Leon and the Spitting Image Read online

  “Now repeat after me. ‘I will make Miss Hagmeyer a master piece!’”

  “I will make Miss Hagmeyer a master piece.”

  Miss Hagmeyer shook her head. “Not good enough. Say it again. Only this time with feeling.”

  Leon forced himself to say, “I will make Miss Hagmeyer a master piece!”

  And that’s when it hit him.

  While parroting his teacher’s silly words, Leon suddenly figured out what he wanted to make. What he had to make!

  “Got it!” he cried as he dashed back to his desk, dizzied by possibility.

  His idea for a master piece emerged, fully formed, like one of those spongy toy sea creatures that burst out of tiny plastic capsules when dissolved in hot water. Except Leon’s animile was a whole lot rarer than the octopuses and angelfish hatched inside a bathtub. It was also a lot more complex.

  Although the idea for the master piece announced itself faster than a butterfly sheds its cocoon, actual construction took a good deal longer. Leon spent three full days working on preliminary sketches and another two tracing and cutting the patterns for the arms, legs, torso, and head. Once that was done, he drew up a list of materials.

  Most of the items he needed—panty hose, cloth, yarn, eyes—came from Miss Hagmeyer’s supply cabinet. But there were a few things Leon couldn’t track down at school, and that’s where Maria came in. She located all the hard-to-find stuff, like the special flexible wire coat hangers he used to make the animile’s bones.

  For six days Leon sewed like a demon. He had never worked so hard or cared so much. His effort was fueled by excitement, worry, determination, and Poore Brothers Salt & Cracked Pepper Kettle-Cooked Potato Chips (part of the April shipment from the Worldwide Chip of the Month Club).

  And with that effort came a new sense of confidence. Leon discovered that his fingers behaved themselves in ways they hadn’t when he was blindly following worksheet directions. Independence and conviction made the seven stitches of virtue easier to execute. In fact, Leon mastered every one, including the pesky overcast stitch needed when finishing off seams after the animile had been stuffed.

  FIFTEEN

  The Spitting Image

  Leon cut the loose threads from the last seam of his master piece and emerged from the back room behind the reception desk. He was bleary eyed but proud. Perching his completed animile below the ALL PETS WELCOME sign, he said, “Hey, Mom. What do you think?”

  Emma Zeisel’s jaw dropped. “If that isn’t a master piece worthy of a master, I don’t know what is!”

  “Really?”

  “Really! Let ’em try and say you lack fine motor skills now! Heck, you’ve got Rolls Royce motor skills!”

  “Well, we’ll find out in two weeks—at Carnival. That’s when the Hag tells me if I pass.”

  “I wouldn’t wait, sweetie,” said Emma Zeisel. “Showing Miss Hagmeyer the master piece early might put her threats to rest.”

  Leon took his mom’s advice. The following morning he left for school with his master piece snugly secured inside one of Frau Haffenreffer’s pastry boxes. The choice of carrying case wasn’t all that smart.

  “No, it’s not dessert,” Leon had to tell Napoleon and P.W. and Lily-Matisse and everyone else who saw him clutching the tantalizing box. But despite the constant pestering, he refused to lift the lid. He wanted to show Miss Hagmeyer first.

  Leon tried to catch her at check-in, but that plan was stymied because of a fire drill. He decided to take another stab after dismissal, when he could display the master piece more privately.

  For the rest of the day the pastry box didn’t leave Leon’s sight.

  He grasped it between his knees while practicing a Gregorian chant in music. He cradled it in his lap throughout art class, as he worked on his knight’s costume. He even clung to the box during a pit stop at the boys’ room, where he awkwardly squeezed it under his arm while taking care of business.

  Lily-Matisse and P.W. cornered Leon during recess.

  “C’mon,” said P.W. “Best friends don’t keep things from best friends. Show us what’s in the box.”

  “I don’t want to jinx things,” said Leon.

  “Just a quick look,” Lily-Matisse pleaded. “We won’t touch. Crossmyheart.”

  “After school. I swear you guys will be the first to see the thing once I get the Hag’s okay.”

  “Thanks a bunch,” said Lily-Matisse.

  “Yeah,” said P.W.

  Leon felt guilty. “Okay,” he said at last. “A peek—but just a quick one.” He lifted the lid.

