Leon and the Spitting Image (26 page)

While the coach was busy filling his pickle jar, Lumpkin taunted Leon. “Hey, Sir Panty Hose. Too bad it’s
not
a joust of war.”

“Just ignore him,” Lily-Matisse said.

“I’m not worried,” said Leon. “He’ll get his joust of war back in class.”

The coach reemerged, dragging the pommel horse. Cheers and laughs erupted as soon as the horse came into view. It had a papier-mâché head fitted to one end and a purple tail attached to the other. A coat of chain mail, made from the tops of soda cans, protected the areas in between.

“Mom did that, too,” Lily-Matisse told her two friends.

“No kidding,” said P.W.

The coach set the horse in the middle of the gym and arranged some floor mats around it.

“Listen up,” he said. “The way the joust of peace works is like this. I’ll be calling out your names, in pairs. The first name called starts out as Rider. Second name called gets to be Lancer. After sixty seconds, Rider and Lancer swap places. The scoring is simple. Only Lancers earn points. If the Lancer hits the Rider’s shield, that’s two points. If the Lancer knocks the Rider off the mount, that’s immediate victory.
However
, if I see the lance hitting anything other than the shield—that’s
immediate
disqualification. Everyone understand what I’ve said so far?”

“Yes!” the class shouted.

“Good. The joust requires me to modify the Kasperitis Code of Conduct. Specifically, that means no thrusting, no trampling, no pummeling, no decapitations, no looting, no marauding, no mayhem, and no bloodshed. I don’t want Cranky Hankey complaining about staying late to clean your guts off the floor mats. And just so we’re clear, none of those weapons you guys are holding can be used on the field of battle. All daggers and swords are to be left in the bleachers.”

“What about soupspoons?” P.W. called out.

Everyone laughed but Lumpkin.

“One last thing,” said the coach. “You’ve heard it before, but I’ll say it again. No teasing, no taunting, no trash-talk of any kind.” With that the coach tooted his jester’s-head whistle and began the tournament joust.

The foam flew fast and furious as Lancers and Riders took turns on the pommel horse. Leon handled himself quite well as a Lancer. Matched against Thomas, he scored six points. But as a Rider, Leon proved less accomplished. Distracted by thoughts of Lumpkin and Plan A, he let Thomas unseat him twenty seconds into the second half of the bout.

Probably a good thing, Leon told himself as he watched the competition from the bleachers. It seemed unwise to risk life and limb—his own and the doll’s—less than an hour before the classroom showdown.

P.W. joined him in the spectators’ gallery at the end of the first round. “I messed up against Antoinette!” he grumbled. “I hit her stupid tiara.”

“Tough break,” said Leon. “At least you’ll avoid Lumpkin.”

“Yeah,” said P.W. “But I know someone who won’t.”

“Who’s that?”

“Take a look.” P.W. pointed. “Lily-Matisse is kicking royal rump!”’

And it was true. Suited up for battle, Lily-Matisse proved to be a gifted jouster. Years of gymnastics training paid off unexpectedly. She ducked and rolled, tucked, arched, and jabbed her way into the second round. And the third. And the fourth. In fact, she made it all the way to the finals.

Unfortunately, so did Henry Lumpkin.

Jasprow vs. Lumpkin started with Lily-Matisse in the saddle. She fended off a ferocious lance attack by digging in her heels and bending her body like a windblown blade of grass. For nearly fifty seconds, Lumpkin could not touch her shield. Then, just as the first half of the face-off was coming to an end, Lily-Matisse let down her guard. Lumpkin glanced the shield rim and scored two points.

The coach blew his whistle. Rider and Lancer swapped places. It was now Lily-Matisse’s turn to charge.

Time and time again, she aimed her lance at the shield of her orange-haired opponent. Time and again she missed. Lumpkin wasn’t so much seated on the horse as
bolted
on.

“We’ve got to do something,” P.W. said urgently.

“I know,” Leon replied. “But what?”

With fifteen seconds left in the match, Leon cupped his hands around his mouth and called out a word he was pretty sure avoided the coach’s prohibition on trash-talking:
“Soupspoon!”

Lumpkin turned toward the spectators’ gallery.

That was just the opening Lily-Matisse needed. She charged and, with a gentle tap, found the sweet spot on Lumpkin’s shield.

