Sinister Substitute

  Also by Wendelin Van Draanen

  The Gecko and Sticky: Villain’s Lair

  The Gecko and Sticky: The Greatest Power

  Shredderman: Secret Identity

  Shredderman: Attack of the Tagger

  Shredderman: Meet the Gecko

  Shredderman: Enemy Spy

  Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief

  Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man

  Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy

  Sammy Keyes and the Runaway Elf

  Sammy Keyes and the Curse of Moustache Mary

  Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy

  Sammy Keyes and the Search for Snake Eyes

  Sammy Keyes and the Art of Deception

  Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen

  Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway

  Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things

  Sammy Keyes and the Cold Hard Cash

  Dedicated to children’s book wizard Tim Wadham,

  whose support helped bring the Gecko and Sticky to life.

  CONTENTS

  1. A Doozy of a Day

  2. The Substitute

  3. Bizarre and Bamboozling

  4. The Hazards of Pranking the Substitute

  5. The Deadly, Diabolical Damien Black

  6. After School

  7. Simmering Soup

  8. Silly-Circuiting

  9. Walking into Science Class

  10. The Boxing Match

  11. Meanwhile, Inside the Mansion

  12. Stalked

  13. Icky-Sticky Syrup

  14. Freedom!

  15. Unmasked

  16. Convergence of Evil

  17. Bombs Away!

  18. Bottom of the Bottomless Shaft

  19. Varanus Komodoensis

  20. Pit of Plumes

  21. Trapped on Goose Island

  22. The Ghastly Goose

  23. What You Don’t Know

  A Guide to Spanish and Stickynese Terms

  Chapter 1

  A DOOZY OF A DAY

  The day did not start well for Dave Sanchez.

  First, his alarm didn’t go off.

  Then his little sister, Evie, stubbornly stayed locked inside the bathroom (because she knew that Dave really, really, really needed to use it).

  This was followed by several mishaps (including a frantic search for gym shorts, a stubbed toe, and a broken plate of scrambled eggs).

  And (as if he wasn’t running late enough already) his gecko lizard decided at the last minute to stay home.

  “Come on, Sticky!” Dave whispered into the crack behind his bookshelf.

  “I don’t think so, señor,” the gecko replied. “That scary señorita is making you slice and dice frogs today, remember?”

  Allow me to pause here a moment to clarify something:

  Yes, the gecko talks.

  Let me also make clear right off the bat that this is not some silly story where make-believe animals act all cutesy-wootsy and talk to each other.

  No, this story is quite true.

  This gecko is quite real.

  And don’t worry—I won’t be springing talking cats or dogs or cows or burros (or monkeys, for that matter) on you. The gecko and only the gecko talks, and that’s because …

  Well, nobody’s really sure. Some people believe Sticky is bewitched or cursed or possessed or a shape-shifting evil entity who’s plotting to ruin lives, but people are often fearful of things they can’t explain. So let’s get on with Dave’s manic morning, shall we? It is, after all, in the middle of going from bad to worse.

  “You’re still here?” his mother gasped when she saw Dave crouched beside his bookcase. “You’re going to be late for school!”

  “I know, Mom!” Dave snapped, and since the fact that Sticky could talk was top-secret (because Sticky had vowed to never speak again if Dave spilled the beans to anyone), he simply gave up on the lizard, grabbed his backpack and bike, and left for school.

  Unfortunately, his neighbor Lily was also running late for school, and she was in no mood to follow Dave and his dorky bike down seven flights of stairs.

  “Out of my way, delivery boy!” she said, trying to squeeze past him.

  So Dave (who had his bike hoisted onto his shoulder) swung to the left at the next landing in an effort to get out of her way. But Lily had been trying to squeeze past him on the right (a no-no maneuver in any traffic situation, be it highway or stairway) and got smacked against the shoulder by the rear tire.

  “Ow!” she cried as she stumbled into the wall.