  Lily-Matisse’s eyes widened, and P.W. cried, “Whoa! Gruesome!”

  The last class before dismissal was PE.

  One hour to go, Leon told himself as he entered the gym. The wait was giving him butterflies.

  “Coach,” he said. “Can I sit out? I’ve got a stomachache.”

  “Sure thing,” Coach Kasperitis told him. He knew Leon was no faker.

  So while the rest of the class did laps and vaulted the pommel horse, Leon watched from the bleachers, the pastry box wedged safely between his knees. After ten minutes of warm-ups, the coach blew his whistle and shouted the single most potent word in the English language.

  “DODGEBALL!”

  “What type, coach?” P.W. yelled.

  “Team Multiple!” the coach cried back. “You and Lumpkin to choose sides.”

  P.W. immediately turned to the sidelines. “Hey, box boy! Get over here!”

  Leon hesitated.

  “C’mon! I need you.”

  Leon waffled a bit before abandoning his precious cargo to join P.W.’s team.

  Once the class was divided up, the coach walked onto the court carrying three spanking-new Rhinos. “Can anyone here tell me the object of dodgeball?” he asked.

  “Elimination,” a few kids called out.

  The coach bent down and positioned the balls along the centerline, then stood up and cupped a hand around one ear. “Excuse me?”

  “Elimination!” a few more kids called out.

  “Say again?”

  “ELIMINATION!” the whole class screamed.

  “Right,” said the coach. He settled his substantial rump on the top row of the bleachers, not far from Leon’s pastry box, and gave a mighty blast on his whistle.

  The fourth graders charged the Rhinos.

  Plommm! “Missed!” Blamm! “You’re out.” Boing! “Gotcha!” Zuftt! “Missed me by a mile!” Zzam! Wooomp! “Busted, dorko!”

  “Hey, Lumpkin!” the coach yelled from his perch. “Clean up your language! No trash-talking in my gym!”

  The field of battle thinned pretty quickly. An unlucky ricochet—pang!—caught P.W. in the leg. A sneak attack from the flanks—paff!—winged Lily-Matisse.

  When the clock ran out, only Lumpkin and Leon remained alive. A chant rose up from the sidelines: “Suh-din death! … Suh-din death!”

  The chant grew louder: “SUH-DIN DEATH! … SUH-DIN DEATH!”

  The coach blew on his whistle. “Go for it!” he cried.

  “Yoo-hoo, Sir Panty Hose,” Lumpkin said menacingly moments after the coach extended the game. “Get ready to be crowned!”

  “Dream on,” Leon replied.

  The coach again shouted down. “Guys! You know the rules. No teasing. No taunting.”

  Lumpkin turned to the coach, as if to apologize, then whipped around and launched a ball, hoping to catch Leon off guard. His cheap shot failed. Leon darted out of the way.

  A defensive pattern quickly emerged. Leon held on to one ball, and Lumpkin held on to another. Only the third and final ball moved between them.

  Neither Leon nor Lumpkin was willing to find himself empty-handed.

  But then, two minutes before the end of the overtime round, Lumpkin aimed a shot at Leon’s backup ball and hit it with such force that both Rhinos bounced off the back wall and returned to Lumpkin’s side.

  A collective groan rose up from the sidelines, followed by the kind of somber
, respectful silence that accompanies an execution.

  Lumpkin, now in possession of all three balls, made Leon zigzag, lurch, duck, and jump with a series of fake throws. Throughout it all, Leon stayed alert. He wasn’t about to fall for the slow ball/fast ball combo that had nailed him in the past.

  From the bleachers P.W. suddenly screamed, “Sidewinder!”

  But the warning came too late. Lumpkin had already recoiled and released his patented low-flying missile.

  A split second later, the missile smacked Leon in the stomach with a brutal POCK! He ignored the searing pain. Only one thing mattered—catching the ball before it touched the ground.

  The Rhino rebounded against his knee and sailed upward.

  Leon stretched his arms forward and dove like a champion swimmer. At the very moment he felt the sandpapery texture of the Rhino against the tips of his fingers, the hard, smooth surface of the gym floor began burning the skin off his elbows and knees. But when at last the Rhino stopped defying gravity, it did so in Leon’s battered hands.

