Project Jackalope (13 page)

I’d seen enough DARPA gadgets to last me a lifetime, so I didn’t even want to know what he was getting ready to do to us. I gave it one last-ditch effort. “He trusts us—if we try to rush things it’ll just mess everything up.”

Mr. Jones frowned at me, like he was reading something written on my forehead. I held my breath.

Mr. Suit #2 stopped talking into his cuff and motioned toward Mr. Jones. “It’s Twitchett! They’ve got a lock on him. They need you!”

Mr. Jones hesitated, glaring at us.

“Jones! You want to explain how you lost him a second time?” Mr. Suit #2 barked.

Mr. Jones grabbed me by the shirt front. “Four o’clock. But know this. You will produce the jackalope. You will hand it over. And if you fail to do so at that time, you will be taken into custody, your parents will be taken into custody, and everything will become evidence in your trial for treason. Am I clear?”

I nodded. Agatha just gaped at me. Mr. Jones shoved me away and hurried after Mr. Suit #2.

“Wait, what about Professor Twitchett?” I said. He was the one person who could spoil my whole plan. “Did you catch him?”

Apparently Twitchett was a touchy subject, because a ticked-off look flashed across Mr. Jones’ face. “Your Professor Twitchett boarded a plane to Venezuela this afternoon. We’ve got agents tracking his movements.
Make no mistake, I’ll get him.” He didn’t look pleased, though. “Four o’clock,” he said deliberately, and then turned and left.

Agatha waited until he was gone to turn on me. “What the heck, Jeremy? Are you insane?” She was doing that spitting thing again. I think she does it when she gets really mad. (Something she has in common with Jack, actually.)

I could tell I was going to have to do some serious explaining. “Look, Agatha. It’s the only way. You know they’re not going to leave us alone, not ever. Not as long as they know about Jack.”

“But four o’clock? Are you crazy? That’s the science fair!” Agatha hissed.

“I know.” I looked around. Mr. Suit #2 was still in the doorway, but it didn’t look like he could hear us. “Listen, I’ve got an idea. It’s our only shot.”

“If you’re so ready to hand him over, why wait? Why not do it right now?” Agatha glared at me.

“Because we need time to set things up.” I leaned forward, and with one eye on Mr. Suit #2, I told her my
plan. I have to admit, though, she didn’t seem to think it was the foolproof work of genius that I thought it was. In fact, she seemed to think it was pretty lame.

“You’re not serious.” Agatha stared at me like I was completely brain-dead.

“Well, yeah, actually, I am.”

“You cannot think that will work.” She had a look on her face like she’d just taken off in an airplane and then realized the pilot was a chipmunk.

But, yeah, I thought it would work. Well, might work. It had a chance. I don’t want to get into percentages here.

I raised one eyebrow. “You’d rather do electricity with a potato?”

Agatha sagged. It was a cheap shot, I know.

“Think about Twitchett. Think about what they know about him. It’ll work.” I smiled. “Two words—baboon butts.”

Agatha gave me the ghost of a smile. “Okay, I’m in,” she said, just as Mr. Suit #2 came over.

“Hey, you two. You need to clear out. Now.” He picked up Agatha’s backpack, went through it quickly, and handed it to her. “Here, take your stuff.”

Agatha went over and took her backpack. I didn’t take anything. Like I needed the remnants of a shredded duffel bag.

“Hey, don’t forget this.” Mr. Suit #2 picked up a notebook with PROPERTY OF AGATHA written in elaborate bubble letters on the front and handed it to her.

Agatha’s eyes got wide. “Thanks,” she gushed, clutching it to her chest. I tried to catch her eye, but she didn’t even notice. Somebody was still riding the freakout train.

She hurried out into the hallway and let herself into her apartment. I hung back and watched as Mr. Suit #2 put up police tape, went into Mrs. Simmons’ apartment, and locked the door. Then I followed her in.

I glanced at my watch. It was just about time for our parents to start getting home. This had to be the longest day of my life.

“So now we wait?” Agatha said.

“Just until most of the Suits are gone.”

