Project Jackalope (2 page)

I think I should take this opportunity to apologize to Coach Reynolds, too. A couple of months ago, he made us learn these deep-breathing exercises, mostly because Huey Langford kept hyperventilating when it was his turn to climb the rope. (He’s got this thing about ropes. You don’t want to know.) Me and Clint Warburton practically busted a gut laughing at how lame the exercises were, and had to do some pretty fast talking to keep from getting sent to the office. But I have to hand it to the Coach: Those exercises sure came in handy when I opened that box. I went through the whole routine—deep, cleansing breaths; finding my center; even the head between the knees move, and
when I felt ready, I cracked the box again. The thing inside blinked again.

I slammed the lid back down and went back into the head between the knees pose.

In the split second before that blink, I’d seen what looked like Twitchett’s handwriting on a piece of paper in the bottom of the box. Which figured—leave it to Twitchett to write out an explanation and then hide it underneath some weirdo box creature. Don’t get me wrong, I would’ve liked to know what it said. But with old Blinky guarding it, I was perfectly willing to stay in the dark.

Now just let me reemphasize here that it’s not like I’m a total wuss or anything. The thing in that box wasn’t your basic lab rat. I’m used to lab rats. I used to have one—a white one with pink eyes, named Killer. But the thing in the box wasn’t anything like Killer. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before.

I was just about to go for round three with the thing in the box, maybe do a snatch and grab to get that note, when I heard the front door slam.

“Jeremy, I’m back!”

Right off I knew something was up. My mom was using her high fakey voice, and that’s never a good sign.

“He should be right around here, Mr…what did you say your name was?”

The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. Mom wasn’t alone. And I had a feeling I knew who was with her.

I peeked out through the crack under the door. I couldn’t see much, just a foot and part of a suit leg, but it was enough for me to put things together. I hadn’t been involved in any criminal activity, I wasn’t in trouble at school, and I hadn’t even responded to that Nigerian banker guy who e-mailed me. I could only think of one reason some weirdo Suit guy would be coming to visit, and it had just blinked at me twice. All of Twitchett’s top secret drugstore runs suddenly seemed a lot less innocent than they had before.

I cussed Professor Twitchett out in my head. The easy thing to do would be just to hand over the box and be done with it. Mr. Suit problem solved, Blinky-in-the-Box problem solved, everybody’s happy.

“Jeremy?” Mom tapped on my door.

If that one Suit guy hadn’t had such a smarmy attitude, maybe I would’ve. Maybe if he hadn’t stared at me and given me that creepy smile. It definitely would’ve been the smart thing to do. But no one’s ever accused me of being smart. I didn’t know what Twitchett had saddled me with, but there was no way I was going to let those jerks from the hallway get their hands on it. At least not until I knew what I was dealing with. And if I handed it over right away, I might never know. I didn’t want to end up that ancient guy with his teeth in a glass, muttering about the blinky thing he’d just handed away sixty years ago. I had to hide that box.

I scanned the room and my heart sank. Because trust me, there are no good hiding places in my room. (And let me tell you, I’ve looked.) But anyplace had to be better than my bed, right?

I rushed over to my clothes hamper, which thankfully was mostly empty, and put the box at the bottom. Then I scooped up my dirty gym suit, underpants, and socks from the floor and dumped them in on top of it.
I figured whatever was in that box had a good ten minutes before it suffocated under my dirty clothes, fifteen if it took shallow breaths until it passed out from the stench. It would have to be good enough.

I slammed the lid down on the hamper just as Mom pushed my door open.

“You okay in here?” she said with an awkward half smile. “We’ve got a visitor, hon. Could you come out for a sec?”

I nodded and let her push me out into the dining room by the shoulder. I tried to keep a poker face and act cool, but there was something about seeing Mr. Suit-from-the-Top-of-the-Stairs in my apartment that made me want to barf.

Mom nudged me encouragingly. “Jeremy, this is Mr. Jones.”

I nodded and tried not to roll my eyes. Mr. Jones. Obviously a fake name.

