The little girl with pigtails put her hand to her head. Her face turned gray. A dull, clouded-over look came into her eyes.
“I think I’m going to hmmnrhghghrghgh . . .”
18
UPSTAIRS, MEANWHILE, FELICITY KEPT MAKING hungry noises in Stanley’s direction, but luckily she wouldn’t leave her desk unless Mr. Baldengrumpy gave her permission.
Still, Stanley was afraid his teacher would notice something was wrong with her. Every time Mr. Baldengrumpy asked for volunteers to collect work or do chores around the room, she whimpered like a begging dog. And she bellowed with enthusiasm whenever he cracked a corny joke.
So in other words she was pretty much her usual self.
Except that her “work” was nothing but scribbles and at one point while washing the blackboard she chugalugged a box of chalk. Fortunately nobody noticed except Fiona and Kathleen, who just nodded in appreciation.
“Sick,” Fiona complimented.
“Nasty,” Kathleen praised.
When Miranda came back from checking the girls’ bathroom, she gave Stanley a shrug from the door to let him know her search had come up empty. But they didn’t get a chance to talk until halfway through the period, when on a secret signal they met at the pencil sharpener.
“The bathroom was empty,” Miranda whispered. “So I searched the rest of the floor again—but there was no trace of Zombiekins anywhere.”
“What about Knuckles?” Stanley asked with concern. “Was he with his class?”
“I don’t know,” Miranda shrugged. “The door to the sixth graders’ room was closed.”
“Something terrible has happened to him,” Stanley said. “I just know it.”
“Calm down, Stanley,” Miranda said. “We don’t know for sure that anything happened to Knuckles. So for now, let’s just worry about keeping Felicity out of trouble. . . .
“. . . and finding Zombiekins before anyone else does. . . . ”
19
MEANWHILE, DOWN IN THE SCHOOL’S BASEMENT, the hall was filled with the sound of cats drowning to the tune of “Old MacDonald.”
Mrs. Bernstein, the music teacher, was conducting the third graders. She stood at the front of the Music Room waving a conductor’s baton with her eyes closed like someone in a trance.
To one side of the room, the string section was choking the cellos, battering the bass viols and doing violence to the violins. Across from them, the horn section was blaring like a traffic jam of angry cab drivers.
“Beautiful, boys and girls,” Mrs. Bernstein beamed. “Marvelous!”
Underneath all this racket throbbed the dull haunting drone of Bubba on the tuba, who didn’t know the tune and was blundering along with a noise like a ship lost in fog.
The kids all seemed to be enjoying themselves, especially Delores, who was doing air guitar moves on the ukulele, strutting and jiving and windmilling her strumming hand without really playing anything.
“Lovely, Delores!” Mrs. Bernstein cooed.
Mrs. Bernstein raised her baton to signal the finale was coming, then brought it down with a sharp flick. The tune tumbled to a halt with everyone finishing at different times and on different parts. Mrs. Bernstein clapped her hands together in delight.
“Bravo, everyone!” she sang. “That was fabulous!”
“Okay,” Mrs. Bernstein trilled, “let’s try it again with a Latin feel. . . . ”
“Aw, can’t we play ‘Three Blind Mice’?” whined Jason.
“Pardon me, Jason?” Mrs. Bernstein smiled, removing a plug from her left ear.
“Why do we always have to play ‘Old MacDonald’?” Jason complained. “Why can’t we ever play ‘Three Blind Mice’?”
“Or ‘Hot Cross Buns’?” said Alycha.
“I wanna play ‘Smoke on the Water’. . . . ”
“How about ‘Ride of the Valkyries’?”
“All right, children,” Mrs. Bernstein smiled, replacing her earplug. “You may all play whatever you like.” She tapped her baton on the music stand. “On three . . .”
All the kids played their hearts out. Except for a girl named Mackenzie in the back row of the horn section. She had stopped playing momentarily to watch how the boy beside her produced such a wonderful tone from his trumpet—as if he’d trapped some strange animal inside that was screaming to get out.
That’s why she was the only one who noticed when a strange stuffy appeared from behind a pile of violin cases by the door. It was small and creepy-cute and it moved on its own like something alive—or at least like something not quite dead.