The Fourth Stall (6 page)

“You let him go,
right now
!” my dad said.

Mike let go of me and backed away. His and Kristoff’s faces turned white as Elmer’s glue. They looked terrified. And I didn’t blame them. My dad, well, he’s pretty big and scary. He’s a football coach, so he has lots of experience at yelling and screaming. When he yells, he yells pretty loud and his face gets real red and his huge neck bulges with veins. He’s like six feet ten inches tall and weighs almost four hundred pounds, pure muscle. He’d scare anybody. But not me, because I know he is a pretty cool guy.

“How dare you threaten my boy? What are you thinking? You’re twice his size!”

Mike and Kristoff both looked at the ground. Mike shrugged and Kristoff started crying. They looked pretty scared and ashamed.

“I don’t
ever
want to see you out here acting like that again! You got that? Because I’ll call your parents! Who are you, picking on little kids half your size? What are you trying to prove?” my dad finished.

Mike put his head down and trudged back to his trailer. Kristoff followed. Kids’ faces poked around trailers, trying to see what all the commotion was about. They smiled when they realized what was happening. The playground was free territory once again.

“Next time idiots like that are harassing you, come tell me,” my dad said to us. “Now, are we going to play football or what?”

My dad’s pretty cool. That was the only time I ever involved him in any of my plans. I like to keep my family out of my business and my business out of my family. It’s worked well that way so far.

Anyways, word quickly spread throughout the trailer park that I had been behind the ingenious plan to get rid of Kristoff and Mike. Those two still played in the playground occasionally, but they mostly kept to themselves. In fact, sometimes we even let Kristoff play action figures with us in the sandbox. Turned out, he was an okay kid.

But back to the point: Everyone heard that it was me who got rid of them. It was my dad not me who scared them off, but Vince was going around telling everybody he came across, “Christian did it; he saved the playground. Hey! Hey, want to know who solved all our problems? Well, I’ll tell you: It was Christian. My best friend and super genius.”

We both knew he was exaggerating a little and he thought it was pretty funny. But deep down I knew that he meant most of it, too. I always tried to tell people that Vince had helped a lot. That it had been Vince’s idea to somehow use my dad in the plan. But he’d always try to hide from the attention and make sure that it came back on me. It’s been like that ever since; Vince is always building me up and staying out of the spotlight himself. He is so good at it that it can even get a little annoying sometimes. It’s like he built me up so high that a lot of people don’t even know who he is at all. But in the end, I think it’s simply enough for him to know that
I
know how much he did for the business. He just didn’t ever want the glory.

Anyways, pretty soon after the whole showdown Vince started telling kids that I could help them with other problems, too. And eventually the other kids
did
start coming to me for help, and somehow I was able to solve their problems.

I honestly don’t know what it was. I just always had a way of knowing what to do for every kid’s situation. I mean, it wasn’t rocket science; back then the problems were really easy. It was stuff like loaning out a video game or helping to organize a lemonade stand and stuff like that. I guess they just didn’t know how to do that kind of stuff on their own.

It was also Vince’s idea to start charging fees for my services. I was a little unsure.

“Isn’t that kind of mean, Vince? I mean, these kids don’t have hardly anything,” I said.

“I know, Christian, but listen. You’re helping them in a major way. They’d be lost without your help. So why not get something in exchange? They’re being helped, and we’re getting payment. Both sides gain something; everybody wins,” he said.

“Yeah, I guess . . .” I started.

“Christian, think of it this way: It’s kind of like at the fair when you order a funnel cake and it’s all warm and greasy and covered in powdered sugar, and oh man, it’s so good. And then you eat it all and lick the sugar and grease off your fingers and it’s just delicious.”

“What? How is it like that at all?” I said.

“It’s not. I just really want a funnel cake right now,” he said, rubbing his stomach.

“Okay, okay. It’s a pretty good idea,” I said, trying to hold back a laugh, “but how will they pay us? I don’t know many kids who have more than like fifty cents, and a lot of them are coming to
me
for money to rent a game or something like that.”

“Well, they can like let us borrow some of their video games. Or maybe they can owe us a certain amount of their Halloween or Easter candy. Or maybe sometimes they could just owe us a favor of some sort. They don’t always have to pay with money.”

“You know what, Vince? I think you’re the real genius here,” I said, and I meant it, too.

