The Eyes of Kid Midas (9 page)

"That's it!" yelled Ms. Q., picking up the phone by the chalkboard. "I'm calling the office." But the joke was on her. The phone hadn't worked since school started.

Bertram grabbed the pack by one thin strap and dangled it out the second-story window.

"You don't know what you're doing!" screamed Kevin.

"C'mon, Midas, come and get it," said Bertram brainlessly.
"Torn, torn!"

Kevin climbed Bertram's arm as if it were the limb of a tree. Bertram pulled the pack in from the window and prepared to hurl it across the room once more.

What Kevin did next came as a complete surprise, to him as well as to Bertram. He simply had to get that pack back . . . so he hauled off and belted Bertram right in the face.

The pack fell out of Bertram's hands, and Kevin caught it before it hit the ground.

Now the room was a three-ring circus, raging fully out of control. In one corner, a slapping fight had turned into a brawl. In the center ring, a chorus of kids were performing armpit farts, and by the window, Bertram was reeling from Kevin's blow.

Ms. Q. chose to break up the brawl in the corner and drag those two kids out in the hall for a reprimand, leaving the rest of the circus without a ringmaster.        

Bertram's lip had been cut against the sharp track of his braces, and his teeth were covered with blood, as if he had just bitten a chunk out of someone. The chain-saw look filled Bertram's face, and Kevin knew there was no escape. He carefully handed Josh his backpack.

"Don't let anyone near her!" said Kevin. The second the backpack was out of his hands, Bertram'sfoot made contact with Kevin's butt, sending him flying across the room.

"You made me bleed!" yelled Bertram.

Kevin scrambled to his feet, and Bertram stepped on Kevin's toes, firmly pinning his to the ground. "Who do you think you are?" screamed Bertram. "You get a pair of glasses and all of a sudden you think you're king of the world."

He pushed Kevin down, but since his feet were pinned under Bertram's, Kevin came bouncing back like a bobo doll.

"Don't make him mad, Bertram!" warned Josh.

"Why? What's he gonna do?"

Bertram pushed Kevin down over and over again, and Kevin just kept trying to scramble away. He didn't want to fight Bertram—he had better things to do, and this was making him furious! Hadn't the day been screwed up enough?

"I'll teach you to make me bleed!" said Bertram, and with that he spat his gum into his free hand and smeared it across the top of Kevin's head. He kicked Kevin's legs out from under him, and Kevin fell to the floor, his hair impossibly snarled with Bertram's gum.

Bertram laughed. He had won. Just like always.

"You're just a loser, Midas," he said, looking down at Kevin. "That's all you'll ever be, a loser."

With every bit of his body aching, Kevin gritted his teeth in anger and spoke to Bertram with a deadly growl that seemed to climb up from the pit of his stomach.

"Go to hell, Bertram!"
said Kevin.

And the glasses began to swirl with color.

It all took place so quickly, everyone was caught off guard, and no one was sure what really happened. No one but Kevin, that is, who saw everything in 3-D Technicolor.

The ground beneath Bertram's feet tore open, and flames brighter than lightning leapt out, wrapping around him like tentacles, pulling him downward. There was a far-away hollow sound—a distant chorus of wailing voices that blended with Bertram's wail as he fell. He grabbed for a chair and took the chair with him.

Bertram slipped into the fiery mouth—as it swallowed him whole.

Kevin caught sight of Bertram's eyes as he dropped into the pit. Then Bertram was gone, and the hole that had split open the wooden floor vanished as if it had never existed.

All that was left of Bertram was the echo of a distant cry that soon became nothing more than the moaning of the wind. And then silence.

Everything was exactly the way it was before; the only thing missing was a chair. And Bertram.

It all happened in the blink of an eye, and kids were still turning their heads to see what that flash of light was.

Ms. Q. came running back into the room. "What was that?" she asked.

"Spontaneous Human Combustion!"
screamed Ralphy Sherman, flapping his arms like a crazy pigeon.
"Spontaneous Human Combustion!!"

Ms. Q. dragged Ralphy straight to the principal's office.

