Zero Tolerance Meets the Alien Death Ray and Other (Mostly) Inappropriate Stories Read Online Free Page A

with my
pencil. "Read the first word of each one," I said.
    Max took the sheet from me. "I need to be
buried." He stood there for a moment. I guess it took that long for
the meaning to sink in. Then he said, "Whoa," and dropped the
paper.
    I stepped back from the beeper.
    "Too weird," Max said. "It has to be a
coincidence."
    "Has to," I said.
    The beeper beeped.
    I looked at the beeper. Then I looked at
Max. Max looked at me. "Guess we have to find out," he said.
    "We can't stop now." I picked up the beeper.
The plastic felt oddly cold. I dialed, listened to the recording,
and wrote down the first word.
    There was no mistake. A message was forming.
When it was done, the beeper stopped. I read the whole message
aloud. "I need to be buried. Look under bridge on river. Thank
you."
    "Spooky," Max said.
    "Yeah. Too spooky." This wasn't like a scary
movie or a Halloween haunted house that you knew wasn't real. This
was flat out creepy.
    "Now what?" Max asked.
    "I'm not looking for a body," I said.
    "No way," Max agreed.
    "We have to tell someone." If I called the
police, they'd want to know how I knew. They'd never believe the
truth. I realized I had to go to the bridge first. Max didn't want
to go, but I talked him into it.
    "I don't see anything," he said, when we
reached the bridge.
    I searched the rippling surface. There had
to be something in the water. For the second time that day, I felt
my blood freeze. I could barely make out the shape deep below me. I
knew it wasn't a tree branch or anything like that.
    "Come on," I told Max. We walked off the
bridge and went to find a policeman.
    That evening, the police recovered a
skeleton from the river. I heard them say whoever it was must have
been there for at least seventy years.
    "Funny thing," the policeman told me when it
was over. "You'd think the rescue workers would have spotted
something when they pulled that car out last week.
    "What car?" I asked.
    He shook his head. "Some guy was more
interested in talking on his cell phone than on watching the road.
He went right into the water." He pointed over to the
guardrail.
    I could see that a spot looked newer, like
it had just been replaced. "Was he hurt?"
    The policeman shook his head. "Nope. Just
wet. But even after we rescued him, all he could do was complain
that he'd lost his phone. It's probably still sitting on the
bottom. If you ask me, that's the best place for it. Those things
will get you killed if you're not careful." He shrugged and walked
back to his patrol car.
    Max and I stood for a while and watched the
water running beneath the bridge. When we were ready to leave, I
reached into my pocket and took out the beeper. It beeped once.
Then it was silent. It never beeped again. But I kept it. I'm not
sure, but I think it brings me luck.

 
Growing
Pains
    I would have enjoyed the assembly a lot more
if I wasn't sitting next to Augie Blockner. He's the biggest kid in
our school, and he liked to make sure everyone knew it. When I took
my seat, he poked me in the arm and said, "Hey, shrimp."
    Okay — I'm short for my age. But I'm not so
short I'd be mistaken for seafood. I looked over at him and said,
"Hi." It was the safest thing to do. If I ignored him, he'd get
mean. If I tried some sort of wise-guy answer, he'd get even
meaner.
    Luckily, the assembly started before Augie
could think of some way to make my life miserable. The program was
actually pretty cool. They had a five real football players on
stage. These guys made Augie look like — well, they made him look
like he made me look. That's how big they were.
    They talked about stuff like studying hard
and staying in school. It wasn't really a message I needed to hear.
I did okay in school, and I didn't have any plans to drop out of
seventh grade to enter a life of crime.
    They also talked about eating good food, and
paying attention to nutrition. The biggest player in the group held
up a sack of oranges in one hand and a head of lettuce in the
other.
    "This is