Free Sinister Substitute by Wendelin Van Draanen

Damien Black, logic is not always the linchpin of reasoning.
    In other words, he sometimes does things that are puzzling.
    Bamboozling.
    Odd, illogical, and unnecessary.
    One might almost suspect that the dastardly, demented Damien Black was a little trigger-shy when it came to actually
killing
someone.
    But that would be a silly thing to suspect, given his track record of diabolical deeds, now wouldn’t it?
    It would be wiser (and decidedly more logical) to suspect that the devilish Damien Black simply relished the experience and wanted to prolong the process.
    Enjoy the agony.
    Savor each and every torturous moment.
    Ah, yes. Anyone would agree. This behavior was simply reflective of the villain’s mental state,as opposed to, say, a soft spot in his devilishly diabolical heart.
    But let’s get back to the pointy point, shall we? Which is that Damien did not simply chuck Veronica Krockle into the shaft and let her splat to her death. Instead, like a fiendish Tarzan in a flapping black coat, he leapt onto the knotted rope, swinging himself and his spiky-heeled Jane aboard. Then,
thump-wump-BUMP, thump-wump-BUMP
, he rode the rope down, down, down into the darkness below.
    The instant Damien was gone, Dave crawled out of the ductwork and hurried toward the shaft. Unfortunately, the Bandito Brothers were descending the tower steps as Dave and Sticky went by.
    “Hey!” Pablo cried. “It’s the boy!”
    “Get him!” Angelo shouted, waddling down the steps.
    “Ándale, hombre!”
Sticky cried, whipping thefabric of Dave’s sweatshirt like the reins of a horse.
    Now, Sticky’s command (and the whipping) was quite unnecessary, as Dave had already
ándaled
. It was also quite unfortunate, as there’s only one voice like Sticky’s, and that is (you guessed it) Sticky’s.
    “Sticky!” Tito squealed. “Wait up, little buddy!”
    Dave wasn’t about to wait up. Oh no. He raced full speed ahead. But when he reached the hole in the floor, he instantly reeled back. “How far down does that go?” he gasped.
    “You have no choice,
señor!
Get on the rope!”
    “Where
does it go?”
    “I have no idea,
señor!
Just go!”
    Dave glanced over his shoulder. The Bandito Brothers were closing in fast. He could see the hairs sticking out of Angelo’s arms. He could see a drip glistening on the edge of Pablo’s pointy nose. And there was the frightening twinkle in Tito’s eyes (not to mention the alarmingly goofy grin spread from cheek to stubbly cheek).

    “Now!” Sticky cried.
    And so Dave jumped onto the knotted rope and went…
    Nowhere.
    “Ah!” he warbled. “How do I make this thing go?”
    The Bandito Brothers were upon them now, and rather than waste any more time on the rope, Dave took a leap of faith (as he was never entirely sure the wristband’s powers would actually work) and dived for the far wall of the shaft.
    “Gecko Power is
asombrrrrroso!”
Sticky cried as they scurried down the wall of the shaft.
    Above them, the Bandito Brothers were beside themselves with wonder.
    They were blinking and bug-eyeing and sputtering at the mouth.
    Their eyebrows were knitting and crossing and flying around all over their foreheads.
    They were, in short, freaking out.
    “Did you see that?” they all asked each other. “How did he
do
that?”
    Now, they had, in fact, seen Dave scale walls before, but it had always been in an upward direction. In an it-could-have-been-a-rock-climber fashion. Mere mortals have, after all, scaled tall buildings armed with nothing more than their fingers and toes (and, okay, a hearty dose of insanity).
    But going headfirst
down
a wall?
    Even Tito recognized that this was an impossible feat.
    “Maybe the lizard and the boy are switched!” Angelo said, his eyes growing wide. “Maybe the boy’s in the lizard’s body and the lizard’s in the boy’s body.”
    This seemed to snap Pablo out of his trance.His squinty eyes pinched down as he looked at Angelo. “That’s the stupidest