“Mr. Jones here is a lawyer. Apparently Professor Twitchett has come into some money.” Mom tried to nudge me closer. Not that it would do any good, though. My feet
had turned into chunks of lead the minute I saw him. “Isn’t that exciting, Jeremy?”

I shrugged. Lawyer my butt. He had to be a cop or something. Gangster maybe. Mafioso. Nothing good.

“That’s right.” Mr. Jones smiled at me. “I think Professor Twitchett will be very pleased. I just need to locate him and have him sign a few papers to transfer the funds. But he doesn’t seem to be home. Do you know where he might be?”

He smiled again, and I’m sure it was supposed to suck me in. But it didn’t. I shrugged again and didn’t say anything.

Mom frowned at me and put her hand on my shoulder. I had a feeling I was going to get the rudeness lecture later on. She smiled up at Mr. Jones. “Well, I haven’t seen him today, but he works at the zoo. He’s a researcher? Something like that. Did you try his work?”

Mr. Jones didn’t even look at Mom; he just kept staring at me. “He wasn’t at the zoo. He seems to have just…disappeared. Poof!” He gave a short barky laugh that made both me and Mom jump a little. “I thought
he might have communicated with your boy. He and the Professor are quite close, I understand?”

Why he would understand anything like that I don’t know, since all I do is run Professor Twitchett’s errands. Monkeys in Japan can do that—I know, I read about it in the paper. And it’s not like me and Twitchett ever hung out. Not like he did with Agatha. Heck, I’m not even supposed to make eye contact with him in public.

Mom frowned. “I don’t know that I’d say ‘close’…”

I cleared my throat. “Sorry, I don’t know where he is.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “He hasn’t communicated with you at all? That seems strange. Not even a…note, perhaps?”

I could feel sweat beading up at my hairline. Curse Agatha and her stupid totally-not-secret secret note system. He knew everything. He probably even knew about the thing in my room. And if I didn’t watch it, I’d give myself away, and he’d pull out his cop handcuffs and throw me in jail for obstruction, or harboring a blinky thing or something. The situation was extreme. I took a deep breath and pulled a Dewey.

Dewey Childress is the biggest brain-dead jock in my English class. Most of the time, he looks like he’s asleep, even when his eyes are wide open. Either that or he’s a zombie. He’s doing well to keep the drool in his mouth, that’s what I’m saying. I don’t know how he made it into junior high.

I did my best Dewey impression and gave a half smile. “Sorry, he didn’t say anything.” I tried to make my eyes glaze over, but I don’t know if it worked.

“I find that extremely difficult to believe, son.” It’s not like Mr. Jones was being anything but polite, but I’ve never been more glad to have my mom in the room. I could see the muscle working in his jaw, and I knew he’d seen through my whole Dewey act. Mom must’ve noticed something was off, too, because she took a half step in front of me.

“Well, sorry we couldn’t be of more help. If we see him, we’ll be sure to tell him you came by. Maybe we could give him your card?”

Mr. Jones stared at me for a long second and then smiled at Mom. “I’m sure I’ll see you again.” He nodded
at me silently and then let himself out. Without giving us a business card, I noticed.

The door had hardly shut before Mom smacked me on the shoulder. “How do you like that, huh? Inheritance. Must be nice. Don’t you wish it was us he was looking for?” She grinned at me and headed into the kitchen.

I shrugged again. That was the last thing I’d want. “Yeah, I guess.”

“You all ready for school tomorrow?” Mom said, grabbing a baby carrot from the fridge. “Homework done, tests studied for?”

“Not really.” I started for my bedroom. “Big project, actually.”

“Well, get cracking!” Mom said, crunching on the carrot. “First thing after dinner I want you hitting the books. Now help me set the table. Your dad will be here with the pizza any minute.”

“Oh. Great,” I said, taking the handful of silverware she handed me. Nothing like laying out forks while God knows what destroys your room. I don’t think I’ve ever
had a harder time choking down pizza. Seriously, I think I only managed four pieces.

