Leon and the Spitting Image Read Free Page A

Lily-Matisse. They had both been away all summer.
    P.W. was called P.W. because his real name—Phya Winit Dhabanandana—tended to scare people off. P.W. was a short kid with a long name, whose parents came from Thailand. He loved math and building things. He hated spelling and keeping quiet. He had areputation for being a bit of a smart aleck.
    As for Lily-Matisse, she was lean and lanky (like Leon) and had buck teeth. (“Dentists must
love
that girl,” Leon’s mom had once conjectured.) She was an awesome jump roper, a gifted gymnast, and the daughter of the school art teacher, Ms. Jasprow, which meant she knew lots of stuff other kids didn’t.
    “Little boy, you hear me?” said the taxi driver. “We are arrived.”
    Leon paid the fare, and dashed out into the rain. He hadn’t even made it up the limestone steps when he took his first tumble of the school year. He fell hard, face forward. Dough balls rolled down the steps and into the gutter. Embarrassed and bruised, Leon tried to pick himself up. He couldn’t.
    A very large army boot was pressing down on one of his untied shoelaces. Intentionally.
    “Hey there,
Zit
-sel,” a voice bellowed. “Welcome back.” The owner of the boot completed his greeting with a brutal punch to the arm.
    Leon winced, but said nothing. He knew his attacker would soon lose interest and seek out other targets.
    The assault came from a beefy eleven-year-old named Henry Lumpkin. Henry Lumpkin had been torturing Leon nearly as long as teachers had.
    Lumpkin’s methods differed from theirs, however. To inflict pain, he relied on dead-arms and dodgeballs,not confidential reports. He was a thoroughly nasty life-form who picked up nicknames the way crooks acquire aliases.
    Some kids called him Lumpkin the Pumpkin because of his bright orange hair and his pumpkiny shape. Others referred to him as Hank the Tank, in recognition of the armored body hidden under the olive drab army jacket he always wore to school. And still others identified him as the Lethal Launcher because of the force and accuracy of his dodgeball throws.
    But to Leon he was just Lumpkin, a blockhead and a bully whose sudden and unpredictable attentions always spelled trouble.
    Leon stayed put on the ground for almost a minute, even though it was raining. When the coast was clear, he darted into school. Lily-Matisse and P.W. were waiting near the water fountain.
    “Hey,” said P.W.
    “Hey,” said Leon.
    “Hey,” said Lily-Matisse.
    “Hey,” said Leon.
    “You okay?” Lily-Matisse asked.
    “Why shouldn’t he be okay?” P.W. said.
    “Well, for starters, he’s limping,” Lily-Matisse observed. “Plus he’s rubbing his arm.”
    Leon glanced at the human tank rolling down the hall.
    “Did Lumpkin do that?” Lily-Matisse asked.
    “Yup.”
    “We’d better take cover,” P.W. advised.
    The three friends hung up their rain gear and entered the classroom.
    “Holy cow!” said P.W.
    “Geez!” Leon exclaimed.
    “My mom told me our homeroom was going to be different,” said Lily-Matisse.
    “This is
so
weird!” P.W. said enthusiastically. He pointed to the back of the room, at a massive metal cabinet mounted on heavy rubber wheels. “Look at the lock on that thing! What do you think is inside?”
    “And what about those!” Leon said, gawking at a series of wall posters featuring severed hands.

    “Sure beats those poems Mr. Joost had on his walls last year!” said P.W.
    “Don’t count on it,” said Lily-Matisse. “My mom told me—”
    “Here it comes,” P.W. interrupted. “Previews of upcoming attractions. Let’s hear what your mom says.”
    “Well, my mom told me—”
    DRRRRINNNNNG!
    The school bell put a stop to Lily-Matisse’s update.
    A thin shadow darkened the frosted glass of the classroom door.
    Leon squinched and clucked.
Please
make this teacher better than the last ones, he told himself.
    The knob turned and the door opened.
    When Leon unsquinched, he found himself in the presence