Mayhem and Madness

  Copyright © 2019 by Jeremy Dauber

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  www.holidayhouse.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Dauber, Jeremy Asher, author.

  Title: Mayhem and madness : chronicles of a teenaged supervillain / by Jeremy Dauber.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Holiday House, [2019] | Summary: When sixteen-year-old Bailey discovers a secret lab beneath his house, complete with an outdated Macintosh computer and mechanized supervillain armor, he believes he might be able to find his father who disappeared six years ago.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018040564 | ISBN 9780823442553 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780823443109 (eBook)

  Ebook ISBN 9780823443109

  Subjects: | CYAC: Supervillains—Fiction. | Robots—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.D3358 May 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018040564

  v5.4

  a

  For my parents

  On their fiftieth anniversary

  In love and in awe

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Now. Friday. 8:05 p.m.

  Three Months Ago

  Now. Friday. 8:12 p.m.

  Three Months Ago

  Now. Friday. 8:23 p.m.

  Three Months Ago

  Now. Friday. 8:32 p.m.

  Two and a Half Months Ago

  Now. Friday. 8:41 p.m.

  Two and a Half Months Ago

  Now. Friday. 9:04 p.m.

  Two Months Ago

  Now. Friday. 9:16 p.m.

  Six Weeks Ago

  Now. Friday. 9:33 p.m.

  A Month Ago

  Now. Friday. 9:47 p.m.

  Also a Month Ago

  Now. Friday. 10:03 p.m.

  Three Weeks Ago

  Now. Friday. 10:23 p.m.

  This Week

  Now. Friday. 10:34 p.m.

  This Morning

  Now. Friday. 10:41 p.m.

  This Afternoon

  Now. Friday. 10:52 p.m.

  Now. Saturday. 6:47 a.m.

  Now. Saturday. 7:36 a.m.

  Now. Saturday. 10:43 a.m.

  Now. Saturday. 11:15 a.m.

  Saturday. 10:47 a.m.

  Now. Saturday. 1:57 p.m.

  Two and a Half Hours Ago

  Now. Saturday. 5:08 p.m.

  Three Hours Ago

  Now. Saturday. 5:17 p.m.

  Two Hours Ago

  Now. Saturday. 5:21 p.m.

  Now. Saturday. 10:14 p.m.

  This Afternoon

  Now. Saturday. 10:23 p.m.

  Four Hours Ago

  Now. Saturday. 10:36 p.m.

  Acknowledgments

  NOW. FRIDAY. 8:05 P.M.

  I did not expect to be spending the night of my winter formal hiding from the police.

  I mean, I’ve never even been given a suspicious look before.

  Yes, sure, sixteen-year-old boys can be prime targets for the neighborhood-watch list. Even skinny ones like me. But I don’t do stupid stuff like vandalize mailboxes, or spray-paint walls, or even smoke.

  Well, not stupid stuff like that, anyway.

  And these aren’t local police. These are SWAT teams. Backed by the National Guard and who knows what else. I think they may be calling in the army, even special forces. I’m not an expert, but my on-board computers are identifying highly coordinated movement. These aren’t amateurs.

  I hope I don’t have to hurt any of them. I said I wasn’t going to do that anymore.

  At least, I don’t want to.

  I’m dictating this into my phone. There are other ways I could do it, with what I’ve got, but given what I’ve learned, simpler is better. I’m sure that if—when?—I don’t make it out of this, the government will confiscate everything I’ve ever touched. But maybe the recording will help me at my trial, or juvenile hearing, or whatever.

  Not that they’ll ever let anything like that happen. At least not in public. I’ll end up in some supermax prison or one of those CIA black sites being waterboarded every day to try to get me to give up information about the Bloody Front or Mr. Jones.

  But at least I got a date out of it, right?

  Which reminds me: Rebecca’s probably sitting at home waiting for me. I’d like to think she’s crying her eyes out, but who am I kidding. Hard enough to believe she agreed to go out with me in the first place.

  Maybe I can make it up to her once I hit another bank vault?

  No. I’m not going to do that anymore, either.

  Let’s be honest: all of this is pretty much beside the point. I hear a helicopter—no, helicopters—and they’re definitely not reporting on weather and traffic. And if I’m reading this panel correctly, it’s telling me there’s stealth technology being employed in the area—I mean, aside from mine. If the government is moving F-35s into my neighborhood, how long can I really have left?

  I better get this recorded while there’s still time. I’m going to try to tell the whole story. From the beginning. Put it in order, with the whens and wheres laid out nice and neat. Almost like one of those outlines Mrs. Delgado keeps wanting us to make in English class.

  I’ll try not to leave anything out. Even if it makes me look like a monster. And I think some of it does.

  No one’s going to believe it, of course, even if they do get to hear it, but some of the evidence speaks for itself.

  I meant well.

  You have to believe that.

