Lizard of Oz Read online

  A sob escaped my throat. “Everyone will know,” I wailed. “I’ll have no friends, no life at all. I’ll be a total outcast. All alone. All alone forever.”

  Dad squeezed my hands again. “Stop,” he whispered. “Kate, don’t say that. Why are you saying that?”

  “Because of Adele!” I cried, my voice breaking again. “Adele Bender at school. Remember? She was here?”

  “What about Adele?” Dad said.

  “She has a video of me crawling on the gym floor after gym class. It shows me acting like a lizard, Dad. Adele says she’s going to put it on YouTube so everyone can see it.”

  “Take a breath, Kate,” Dad said. “You’re trembling.”

  I took a deep breath and held it. But, of course, it didn’t calm me down at all.

  “Dad, she thinks as long as she has that video, she can get me to do whatever she wants. Like I’m her slave or something. I … I’ll never be safe as long as she has that video. Never.”

  Dad placed his hands on my shaking shoulders. “Sssshhhh,” he whispered. “Ssssh.”

  I took another deep breath. I could see that Dad was thinking hard.

  “I think I can solve your Adele problem, Kate,” he said finally. “I think I can solve it easily.”

  “Huh?” I blinked. “Seriously? How?”

  “Invite Adele over,” Dad said.

  I squinted at him. “Huh? Invite her here? I don’t think so.”

  A grin slowly spread across Dad’s face. “Invite her over tonight, Kate.” His eyes flashed. “Did you forget that we are carnivores?”

  “Oh, gross,” Freddy groaned.

  He understood what Dad was saying before I did.

  When I finally got it, I burst out laughing. Then Dad and I transformed into lizards. We both snapped our jaws and flicked our long tongues excitedly.

  * * *

  Adele showed up a little after five. I greeted her at the front door.

  “Kate, you wanted to talk?” she said.

  “Yes. Come in.” I stepped aside so she could enter the house.

  She sniffed the air and smiled. “Mmmm. What smells so good?”

  “My dad is making a special sauce,” I said.

  Her smile faded quickly. “I guess you want to talk about the video I have?”

  I nodded. “Yes. I do. Adele, come in. Take your coat off.”

  She frowned. “Why? Is this conversation going to take long?”

  “Well …” I said. “Dad and I were hoping you could stay for dinner.”

  Did we really eat Adele for dinner?

  That would be an awesome ending to my story, wouldn’t it?

  And it would definitely solve my problem with that video she had.

  But the truth is, we didn’t have to eat her.

  Dad and I transformed into lizards. That scared Adele plenty. And then when we led her to the big roasting pot, bubbling with Dad’s special tomato sauce, and we snapped our jaws hungrily, she got the point.

  Victory was ours. Adele was shaking and quaking and stuttering and sweating. She begged us with her hands folded in front of her to take her off the dinner menu.

  I guess the sauce didn’t smell that great to her anymore. She was frightened enough to do whatever we asked. She took out her phone and deleted the video in front of our eyes.

  Dad and I shifted back to being humans again. Adele was still shaking and quaking. It was easy to get her to swear she’d never tell anyone about us.

  So we let her go.

  “Sorry I can’t stay for dinner,” she said. At that point, she would say anything. I never saw anyone run out of a house so fast.

  “See you in school!” I shouted after her.

  I knew Adele and I would never be friends. But at least now we understood each other.

  As I joined Dad back in the kitchen, the only question that remained was what to have for dinner. And then we saw the two fat mice scamper under the pantry door.

  On Ian Barker’s twelfth birthday, he received a gift that brought pain and terror to him and his entire family.

  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

  Let’s try to enjoy Ian’s birthday for as long as we can. Just keep in mind that it was not the birthday Ian had hoped for. In fact, it quickly became a day he would have given anything to forget.

  Ian came down to breakfast on that sunny spring morning, eager for his special day to begin. Almost at once, he had trouble with his nine-year-old sister, Molly. But that was nothing new. If you ask Ian, “How do you spell Molly?” He’ll answer, “T-R-O-U-B-L-E.”

  Since blueberry pancakes were Ian’s favorite, Mrs. Barker had a tall stack of them on the table. Ian and Molly ate peacefully for a while. Molly liked her pancakes drowned in maple syrup, and she used up most of the syrup before Ian had a chance. But Ian didn’t complain. He was determined to be cheerful on his birthday.

  But then they came down to the last pancake on the platter. When they both stabbed a fork into it, that’s when the t-r-o-u-b-l-e began.

  “Mine,” Ian said. “You’ve already had six.”

  “But I saw it first,” Molly insisted. She kept her fork poking into her side of the pancake.

  “It’s my birthday,” Ian reminded her. “I should get what I want today.”

  “You always think you should get what you want,” Molly declared. Molly has wavy red hair and blue eyes, and when she gets into an argument about pancakes—or anything else—her pale, lightly freckled cheeks turn bright pink.

  Their mom turned from the kitchen counter. She had been arranging cupcakes on a tray for Ian’s birthday party. “Fighting again?”

  “We’re not fighting,” Molly said. “We’re disputing.”

  “Oooh, big word,” Ian said, rolling his eyes. “I’m so totally impressed.”

  They both kept their forks in the last remaining pancake.

  “You’re a jerk,” Molly said. “I know you know that word.”

