Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters Read online

  For a second I wondered what my mother would have done about Mr. Stedman, if she were here. She had a real temper—Dad said it came with the red hair and the Irishness. I remember her curls flying all around her head, like a flaming halo of doom, when she got mad. Mom got angry about a lot of stuff—one of my last memories of her is Mom yelling at Dad about how he made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “You put the peanut butter on after the jelly, not before! Otherwise, the peanut butter sticks on the knife and gets in the jelly jar!”

  It seemed like a really funny thing to get so worked up about. I asked Dad about it once, and he said she wasn’t mad, just passionate. “Passionate about peanut butter and jelly?” I asked. “It’s only a sandwich!”

  “Passionate about everything.” Dad got a big smile on his face. “Besides, it wasn’t the sandwich she was angry about.” He shook his head and looked gloomy. I changed the subject.

  That makes me think that my mother would have given Mr. Stedman more than a lecture. She probably would have given him a solid right hook to the jaw.

  Anyway, the threat worked. Mr. Stedman’s nostrils flared as he sputtered and combed his fingers through his balding hair. Dad’s glare bored holes into my teacher until Mr. Stedman finally looked away.

  This whole school pretty much hates my family now. Especially Mr. Stedman.

  I strategically place my thick textbook in front of my notebook and start drawing while I stare at Mr. Stedman like he’s the most fascinating thing I’ve ever seen. If I don’t draw, I will literally fall asleep, because Mr. Stedman’s voice is like Ambien. And if that happened, he would truly go nuts.

  I consider what to draw. Self-portrait? Too boring. Just straight black hair in a style that’s almost a bowl cut, because Grandma, Obāchan, cuts it for me. (Dad keeps promising to take me to a real barber, but I’m not holding my breath.) Gray-blue eyes. Skin I can never find the right crayon color for anyway, even in Crayola’s “Multicultural” collection. It’s a shade with too many pink undertones to be yellow and too much yellow to be pink.

  A mix. A blend. A mutt. That’s me.

  “Yesterday, a volcano in Hawaii froze,” Mr. Stedman says.

  I pause. Huh. Now that’s interesting. Idly, I draw sharks ice-skating on frozen lava covering the ocean. Weird climate things have been happening for the past two years. Pretty much every day, some news anchor interrupts my grandma’s Wheel of Fortune show to tell us about snakes fleeing a rain forest, or enormous tuna jumping out of hot ocean water, or people in Florida having to buy ski jackets for a sudden blizzard.

  Climate change. I guess maybe it is a problem. But it’s all happening far away. Too far away for me to worry about.

  On my left, Clarissa taps my arm. She grins, showing two rows of braces with hot pink rubber bands. She points to my notebook. “You should put that into the game,” she whispers.

  I shrug quick, feeling my face go all hot. My hands start sweating. She tucks her long, curly black hair behind her ear and wiggles her eyebrows at me. I’ve known Clarissa since kindergarten. We’ve watched each other pick our noses. I don’t know why I’m so nervous around her now. Once, I called her a hobbit—I meant it as a compliment, because hobbits are the coolest creatures ever and she’s the only girl still shorter than I am—but she socked my arm so hard it left a purple bruise for two whole weeks.

  The game she’s talking about is what we’re working on in computer class. We play this game called CraftWorlds, where you can build your own, well, worlds. Anything you can make with pixels. Since you actually have to know some coding to change the game, the teacher’s letting us use it in class.

  Not to brag, but I’m the king of the computer class. It’s the one place where I pretty much rule over all the other kids. The characters I program look better, jump higher, and can do more than anyone else’s. I’m famous for it around here.

  Clarissa smiles at me again and I smile back, and Mr. Stedman shoots a glare at me. What, it’s illegal to smile now? Mind police. Mr. Stedman sticks a pencil behind his ear, near the ring of hair around his bald spot. “Find two articles about global warming and summarize them.” He writes the assignment on the whiteboard like we’re morons. Summarizing is the most boringest thing in the free world. Why do I have to tell you exactly what I read? I know what I read; you know what I read. I want to tell you what I think about it.

  I look down at my notebook.

  I blink.

