James Patterson: Dangerous Days of Daniel X

“Hello?” I said.

“Hello, indeed,” a cultured voice said.

It was Seth. Don’t ask me how I knew for sure, I just did. Just like I knew he was the one who’d trashed my place with his crazy felines.

“Who’s this?” I said, playing dumb.

“Who’s this? ” the voice repeated almost sorrowfully. “Now is that remotely proper etiquette? Wouldn’t ‘May I help you?’ be a tad more polite? Bad enough they send a boy for me, but a crude American one with no manners? Nonetheless, to answer your impolite question, I think you know who I am. Though I daresay, if you don’t follow my advice very, very soon, you’re going to wish you did not.”

“Um, sorry?” I said, still stunned. I’d never spoken to a gas before, let alone one that sounded like it had trained with the Royal Shakespeare Company. “I really think you have the wrong number.”

“Better the wrong number,” the confident British voice said, “than the wrong city, Daniel. By the way, I heard you had a little problem today-with kitty cats. Or should I say kitty litter? ”

Panic rose at the mention of my name. And the cats.

Ergent Seth not only knew where I was, he knew who I was!

“OH, YES,” Seth leisurely continued. “I know who you are, Dan. In fact, I’ve been patiently waiting for you ever since that unfortunate accident with that silly Arbilitorarian pretender in the sewers of Portland.

“Perhaps you are under the impression that there is some similar business to take care of between you and me. But there is not. Because of your youth, I am paying you this final courtesy. You can’t say I didn’t give you fair warning. First the dream. Then the visit from my feline friends. Now an actual phone call.

“Move on! Skip me and go on to the next on your List, if that is your foolish desire. To each his own, or, as my American friends so charmingly say, it’s a free country. But if you value your life, then you do not wish to meet with me, little boy-for I am death its very self. Nothing that has ever encountered me has lived to tell the tale.”

Seth was more like a gasbag than a gas, I thought. He sure seemed to love the sound of his own voice. Too bad I didn’t.

“Okay. That’s interesting. But my name’s not Daniel, and I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, still playing dumb. “You have a good day.”

I hung up on him.

Then I nearly jumped out of my skin as the phone rang again.

I bent down immediately and ripped the cord out of the wall.

But as I stood there, something happened that shook my confidence a little. The phone, with its tattered cord dangling beside it, rang again.

Cold beads of sweat were rolling down my spinal column. My heart was pounding.

The answering machine beside the phone picked up after the second ring. Was that even possible?

“Dan? Hello? I do believe we’ve become disconnected,” the clipped British voice said from the speaker. “Never say I didn’t give you a chance, dear boy. The kid gloves are now officially off. You are now Dead Boy Walking.”

Seth began to chuckle softly. The chuckle morphed into a bloodcurdling kind of clicking sound. Like a cricket, a thousand-pound one.

All of a sudden, my lungs and face were burning. Then I started gagging. I opened my mouth to tell my friends that I was choking, but nothing came out. I fell to my knees.

That’s when Willy dove to the floor. He lifted the answering machine by its cord and smashed it to pieces.

My breath returned in a sweet, life-preserving rush.

“Seth isn’t your regular, garden-variety slimer, is he?” Willy said.

“I’m beginning to think,” I said between greedy gulps of air, “maybe not.”

At this I heard a horrifying noise outside. Cats! Hundreds of them, shrieking in the night, calling out my name.

They knew who I was too.

I GOT TO SCHOOL EARLY the next day. Why school? Maybe because I’d learned my lesson in Portland. Or maybe it was because Phoebe Cook would be there. Honestly? I’d say five percent the lesson in Portland, ninety-five percent Phoebe.

My first class was history with Mr. Marshman, and he was right on time, looking sappier and happier than I’d ever seen him. Why was he so giddy and joyful?

“Pop quiz time!” he announced.

I noticed how I was the only one in the class who didn’t groan like it was the end of the world. Look on the bright side, I wanted to tell them as I took the handout. At least we’re not all on the floor sucking alien nerve gas and incapable of breathing.

Yet.

And fortunately, the quiz wasn’t all that hard.

What are the names of the two oldest, most complete hominid skeletons? Duh, Lucy and Little Foot, maybe. What was the first known great civilization? Depends on your point of view, I thought, mentally flipping through the origin dates of thousands of major alien tribes, some who made it to Earth long before anything in our history textbook. But I wrote the answer Marshman wanted: The Sumerians. These people had no idea…

I was breezing along okay when I suddenly dropped my pen. Hold up! It wasn’t too smart for me to show off, was it? I erased what I’d written so far and started scribbling wrong answers one after the other.

I handed my test in first, and Marshman graded it in about half a minute flat.

“Wow!” he exclaimed. “Just to let everyone know, Linus and Cujo were not the oldest hominid skeletons. Las Vegas is not the first known great civilization, and Sauron was not the Babylonian king who kept the Jews in captivity. Daniel, I really want to thank you. You’ve provided a perfect example of what not to do in my class.”

I felt my face flush as everyone in the room laughed at me. I kept my head down as I walked up and got my test. A big red 0 was written across the top, which actually kind of hurt my feelings.

Ground control to Daniel, I thought. Maybe you’re playing this dumb game a little too well.

“STEP BACK, EVERYBODY. Give him room. Here comes Albert Daniel Einstein,” some wise guy said as I came out of history class.

One of the school tough guys was talking to his buddies in the hall. I was trying to walk around him when he grabbed my shirt and shoved me hard against a locker.

“Guys, feast your eyes on Daniel Hopper, the mindless new kid. Stand back! I speak brain-dead.”

“ Me Jake,” another kid said, patting his Abercrombie amp; Fitch polo shirt. He poked me hard in the chest with his finger. “ You halfwit.”

My instinct was to deal with bullies the way all pathetic, attention-seeking, disturbed individuals need to be dealt with-by ignoring them. But I was on edge that morning, and he was picking at a nerve.

I stared at his index finger, debating whether I should snap it at the first knuckle or the second.

A janitor’s mop bucket across the hall solved my dilemma. At a speed approximating that of sound, I shot my left leg behind Jake’s and shoved the six-foot, two-hundred-something-pounder with my right palm. He actually went airborne before he landed, butt down, in the slop bucket.

“Watch those wet floors, and have a super day,” I said before I disappeared around the corner.

Only to barely avoid a head-on collision with Phoebe Cook coming out the door of the bio lab. She looked incredible again today.

“I was hoping to bump into you, Daniel,” Phoebe said. “Well, not literally, I guess, but do you have a free period now? I was wondering if we could talk. Please?”