Popular Clone

CHAPTER 1

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every geek, freak, or nerd, there are three massive and ruthless meatheads. Ergo: the universe does not like geeks.

—Fisher Bas, Scientific Principles and Observations of the Natural World (unpublished)

Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack.
Fisher Bas dashed down the main hall of Wompalog Middle School, wishing he hadn't worn flip-flops. Walls of puke-green lockers blurred past him.

The predators were closing in, quickly. Brody, Willard, and Leroy. The Vikings. Fisher's archenemies.

Fisher knew he shouldn't have gone to the principal after the Vikings had put a live, very unhappy squirrel in his backpack just before biology lab. They didn't take kindly to being snitched on, and they definitely didn't take kindly to detention, and now Fisher was going to pay the price.

Sweat beaded on his forehead as Fisher analyzed possible escape routes. The Vikings were getting closer. The C wing bathroom was out. He had a far-too intimate relationship with the interior of the toilet bowls. The library was close, but usually when he tried that option they'd find him and play Study Hall, which involved hitting Fisher over the head with each of his textbooks.

The cafeteria contained its own terrors. Last time Fisher had hidden behind one of the hot-food stations, he'd seen a lunch lady flick her boogers into the sloppy joe meat.

Having no other choice, Fisher bolted along his original course like a spooked antelope. He dodged a fellow student walking down the hall in the costume of their school mascot, the Furious Badger.

“Nice speed!” the badger-costume-clad kid called after him, giving him a furry thumbs-up.

Fisher had no time to respond. He did some quick calculations in his head.
Assuming a straight-line course with minimal trajectory variance, with V
F
= the Velocity of Fisher, and H being the Length of the Hallway, taking into account the Traffic Density of students as T, at current levels, T should provide a theoretical limit of .73V
F
until the plausible minimum value of T is reached in approximately …

“Watch it, dude!” he heard, but it was too late—he was already careening off Trevor Weiss, a glasses-wearing neat freak from his debate class. The soup in Trevor's open thermos splattered across Fisher's white shirt, and Trevor's glasses fell straight into the thermos.

“Sorry, sorry!” Fisher half mumbled, half shouted as Trevor blindly tried to fish his glasses out of the soup. Fisher swiped a finger across his shirt. Potato leek. Not bad, actually.

“Aw, come on, Fisher!” Trevor yelled after him. “That was my lunch, you—
ow
!” Brody, leading the Vikings, elbowed Trevor out of the way. Trevor crashed back into his locker, and what was left of the soup spilled all over his books.

“You can't run from us, Fisher!” bellowed Brody, gaining on him.

The books in Fisher's backpack shook up and down along with him, its straps digging into his shoulders with every step. The Vikings' voices and the sound of their echoing laughter were getting louder by now; the teachers were in their classrooms, getting ready for the period to start.

Nobody was going to help him.

Fisher bolted past the academic standings board, and the names all blurred together. If he'd paused to look, he would have spotted
FISHER BAS
,
in proud, bold letters, at the top of the math and science rankings. He fell squarely into the middle of the group when it came to English, history, and language, though.

On the attendance awards board, his name was dead last.

Just as the Vikings rounded the corner behind him, the door to the teachers' lounge opened and out walked Mrs. Sneed, the vice principal. Her dark eyes swept the hall, and the Vikings skidded to a halt when they saw her.

“Something the matter, boys?” she asked. “What's the hurry?”

“Just eager to learn, ma'am!” said Brody, pasting an enormous smile on his face.

“G-Got to make sure we have time to study and review,” said Willard, clasping his hands behind his back.

“We really value our altercation,” Leroy said proudly.

“
Education
,” muttered Brody.

Fisher used the distraction to slip into an empty classroom, slamming the door shut. He leaned back against the door, his breathing quick and shallow.

“Hey, Fisher! You're early today.” Mr. Granger popped up suddenly from behind his desk, giving Fisher a shock. Fisher's favorite biology teacher was somewhere around forty-five, though his smallness often made him seem younger. He had narrow shoulders and tiny eyes, which were obscured by the wide, thick glasses that were constantly slipping off his nose. He didn't look like he weighed much over a hundred and ten pounds. He could probably be knocked over by a not-too-strong wind (maybe even the kind Gassy Greg was known for). Fisher and Mr. Granger regularly lunched together in his classroom.

“Vikings,” Fisher panted. And then, suddenly, he heard them: their low, grunting voices were just on the other side of the door. Fisher made a beeline for the lab storage cabinet, shutting himself into it seconds before the classroom door was shoved wide open.