I think he knew I was going to say something like that, because as I said it, he crossed one single eye and scratched his head, and he had this blank look on his face. Then he got up and started chasing around a butterfly while giggling like a madman.

So I eventually agreed that it was okay to charge kids for my services. Besides, how many first graders do you know who make their own money without any help from their parents? Exactly.

That’s pretty much how the business got started. We made my first office in the sandbox of that trailer park playground.

We kept running the business there until eventually my family moved into a house in a different neighborhood. Vince still lived in that same trailer, and actually still does now, but the distance from my new house made it a tough place to run the business from, which is why we finally decided to take our operation inside the school. In part it was because as time went on, the neighborhood near that playground got more dangerous, so it wasn’t really safe to be hanging out there by ourselves all the time. But Vince also had the genius idea of tapping into kids’ school problems, because as we got older, we realized that school started to take up more and more of kids’ lives.

After we moved into the school, the problems got more complicated, which led to larger payments. Pretty soon, we had an operation that brought in more money than we knew what to do with. We were unstoppable. And it was because it was a team effort, right from the beginning, with his ingenious business ideas and my problem-solving skills.

That’s why it seemed so significant that a little kid like Fred could have a problem so huge that it was threatening the very existence of our business.

Chapter 8

T
he morning after Staples’s posse ambushed us went pretty smoothly. Especially considering it was day one of our war against Staples. We ran the business like usual during early recess. The only difference was that Fred sat in the corner of the bathroom where we could keep an eye on him. He was supposed to look at the customers and let me know if any of them were on Staples’s payroll, but mostly he just played his Nintendo DS.

Thankfully, most of the morning customers had easy problems, like wanting me to get them McDonald’s for lunch or other stuff like that. There was one customer, though, whose problem concerned me a little bit.

It was this fourth grader named Matt Murphy. He was known for picking his nose and eating his boogers in class. He’d try to hide the act by leaning over and huddling down near his desk, but that didn’t really hide anything from the kids sitting in front of him. He was pretty well known as an “eater,” and he was generally considered to be pretty gross by all the girls. I always thought he seemed like a good kid, though, despite his bad habit.

“What’s your problem, Matt?” I asked as he sat down.

“I’m, well, I’ve been told that you could help me with anything, anything at all, right?”

“Of course, as long as it doesn’t involve, like, killing a raccoon and then barbecuing it in the alley behind your house or something like that,” I said.

He smiled but it was humorless.

“I made some bets and lost and I don’t have the money to pay for them. And now I’m going to be collected, Mac!”

“You need a loan, then?” I asked.

“Well, maybe . . . I don’t know,” he said as he leaned over to play with his shoelaces.

“What do you mean you don’t know? How much do you owe?”

“Uh, like a hundred and fifty dollars,” he said.

This was the part where, if I’d been drinking something, I’d have sprayed it all over the desk. But I wasn’t, so instead I just gawked at him.

“I know, I know,” he said. “It’s just that Jacky Boy, my bookie, kept saying, ‘Double or nothing, Matt, it’s the only way. Come on, Matt; don’t be stupid, you’ll never pay it all back. You have no choice, really. Double or nothing, Matt,’ and on and on like that. I—I just never realized how high it had gotten.”

“I see,” I said as I regained my composure.

He was screwed. Flat-out. I had that kind of money, but I’d probably have to dip into the Emergency Fund. Which I wasn’t about to do for this kid. But I did have another solution in mind and it would help me on two fronts.

“Do you know who they’re sending after you?” I asked.

“The Collector, of course,” he said. “And he’s bad news, Mac. He already collected my friend Evan. The Collector hurt Evan’s hand pretty bad, and stole his bike and made him tell his parents that he lost it! How do you convince your parents that you
lost
a bike?”

I shook my head.

That settled it. Barnaby Willis would be the first to go. Evan had been on my baseball team the previous summer. He was a good kid and a really great shortstop. Anybody who would do something like that to Evan deserved to be taken out. If the assault on me yesterday morning and the beating he laid on Joe after school weren’t enough, this certainly was. Plus, taking out Willis seemed to be the natural first step to bringing down Staples. Hopefully kids would be willing to talk once he was out of the picture.

“Okay, here’s the deal. I’m going to buy you a little time. I’m not saying how I’ll do this, but just know you’ll be safe for a little longer. So you’d better start saving up some cash. Come back to me in a week or so and show me what you have and I’ll try to loan you the rest, okay?”

“Okay, Mac, thanks,” Matt said, looking relieved. He left the office as the bell rang.