  My sharks aren’t there anymore. In their place there’s a drawing of an ape and a human mixed together, except it has a long lizard tail studded with spikes, like a dinosaur’s, waving in a muscular curve. His skin is hairy but wet-looking, in shades of red and purple and iridescent green.

  I suck in a quick breath and look at my black-ink pen, then back down at the colorful drawing. What the heck?

  I put my fingertips on the drawing. I could be wrong, but it kind of feels like the ink is rising up from the paper….

  I yank back my hand and shake my head to clear it.

  The creature’s eyes stare back at mine. They’re like a shark’s—no white, no iris, just all black pupil.

  I have the urge to set the notebook on fire. Or bury it someplace. I’m frozen. I can’t take my eyes off it.

  The creature’s smiling at me with serrated yellow teeth, and I know there’s all kinds of gross bacteria on them, like a Komodo dragon who poisons his prey. A pink-red tongue forks into three snakes at the tip. The tiny snakes hiss their displeasure. SSSsssssss.

  Hissing?

  It’s a drawing. It can’t make noise.

  But I hear it, the same way I can hear Mom calling, “Xander,” sometimes as I’m waking from a deep sleep.

  The hair on my neck stands straight up, and my stomach drops like I’m falling into a pitch-black and cold endless pit. Then my stomach feels like I’ve been hit by a really hard ball. I gasp, trying to get air into my lungs.

  “Are you okay?” Clarissa whispers.

  I nod once and shut my notebook fast.

  Suddenly Mr. Stedman’s forearms, covered in wiry black hair, appear by my face. SMACK! He hits the desk with his metal ruler so hard the fillings in my teeth rattle. “Xander! This is not art class.”

  I shrug, trying to hide how much he startled me. “Of course it’s not art class. This school doesn’t have an art class.”

  Clarissa giggles softly. Mr. Stedman’s nostrils flare. He yanks my notebook away, turns to a blank page, and puts it back on my desk. He narrows his eyes. “You’re on thin ice, Mr. Miyamoto.”

  “Like sharks by the frozen volcano?” I ask before I can help myself. Whoops.

  This time both Clarissa and Peyton, who’s sitting a few rows back, snort.

  Mr. Stedman bares his teeth like he’s in some teen werewolf show. I sigh and nod. “Sorry.” I manage to sound like I really mean it. And I do. I know he’s going to spend the rest of class time watching me, and I hate that.

  He stalks to his desk. “Get into your groups. I don’t want to hear too much noise, or this exercise will be over.”

  The good news is, five more minutes have passed. I make more hash marks. Only thirty more to go and we’re on spring break. Freedom. I can’t wait.

  We move around to do our group work. Peyton throws four newspapers on the table. “You look through two; I’ll look through two.” He sits in his chair backward, the way teachers always tell you not to do. But Peyton’s Peyton, so nobody corrects him. His blond-brown hair sticks up in the middle, and he smooths it down, which only works for a second before it springs back up again in a feathery plume.

  Peyton’s taller than most people’s dads, though he’s not thirteen yet. He plays a ton of sports, and his size is an advantage for him, which is why somebody on the other team always demands to see Peyton’s birth certificate. Last year I went to his Little League play-off game, and a loudmouthed mother from the opposing team shouted, “No way that kid’s only eleven. Lookit them long arms and legs! Chicken legs!” (I thought
that was pretty funny, but Peyton didn’t.) Also, under his pointy nose, Peyton has a mouthful of naturally straight white teeth. Oh, and he has a great voice as well. In class he isn’t too loud or too quiet, he stays on task, and he makes girls and teachers laugh instead of annoying them. He’s pretty much the mayor of Oak Grove Lower School.

  It’s a good thing I met Peyton when we were only four. Because if we’d met in sixth grade, I’m not sure the Number One Jock and the Number One Nerd would be such good friends.

  Allow me to demonstrate how well Peyton and I know each other.

  Phone rings. One of us answers. “Dude.”

  “Dude.”

  “7-Eleven. Ten minutes.”

  “Yup.”

  Hang up.

  Boom. Done. That’s all we need.

  And most of the time, it doesn’t matter that I’m smaller than Peyton. If I can’t do something physical, my friend will do it for me.