“Two points!” the coach shouted. “All tied.”

“That’s not fair,” Lumpkin protested.

Lily-Matisse spun around as her archenemy rose off his saddle to complain. She jabbed her lance tip hard into the dead center of his shield.

Lumpkin crashed onto the gym mats with a
thud!

Over the shouts from the bleachers, the coach gave a blast on the jester’s-head whistle. “Hear ye! Hear ye!” he called out.

“They didn’t say ‘hear ye’ in the Middle Ages,” Antoinette said. Her quibble was instantly drowned out by jeers.

The coach marched over to the pommel horse carrying a small trophy. After quieting everyone down,
he said, “In recognition of her valor and victory in the tournament joust, I do bestow upon Lady Lily-Matisse the Kasperitis Chalice of Champions.”

He handed her the chalice, which was actually a baseball trophy Mr. Groot had altered for the occasion. (The shop instructor sawed off the bat and reattached it under the player’s armpit so that it would look like a lance.)

“Thanks,” said Lily-Matisse.

“And with the Kasperitis Chalice of Champions comes the honor of assigning seats at the banquet,” said the coach.

“Thanks,” she said again.

“Way to go, Lily-Matisse,” P.W. shouted. “You pulverized him!”

The coach leveled a harsh gaze at P.W. “What was that?” he bellowed.

Everyone, from beggar to queen, turned silent.

“Repeat the word you just used,” the coach demanded.

“Pulverized?” P.W. said hesitantly.

The coach shook his head with apparent disgust. “And what’s the most important rule in the Kasperitis Code of Conduct?”

“No trash-talk?”

“That’s right. Do you think they even
had
trash-talk in the Middle Ages?”

“No,” said P.W. nervously.

“Well, you’re wrong!” said the coach, breaking into a big fat smile. “Hey, Queenie,” he yelled to Antoinette. “Since you’re such a stickler about what people did and didn’t say in medieval times—go grab those wordlists off the bench and pass ’em around.”

Wordlists—in gym?

Groans and grumbles spread through the spectators’ gallery. But the grumbles and groans turned into giggles and guffaws when the students got a look at the handouts. They read:

“Back in the Middle Ages, no tournament was complete without a flyting contest,” the coach told them.

“What’s a flyting contest?” Antoinette asked.

“According to Mr. Rattles—he’s the one who made up the list—a flyting contest is an insult
competition. The rules are simple. You guys have two minutes to come up with your best curse. You can use any word you want—as long as it’s decent and medieval.”

The joust of peace was fierce. The joust of words was fiercer. Slurs and slights filled the gym. And in the end, it was P.W. who carried the day by stitching together a nickname that described Henry Lumpkin perfectly. He called the bully a “pimple on the buttock of a toothless curd-turd.”

Why did P.W. do something so obviously life-threatening? For the same reason Lily-Matisse had risked injury during the joust. Both felt confident that Leon and his master piece would protect them.

Moments after the end of the insult competition, Mr. Hankey stuck his head through the double doors of the gym and clanged his bucket-sized bell. “Banquet time,” he announced. “Get thee to the lunchroom.”

“You mean feast hall,” Antoinette corrected.

Lily-Matisse installed herself at the head of the banquet table, in a throne covered with recycled tinfoil. She set down the Kasperitis Chalice of Champions and commanded Sir Leon and Master Dhabanandana to sit by her side. At Leon’s suggestion she exercised her special rights still further by exiling Lumpkin to the opposite end of the room.

“Let’s just hope that keeps him away until we get
back to class,” Leon said as he surveyed the table. It was decorated like a medieval kingdom, complete with a gingerbread castle and vegetable forests. The banquet menu included cercles of oynon and fyngers of chicken and something called solana tuberosa in modo crispus fricta, which looked promisingly like curly fries.

Everyone was impressed. Well, almost everyone. “They didn’t
have
curly fries in medieval Europe,” Antoinette said. “They didn’t have potatoes,
period.”

“Now there’s a scary thought,” said Lily-Matisse. “A world without curly fries.”

“Or mashed potatoes,” said P.W.

“Or potato chips!” Leon exclaimed.

P.W. grabbed a fistful of chicken. “Still, I could get used to eating this way. Food tastes a lot better without forks.”

