Dunc Gets Tweaked Read online

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  DUNC’S DOLL, Gary Paulsen

  CULPEPPER’S CANNON, Gary Paulsen

  THE VOYAGE OF THE FROG, Gary Paulsen

  HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS, Thomas Rockwell

  HOW TO FIGHT A GIRL, Thomas Rockwell

  HOW TO GET FABULOUSLY RICH, Thomas Rockwell

  THE BOY WHO OWNED THE SCHOOL, Gary Paulsen

  IT’S A WEIRD, WEIRD SCHOOL, Stephen Mooser

  THE HITCHHIKING VAMPIRE, Stephen Mooser

  YEARLING BOOKS/YOUNG YEARLINGS/YEARLING CLASSICS are designed especially to entertain and enlighten young people. Patricia Reilly Giff, consultant to this series, received her bachelor’s degree from Marymount College and a master’s degree in history from St. John’s University. She holds a Professional Diploma in Reading and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Hofstra University. She was a teacher and reading consultant for many years, and is the author of numerous books for young readers.

  For a complete listing of all Yearling titles,

  write to Dell Readers Service,

  P.O. Box 1045, South Holland, IL 60473.

  Published by

  Dell Publishing

  a division of

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  666 Fifth Avenue

  New York, New York 10103

  Copyright © 1992 by Gary Paulsen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-80413-6

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  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

  Duncan—Dunc—Culpepper stood next to the starting gate of the track at the Speedway Skateboarding Park. He was watching his best friend, Amos Binder, put his crash helmet on. Amos was getting ready to compete in the Skateboard National Open, amateur division.

  “Are you sure you want to do this, Amos?”

  “It’s not a question of wanting to or not wanting to. I have to.”

  “I’m not real clear on this ‘have to’ stuff,” Dunc said. “Maybe you better explain it to me again.”

  Amos had his helmet on and was pulling up his kneepads. “It’s easy. All I have to do is win this championship.”

  “And?”

  “And Melissa will be so impressed she’ll be crazy about me forever.” Amos was madly in love with Melissa Hansen. Melissa Hansen didn’t know that Amos existed.

  “But you’ve never skateboarded before in your life.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “That driveway thing doesn’t count.” Amos had borrowed the neighbor’s skateboard once and tried riding it down the driveway. He did fine until he reached the street. The skateboard flew out from under his feet right into the window of a passing car.

  “Poor Mrs. Watkins,” Amos said. “That skateboard passed right in front of her face. One of the wheels left a track on her nose.”

  “She went to the newspaper with a story about a UFO.”

  “I know. She was so frightened, she drove her car right into the living-room window of Mr. Meany.”

  “The policeman,” Dunc said.

  “Yeah.” Amos picked up his board and spun all four of its wheels. “He told me that as soon as I’m old enough, he’s going to put me in prison for life.”

  “At least there you won’t get in trouble.”

  “I don’t get in trouble now. You get me in trouble.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with the skateboard incident.”

  “And you won’t have anything to do with this skateboard incident, either. For once, I’m not going to listen to any of your advice.”

  “But you have to get advice from someone.”

  “Then I’ll get it from somebody else.”

  “Who—Lash?”

  “Yeah.” Lash Malesky was Amos’s first cousin. He was a professional from San Diego and one of the best skateboarders in the country.

  “He’ll tell you the same thing I tried to,” Dunc said. “He’ll tell you you’re crazy to try this.”

  “He already told me that. When I wouldn’t listen, he gave in and promised to tell me how to win.” He turned his head, and together he and Dunc watched one of the other competitors wait in the starting gate.

  “Now making his run,” the announcer said over the loudspeaker, “Billy Slide.”

  The whistle blew and the gate opened and Billy zipped out onto the track. He went down the course flipping up in the air doing somersaults. Right before the end, he pressed into a handstand. The crowd cheered.

  “Even with Lash’s advice, you won’t be able to do that,” Dunc said.

  “Except for the handstands I will.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I have a secret weapon.”

  “A secret weapon? What is it?”

  “I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.” Amos smiled the way he did when he knew something that no one else knew. He cradled the board in his arms and waited for his turn.

  “Hey, dudes.” They turned around. Lash was standing behind them, bobbing his head up and down and smiling. He was wearing a fluorescent orange crash helmet and a pair of reflective sunglasses. He had a board in his hand with the word Maggie painted across the top of it.

  “Hi, Lash,” Amos said. “Are you here to wish me luck?”

  “Forget the luck,” Dunc said. “You better just give him some advice.”

  “Radical,” Lash said. “Cut loose and bone out all your tricks. Rock and roll on all your axle grinds. Dig into a mctwist on this jam with a five-forty—so radical. Just totally insane.” He smiled and bobbed his head up and down again. Amos and Dunc looked at each other.

  “Uh, thanks, Lash,” Amos said.

  Lash nodded. He patted Amos on the back and walked away, still bobbing his head. Amos and Dunc watched him go.