  THREE MONTHS AGO

  The thing you should know about my dad is that he was relentlessly normal. The only weird thing about him was the way he disappeared without a trace seven years ago.

  He was an assistant regional service manager for one of the big chain stores. I’m not going to say which one, but we got great discounts on electronic goods right around Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’m sure he had hobbies, but I don’t know what they were. He loved my mom, and used to give her a kiss or a squeeze as they maneuvered around the kitchen, enough for me to guess they still—well, you know—but not enough to be gross or embarrassing. He never raised his voice, except to remind Mom that there was no smoking inside the house. He was a fanatic about it, ever since I had had an asthma scare when I was three—or so I’d been told.

  Absolutely, totally, normal.

  He was good at the dad thing, too, until he vanished. We played this rhyming game when I was little where I would have to complete a rhyme with a part of my body. Like: “It’s something everybody else can see, the middle of your leg it’s got a—” and then he’d tickle it.

  We would spend hours building those Playmobil and Lego kits together, sprawled out on the floor of our guest room. The only time I ever heard my dad curse was when he stepped on one of the Legos, hopped up in the air, and then landed right on another piece. My mom was there, and I could see that she wanted to warn him about language, but she was laughing too hard. So was he, and so was I.

  Later, I got into the Beatles, which made him really happy. We made up a new game where we’d have to identify one of their songs using the fewest words. I still remember stumping him with “is not,” which, believe it or not, appears only once in all their lyrics. It’s in “Tomorrow Never Knows,” in case you
were wondering.

  Like I said, he hated smoking, so I can’t use the “he went out for cigarettes and never came back” line. Knowing what I know now, of course, I can’t use any line at all. I just assumed he was in some terrible accident and that he’d turn up in a hospital, face wrapped in bandages, wallet missing, identifiable by a birthmark only my mom knew about. It was the only explanation for something so…abnormal.

  I was in fourth grade, but I remember the whole thing sharp and clear. Came home from school, started homework, Mom got home, asked where Dad was, I said he wasn’t back yet, Mom grumbled because it was Dad’s turn to start dinner, she waited, we ordered sushi, I could see Mom rehearsing what she was going to say to Dad, it got late, Dad didn’t come, Mom tried calling his phone for the fifth, tenth, fifteenth time, I couldn’t go to sleep, I went to sleep.

  The next day I stayed home from school, and the day after that. I don’t particularly want to talk about the police, given my current circumstances. I will say, looking back, they seemed as caring, professional, and committed as possible given that they clearly assumed my dad had skipped out on us.

  So that sucked.

  * * *

  You probably need to know a bit about my house for this next part to make sense. It’s not an old house, but it’s not new, either: just your average ranch on a half-acre lot surrounded by other ranches that look pretty similar. We’re in this part of town that the real estate agents like to call “in transition.” It was built back after World War II when the plastics plant started up and they needed workers, but then things got kind of sketchy when the plant was automated and they let a lot of those workers go. Some people moved closer to the center of town, but we didn’t, so I grew up surrounded by empty houses. I used to think that was just bad luck or something, that Mom and Dad had made a mistake when they chose our house and we couldn’t afford to move.

  Looking back, I’m not so sure.

  It’s just me, no brothers or sisters, and we never did do much with the guest room. There’s a couch, and a desk with an old computer, and wedged in against the wall is a treadmill my mom and dad would occasionally get on after the holidays. I was more of an outdoor runner myself, although I tended to stick to the school track: I’d gotten shin splints once after hitting the pavement too hard, definitely not an experience I wanted to repeat.

  But then there was this one rainy Sunday three months ago.

  My mom was watching TV in the living room, smoking one cigarette after another, and I had a paper I was seriously putting off waiting for me in the bedroom. School had just started, junior year, and I was already drowning in homework. I had to get out of the house, but it was pouring, I mean, pouring. Finally I announced that I was off to use the treadmill, since my lungs were going to need all the help they could get. And before she could answer I stormed into the guest room and slammed the door shut, knocking a framed picture of my parents off the wall.

  That accident: verification step one. As it turned out.

  I thought I heard a click as the door closed behind me, but I was already on the treadmill starting to jog, then sprint, then run.

  So quickly, and so angrily, that the stupidest thing in the world happened: I slipped.

  I didn’t fall off the treadmill. My reflexes were too good for that. I grabbed the window frame right next to the treadmill for support, squeezing exactly the right—or wrong—place.

  Verification step two.

  Immediately, the small shag rug next to the treadmill slithered under the couch as a trapdoor opened to reveal an entrance to the basement.

  Here’s the thing, though. We live in a ranch house. We don’t have a basement.

  * * *

  But there it was: a circular opening, about the size of a manhole, leading down from our guest room into who-knows-where. It was concrete. Machine-smoothed. And, judging from the way the ladder leading down was rusted, it’d been there for a while. I tried to remember how long we’d lived in the house, and couldn’t remember exactly. Since before I started elementary school. More than a decade, I was sure.

