Hamstersaurus Rex Read online

  DEDICATION

  For Colleen

  —T.O.D.

  Für Onkel Dieter und Tanta Daggi. Vielen Dank für alles.

  —T.M.

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  BACK AD

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  CHAPTER 1

  CERTAIN CLASS PETS will go down in legend. We’ve all heard of the duck from Marneyville Elementary that could use an electric pencil sharpener. And of course there was Bert, the chameleon that Ms. Simonson’s fourth graders all swore they saw go plaid that one time. Some kids at my cousin’s school still whisper of a goldfish that could see fifteen minutes into the future but was cursed with the inability to tell anyone what it had learned. Because, you know, it was a goldfish.

  Impressive as these creatures are, none of them can compare to Hamstersaurus Rex. He was a giant among rodents, a folk hero for all time. He was the pride of Mr. Copeland’s sixth-grade class. Most of all, he was my friend.

  Nobody knew where Hammie Rex came from. All we knew is that when we returned to school after Columbus Day, there was a hamster cage in the corner. Mr. Copeland seemed as surprised as anybody.

  “Well, kids, I guess we have a hamster now,” he said with a shrug. “Nobody at this school ever tells me anything.”

  “I wish this hamster was a turtle,” said Tina Gomez. “Do you think the pet shop has an exchange policy?”

  “I bet we could return him and get, like, a hundred and fifty snails,” said Wilbur Weber. Wilbur had a lot of snails at home. I guess it wasn’t enough.

  I looked into the cage. At first glance he appeared to be a normal hamster: orange fur, pink nose, beady black eyes. Then he opened his mouth and made a weird growling noise. The other kids were startled. Even though he was the size of a muffin, this hamster wasn’t afraid of anything.

  “I think the new hamster’s cool,” I said, drawing a quick sketch of the little guy in my notebook.

  “Nah, I think it’s dumb,” said Beefer Vanderkoff, squinting at me from across the room. His real name is Kiefer, but only teachers call him that.

  “Stow it, Beefer,” said Dylan D’Amato. She’s my best friend, also pretty fearless.

  “Kids, enough,” said Mr. Copeland, frowning.

  Martha Cherie raised her hand. “Um, Arnold, may I address the class, please?” she said. Everyone but Beefer rolled their eyes.

  “Okay, Martha,” said Mr. Copeland. “But seriously, you have to call me ‘Mr. Copeland,’ okay? We’ve been over this.”

  She nodded and turned to face the rest of us. “Classmates, I just wanted to tell you that even though having a pet seems like it’s all fun and games, in reality it’s a huge responsibility that you’re probably not ready for.”

  “Um, why?” asked Dylan. Martha Cherie rubbed her the wrong way like no one else.

  “Because, Dylan, most of you are careless and, quite frankly, immature. I took an online quiz, and it said my mental age is forty-five, so . . .”

  “Caring for a hamster isn’t rocket science,” said Dylan. “You give it food and water every day and change the wood chips once a week. I think we can handle it.”

  “Well, my uncle Tony happens to be a zoologist who specializes in hamsters, and he says it’s much, much more complicated than that,” said Martha with a smug look on her face. “I just think it would be for the best if we were to pick someone—a person known for being very, very responsible—and assigned her the duty of caring for our beloved new class pet.”

  Mr. Copeland sighed. “Yes, fine, Martha, you can be Hamster Monitor.”

  She squealed with glee, an incredibly disturbing sound. “Oh thank you ever so much, Arn— Er, I mean Mr. Copeland. May I ask: Will I be issued an official Hamster Monitor ID card and lanyard?”

  “No,” said Mr. Copeland.

  “I’ll make my own,” said Martha.

  “Knock yourself out,” said Mr. Copeland. “Okay. So who’s ready to learn about Pilgrims?”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Copeland.” Martha had her hand up again.

  Mr. Copeland rubbed his temples. “Yes, Martha.”

  “I think the new hamster should have a name.”

  “Fine.”

  “As Hamster Monitor, I officially decree that the hamster’s name is Toothbrush.”

  This prompted a chorus of boos from the other kids.

