Academic Assassins Read online

  Smile graphic © 2015 Rachna Batra

  Background image © Shutterstock / Sakarin Sawasdinaka

  Cover design by Sammy Yuen and Joann Hill

  Text copyright © 2015 by Clay McLeod Chapman

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  ISBN 978-1-4231-5485-3

  Visit www.DisneyBooks.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part I: Me, Myself, and the Voices in My Head Journal Entry #1

  Journal Entry #2

  Journal Entry #4

  Journal Entry #9

  Journal Entry #17

  Journal Entry #31

  Journal Entry #43

  Journal Entry #???

  ???

  ?

  Part II: Welcome to the Ant Farm Missing “Wild Child” Responsible for Recent Attacks in Wilderness

  Wave the White Bag

  Parens Patriae

  Roll Out the Blood-Red Carpet

  Peas in a Penal Colony Pod

  Old Sparky

  Follow the Yellow Brick Road

  Rekindling Old Forest Fires

  The Underground Tribe Fair

  Part III: The Voice of a New Generation Literary Rib Cage

  Visiting Hours Are Over

  Under the Green Thumb

  Marquise de Encyclopedia

  The First Rule of Book Club…

  Channel Surfing

  Our Lives Are an Open Book

  Coloring Outside the Lines

  Library Fines and Fees

  Part IV: Down the Black Rabbit Hole The Ministry of Push and Shove

  The Walls Are Whispering Again

  Blast from the Past

  The Ant Farm Rebellion

  Get It Off Your Chest (Lightning Round)

  Choose Your Own Adventure

  List of Known Tribes in the Public School System

  Acknowledgments

  for Donnie

  “Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?”

  —Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

  (Selected excerpts from the personal journal of Spencer Austin Pendleton.)

  “I am on my mountain in my woods in a tree home cave that people have passed without ever knowing that I am here….”

  —My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George (and Spencer Pendleton)

  JOURNAL ENTRY #1

  By the power vested in me by Mother Nature, I am hereby granting myself emancipation from my parents.

  Whatever life I had beyond these woods is officially over.

  I’m on my own now.

  Peashooter was right about one thing: our families sold us out. He lured everybody’s parents into a trap—only, guess what? My mom and pop-sicle couldn’t even give a cannibal’s ass about me enough to take the bait in the first place. I’ll spare them the hassle of pretending to care.

  I’m pulling a Thoreau, folks. Time to go native. Sayonara, city life—hello, wilderness.…

  Nobody outside the Tribe knows this cave exists. They lived in this limestone grotto for nearly six months. Since they’re back home with their parents—thanks to, ahem, moi—this place is all mine now.

  Chez Pendleton. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

  Cave sweet cave.

  When the mosquitoes aren’t feasting on my flesh and the bats aren’t dropping guacamole guano on my shoulders, this dank dungeon can be pretty picturesque—my own cozy subterranean abode.

  Care to take a little tour?

  It might not look like much from the outside, but believe me, it’s very spacious once you crawl in. Six thousand square feet. High ceilings. All natural floors. Those calcium carbonate chandeliers are completely original. They date all the way back to when this cave was first formed in the Ice Age. You just can’t find stalactites like that these days. And you simply can’t beat the plumbing. There’s running water, twenty-four-seven—though the metallic aftertaste makes my tongue feel like I’m sucking nickels.

  Not to mention, I’ve got my very own personal Library of the Dead.

  Peashooter stocked his hovel with every possible novel he could get his hands on, sorted according to subject matter. I’m surrounded by stacks of abandoned paperbacks, their pages curled and contorted from the damp air. Each pile serves a particular reading niche.

  Fantasy has its own stack.

  Cookbooks, how-to books.

  There is even a stalagmite of dystopian fiction. The column ascends to the ceiling with works such as Nineteen Eighty-Four, Fahrenheit 451, and Brave New World.

  Another lit pillar tucked at the back of the cave specializes in kids surviving the wilderness—My Side of the Mountain, Hatchet, and The Swiss Family Robinson.

  What better way to learn how to rough it in the woods than to read about those characters who’ve already done it?

  There isn’t much to do in here but read by candlelight, anyhow. I could spend the next thirty years buried with these books, chewing through to the very core of each and every last one of them.

  I’m never going above ground again.

  JOURNAL ENTRY #2

  WHAT DO I HAVE?

  • One box of soggy wooden matches.

  • One dozen candles, partially melted.

  • One bag of bread, slightly moldy.

  • A stash of expired vending machine snacks—Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs—corn starched into existence circa nineteen seventy-four, preserved to processed food perfection.

  • Three musty blankets and six pillows, damp, sans pillowcases.

  • Two fishing poles—one with line, the other without.

  • One dozen oxidized batteries, mostly dead.

  WHAT DO I NEED?

  • Learn how to start a fire. Stay warm, stay dry.

  • Learn how to fish.

  • Food.

  • Food.

  • Foooooood.

  Last time I looked at a calendar, it was the beginning of July. It’s bound to be somewhere in the middle of the month by now. Time was tossed right out the window when the Tribe overthrew Camp New Leaf. Even that feels like a lifetime ago.

