Polar Distress Read online

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Grau, Sheila, author. | Sutphin, Joe (Children’s book illustrator), illustrator.

  Title: Polar distress / by Sheila Grau ; illustrated by Joe Sutphin.

  Description: New York : Amulet Books, 2017. | Series: Dr. Critchlore’s School for Minions ; book 3 | Summary: Runt joins a team from his school in icy Upper Worb, where they battle beasts and compete to find a rare mineral against a team from Dr. Pravus’s school that includes Runt’s former best friend, Syke.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016037984 | ISBN 9781419722943 (hardback)

  eISBN 978-1-68335-060-6

  Subjects: | CYAC: Monsters—Fiction. | Contests—Fiction. | Polar regions—Fiction. | Boarding schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Blessing and cursing—Fiction. | Mystery and detective stories. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic. | JUVENILE FICTION / Fairy Tales & Folklore / Adaptations. | JUVENILE FICTION / Humorous Stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.G73 Pol 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037984

  Text copyright © 2017 Sheila Grau

  Illustrations copyright © 2017 Joe Sutphin

  Book design by Julia Marvel

  Published in 2017 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

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  FOR RACHEL, RICKY, ALEX, AND DANIEL

  If at first you don’t succeed, you’re fired.

  —EVIL OVERLORDS TO NEW RECRUITS

  I was pretty sure the apple was poisoned. In my defense, I was really hungry.

  It was afternoon, I’d missed lunch, and now I was stuck in my junior henchman classroom, alone with Professor Murphy, who sat behind his giant desk, ignoring me. On my own desk was a plate with the apple, a small cage holding a mouse, a pocket chemistry set, my test sheet, and a pencil.

  We’d been studying food safety, an important job for henchmen, because they have to keep their overlords safe from enemies who want to poison their food.

  I knew what I had to do: carefully examine the surface of the apple for needle marks and other blemishes, cut a slice, use the poison-detecting mouse, and perform some chemical tests. I’d done it all. One side of the apple had a puncture mark. And even though Professor Murphy had used a “poison” that was safe to eat (but was detectable as a real poison), when I dropped a slice from the punctured side into the mouse’s cage, he wouldn’t even sniff it. The chemicals started foaming like a rabid werewolf as soon as they touched the slice. Finally, according to the test, the server had only just been hired (meaning: not trustworthy).

  I wrote all of this down, along with my conclusion: The apple was poisoned. My suggested course of action: Arrest the server and feed him the apple.

  In my mind, I’d completed the test.

  And then my stomach growled.

  Professor Murphy worked at his desk, scowling as he graded the essay portion of my exam. I stood up, grabbed my practical exam, and approached him. Without looking up, he pointed to a pile of papers on the corner of his desk. I dropped it on top.

  “You need a mentor, I believe,” he said, still focused on his papers. He hardly ever looked at me. It was as if he thought if he ignored me, I might go away.

  He was right, though. I didn’t have a mentor. My first mentor, Coach Foley, had gotten rid of me after I failed the first junior henchman test. My second mentor was Mistress Moira, the school seamstress/chocolatier, but she didn’t teach a class of minions, and one of the goals of the Junior Henchman Training Program was to teach us how to lead a group of students. Plus, she’d recently taken leave to find the witch who had cursed me.

  “I’m assigning you to Tootles,” Professor Murphy said.

  “Tootles?” I was confused. Tootles wasn’t a teacher—he was the head groundskeeper. “But he doesn’t teach a class of minions.”

  “No. He needs help with his Forest Restoration Project and asked me for a volunteer, so I’m assigning you.” He finally looked up at me, and then pointed to my desk. “Return to your seat until the test period is over,” he said, so I did.

  Well, this bites. All the other third-year junior henchmen trainees had great minions to lead. Rufus’s mentor taught the intermediate mummies. Janet had the imps, Jud had some giants, and Frieda led other ogre-men. Even the new kid, Meztli, had a great group of minions—some first-year monkey-men. Who did I have? Nobody. I wasn’t going to be able to march around school with my very own minions following me, doing what I told them to do. And, really, that was the best thing about being in the Junior Henchman Program.

  I sulked at my desk, alone. We had to take the quiz individually after school. Each of my classmates had already taken it and passed. It wasn’t a hard test.

  The ticking wall clock echoed in the silent room, a constant reminder of how slowly time can pass. I had fifteen minutes until the period was over. Fifteen minutes, going by in agonizingly slow tick . . . tick . . . ticks.

  Professor Murphy slashed and swished his red pen across the page with the relish of a fencer. He was killing my essay with a thousand forceful scratches.

  I looked at the apple on my desk. My stomach growled.

  The pen scratched.

  The clock ticked.

  I sliced off a piece of apple from the side that hadn’t been punctured. I gave a sliver to the mouse, who sniffed it once and then gobbled it up. I ate the rest of the piece. At the sound of my chewing, Professor Murphy looked up. His scowl was so severe, you’d have thought I’d just thrown the apple at the OUTSTANDING EDUCATOR plaque hanging on the wall behind him.

