The Fourth Stall Part III (9 page)

T
he next evening Vince, Staples, and I went to play miniature golf. It was another one of Staples's “brownie point” outings. I wasn't sure where the phrase “brownie points” came from, but I was starting to pretty much hate it. Because in our case it didn't involve scoring any points or eating any brownies. For us it simply meant getting slugged in the limbs a lot. Well, okay, maybe Staples had stopped doing that as much now that he knew his sister was mixed up in some sort of school war.

And so, yeah, maybe he wasn't quite the same bloodthirsty psycho he had been a year ago, but he was still plenty mean when he wanted to be. And being around him made me nervous. I mean, could anyone blame me if I never would truly trust the guy again?

“So I think the next step is that I should meet up with this Ken-Co kid to see if we can make a bargain with him somehow. I mean, paying him back in full will be basically impossible.” I hit my ball toward this ramp that would send it soaring over a mini waterfall. It was a pretty cool mini-golf course that Staples had taken us to; I'd give him that much.

“Wait, you have enough to cover it, don't you?” Staples said as he watched my ball sail not only over the waterfall but also right over the hole and bounce off some rocks that were technically out of bounds. “I mean, what happened to all your cash? You guys used to be loaded.”

I glanced at Vince, who was pretending to study the hole we were on.

Our dwindling cash supply was a touchy subject with him. Not because he was greedy or obsessed with money, necessarily. He was just overly cautious. It stressed him out anytime our cash dropped under three thousand dollars because a good business always has a lot of disposable cash or something like that. I usually zoned out when Vince would get into one of his financial mumbo-jumbo lectures.

“We've spent most of it,” I said. “Some cleaning up the mess last year, some just for fun over the summer, and some paying out old debts to longtime employees like Joe and Tyrell. Stuff like that. Plus, the Cubs are terrible again, so the Game Fund just didn't feel worth keeping anymore. And yeah, we've been getting a cut from Jimmy, but a cut is still just a cut. Fifteen percent does not equal four grand, not even in the best of years, and this has only been, what, like a month, maybe? How much money
do
we have left, anyway, Vince?”

I had a general idea, but Vince was our money guy so he'd know for sure.

“Last I checked we were down to $1612.86 in all of our Funds combined,” Vince said. “Those are all of our liquid assets.”

“That's it?” Staples said as he drained his second putt into the cup.

“Hey, it goes faster than you realize when there's not as much money coming in,” I said, scooping my ball out of the hole after logging a six.

Staples just shook his head in disbelief. I could see why he was shocked. Way back when he'd stolen all of our Funds, there'd been over six grand all combined. We were worth just a fraction of what we used to be.

“Where does that leave us?” Staples asked.

“I think I'll have to go pay this Ken-Co a visit. To see if we can work out some sort of deal or payment plan or something. I mean, he runs a pretty good business from the sound of it, so I'm sure he's a reasonable dude. Besides, he's only a fourth or fifth grader, supposedly.”

“I still can't believe we're digging Jimmy out of this pro bono,” Vince said.

“Well, it's more about helping Staples and all the other kids than it is helping Jimmy, but I know what you mean. It does feel like he's getting a free ride here, doesn't it? We'll probably have to neutralize him somehow once this is all over.”

“And I also can't believe we're getting involved again. I mean, we could have been out, Mac!”

“I know, but what choice do we have now? The only thing left that we can do is fix this and then get the business shut down for good. Ken-Co can have this town if he wants; our school has to be out after this, completely.”

As I said that, I hit my ball and it passed through a mechanical alligator's opening and closing mouth, came out the tail, and dropped into the cup.

“Yeah!” I said. “Hole in one!”

I jumped up and did a celebratory dance like I'd just scored a touchdown. I was really just kidding around; I didn't care that much about a game of mini golf.

“Nice job, buddy,” Staples said, and then proceeded to slug me in the arm so hard that my celebration instantly came to a close and I almost went tumbling down the side of the fake miniature mountain that the course was built on.

Vince laughed at me and lined up for his putt.

As Staples walked by him, he clipped Vince's putter with his own during Vince's backswing, and Vince's ball ricocheted off the side wall and bounced down the side of the mountain we'd been working our way up.