As soon as everybody was done, I hustled into my room and closed the door. The hamper was still the way I’d left it, so I figured that was a good sign. What I needed to do was figure out what that thing was (if it had survived the underwear fumes) and get Twitchett to take it back. ASAP. Because if there was one thing I knew about creeps like Mr. Jones, it’s that they don’t give up. He’d be back.

I took a deep breath and took the lid off of the hamper, flinging it onto the bed so I couldn’t wuss out again. Which was a big mistake. Because when I looked inside that hamper I almost lost it.

In my defense, I think anyone would have. I distinctly remembered putting my gym clothes on top of the box, right? I know I did that. But when I looked in the hamper, there were no gym clothes. There wasn’t even any box—just a big pile of shredded cotton, pieces of cardboard, and that thing blinking up at me from the bottom of the hamper. I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t happening.
That thing, the one that had destroyed the contents of my hamper in what, thirty minutes flat? It was a bunny.

Yeah, I know. A tiny little fluffy bunny with soft tufty feet and huge Hallmark card eyes. Oh yeah, and a set of nasty-looking razor-sharp antlers coming out of its head.

It was a jackalope.

I may not be brain surgeon material, but the minute I saw those antlers, I knew that was no normal bunny. And yeah, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Jeremy, get a grip. Jackalopes are imaginary. Everybody knows there aren’t really bunnies with giant antlers. They’re mythological. They don’t exist, you wacko. And that’s what I was thinking, too. Except that’s not so easy to remember when you have one sitting in your hamper with a piece of what used to be your underwear hanging off one antler.

So I did what any normal person would’ve done. I screamed and lunged for the cell phone. (Not a full-throated scream or anything. More like a manly stifled squeal.)

I’ll tell you one thing. Mr. Jones may be the creepiest loser jerk of a gangster-cop-whatever, but he isn’t a liar. Because he was right—Professor Twitchett was nowhere to be found. His home phone just rang and rang and his cell phone went right to voicemail every time. And it’s not like I gave up after one call either. I can be pretty persistent when I’ve got a mythological creature on my hands.

“Professor Twitchett, it’s Jerem—uh, Igor. Hi. I really can’t keep this…uh…project here. Sorry. Call me back.”

“Hi, Professor Twitchett, me again. I need you to call me right now. And there was a man here for you? Call me back. It’s urgent.”

“This isn’t funny, Professor Twitchett! I can’t sleep with this thing here, okay? Call me!”

I have to admit the calls were a little emotional by the end. It wasn’t easy to stay calm and rational. But after about fifty calls, I decided I needed to man up and face the situation. Assess the facts. That kind of thing. Fact number one: Professor Twitchett probably wasn’t going
to answer the phone or call me back. Fact number two: I had a possible jackalope in my clothes hamper. Fact number three: Fact number two was practically guaranteed to get me grounded, arrested, or put into the psych ward.

I figured the sane and rational thing to do was to go online and make sure that what we had here was an actual jackalope situation. Because there was always a chance that it could be something else, like some kind of novelty robot toy, maybe. Maybe a jackalope-shaped Roomba vacuum cleaner? You never know. And here I’d be getting all worked up for nothing.

Well, guess what? They don’t make jackalope-shaped Roomba vacuum cleaners. Or jackalope novelty robot toys. Jackalopes don’t even show up in most of the online dictionaries. Apparently there are bunnies out there with some weird disease that makes people think they’re jackalopes, but sorry, they didn’t look anything like the picture-perfect model chowing down on my jockstrap.

There weren’t a lot of options left. It was pretty much jackalope or nothing. I mean, Wikipedia doesn’t lie, right? And believe me, I wish it did, because I wasn’t all that thrilled with what I found out about our friend the jackalope.

Number one: They drink. I mean booze, the hard stuff, like whiskey. They’re bunny lushes.

Number two: They can mimic human voices, and even throw their voices, although the one in my hamper hadn’t said a word so far. (Number two was giving me real anxiety pangs, though, because the last thing I wanted was for that fuzzy lush to go around repeating my messages to Professor Twitchett. Especially message forty-two. I started hiccuping during that message, I was so worked up. Talk about embarrassing.)

Number three: They’re shy, which seemed pretty okay to me.