  Like the time, back when we were seven, I thought it’d be fun to design a parachute out of bedsheets and clothesline and jump off the garage roof onto a pile of garbage bags stuffed with leaves and pine needles. If I’d been just a few inches taller, I could have climbed the wooden fence next to the building and pulled myself onto the roof.

  I could imagine how cool it would have been to leap from those gray asphalt shingles, the parachute billowing behind me. “Whatcha think?” I asked Peyton. Before I even got the words out of my mouth, Peyton had the parachute strapped to his back and was scrambling up the fence.

  My grandmother had emerged from the house just in time to see Peyton launching himself off the roof, his arms spread and his eyes closed, like he had every confidence in the world that those flimsy garbage bags would cushion his leap. And there I was, yelling, “Fly, Peyton!” and being more than a little bit jealous of what he could do.

  My eardrums still hurt from the sound of Obāchan’s scream.

  Oh, and by the way, the bags mostly held. Peyton only got one little fracture in his ankle and had to wear a small cast for six weeks.

  It was a while before Peyton’s parents let him come over again.

  Now, in Mr. Stedman’s class, Peyton goes off to get the scissors. Clarissa and Lovey move their desks near ours. They are besties. I wish Lovey would sit somewhere else. Like in the middle of the frozen volcano about two thousand miles away from me.

  Lovey’s supposedly the prettiest middle-schooler in town, because she more or less looks like Barbie. But I’ve known her since second grade, and she’s got the worst personality ever. That makes anybody ugly. I wouldn’t want to run into her in a dark alley.

  Plus, Lovey wears so much makeup—in frosted pale colors, over sunburned skin—that she doesn’t even look like a girl to me anymore. She looks like a baboon wearing clown makeup. I don’t know why Clarissa bothers being friends with her.

  Clarissa smiles up at me. “Hey, do you have time after school to help me with my modding in Scratch? I can’t get my DreamShine characters to look like they’re dancing.”

  Scratch is an animation program. Is she asking because she likes me, or because her code won’t work? Is the computer lab open today? How do I get the characters to dance? I frown, thinking about all this stuff.

  “DreamShine…” I say out loud, picturing the code, what those characters would look like.

  Clarissa’s smile fades. “DreamShine is a band.”

  “I know who DreamShine is. That boy group.” I blush again. Clarissa and Lovey both giggle. Masculinity, minus 1,000 points. “The most annoying band in the history of time, that is.”

  “DreamShine?” Peyton puts some scissors down on the table. “I like that one song, ‘Blame It on the Heart.’” With that, he breaks into an accomplished falsetto, notes trilling up and down. “Blame it on my heart/it’s not so smart/and when you sleep it’s an art….” The girls smile up at him. “And then you rip a big fart.” This whole side of the classroom laughs. He shuts his mouth and spins around. “Darn. Forgot the glue.”

  Mr. Stedman glances up at Peyton but says nothing about the musical interlude. That, ladies and gentleman, is my friend Peyton. He could wear a pink tutu to school and not lose any masculinity points.

  “You know what, Xander? You don’t need to help me. I probably just made a typo in the code.” Clarissa turns pink and opens her newspaper.

  Oh. She thinks I don’t want to help her. Just because I was frowning? I’m so dumb. “No, I’ll help you. Meet after school?”

  Clarissa shrugs. “I think the computer lab’s probably not open today. We can do it after spring break.” She sounds a lot less enthusiastic now. She gets up and crosses the classroom to sharpen her pencil.

  Oh well. I inhale a huge breath. I will dazzle her with my mad modding skills after break. Then we’ll be friends again. I open up a newspaper and scan the headlines. “Earthquake in Kansas Topples Houses.”

  Strange, but (a) do earthquakes count as climate change? and (b) who cares about earthquakes? We have them all the time here. Let other places experience our joy, too.

  I look through the newspaper, praying Lovey will keep quiet. She’s one of those people who finds out what bugs you the most, then pokes at it over and over. Just because she’s bored as well as mean.

  “Hey, Xander.” Lovey wrinkles her perfect little nose at me. “I thought Asians were supposed to be smart. Why are you so dumb? You totally failed that report.”