Now it was Staples's turn to laugh as Vince sighed and started off down the mountain to retrieve his ball, apologizing to other golfers as he stepped across neighboring holes. I shook my head. We needed to get this mess resolved before Staples accidentally killed us while goofing around. I could just see the headline now:
LOCAL TEEN'S ARM EXPLODES FOLLOWING RECEIPT OF 158TH CONSECUTIVE PUNCH
.

T
hat Wednesday I took a sick day from school in order to go pay Ken-Co a visit at Thief Valley Elementary. If his business was anything like mine, then the only way I could get an appointment was to show up on a school day. Which was risky business for me.

First, it meant I had to sneak around another school even though I wasn't a student there. In my experience, schools typically don't like random people, especially those older than their students (like me), just hanging around and acting suspiciously. It gives off the wrong kind of vibe, and if I was caught, it would almost definitely get back to Dickerson somehow. I was pretty sure that all principals were not only friends outside of work, but probably had some sort of Secret Suit Society that met every other Saturday night in a clearing in the woods behind the local Walmart. They all probably wore bathrobes over their business suits and sieves as hats, and recited enchantments and cast spells on their especially challenging troublemakers, and boiled cauldrons full of burned coffee and giggled and ate popcorn, and told stories, and then finished with a rousing game of truth or dare before sacrificing a goat to Principal Emperor Mr. Belding. You never could know for sure with principals.

And the other reason that it was risky was that I had to skip school. Because school was obviously not like your parents' jobs where they just get vacation days. I mean, all absences needed to be excused somehow. Especially for me with Dickerson all over me like he had been. Luckily getting kids out of school used to be one of my specialties. It was one of the more popular requests I got back when I'd run my business.

When kids needed a way out of school, I always called in Mike “My-Me” Winslow. He was the master of impressions. He could impersonate anyone or anything. In class he once did this impression of a squeaky wheel every time the teacher sat in her chair. It sounded so real that the teacher kept calling down to the office to get the chair fixed. The teacher called down so many times that eventually the school just bought her a whole new chair. Then when she sat in the new chair for the first time My-Me did the squeaking noise again, but this time just slightly different. The look on the teacher's face was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen in my life. Even though I did feel kind of bad for her—I mean, I definitely hoped My-Me's prank didn't have anything to do with this teacher's mental breakdown later that year where she showed up to school wearing waffles on her feet and shoes on her hands.

So, anyways, the thing was My-Me could impersonate adult voices so well that the attendance secretary never called the parents at work to verify that the sick calls were real like she sometimes did if the call sounded suspicious in any way. Part of his trick, in addition to just the awesome adult sound of his impressions, was that he was the master of using weird phrases and words that only old people used, such as: “I'm afraid he's come down with a case of the chills” or “He's sick as a dog” or “She's a bit under the weather today.”

So my day started with an early morning phone call to My-Me. He was used to this. My waking him at six or sometimes even five in the morning for emergency cases was something he was typically well-compensated for in our past dealings.

“Mac. Haven't heard from you in a while,” he said, sounding half-asleep still.

“Yeah, well, as you know, I'm not really in business anymore.”

“Yeah, exactly, so what's up?” He didn't sound angry or annoyed but definitely curious as to why I'd interrupted his dreams a full hour before he probably normally woke up each morning.

“I need a personal favor this time, one which you'll still be paid the usual fee for,” I said.

“You need a sick call for yourself?” he asked, sounding surprised.

I'd never actually had My-Me call me personally in sick before. I'd always made it a habit to not miss school in the past, since, when you had a business operation like the one I'd been running for the past five years, missing school meant lost business. Lost business meant lost profits.

“You up for it?”

“Hey!” he said, transforming his voice into that of a shouting forty-year-old dude from Brooklyn, an impression of this old comedian that he sometimes did. “Hey! What do I look like? A sausage? Of course I'm up for it! Hey!”

I laughed. “Great. Just give me the standard sick call. One day is all I need.”

“Hey, you got it, pal,” he said, still in character. “Hey!”

S
taples dropped me off a few blocks away from Thief Valley around nine o'clock. I'd walk the rest of the way. Staples wanted to keep his distance from his sister's school during the week until he got the go-ahead from the courts to have official custody. Apparently, he'd been involved in some pretty unsavory business here in the past.

“See you,” I said as I got out of his car.

I didn't really have much of a plan yet. I had plenty of experience at breaking into schools, but always my own. And I usually had a key. I had zero experience doing anything at other schools except for going to sports events and playing baseball games. I didn't even know where Ken-Co's office was or how to find him.