And oh yeah, number four: They’re ruthless killers. Which is just what you want to hear about your new roommate.

Apparently, jackalopes are cute and cuddly and shy and even friendly until you tick them off—then they go for the jugular with their slashy killer antlers. And judging from the state of my gym suit, they’re pretty good at using them.

I stared at the hamper and considered my options. Which were pretty much nonexistent. I had to get in touch with Professor Twitchett.

I was dialing for the fifty-first time when my dad knocked on the door.

“Jeremy? Time for bed.” He stuck his head inside just as I lurched to my feet.

“What? Great. Sure.” I hoped he wouldn’t look inside the hamper. If he looked inside the hamper I was dead. Or we both were, depending on how threatened Twitchett’s experiment felt.

“What’s this project you’re working on?” Dad leaned against the door frame. He glanced around the room, probably expecting to see project-related papers or something. I bobbed nervously in front of the hamper.

“Just, you know. Science fair.” I rolled my eyes. “I figured I’d do the planets, maybe? I’ve been coming up with ideas.” I hoped that would cover the lack of any signs of productivity.

“That sounds good,” Dad said, nodding. “I used to be an astronomy buff myself. Did you come up with something concrete?”

“Yeah, you know. Styrofoam.”

Dad frowned slightly but nodded again. “Okay, we’ll make that work. I can take you to get supplies after work tomorrow. Sound good?”

“Great!” I smiled and bobbed some more, hoping that bobbing in front of a jackalope wasn’t like waving a red flag in front of a bull. My butt was feeling pretty exposed and vulnerable.

“Okay. Well, get some sleep, champ.” Dad punched me on the shoulder. “Lights out.”

I nodded. “Good night!” I closed the door behind him and sank to the floor.

It was true; the science fair was coming up. In two days, actually. And I know my dad was hoping I’d get a
ribbon or something. And if you’d asked me yesterday, it would’ve been a pretty big priority. Not so big that I’d actually started on it yet, but big. And I definitely would’ve come up with something awesome, or at least awesomer than Styrofoam planets. But right now my main priority was just surviving until the fair.

The science fair had given me an idea, though. Wikipedia wasn’t enough. I had to test my theory, make sure what I was dealing with.

I sat on the floor staring at my hamper until I heard my parents go to bed. Then I snuck out into the kitchen.

My dad always likes to get those tiny little airplane bottles of alcohol whenever he goes on trips, and he had a pretty good collection. I crept up to the shelf where he kept the bottles and poked around, trying to identify the whiskey ones. There was one right in front, but it had a bunch of red wax around the top, which made it pretty noticeable and probably messy to open, neither of which was good. It was too big a risk. I put it back into its little dust-free circle and kept poking around. Another one farther back looked pretty basic and plain,
like it wouldn’t be missed. And it was all in the name of science, right? I stuck it into my jeans pocket and snagged a Dixie cup from the bathroom before sneaking back into my room. It was time for the riskiest part of my plan.

I unscrewed the bottle top and poured the whiskey into the cup. Then I peered over the edge of the hamper.

The jackalope was hunkered down in what used to be my gym suit, glaring up at me with murder in his eyes. Or with a sleepy expression, one or the other. It’s hard to say. I held the Dixie cup by the extreme edge and reached into the hamper, nestling the cup in the underwear fluff near the jackalope (but making sure to keep my fingers clear of the antler area). Then I waited.

The jackalope kept glaring at me for a couple of long minutes, and then its nose got to working. It sniffed at the air suspiciously and then heaved itself up onto its feet. It blinked its huge eyes at me and then hopped over to the cup. So far so good.

After one last suspicious look at me, it leaned forward and quickly lapped up the whiskey with a dainty
pink tongue. Then it sat back on its haunches, smacked its lips, and belched like a trucker.

It was an impressive display. A belch like that could win a guy some major points.

The jackalope burped again and flopped over onto its side, but I barely noticed. I slumped back against the wall, all the energy drained out of me. My experiment had worked. It was definitely a jackalope. Which meant one thing. I didn’t care what Professor Twitchett said. I needed help.

I needed Agatha.