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  “Is this crazy contraption one of yours?” he asked while holding up the phone.

  “It’s mine,” Ben replied, grabbing his phone. “Sorry.”

  The swamp creature turned his attention back to the stage and slowly started to lower his backside onto the seat. I quickly tried to finish the deed.

  SHHHHHRRRRPPPP

  A little gas seeped out from around the cork, I could feel it like a warm breeze on my hand.

  “Get out of there,” Shane whispered.

  “I haven’t pushed it in far enough yet,” I whispered back.

  My hand would soon be sandwiched between his posterior and the seat.

  “Oops!” Ben yelled, and dropped the phone under the swamp creature’s chair again.

  “You brainless buffoons,” the swamp creature muttered.

  The phone had slid a little farther forward this time, and the swamp creature had to hold on to the chair in front of him in order to bend over far enough to grab it. Soon, we were cheek to cheek. Well…butt-cheek to cheek. Not wanting to get my hands too far into a swamp butt, I grabbed my cell phone and used it to prod the cork tightly into place.

  “I’m going to need to boil this before I can use it again,” I said.

  The swamp creature sat down and Herr Direktor Detlef rambled on.

  “It really is quite amazing vhat has happened here at Raven Hill,” the Direktor continued. “Ze energy gained by ze network of retirement homes is invaluable. Giff yourself a round of applause!”

  The Great Room filled with applause, hoots, and cheers. The zombies moaned happily, the werewolves howled, and the witches cackled with glee.

  The swamp creature stood up to applaud with the rest of the monsters.

  The Direktor boomed above the applause: “Zat said, it’s my distinct pleasure to announce—”

  He was interrupted by a great rumble from the swamp creature.

  BLLLLLUUUUUURRRRRRGGGGG!

  “Uh-oh,” said Ben.

  Our chairs vibrated. Above us, a crystal chandelier dropped wisps of spiderweb as it started to sway.

  “Oh no!” Gordon gulped. “I don’t think the cork is going to hold.”

  Before we could do anything, the excited swamp creature let out the most rip-roaring raunch ever. The cork flew out of his fishy old butt and hit me right between the eyes. I stumbled back into my chair. Stars danced before my eyes. I stood up and tried to get out of the way, but it was no use. The green cloud surrounded me.

  “We’re going to need a bigger cork,” Shane announced as the room turned black and I tumbled to the floor.

  My last thought was I wish I had left for Kennedy Space Center today…

  Three, Two, One, LIFTOFF!

  At lunch the next day, we spoke about normal, non-monstery things for once.

  “No, really,” said Gordon, “I think that we have a really good chance at making regionals this year.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Shane. “I’ll wager you a Grilled Screams that you guys win three games—TOPS.”

  “We just need practice and focus!” Gordon said, “I even convinced Coach Grey to come along on the science trip so we can practice. Everyone on the team is already going to be there. Plus, all the pros train in Florida.”

  “Hey, are you guys practicing on Cocoa Beach, perchance?” asked Shane.

  “Guys,” I said, almost choking on a Chicken Linger, “can you please just pretend to be excited about touching a moon rock? Or seeing a Space Shuttle?”

  “I’ll be excited once I survive the plane trip,” said Ben as he poked at his lunch.

  “We’re going to have a great time at Kennedy Space Center,” said Shane, “but thinking of the beach keeps me calm…especially when toilets explode in my face.”

  “Or swamp butts,” Ben added.

  “Look,” said Gordon, “I have sports. You have space. Why do you need me to like what you like? You don’t like sports, and that’s fine.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Got it. But let’s not talk about monsters—the whole trip.”

  “Agreed,” everyone said.

  After lunch, almost one hundred sixth graders hovered over their luggage in the school gym, discussing how they would survive the plane ride and how much candy they had hidden in their carry-on bags. The room buzzed with anticipation.

  Shane, Gordon, Ben, and I formed a tight circle.

  “Wait—are there only two seats between the aisle and window, or three?” Ben asked. “If it’s three, please don’t make me sit alone. I hate barfing alone.”