The acrid scents of a dozen bottled chemicals seeped into Fisher's nostrils—he hoped they'd disguise the smell of the potato leek soup still coating his clothes. Squeezed into the tiny cabinet, his breathing sounded like a revving engine. His back and arms started to ache after half a minute. He tried to force every muscle in his body to stand still, which just made him twitchier. Through a narrow slit between the cabinet doors, he saw the three very large, very ugly boys saunter in.

Brody Minas, whose forward-jutting forehead hooded his eyes like the headlights on a muscle car, was the leader. Willard Mason and Leroy Loring flanked him on either side. They were in that lumpy, awkward, in-between stage of growing up: large and powerful but still unbalanced in their newly big bodies, like toddlers who have just learned they could stand.

Fisher balled up his fists. He wished he could make the Vikings vanish into a cloud of disassociated molecules. He
had
done some work in his home lab on the Vikingatomizer project, but the particle stream hadn't been up to calibration.

The Vikings advanced on Mr. Granger, who backed away nervously. Brody was nearly as tall as Mr. Granger, and Willard was at least twice as heavy.

“Can … Can I help you boys with something?” Mr. Granger asked, smiling halfheartedly while fidgeting with his clipboard.

“Oh, we were just lookin' for a good friend of ours, Missster Granger,” said Brody, his smirk growing as he picked up a glass flask from one of the lab stations and tossed it at Willard, who caught it, but just barely. “You know Fisher, don't you?”

“I, uh.” Granger looked back and forth between the flask and Brody. “Yes, Fisher is a student of mine. I'm afraid I haven't seen him all day.”

Brody crossed his bulky arms. “Are you sure about that? 'Cause we're pretty sure we saw him slip into this room a second ago, didn't we, Willy?”

Willard put the flask back on the desk. “Yep, yep, Brody! That's t-true!” Willard followed with a mild hiccup. He always seemed to have the hiccups. Fisher guessed it was because Willard was secretly scared of Brody, too. That or he simply drank too much orange soda.

Fisher clamped his hand over his nose and mouth, suffocating a sneeze before it had a chance to come out.

Brody turned his attention back to Mr. Granger, who was attempting to stack some graded papers into a neat pile and mind his own business. “Mr. Granger, maybe with those big glasses of yours, you just didn't spot him. Maybe we should have a look around ourselves, just to make sure. We wouldn't want to miss our
good friend
Fisher.” The way he said “good friend” turned Fisher's neck hairs into spikes.

The three boys split off and began looking under desks.

“He's
not here
, boys, I told you,” said Granger, putting as much authority as he had into his voice. “Now, now, the period's already started. You don't want to be late for lunch. You should go and get something to eat before your next class.” He turned nervously away from them, moving papers around his desk with no real purpose. Fisher tried to bunch himself up even smaller, and his left thigh pushed against his wristwatch.

“You look splendid today!” erupted from its tiny speakers. He had built-in a compliment generator to his watch, for when he talked to girls. For
if
he talked to them. Fisher inhaled sharply and held his breath.

“Did you say something?” asked a confused Brody. Mr. Granger, who had gone stiff as a scarecrow, cleared his throat.

“I, er, I said you boys look … splendid.” He tried to tone his voice to match the watch, with little success. “Been, um, striking the weights? Pumping the, uh, gym? Hauling iron?” With each attempt to remember a workout-related expression he sounded more ridiculous, so he finally stopped trying and smiled weakly. Brody and Willard exchanged suspicious looks. Then they continued with their search.

“Well, well, well, what have we heeeere?” said Brody, coming across the glass tank where Mr. Granger kept Einstein and Heisenberg, his white mice. The tank was much bigger than necessary for the tiny animals. All that extra space was taken up by elaborate playthings Fisher had helped design. There was a little mouse washer, a tunnel that sprayed warm water followed by a segment that blew hot air down its length. Einy and Berg always emerged from their mouse wash all puffed up and slightly dizzy.

Fisher had also designed a running wheel that slowly wound up a little slingshot. One of the mice would run on the wheel while the other would get in the sling basket and be flung across the tank onto a little hill of cushions. There was even a tiny mouse telescope in the corner of the tank.

The mice were curled up napping when Leroy wrapped his bulky hand around one, and Willard snatched up the other. Fisher's eyes widened.

“These little guys look like fun,” rumbled Brody in his uneven, still-changing voice.

Mr. Granger began stammering lightly, almost under his breath. “B-Be careful with the … Please don't … Watch out for their …”

“Maybe we can play catch with them!” said Leroy. “They'd abbreviate that, wouldn't they?”

“
Appreciate
, not abbreviate, sausage-brain,” snapped Brody. “Hey. What's this stuff?” Brody held out a bottle of something.