But I was sure I'd think of something. I always did.

From the outside it looked like any other school. The outside looked pretty quiet. I was guessing morning recess would be around ten o'clock. I would probably keep my distance until then and scope the place out.

After circling the school, I'd discovered that it had five entrances/exits, one playground, one junky baseball field (if you could call it that), and two small parking lots. Recess was likely going to be my best shot to get in undetected, since I could probably just blend in with the other kids.

It seemed to take forever for recess to arrive. I was waiting across the street behind a row of bushes in somebody's front yard. I kept sneaking glances at the house behind me, worried that the owner might come running out and chase me off with a rake or something. Or sic a bloodthirsty rottweiler on me. Or even worse, call the cops.

But there wasn't any activity from inside that I could see. Well, at least not at first. Probably the third time I looked back, there was a kid in the window. He was young, probably too young to be in school yet, but old enough to stand and walk and maybe talk. His face and shoulders were all I could see, and he was like a statue, just staring at me with a blank expression on his face. I almost ran but was too creeped out to even move at all. The worst part was that the kid was wearing a black suit and tie. What kind of five-year-old wears a suit at nine thirty in the morning?

I tried to ignore his stare. When I turned to face the school, I could still feel it boring into me like a laser. I glanced back again. He was still there, not moving, not smiling. Nothing. Just staring.

Thief Valley gave me the creeps.

Just when I thought I couldn't take it anymore, I heard the recess bell from across the street. I made my move, darting out from behind the bushes. I had to time this perfectly or I'd be noticed.

I ran across the street and ducked behind a car in the parking lot nearest the playground. A few kids were starting to trickle outside now, as well as a few recess supervisors. I moved closer, staying behind the parked cars.

Then suddenly there was another kid right next to me, crouching behind the car.

I gasped and almost ate some gravel. But I gathered myself enough to say, “Tyrell?”

The kid looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “Who?”

Now that I had a better look at him, I realized it wasn't Tyrell at all. But he had looked like him for just a second. And more than that, Tyrell was the only kid I knew who could sneak up and get within inches of me without making a single noise.

“Sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

“Nope, not Someone Else. My name's LT,” he said, offering his hand.

I didn't know many grade-school kids that shook hands when meeting someone unless they were making business deals, but I shrugged and shook it anyway. “Zack.”

I figured there was no benefit from telling him my real name.

“Okay, ‘Zack,'” he said, putting a weird emphasis on my fake name, clearly not buying it, “want to tell me why you've been across the street spying on our school for the past half hour? Not to mention making a sweep around the outside as if taking inventory?”

“I . . . ,” I started, but stopped.

The truth was I didn't know what to say.

“Right,” he said. “Well, just let me warn you, whatever you got going on, man, you best be careful. Ken-Co doesn't really appreciate uninvited guests hanging out around the school, you know.”

I nodded, relieved that it seemed like he wasn't going to turn me in for whatever reason. Then as suddenly as he'd arrived, he was gone. So I guessed Ken-Co had his own version of Tyrell. That partially explained why he ran such a good operation. A business is only as good as its employees.

The sound of a full-fledged recess in progress turned my attention back to the mission at hand. I realized I probably should have asked LT where to find Ken-Co, but I'd been too stunned to even think of it. I peeked at the playground; hundreds of kids played on equipment, lounged around talking, or were playing a variety of other games near the baseball field.

I came out from behind the car and ran to the edge of the building. As soon as I was sure both recess supervisors were not looking, I casually walked out from behind the school and sauntered my way into the crowds of kids.

There were kids of all different ages and heights and sizes. I tried to group myself near the biggest of them, who were mostly just standing around talking and joking in between the slide and the baseball field's outfield. Luckily for me, I was still pretty short for a seventh grader, so I didn't stick out among the fifth and sixth graders. Well, at least not at first glance. It was pretty clear right away that the kids noticed I didn't belong here.

“Hey, kid, who are you?” asked one of them. A particularly big and hairy grade schooler who looked kind of like Sasquatch. In fact, the word “Yeti” was literally written all over his face in huge and elaborate black lettering. I couldn't tell if it was a tattoo or if he just had a really bad self-drawing habit.