We sat in Agatha’s window, watching the Suit activity until it looked like only Mr. Suit #2 was still there. Then we crept back out into the hallway. We had to get this done before our parents got home from work, or we were totally screwed.

I put one of Agatha’s saucers on the floor and poured a little of the hotel whiskey into it. “Hey!” I whispered. “Jack!”

Even with Agatha standing guard, I was convinced that Mr. Suit #2 was going to come out and bust us at any second, or Mrs. Garcia was going to come downstairs and scream. And I didn’t even want to think about what would happen if Jack had lost his taste for whiskey.

I sat back on my heels in the hallway, waiting for a glimpse of twitchy nose or fluffy tail, but there was nothing. No sign of him.

Agatha and I exchanged worried looks. “They’ll be getting home soon.” she whispered. “Hurry!”

I poured a little more whiskey in the dish and waved my hand over it, trying to make the smell float around. Which was really going to be fun to explain to my parents. I had a feeling that I smelled like a distillery.

“Jack!” I whispered again. Nothing.

Then, just when I was feeling desperate, I heard it.

“He went that way!” A tiny voice came from under the stairs. It sounded just like Professor Twitchett.

“Did you hear that?” Agatha said, looking around.

“Jack?” I said a little more loudly. I waved my hand over the whiskey again.

“Quick, over there!” The voice under the stairs came again, but this time it sounded like Bob.

I looked nervously at Mrs. Simmons’ door. “Come on, Jack.”

I clinked the bottle against the dish, and at the sound, Jack gave a skittery jump out into the hallway. He had blood on his antlers and matted into his fur. He looked pretty rough, but I’ve never seen a jackalope look more
awesome. I pretended not to notice the crazy in his eyes. Jack wouldn’t hurt me. I had to believe that.

I pushed the dish closer to him. “Want some?” I was trying to act casual, but it was hard to ignore the blood dripping onto the floor.

Jack eyed me warily and then hopped over to the dish to do some major-league guzzling. He was definitely a jackalope in need of a pick-me-up.

When he was finished boozing it up, I reached down and carefully scooped him up. He snuggled back into my hands and watched me sleepily. I really appreciated him not ripping my throat out.

Agatha hurried over and wiped off his antlers and fur with a tissue.

“You know what to do?” I asked her, holding him out to her.

Agatha nodded and took him from me. “Say goodbye, Jack.”

I ruffled him on the head between the antlers. “See you, buddy.”

Jack belched affectionately in my face. I would’ve appreciated it more if it hadn’t been as loud as a foghorn.

Agatha jerked the little boozer close to her chest and rushed into her apartment with a grin. She closed the door just as Mr. Suit #2 opened the door and looked out into the hallway.

I waved at him and headed upstairs, looking a whole lot cockier than I felt. I just hoped we would be able to pull this off. Our whole lives depended on it.

If I thought the rest of the day was going to be relaxing and easy, boy, was I wrong.

I barely had time to change clothes and wash the blood off before my dad got home and whisked me off to buy Styrofoam balls and paint for my model of the planets. (I don’t even want to get into the whole Pluto fight we had in the car. The way I see it, if it’s officially been declared a nonplanet, it doesn’t deserve a spot in my project. My dad’s what I would call a Pluto sympathizer, and was of the opinion that I was trying to get out of doing more work. He was right, but that was beside the point.)

The whole apartment building was buzzing about Mrs. Simmons and Professor Twitchett by the time we
got back, and by “whole apartment building” I basically mean my parents, the Garcias, and Agatha’s mom. (That flight attendant lady was, no surprise, off on a trip somewhere.) Apparently the Garcias had decided to use their cookies for evil, and had weaseled a twisted version of the story out of the Suits who had come back to follow up. They had to come up with something to explain the blood in the hallway. Thankfully, it was a version that didn’t include me or Agatha. (From what I heard, it included a sordid love triangle, chemical weapons, illegal zoo animals, and mail fraud.)

And Mrs. Garcia didn’t do me any favors by taking the opportunity to talk to my parents about the problems I might be having in school, what with kids picking on me and slashing up my backpack and stealing my books. That kind of thing. Thanks a lot, Mrs. Garcia. I had to do a lot of fancy footwork to get out of that conversation, especially since Mom had discovered the shredded gym suit in my hamper.

