Strange Country Day

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the word marks mentioned in this work of fiction.

  Copyright © 2015 by Charles Curtis

  STRANGE COUNTRY DAY by Charles Curtis

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Month9Books, LLC.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Published by Tantrum Books for Month9Books

  Cover illustration by Al Sorois

  Title design and cover by Najla Qamber Designs

  Cover Copyright © 2015 Month9Books

  To Erica and Benji

  My superheroes

  Chapter One

  You always hope your first day of school is uneventful. You lay low, you blend into the background, and you make it through without doing something that’ll get you tormented for an entire year.

  That didn’t happen in my first few hours at Strange Country Day.

  Here’s what did happen: just as I was about to be demolished by an elephant-sized bully named Flab, some superhuman power possessed me and I bloodied his nose. Another new kid named Dex escaped an ancient initiation ceremony by clambering up a bookcase like a mountain goat. That night, I played catch with a football-hurling robot.

  That was Day One. A week later, I started crushing on the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.

  Wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from the beginning:

  I stood at the front gates to Vance M. Strange Country Day School, staring up at the name of my new school, the letters set high above a set of iron bars that looked as if they had been there for centuries. The curlicues and script looked just as ancient.

  It was Orientation Day, so I wouldn’t have to sit through any classes until tomorrow. After a tour given by an upperclassman, my new prep school brought the seventh graders to our state-of-the-art auditorium, where we listened to the headmaster lecture all 110 of us about Strange Country Day’s policies. It’s exactly what you’d expect—no gum in class, no graffiti, no lateness. But there were also some weird ones, like the ten-page booklet on “uniform violations.”

  Oh, the uniforms. I couldn’t believe my parents made me go to a school with a strict dress code. I looked down at what I was wearing and winced: a button-down white shirt with a yellow tie—not a clip-on, so we had to learn to tie a Double Windsor knot, whatever that was—that felt like it was choking me. I also sported tight khakis and brown, shiny loafers. The whole thing wouldn’t be complete without the navy blazer with the school emblem, a griffin—the mythological lion with wings—and words displayed below “Vance M. Strange Country Day School, est. 1904” above the front gate: In Via Incipit Hic.

  I used my phone to look up the meaning: “The Road Starts Here” in Latin. My new school was some rich kids’ academy past presidents had attended, where future Wall Street barons first learned the quadratic equation and where I’d now start myself on the supposed road to greatness.

  That road was real—it weaved through the gigantic campus. The school consisted of a dozen ivy-covered buildings spread out over a campus that spanned what looked like miles. Walking from the art building to where I was supposed to take history would take at least ten minutes, or so our tour guide warned us. I could see different trees planted everywhere with plaques describing them and what seemed like acres of neatly trimmed grass. My old school back home had been one small, cramped brick building with a slab of concrete out back that we played on during recess.

  With the half-day orientation over, we headed for the front gate, where the buses would pick us up. I looked at the other kids in their uniforms and saw them joking around and greeting each other with complex handshakes, as if they were a basketball team after a playoff win. I heard nearly everyone entering seventh grade had graduated from Strange Lower School, so they all knew each other already. I wanted to introduce myself to someone, just so I wouldn’t feel awkward, but they passed me as if I were invisible. I turned back around to confront those iron gates, realizing that they were a jail from which I couldn’t escape.

  I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. I turned around to look up at a big kid wearing a maroon and yellow jacket with a giant version of the griffin on it. I could see a jersey with the number 77 underneath.

  “Come with me—with them,” he said, pointing at a group of seventh grade boys.

  We were led down a walkway, ushered inside one of the buildings and into a classroom. When the big guy opened the creaky windowless door, I saw most of my other male classmates. They all had the same fear written on their faces. We were surrounded by bigger guys—ninth graders, probably. Some of them were football players. A few more kids were squeezed in, and the “guards” shut the door. In front of the room, standing over us, was another player in a maroon and yellow jacket. He was the biggest guy in the room, hefty, but you could see it wasn’t all fat.

  “Welcome to Fresh Meet Friday!” the enormous kid announced. The other ninth graders whooped and hollered. “Boys, since you’re about to join the Strange brotherhood, you can call me what everyone calls me: Flab.” That’s the worst name I’ve ever heard for someone that size.

  “This is all about tradition, boys. Strange Country Day is filled with tradition. For starters, you are standing in the oldest building on campus, built in 1904. Three years later, this tradition began right here in the Roger Basil Thayer Room.” Strange alumni donated heaps of cash to have a room, a library desk, a water fountain, anything, named after them.

  “Here’s how this works: you will stand in front of the room and pledge allegiance to Strange Country Day. Only then will we tell you the next step.” Flab paused for dramatic effect, and his classmates asked, almost in unison, “And what’s that?”

  “ … You’ll find out soon enough,” he said, with a big grin.