  “Did you understand a word he said?” Dunc asked.

  “No. I guess that’s what happens when you grow up in San Diego.”

  “Too much sun.”

  “Yeah.” Amos spun the skateboard’s wheels again. “So much for advice. At least I have my secret weapon.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Come on, Amos. I’m your best friend.”

  “So? Every time I tell you a secret, something bad happens.”

  “That isn’t true.”

  “Oh yeah? Remember the time I told you the secret about keeping the pet bat in my bedroom closet? That wasn’t good.”

  “But it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t tell your mother a thing about it.”

  “But she still found out. I lost a lamp, a mirror, and a bookshelf, and I got a pretty nasty bruise on my forehead.”

  “And she broke the tennis racket. Remember?”

  “I remember. She swung that thing like she was competing in Wimbledon, and the bat still got away.”

  “But it wasn’t my fault,” Dunc repeate
d.

  “It doesn’t make any difference. Something bad always happens when I tell you secrets.”

  “Come on, Amos.”

  Amos sighed. “All right. What was my biggest problem the last time I tried to skateboard?”

  “Mr. Meany.”

  “Besides him.”

  “The fact that you’re such a klutz.”

  “No. The biggest problem was, I couldn’t stay on the board. That’s where the secret weapon comes in. With it, I know I can do anything any other skateboarder can do, including Lash.”

  “And what’s your secret weapon?”

  “This.” He took a small plastic bottle out of his pocket.

  “What’s that?”

  “Epoxy glue.” He set the skateboard on the ground and put a couple drops of glue on it.

  “Don’t do this, Amos,” Dunc said. “You’ll kill yourself.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  Dunc had to think fast. “Maybe you better just go home. What if Melissa calls and you’re not there?”

  “I’m having all my calls transferred to the park. If she phones me, it’ll ring here.”

  He put two more big drops of glue on the board and stood on it. He tried to pick up his feet. They wouldn’t come loose.

  “Push me over to the gate.”

  Dunc sighed and did as he was told.

  “Now competing,” the loudspeaker said, “Amos Bender.”

  “That’s Binder,” Amos shouted. “Did you hear me? That’s Bi—”

  The whistle blew and the gate opened and Amos was on the track.

  He swayed from side to side, barely staying upright, and his shirt flapped in the breeze behind him like a whip. He smoked up one side of the track, did a flip, and came down the other.

  Dunc didn’t know if it was intentional or not, but it didn’t matter. The crowd and the announcer loved it. It looked like Amos might actually make it to the end of the track without requiring any major surgery when the worst possible thing in the world that could happen happened.

  The phone on the judges’ table rang.

  Amos forgot about doing flips. He forgot about doing tricks of any kind. He forgot his name. He leveled out the board and headed straight for the table, gaining speed all the way.

  He was going well over fifty when he hit the rise at the end of the track right in front of the judges.

  The board flew high up in the air, but he managed to reach down and grab the receiver as he arrowed straight toward a large tree.

  The phone cord had ripped off the telephone, but Amos didn’t know that. A branch hit him across the stomach. He was moving so fast, he tore it off the tree right at the trunk. The branch tipped up in the air and took out three power lines as Amos landed with a crash in the parking lot.

  The crowd was silent.

  The loudspeaker was dead. The next contestant tried to start his run, but the electric gate wouldn’t open.

  “Amos, are you all right?” Dunc ran down the length of the track to the parking lot.

  There was no answer. Amos was lying in the branches with the receiver up to his ear. His feet stuck up in the air, and the wheels of the skateboard spun crazily. A squirrel sat next to his head and chattered at him angrily.

  “Amos,” Dunc repeated, “are you all right?”

  “Hello? Hello?” Amos put the receiver down and looked up at Dunc with a disappointed expression.

  “She hung up,” he said.

  Dunc was at Amos’s house the next morning. Amos was stretched across an easy chair, and Dunc was sitting on the couch.

  “I don’t know if I can make it, Dunc.” Amos groaned and held the four-inch-wide bruise from the branch. It went all the way across his stomach.

  “You don’t have to compete. They disqualified you for tearing down the power lines.”

  “Then why do I have to go at all?”

  “Because it’s your duty. The tournament had to be postponed a day because of the power loss. You have to go. You owe them at least that much.”

  “That’s not a good enough reason.”

  “Then go because Lash is making his run today.”

  “That’s not a good enough reason, either.”

  “I don’t know what to say, then.” He sat watching Amos.

  “Amos?” Amos’s mother called from the kitchen. She had a high voice that sometimes set Amos’s back teeth on edge.

  “What?”

  “You can’t sit in that chair all day. Your uncle Alfred is coming over to watch a football game with your father, and you know how he likes to sit in that chair.”

  “Uncle Alfred, Mom? Does he have to? He picks his feet.”

  “Everyone has little faults, son.”