  He picked up my test, marked it with a giant red F you could probably see from the top of Mount Curiosity, and then came over and slammed it down onto my desk.

  “But I was done,” I said. “I went through the protocol. I marked everything I found on the test.” I pointed to the paper.

  “Your analysis indicated poison—but you just took a bite of the apple.”

  “It’s not real poison, and I missed lunch. I’m really hungry.”

  “Discipline is vitally important for a henchman,” he said. “You will not embarrass me by graduating from this program, getting my seal of approval, and failing in the first task your EO assigns you. Do you know how that would make me look?”

  Clearly, Professor Murphy hated me. He’d been trying to kick me out of the training program from the moment I entered his classroom. But Dr. Critchlore had placed me in the class. He’d reinstated me after Professor Murphy kicked me out, and then had reinstated me again after I’d gotten three “behavioral” strikes. Professor Murphy didn’t think I was junior henchman material, and he was super proud of all the students who graduated with his precious “seal of approval.”

  When he looked back
down, I tried to finish my apple slice as quietly as I could, but he heard me.

  “You think you can do whatever you want and Dr. Critchlore will save you every time?” he said. “Who do you think you are?”

  That was my problem. I didn’t know who I was.

  Exploding cigars, falling objects, poison, and old age.

  —LEADING CAUSES OF DEATH AMONG EVIL OVERLORDS

  For most of my life, I’d thought I was a werewolf. My earliest memories are of snuggling with my wolf family, running and playing with them in the forest, and howling together at night. I remember eating out of a bowl on the floor. But then so did my friend Boris, and he’s mostly human.

  Recently, I thought I might be a vaskor. The vaskor are terrifying creatures with horns and sharp claws, but they use glamour to appear human. My vaskor friend Sara had called me “family.” Maybe I’ve been walking around disguised all this time, I thought, my impressive monster form hidden beneath a runty human disguise.

  Nope. I was 100 percent human. It was a disappointment.

  And then I’d learned I was the missing prince of Andirat. A prince with a ridiculously long name that I couldn’t even remember. The prince’s family had been killed in a military coup, and the country had been split up by the generals who’d led the uprising. I’d spent my life dreaming of finding my family . . . only to discover that they were dead, my country gone.

  There was proof: I’d shown up at Dr. Critchlore’s School wearing the Andiratian royal attire and medallion, and at four years old I looked just like the prince in the family portrait. Never mind that I didn’t have any princely memories. And I wondered how many princes remember eating from a bowl on the floor.

  Still, it was all I had to go on, and I needed that clue because I was cursed to die on my sixteenth birthday. I had thick red bands around both wrists, which had shown up after I’d left Stull. Mistress Moira called the marks “a tethering curse,” to make sure I didn’t go outside the range of the death curse. So, really, I was twice cursed, and I had no idea why. Learning I was a prince was the first clue I had toward figuring that out.

  You can see how all this could get a guy down. But wait—there’s more! I’d also lost my best friend, Syke, who left the school after finding out that Dr. Critchlore had killed her mother. Syke’s mother was a hamadryad, and Dr. Critchlore had burned down the forest where she’d lived to make room for a boulderball field. We’d always believed that he had saved Syke from a fire when she was a baby. What we didn’t know was that he was the one who’d started the fire.

  Syke had grown up as Dr. Critchlore’s ward, but now she hated him. She hated me too for not telling her when I found out the truth. And also because I’d defended Dr. Critchlore. But I knew there had to be another reason for why he’d done it. The story just didn’t add up.

  Before leaving, Syke had gotten some revenge by using her Tornado in a Can™ to sabotage Dr. Critchlore’s office. She’d done some other stuff too, and now, according to Dean Everest, Syke was “persona non grata” at our school. That meant they didn’t want her to come back.

  She was currently living at the Great Library, next to a forest filled with hamadryads who had known her mother. She took classes at the Kobold Retraining Center, which was kind of ridiculous, because she wasn’t a kobold. I had seen her once in the three months she’d been gone, and her anger hadn’t faded one bit. She didn’t want to come back.

  It had been a depressing winter for me.

  After my test, I snuck into the kitchen, plopped myself down at Cook’s table in the corner, and hunched over my dinner tray, which was piled high with food. I was starving.

  Cook leaned against the table, ladle in hand. She tucked a stray hair back under her hairnet and sighed. “Runt, you’ve always been the happiest kid I’ve known,” she said as I stuffed my face with dinner rolls. She grabbed the last one out of my hand and pointed to my stew.

  “I keep thinking things like, I can’t wait for third period so I can hang out with Syke and complain about Professor Murphy. Who hates me, by the way.” I picked up a spoon and attacked the stew like I was in an eating competition.

  “He doesn’t hate you,” Cook said.

  “Yes, he does,” I said with a full mouth. Cook shook her head, so I finished chewing before adding, “He’s had it in for me ever since Dr. Critchlore selected me as a junior henchman trainee—and then put me back in the program after Professor Murphy kicked me out. Twice.”

  “Kids always think teachers have it in for them. Teachers aren’t like that.”

  Since when? I wanted to say, but instead I lifted the bowl to my face to finish off my stew. Then I turned to the pasta, mounded high on its own plate.

