Avery Overman's Adventures In Underbed

By Robert Rodi

Avery Overman has a very high temperature. In fact, his mom says he's "burning up" and makes him stay in bed in the middle of the day. Avery doesn't like being treated like a baby, but he has to admit he isn't feeling very good; he's dizzy and he's sweating a lot. When he accidentally falls out of his covers, he notices how much nicer it looks under the bed: darker, quieter, and cooler. So he shimmies beneath the box spring...and discovers that Underbed is actually a bigger place than he ever imagined—a strange world filled with cattle rustlers and mobsters and robots and alligators, and a slippery menace called Copperhead who seems to be after Avery himself. His only hope of survival is a charming but mysterious protector who is never quite what he seems to be. ~ Wickedly funny, fast-paced and suspenseful, Avery Overman's Adventures In Underbed is a 21st-century descendant of Alice In Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, with more crazy changes of scene than you can get from flipping TV channels. It's a wild ride through sheer imagination, with an ending that warms the heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Rodi
• Release date: May 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310541551

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Avery, hold still for pity’s sake."

He stopped squirming across the bed sheets and looked up. What does that mean? he asked his mother. Who is ‘Pity’ and why should I do anything for his sake?

She tried to pry open his jaws, but he’d clamped them shut once he finished talking. It’s an expression, that’s all. Avery, honestly, open your mouth!

You shouldn’t use an expression if you don’t understand it, he tried to say while keeping his teeth clenched; but he’d forgotten that he’d knocked one of his molars out after falling out of a tree onto the sidewalk. His mother just stuck the thermometer right into the gap and said, "Hold that under your tongue. Avery, I mean it."

And another thing, he said, causing the thermometer to bob up and down like a conductor’s baton, "how am I supposed to honestly open my mouth? Is there a way a person can dishonestly open his mouth?"

Don’t ask so many questions, she said, trying to hold the thermometer still for him. I swear, sometimes I think I’d give you a hundred dollars if you’d just stop talking for thirty seconds.

Would now be one of those times? he asked, sensing an opportunity.

No, it would not. She plucked the thermometer from his lips and gave it a very severe look. Oh, dear. You’re burning up.

Like the Human Torch? he asked, not entirely displeased with the idea.

No; burning up on the inside. She lay her hand on his forehead. You’re like a furnace in there. She took away her hand and Avery saw that it was slick with his sweat. She wiped it on her jeans.

Suddenly Avery realized that he was indeed feeling very warm, and that the pajamas he was wearing were damp in the crooks of his elbows and his knees. He kicked off the covers and said, Open the window.

It’s already open, said his mother. And Avery, magic word.

"I don’t have to say please if it’s already open. He felt a little shiver of triumph; but then he thought of something else. Please turn the fan on."

It is on, said his mother as she poured him a tall glass of water.

But he was looking right at it, right at the fan’s big white blades; and it didn’t seem to be moving. Or did it? … For some reason it was hard to tell. Then he lowered his gaze and saw what was wrong:

"Mom, you idiot, it’s not the fan, the whole room is spinning!"

She put down the pitcher and gently pushed him back into the pillows—which, he now noticed, were damp as well. The room’s not spinning, she said; "your head is. You have a very, very high fever, young man, and until it breaks you have to remain very quiet. You need rest and repose, do you understand me?"

No. What does ‘repose’ mean?

Not moving. Like a statue. Pretend you’re a statue.

I never saw a lying-down statue before.

Pretend you’re one that fell over. She pulled the covers back up over him.

Did anything break off? My arm, or my head?

Nothing broke off. You fell onto a pile of leaves. She tucked the covers back under the mattress and said, There. Don’t want you getting a chill.

He could feel the perspiration trickling down his temples and into his ears. How could anyone get a chill in this room? It’s like an oven!

If you get too warm, have some water, she said. "It’s right here on the stand next to your bed. Avery, are you listening to me?"

How could I avoid it? he said. Suddenly her voice sounded so loud, so harsh; he really, really wanted her to stop talking. It was almost starting to hurt his brain. And so he did something that, for Avery Overman, was very, very unusual: He let his mother have the last word. He shut his mouth tight and resisted the urge to say anything as she told him to get some sleep and to call out for her if he needed her; then she gave him a very light kiss on the tip of his nose and carried the tray with the pitcher out of the room and shut the door. When she was gone, the silence was a tremendous relief; but also the temperature seemed to drop. He hadn’t realized till now how much heat she gave off.

He kicked off the sheets and blanket again; he couldn’t stand the weight of them on his legs. His mom was always trying to do that, cover him up, smother him alive. He’d seen a movie once, where a lady actually walled her son up with bricks, right off her living room, so that she had him right there to talk to, forever. He remembered being glad his mom was in the kitchen at the time, ’cause she didn’t need any new ideas.

‘Repose’ is a stupid word for being like a statue, he muttered to himself. "You can’t re-pose a statue. It’s in the same pose forever." He sneered at how lazy and inaccurate his mom was with language; it drove him crazy sometimes, the way she talked. Like words didn’t even matter.

He lay there for a little while imagining, what if you could re-pose statues. It’d be great if anyone who went to a museum could change a statue they didn’t like, just by rearranging its arms and legs. He thought of sneaking in one night, past the guards, and changing all the statues of Zeus and President Lincoln and everybody else, so that in the morning when the first visitors came in they’d all look like they were scratching their butts.

Suddenly he was very thirsty, so he sat up to have a drink of water. He swung