Aleca Zamm Fools Them All Read online

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I don’t see things like that unless you’ve stopped time. And you’re not supposed to stop time.”

  I had forgotten about that. Aunt Zephyr had forbidden me to stop time anymore. She said I might get caught. We didn’t know how many other Wonders there were or if they were all nice. And we didn’t know if some Duds were immune to Wonder-ing. It was possible, she’d said, that I might be detected and get into some kind of trouble.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “You’re right.”

  I’d sure hate to miss out on crossing that bridge, though.

  4

  I Wish I Could’ve Enjoyed That Burn Longer

  Ford and I walked into school together when the buses began arriving and the car-pool lane was at its busiest. Of course we walked through the front doors just in time to see Madison and Jordan standing around with the other soccer girls.

  “Are you babysitting, Aleca?” Madison taunted.

  “I think he’s her boyfriend,” Jordan chimed in. They all giggled.

  See, I’m never good at thinking of comebacks until the chance to say them is already gone. If I could’ve stopped time and thought about it, I might have said something that would’ve burned them really good. Like maybe, He’s not my boyfriend. He’s your mom’s boyfriend. (That doesn’t actually make any sense, but when you drag somebody’s mom or dad into an argument, it always ups the stakes.) Or maybe, Ford could give you some maturity lessons, which would have made more sense. But of course I was too pressed for time to say anything good, and I couldn’t stop time just to think up an insult. Aunt Zephyr definitely would not have approved.

  Madison leaned down and spoke to Ford in a baby-talk voice. “Didn’t your mommy teach you not to play with freaks?”

  “Yes,” stated Ford, “which is why I won’t be playing with you after school, so stop texting me.”

  Zing! Wow, he totally roasted her! I didn’t think Ford could do that!

  Even Jordan and the soccer girls laughed. That is, until Madison turned around and gave them the stink eye.

  Ford and I walked away before Madison could say anything else. “Hey, that was a good burn!” I told him. “How’d you think of it so fast?”

  “I get teased a lot,” he replied. “I have memorized twenty-seven comebacks that can easily be modified to different situations.”

  “Aleca, there you are!” Maria rushed over to me. “Where have you been?”

  “What do you mean? I’m here on time,” I corrected her.

  “Not for the meeting,” Maria said. “You missed the meeting!”

  “No, I didn’t,” I responded. Then I realized she wasn’t talking about my playground meeting with Ford. Maria didn’t know anything about that. “Wait,” I began. “What meeting?”

  “I can’t believe you forgot!” She huffed.

  “Forgot what?” I asked. I thought hard, trying to remember what meeting I’d had with Maria.

  “The Secret Pals Club meeting!” Maria said. “Thirty minutes before school in the library? We planned it last week. Don’t you remember?” Maria had thought up a great idea for a club where the members would do secret, friendly things for people. She had thought it up as a way to be nice to people who didn’t have many friends or who got picked on. She figured we could do things like notes and cards and stuff to cheer them up. It was a good idea, for reals, but I just had so much Wonder stuff on my mind that I had forgotten all about it.

  “I’m sorry, Maria. I just had something else I had to do this morning. Something even more important.”

  “Like what?” Maria challenged. “What was more important than our new club?”

  “She can’t tell you,” Ford said.

  Maria made a little noise that sounded almost like a poodle bark. Her noise meant How dare you!

  “Well, she can’t,” Ford told her. “That’s just the way it is.”

  “She can tell me!” Maria argued. “Aleca tells me everything! Don’t you, Aleca?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Mostly.”

  “Mostly!” Maria boomed. “But we’re BFFs!” She looked at Ford and told him, “That means ‘Best. Friends. FOREVER.’ ”

  “I know what it means,” said Ford, rolling his eyes. “But that doesn’t mean she can tell you about this.”

  “Yes, she will!” Maria challenged. “Won’t you, Aleca?”

  Thank goodness the bell rang.

  “We’ll have to talk about this later,” I answered. “We don’t want to be late!” I walked away and left Ford and Maria standing together with surprised looks on their faces. I just kept on walking, fast. You might even say running, because really, that was what I was doing. I was running away.