CHAPTER 9

Out of Mind

The rest of the afternoon seemed to unfold around Kevin and Josh like one of their school plays— they were part of the production but hid so far upstage that no one noticed them.

They kept their mouths tightly shut and watched.

At first there was some confusion about Bertram's disappearance in Ms. Q.'s unruly classroom, until someone claimed to have seen Bertram run down the hall.

"Yeah, that's what happened," said someone else, and before long, everyone just figured Bertram had cut class (a common enough occurrence) and he'd turn up eventually. Only Hal protested, but no one ever listened to Hal, and they weren't about to start listening now.

Kevin suffered through the rest of the day with ice-cold, shaking hands and spoke to no one.

"I wish . . . I wish the glasses would stop working," he desperately whispered to himself, hidingalone in a bathroom stall between classes—but the glasses just vibrated and buzzed like feedback through the auditorium microphone, growing hotter and hotter, until Kevin had to fling them from his face. The sleek visor blade had power over everything except itself. Wishing them to stop was about as useless as wishing it had never happened.

Kevin shuffled around for the rest of the day with a pale green face that grew greener every time he thought of Bertram or Nicole—-but for the rest of the school, it was business as usual. The bells rang, kids were shuffled around the school like a deck of cards, and eventually both Bertram and Nicole were lost in the shuffle. Forgotten.

Out of sight, out of mind,
thought Kevin. It was much truer than he could know.

After school, Josh spent a good angry hour blasting Kevin for being such an idiot.

"Bertram deserved to have his head flushed in a toilet, or to be strung up the flagpole by his underwear, but he didn't deserve what you did!" said Josh. "And you should never have tried to control Nicole's mind! I'll bet there's not enough energy in the whole universe to control a mind that stubborn!"

But it was done—and no amount of raving by Josh could undo anything.

A Habitrail rested on Kevin's bedroom desk. He had gotten it for Christmas the year before, but ever since Teri's snake found its way into their mother's jewelry box, animals that could fit in drawers were not allowed in the Midas home, so the Habitrail had never been used.

Kevin supposed his mother wouldn't approve of this, either.

Resting on a pile of cedar chips in the Habitrail was Nicole Patterson, somewhere in the neighborhood of six inches tall.

She was sound asleep—Kevin had put her into a deep sleep the moment he had wished her small, but she was bound to wake up sooner or later.

"Well," said Kevin, "it could be worse; I could have turned her into a shrimp."

"Yeah," said Josh. "I'm sure she'll thank you when she wakes up.".

Kevin looked down in shame.

"You oughta use those glasses to wish your lips into a zipper," said Josh, "so you can shut your fool mouth!"

Kevin nodded. "I deserved that."

"Damn right," said Josh. "You deserve a lot worse . . . but I don't know what."

The glasses were now in Kevin's shirt pocket, and he touched them with his right hand, as if pledging allegiance. He longed to put them on and feel their weight on the bridge of his nose. The glasses would take away the shame and the fear. They would make him feel strong and untouchable. Now all he felt was weak and empty. Every timehe took those glasses off, they seemed to take a chunk of his soul with them.

At about five o'clock, Nicole woke up.

Kevin and Josh, instantly chickens, dove to the ground and hid, without making as much as a single cluck.

"What the . . . ?" Nicole looked around. "All right, very funny. Now let me out."

Kevin peeked to see Nicole standing on the red running wheel that was normally reserved for small rodents.

"Kevin Midas!" said Nicole, "I should have known it was you. There better not be any hamsters in here!"

"No," said Kevin, "just you."

She yawned. "What time is it?" She looked down at the microscopic Mickey Mouse on her wrist. "Oh no! I missed gymnastics. I'd better get home, or my parents will kill me!"

"But, Nicole . . ." said Josh, climbing out from underneath the desk, ". . . you can't go home in your . . . um, condition."

"What condition?" asked Nicole.

Kevin grimaced. Was she so bewildered that she didn't know what was wrong?

"Nicole," said Kevin, "you may not have noticed this . . . but you're very,
very
small."

"I'm not small, I'm petite," she said. "There's a big difference. And besides, there are no small people, only small minds."