  He had caught the ball, which meant he had won the game and Henry Lumpkin had lost it!

  The bleachers erupted in cheers. P.W. was the first to reach Leon and offer congratulations. “You pulpified him!” he cried.

  “No such word,” said Lily-Matisse, arriving a few seconds later. “Puréed him, maybe. Or made Lumpkin Pumpkin Soup out of him, but—”

  Leon, still panting, cut them off. “Keep … your … voices down…. He … might … hear.”

  Lumpkin was standing all alone twenty feet away, scowling at his spare Rhino as the magnitude of the upset slowly penetrated his stegosauruslike brainpan.

  Bruised and scraped though he was, Leon nevertheless approached his defeated archenemy. “Good game,” he said, extending his hand. “That last toss really did a number on me!”

  Lumpkin rejected the handshake and reached for the Rhino, angrily whipping the ball at the leather pommel horse on the far side of the gym. It hit the grip of the vaulting apparatus and ricocheted toward the bleachers, knocking Leon’s pastry box into the air.

  The box went in one direction, the contents in another.

  Leon broke free of his friends and sprinted for the bleachers. By the time he got there, it was too late. Coach Kasperitis had already reached through the bench slats and retrieved the exposed master piece.

  “Geez, Zeisel!” the coach gasped. “Did you make this?”

  “Yeah,” Leon said, out of breath.

  “Amazing!” said the coach. “This is major-league work, kiddo. I mean it.”

  “Let’s hope Miss Hagmeyer thinks so,” Leon said.

  “Are you kidding me?” said the coach. “She’ll have to. I mean, what choice does she have? This doll, it’s … well, it’s her spitting image!”

  SIXTEEN

  A Supernatural Occurrence

  The coach was right. Leon’s master piece was the spitting image of Miss Hagmeyer. Everything on the doll matched its model perfectly. The long black cape. The black dress. The slightly droopy stockings the color of cooked liver. The pair of black lace-up boots that Leon tied just right—with double rabbit ears, plus the safety knot Miss Hagmeyer always added for good measure.

  But far more extraordinary than the clothing was the expression on the doll. Leon had captured Miss Hagmeyer with eerie precision. The narrow skull. The pursed lips. And, of course, the eyes. All four of them—the dull ones set deep into the head of the doll, plus the glass pair clasped onto the cape.

  Even the doll’s hair, fashioned out of ordinary black yarn, looked like the shiny helmet of possibly fake hair on the head of the original. The coach lifted the yarn and revealed the doll’s ears.

  “You got the gnarls exactly!” P.W. said admiringly.

  Leon smiled. “The lobes still need some work,” he said humbly.

  “How’d you think this up?” Lily-Matisse asked.

  “Miss Hagmeyer kind of gave me the idea.”

  The coach shook his head. “I knew this kid was a champ. I knew it. And it’s like I tell all you guys at the start of every season. Passion and practice. Combine the two, and you’ll make magic every time.”

  Fear of flunking also helps, Leon said to himself.

  Antoinette Brede pushed to the front of the growing crowd. “Where’d you get those boots?” she asked jealously.

  “My friend Maria found them for me. There was a doll convention across the street from my building.”

  “She get you the hair, too?”

  “No, I made the hair. It’s yarn and shellac. I tested real hair, but it didn’t look right.”

  “That’s because the Hag wears a wig,” said Lily-Matisse.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” said P.W.

  “Do, too. My mom heard her adjusting it.”

  Leon smirked. “Did it sound like this?” He grabbed a hank of the doll’s hair and gave it a gentle tug.

  Sccritchh!

  “Velcro!” cried Lily-Matisse.

  “Pretty slick,” P.W. admitted. “But it still doesn’t prove that the Hag’s hair is fake.”

  After the bell rang and the crowd around Leon began to thin, Lumpkin approached him.

  “Hey, Leon. Sorry about being such a spoilsport.”

  “No problem,” Leon replied suspiciously. It was the first time he could recall Lumpkin using his actual name.

  “Here, you’d better take this.” Lumpkin handed Leon the smashed pastry box. “I found it near the water fountain.”

  “Um, thanks.” Leon eyed Lily-Matisse and P.W. Understanding his cue, they headed off to find the coach, who was rounding up Rhinos at the far end of the gym.