  Dave apologized, but Lily Espinoza was not the sort of girl who accepted apologies from dorky boys who hoisted their bikes up and down stairs. And after she was done using language that made Dave want to retreat like a turtle inside his bike helmet, she stormed past him and charged off to school.

  It was, I’m sure you’ll agree, a doozy of a day already, but then a new wave of misfortune began:

  As fate would have it, Dave got a flat tire and had to lock his bike to a streetlight and run the last three blocks to school. He was, of course, late. And late at Geronimo Middle School meant lunchtime detention.

  “Here you go, Mr. Sanchez,” the attendance secretary said, handing Dave a slip that would allow him to get into his first-period class.

  “Thanks,” Dave sighed, and shuffled off to pre-algebra, where, to his dismay, he couldn’t find his homework. Unfortunately, his teacher, Mr. Vye, did not believe in late homework. He believed in zeroes and detentions and parent conferences, but late homework? Oh no.

  In his next class, he could find his homework, but he’d done the wrong questions. (Right numbers, wrong page.) Ms. DeWitt was sympathetic, but her allowing him to make up the assignment (and, consequently, doubling the social studies homework that night) was almost worse than receiving a zero.

  Then, in language, Dave sat in his seat and discovered there was some sort of puddle on it. (He didn’t want to know or imagine what.) His backside now looked sadly soggy, and, of course, this was the day Ms. Huff called on him to go to the board and conjugate the verb “to lie” (by which, unfortunately, she did not mean the “to lie” that means “to tell an untruth,” but rather the one that means “to lie down”).

  Dave had never been so glad to get to P.E. and switch out of his clothes, only someone had broken into his locker and stolen his shirt. (His shorts, you may recall, were with him, as he’d had his mother repair an embarrassing rip in the inseam.)

  “Oh great,” he grumbled, and trudged over to Mr. Wilson’s office to get a loaner.

  “Last loaner for this quarter, Mr. Sanchez. Next time, your grade drops.”

  “But someone broke into my locker!”

  “Uh-huh,” his teacher replied, and without question this “Uh-huh” meant “Yeah, right.”

  “It’s true!” Dave countered. “People get stuff stolen from their lockers all the time—can’t you do something about it?”

  “Uh-huh,” Mr. Wilson said again. “I can get you to click your lock closed, and if you don’t, I can give you a loaner and dock your grade.”

  “But I did close my lock.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Now, I could tell you the rest of the conversation, but why subject you to it? Obviously, Mr. Wilson didn’t believe Dave. Obviously, Dave was upset (and, I might add, rightly so).

  So after P.E. had ended and Dave had collected two shin bruises for his efforts in soccer, he was (as I’m sure you can imagine) in one bad mood. And he was trudging off to the cafeteria to serve his lunchtime detention (looking every bit as grumpy and glum as he felt) when he bumped into Lily Espinoza.

  Again.

  This time, however, there was no bike involved. This time she was bubblin
g with excitement. “Did you hear?” she asked Dave.

  Dave was a little stunned, as Lily wasn’t treating him at all like he was her dorky, dangerously klutzy neighbor. She seemed actually happy to see him.

  “Uh … hear what?” Dave asked.

  “The Crocodile is absent!”

  “Ms. Krockle is?” Dave pumped a fist. “Yes!”

  To his continued surprise, Lily pumped her fist, too, then moved on to further spread the giddifying news.

  Well! What, you may ask, could this Ms. Krockle be like to evoke such a response from both Lily and Dave (and, in truth, from each and every member of the seventh-grade class)?

  Let me attempt to explain:

  Ms. Veronica Krockle is severe.

  Strict.

  And worse than both those combined, sarcastic.

  “Another stellar performance,” she would tell a failing student. “The studying must have been exhausting. Really, do take some time off to recuperate.”

  She had sarcasm down to a science.

  But not only was she painful to be around, she was painful to look at.

  Imagine a woman with too many teeth, too little hair, a snarl for a mouth, and pointy yellow fingernails. Then put that woman in a knee-length lab coat and high-heeled black boots, and you have a pretty fair picture of Ms. Veronica Krockle.

