Klonk! “Ow! The Klingon got me!”

I rubbed my head and kicked my life-sized photo of a Klingon—one of those warlike aliens on Star Trek—out of the way. I’d been reaching for one of my favorite books, Ant Attack on Pluto, when the big hunk of cardboard fell off the top shelf and klonked me on the head.

I kicked the Klingon again. “Take that, you evil piece of cardboard!”

I was fed up. My stuff kept attacking me.

My room was packed with junk. Things were always leaping off the walls and whacking me on the head. This wasn’t the first time.

“Uhn!” I gave the Klingon another kick for good measure.

“Matthew Amsterdam, twelve-year-old geek.” My older brother, Greg, stood in my bedroom doorway, murmuring into a tape recorder.

“Get out of my room!” I grumbled.

Greg totally ignored me. He always does.

“Matt is skinny, small for his age, with a round, piglike baby face,” he said. He was still talking into the tape recorder.

“Matt’s hair is so blond that, from a distance, he almost looks bald.” Greg spoke in a deep, fake voice. He was trying to sound like the guy who describes animals on those nature shows.

“At least I don’t have a Brillo pad sitting on my head,” I cracked.

Greg and my sister, Pam, both have wiry brown hair. Mine is white-blond and really thin. Mom says my dad had the same hair as me. But I don’t remember him. He died when I was a baby.

Greg smirked at me and went on in that Wild Kingdom voice. “Matt’s natural habitat is a small bedroom filled with science-fiction books, models of alien spacecraft, comic books, dirty socks, rotten pizza crusts, and other geekazoid stuff. How can Matt stand it? Scientists are puzzled by this. Remember, geeks have always been a mystery to normal humans.”

“I’d rather be a geek than a nerd like you,” I said.

“You’re not smart enough to be a nerd,” he shot back in his regular voice.

My sister, Pam, appeared beside him in the doorway. “What’s happening here in Geek World?” she asked. “Did the mother ship finally come for you, Matt?”

I threw Ant Attack on Pluto at her.

Pam is in tenth grade. Greg is in eleventh. They gang up on me all the time.

Greg spoke into his tape recorder again. “When threatened, the geek will attack. However, he is about as dangerous as a bowl of mashed potatoes.”

“Get out!” I yelled. I tried to close the door, but they blocked it.

“I can’t leave,” Greg protested. “I have a school project. I have to watch everybody in the family and write a paper about how they act. It’s for social studies.”

“Go watch Pam pick her nose,” I snapped.

Pam knocked Greg aside and pushed her way into the room. She grabbed me by the neck of my Star Trek T-shirt.

“Take that back!” she ordered.

“Let go!” I cried. “You’re stretching out my shirt!”

“Matthew is very touchy about his geek clothes,” Greg mumbled into the recorder.

“I said, take that back!” Pam shook me. “Or I’ll sic Biggie on you!”

Biggie is our dog. He’s not big—he’s a dachshund. But he hates me for some reason.

With everybody else—even total strangers—he wags his tail, licks their hands, the whole bit. With me, he growls and snaps.

Once Biggie sneaked into my room and bit me in my sleep. I’m a heavy sleeper—it takes a lot to wake me up. But believe me, when a dog bites you, you wake up.

“Here, Biggie!” Pam called.

“Okay!” I cried. “I take it back.”

“Good answer,” Pam said. “You win the noogie prize!” She started knocking me on the head.

“Ow! Ow!” I gasped.

“The geek’s sister gives him noogies to the head,” Greg commented. “Geek says, ‘Ow’.”

Finally Pam let me go. I stumbled and collapsed on my bed. The bed knocked against the wall. A pile of books rained down on me from the shelf over my head.

“Give me that tape recorder for a second,” Pam said to Greg. She snatched it from him and yelled into the microphone. “The geek is down! Thanks to me, Pamela Amsterdam, the world is safe for cool people again! Woo! Woo! Woo!”

I hate my life.

Pam and Greg use me as their human punching bag. Maybe if Mom were around more, she’d be able to stop them.

But she is hardly ever around. She works two jobs. Her day job is teaching people how to use computers. And her night job is typing at a law firm.

Pam and Greg are supposed to be taking care of me. They take care of me, all right.

They make sure I’m miserable twenty-four hours a day.

“This room stinks,” Pam groaned. “Let’s get out of here, Greg.”

They slammed the door behind them. My model space shuttle fell off the dresser and crashed to the floor.

At least they left me alone. I didn’t care what mean things they said, as long as they went away.

I settled on my bed to read Ant Attack on Pluto. I’d much rather be on the planet Pluto than in my own house—even with giant ants shooting spit rays at me.

My bed felt lumpy. I shoved a bunch of books and clothes to the floor.

I had the smallest bedroom in the house—of course. I always got the worst of everything. Even the guest room was bigger than my room.

I didn’t understand it. I needed a big room more than anybody! I had so many books, posters, models, and other junk that there was barely room for me to sleep.

I opened my book and started reading. I came to a really scary part. Justin Case, a human space traveler, was captured by the evil ant emperor. The ant emperor closed in on him, closer, closer…

I shut my eyes for a second—just a second—but I guess I fell asleep. Suddenly I felt the ant emperor’s hot, stinking breath on my face!

Ugh! It smelled exactly like dog food. Then I heard growling. I opened my eyes.

It was worse than I thought. Worse than an ant emperor. It was Biggie—ready to spring!