  But I knew I couldn’t run forever. Maria would want some answers, and she’d want them soon.

  5

  I Don’t Think So Great under Pressure

  Mrs. Floberg had barely started her lesson on how to find the verb in a sentence when a little piece of balled-up paper landed on my desk.

  I grabbed it quickly and held it in my lap so that Mrs. Floberg couldn’t see me open it.

  In pencil, in Maria’s handwriting, the note said, What is the big secret?

  I turned around and looked at Maria while Mrs. Floberg wrote on the board. I mouthed the word “NOTHING.”

  Pretty soon another piece of balled-up paper landed on my desk. It’s not nothing, the note said. What is the big secret? BFFs tell each other everything!

  Ugh! Little Ford and his big mouth!

  What was I going to say? I thought for a few minutes and then wrote It’s personal on the same piece of paper. I threw it back to Maria when I thought Mrs. Floberg wasn’t looking.

  I’d thought wrong. Mrs. Floberg had been looking.

  “It appears that Aleca isn’t very interested in finding the verb in our sentence,” Mrs. Floberg mocked. She went to Maria’s desk and snatched up the note.

  Of course she read it out loud. Everyone giggled.

  “Aleca, since you have wasted everyone’s learning time, I think you should let us all in on your personal secret,” Mrs. Floberg announced.

  “No, thank you,” I muttered.

  “I wasn’t asking if you’d like to,” Mrs. Floberg said.

  “Oh.” I choked.

  “Your secret, Aleca,” said Mrs. Floberg. “You have exactly ten seconds to spit it out, or I’m sending you to the principal’s office to share it with him personally.”

  The principal’s office!

  See, I really needed to not go to the principal’s office. Because the principal and me, we had a history. A history of my unhooking his suspenders once when I stopped time, so that his pants fell down and the whole class saw his sailboat boxer shorts. Sure, he didn’t know why his pants had fallen down, but he knew that I’d been in the room and had been about to get in trouble when it had happened. So probably he at least had it in his head that embarrassing moments and Aleca Zamm went together like ice cream and sprinkles. So probably he didn’t like me very much.

  “The secret?” Mrs. Floberg said. “Would you rather share it with us or with the principal?”

  “I’d really rather not share it with anyone,” I clarified. What was I going to do? Aunt Zephyr had said I couldn’t tell anyone I was a Wonder. But I had to come up with something fast, something that sounded so personal that people would believe I hadn’t wanted to tell even my BFF about it.

  “It must be something really embarrassing,” said Brett Lasseter.

  Even though Brett is a toot and was just trying to make things worse, he gave me an idea.

  I’d have to think up something awful. If it was embarrassing enough, Maria would stop asking questions, Mrs. Floberg wouldn’t send me to the principal’s office, and everybody would just leave me alone already!

  I looked around the room quickly. I hoped maybe something would jump out at me. But all I saw were bright colors: the red bulletin board, the blue bookcase, the yellow baskets for art supp
lies.

  Bright colors . . .

  “My supersecret secret is,” I began, “that my dad is a Whoop-Dee-Doo!”

  6

  Of All the Celebrities in the World, I Pick This One

  As soon as I said it, I saw my mistake. Sure, now no one would suspect that I was a Wonder. But they would think my dad was a Whoop-Dee-Doo. That is, they would think it if I really, really sold it. So I said to myself, Okay, Aleca! Start selling!

  “Your father is a what?” Mrs. Floberg asked.

  “A Whoop-Dee-Doo,” I said. “You know, that musical group that has the people in the weird costumes in all the bright colors? The group that has the TV program and tours around the country doing shows for preschoolers and kindergartners? I was never supposed to tell anyone, but my dad is one of them. He lives a secret double life.”

  “Your dad is a Whoop-Dee-Doo?” cried Joanie Buchanan. “Seriously?”

  Everyone started giggling.

  “Wait, which one is he?” questioned Scott Sharp.