  “Can I see this dolly everyone’s so wild about?” Lumpkin asked.

  Leon froze. Now he knew something was up. “I don’t think there’s enough ti—”

  Lumpkin yanked the animile out of Leon’s hands and raced off.

  “Hey! Give that back!” Leon yelled, running after him.

  Lumpkin scrambled up to the top of the bleachers. When Leon confronted him, he was all set to toss the doll into the rafters.

  “Stop!” Leon cried.

  Lumpkin paused to draw out the agony. That’s when he noticed the coach’s pickle jar resting a few feet away. “Well, well,” he said as he reached for the jar.

  “No!” Leon screamed.

  Lumpkin tucked the doll between his knees and unscrewed the jar lid.

  Leon made a heroic lunge for the master piece, but Lumpkin scooted out of the way just in time. Leon took a nasty tumble. His foot went through a gap in the bleachers, and his ankle got twisted (that, in addition to the already scraped elbows and knees).

  Wounded and helpless, Leon repeated his plea. “Stop. Please!”

  Lumpkin smiled maliciously. Then, with terrifying calm, he tipped the jar and dribbled some of the tarry brown teacher’s spit directly onto the master piece.

  “Poor Sir Panty Hose,” he said. “His master piece is all stained. Now he won’t be able to hand it in.”

  “Give it back!” Leon cried.

  “Sorry, no can do. You know what the Hag says about everything having its place.” Lumpkin drew back his arm like a spear thrower. “Say good-bye to your—”

  Thhhwomp!

  A dodgeball smacked against the wall.

  “LUMPKIN!” Coach Kasperitis hollered from across the gym. He was flanked by P.W. and Lily-Matisse. “You’ve got to the count of three to give Leon back his whatchamacallit. And if you don’t, son, you’re going to find out—painfully—how I made the all-star team two years running.”

  Lumpkin glowered at Leon, then grudgingly relinquished the doll.

  Leon grabbed it and limped out of the gym.

  By the time dismissal rolled around, Leon’s ankle was throbbing, his knees and elbows were burning. His morale was battered, his animile damaged.

  Sitting at his desk, Leon inspected the master piece. Spit had soaked through the cape and the dress, penetrating deep into the doll�
�s panty hose–stuffed core.

  One might think that the black cloth would have hidden the stain. But it didn’t. A horrible blotch discolored a large expanse of torso. Lumpkin was right. There was no way the doll could be submitted in its current condition.

  Maybe Maria can help, Leon told himself. She had all those special cleansers back in Housekeeping. Her Poop-B-Gone had worked miracles after a cheetah had an accident near the key rack. Maybe the stuff removed teacher’s spit, too. It’s worth a try, Leon concluded.

  In the meantime, he did what he could to limit permanent damage. Not wanting to touch the spit directly, he rubbed the tarry blemish with the hand of the doll, failing to realize that his intervention would only spread the stain more.

  As Leon brushed, the doll gave off a slight warmth. Then, for the briefest moment, a tiny sparkle of light seemed to enter the doll’s dull eyes.

  Leon stopped rubbing.

  Giggles suddenly spread through the room. At first Leon thought he’d been caught cleaning the doll. But to his considerable relief, Miss Hagmeyer hadn’t heard him and none of his classmates were looking toward the back of the room.

  He returned his attention to the stain. But as soon as he did, more laughter erupted. He looked up and saw Miss Hagmeyer acting very oddly, even by her standards.

  She was stony faced, as if in a trance. Yet she appeared to be strumming an imaginary guitar. Her gestures so startled Leon that he again stopped rubbing the stain. The moment he did, Miss Hagmeyer stopped flailing her arm and regained her normal expression. It was as if master piece and master were playing a game of Simon Says.

  No way, Leon told himself. Not possible. Definitely not possible.

  He decided to run a test.

  “Leon says, ‘Lift up your arms,’” Leon whispered to himself as he raised the arms of the doll. He watched and waited.

  Within seconds Miss Hagmeyer was lifting her arms!

  “Leon says, ‘Lower your arms,’” Leon murmured, releasing the arms of the doll.

  After a brief pause, Miss Hagmeyer flopped her arms to her sides!

  Leon’s heart began to race. Could his doll be controlling his teacher?