Either way, I ignored him and joined a group of four kids and pretended to laugh at one of their jokes. They made faces at me that said stuff like “Who is this geek?” The whole thing was about as awkward as it sounds, but I didn't know what else to do. I clearly was not as good at this kind of stuff as Tyrell. I didn't know what I'd been expecting, but this was definitely going a lot worse than I'd imagined. This type of stuff always looked way easier in the movies.

A hand grabbed my shoulder and spun me around.

“Hey, kid, I was talking to you,” Sasquatch said. “What are you doing here, huh?”

Even though he was younger than me (well, unless he'd been held back a few years, that is, which is entirely possible considering his flat caveman head and soft feathery mustache), he was still at least several inches taller.

“Me?” I said, trying to sound offended.

“Yeah, you!”

There was a group forming around us now. This wasn't going well. Not at all.

“Hey, I'm new here. It's my first day,” I said, trying to look like a terrified fifth grader.

“He's lying!” someone in the crowd shouted.

Were TV kids clairvoyant? I mean, they'd sniffed me out like I was wearing a vest made of fish heads under my clothes or something. It would have been almost laughable were I not getting pretty concerned that Sasquatch was going to take out his anger about using such poor judgment in getting “Yeti” labeled all over his face on my relatively small head.

Then Sasquatch shoved me. I kept my balance only because I crashed into the wall of kids behind me who just shoved me back into the middle of the circle of kids that had formed. Sasquatch laughed and so did a lot of the crowd.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Look, I just came here to see Ken—”

But I couldn't finish my sentence because it's hard to talk when a giant hairy fist is smashing into your mouth. Sasquatch's totally unprovoked punch knocked me back and definitely stunned me, but I was still on my feet. I tasted some blood where my lip had split open slightly.

“Fight!” someone yelled.

The crowd grew as Sasquatch came at me again. This time I was able to duck easily under his wild right hook. As I passed him, I clipped the side of his heel with my foot. He sprawled onto the dirt. Kids booed, some yelled, and some cheered, likely just for the fight itself rather than for me specifically.

How the heck did I get myself into a fight within thirty seconds of being here? The kids of Thief Valley were just a bunch of hairy, creepy, suit-wearing, face-tattooing, bloodthirsty psychos. Sasquatch climbed to his feet with a scowl on his face that distorted one of the “Yeti”s on his face into a “Yet.” He let out a short scream of pure primordial rage like he really was a giant mountain-dwelling beast.

I figured I was about to find myself flying about eighty feet through the air, but an authoritative voice silenced all of us.

“What is going on here?” one of the recess supervisors shouted.

The crowd parted, and she came lumbering in between me and Sasquatch. She saw the scrapes on his elbows and then grabbed my arm firmly, before I even had a chance to make a break for it.

“He tripped me,” Sasquatch said, and then started crying.

I was impressed by his instant waterworks but also disgusted that he'd stoop that low. He was a BNT (bull-n-tell), the absolute worst kind of bully of them all. The sort of kid who just bullied other kids mercilessly and then as soon as anyone ever tried to fight back, they'd start crying and tattle.

“He punched me first,” I said, pointing at my lip with my free hand.

The recess supervisor looked at me. I thought she was studying my lip, but it turns out she was looking for something else.

“You don't go to school here,” she said, ignoring my split lip altogether.

“Yes, I do,” I said, knowing the lie was weak, but it was my only hope.

“No, he doesn't,” a few kids from the crowd said. “He doesn't go here.”

What was with the kids here? Narcs, all of them.

“Whose class are you in?” she asked, her beady eyes glowing a smug
I Told You So
.

“Uh, Mrs. Johnson's?” I tried.

“Oh really?” she asked.

I nodded.

“So I'm supposed to believe that you're in first grade, then?”

I nodded again, not knowing what else to do. All of my guts had melted now, along with my lungs and brain. They were all pooled inside my legs, making them weak. It took everything I had not to just collapse. There was no way out of this now.

“Yeah,” I said in a voice that was clearly trying way too hard to sound like a first grader. “I want my mommy!”

A few kids laughed at my pathetic attempt to sound like a first grader, but the recess supervisor was not amused. I could tell by the way she was baring her teeth at me like a snarling dog.

“Well, what you're going to get is a trip to the principal's office and then probably a trip to your own school's principal,” she said.

And just like that it was all over. I was going to be expelled.