Night of the Puppet People Page 4

  Anna and Maria’s faces were an angry red. They glared at us, scowling. Then they sank slowly into their seats.

  I grinned at Bird and Jenny. “That was awesome,” I whispered. “Did you see the looks on their faces? We already won!”

  When the kids in the audience finally stopped chanting, we did our skit. We were getting big laughs and a few cheers. I kept glancing at Anna and Maria. They sat stiffly with their arms crossed in front of them. Their faces were still bright red.

  At the end of the skit, we made our puppets take deep bows. Then we carried them offstage.

  Mrs. O’Neal grinned at us, with two thumbs raised. “That was excellent,” she said. “Very enjoyable.” She turned to Anna and Maria. “We definitely have room for two puppet acts. Especially since the puppets are so different.”

  “But we were first!” Anna declared.

  Mrs. O’Neal ignored her and studied her little name cards. Then she raised her eyes to us. “Why don’t you all take your marionettes to the art room, where they will be safe. Then come back and watch the rest of the auditions.”

  Anna and Maria grumbled to one another as they edged down the aisle and went to collect their puppets at the side of the stage. We followed them down to the art room at the end of the hall, but they pretended we weren’t there.

  “I liked your puppet dance,” Jenny said to them. Jenny always has to be nice.

  “Of course you did. It’s awesome,” Anna replied. Maria just sneered.

  We hurried back to see the other auditions. Vanessa Arthur was onstage, doing a baton-twirling act. I took a seat at the end of an aisle and tried to concentrate.

  But my mind was spinning with images and thoughts. I kept thinking about our puppets and how easy they were to operate. I kept going over the skit we had just performed, remembering what the kids in the audience had laughed at the hardest.

  Once again, I had the strange feeling that I had seen these puppets before. My sister said she had the same feeling. But neither of us could remember where or when we’d seen them.

  We both had the same weird problem with puppets. So we never went to puppet shows. And we never watched puppets on TV. Even the Muppets made me feel shaky and a little afraid.

  I found myself thinking about Bird’s dad. We should have told Coach Sparrow that we were taking his puppets to school, I told myself. Why was Bird so afraid we would get into trouble? He definitely refused to tell his dad what we were doing. Bird said we could tell him after we won the five-hundred-dollar prize.

  After Vanessa, four guys came onstage breakdancing. Kids were clapping with the beats and cheering them on.

  I glanced down the aisle and saw Anna and Maria still glaring angrily at me.

  Give it a rest, I thought. Were they going to keep those sour expressions on their faces for the rest of their lives?

  “That’s our last audition,” Mrs. O’Neal announced as the dancers trotted off to a deafening ovation. They raised their fists above their heads in triumph. One of the guys did a crazy somersault and almost fell off the stage.

  “So many great acts,” Mrs. O’Neal said, tapping her stack of cards against the podium. “Thank you all for staying after school. I’ll announce the ten acts for the variety show later this week.”

  Everyone jumped up and started to make their way up the aisles to the auditorium doors at the back. I met up with Bird and Jenny in the hall and we headed to the art room to collect the marionettes.

  “Nice job, Ben.” Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to see Vanessa Arthur smiling at me. Wow, I thought. That’s the first time she ever talked to me!

  “You did a great job with the baton,” I said.

  Her smile grew wider. “Yeah. I only dropped it once.”

  Jenny, Bird, and I arrived at the art room at the same time as Anna and Maria. They took a few steps into the room — then stopped.

  I saw Anna’s eyes go wide and her mouth drop open. Maria gasped.

  Then they both let out screams of horror.

  “I don’t believe it!” Anna shrieked. “How could you?!”

  “No way! No way! How could you do this?” Maria cried, her hands pressed to her cheeks.

  We pushed past them to see what they were staring at. I saw their puppets, the boy and the girl, facedown on the floor. It took me a few seconds to realize that their strings had been cut.

  “No way! No way!” Maria repeated.

  Anna started to cry, big tears rolling down her cheeks.

  I couldn’t believe it, either. Jenny and Bird stepped up to the puppets and bent down to examine them. Yes, the strings had all been cut.