  “Actually,” said Gordon, while he pinched his nose and waved his hand in the air, “maybe that’s why you should sit alone.”

  Gordon giggled.

  “Hey!” said Ben. “I didn’t make fun of you when you had a roach mouth, did I?”

  “Technically, you won’t be alone,” said Shane. “I’m sure someone will sit next to you.”

  A voice from outside the circle said, “I’ll sit next to you!”

  “Huh?” we all said, looking around to see where it came from.

  A short girl with dark hair and dark eyes walked over to our circle. She had on the thickest glasses I’d ever seen, and a fanny pack.

  “I’m Nabila,” she said with a grin that revealed a tangle of braces.

  “Na…leeba?” asked Gordon.

  “No, na-BE-lah,” she said. “And I’d be happy to sit next to you, Ben. In fact, it would be my pleasure.”

  Ben looked shocked.

  “Wait,” I said. “Who are you? I haven’t even seen you around school.”

  “Are you new?” asked Ben.

  “Somewhat. I usually keep to myself,” she said. “My family moved from Egypt this year. My dad works for the government and got transferred here.”

  “Sounds cool,” said Shane.

  “I’ve seen you boys around school,” she said, with a smirk. “In fact, we met at Jackson Amusement Park. I was the girl at the front of the line you cut to get on the Gravitron. It took me days to get the vomit out of my hair.”

  “Look,” I said, “thank you for saying you’d sit with Ben, but we’ve got him covered. Right, guys?”

  “Wait a minute,” said Ben. “You’re more than welcome to sit next to me.”

  Ben bowed awkwardly.

  Shane, for perhaps the first time in his life, was speechless.

  Why was this nerdy girl trying to invade our group? I couldn’t let this happen. I had just spent months working my tail off with my friends at Raven Hill, and I just wanted to spend a relaxing week with them at Kennedy Space Center. I didn’t want an outsider coming in and ruining our fun—especially not a girl that Ben was flirting with.

  I started to say, “Now, just wait a minute…”

  “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” boomed a voice from the front of the gym.

  I looked up to see Mr. Stewart holding a bullhorn.

  “LET ME JUST INTRODUCE YOU TO YOUR CHAPERONES. COACH GREY…”

  “Yeaaaaaahhhhh!” screamed all of the jocks, including Gordon.

  “AND MS. VERACRUZ.”

  “Who’s that?” I asked Ben.

  “Dunno,” said Ben.

  We craned our necks to see where Mr. Stewart was pointing. An extremely familiar hairnet rose above some of the shorter sixth graders.

  “Lunch Lady?” asked Shane.

  The room spun. My stomach sank. This can’t be happening, I thought.

  “I knew I wouldn’t get one moment’s peace from Raven Hill,” I said. “Lunch Lady is going to be watching our every move. Ugh!”

  “Who cares?” said Ben. “We’re not talking about monsters during the trip. What is she going to tell Director Z?”

  I wasn’t sure, but I had a really, really bad feeling.…

  “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE BUSES TO THE AIRPORT ARE OUT FRONT. PLEASE LINE UP AND GET READY TO GET GOING!”

  Nabila sat next to Ben the whole bus ride to the airport. He was too shy to speak with her, so she just sat quietly watching him. Whe
n we finally got on the plane, she followed him on, and sat down right next to him.

  Shane and Gordon sat in two empty seats behind them, so I was forced to sit next to her. Immediately, I went to work figuring out how to get her as far away from us as possible.

  We were dealing with a new breed of monster.

  Intruder Alert!

  The flight down to Florida was a bumpy one.

  I looked over to Ben and—big surprise—his face had gone green. His hands gripped the armrests for dear life. He was going to blow chunks any second. This could be the break I was looking for. If he lost his cookies all over Nabila, she’d surely ditch him. I didn’t even care if I caught a little side splatter. It would totally be worth it.

  Ben’s chest started to spasm. He was going to erupt soon. Nabila just kept smiling at him. I didn’t want her to think I was actually paying attention to them, so I ignored Ben’s retching and went back to updating my itinerary for the space center.