So that was that. I needed to take out the Collector, a.k.a. Barnaby Willis. And I knew just where to go for help.

At lunchtime we closed up the office. And then we made the East Wing boys’ bathroom the most dangerous place in the school. The playground probably threw a party that day.

Nine visitors stood near the sinks. They watched me warily, but also with a hunger that I found pretty unpleasant. We were normally enemies, most of these nine and I. But not today.

I stood in front of nine of the school’s meanest, most dangerous and vile bullies, jerks, punks, and tough kids. Never before had our school witnessed such a large gathering of bullies as it did on this particular Wednesday. Usually it would have been hard to get these sort of kids to meet me here, but we managed to convince them by offering ten bucks each. Even the most vicious of bullies can be tamed with money. It was an expensive meeting—ninety bucks to be exact—so I hoped that it would pay off in the end.

Vince especially had been annoyed at the cost. I wasn’t sure what was with him. He was always a little concerned over our expenditures, but lately he’s been freaking out over every penny. I swear, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him out on the streets selling his school lunches to homeless guys for an extra buck. But I guess it probably has something to do with the Cubs being closer to the World Series than ever in our lifetimes.

I normally liked to stay out of the bullies’ business unless a customer made it my business. Bullies are part of the social order of school and it wasn’t my place to mess with that. I may not have liked it, but in the end I never could have stopped all of the bullies all of the time anyways. To be honest, our business depended on the bullies a little, like an exterminator depends on rats and bugs. But now I was meddling in the bullies’ business because I needed their help. I needed mercenaries. I needed muscle.

I looked at the group of kids in front of me; each of them could beat me senseless in one way or another in less than a second. Which is why I also had Brady join us that day, for some extra security. There were seven boys and just two girls, each more dangerous than the last. Maybe I should stop here for a moment to tell you a little more about the bullies, so you can get an idea of what I was dealing with.

1. Nubby
—Nubby kind of sticks out because he is by far the biggest of the bunch. He is a seventh grader and the kind of bully who picks on other kids to avoid being bullied himself. I guess he really buys into that whole “best defense is a good offense” sort of thing that coaches are always talking about. Nubby is kind of fat and has a lot of freckles and his left hand has only stubs of fingers, due to some unknown accident. That’s why people call him Nubby, because of his stubby fingers. Rumor is he lost the fingers in a horrible petting zoo mishap, but nobody seems to know for sure if that is actually true.

Nubby is definitely an easy target for teasing, but he happens to be bigger than the other kids. So instead of being nice and getting picked on, he’s mean and quick to club kids over the head with his fingerless mallet of a hand anytime they even look at him funny. Nubby really isn’t too bad of a guy, though. Whenever kids come to me for help because Nubby is bullying them, it’s usually pretty easy to get Nubby to lay off. A bag of chips, some candy, that sort of thing.

2. Little Paul
—Little Paul, or LP as some kids like to call him, is actually pretty little. I know in lame movies the huge guy is always nicknamed Tiny and the little guy is always nicknamed Jumbo. But this is real life and not one of those stupid movies. In real life kids usually just call it how it is.

Not that Little Paul can really help being little—he is only a second grader, after all. But that doesn’t mean the kid still doesn’t have a real mean streak. He’s confident and talks a big game, and he never backs down from a fight, no matter how outmatched he is. But the truth is that no second grader can take Little Paul by himself. He is the master of the first strike. The kid always strikes first and strikes hard. At least seven independent eyewitnesses once reported that with a single blow he dropped a hundred-and-fifty-pound sixth grader like a sack of potatoes.

The general rule with LP is: If you get on his bad side, you’d better have your head on a swivel, because he can come out of nowhere and take you down before you even know he’s there.

3. Snapper
—Snapper looks pretty harmless, if you’re one of those people who consider little third-grade girls harmless. But everybody at my school knows better. Snapper is one of those girls who is used to getting her way; she is a brat through and through. Which in itself isn’t all that bad. But it is triply terrifying considering that her signature move is a bite so hard it would snap a man clean in half if her mouth were big enough. And it isn’t too far off. Sometimes if you look at her right before she’s about to strike, her face is all mouth and nothing else.

Lots of little girls are biters. That’s not really all that new. But the difference with Snapper is that she is an especially talented biter. If she isn’t getting her way, she strikes fast and hard. Once her iron jaws are clamped around whatever appendage you’re unlucky enough to have too close, you can pretty much kiss it good-bye until either several teachers are able to pry open her jaws or she simply gets tired of making you beg for mercy.