  “No, no, no,” said Caroline Moody. “Let’s call him Xullthrox the Destroyer.”

  More boos.

  “What about Shelly?” said Wilbur Weber.

  Still more boos. Maybe Wilbur could only think up good names for snails?

  “I think the hamster should be called Martha Junior,” said Beefer. The boos stopped. Everyone stared at him in silence. “I mean, I don’t know. Whatever,” he said. “Man, everybody shut up.”

  Suddenly, the perfect name came to me in a flash. I didn’t dare speak up again for fear of provoking Beefer further. Instead, I wrote it on a scrap of paper and passed it to Dylan while Mr. Copeland wasn’t looking.

  Dylan read the note and nodded, satisfied. “Look, we’re calling the little dude Hamstersaurus Rex,” she said to the class. “End of discussion.”

  They all stared at her now. Coming from me, the name would have been a hard sell. But most people actually liked Dylan.

  “Just look at his tiny little T. rex arms,” Dylan added with a shrug, like it was obvious.

  The class did look. Everyone agreed that his arms were indeed very tiny.

  “I don’t know, Dylan,” said Tina. “I guess I see the arms thing. But how else is he like a dinosaur? He doesn’t—”

  The hamster growled again.

  That settled it. The sixth-grade class hamster was officially Hamstersaurus Rex. Everybody seemed happy about it except Beefer. He must have been pretty attached to the name Martha Junior.

  “Now about those Pilgrims,” said Mr. Copeland. “So, way back in the sixteen hundreds everybody wore these funny hats—”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Copeland.” Once again, Martha had her hand up.

  “Martha,” said Mr. Copeland, gritting his teeth. “We’ve already spent a lot of time talking about hamsters this morning, so if the sentence you are about to say contains the word ‘hamster,’ I’m going to ask you not to say the sentence. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Now, does the sentence you are about to say contain the word ‘hamster’?”

  Martha shook her head.

  “Okay, then,” said Mr. Copeland. “What is it?”

  “As official monitor of a specific type of rodent, I just wanted to tell you that specific type of rodent is gone.”

  “What?” said Mr. Copeland.

  “Just look,” said Martha. She pointed to the cage.

  Sure enough, it was empty. The little door swung open on its hinges.

  “Well, kids,” said Mr. Copeland, scratching his head. “I guess we don’t have a hamster anymore.”

  CHAPTER 2

  NOBODY SAW HAMSTERSAURUS REX for a week after that. Most of the other kids
seemed to forget about him. Not Martha Cherie, though. She never stopped wearing her homemade Hamster Monitor ID lanyard.

  I didn’t forget, either. Before school, I poked around our classroom looking for any sign of him. I searched the halls between classes. I asked kids from other grades if they’d seen him. I even put up missing hamster posters—hand-drawn by yours truly. Still nothing. Dylan thought I was nuts, but I never lost hope that he would one day return. Even though I’d known him for all of four minutes, I couldn’t help it; I liked the little guy.

  It was Tuesday, after school, when I made a terrible mistake. While checking to see if Hamstersaurus Rex was hiding in the faucet of one of the sinks in the second-floor boys’ bathroom, I accidentally sprayed water everywhere. Well, not everywhere, exactly. Most of it went right onto Beefer Vanderkoff’s T-shirt.

  “Arrgh!” growled Beefer. “You got my shirt all wet, dummy!”

  “Beefer! I didn’t see you there. Here, let me get that for you,” I said, grabbing a paper towel to dab the shirt, which had a picture of a zombie throwing up on it. “If it’s any consolation, I’m pretty sure water doesn’t stain.”

  “Is that some kind of a joke?” said Beefer, squinting at me. “You know I’m a clear belt in karate, don’t you?”

  “Clear belt?” I said.

  “Yup. It’s one level above a black belt,” said Beefer. “It’s so hard to get that nobody even knows about it. The final test is, they make you head-butt a rock in half.”

  “Hey, that’s great,” I said. “Congratulations on your clear belt. Yay, Beefer!” I won’t sugarcoat it—I was groveling.