  A faded vine of Peashooter’s graffiti still stretches along the cave’s ceiling—I NEVER FOUND A COMPANION THAT WAS SO COMPANIONABLE AS SOLITUDE. Words to live by, courtesy of Thoreau.

  Nobody would call the Tribe great interior decorators, but they still gave this place a nice personal touch. There is a shrine to their parents—all the candid snapshots of younger versions of themselves with their families. Every so often, I get to thinking about the Tribe reuniting with their parents. I wonder how they’re getting along back at home, now that they have reentered the real world again.

  Why didn’t my parents come for me? How could they just abandon me like that? I’m not some tennis ball. They can’t keep volleying me back and forth between each other like this is Wimbledon.

  I’m their son.

  Actually—scratch that.

  I’m nobody’s son now.

  I left the Tribe’s photos where they were, untouched. See how happy they were as kids? Before their parents completely messed them all up?

  Okay—I lied. I took one pic for myself. Sully’s photo is folded in my back pocket. She follows me wherever I go. Out here, it’s good to have someone to talk to. Even if she is just a photog
raph.

  Someone forgot to turn the tap off. I keep hearing the persistent plink of water from deeper inside the cave, as if a kitchen sink were dripping—plink, plink, plink.

  Almost sounds like someone’s crying.

  JOURNAL ENTRY #4

  I swore I heard voices echoing through the woods today.

  Adult voices.

  Some even called out for me. “Spencer…?” The trees shuddered at the sound of my name. “Spenceeeeer Peeeeeeendleton?”

  Their voices had a deceptive tenor. They sounded like they were concerned, but I wasn’t falling for it.

  Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice—well.…

  You know how it goes.

  The only time anyone ever says my name out loud these days is because I’ve done something wrong. It’s as if my very name naturally phonates fury:

  “Spen! Cer! Pen! Dle! Ton!”

  For a while, those voices sounded awfully close. Like, right-outside-my-cave close. About-to-be-breathing-down-my-neck close.

  I ducked behind a literary stalactite, just in case they found the cave’s entrance. Books toppled over, their soft pages sounding like bat wings echoing throughout the cavern—fflpt-fflpt-fflpt-fflpt.

  I figured I was done for. Whoever was out there would drag me back home and force me to—

  The voices faded. They missed me. Missed me! Ha! Take that, humanity! I slipped through civilization’s fingers once again! Eat it!

  Now I really am on my own.

  JOURNAL ENTRY #9

  I’m eight. I’m running away from home. I’ve stuffed enough clothes into a suitcase to last a week. I’ve informed Mom that I am officially flying the coop and there’s nothing she can do to stop me.

  Mom nods and says, “Dinner will be ready around seven.”

  I hit the road with visions of sticking my thumb out and hitching a ride to Alaska. Or hopping on a freight train across the country. Or joining the circus. Anything to take me away from home.

  I’ll rough it in the wilderness. I’ll live off of nuts and berries. I’ll make my own bow and arrow from a tree branch, with a bowstring made from the sinew of a deer that I’ll personally hunt and gut all by myself. I’ll chat with the birds and they’ll fill me in on the best spots to set up camp and all the primo fishing holes.

  And eeeeeeeeverybody back at home will miss me. How sorry my family will be when I was gone. They’ll stay up for hours at night, in tears, rolling around in bed, pulling their hair out, wishing they had only been nicer to me when they’d had the chance.

  “Why oh why did you forsake us, Spencer?” They’ll all wail. “Oh—how can we ever live with ourselves now? Come back to us! Pleeease!”

  Too late now, I’ll say from the cozy confines of my woodland Shangri-la. Maybe next time you’ll think twice about saying no to me when I ask for an extra helping of chocolate milk…

  Or if I can stay up an extra hour to watch television…

  Or if I can borrow the keys to Dad’s car.…

  I made it as far as the end of our block before I realized I had forgotten to pack my toothbrush. And my favorite T-shirt (I really shouldn’t have scheduled my great escape on laundry day).

  Dragging my suitcase back into the kitchen, I found Mom setting the dinner table.

  “I’m not staying,” I said. “I just forgot a few things.”

  “I’ll pretend like I didn’t see you.”

  I smelled the alluring aroma of beef in the oven. “What’re you making?”

  “Meatloaf sandwiches,” she said. “Want one for the road?” Mom had already set a place for me at the dinner table. “Just in case you change your mind.”

  Mom didn’t say anything when I sat down. She didn’t have to. She simply served me a sandwich. And with every meaty, juicy bite that she watched me take, I could feel how much she loved me.

  Whoa.…

  Where did that memory come from? I hadn’t thought about it in years. Out here in the woods, recollections keep returning when I least expect them, like a dam has cracked in my mind, releasing a flood of memories.

  The biggest difference between now and then is—when I was eight, I had a home to run away from.

  Now I’ve got nothing. And I’m keeping it that way.

  Sitting here with my back pressed up against cold limestone, huddled in the dark with a flickering candle, I can’t help but wonder if Mom and Dad are sorry that I’m gone this time.