  “How could you do this?” Anna demanded through her tears. “You were so jealous of us? You had to ruin our puppets?”

  “I — I —” I stammered. “We didn’t do it!” I finally managed to choke out.

  And then my eyes caught the sultan puppet. It was slouched on the chair where I’d left it. Its head was tilted back, a wide smile on its face. And grasped in its hand …

  In its hand I saw a large pair of scissors.

  Ms. Feeney is the new principal at our school. Our old principal was a hundred and twelve. But Ms. Feeney is young, and has long wavy blond hair and wears bright red lipstick, and she dresses in jeans and T-shirts, which makes everyone think she is cool and awesome and terrific.

  Even though she was so awesome and terrific, I didn’t want to be sitting in her office beside Bird and Jenny. We sat on folding chairs across from her desk, and she kept giving us the eye, studying us one by one as if she could see into our brains.

  The office was small and kind of cramped, and hot. I kept wiping sweat off my forehead. I kept my eyes on the desk photo of her golden Lab. I didn’t want to catch her hard stare. Beside me, Bird kept wiping his palms on the legs of his jeans and tapping his fingers rapidly.

  Jenny had her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She kept biting her lower lip. She only does that when she’s really stressed out.

  Anna and Maria were huddled on the couch in the outer office. Through the open door, I could see that Anna was still crying. Maria had an arm around her shoulders, trying to comfort her.

  It was silent for a long while as Ms. Feeney eyed us one by one. Then she chewed on the end of a pencil for a while. Finally, she brushed back her blond hair and spoke: “So does anyone want to tell me what happened in the art room a few minutes ago?” She speaks softly, almost in a whisper.

  Anna sobbed in the outer office.

  “We didn’t do it. I swear,” I said, raising my right hand.

  Ms. Feeney squinted at me. “You didn’t sneak back to the art room and vandalize their puppets?”

  “Ms. Feeney, we never left the auditorium,” Jenny said. “We watched all the auditions.”

  “It’s true,” Bird chimed in. “Why would we cut the strings on their puppets? Their puppets are lame.”

  “That’s beside the point,” the principal said, frowning. “You say you didn’t do it. But someone did. Someone went into the art room, cut the strings on the two puppets, and placed the scissors in the other puppet’s hand.”

  “It wasn’t us —” I insisted.

  “Someone must have thought that was a funny joke,” the principal said. “Putting the scissors in the puppet’s hand. Making it look like the puppet did it.”

  “Maybe he did,” I said. The words fell out of my mouth. I didn’t think about them first.

  I immediately regretted it. I could feel my face turning red.

  Ms. Feeney squinted at me. “Excuse me?”

  “I didn’t mean to say that,” I replied.

  Ms. Feeney leaned across the desk. Her eyes locked on mine. “Do you want me to believe that your puppet walked across the room and cut the strings on the girls’ marionettes? Do you seriously think you are living in some kind of science-fiction movie where puppets come alive?”

  “Well … no,” I stammered. I could feel my face growing hot and knew I was blushing.

>   “Let me explain,” Jenny chimed in. “Ben has always had a weird thing about puppets. Me too. He doesn’t really believe the puppets are alive.”

  Ms. Feeney sighed and tapped the pencil against the chair arm. “Someone did this terrible prank, and it wasn’t a puppet.”

  “We know,” Bird said. “But I promise it wasn’t us.”

  Ms. Feeney nodded. She brushed her blond hair back off her shoulders. “I believe you. I don’t think you did it. But I don’t know who else it could have been.”

  “We never left the auditorium,” I said. “We never —”

  She raised a hand to silence me. “No more incidents like this,” she said. “You understand me, right? If something else happens, you’ll automatically be out of Mrs. O’Neal’s show. And I’ll have to call your parents in for a serious talk.”

  The three of us nodded.

  “No problem,” Bird muttered.

  Ms. Feeney waved us out of her office. She called to Anna and Maria. “Okay, girls, you can come in now.”