  “It’s been three months. You need to get over losing your friend,” Cook said. “Tootles and Riga are crushed, you know. They raised her like a daughter . . . and then she runs away like that.”

  “She probably thought they knew the truth too,” I said, still wanting to defend her. “She was mad at everybody here. You saw her.”

  “Well, she’s gone now. And good riddance, I say. After what she did to Dr. Critchlore’s office? And to the boulderball stadium? And to the Wall of Heroes? She could have seriously injured someone. I’m telling you, Runt, if that girl was still here, I’d forbid you from associating with her.

  “Now, then,” she went on. “Moping isn’t going to cheer you up. You need to get yourself out there. You have other friends—Darthin and Frankie. Eloni and Boris.”

  “Yes, but don’t you hear yourself?” I slurped up the last noodle and moved on to the chicken fingers. “They’re already best friends with each other. I’m like the useless third eyeball on a three-eyed cat.”

  “Well, go out and find a replacement best friend. And it wouldn’t hurt to try a vegetable once in a while.” She went over to the counter and returned with some green beans. “Syke’s leaving was a blessing in disguise. When you attach yourself too tightly to one person, you miss out on meeting a lot of interesting people. And monsters too, I suppose.”

  She pointed to the beans.

  I sighed. I hated green food. Unless it was frosting.

  “And cheer up, for goodness’ sake!” She put down the ladle and searched her apron pockets until she found her notebook and a pen. She ripped out a page and put it next to my tray. “Write down all the good things in your life . . . Go on.”

  I stared at the blank page, then looked up at Cook.

  She folded her arms and nodded at the paper.

  I wrote: Cook isn’t really going to make me eat these mushy green beans.

  She laughed. “Guess again.”

  I crossed that out and wrote: Hoopsmash season has started.

  Cook winced. She thought hoopsmash was too violent. Tackle three-ball was okay, but she did not want me playing hoopsmash, which is sort of an indoor combination of Tackle-the-Pill and Shoot for the Hoops.

  Doing well in classes (except for JH). I was acing all my classes: Literature, Math, Monster Biology, and Introduction to Sabotage.

  I’m a prince, I wrote, but then I crossed that out. I wasn’t sure that was good, or that it even mattered. Could you really be a prince if you didn’t have a country?

  I live in the most amazing place on the planet.

  I’ve grown two inches since school started.

  Janet Desmarais smiled at me this morning.

  “That’s a good list,” Cook said. “Feel better?”

  “I guess,” I said. I tucked my Good List in my pocket and got up to go. “Thanks, Cook. Do you know when Mistress Moira will be back?”

  Mistress Moira had left shortly after my return from the Great Library. Nobody knew where she’d gone. Aside from a letter of instruction on how to get rid of my tether curse, I hadn’t heard from her. I was hoping she’d be back before the next full moon, because I had a question about her instructions. There was something on her list that I really didn’t want to do.

  “Nobody knows,” Cook answered. “Bu
t I’m sure she’ll be back soon.”

  “Why are you sure?”

  “Because it makes me feel better to be sure.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Then I’m sure you’re not going to make seafood tetrazzini this week.”

  She was right. I did feel better.

  I left through the cafeteria, which was filled with the rest of the student body eating and talking. I passed the skeleton table, the siren table, the ogre-man table, and the cool shape-shifter table. As I approached my usual spot in the corner to say hi to the guys, the alarm bell sounded—three quick blasts.

  The screen at the end of the room blinked on, showing our fearless leader, Dr. Critchlore, smiling broadly. “Everyone, the day we’ve all been waiting for has arrived! Please, sit down and pay attention.”

  I sat down next to Darthin, wondering what Dr. Critchlore was talking about.

  “It’s must-see TV! Literally. You have to watch it—or face large fines and possibly imprisonment.”

  —TAGLINE FOR THE SHOW EVIL OVERLORD DINNER THEATRE

  Dr. Critchlore cleared his throat. “Students and faculty . . . It brings me great pleasure to share with you the following live episode of Evil Overlord Dinner Theater. The EOs love to broadcast how they punish people who displease them, and I’ve been waiting for tonight’s episode for months.

  “As you know, my nemesis, Dr. Pravus, has been charged with conduct unbefitting a minion-school headmaster. He has broken the Minion School Directives by sabotaging not only us but other minion schools as well. Now, after months of delays, he’s finally going to get his due.

  “Enjoy.”

  The scene switched to the council chamber, where five evil overlords sat behind a long desk on an elevated platform, looking down on a contrite Dr. Pravus. I’d seen him in person a few times, and each time I’d felt a desperate urge to crumple into a ball and beg for mercy. Now he stood humbly with his hands clasped in front of him.

  Wexmir Smarvy, the EO of Lower Worb, sat at the center of the judges’ panel. He was a bull of a man, with a square jaw, a thick mustache, and slicked-back black hair. He leaned forward to speak into his microphone, but no sound came out. A man rushed over to fix the problem, fiddling with some wires on the desk. He tapped the microphone, which echoed with his thumps, then motioned for Smarvy to continue.