“Agh!” Charles yelped. Slinking up his arm was a seven-inch-long black millipede. From Charles’s zoological studies, he knew they were highly poisonous.
“You need not fear Millie. She bites only on my command,” said a girl seated next to him. Every inch of her was covered in a black ninja outfit known as a shinobi shozoku. I know that because (as you may remember from reading my author bio) I planned on becoming a master ninja before I turned into a ghost. Even her face was hidden. He could have sworn she wasn’t there a moment ago.
“Is, uh, this your millipede?” Charles asked nervously as the creature crawled up his shoulder and circled his pencil-thin neck like spaghetti wrapping around a breadstick.
“Millie is my companion.”
Charles knew millipedes liked to eat vegetables. He took a carrot from his backpack and offered it to the millipede, which was now creeping up his chin and seemed to be considering burrowing inside his nose.
The millipede stopped in her tracks and sniffed the tip of the carrot. Instead of taking a nibble, the millipede stretched her mouth open to the size of a tennis ball and devoured the entire carrot in one gulp.
“Millie likes carrots,” said the girl in black.
Millie gave Charles a kiss on the nose. Charles had never been kissed by anything with so many legs before. It tickled.
King Khufu was calling attendance. “McCallister?”
“My body is here, but my heart is with my true love,” said Bryce McCallister with a smoldering gaze. All the girls sighed at his vampire charm.
“Nukid?”
“Here,” said Charles. He turned back to the girl in black. “So, what is your name?” he asked.
“Lat—” she began.
Suddenly, the PA crackled, and the voice of Principal Headcrusher rang through the classroom. “Attention, everyone!”
The girl in black perked up in her seat, as if sensing danger. Her eyes darted and she sniffed the air. “Watch Millie,” she said to Charles. Then she leaped out of her chair, sprang off the wall, and dove through the air conditioning vent in one astonishingly swift movement.
“Um . . . see ya,” said Charles to her empty desk.
Principal Headcrusher continued, “After your first class, everyone is to report immediately to Petrified Pavilion for an urgent assembly. If you brought jackets or sweaters with you today, make sure to bring them. That is all.”
King Khufu resumed taking roll. “Lattie?” There was no response. “Lattie . . . There is no last name. How odd.”
“Um,” said Charles, “I think she was here a second ago, but she dove through the air vent.”
“Preposterous,” said King Khufu. “I would have noticed.”
“She did it really fast,” said Charles.
“Not a chance. I’m marking her absent. Lastly . . . Tanya Tarantula?”
Tanya the Giant Tarantula raised four of her eight legs from her terrarium at the back of the classroom.
“Perfect. Now let’s get started with our lesson on ancient prophecies. Please open your textbooks to page thirty-two—the Wise Wizard’s Prophecy. This prophecy is of particular importance because it is scheduled to come true next week. It states that a human child will battle the scariest monster in the world to decide the fate of all monsterkind. Luckily for you human students, there are currently no signs that this prophecy will come true.”
As the students began reading about the prophecy, which was written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Lattie dropped back into her seat. This time Khufu noticed.
“Who are you?” Khufu asked the girl.
“I am the shadow in the darkness. I am the eagle on the mountain face. I am the last vision seen by an evildoer.”
“Ah, you must be Lattie,” said Khufu. “Where were you when I called your name?”
“The best way to tell when a ninja is here is when she is not here.”
King Khufu fumed, “How dare you leave my class without permission! I ought to put a curse on you right here!”
Lattie responded calmly, “He who becomes angry boards a train to a wilderness of ignorance.”
King Khufu was stunned that someone had dared talk back to him. The last one who did that was Eddie Bookman. As you may remember from the last book, he doesn’t exist anymore.
King Khufu could only babble, “Hubble . . . habble . . . huffle . . . well, just don’t do it again. Since you’re new, this is your one warning.”
Charles extended his arm, and the millipede used it like a bridge to crawl onto Lattie’s shoulder. Lattie nodded a silent thank-you. She wasn’t sure what it was, but there was something different about Charles, as if he reminded her of someone she liked, but she couldn’t think who.
When King Khufu turned around to resume his lesson, Larry Ledfoot stood up and shouted, “Hey, Toothpick!”
Larry held up a straw and shot a spitball right at Charles’s face. Charles closed his eyes, dreading the embarrassment before it even hit, but he never felt the wet impact.
He opened his eyes and saw Lattie holding the spitball between the tips of two pencils, like chopsticks. She had caught it in midair just inches from his nose.
Lattie glared at Larry, then shot the spitball back at him with a flick of her wrist. It hit him right in the forehead. Splat!
The whole class laughed and applauded. Even King Khufu. Even Larry for that matter. It was that incredible.
Charles said to Lattie, “Thanks. I’m Charles Nukid.”
“You’re welcome, Charles Nukid. I am the unseen hand of righteousness. But you can call me Lattie.”
Mr. Acidbath