So by the time I’d spray-painted my last planet (Pluto. Don’t say it.) and stuck them all on the wires, my
eyes weren’t even open anymore. I don’t know how I managed to drag myself to school on time the next morning.

Just in case you were wondering, Agatha and I are both under police surveillance for our drug trafficking and embezzlement scheme. We’re going to be arrested as soon as the judge approves the warrant, which could be any time. Or, at least, that’s what I overheard in the locker room, so the details may not be 100 percent accurate. And it turns out some kids don’t like sharing a classroom with suspected felons, especially when the Feds are supposedly planning to arrest their classmates as accessories. So you can imagine how fun the day was. Especially since there was a giant doomsday clock hanging over my head ticking down to four o’clock.

Agatha had it worse, though. At least a couple of the guys seemed to think that being a federally wanted embezzler and hit man was kind of cool. But the girls basically looked at Agatha like she was a zombie freak (the lack of sleep wasn’t doing her any favors either).

I tried to catch her in the hallway between classes to make sure we were all set for four o’clock, but she just
gave me a weak smile and drifted away. Carter Oliver saw the whole thing and couldn’t keep the smirk off of his face. I hoped that his invisible fish would jump up and rip his face off during the science fair. (Not likely, I know. But I’d pay to see that.)

To tell the truth, I was starting to have bad feelings about my whole plan. Mostly because of Agatha. She had a lot more to lose than I did. If I crashed and burned, nobody would notice, but Agatha’s whole reputation as a brainiac was likely to be trashed. And it was too late to do anything about it. Although the truth was that if the plan didn’t work, we’d be spending the rest of our lives in the federal pen, so our reputations wouldn’t matter anyway. But somehow knowing that didn’t make me feel better.

Because before I knew it, it was four o’clock.

If Mr. Jones thought he was going to be meeting us in an empty gym at four, he was sadly mistaken. Because four o’clock was the official beginning of the Buckram County Junior High School Science Fair.

I’d been to the gym earlier to set up my project, and Agatha’s was already over in the corner, covered with a
sheet. I set mine up next to hers, which would’ve been project suicide any other time, since her project would just highlight the lameness of mine. Not to mention the damage hanging out with Agatha would’ve done to my rep. But that stuff just didn’t matter anymore.

So at four o’clock we were all lined up in the gym, standing behind our projects, waiting for the judges to make their way down the line. Judging this year was Principal Turner, as usual; Mrs. Marlowe, the science teacher; and school board chair Bitsy Perkins, also known as Carter’s mother’s real estate partner. Because Buckram County Junior High School is nothing if not impartial.

Agatha was standing next to her project when I got there, looking nervous and chewing on the end of her braid. (Barf.)

I punched her lightly on the shoulder. “We all good?”

She stopped chewing and shrugged. “We’re going to jail. Is that good?”

Way to be positive. I lifted the sheet a tiny bit and peeked at the cage underneath. Everything looked good to me. I gave Agatha the thumbs-up.

Agatha glared at me and eyed my project. “You realize Pluto’s not a planet, right?”

“Don’t start, Agatha.”

Agatha started chewing again.

At the front of the room, Principal Turner had gotten out the megaphone and was calling everyone to attention. It would have been more effective if she’d moved the megaphone an inch farther away from her mouth, but we all got the gist of what she was saying. So what if she sounded like one of the grown-ups in those Charlie Brown cartoons?

The judges started at the opposite end of the room, going through the projects one at a time and taking extensive notes. I’d gotten a look at some of the other projects, so I wasn’t surprised that they seemed to be zipping right along. Trust me, there wasn’t a lot there that you’d want to spend any time on.

Keisha Albright’s project was the biggest attention getter. She’d lugged Killer’s dream house in, and it was like a fluorescent pink beacon on the other side of the room. She’d gotten it set up with plumbing and taught Killer how to do dishes or something wussy like that. Not that I was looking or anything; I just happened to notice. The judges didn’t seem that impressed by it. I have to give Keisha props, though—Killer never lifted a finger to help around the house when he lived with me.

