Free Seven Dead Pirates by Linda Bailey Page B

“local history” they were going to study. He forced his eyes open.
    But at afternoon recess, crouched and leaning against the back wall of the school, he fell again into a doze.
    “Hey, look at this!” Seth’s voice. “Lewisser’s gone sleepy-bye.”
    Lewis burrowed his chin into his jacket. Ostrich, he told himself.
    “Nice hair!” said Seth. “Maybe we can make it even nicer …”
    Other voices laughed. The boys in white.
    Before Lewis could move, something rubbed hard across the top of his head. A sharp sweet odor filled the air.
    He jumped up, grabbing his head. Perfume! Seth had smeared perfume in his hair.
    He looked around. The boys in white had bolted. But Seth was still there, wagging a foil packet—the kind that comes free in the mail.
    “It’s called
Sweet Dreams
,” he said. “Smells good on you, Dearborn.”
    Lewis ran for the washroom and straight into a cubicle. He hid there till he was sure the room was empty. Then he washed his hair, sticking his head in a sink and using the pink liquid soap.
    After recess, Ms. Forsley sniffed the air. She said she didn’t know who was using perfume, but whoever it was, she would like them to stop because some people, including her, were allergic.
    Lewis twisted his pencil in his fingers until it snapped. Bite marks mottled the yellow paint.
    Abbie’s hand slowly reached back toward him. It dropped a folded paper on his desk. He opened it.
    Something stinks in this class, and it’s not perfume
.
    He read it again.
    Was she talking about
him
? Was she saying
he
stunk? Maybe he smelled musty, like Shornoway. Or worse, like the pirates. That dead-fish smell.
    For the rest of the day, he barely moved, showing nothing. He sat so stiffly, his neck hurt.
    When he got home, his father and Mrs. Binchy were in the kitchen. Mr. Dearborn was up to his wrists in dough.
    “Torta rustica!” he called. “I’ve been eager to try it.”
    “Your father has the knack,” added Mrs. Binchy. “It’s a gift!”
    Lewis took a closer look at his father, and his heart sank. Mr. Dearborn was wearing a
hairnet
.
    And bad as that was, it was just part of a much bigger craziness. His father was now collecting cookbooks. Huge, heavy ones you could hardly lift. He’d brought home a crepe pan, too—from France—and a stock pot so big it barely fit on the stove. He and Mrs. Binchy were making way too much food, and the freezer was filling with leftovers no one could eat. It was like that fairy tale about the porridge pot that overflows till the whole town is swamped.
    As Lewis left the kitchen, he thought, not for the first time, that it was no wonder he wasn’t normal. How
could
he be?
    He stood under a hot shower for fifteen minutes, scrubbing his hair, then used his father’s deodorant afterward. At dinner, he discovered that torta rustica was a kind of vegetable pie. It didn’t
sound
good, but the taste was amazing. Everyone had large helpings. Even so, they barely made a dent in the enormous pie.
    “And where are you sleeping tonight?” asked his father. “Seeing as you seem to have two bedrooms now?”
    Before Lewis could answer—he actually wasn’t sure how he
would
answer—his mother broke in.
    “For goodness sake, Lewis, must you slouch? You’ll ruin your spine that way.”
    He jerked up straight in his chair. “The tower,” he told his father in a firm voice. “
That’s
where I sleep.”
    Upstairs, the pirates were waiting in their storytime circle. Skittles clutched the book.
    “HOOK!” they chanted, as Lewis walked in. “HOOK! HOOK! HOOK!”
    He read for most of an hour, searching, as before, for the pages that featured Captain Hook. These weren’t always easy to find, and the pirates grew impatient while he looked. Not only that, he was already repeating the same bits.
    “Excuse me,” he said finally. “I don’t mind reading. But maybe … could we find another book?”
    His audience erupted in shouts. “Stow it! No! We likes