Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow (2 page)

He closed his eyes and grimaced as he waited to see if Mrs. Pinkerton would allow that answer.

Mrs. Pinkerton paused. “Correct.”

Dexter nearly fainted.

“Next?”

“Beryllium.”

Sarah smacked her hand on her face. “Lithium,” she muttered. “Lithium!”

“I mean lithium,” Dexter said.

Mrs. Pinkerton let out an inhuman growl and Jacob saw purple veins popping out on her face in places he didn't even know people had veins. She grasped her ruler and broke it over her knee, flinging the pieces up in the air. “Cheating?! In my classroom?” She rushed toward Dexter, who shrunk away in fear.

Jacob sprang into action. No one bullied Dexter, especially not a substitute teacher. It was time for the nuclear option.

He reached into his desk and pulled out a baseball he had hidden away in case of emergency. He had practiced for hours for just this occasion. He threw the baseball toward the ceiling and hit the emergency fire sprinkler, which immediately burst into pieces and began drenching the class with heavy streams of water.

The entire class screamed and began a mad rush toward the door, overturning desks and chairs and slipping in the water. Sarah laughed hysterically and slapped Jacob on the back.

Amid the pandemonium, Dexter backed up against the wall and accidentally knocked a large framed picture of Albert Einstein to the ground, which then tipped over and bumped Miss Banks's rolling chair, which rolled just far enough so that the arm of the chair barely clipped Mrs. Pinkerton's coffee mug, which slid off of the desk, fell ever so slowly, crashed, and shattered on the floor into a million pieces.

As the class streamed into the hallway and as water rained down, Jacob, Sarah, and Dexter stared at Mrs. Pinkerton, who looked completely calm. It was almost as if her “Reach for the Stars” coffee mug had not just been destroyed and she was not being doused with water at the rate of two gallons per second. In fact, she acted as if it were the most natural thing in the universe.

“Dexter Goldstein, Sarah Daisy, Jacob Wonderbar. Principal's office. Now.”

“But—” all three said at once.

“NOW.”

F
irst things first,” Mr. Bradley, the principal of Magellan Middle School, said to Jacob, Dexter, and Sarah as they sat soaking wet in his office, hoping they would not be in too much trouble. “You're in a great deal of trouble. Coffee mugs exploding, classrooms flooding, allegations of cheating, an angry substitute teacher. This is all quite serious. Punishment will be leveled.”

Mr. Bradley was completely bald except for a small patch of hair near the base of his neck that had somehow managed to avoid the catastrophic fate of the rest of the hair population on his head. His black glasses made his eyes appear approximately three times larger than they actually were, although his eyes were plenty big to begin with. He wore a yellowing white shirt and a red tie spotted with toothpaste. It's best that his mustache not be mentioned at all.

Mr. Bradley tapped his forehead in thought. “Considering the facts at hand, Sarah Daisy, you may return to the classroom. You are clearly innocent.”

“What? But I'm the one who started this whole thing when I blurted out the answer. It's my fault!”

Mr. Bradley shook his head. “You don't understand. You couldn't possibly be guilty.”

Sarah closed her eyes and let out a long exhale of pure resignation. She clenched her hands into fists. “It's because I'm a cute little girl, isn't it?”

“Yes! Yes, I would say that is precisely it,” Mr. Bradley said.

“This is discrimination! What if I wasn't a girl? What if I had warts all over my face? Would you still treat me like a silly little girl? This is horrible! I demand equal punishment.”

Mr. Bradley laughed and clapped his hands. “Such a clever girl. Back to class with you.”

Sarah Daisy stormed out of the office, slamming the door as she left.

“Dexter Goldstein . . . Dexter Goldstein ... what shall we do with you? Mr. Wonderbar's favorite accomplice, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm never mistaken. What say you?”

Jacob waited for Dexter to defend himself since he had only broken Mrs. Pinkerton's mug by accident and was otherwise completely blameless.

Instead, Dexter ran his hand through his hair, sighed, and said, “Nothing. I'm guilty as charged.” He looked over at Jacob. “Again.”

Jacob knew why Dexter had issued a false confession. He had gotten Dexter into enough trouble that adults very rarely believed either of them when they claimed to be innocent. Mr. Bradley didn't believe them when they said they weren't the ones who taped the words “in the bathroom” onto all of Ms. Franklin's inspirational posters celebrating qualities like determination and creativity, and he certainly wouldn't believe that a flooded classroom was Jacob Wonderbar's sole responsibility. After their many successful pranks over the past couple of years, Dexter's only hope in the face of punishment was to admit guilt and hope for leniency. Even when he wasn't actually at fault.

Mr. Bradley adjusted some of the souvenirs that littered his desk, including a clock in the shape of an old sailing ship and a gold star that said “#1 Principal.” He took out a pen, scribbled on a piece of paper, tore it off of his tablet, carefully folded it, and handed it over to Dexter.

Dexter opened it very slowly. It read: “I am giving you two hours of detention. Your punishment will be halved if you answer this question correctly: Who is your favorite principal?”