  Sure enough, a few bumps later, Ben was done.

  WHAAAARRRFFFF!

  All the kids on the plane started EWWWWWing at the top of their lungs. All but one.

  Nabila wasn’t EWWWWWWing.

  Nabila was almost AWWWWing in amazement. She looked at Ben as if he was the most stunning thing on the planet.

  She reached into her backpack and pulled out a jar. She handed it to Ben.

  “Here, go in this,” she said calmly and patted him on the back.

  “No,” he drooled. “I’m good. I think I’m okay.”

  Nabila yelled, “Brussels sprouts!”

  WHAAAARRRRRFFFF!

  And Ben threw up again.

  The whole plane EEEWWWWed again—this time some of the adults joined in.

  “Thanks,” she said, and screwed a cap on the newly-filled jar.

  I watched the whole thing in amazement, trying my best to ignore Nabila, but I just couldn’t.

  “What are you DOING?” I screeched.

  “Collecting a sample,” she said. “As far as we know, Ben’s vomit is the only non-sussuroblat vomit that can actually melt a sussuroblat. It needs to be studied.”

  “WHAT!?” both Ben and I yelped.

  “How do you know what a sussuroblat is?” I demanded.

  “You guys talk about everything at lunch,” she said. “I heard about sussuroblats from you.”

  Ben and I gasped.

  Shane and Gordon popped up from their seats behind us.

  “WHAT?!” they both yelped.

  “I knew that those roaches you led into the Gravitron were not ordinary roaches. I knew something else was going on. So, the next week at school, I started listening in on your lunchtime conversations. Now that I know you’re helping defend a bunch of old monsters from some force of evil,” she said matter-of-factly. “I want in.”

  “In?” I asked. “In on what?”

  “On the action,” she said. “I want to help you guys out. Most of all, I want to meet the monsters.”

  We were stunned.

  Before we could even ask why, Lunch Lady appeared out of nowhere. I almost jumped out of my skin!

  “What eeesss going on here?” she asked.

  I stammered to get out a reply when Nabila said simply, “Ben threw up.”

  “All right,” she said, eyeing me suspiciously. “I’ll geet a flight attendant.”

  She turned to leave, and we all stared at Nabila again.

  “Yes,” she said, “I know she’s part of Raven Hill, too. And I’m not about to let her know I heard everything from you…if you guys cooperate.”

  “If we…” Gordon started,“…cooperate? Are you threatening us?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We’re on vacation…I mean, we’re not talking about monsters this week. So, that’s that.”

  “Talking about monsters or not,” she said, “I still need your help. I’d go there myself, but I can’t find Raven Hill on any maps, and I’ve wandered around town day after day looking for the place.”

  “It has a way of keeping out unwanted visitors,” I said.

  “Wait!” Shane said. “How did you hear EVERYTHING? We might have gotten sloppy at the lunch table recently, but in the beginning, we kept things to a whisper—and we always speak in code.”

  “You were speaking in code?” she asked. “I didn’t even know.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Shane said. “What I want to know is how you actually HEARD everything. I’ve never seen you sitting near our table.”

  “You never saw me because I was born without a sense of smell,” she said matter-of-factly.

  We all looked at each other. Even Ben.

  “I have an extremely sharp sense of hearing,” she added. “My poor nose gave all of its powers to my ears.”

  “It looks like your eyes might have helped out as well,” snickered Gordon.

  Nabila eyed Gordon through her thick lenses and continued, “Do you know how some people say they can hear a pin drop?”

  “Yes,” we all said.

  “Well,” she said, “I actually can hear a pin drop. I can hear the flight attendant’s shoes coming toward us, and I know that she has wet paper towels with her because I heard her turn the sink on, hold something in it, and squeeze out excess water.”

  Sure enough, a concerned-looking flight attendant came down the aisle.

  “Oh dear,” she said, looking at the mess.

  We all forgot that Ben had barfed. We were hypnotized by Nabila’s tale. Even Ben forgot he had barfed—the flight attendant had to ask him the same question twice: “Didn’t you know there was a barf bag in the seat in front of you?”