Nicole hopped off the running wheel and came right up to the plastic wall of the cage. She looked straight into Kevin's right eye, which, to her, must have seemed the size of a classroom globe.

"Joke's over," she said. "I have to get home."

Something's wrong with this,
thought Kevin.
She's acting . . . well, she's acting like Nicole, not like the victim of a freak miniaturization.

Kevin looked at Josh, who just shrugged, and so Kevin did as he was asked. He let Nicole out.

"Where's your phone?"

Both Kevin and Josh pointed dumbly to the phone sitting across the desk, and watched as Nicole climbed over a book, nearly losing a shoe in a sticky old soda stain, then climbed the face of the phone and heaved the receiver out of its cradle.

"I don't get it," said Josh. "Is she in shock or something? Doesn't she care that she's been Barbie-fied?"

Nicole went about her business, jumping on the phone buttons to dial them as if she did this every day.

"I don't get it, either," said Kevin.

Nicole knelt by the receiver as her mother answered on the other end.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Mom, it's me," said Nicole in that squeaky, mousey voice.

"Nicole?" said her mother, confused and startled by the strange sound of Nicole's voice. There was silence for a moment, but then Mrs. Patterson's confusion quickly passed away. Too quickly, Kevin thought.

"Thank God you're all right! You had us all worried, little lady—we had no idea where you were."

"I'm at a friend's house," explained Nicole. "I forgot to call."

"We'll talk about it when you get home," said her mother sternly.

Nicole sighed. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Good," said her mother. "And watch out for cats on the way home."

Kevin hung up the phone for her.
Cats?
he thought. Did she say
watch out for cats?'

"You see the trouble you got me in? Wasn't your salami kiss bad enough? Now you have to kidnap me, too?"

Josh perked up. "You kissed her?"

There was no time for Kevin to answer, for just then his door sprang open with a bang, and Teri stormed in, unannounced, as she often did.

"Moron police," she said. "All morons present I.D."

Then she stopped dead, coming face-to-face with the Barbie-fied Nicole. Teri's jaw dropped dumbly, making her look like the only actual moron in the room.

Silence hung in the air like the Hindenburg.

Kevin braced for the explosion.

But it didn't happen.

Yes, for a moment terror and confusion filled Teri's eyes, but then Teri blinked, and the terror vanished. It was as though her whole brain had adjusted to accept what she was seeing . . . just as Nicole's mom had adjusted to the voice she was hearing over the phone.

"Hi, Nicole," said Teri as if everything in the world was perfectly fine.

Nicole waved. "Hi, Teri. Tell your brother that he's a waste of valuable protoplasm."

"I would, but I think he already knows." Teri sauntered out of the room as quickly as she had entered. "Better hope I don't tell Mom you're hiding a girl in your room." And then Teri disappeared into her own room.

"What is this?" cried Josh. "Has the whole world gone schizo?"

And then the truth swung itself at Kevin with such fury that his brain was launched into deep, deep left field.

He suddenly understood.

Kevin coughed out his wind, and no amount of rapid breathing could bring it back.

"Excuse us, Nicole." He grabbed Josh by the shirt and pulled him out into the hallway, still unable to catch his breath.

"Talk to me, Kev," said Josh. "Don't just stand there like a fish gulping air."

Kevin grabbed Josh by the shoulders and looked him right in the eye.

"Josh, how tall was Nicole yesterday?"

"She was
normal,
Kevin. You remember what normal is, don't you? About three inches taller than you!"

"Okay," said Kevin. "Now close your eyes and try to remember that. Try to remember the last time you saw her looking 'normal.' "

Josh closed his eyes, and after a few moments, his eyebrows wrinkled and knotted. "I can't," said Josh. "I can't picture it."

"Okay," said Kevin. "Now tell me what happened to Bertram."

Josh took a step away from Kevin. He rubbed his arms, as if he were cold. "You sent him to the land down under."

"And what did Bertram look like?"

Josh thought for a moment, and his eyebrows knotted up again.

"Well . . . he had braces. . . ."

"What else?"

Josh stammered a bit.

"What else?"

"Give me a minute . . . ."

"What about his hair, his eyes, how tall was he?"