  Beefer scowled. “Is that sarcasm? You think you’re so funny, with your funny little pictures. Man, you wouldn’t last one minute down at the dojo. You know what would happen?”

  “Uh, what?”

  “This: Keeeee-yah!” Beefer shrieked, and punched the trash can. It wobbled for a second and then fell over, spilling a pile of wet paper towels onto the floor.

  “Wait . . . ,” I said, genuinely confused. “I’m the trash can in that scenario? Or the guy fighting it?”

  “Shut up,” hissed Beefer, clutching his knuckles and gritting his teeth in pain. Someone like you or me might have guessed that punching a metal object would hurt your hand. Beefer had to figure these things out for himself.

  “I can’t believe you forced me to use my karate in anger,” he said, as he winced and flexed his fingers. “I’m going to kill you for that.”

  That was my cue. I dashed past him through the door and out into the hallway.

  “Get back here, Sam!” yelled Beefer behind me.

  I ran for my life.

  You have to understand: running for my life isn’t my favorite activity in the world. In fact, running for any reason is pretty low on the list. I enjoy reading comic books. Playing disc golf with Dylan is fun (even though I never win). Occasionally, I like to put a second pair of shoes on my hands and pretend I’m a horse. (Actually, maybe don’t tell anybody about that last one.) These days, though, running for my life seemed to take up an awful lot of my free time. Thanks to Beefer, it was my number one forced hobby.

  It all went back to my actual favorite activity in the world: drawing. I love to draw stuff. Always have. Other kids used to think it was cool, almost like a magic trick. That changed last year.

  I’d just mastered drawing robots punching each other’s heads off, and I wanted to work on my caricature skills. For practice, I drew a caricature of every single kid in our class. I wasn’t going to show them to anybody. (Okay, I showed them to Dylan. She laughed at hers.) But one day I accidentally left my sketchbook in the library. Caroline Moody found it, and soon everyone had seen their official Sam Gibbs portrait. They were all pretty mad—except Martha Cherie, who was eerily flattered. Angriest of all was Beefer Vanderkoff. I’ll admit the stink lines around his head may have crossed a line.

  I still wasn’t exactly popular with the other kids, but only Beefer wanted to flatten me. As far as I could tell, flattening people was one of three things he actually cared about—along with horror movies and processed food. Without a zombie DVD or a package of Funchos Southwest-Style Teriyaki-Ranch Flavor-Wedges (A SmilesCorp Product™) to distract him, I was in serious trouble.

  “I’m going to hit you so hard that you forget how to do long division,” he yelled as he chased me. “Seriously, this beating is going to affect your report card!”

  I had only one hope: Beefer probably wouldn’t pummel me in front of Mr. Copeland. I ran toward our classroom. As I skidded around a corner, my heart sank. The lights were off. The room was empty. Mr. Copeland had already gone home for the day. That meant the door would be locked. In desperation, I tried anyway.

  Success! The knob turned. I ducked inside, closed the door, and locked it behind me. Then I got down on all fours and hid behind a row of desks. I won’t sugarcoat it: I was cowering.

  I could hear Beefer outside now, right outside the door.

  “Where are you, Sam?” he yelled. “Seriously, you better not be reading my diary. There’s personal stuff in— I mean, I don’t keep a diary. Shut up!”

  He tried the knob. It turned, and I heard the door swing open. I buried my face in my palm. Of course Mr. Copeland had locked the door before he left. It was just that the lock was broken! Beefer stepped inside.

  “You’re in here somewhere, Sam,” he said. “Believe me, I’ve had enough detentions to know every single inch of this classroom. You can’t hide from me. I’ll find you. I’m like a modern-day Sunblock Holmes.”

  Silently I crawled along the row of desks. Things were getting desperate now. I looked around for something, anything, that might save me.

  Graphing calculator? Nope.

  Tube of puff paint? Nope.

  Walrus puppet? Nope.

  I could go no farther. I was in the corner of the room, right underneath the big, misshapen model of the solar system that hung from the ceiling. We were told that some kid last year had made it out of old pennies and plastic wrap, for something called Science Night. It was terrible but too heavy to move, so Mr. Copeland left it up.