  Or if they’ve realized I’m gone yet.

  It has been days since I last set foot outside. I think. Hard to tell with no daylight. I’m beginning to forget what sun feels like on my skin.

  Too much time on my hands here.

  In the cold. In the dark.

  In my head.

  JOURNAL ENTRY #17

  I returned to Camp New Leaf today.

  I know, I know.…Bad call. I promised myself I wouldn’t, but I had no choice.

  I needed to find food. Pronto.

  One unclassified red wildberry was enough to seize my stomach with massive cramps. I threw up—twice—even though there wasn’t anything left to purge. I sounded like a donkey with colic, heave-ho-ing a lot of bile and air and emptiness—heehaw, heehaw, heehaw!

  Food. I’ve got to find food.

  Hello, New Leaf.…Boy, were you ever a sight for sore eyes.

  Sore, pecked out, bleeding eyes.

  The grounds were nothing but a burnt shell. The gutted cabins looked like the long-forgotten skeletons of some prehistoric pack of wooly pachyderms, their bones pecked clean of their meat by scavenging animals. Whatever remains of these oversized frames had been left to decay, swallowed up by the surrounding wilderness.

  Walking through the front door of my old cabin, I looked up and noticed the roof had been scorched back to its beams, compliments of Firefly. The exposed rafters were nothing more than cindered ribs.

  I spotted a partially charred sleeping bag on the floor. The fire had chewed through the bottom of the bag, but I could still use it. I rolled it up and tucked it under my arm, searching for more salvageable materials.

  I could have sworn I heard somebody call out my name—Speeeeeeeencer.

  “Who’s there?” I spun around and realized it was just the breeze blowing through the shattered window at my back. Shards of jagged glass rattled in the windowsill, like fangs—Speeeeenceeeeeeeeeeer.

  Let’s make this a quick visit, Spence, I thought. Now’s not the time for a trip down memory lane.

  Hunger had taken over my head. I couldn’t think straight. My vision was blurry.

  I needed to eat.

  Something.

  Anything.

  There wasn’t any food in the mess hall. A raccoon was perched on a table, clasping a hamburger bun covered in blue and green spots.

  “You gonna finish that?” I asked.

  No answer.

  “Thanks for the stimulating conversation, pal.…That’s the last time I invite you to lunch.”

  I gathered a few plastic forks from the floor and stuffed them into my pocket before I heard a clanging coming from the parking lot.

  Sounded like Morse code.

  I’m not alone, I thought as I picked up the pace and raced toward the parking lot. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who had hightailed it into the woods. Maybe I’m not alone I’m not alone I’m not—

  The parking lot was empty. All I saw was a few abandoned cars, their tires melted down to the rims. A loose pulley kept striking the flagpole in the wind. A few scraps of fabric billowed in the breeze.

  The Tribe’s flag.

  I saluted the raggedy blanket with my middle finger—“Thanks for the memories, guys. This was a summer I’ll never forget.”

  Back to scavenging. I found a few pens in the counselor’s office. They would hold me over for a couple more journal entries, I thought.

  George’s computer sat on his desk. A thin film of soot smeared the screen. Wiping the grime away, I was confronted with a teenage scarecrow staring back at me
from the dark screen.

  “Aaah!” I gave a start, thinking someone else was standing behind me.

  My face looked thinner. Whatever puff I had in my cheeks was gone. I really could’ve used a haircut.

  I found my finger hovering over the computer’s power switch. Only an inch between me and electricity.

  Spencer, I thought, what are you doing?

  If I turned it on, I could connect to the outside world.

  Don’t do it, Spence.…

  If I connected to the outside world, I could go online.

  Don’t do it.…

  I could reach out. Reach home.

  Don’t.…

  I pushed the power button. Nothing. Of course there was no electricity. Nothing works out here anymore. It was as if everybody had forgotten this spot. Maybe nobody wanted to remember.

  Would you?

  Best to forget you even exist, Spencer.…

  I couldn’t quiet the voice in my head.

  Nobody wants you.

  The whispers at my ear were growing louder.

  Nobody cares.

  I walked down to the dock for a last look at Lake Wendigo. A stray life preserver drifted along the crystal-smooth surface, like a floating donut. The sun started to sink below the tree line, as pink as a slice of raw sirloin.

  Yum.…I was seeing food everywhere now.

  I had to head back to the cave. There was an hour’s hike through the woods, and it wasn’t easy in the dark.

  There were animals out there. Wolves. Bears. Snapping turtles. Each looking for their next meal.

  Aren’t we all?

  I could feel the knot in my stomach tighten its grip, squeezing my insides until it had my undivided attention—

  Feed me feed me feed me feed me feeeeeed meeeeee.…

  Dusk brought a cicada song out from the pines. Their grinding jaws filled the night sky—

  Fee­edme­eee­fee­eed­mee­eee­ef­eee­edm­eee­eee­ee.

  The camp reminded me of an empty cicada husk. Once the molting adult insect sheds its skin, the abandoned exoskeleton still clings to the side of a tree.