Mutant Mantis Lunch Ladies by Bruce Hale

Author:Bruce Hale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Disney Book Group
Published: 2017-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

AS SOON AS the Detention Queen, Ms. Pebblecreek, released us from our after-school punishment, Benny and I shot from the room like a loogie from a lip. Collecting our bikes, we made straight for the Monterrosa Natural History Museum and our town’s biggest expert on insects.

At the end of Durfee Road squatted the museum, a low, wide building that smelled faintly of cheese. This time of day, only a handful of tourists wandered through its exhibits admiring the dioramas of sea animals, geological cross sections, and central Californian critters.

A bored-looking young woman with purple-streaked hair and a shoulder tattoo of one of the X-Men sat at the front desk, texting away on her phone. She glanced up, mildly surprised that she had visitors.

“Go on in,” said Purple Hair, popping her gum. “Kids under twelve are free.”

“We’re not into dioramas,” said Benny, even though I knew he was.

“We’re here to see Mr. Sincere,” I said.

Purple Hair looked us up and down through her cool-girl glasses. “Aren’t you kinda young to be scientists?”

“He’ll want to see us,” I said. “It’s about giant bugs.”

“Imagine my excitement,” she said, all deadpan. “Second floor, room 202.” Making a vague gesture toward the elevator, Purple Hair resumed texting.

“Wolverine is one of my favorite X-Men too,” I said, pointing at her tattoo.

Her lip curled and she blew out a dismissive puff of air. “That’s not Wolverine, that’s Papa Smurf. Get a clue.”

I apologized, although personally, I thought her tattoo artist could’ve used some art lessons.

Room 202 lay halfway down a dingy hall of offices that smelled like burned coffee and moldy carpet. The door hung open, but we rapped on it anyway.

“Mr. Sincere?” Benny called.

The room was a mess. Worse than my bedroom.

Stacks of scientific journals leaned against a battered, gunmetal-gray desk. Packed bookshelves filled one wall. The rest of the space was jammed with cameras, microscopes, butterfly nets, a display case bristling with more kinds of beetles than there were TV channels, and loads and loads of framed and mounted moths and spiders.

I shuddered at the spiders. “Hello?”

A tight salt-and-pepper Afro peeked up from behind the desk. A long tea-colored face followed it. “Eh, how’s that?” said the man.

“Are you Mr. Sincere?” I asked.

An enormous hazel eye blinked at us through one of those massive magnifying glasses scientists strap to their heads. A chill tickled the tops of my shoulders. What kind of man was this?

“That’s Doctor Sincere,” he huffed. “I didn’t spend all that money on a PhD to be called mister.”

“Doctor, we need your help,” I said.

Dr. Sincere rose to his feet, blinking. His body was long and lanky with a potbelly, and draped in a tan jacket with lots of pockets, like hunters wear. He looked like a librarian on safari. The scientist dropped some small wriggly thing into a coffee can with his long tweezers.

“Mind the scorpions,” he said.

“Scorpions?!”

Benny and I shuffled back a couple of steps, eyeing the carpet around us. Something scuttled from behind a stack of magazines and along the front of the desk.

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