  “Did you suspend them from school?” Anna asked as she brushed past us. “That’s what I would do.”

  I didn’t hear the principal’s reply. Jenny, Bird, and I hurried away from her office. We stopped near the front doors to the school. “That was a close one,” I said.

  Jenny and Bird nodded. Jenny frowned at me. “It got especially tense when you started talking about how the puppets are alive. What were you trying to prove? That you’re totally insane?”

  I shrugged. “I just lost it for a moment.”

  Bird pounded his fist against the wall. “Well … who did it? We know we didn’t. Our puppet skit was a major hit. Everyone loved it. Why would we want to wreck the girls’ lame puppets? No way.”

  “Maybe it was someone else who auditioned,” I said, thinking hard. “You know. Someone who’s afraid of not getting in the show. So they wanted to make sure Anna and Maria couldn’t be in it.”

  “That’s crazy,” Jenny said. “Do you think someone really wants the five hundred dollars that badly?”

  I shrugged again. “I’m totally confused. I mean, nothing makes sense to me.”

  “Let’s get the puppets and get out of here,” Bird said.

  We turned the corner and made our way down the empty, silent hall to the art room at the end. I followed Bird and Jenny into the room. I saw our marionettes sprawled at the table where we left them.

  Then I turned and saw what Jenny and Bird were staring at.

  “Oh, no! Oh, wow!” I gasped. “This can’t be happening! Who is doing this?”

  PUPPETS RULE!

  My mouth dropped open as I stared at the words scrawled across the wall in huge, ragged black letters. “Nooooo,” I moaned.

  “Who would do this?” Jenny asked in a tiny voice, her hands pressed to the sides of her face. “Who?” She gazed from Bird to me, as if we had the answer.

  Bird shrugged. “We’re in major trouble.” He was suddenly pale and he kept blinking rapidly, eyes on the smeared black words.

  “Is it black paint?” My question came out in a whisper.

  “I think it’s marker,” Jenny said.

  Then I turned — and gaped at the large black marker in the princess puppet’s hand. “NO WAY!” I choked out.

  All three of us staggered over to the puppet, who was sitting very straight in a chair at one of the art tables. Two black markers were open in front of the puppet on the table. And one appeared to be gripped in her right hand.

  I heard footsteps out in the hall. The sound made all my muscles tighten.

  Ms. Feeney?

  “Hurry,” Jenny said, running to the sink at the far wall. “Get sponges. Maybe we can scrub the words off before anyone sees them.”

  Bird trotted after her to the sink. But I didn’t move. I couldn’t move.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the puppet. I kept staring at the sly smile on her wooden face. At her shiny green eyes that appeared to be laughing at me. My gaze stopped on the marker attached to her right hand.

  “I told you,” I muttered.

  Bird and Jenny dragged stools to the wall and started wiping wet sponges over the scrawled words. “It … isn’t coming off,” Jenny said.

  “I told you,” I repeated. “I know you think I’m crazy — but these puppets are alive.”

  “Shut up, Ben,” Jenny said.

  “No one else could have done this,” I insisted. “There are no kids still in school. Just a few teachers and the principal. The puppet did it. It can’t be anyone else.”

  “Shut up and come help us,” Jenny said, scrubbing with both hands. Gray water from the sponges ran down the green tile wall. But the words hadn’t faded at all.

  Bird turned to me. “Ben, you’ve got to stop thinking like that. It’s too crazy. Puppets don’t come alive. And no one is going to believe that a puppet grabbed a marker and wrote these words. No one.”

  “Okay, okay,” I muttered.

  The princess puppet stared up at me with that sly grin on her face.

  I swallowed hard. You aren’t alive, I thought. You CAN’T be alive.

  I reached down to her hand to take the black marker away —

  — and she wouldn’t let go of it!

  “No way!” I shrieked. “No way!”

  Jenny and Bird jumped off their stools and came running over to me. “What’s wrong?” Jenny demanded.

  “The m-marker —” I stammered, pointing with a trembling finger.

  Jenny wrapped her hand around the marker and lifted it easily from the puppet’s hand. “Yes? What about the marker?” She raised it to my face.