  “Nope,” he said simply, and grabbed the paper towels as the attendant passed them over.

  “Sorry. This is his first time on a plane,” I explained.

  There was a pause as Ben started to clean up.

  “You need any more of this stuff?” he asked Nabila, holding up the dripping paper towels.

  Behind us, Gordon gagged slightly.

  “No,” she said. “I’ve collected more than I possibly need to run my calculations.”

  The flight attendant looked at Nabila strangely as she grabbed the paper towels from Ben. But, before she could ask any questions, the intercom crackled and the captain announced that we’d be landing soon.

  The flight attendant motioned to Gordon and Shane and said, “Please sit down.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Shane said politely as she walked away, and then turned to Nabila. “Wait! Why do you care about the monsters at the retirement home?”

  “Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve been obsessed with American monster movies. Vampires. Werewolves. Mummies. I learned all about Halloween. Celebrating Halloween in America for the first time was amazing, but that was make-believe. What you guys are doing is real, and I can assist. I know things. I know a lot about mummification. I’ve read the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead—”

  “Interesting hobbies,” said Shane, his eyebrow raised.

  “—and I could help you guys in more ways than you can imagine.”

  With that, she sat down in her seat and looked forward.

  My friends and I passed each other strange glances.

  Wild Life

  We arrived in Orlando in the early afternoon. While waiting in front of the terminal for a bus to take us to Cape Canaveral, I walked over to Mr. Stewart.

  “Are we going right to Kennedy Space Center?” I asked him, trying my best to ignore Lunch Lady, who stood right next to him.

  “That’s the plan!” Mr. Stewart said with a smile. “We have orientation and then we will meet with an astronaut. Did you know there’s always at least one astronaut answering questions there?”

  “I did,” I squealed, barely able to hold in my excitement.

  Meanwhile, Coach Grey and all of the football players, Gordon included, were gathered at one side of the bus stop. There seemed to be a lot of high-fiving and muscle flexing going on. I’ve never understood athletes
, but Gordon looked happy. I guess he was right—we each had our own things and that was okay.

  I walked from Mr. Stewart over to Shane and Ben, who were standing alone at the other side of the bus stop.

  “Man this weather is supreme!” yelled Shane. “I could totally get used to this.”

  “I dunno,” said Ben, “this humidity is a little nasty. I’m feeling pretty clammy.”

  “Aren’t you always feeling clammy?” I asked.

  “The weather is much, much hotter in Cairo,” said Nabila, from out of nowhere.

  “Ah!” I yelled and jumped.

  The idea of meeting with an actual astronaut had made me forget about Nabila. But here she was, walking toward us with a bottle of water in her hand and a braces-filled grin on her face.

  “Is it really?” Ben asked Nabila. “I don’t know if I’d make it there.”

  “We’ll see,” she said with a wink, and handed Ben the bottled water. “Here, I thought you could use this.”

  “Aw, thanks,” he said, and blushed for the fourth time that day. (I’d been counting.)

  Two buses arrived, and everyone pushed and shoved their way on board. Ben and Nabila headed onto the first bus with Lunch Lady.

  Shane reached out to stop them, but I pulled his arm back.

  “Just let them go,” I said, and walked toward the second bus.

  I headed to the back of the bus, and dropped down in the very last row with a FLUMP.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Shane, slumping down in the seat next to me. “This is supposed the best day of your life, Space Boy.”

  “I feel like we’ll never get a break from Raven Hill. First Lunch Lady shows up for the trip, and now all Nabila wants to talk about are the monsters. That’s the last thing I want to discuss. We all agreed, no monsters on this trip.”

  “Ben knows to keep quiet, and he’s the only one she wants to talk to,” Shane said. “As for Lunch Lady, so what if Director Z sent her to keep an eye on us? We’re not going to say anything. It was probably just her turn to chaperone, anyway.”

  “She’s not just chaperoning,” I said. “Something’s going on, I know it.”

  “Stop worrying,” said Shane. “Even if something is going on, there’s nothing you can do about it. Just relax—we’re heading to Kennedy Space Center, remember.”