  We seventh graders exchanged looks but stayed silent. Flab explained the rules of the mysterious tradition: in exchange for our participation, they would agree to stay out of our way the rest of the year. Violations of this pact would result in punishment to the violator(s) and random acts against other classmates throughout the school year. We were not allowed to breathe a word of this to our parents, teachers, advisors, bus drivers, or otherwise at school. “We went through the same thing you’re about to go through, and not one of us retaliated,” he said as the mob nodded approval. One of the other ninth-graders interjected and pointed out that he’d heard of a kid decades ago who rebelled.

  “And he had to transfer two months later.”

  “Fight back and you’re fighting against Strange’s hundred years of tradition,” Flab finished with a grin. He picked up a book from the nearby desk and opened it. “Let’s start with … ” he trailed his chubby fingers over the pages. My heart nearly leapt through my crisp white shirt. “ … Dex Harrison.”

  No one reacted. Flab looked up. “Dex. Get up here. Now,” he said.

  The seventh-grader sea parted, and a kid emerged who looked to be about five feet tall. His skin was pale, an almost grayish color, and his pointy ears appeared to be higher up on the sides of his head than usual. His eyes were like slits. I never saw anyone who looked like that. There were some snickers among my classmates as he walked slowly to the front of the room. He stood there, surrounded by four ninth graders.

 
“Dex, do you swear to uphold the traditions, honor, and virtue that those before you have also sworn to defend?” Flab recited.

  A barely audible, high-pitched “Yes” came out of Dex’s mouth. He scrunched up his eyes. “You have now joined the brotherhood of Strange Country Day,” Flab said, as he leaned back to watch the action.

  As the quartet of ninth-graders began to move toward him, Dex jumped away. They tried stepping closer, but Dex kept backing away. The entire room, seventh and ninth graders alike, gasped. Some of us started laughing.

  “Shut up!” Flab yelled. He slammed his fist down on the desk and marched over to Dex. “Don’t make this harder on yourself. You took the vow; you have to fulfill it.”

  Flab and the others reached out to grab him, but Dex somehow eluded their grasps. He backed away as some of the seventh graders began to root him on. The others yelled for Dex to stop, knowing we would all suffer if he messed up the tradition. The noise in the classroom got louder. Dex backed into a bookcase filled with dusty volumes; he looked like he was about to be trapped. Just as Flab was ready to pounce on him, Dex darted up the bookcase with lightning speed. The roar was huge.

  Dex had a weird way of celebrating his victory—he bared a set of sharp teeth and hissed at his pursuers, who grabbed books off the shelves and threw them at him. With incredible dexterity, he dodged every one of them, repeatedly displaying his spiky teeth at the ninth graders. That brought the room to a fever pitch.

  The older kids began to shove some of us to stop the cheering. It was the beginning of a riot … and I was stuck in the middle of it. I tried to push my way back to the door.

  There was no way that was happening—I felt shoves from behind. Sweat began pouring down my face as I saw Flab turn his attention away from Dex, who looked down at the action with a mix of horror and fascination. “Everyone stop!” Flab shouted. The seventh graders didn’t listen, pushing every kid in a football jersey they could see. I was shoved into Flab’s expansive back and stumbled back. As he turned to look at me, something, well, strange happened at Strange. Something that had never happened to me before today.

  My vision got blurry, and my head began to pound. I smelled toasted marshmallows. Then it was like someone poured water through my veins, and it rushed through my arms, down to my feet and into my head, which stopped pounding. I couldn’t hear any of the noise of the chaos around me. Instead, a high-pitched whistle took its place.

  Squeeeeeeeee

  Then it disappeared—the marshmallows, the water in my veins, the blurry vision … everything.

  I watched as if detached from my body as my fist flew toward the behemoth standing before me and connected with his nose.

  The entire room stopped moving. Silence. Shock. I looked down at my fist and back up at Flab, who stumbled and touched his bleeding nose. He couldn’t believe what I had done and neither could I.

  “What the heck is going on in here?” The entire room turned its attention to the door, where a young man wearing a tie and a white shirt stood.

  The man glared at us. “Anyone want to take a trip to visit Headmaster Hoyer?” It sounded like he was a teacher.

  More than a hundred Strange students shook their heads in unison.

  “Good. Then I’ll wait here while you clean up the mess you made, and maybe I’ll forget I saw anything.”

  Silently, everyone started picking up books, papers, and uniform jackets. When we finished, the ninth-graders filed out, followed by my classmates.

  “Thanks.”

  I looked down at Dex. I was surprised to hear him talk. His voice was squeaky, like he’d swallowed a balloon full of helium.

  “For what?”

  “If you hadn’t hit him, they would have gotten me,”

  “Now, it’s your turn to save me when they come to beat me up,” I said. I wasn’t kidding, either.

  “Anytime,” he said with an odd grin. Up close, his teeth were even weirder, as if they were a little too big for his mouth.

  “You did a pretty good job in there,” I replied. “Alex.” I offered my hand, and he shook it vigorously. His palm felt clammy.

  “Dex.”

  We figured out that we lived near each other, and that he was new, like me. But there was something else I was itching to know.