  Ms. Veronica Krockle, who, I might add, relished the slicey-dicey dissection of frogs.

  Yes, of all the fizzy-foamy, smoky-choky labs her students did in science, dissecting frogs was the one she really looked forward to. For weeks before the scalpels came out she would chortle and snort in anticipation. Fainting girls, green-gilled boys, queasy, squealing students … Ms. Veronica Krockle would not miss it for the world.

  And yet…

  And yet on this particular frog-slicing day she was absent.

  It was, in fact, her first absence in the nine years she’d been teaching at Geronimo Middle School. Never had phlegmy colds or fiery fevers or scratchy rashes or sties in the eyes or great gusting bouts of gas kept her away.

  She was there, without fail, each and every day.

  So this was, truly, a rare and joyous occasion.

  But it was also strange.

  Ah, yes. As Dave would soon discover, it was very strange indeed.

  Chapter 2

  THE SUBSTITUTE

  It’s a well-known fact among people in education that substitute teachers are saints. You may not be aware of this well-known fact, but that’s most likely because you’re on the receiving end of a substitute’s mission to maintain law and order (and, if time allows and they know the material, teach a little).

  It’s also a well-known fact (this time among students) that substitute teachers are either too lax or too strict; either you’re allowed to monkey around or you’re barely allowed to breathe.

  Both kinds are, for the record, still saints because no matter when they’re called in to work, it’s always feeding time at the zoo.

  Now, by “feeding time at the zoo,” I do not mean the feeding of hungry young minds.

  Oh no.

  By “feeding time at the zoo,” I mean the tossing of a single well-intentioned adult into a cage of thirty or more monkeys hungry for a little fun. And the students in Ms. Krockle’s class were, without question, ravenous. To them, this day was like uncovering a Reese’s peanut butter cup on a plate of broccoli.

  Like discovering chocolate milk in a bottle of V8.

  Like finding Cap’n Crunch in a box of All-Bran!

  In a word, sw-eeeet!

  It was almost irrelevant whether the substitute was a lax one or a strict one. Even the strictest of substitutes would be a pushover compared to the ironfisted Veronica Krockle.

  It was a popular boy named Fons Soto who started the fun. “Switch seats!” he whispered to the kids around him as they filed into fifth period. “Everybody!”

  And so it was that Dave wound up in Reuben Medina’s seat, Reuben Medina wound up in Fons Soto’s seat, and Fons wound up in Dave’s seat.

  The rest of the class, too, was completely scrambled.

  “Good afternoon,” the substitute said. “My name is Dr. Schwarz, and I have the distinct pleasure of delving into the fascinating complexities of science with you today.”

  Having been so intensely absorbed in the switching of seats, the students had, until now, avoided looking at the substitute. But now that they were looking, each and every jaw dropped.

  Dr. Schwarz looked like something out of a storybook: Dressed in a tweed suit (complete with matching vest), he wore stylish rectangular hornrimmed glasses and held a pipe. (Yes, the sort that’s smoked, as opposed to the sort you might run water through or, say, clonk against a villain’s head.)

  He had a full head of dark hair, with just a smattering of gray (giving him a distinguished, professorial look), and a gold watch on a chain was tucked neatly inside a waistcoat pocket.

  “So!” he said, chomping down on his pipe (which, due to smoking regulations, was not lit). “What do you want to talk about?”

  Thirty pairs of eyes went this way and that, signaling, “Is he serious?” in the sly and semaphore-ish manner only teenage eyes can.

  And when the signals that returned were “I think so!” thirty minds kicked into immediate overdrive, thinking, Oh, this guy’s gonna be easy to mess with.

  Dr. Schwarz laughed. “Surely you don’t want to dissect frogs. …”

  “I do!” a boy named Greg Lazo (who was, incidentally, sitting in Tyler Mills’s seat) called from the back of the class.

  All the students whipped around in their seats to shoot Greg down with their semaphore-ish eyes.