The worst part about Snapper’s bite and perhaps what makes it especially deadly is that struggling only makes her bite harder. One kid even was poking her in the eyes and pulling her hair so hard we all thought she would soon be bald, but all that did was make her bite so hard that she broke the skin and the kid ended up with an infected arm for three months.

4. The Hutt
—The Hutt got his name because he kind of looks and sounds like Jabba the Hutt from the
Star Wars
movies. He has thick lips and a slimy, sluglike appearance. He also slurs his speech, and when he does talk, it is with a raspy, gurgling voice. And I bet he would choose to ride around on a concrete slab with Princess Leia chained to him if that was possible. He is kind of a slobby, gross kid, and normally that would make him ripe to get bullied himself, but the fact is that the Hutt is a jerk, flat-out. He is an eighth-grade bruiser and often likes to trip kids in the halls for no reason other than to show everybody else just how cool he thinks he is. The sad truth is that Jar Jar Binks is more likely to ever end up with a girlfriend than this kid, and that makes me feel a little bad for him, despite the fact that he’s usually nothing more than a mean blob of slime.

5. Kevin
—Kevin is your typical, run-of-the-mill, good old seventh-grade bully. He’s tall, big, has a lot of freckles, and likes to make kids miserable. His standard move is also pretty classic: He’s a lunch-money guy. He thrives on lunch money the way zombies thrive on brains. It got so bad at one point that the school had to lower the prices on their à la carte items, such as cookies, pizza, and Little Debbie snacks, because so few kids could afford to buy that stuff anymore. Oddly enough, that was the one year that our school actually passed the Presidential Physical Fitness standards in gym class.

A lot of kids come to me for help with Kevin and I do what I can. But sometimes it seems like there are at least
twenty
Kevins running around the school feasting on kids’ lunch money. One day, a day that everybody now calls the Day the Lunch Money Died, Kevin had thirty-three confirmed attacks spanning six different grade levels. It had been the largest-scale lunch money massacre in history. There’s no question that Kevin has a hunger for lunch money that goes far beyond basic greed. I was eventually able to get Kevin to lay off the younger kids for the most part, which is better than nothing. Plus, he’s gotten so good at taking lunch money that he rarely has to beat anybody up anymore. Kids basically just throw their quarters at his feet as he walks by them in the halls.

6. iBully
—iBully is a tall fifth grader who weighs about sixty pounds, pure skin and bone. He’s pale and his hair is oily and there have been only seven or eight confirmed sightings of him outside in the fresh air in school history. But that doesn’t mean he can’t still inflict a serious amount of damage.

iBully is a computer bully. He is the master when it comes to hacking kids’ email and Facebook accounts and wreaking havoc on their personal lives. He logs in and sends nasty emails to your best friends. He writes inappropriate messages on teachers’ blogs and Facebook walls and Twitter accounts. He even once sent a horrible message to the President of the United States from this one kid’s email account, and these dudes in black suits showed up in dark SUVs with tinted windows and escorted the kid out of the school. The kid came back three days later and he hasn’t spoken a word since. Not one.

iBully is part of the reason that I never made a Facebook or Twitter account for myself. It’s just too dangerous, with him constantly lurking in the neon-glowing depths of the computer lab. Well, that, and I also think Facebook and Twitter are pretty lame. I always preferred, you know, talking to people face-to-face in real life instead of stalking them online like a creeper.

7. Great White
—Great White is a shark, just like his name might make you think. But really people call him Great White because he has super pale skin, white hair, and freaky whitish blue eyes. He’s a tall and lanky seventh grader, and he’s British, too. Normally, most kids would probably laugh at the weird way he sometimes talks, using phrases like “give it a go” and calling the TV a “telly” and saying “maths” instead of “math.” But laughing at his weird British accent would pretty much be the last mistake any kid made.

According to Ears, Great White moved to America because he was kicked out of darn near all the schools in England. I’m not sure if that’s true, but it definitely seems possible. I don’t know how things work in Britain, but Great White is a real scrapper. He is probably the best fighter at our school. Some kids say they’ve seen him take out four eighth graders at one time. He also isn’t easy to buy off. When kids need help with Great White, one of the only ways to stop him is to send this bully named Kitten after him. I’ll get to Kitten in a bit.