  This isn’t the first time she’s said this. I’m the only half-Asian—or any-Asian—in the whole school. Plus, I’m not in GATE—that’s Gifted and Talented Education—a program that you get into by scoring high on an intelligence test. The GATE kids have a special math teacher and go to some kind of fun enrichment class a few times a week, leaving the rest of us behind to stew in social studies purgatory. Peyton’s in the program. So is Clarissa. And Lovey.

  She’s not the type of person to let you forget.

  Dad says it’s not Lovey’s fault; it’s her parents’. “Parents can infect their children with their own backward thinking,” Dad once said. “You should feel sorry for her.”

  I glare at Lovey, and I don’t feel sorry at all. I feel like I want to punch her right in her clown face. “How many Asians do you even know?”

  Lovey leans forward, her head cocked to one side, squinting at me like I’m a pile of roadside trash. “You know you’re ugly, right? You’re like the bad parts of white people and Asian people mixed together. And I’ve never seen such an ugly color of blue eyes before. Like dirty water.”

  My cheeks go hot, but I keep my cool. I raise an eyebrow at her. “Have you looked in a mirror lately? You’re not exactly supermodel material yourself.”

  She opens and closes her mouth like a brainless fish.

  I doodle in my notebook, my pen pressing down hard into the paper as I draw cubes. Yes, my family has blue eyes—it goes back a long way, my dad says. We have some ancestors from Russia who migrated to Japan and became the Ainu. Besides, my mom is—was—as Irish as they come, with blue eyes and red hair. Of course that’s what color my eyes are.

  Peyton puts down the glue. “Find any articles yet?”

  “Hi, Peyton,” Lovey sings, and I swear she bats her eyes at him. Her mascara’s so thick it falls on her cheeks in little clumps. “I saw your baseball game last week. You did awesome.”

  “Stalker,” I mutter. Now I know she’s the dumbest person in town. If you’re in love with Batman, you don’t go around harassing Robin.

  “Thanks.” Peyton glances at me. He knows what Lovey’s like. I doodle another cube, probably looking as upset as I feel. He sits down. “You should go somewhere else, Lovey. You’re not in our group.”

  “Mr. Stedman said to sit here.” Lovey smiles at Peyton. “We won’t bother you.”

  Peyton angles his head at me and I shrug. If I make a scene, Stedman will bug me even more. “It’s fine,” I mumble. Clarissa returns, and she and Lovey are actually quiet for a change as they cut out their articles.


  I look out the window. The old man at the bus stop stands up and walks across the street, toward the school. Even from here his skin looks pale, papery. Must not get much sun in the old folks’ home. I wonder how he escaped. Maybe he hitchhiked all the way up here. Should I call the cops or something?

  He comes up to the classroom window and looks straight at me.

  Our eyes meet. I have this strange feeling that I know him, or should know him.

  We stare each other for a second. Then he winks. A ridiculous, dramatic, slow wink, like a stage actor making sure the last row can see it.

  I slide down in my seat and look at my desk again. Where have I seen that man before?

  Oh. He must look familiar because he’s Asian, like my grandmother and father. That’s why. You don’t see many Asians around here.

  “That old guy must be from out of town,” I say to Peyton.

  “What guy?” Peyton pastes his article onto his paper.

  I look out the window. The old man is gone. “Huh. Nobody, I guess.”

  And now, suddenly, the sun is out. Not only has the rain stopped, but there’s not a cloud in the sky. I grin. Maybe it’s an omen that spring break is going to be awesome.

  “Have you actually done any work?” Peyton takes the notebook out of my hand. His eyes go Frisbee-wide. He looks up at Lovey and snorts. “Dude. Ha. Good likeness.” He shuts the notebook, shaking his head with a wide grin. He whispers, “You better hide it, though. You’ll be in a load of trouble if Stedman sees it.”

  What is he talking about? The cubes? The beastly man? I flip open to my drawing.

  It’s Mean Girl Number One, Lovey. As a baboon. Wearing clown makeup and a clown suit, her nostrils huge, her hairy knuckles dragging on the ground.

  Not only did I make her look horribly—and awesomely—ugly, she is also doing something not so polite. If you’ve seen apes or monkeys at the zoo, you might have experienced this: sometimes they poop and then throw it. They hurl it at the people gawking at them through the glass, and even though it just hits the window, everybody screams and ducks as it slides down in front of their faces. It’s completely disgusting—and completely hilarious.