The Great Interactive Dream Machine Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t have a gang at Huckley. We call it student government. Daryl’s the middle-school president. He won in a landslide because he shaves.
    Nobody around here is named Daryl, but I think he’s a foreign-exchange student from someplace like Oregon. He’s built along lumberjack lines, and he’s a very clean-cut, good-looking guy until you come to his eyes. Then you see he’s mean as a snake.
    He wasn’t alone. He never is. He had his eighth-grade peer group with him and two or three of the larger seventh graders, and Buster Brewster. Buster is the biggest kid in sixth grade, and bad to the bone.
    â€œSixth graders, right?” Daryl snapped at us.
    He knew.
    â€œWhy are you two still in the lunchroom?” he said. “Spell it out for me. If there’s anything I hate to see, it’s sixth graders lolling around in the lunchroom like they own the place.” Daryl’s snake eyes bored down into us. “What’s our motto for sixth graders? Remind me.”
    â€œEat it and beat it,” Aaron mumbled.
    â€œYou got it,” Daryl said. “So get out of here and stop cluttering up the landscape with your miserable small bodies.”
    He stroked his stubbly chin. “Wait till we get you two into soccer camp. We’ll either make men or mincemeat out of you. Take this as my personal pledge.”
    â€œActually,” Aaron said in his changeable voice, “I’ll probably be going to computer c ...” But his words trailed away. His bean sprout hung limp.
    Daryl planted a pair of massive fists on his hips, so his whole peer group did too. “What’s the school rule? Let’s hear it.”
    So his whole bunch chanted:
    â€œEighth grade leads,
Seventh grade follows,
Sixth grade crawls,
Fifth grade wallows.”
    Even Buster Brewster got the words right.
    Aaron and I were more than ready to take our miserable small bodies out of there. But we probably weren’t moving fast enough. Anything could have happened to us. Then Coach Trip Renwick entered the lunchroom.
    This is his first year on the Huckley faculty. He still wears his Dartmouth sweatshirt. The whistle around his neck hangs from a lanyard he probably made as an Eagle Scout.
    â€œCode alert,” Daryl muttered. “It’s Coach Renwick.” His peer group unclenched their fists. Buster straightened his tie.
    â€œHey, fellows, how’s it going?” Coach Renwick boomed, and they all beamed innocently at him. The sparkle off Daryl’s white teeth was blinding.
    Aaron and I escaped.
    On the way to History it hit me like a ton of bricks. In regular P.E. class we play soccer by grade. The worst that can happen is that Buster Brewster will kill you. Buster likes to inflict as much pain as possible, even on his own team. But at soccer camp ...
    â€œAaron, Terrible Daryl Dimbleby is going to soccer camp. Why didn’t I think of this? We’ll be living under his rule.”
    â€œWhat we?” Aaron said.
    School went on forever that day. Then when Aaron and I got home, Miss Mather was in the lobby, talking to Vince. Nanky-Poo too. She was hanging from Miss Mather’s shoulder in a carrier bag. Nanky-Poo’s face was sticking up from the bag. When she saw Aaron and me, she remembered Ophelia and screamed.
    â€œThere they are now,” Miss Mather said to Vince. She pointed an old finger at me. “That is the boy who jumps on my head.” She pointed at Aaron. “That is the boy with the attack dog.”
    An attack poodle?
    â€œYoung man,” she said to Aaron, “I have lived all my long life in this very building, and I have never known such an outrage. I have alerted my lawyers. That animal you harbor is a public nuisance. It is clearly out of control.”
    Which is true. Ophelia flunked out of obedience school.
    â€œAnd it will simply have to be put to sleep.”
    I thought about Ophelia asleep on her silk cushion up in the