  Is it weird that I didn’t call my mom in? I think it’s like—and I hope this never happens to you—if you discover evidence around the house of your parents engaging in, uh, adult activities, what you do not do is go over to one of them and tell them you’ve found the stuff from their drawer or on their hard drive or whatever. No, what you do, of course, is ignore the whole thing, forget about it, banish the images that have entered your consciousness, and never, ever bring it up for the rest of your natural life.

  Now, this wasn’t the same thing. At all. But there was a similar sense of the…forbidden.

  Maybe that was why I didn’t call Caroline right away. Which is what I would normally have done. But I had the feeling that this was something private. A secret.

  Family business.

  I think that was it. It’s hard to remember. Only three months ago, this was. But it seems like years.

  I took a deep breath and looked down into the hole. It was dark and I couldn’t see much, but really, what choice did I have? Maybe you have a different opinion, maybe you think you’d do something else, but then I think you’re not being honest with yourself.

  I hadn’t gone more than three rungs down when a set of lights switched on. I could see the rest of the ladder, now. It went down what looked like at least twenty feet to hit a plain concrete floor. Nothing else down there but the bottom of the ladder. Like some kind of deep, narrow, empty swimming pool.

  But that wasn’t the thing. This was the thing: someone had dug twenty feet under our house.

  We did a unit on local geography in Earth Science class in sixth grade. It’s all bedrock around here. Thus the ranch houses. Digging through twenty feet of solid rock: that’s just nuts.

  When I got to the bottom, I realized I was wrong: there was something else down there. You couldn’t see it from up top, but there was a door set into the wall. Just a plain old gray steel door with a pull handle, the kind you see around the back of any commercial building. If it wasn’t hiding under my house, I wouldn’t have paid the least bit of attention to it. Or to the keypad lock next to it, one with letters and numbers like on those old push-button phones.

  Considering what I’ve learned since, I guess the security could have been a lot worse. It could have been a retinal scanner. Even a DNA swab. The keypad must have been state of the art when it was installed and just never got upgraded. Which seems careless. Judging by the past few days, careless seems to run in the family….

  A locked steel door is still a locked steel door. I got up close to see if any of the numbers on the keypad looked more faded from repeated pushing—maybe it would help me guess the combination—but they all seemed the same.

  And then I thought I heard my mom calling.

  I got up that ladder and closed the trapdoor behind me so fast that if the JV coach had seen it he might’ve thought twice about cutting me during tryouts. I didn’t want Mom to come in and find me down a hole that shouldn’t exist.

  I think even then I’d realized this had something to do with my dad’s disappearance.

  But as it turned out, whatever guesses I had about how it was involved were wildly off base.

  Not one of them, for example, involved me dodging incoming missile fire.

  * * *

  The next day I skipped school, which wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

  I’d never tried it before. Like I keep telling you, I’m a good kid. Or, I guess, I was.

  It just meant doubling back after my mom dropped me off on her way to work, and avoiding the other carpooling moms and dads. A lot of hiding in bushes and behind buildings. I was going to have to make up a Biology test, and turn in a paper late, and probably forge an e-mail from my mom’s account, but all that seemed doable. I’ve known my mom’s password for years. She never changes it. Out o
f sentiment, I think—it’s Baileycutie01.

  I’m Bailey, by the way. Pleased to meet you.

  Now Mom’s going to have to change her password. Probably a good idea, though. There’ll be a lot of people interested in her now that she’s got two generations of felons in the family….

  My phone buzzed as I got back to my house. A text from Caroline.

  Where are you? What is going on? Are you sick? I told you that fifth piece of pizza was a bad choice. And the sixth was even worse.

  Caroline doesn’t use abbreviations in her texts. She says it’s because her mom, who is an English professor at the community college, would kill her. I think she likes being different.

  I texted her back that I was at home, that I was fine, and that I would see her tomorrow.

  Which led to like thirty more texts. Asking questions I didn’t know how to answer.

  Explain everything tomorrow promise promise, I promised, having no idea if, or how, I’d be able to.

  I am going to hold you to that promise, she texted back.

  To which I responded k bye . Then I put the phone down and took the photo frame off the guest room wall.

  Yeah. The photo. I’d noticed it lying on the floor when I climbed out that first time, once I realized Mom hadn’t been calling for me. It wasn’t until later that night that I wondered if there might be some connection: I was sure I’d touched the window frame plenty of times before, and I’d never seen any tunnel. So when I took the photo off the wall a second time and heard a faint click deep inside the walls, I wasn’t completely shocked.

  I grabbed the window—this time without the surprise and the scrambling to keep my balance—and the hatch in the floor slid open, pushing the rug aside. I climbed down and stood in front of the door, trying to figure out the pass code. But not trying too hard, really: I got it on the third try, after my dad’s birthday and my parents’ anniversary. It was his name: G-E-R-R-Y. The door opened, the floodlights went on, and I saw it for the first time.