The boys roared with laughter. “We get caught all the time!” Toad said. “Why do you think we’re in detention? And in you, we see a kindred spirit—another artist, if you will.”
“Me?”
“You must have done something to get the principal on your case,” Wyatt said. “Hey! You’re not the kid that keeps stealing the letters off the movie theater sign, are you?”
Flinch shook his head.
“Whoever is doing that is an inspiration to juvenile delinquents everywhere,” Toad said.
Hooper laughed. “Last week there was a movie playing called Trouble in the Deep Water. He changed the sign to read The Turd in the Bowl.”
“Star Wars Festival turned into Fart Wars,” Toad said.
“Last month the sign advertised a movie called Eat Pray Fart!” Hooper exclaimed.
“It’s truly groundbreaking work,” Wyatt said. “He’s taking the juvenile delinquent world by storm!”
All of the boys laughed. Toad nearly fell out of his seat. Even Flinch laughed, right before he sneezed.
“Wow! You got some serious allergies, bro,” Wyatt said.
“We should record that and make it Ms. Dove’s voice mail message,” Hooper suggested.
“Flinch, I need you in the Playground on the double. We’ve got a problem,” Pufferfish told him through the com-link.
“So what do you say, dude? You hanging with us? Those rocks aren’t going to throw themselves,” Hooper said.
“Listen, thanks for the invite but I gotta go,” Flinch said as he stood up from the table.
“I told you the guy had a secret life!” Wyatt cried.
Flinch froze. How did Wyatt know? Had he seen him sneak into Locker 41? Had he spotted him running to school at superspeed? “Um—”
“You’re the one that keeps letting off stink bombs in Ms. Bailey’s class!”
“Yep—busted,” Flinch lied. It was best for the boys to think he was pulling pranks instead of wondering what he was doing when he disappeared.
“Dude, that’s classic!” Toad croaked.
The other boys all agreed that it was indeed “classic.”
“All right, dude,” Hooper said. “You go do your thing. We’ve got some serious pranks to pull before the end of the day, too.”
Wyatt opened up his backpack. Flinch saw it was stuffed tight with chocolate snack cakes. They were tubes of chocolate with cream filling called Ho Hos. Flinch had eaten a million of them in his day.
“What are those for?”
“We’re dumping them in the girl’s bathroom toilets where they will magically be transformed into floating number twos. It’s going to be hilarious when the girls run out of the bathroom looking like they’re going to barf!”
“FLINCH. We need you now!” Pufferfish shouted loud enough to rattle Flinch’s brain.
“Well, have fun,” Flinch said before he left. As he hurried from the cafeteria, he looked back at the boys. What a strange world middle school was. No one was exactly who they seemed. Even the troublemakers had layers.
Moments later, Flinch leaped into Locker 41. When he reached the floor of the Playground, his team was waiting for him—or rather, what was left of it. Nearly fifty of the scientists were now locked away in quarantine.
“They’re all infected?” Flinch asked.
Brand nodded. “And there may be more, but right now we can’t be certain. The results from the first round of testing were corrupted, so we’re going to start over. But that’s not our biggest concern right now. Suit up. The School Bus is ready.”
“Where are we going?” Flinch asked.
“Pack your sunglasses, shaky,” Jackson said. “We’re going to Hollywood.”
Ten minutes later, the School Bus was breaking the Earth’s gravitational pull and making a U-turn to California. Flinch watched the red glow of the superheated ship’s hull out the window while chewing on his fingernails. The last couple of missions had all been technically successful, but they were also disastrous, and it was mostly his fault. He just hoped that Agent Brand would finally see that he shouldn’t be leading the team.
Ms. Holiday unstrapped herself from her seat. “Time for your mission. Benjamin, can you help me out with this one?”
“Of course,” the little blue orb chirped. Spinning like a top in midair, it projected a 360-degree image along the walls of the rocket. Flinch saw a hulking giant with two heads, four arms, and four legs standing nearly ten feet tall. It was stampeding down Hollywood Boulevard, kicking cars aside and terrorizing everyone it passed. Then the video changed to a news reporter standing on the side of the very same street. She gestured toward the creature that was rapidly approaching from behind her, but much to Flinch’s surprise, she didn’t seem at all concerned.
“As you can see, today’s film shoot is tying up traffic from here to Wilshire, and I have to say, that is one amazing-looking robot,” the reporter said. “The magic of moviemaking is alive and well, folks.”
The video cut to a man sitting at a desk. “Carla, how long do they say the shoot will last? I’m sure that’s backing traffic up for miles.”
“At this moment there seems to be confusion as to who exactly is shooting the movie, but as soon as I get word, I’ll report back to you,” the reporter said.
“Why are we getting involved with moviemaking?” Gluestick asked.
“That’s not a movie. It’s the real thing. We’ve told the local press we’re a production company shooting a movie called The Monstrosity, and it’s important to keep them believing it as long as we can,” Agent Brand said. “People are already tense from the sudden crime wave. If they think a two-headed giant is terrorizing a major city it will lead to panic.”
Pufferfish slipped on her parachute. “So, what is it—a mutant? A robot?”
“No, it’s an actor,” Ms. Holiday said. “I’ve used facial recognition technology on one of the heads and I’ve identified him.”
“Facial recognition technology?” Flinch asked. “What’s that?”
“It’s a computer program. I tapped into a database filled with photos of people from all over the world. It searched every published photo, trying to match the eyes, bone structure, and nose of our giant. It took a bit longer because I was searching criminal records first. That’s the problem with this epidemic. The usual suspects aren’t the usual suspects; it’s regular people who are causing all the problems. Well, anyway, when I expanded the search I found him right away. His name is Justin Maines.”
“The Justin Maines?” Duncan cried.
“You know him?” Brand asked.
“Of course! He was on my favorite show of all time, Space Trek! He was one of the red shirts.”
“What’s a red shirt?” Braceface asked.
“The show was about a spaceship that investigated alien worlds. The people in charge wore yellow shirts, and the science and medical teams wore blue. But if the character had a red shirt on, he was a low-level member of the team, which meant there was a pretty good chance he was going to get killed or eaten or sucked into a time vortex and you’d never see him again.”
“Gluestick, sometimes your nerdiness is frightening,” Braceface said.
“But he’s right, Jackson,” Ms. Holiday said. “Mr. Maines was in fifty-seven episodes of that show, and he died in every single one. Since then, he’s made a career out of playing dead bodies on crime shows. They call him the ‘king of extras.’”
“Which makes a lot of sense when you take a good look at him—he’s got a couple extra arms and legs and an extra head,” Flinch said.
“Let me guess: He’s got a ray gun,” Pufferfish offered.
Ms. Holiday nodded. “We’re not sure how it works, but it appears to duplicate the molecular structure of anything it blasts, and then it rearranges the two copies into one solid form.”