Those judges were staring at the train wreck that was Madison Butler’s working model of a gopher’s digestive tract when Mr. Jones and his flunkies came into the gym.

They didn’t look pleased.

Mr. Jones stopped, scanned the gym, and then zeroed in on us. The look on his face was making me think that maybe I’d made a major miscalculation. I hoped Agatha wasn’t right about the whole jail thing. It’s pretty much impossible to look cool in a bright orange jumpsuit.

“This wasn’t part of our agreement, Mr. Sayle,” Mr. Jones said without looking at me. He folded his arms and watched as the judges moved on from the gopher digest-ion to the reproductive habits of bread mold.

“I know, but…”

“It’s my whole grade! Please! I’ve got to beat Carter!” Agatha said in a low, desperate voice. “I know we should’ve told you, but I had no choice!” It was a moving plea. Heck, I think the lab rats in Dewey Childress’ “Watch Rats Get Hopped Up on Sugar Water” project were touched.

Mr. Jones apparently had a heart of stone. “This is not acceptable.” He took a step away and started talking into his cuff in a low voice.

Agatha gave me a panicked look, and then jumped forward. “No, wait! Mr. Jones, look, I know you don’t want everyone to know about the—” She mouthed the word “jackalope.” “But come on, they’re not going to believe it anyway, right? And then you can take it. It’ll be perfect with your army of cyborg moths.”

I stifled a groan. Cyborg moths are just one of those things you don’t mention.

Mr. Jones shook her hand off of his sleeve. “This is not a game, Miss Hotchkins. We’ll be collecting the Subject now.”

He walked back to the entry of the gym, where the other Suits were standing. We didn’t have much time if we were going to get away with this.

I took off running down the aisle (at an I’m-not-running pace so I wouldn’t get in trouble). Principal Turner and the other judges had just finished scoring Huey Langford’s “Ropes: Friends or Foes?” project. (Poor Huey. He needs to get over that rope thing. Last year instead of a ribbon, the judges gave him a coupon for a free therapy session.)

“Principal Turner?”

Principal Turner looked up at me over her clipboard. “Yes, Jeremy?”

“Agatha really needs you to judge hers now, okay? Her uncle’s here but he has to leave, so could she go now?”

If the principal was dumb enough to fall for Mr. Jones’ whole “uncle” story in the first place, then heck, I was going to milk it for all it was worth.

Principal Turner made a face like she’d just smelled something bad (that would be me). “That’s very nice of you, Jeremy, but I really don’t think so. It wouldn’t be fair to…” She checked her clipboard. “Brendan here, who’s supposed to go next.”

Brendan Weekes was at that moment desperately trying to lure his hermit crab out of its shell for his “Harnessing the Power of Hermit Crabs” demonstration.

“That’s okay, Principal Turner,” he squeaked, holding out a tempting piece of wilted celery. “I’m good. You go on ahead. I’m fine waiting.”

Principal Turner looked at Bitsy Perkins uncertainly. “Well, I suppose…if Brendan doesn’t mind.”

“I don’t mind!” Brendan squeaked again. His hermit crab made an angry swipe with his claw and then withdrew back into his shell.

“Fine, let’s go see Agatha Hotchkins’ project.” The judges nodded to each other and started toward Agatha.

I raced on ahead. “Agatha, go!” I yelled.

Agatha, who had been distracted watching Mr. Jones and the Suits descend on her, snapped to attention.

It was all or nothing.

Principal Turner and the other judges gathered around Agatha’s table just as Mr. Jones arrived, wire cage in hand.

“Go ahead, Agatha,” Principal Turner said.

“Take these two into custody.” Mr. Jones signaled to two Mr. Suits flanking him on either side. But before they could move, Principal Turner silenced him with her most steely principal stare. I was impressed. (And frightened. I have to go to school with this lady.)

“If you please,” she said frostily. “Agatha, proceed.”

The Suits shifted, but at Mr. Jones’ signal, they hung back.

Agatha gave a nervous smile. “Okay, this year, I knew I needed to do something extra special for the science fair. So for my project, I’ve created…” She whipped the sheet off of the cage with a flourish. “A jackalope.”