  “Don’t call Ian names on his birthday,” Mrs. Barker said. “Wait till tomorrow.” She had a good sense of humor. Sometimes the kids appreciated it. Sometimes they didn’t. “Why don’t you split the pancake in two?” she suggested.

  “Good idea,” Ian said. He used his fork to divide the pancake into two pieces.

  “No fair!” Molly cried. “Your half is twice as big as mine.”

  Ian laughed and gobbled up his half before Molly could do anything about it.

  Molly frowned at her brother. “Don’t you know how to eat, slob? You have syrup on your chin.”

  Ian raised the syrup bottle. “How would you like it in your hair?”

  Mrs. Barker turned away from the cupcakes and stepped up to the table. “Stop,” she said. “Breakfast is over.” She took the syrup bottle from Ian’s hand. “You’re twelve now. You really have to stop all the fighting.”

  “But—” Ian started.

  She squeezed Ian’s shoulder. “Your cousins are coming for your party. I want you to be extra nice to them and don’t pick fights the way you always do.”

  Ian groaned. “Vinny and Jonny? They always start it.”

  “Ian always starts it,” Molly chimed in.

  “Shut up!” Ian cried.

  “Just listen to me,” Mrs. Barker pleaded. “I want you to be nice to your cousins. You know their parents have been going through a tough time. Uncle Donny is still out of work. And Aunt Marie is getting over that operation.”

  “Could I have a cupcake now?” Molly asked.

  Ian slapped the table. “If she has one, I want one, too.”

  “Have you heard a word I said?” their mom demanded.

  “I swear I won’t start any fights with Jonny and Vinny,” Ian said. He raised his right hand, as if swearing an oath. Then he stood up from his seat and started toward the cupcake tray.

  “Hands off,” Mrs. Barker said. “Go get your dad, Ian. Tell him the guests will be arriving soon.”

  “Where is he?” Ian asked.

  “In his work
shop,” his mom answered. “Where else?”

  “Where else?” Molly mimicked.

  Ian walked down the back hall to the door to the basement. He thought about Jonny and Vinny.

  Jonny and Vinny lived just a few blocks away. Jonny was twelve and Vinny was eleven, but they looked like twins. They were both big bruisers. Tough guys, big for their age, loud and grabby, with pudgy, round heads, short-cropped blond hair, and upturned pig noses.

  At least, that’s how Ian described them. The kind of guys who were always bumping up against people and each other, always giggling, always grinning about something mean. Mean guys.

  “They’re just jealous of you.” That’s what Mrs. Barker always told Ian. “They’re your only cousins, so you have to be nice to them.”

  Ian opened the basement door and went down the stairs two at a time. The air grew warmer as he reached the basement, and it smelled of glue.

  Under bright white ceiling lights, his father stood hunched over his long worktable. He turned as Ian approached. “Oh, hi, Ian.”

  “Hey, Dad,” Ian started. “Mom says—”

  “Here’s a birthday surprise for you,” Mr. Barker said. He reached both hands to his face, plucked out his eyes, and held them up to Ian.

  Ian groaned. “Dad, you’ve been doing that joke since I was two. It just isn’t funny anymore.”

  Mr. Barker tossed the eyeballs in the air and caught them. “You love it,” he said. He set down the eyes and picked up a tiny arm and leg from the table. “You’d give an arm and a leg to do the eye joke as well as I do.”

  Ian laughed.

  He gazed at the pile of arms and legs and other body parts on the long worktable. Broken dolls were piled at the other end. Doll heads stared wide-eyed at Ian as he surveyed his dad’s work area.

  Dolls stared down from shelves along two walls. Headless dolls. Dolls with eyes or arms or legs missing. A bucket beside the worktable was filled to the brim with yellow, red, and brown doll hair. There were shelves of dresses and pants and shirts and all kinds of new and old-fashioned doll clothing.

  Ian’s dad had started his doll hospital before Ian was born. He spent most every day down here, repairing the broken dolls, replacing missing parts, painting fresh faces, making old dolls look new. Then he carefully wrapped them and sent them back to their owners.

  He picked up a slender paintbrush and began dabbing pale pink paint on a doll head’s gray cheeks. “This is a vintage Madame Alexander Doll,” he told Ian. “It’s quite valuable, and when I received it, the face was completely rubbed off. So I—”

  A hard knock on a door upstairs made him stop. Someone pounded the door four times, then four more.

  “That’s the front door,” Mr. Barker said. “It must be your cousins. Go let them in.” He squinted at the doll face and applied some more dabs with his paintbrush. “I’ll be there in a few seconds.”

  Ian trotted up the stairs, then hurried down the hall toward the front door. He heard four more hard knocks. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he muttered.

  Ian pulled open the front door—and let out a startled shriek as Jonny landed a hard-fisted punch in the middle of his face.

  R.L. Stine’s books are read all over the world. So far, his books have sold more than 300 million copies, making him one of the most popular children’s authors in history. Besides Goosebumps, R.L. Stine has written the teen series Fear Street and the funny series Rotten School, as well as the Mostly Ghostly series, The Nightmare Room series, and the two-book thriller Dangerous Girls. R.L. Stine lives in New York with his wife, Jane, and Minnie, his King Charles spaniel. You can learn more about him at www.RLStine.com.

  Goosebumps book series created by Parachute Press, Inc.

  Copyright © 2016 by Scholastic Inc.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First edition 2016

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-82550-4

  Cover design by Steve Scott

  Cover art by Brandon Dorman

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