  “It’s not a little fault. His feet smell terrible.”

  “Well, at least he leaves his socks on. He doesn’t get it all over the chair.”

  Amos sighed and stood slowly. “Let’s go to the skateboard park.”

  “Are you sure you’re up to it?”

  “I’m up to anything if it means avoiding Uncle Alfred.” He stretched out his stomach and winced.

  When Dunc stood up, a growl-whimper came from behind the couch.

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s Scruff.” Scruff was the family collie.

  “What’s he doing behind the couch?”

  “I was in the bathroom this morning practicing shaving—”

  “Practicing shaving?”

  “You know, for when I get older. My face was all lathered up, and I had just turned on Dad’s portable electric razor when I heard Melissa’s ring.”

  “How did you know it was her?”

  “I figured she’d be calling since she couldn’t get me yesterday at the tournament. She has a very distinctive ring. So my older sister was sitting at the dining-room table studying infectious diseases for health class. She saw me running out of the bathroom and thought I was foaming at the mouth with rabies. She told Scruff to attack me.”

  “Your own dog attacks you?” Dunc stared at Amos.

  “Not usually. Most of the time whenever he’s near me, he just pulls his lip back and growls a little.”

  “He never has liked you too much, has he?”

  “Not since you made me try to screw antlers on his head for that most-unusual-pet contest when we were kids.”

  “That almost worked. We would have won if he hadn’t lifted his leg on that poodle. Reindeer don’t lift their legs.”

  Amos smiled, remembering, then shook his head. “Anyway, just as he jumped, I backed up and tripped and the razor caught his muzzle and shaved him all the way down the belly.”

  “So why is he hiding?”

  “He’s embarrassed—he think’s he’s ugly. Whenever I’m in the house, he growls from behind the couch and won’t come out. And I never did get to the phone. My sister answered it, but she said it was just a magazine salesperson. She’s lying.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She lies all the time. And besides, like I said, I know Melissa’s ring.”

  They went out the door to their bikes.

  The power line was repaired at the track, and a large crowd had gathered to watch the professional competition. The bleachers were already full, so Dunc and Amos stood by the judges’ table to watch. They saw Lash by the starting gate and waved. He waved back.

  As they waited, two big men in long black raincoats and brimmed hats pushed through the crowd and stood next to them.

  Both men had sallow faces and double chins, and one had a black pencil moustache sitting on his upper lip. It looked as if he had just drunk a cup of ink. Amos and Dunc looked at each other with grimaces on their faces.

  “They look terrible,” Amos whispered.

  They moved away from the two men as far as possible. It wasn’t too difficult since the rest of the crowd was shying away too. Nobody wanted to stand close to them.

  The announcer said Lash’s name over the loudspeaker, and Lash stepped behin
d the gate. The crowd grew quiet, except the men in dark coats. They grumbled something to each other that neither Dunc or Amos could hear.

  The starter blew a whistle, and Lash disappeared in a blur, racing down the track. He flipped his board up one side at least fifteen feet in the air, held it above his head with both hands, did a somersault, and landed on his board again.

  He did it once more right at the finish line, and instead of landing on his board, he landed on his feet with the board raised over his head.

  The crowd went wild.

  “That’s incredible,” Dunc said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “That’s because it’s never been done before. Lash told me he was going to try it for the first time here—at least, that’s what I think he was trying to tell me.”

  “What’s he call it?”

  “The Maggie tubular sky-high inverse sub-sub-shakysault.”

  Dunc frowned. “The only thing I understand is the name of his board—that’s Maggie, right?”

  “Right. Come on, let’s go talk to him.”

  Lash was standing by the judges’ table. He was still wearing his helmet but had taken off his glasses. The skateboard was tucked under his arm. He was being interviewed by Dirk Cordoba, a local television sports announcer. Dunc and Amos stopped and waited for the interview to end.

  “Another incredible display of aerial acrobatics,” Dirk said. “Lash Malesky, how do you do it?” Dirk wasn’t looking at Lash. He was watching the camera. He had a big plastic smile on his face. The microphone was in one hand, and with a finger he flicked a gob of makeup out of the cleft in his chin.

  “Awesome, Dirk,” Lash said. “It’s stoked, smoking to the wall—”

  “Isn’t that a new board, Lash?” Dirk interrupted. He pointed at the board without taking his eyes off of the camera. “It isn’t the same one you used at the Nationals last year, is it?”

  “Rad. Barrelling—”

  “I noticed it says ‘Maggie’ across the top.” Amos was amazed that Dirk could notice so much without ever taking his eyes off the camera.

  “Tweak—”

  “Well, thank you very much for your time, Lash,” Dirk said. “I wish you the best for the rest of the day and the finals tomorrow.”

  “Boned—”

  “This is Dirk Cordoba with skateboarding ace Lash Malesky. Back to you in the booth, George.” He kept smiling until the red light on the top of the camera turned off. The smile went off with the light.