  “The princess. She … wouldn’t let go of it,” I said. “I tried to take it and —”

  “It was stuck, that’s all,” Jenny said.

  “Don’t totally freak, Ben,” Bird said. “We’ve got enough trouble without you losing it.”

  And as he said that, I heard a sound at the art room door. A cough.

  I spun around and saw Ms. Feeney enter the room. “Are you kids still here?” she asked. Her eyes moved to the black marker in Jenny’s hand. And then she raised her gaze to the two words scrawled in black on the art room wall.

  Her mouth formed a small O. She blinked a few times. Then she squinted again at the marker in Jenny’s hand.

  “I’ll see you in my office,” Ms. Feeney said finally. “And please don’t tell me the puppets did it.”

  Jenny, Bird, and I were suspended from school for a week. And, of course, we were kicked out of the variety show.

  We called our long week at home Doom Week. Only, it was worse than doom.

  Can you imagine how thrilled our parents were to be called to school to meet with Mrs. O’Neal and Ms. Feeney? And how do you think they liked it when the teacher and the principal described the three of us as “destructive problem children”?

  I don’t really know what happened at Bird’s house. Coach Sparrow must have been shocked that the puppets were at school and not in the hidden cabinet. He probably got on Bird’s case about taking them without telling him. But Jenny and I had no idea what happened at their house across the street.

  We didn’t talk to Bird for the whole week, because we weren’t allowed to talk to anyone from school. Our phones were taken away. We weren’t allowed to text or email anyone on our laptops.

  Talk about grounded.

  We were forbidden to do anything that might be a little fun. Every electronic thing Jenny and I owned was unplugged.

  And maybe the worst part of Doom Week was the heart-to-heart talks we were forced to have with our parents every night after dinner. Long discussions about how we felt about school and why we did those horrible things in the art room, and how it would never happen again.

  Of course, Jenny and I told them over and over that we were totally innocent. That we didn’t cut the puppets’ strings and we didn’t paint Puppets Rule on the wall. We shouted. We pleaded. We practically jumped up and down on the furniture.

&
nbsp; Did they believe us?

  Three guesses.

  The teacher and the principal said Jenny and Bird and I did those crimes, and that was good enough for our parents.

  And so Doom Week slowly … slooooooowly dragged on.

  And now, a week later, we eagerly burst out of our home-prison and jogged all the way to school, backpacks bouncing on our backs. I wondered if kids would make fun of us, or look at us funny, or keep away from us, like we were criminals or something. But kids didn’t treat Bird, Jenny, and me any differently at all. In fact, most of them didn’t seem to realize we had been gone!

  The morning was going great. We were so glad to be back. Nothing much happened … until lunch period. That’s when we bumped into Anna and Maria walking into the lunch room.

  They stepped in front of us to keep us from joining the cafeteria line. They both had these wide grins on their faces.

  “I hear you have some evil puppets on your hands,” Anna said, sticking her grinning face close to mine.

  “Just leave us alone,” I muttered. I tried to squirm past them, but they stepped quickly to block my path.

  “Go away,” Bird said. “Give us a break.”

  “How did you like being suspended from school for a week?” Maria demanded. “It never happened to me. I just wonder what it was like.”

  “Shut up,” I said. “We just want to get some lunch.”

  “That’s rude,” Maria said. “Don’t you want to chat with us?”

  “No.”

  “I hear your puppets are really good with scissors and black marker,” Anna said. “That’s totally amazing!”

  I stared hard at them. Stared, my mind churning. And suddenly I realized what had happened. Suddenly, everything became clear.

  “YOU did it!” I screamed. “You two did it — didn’t you?!”

  Their grins grew wider.

  Bird’s mouth dropped open. “Is Ben right?” he demanded. “You cut your own puppets’ strings — just to get us kicked out of the show?”

  They exchanged glances. Then they both burst out laughing.

  “You did!” I cried. “Admit it. Admit it! You cut the puppets’ strings just to get us in trouble. You wrecked your own puppets.”