“Um. You are?” Dexter said.

“Correct! I knew I could count on you. You may return to class. I will see you in detention next Wednesday.”

Dexter sat still for a few seconds. “My mom is going to kill me,” he whispered. Then he stood up, punched Jacob lightly on the shoulder, and left Jacob and Mr. Bradley staring at each other in silence. Mr. Bradley scratched his mustache and cleared his throat.

“Well well, Mr. Wonderbar, we meet again. I would say it's a pleasure, only it's not. So many office visits this year. Disruptions, lack of focus, practical jokes . . . you are a regular criminal mastermind. Do you know what your teacher Miss Banks said about you the other day?”

Jacob shook his head.

“She said that you show a great deal of promise. Did you know that? I strenuously disagreed with her, of course.”

Jacob thought about the time he let the air out of Miss Banks's bike tires and was mystified that she had said something nice about him in private.

“But no matter. Today we have a case where you have soaked a thoroughly distressed Mrs. Pinkerton. A priceless coffee mug has been destroyed. I don't know that there are enough hours in the day to give you the detention you deserve. What is your mother going to think about all of this?”

Jacob stood up out of his seat. “I do not repent!”

Mr. Bradley took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

“Mr. Bradley. Rather than locking us up in detention, wouldn't your time be better served reconsidering your policy for hiring substitute teachers? Didn't you at least do a background check on that woman? We could have all been killed! How could I be punished for saving the class from a crazy person? I should probably receive a medal. There's no need to call my mom.”

Mr. Bradley wiped his glasses with his tie and put them back on. “I'm not going to call your mother.”

“Whew.”

“That would be redundant. We spoke just before you came into my office. A preemptive strike, they call it.”

“What?!”

“She'll be here in two minutes.”

J
acob stepped carefully into his mom's hybrid SUV and shut the door. He could tell that she had been in a meeting because she was driving without a shoe on her right foot, which meant she had been wearing high heels, which meant an especially important meeting.

Jacob wasn't exactly sure what his mom did at work. It had something to do with people trading gasoline, only it wasn't gasoline you could buy at a gas station, it was sort of like gasoline you could buy in the future. They didn't have a bunch of barrels of oil in their garage or anything like that; it was all done on computers. When people asked his mom what she did for a living, she said “commodity futures trading,” but Jacob could tell that most adults didn't really know what that meant either.

It was silent in the car, and Jacob couldn't bear it. He said quickly, “I know. You don't want to say anything you'll regret later. I understand.”

Jacob's mom didn't say anything, and he wondered what unspeakable thoughts were running through her mind. He knew from past experience that he had a fifteen-minute reprieve until they arrived home and she had calmed herself down enough to lecture him with a reasonably level head. He started mentally outlining his opening statement.

“Then why am I here picking you up at school?” she said. “What am I supposed to do? I can't drop everything at work every time you act up in class.”

Jacob froze. It was a surprise attack. He had no choice but to opt for complete denial. “Mom! This one wasn't my fault!”

Based on the skeptical look on her face, Jacob knew that his mom was remembering the last time Jacob had insisted that a visit with Mr. Bradley wasn't his fault. That incident had involved a great deal of glue, a handful of feathers, and a teacher's bottom, and had been, in fact, 100 percent completely Jacob's fault.

“Okay,” Jacob said, “that time with the feathers was me. But this time I'm innocent!”

“Jacob . . .” his mom began.

“No, I'm serious! This time it was Sarah and Dexter. I promise.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Mom!”

“How am I supposed to believe you, Jacob? Honestly. After the last two years of you acting up and getting into trouble at least once a week, tell me, why would I believe you when you say an incident at school isn't your fault? I've had to replace three sprinklers in the backyard because you ‘accidentally' hit them with your baseball. Are you also going to try and tell me you weren't using them for target practice?”

Jacob leaned back in his seat. She had played her hand well. It was wildly improbable that anyone but him could have destroyed a fire sprinkler with a well-aimed baseball in order to douse an evil substitute.

“Did you or did you not promise that you would stop getting into trouble?”

He nodded solemnly. “That is a fair question.”

Jacob's mom pursed her lips together, but then she smiled despite herself. “Listen to you. You know, sometimes you take after your father a little too much for your own good.”

Jacob turned away and looked out the window. He picked at the plastic on the door handle. “I don't want to talk about that person.”

Jacob's mom stopped the car, reached over, and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Jacob, I'm sorry. That was a loaded thing to say.”

He kept staring out the window and wondered if his mom knew how much he thought about his dad since he had moved to Milwaukee. “I don't want to be anything like him.”

“Well, the good thing about the world is that you can be whoever you want to be. You don't have to be like your father. But until you're eighteen years old you will follow my rules.”

Jacob's mom suddenly clenched his shoulder and made him look her in the eye. “Listen to me carefully,” she said. “This is the last time you will get into trouble and I mean that very sincerely. You are officially not allowed to have any fun until I say you can have fun again, which will most likely be around the time you have forgotten what having fun even feels like. Do you understand me?”