  “Found you,” said Beefer.

  I turned. “Oh, hi, Beefer,” I said, trying to sound casual.

  “Now you must choose your destiny, Sam,” he said. “Do you want Nerdsmasher?” He held out his left fist. “Or Dweebcrusher?” He held out his right fist.

  “What are the pros and cons?” I said, playing for time.

  “Quit stalling, Sam.”

  “Okay, fine. Did you say one was called Nerdsmoosher?”

  “Nerdsmasher! Nerdsmoosher would be a ridiculous name for a fist.”

  “Right, sorry . . .”

  From the corner of my eye I saw movement up above me. Something was running along the strings of the solar system model.

  “In that case,” I said. “I’m thinking maybe Dweebcruncher?”

  “It’s Dweebcrusher!” yelled Beefer. “It’s like you’re not taking this situation seriously! That makes me so—”

  Both of us heard a growl.

  CHAPTER 3

  “HEY LOOK, IT’S the dumb, barking gerbil,” said Beefer. He stared up at Hamstersaurus Rex, who was clinging to the string that held the solar system, directly above Beefer’s head.

  “Hamstersaurus Rex,” I said.

  Beefer turned to glare at me. “Martha Junior,” he said.

  “Right, sorry. Martha Junior.”

  Above him, Hamstersaurus Rex began to chew on the string.

  “Now, where were we?” said Beefer.

  “Um, I think you had decided that violence is never the answer and you were about to let me go with a stern warning.”

  Beefer scratched his head, confused. “Are you sure? Because that doesn’t really sound like something I’d—”

  There was a snap. Then a crash. And Beefer Vanderkoff was lying flat on the ground under a pile of plastic-wrap-and-penny planets. I blinked. Hamstersaurus Rex had gnawed clean throu
gh the string. He’d saved me!

  “Mom . . . are we at Grandma’s yet?” moaned Beefer. If he could moan, he wasn’t dead. Which was good. Sort of. I guess.

  “Thanks!” I said to Hamstersaurus Rex, still dangling from the string on the ceiling. I held my hands out to catch him. “Now, why don’t you come on down from there?”

  And that’s what he did. Except instead of jumping into my outstretched hands, he dropped right onto the top of my head. Which—even though I’m pretty pro-hamster—felt super weird and I, uh, may have screamed. A lot. And this may have scared Hamstersaurus Rex. Which is probably why he scurried down my back and squeezed underneath the door of the classroom.

  “Sorry! I have a very sensitive scalp!” I cried. “Please don’t go!”

  But he didn’t wait. Out in the hall once again, I caught a flash of his furry orange butt disappearing around a corner. I ran as fast as I could, but Hamstersaurus Rex was faster. He darted down the stairs, and I followed. By the time I made it to the end of the hallway, he was nowhere to be seen.

  I stood at the door of the school gymnasium: this had to be where Hamstersaurus Rex had gone. My watch said ten till four. My mom would be by to pick me up any minute. Still, I couldn’t just let Hamstersaurus Rex disappear again.

  Inside the gym it was dark and quiet. I squinted. Was that a flash of movement racing toward Coach Weekes’s office? I ran toward the door and threw it open.

  The lights were on. Coach Weekes, our mustachioed gym teacher, stood facing a full-length mirror. He held a protein shake in one hand and an old-fashioned trophy in the other. He didn’t see me.

  “And now, representing the town of Maple Bluffs at the Regional Personal Fitness Championship,” said Coach Weekes in a strange announcer voice, “Leslie Weekes, a.k.a. the Velvet Shark.”

  Coach Weekes took a swig of the protein shake and then flexed all the muscles he had. He didn’t have many.

  Again, in the announcer voice: “Wow, will you look at that physique, folks? I wouldn’t be surprised if Weekes is awarded the Special Jury Prize for ‘Best Calf Muscles.’ Looks like he’s got two hams stuffed into his socks, doesn’t it? You know, the winner of this competition will go on to nationals and will probably become famous and rich and no one will ever laugh at his mustache ever again! Weekes is the strong favorite—pun intended—because, as we all know, he’s already a winner.”