  “Oh.” I grimaced. “I guess you would want to know that.” I tried to remember the names of the Whoop-Dee-Doos. I hadn’t thought about them much since I was in preschool. Back then everybody loved the Whoop-Dee-Doos. In fact, my mom had taken me and Maria and Madison to one of their concerts at the civic center.

  “Yeah, Aleca, which one?” said Neal Martinez.

  I tried to think of the names of the Whoop-Dee-Doos and blurted out the first one I could remember. “He’s BeepBopBoop,” I declared.

  “The blue one?” Brett Lasseter laughed. “The one with the boingy antenna things on his head and the giant squirty flower on his shirt? No way! That is so lame!”

  “Yeah, well, you didn’t think it was so lame back when you had the Whoop-Dee-Doos on your birthday cake and plates and balloons and everything!” I exclaimed.

  Brett kept laughing. “But I was five!” he said.

  He had a point.

  “That is a total lie!” Madison shouted. “Aleca’s dad sells medical equipment!”

  “That’s just the cover story we tell people to keep him in cog-neat-o,” I insisted. “Cog-neat-o” is what famous people and spies get in when they don’t want to be recognized. “He has to make people think he’s just a regular salesman so he can keep all the little fans from mobbing him and stuff.”

  “Well, I can see why you wouldn’t want to tell anybody now,” Madison went on. “How embarrassing!”

  On the one hand, I was glad that Madison had actually bought it and that, without meaning to, she was helping me sell it.

  On the other hand, now everyone thought my dad was a Whoop-Dee-Doo. And Madison was right—it was pretty embarrassing.

  “Aleca’s dad is a Whoop-Dee-Doo!” Brett repeated.

  Of course the whole class burst out laughing. They pointed. They made faces.

  Then, naturally, they all started singing the Whoop-Dee-Doos’ theme song, which goes, “What will you do when the Whoop-Dee-Doos . . . open up their big bag . . . of fun?” Except that “fun” has, like, eighty syllables. When the kids in my class started singing it, they couldn’t even get through the first few syllables of “fun” without practically dying laughing and having to start the whole thing over again.

  I am not even gonna lie. It was humiliating.

  “Oh, sure,” I broke in as they kept singing. “Like you didn’t think the Whoop-Dee-Doos were cool!”

  “Not now,” Brett taunted. “I mean, my mom bought me their potty training video when I was two, but—”

  “I had that video too!” said his friend Braxton. “Aleca’s dad teaches people how to poop!” They laughed and laughed.

  “That’s enough, boys and girls!” Mrs. Floberg burst out. It was almost like she was actually taking my side for once. But nobody listened. Everybody was talking or laughing. Mrs. Floberg had lost control of the class.

  “That is the most embarrassing thing ever,” Madison stated. “If my dad was a Whoop-Dee-Doo, I would take that secret to my grave!”

  “I am almost embarrassed for her,” Jordan said. “Except that it’s Aleca, so who cares?”

  So I’d convinced everyone. But now I was trying to think of a way out of it. I wanted to shout, Scott Sharp picks his nose! just to get everyone to laugh at someone besides me. But that would have been mean, and besides, everybody already knew that Scott Sharp picks his nose. And it wasn’t Scott Sharp who’d gotten me into this mess. It was all me.

  Maria asked, “Aleca, is your dad really a Whoop-Dee-Doo?”

  “Of course he’s a Whoop-Dee-Doo!” Brett cackled. “That explains why Aleca is such a dork. It’s because her dad is a dork! He’s the biggest goofball in town! He probably likes being a Whoop-Dee-Doo because the costume covers up that big bald spot on his head.” He started singing the theme song again, and all his friends joined in.

  Remember earlier that morning when I’d wished that I had said that Ford was Madison’s mom’s boyfriend? Because bringing somebody’s mom or dad into it really ups the stakes?

  Well, now Brett had done it. He had just upped the stakes. A lot. Braxton’s crack about the poop had been one thing, but Brett had taken it to what you call a “whole ’nother level.”