  “How did you get up the bookcase so quickly? That was amazing!” Dex didn’t answer. Instead, his eyes got wide as he peered around me. I turned around to see Flab and a few other yellow and maroon jerseys headed our way.

  Flab looked around to see if anyone was watching and then got close to me. I could see some dried blood near his nose.

  With every word out of his mouth, he poked me in the chest. Hard. “You.” POKE. “Got.” POKE. “Lucky.” HARD POKE. He glanced down at his notebook. “Alexander Ptuiac,” he growled, pronouncing what was supposed to be a silent “P” as he pushed his way past me, as did his fellow football teammates. I turned around to see what they would do to Dex as they brushed by him.

  But Dex was gone.

  Chapter Two

  “I said today was fine.”

  I spent that night’s dinner deflecting my parents’ questions left and right. No, I hadn’t made any friends. Yes, orientation took forever. No, I wasn’t sure what the other kids were like. And yes, for the fiftieth time, I said today was fine.

  But I didn’t say a word about Fresh Meet Friday or the mysterious marshmallow smell and high-pitched whistle that led me to punch the biggest kid in school without having control over my fist.

  “Don’t worry, sweetie. It’s the beginning of the year, and there are plenty of other new kids who probably feel the same way you do.” That’s my mom, always trying to turn a bad situation into a positive one. “Right, Martin?”

  “Mmm.” I didn’t expect anything helpful from Dad, who wasn’t at the table. He was behind our refrigerator, punching commands into a computer attached to the back of it.

  “Will you sit down and talk to your son? He needs you right now,” she commanded.

  “It’ll be one sec, I promise. I just want to set Morimoto up for dessert, and we can talk over ice cream.”

  My dad’s an inventor. He was one of those child prodigies who built computers when he was seven. A few months ago, he had a major breakthrough. He invented the first universal voice translator and sold it to the biggest software company in the world. He named me Alexander Graham Ptuiac—the “P” is silent—after his favorite inventor.

  That’s when my parents informed me that we were moving to a rich suburb and that I’d attend one of the most expensive private schools in the country (they didn’t say it quite that way, but I Googled it).

  Dad finished working on the computer and moved the fridge back into place. The kitchen appeared ordinary, but a set of machines complete with gears, claws, assembly lines, and countless miles of wires were built into the wall behind all the appliances. They started at the fridge and ended where the “washer/dryer” stood near the kitchen table.

  He’d been working on Morimoto for years—an automatic chef.

  He named his creation after a famous Japanese chef, something my mother called “ambitious,” probably because he still had to fix the countless errors in the system that screwed up our meals.

  “I can cook, you know,” Mom said as he came back to the table.

  Dad wiped his hands on his red and black plaid shirt and adjusted his rimless glasses. He waved her off. “Karen, if I’m going to sell Morimoto, it has to be perfect.”

  She sighed as Dad looked over at the wall of machinery. “Morimoto, three vanilla ice cream sundaes, please.”

  I could hear the whirring and clicking as the claws reached into the freezer and refrigerator to take out the ingredients. Hopefully, when the lid of the “dryer” popped open to reveal a serving platter, the sundaes presented on it would be perfect. Considering we’d just thrown away a bowl filled with nothing but the burnt skins of four potatoes, I didn’t have m
uch confidence. But I was happy to see something distract my parents from asking anything more about my weird first day of school.

  Pop! The door opened, and the three of us jumped in our seats. Out came the tray and Mom handed us the three sundaes as Dad called out, “Thank you!” Somehow, he thought treating Morimoto like a human being would help it perform better. Then, he looked at the sundaes. Sure enough, two scoops of ice cream sat on each dish, but they were plopped on top of the whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and what was likely a Maraschino cherry on the bottom.

  “He got it backwards. Dang,” he said.

  I wasn’t even hungry anymore. “It’s okay, I’ll pass.”

  Dad looked at me over his glasses and raised his eyebrows as the corners of his mouth turned up. He threw down his napkin and got up hastily. “I was going to wait until your birthday in February, but I think you need an early present.” He opened the back door and walked out. I looked at Mom, who motioned me to follow him.

  Mom and I trailed him out to our spacious backyard. He held a device in his hands and pressed a button. I heard the garage door open and the sound of wheels screeching as whatever it was rolled out to where we stood. The waning light of dusk bounced off the gleaming surface as a machine as tall as I was stopped right in front of me.

  It was a robot that sort of looked like a football player in a suit of steel armor. Beneath the enormous football helmet on its head was a pair of red, unblinking eyes staring back at me. A screen on its chest read, “Happy birthday, Alex!” It had arms and hands covered with yellow gardening gloves. I looked down at its feet to see the same kind of treads as a tank.

  “I know it’s been rough moving and leaving your friends behind, and I know I don’t have any athletic skill, so I made you this. Tell it to throw you a pass,” Dad said.

  I held out my hands as if ready to catch. “Throw it here.” Nothing happened. I tried something different—calling out in a cadence as if I was a quarterback. “Red 80 … set-HUT!”