  “Well, I do,” he said meekly.

  Dr. Schwarz went to the podium and scanned the seating chart. “Well, Tyler,” he said, looking directly at Greg, “let’s rethink your position on this, shall we? Because frogs are one of nature’s most magnificent creatures. Why, did you know that most frogs can jump twenty times their own body length? That would be like you jumping one hundred feet! Could you imagine?” He paused for Greg (or, according to the seating chart, Tyler) to imagine himself hopping such a distance, then quietly asked, “Why would we want to kill and dissect such a wonder?”

  “But they’re already dead,” Greg muttered.

  The rest of the class whipped around again.

  “But they are!” Greg grumbled.

  “Ah, young man,” Dr. Schwarz said with a gentle tisk. “You have so much to learn.” He gave Greg a wink. “Which, I suppose, is why you’re in school, hmm?”

  Dr. Schwarz was now pacing, his hands and his pipe clasped behind his back. “Perhaps you’d be more sympathetic if the subject were a snake?” He looked around the room. “How many of you like snakes?”

  All the boys (including Greg Lazo) raised their hands.

  All the girls (especially Lily Espinoza) left theirs firmly in their laps.

  “How about… iguanas? Hmm?”

  This time, almost all hands went up.

  “How many of you own an iguana?”

  To everyone’s surprise, Yasmine Branson (who was known for her addiction to peanut M&M’s and little else) said, “I do.”

  Dr. Schwarz consulted the seating chart, gave Yasmine a warm smile, and said, “Amazing, aren’t they, Carla?”

  Yasmine smiled uncomfortably as her head bobbed up and down.

  It’s fair to say that at this point the students were beginning to regret their little seating prank. Tyler Mills, especially, did not like Dr. Schwarz thinking he was the one who wanted to kill and dissect frogs. But what else could they do but play along?

  “What about chameleons?” Dr. Schwarz asked, pacing thoughtfully as he looked around the room. “Don’t you wish you could change colors like they do? Wouldn’t it be fun to camouflage yourself that way?” He dropped his voice in a conspiratorial manner. “Imagine if you were walking the halls without a pass and the principal was coming and you could instantly take on the shade an
d markings of the wall!” He chuckled. “Wouldn’t that be fantastic?”

  And that was it. With the possible exception of Greg Lazo, every student in Ms. Veronica Krockle’s fifth-period class instantly liked their substitute.

  He wasn’t just a spiffy dresser.

  He wasn’t just nixing the dissection of frogs.

  He was funny!

  Understanding!

  In a word, cool.

  But then came a question that gave one particular student pause:

  “How about geckos?” Dr. Schwarz asked. “Know anybody with a pet gecko?”

  The particular student pausing was, as you’ve almost certainly guessed, Dave Sanchez. Since Sticky had moved into Dave’s apartment, Dave had taken him to school almost every day because, well, Sticky was his little buddy.

  However, bringing pets to school was against the rules, and since there was the additional worry over Sticky being no ordinary gecko, the lizard spent most of the school day snoozing inside Dave’s backpack or quietly cruising the campus for bugs and some sizzly sunshine. So (amazingly enough) it was not common knowledge that Dave had a pet gecko, which is the way Sticky liked it. “If someone sees me, señor,” he had instructed Dave, “just tell them you found me outside.”

  This was, I might add, a perfectly reasonable thing to say, given the nature of nature in the area. Geckos were common. Found here and there in gardens or buildings or just stuck to walls soaking in the afternoon sun.

  And since it’s a long-held belief that geckos bring luck, nobody minded finding one hanging from the ceiling of their sitting room.

  Or bathroom.

  Or classroom.

  So although someone asking about geckos was, to the average student, no big deal, to Dave it was.

  Especially since his gecko was no ordinary gecko.

  And double-especially since it wasn’t just having a gecko that was supposed to stay secret. There was another secret much bigger than that.

  A life-and-death get-caught-and-you’re-toast sort of secret.

  And it was most definitely connected to geckos.