Leon and the Spitting Image (30 page)

“Went a little crazy with the exclamation marks, didn’t you, Mom?”

“Not at all,” said Emma Zeisel. “That’s all there
were in the letter box. Otherwise I’d have used tons more.”

A penguin waddled toward the revolving door.

“Uh-oh,” said Maria. “I better get the Poop-B-Gone.”

“I have it covered,” said Emma Zeisel. She held up a diaper.

Maria laughed.

“So what are you kids going to do now that you’ve finished all those silly sewing projects?” asked Leon’s mother.

“Oh, they’re not
all
done, Ms. Z,” said Lily-Matisse.

“Really?”

“Really,” said P.W. “We’ve got a huge project we’re just about to start. Isn’t that right, Leon?”

Leon tapped his pouch and looked at his friends.

“Yup,” he said with a smile.

The evening before the start of fifth grade, Leon Zeisel was feeling
unusually chipper. He sat on his bed in Trimore Towers—the six story, wedding
cake-shaped one-star hotel he called home—and prepared his things for school.

Three-ring binder? Check.

No. 2 pencils? Check.

Pens? Check.

Lab notebook? Check.

After reassuring himself that all
required
materials were present
and accounted for, Leon reached under his bed and pulled out the unrequired item that
was making him so chipper.

Keen though he was to peek inside the large purple
pouch that protected the item in question, Leon worried about jinxing things, so he
resisted temptation. He placed the school supplies—plus the pouch—into his
backpack, hung the backpack on the doorknob, and pushed the pouched item out of his
mind.

For a while.

But in the middle of the night Leon awoke with a start. A single word
pulsed through his head.

The word beat quietly at first:
POUCH! POUCH!
POUCH
!

But soon it got louder:
POUCH! POUCH!
POUCH!

Then louder still: POUCH! POUCH! POUCH!

Leon couldn’t stop the tom-tom of temptation. Eventually he hopped
out of bed and padded over to the bedroom door, dragging his blanket behind him. He
placed the blanket across the doorjamb to make sure no light would seep into the living
room. Once the blanket was properly positioned, he grabbed the backpack off the doorknob
and switched on the lamp by his bed.

As soon as his eyes adjusted, Leon unzipped the backpack and removed the
purple pouch. He took a breath. Then he squinched his eyes and clucked his tongue, a
good luck ritual performed to ward off worry. And Leon Zeisel
was
feeling
worried—
and
thrilled and antsy and eager.

After the squinch and cluck, he got down to business.
With great care, he unpuckered the pouch by loosening the braided drawstrings, and he
removed two objects: a small glass bottle filled with tarry brown liquid and a
nine-inch-long handmade rag doll.

He set the bottle aside and directed his attention to the doll. It was a
stocky figure of a boy dressed in an olive drab army jacket. The boy had bright orange
hair, a surly looking mouth that curved downward, and beady eyes made out of actual
beads. The beady bead eyes glowered at Leon.

Leon glowered back. “You staring at me, Pumpkinhead?” he
whispered sternly.

Pumpkinhead remained silent.

“Wipe that look off your face
now
, soldier!” Leon
commanded.

The doll failed to obey the order.

“Okay, lamebrain, you asked for it.” Leon dispensed a
disciplinary noogie to show Pumpkinhead who was boss.

Actually, he made Pumpkinhead give
himself
a
noogie—bunching up the figure’s tiny cloth fingers and grinding them into
the soft, stuffing-filled skull.

“And there’s more where that came from, Pumpkinhead,”
said Leon. “You’ll find that out
for yourself
tomorrow, bright and early.”

Reassured by the one-way exchange, Leon began packing up. As he reached
for the bottle of tarry brown liquid, he felt a slight tug on the leg of his pajamas. He
didn’t think much about it until his bed lamp came crashing down. A wire had
wrapped around his shin.

Almost at once, Leon’s mother called out from the living room.
“Sweetie? You okay?”

“Fine,” Leon managed, as he groped about in the dark.

“What are you to up to in there?”

Leon could hear the springs of the pullout couch in the living room
creaking, a sure sign that his mom would soon burst in. “Just organizing stuff
for school,” he shot back, as fumbled to repouch the bottle and rag doll.

The doorknob turned. “What’s blocking the door?” Emma
Zeisel demanded.

Leon zipped up his backpack seconds before his mother pushed the blanket
aside. She entered the bedroom and flipped on the wall switch.

Sniffing the air, she said, “I smell something fishy. You’ve
been going through that collection of yours, haven’t you?”

“No, Mom. It’s just back-to-school jitters,” said
Leon, his heart pounding.

“Well, jitters or no jitters, now’s no time for
mischief—not the night before the start of fifth grade. Get
it?”

“Got it.”

“Good,” said Emma Zeisel firmly. “Now get your behind
back into bed.”

Leon crawled under the sheets. His mom then waved the blanket back over
her son, tucking in the edges with the expert hand of a seasoned hotel professional.
“There we go,” said Emma Zeisel. She gave her son a kiss and returned his
bed lamp to the nightstand. “I’d tell you, ‘Lights out,’ but
you seem to have taken care of that all by yourself.”

“I was just—”

“Hush now, and get some shuteye,” she scolded gently.
“You have to be up by six thirty to walk the poodle in 309.”

“Six
thirty?”
Leon whined.

“At the latest, sweetie. You’re the one who told Napoleon
you wanted to get to school before the first bell. Remember, he’s picking you up
at a quarter to eight on the dot.”