“Or soupspoons,” said Leon. He gazed toward the far end of the table. “Where’d Lumpkin go?”

P.W. shrugged.

“I’m sure we’ll find out,” said Lily-Matisse nervously.

And she was right. Ten minutes before the end of the feast, after the fruit tarts and jellies had been served, after a jester had jested and a juggler had juggled, Leon felt a small tug. He looked under the table just in time to see Lumpkin crawling away.

“Yoo-hoo, Sir Panty Hose,” said Lumpkin, as he
resurfaced at the far end of the table. “Missing something?”

Leon reached for his pouch. “It’s gone!” he cried. “Lumpkin’s got the master piece!”

Leon jumped up and raced toward the doll. Lily-Matisse and P.W. followed close behind. When they reached Lumpkin, he was tapping his soupspoon against the pouch, like a musician playing the triangle.

Tap … tap … tap
.

“Give it back,” Lily-Matisse said.

Lumpkin kept tapping.

Tap … tap … tap … clink!

Lumpkin raised a brow. “Hmm.”

Leon tried to grab for the pouch, but Lumpkin fended him off with a vicious swipe. The soupspoon caught the back of Leon’s hand.

“Now, now, Sir Panty Hose. None of that.” Lumpkin tucked the spoon under his arm, opened the pouch, and dumped the contents. Doll and juice bottle tumbled onto the banquet table.

Leon watched helplessly as Lumpkin brought the bottle to eye level and inspected the murky liquid inside. “What’s this?”

“Mead,” P.W. said quickly.

“Huh?”

“It’s a kind of medieval drink,” said Lily-Matisse. “Very tasty.”

Lumpkin unscrewed the bottle and took a sniff.

Leon wasn’t sure what to do. Much as he would have loved to see Henry Lumpkin drink teacher’s spit, it didn’t make sense to waste the powerful potion.

Lumpkin brought the jar to his lips….

“That’s not mead!” Antoinette shouted seconds before he was going to take a swallow. “It’s not clear enough to be mead.”

Lumpkin put down the jar and scowled, then turned his attention to the other item that had fallen from the pouch.

“Well, well,” he said, looking straight into the eyes of the doll. “So we meet again.”

“Please,” Leon cried.

Lumpkin ignored him. “What was I going to do with you?” he said to the master piece. “Oh, that’s right.” He brought his hand back.

“Stop!” cried Leon.

Lumpkin hurled the master piece. It flew over the banquet table with such force that it knocked a sugar-cone roof off the north tower of the gingerbread castle and kept on going. It hit a stack of trays and kept on going. It ricocheted off a wall and kept on going. It only ended its flight after it glanced off the side of the salad bar and dropped into a garbage can.

“Hank the Tank for two!” Lumpkin shouted boastfully.

Leon raced over to the crash site and retrieved his master piece. Lily-Matisse and P.W. arrived seconds later.

“The wig!” Leon cried. “It’s missing!”

Where the hairpiece should have been, there was now only a sparse Velcro stubble. Leon rooted through the garbage can while Lily-Matisse and P.W. searched for the wig along the doll’s flight path.

“Found it!” Lily-Matisse yelled, emerging triumphantly from behind a stack of trays. She handed Leon the hairpiece. He reattached it and gave the doll a once-over.

The clothing was a little rumpled, but otherwise everything seemed okay. Then Leon straightened out the cape.

“Oh, no!” he blurted out.

“What’s wrong
now?”
said Lily-Matisse.

“Look!” Leon cried. He pulled back the cape to expose the doll’s legs.

P.W. and Lily-Matisse understood at once the severity of the situation. The force of impact had ripped through the doll’s panty hose and had opened a seam on one of the legs. And leg seams, all three knew, were where Miss Hagmeyer usually conducted the stitch counts that determined whether animiles passed—or failed.

M
iss Hagmeyer heard the door creak before Leon set foot inside the classroom.

“You’re early,” she snapped. She was kneeling before the supply cabinet, her arms shoved deep inside the panty-hose drawer.

What
is she fishing for? Leon wondered as he watched her root through the tattered, tangled hose.

All of a sudden she pulled something to the surface. It was the black binder!

“Why aren’t you still at the banquet?” Miss Hagmeyer demanded.

“Just wanted to check over my master piece,” Leon said. And while I’m at it, get a look at that binder, he thought to himself.