  Brett and his friends could call me a dork all day long, but nobody was going to call my dad a dork! My dad could tell corny jokes with the best of them, but that is a dad’s job. And sure, maybe my dad had a bald spot, but he couldn’t help that. Plus, I happened to know that he was sensitive about it because he had special shampoo and also tried real hard to make the hair he did still have lie on top of that big shiny bald place.

  My dad might have been corny and balding, but he was also good and smart and awesome. No way was I going to let Brett get away with saying mean things about my dad!

  “Aleca Zamm!” I snarled. But nobody heard it over the song that Brett and his friends were singing.

  7

  Brett Lasseter Is Going to Get His One Day, but I Can’t Wait That Long

  It was nice how quiet it got all at once. Time stopping is a special kind of quiet. You don’t hear the hum of the air conditioner or a breeze outdoors or even the flicker of the lightbulbs. It’s 100 percent perfectly silent. And after all that mean laughing and singing, the silence was downright beautiful.

  Mrs. Floberg had her top desk drawer open and was reaching for a coach’s whistle. She does that when nobody pays attention to her. I think deep down she is probably jealous of our PE teacher because he gets to blow his whistle all day long whenever he feels like it.

  Some of the kids were pointing at me. Some had their mouths open from singing that dumb song. Neal had sneaked out his phone and was trying to find the secret identities of the Whoop-Dee-Doos on the Internet. Good thing for me that the Whoop-Dee-Doos never told who they really were and that they wore those costumes that covered their whole faces. Nobody could prove a thing.

  Maria’s head was facing down. I went over and got a good look at her. A tear was hanging in the air between her head and her desk. I poked it because I like the way water feels gooeyish when time stops. Maria and I had been friends since preschool, and she had always been softhearted. I knew she was upset because she thought she had forced me to tell my big secret to the whole class. “It’s okay, Maria,” I said out loud. “I know you feel bad about all this, but it’s not really your fault.”

  I sat on the edge of Maria’s desk and thought. It was nice to have some quiet time to try to figure out how I was going to fix all this.

  You know what would come in handy with a time-stopping ability? A memory-erasing ability. Or even a time-rewinding ability so you could fix your screwups. Too bad I didn’t have one of those powers too.

  Ford came into the room while I was thinking. Oh, and I had started hula dancing too.

  “What are you doing?” Ford asked.

  “The hula,” I clarified.

  “Why?”

  “Because I have a pact with myself that whenever I stop time, I will d
o a dance. I try to do a different dance each time. Today it is the hula. Would you like me to teach you how to do it?”

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to be doing this!” Ford snapped.

  “What, is there some law against the hula that I don’t know about?”

  “Not the hula,” Ford corrected me. “Stopping time!”

  “Oh, that,” I said. “I had a good reason.” I explained everything to Ford. “So you see? I couldn’t let him say something mean about my own dad!”

  “Children can be so cruel.” Ford sighed. He sounded like a grown-up.

  “Are you seeing anything?” I asked. “Any bridges or whatnot?”

  “I didn’t take the time to see if that bridge was there again,” Ford explained. “I rushed right over to find you.”

  “Should we go look?”

  “It’s all the way on the other side of the school,” Ford replied. “And isn’t your aunt already going to kill you for stopping time? Do you think you should drag it out any longer than necessary?”

  “The way I see it, I’m already in trouble,” I said. “So why not make it count?”

  “Well,” Ford replied, “if you insist. Let’s go.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Before we go looking for the bridge, do you see anything else?”

  “Yes,” Ford revealed. “There’s a man standing by Brett. Or standing where Brett is standing. It’s almost like they’re standing in the same spot, overlapping each other.”

  “What does the man look like?” I asked.

  “He looks like Brett,” Ford responded. “Except much older.”

  “Hey!” I said. “Maybe you’re seeing future Brett!”

  Ford thought about it. “I think that’s entirely possible,” he guessed. “Assuming I saw future deejay and past Mrs. Young, this would indicate a pattern. Yes, this appears to be a future version of Brett. I wish I’d brought my notebook. We should record this data.”

  “Never mind the notebook right now. What does future Brett look like?” Boy, I wished I could see him!