Read Online Fear the Barfitron by M. D. Payne - Free Book Online Page A

thought I was crazy before, they sure did now. I couldn’t believe I was talking about things like lebensplasm and monster dance parties in the middle of the school lunchroom! It helped that there was nobody else there but the lunch lady, and she was a little too busy to notice anything at the moment.
    Behind the counter, she had finally cornered her prey.
    Smack, smack, CRACK.
    I swore I heard a grunt come from the floor, and then the lunch lady dropped the broom and grabbed a bucket. She slammed it on the ground, upside down, over her prize. She bent over, and pushed the bucket back into the kitchen with a SCCCCCRRRAAAAPPPE.
    She returned to the counter and yelled, “What you waiteeng for? Geet eet while eet’s hot.”
    Students started streaming back into the abandoned lunchroom. If the Director had sent a huge cockroach to shut me up, his plan had failed. I breathed a sigh of relief.
    “So,” I said. “Let’s head up there tonight, and—”
    “Whoa, wait a minute,” said Gordon. “I’ve got practice tonight.”
    “Yeah,” said Shane with a shrug. “I’ve got karate.”
    “Come on guys,” I pleaded. “I’m being serious here! Did you already forget about the Fireball of Death?!”
    “It can’t wait one more day?” asked Ben. “I have oboe practice tonight. Sorry.”
    “Fine!” I said, exasperated. “How about tomorrow night? The Director said I could come back Thursday
or
Friday, and I could use a day off anyway.”
    Shane let out a long hissing sound and scrunched up his face.
    “WHAT!” I was yelling now. “What is it now?!”
    “Dude!” said Gordon. “You might have forgotten—because you bailed on us—but we’ve got those killer passes to the park this weekend, and this weekend starts tomorrow night.”
    “All right,” I said, “look. Just come with me to Raven Hill after school tomorrow, and as soon as we’re done there we can spend the whole night and the entire weekend enjoying Ben barfing on every ride, over and over and over again.”
    “Perfect!” said Ben.
    “Fine by me,” said Shane.
    “Whatever,” said Gordon.

    After lunch, Shane, Gordon, Ben, and I all had Mr. Stewart’s chemistry class.
    Although I was relieved that my friends hadn’t abandoned me at the lunch table, my energy was completely drained after having told them my insane tale.
    I stared down at the stained stone-top lab station, nearly falling asleep on my feet. I leaned on Shane—my partner for the day’s experiment—for support.
    The bell rang for the start of class, and Mr. Stewart was still nowhere to be seen. Shane turned to me to say something when the door on the side of the classroom exploded with a puff of smoke. Everyone gasped, and I must have jumped two feet, imagining a huge cockroach creeping toward me through the haze.
    Instead, Mr. Stewart stumbled through with a cough, running into a skeleton set up next to the door. The smoke was superfunky—a mix of burned bacon, burned hair, and burned fart. Some kids started coughing. Others laughed as Mr. Stewart did a bit of a dance with the skeleton to keep it from falling over.
    “Whew,” Mr. Stewart said. “Guess I should have tested the ventilator system in the lab before I tried that experiment.”
    Mr. Stewart tried to straighten out his disheveled, slightly scorched mop of hair, but it just wouldn’t behave.
    My heart continued to bounce around in my chest as Mr. Stewart started his lesson.
    “Today,” said Mr. Stewart, as he walked behind his lab station, “we are going to learn about the relationship between acids and bases, starting with one of my favorites—butyric acid—which is found in the stomach.” He erased a small patch of blackboard that still contained notes from years past, and wrote B-U-T-Y-R-I-C A-C-I-D in huge, crazy block letters.
    I heard a small, wet burp escape from the lab station behind me. I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell that Ben probably wasn’t too excited to learn about stomach