by Ron Bates
“I SAID, PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSST!”
The sound blasted a big flurry of leaves from the bush and not surprisingly got the boys’ attention. When they saw her smiling and waving, they couldn’t have been more relieved. After all, if there was one thing Ms. Chalice was better at than getting into trouble, it was getting out of it.
They watched as she pulled a yo-yo from her pocket and flung it forward. It rollllllllllllllllllled out on the long string until it was right in front of their faces, and then it stopped. Written on the side of it was a message.
Dear Tardy Twosome, it said.
She yanked the string and the yo-yo rolled back to her. When it rolled out again, there was another message.
Looks like you’re having some trouble.
In short order, it rolled in and out again six more times with six more messages that, when put together, said:
Come to the window…
And I’ll help you…
Get inside.
Warmest regards,
Ms. Chalice
PS: Impressive yo-yoing, isn’t it?
The boys thought this was an excellent plan, the only flaw being that it had absolutely no chance of working. How were they supposed to get to the window with Silverworth standing only a few feet away? It was impossible! But just when it looked like all hope was lost, a light bulb appeared above Cuphead.
“You have an idea!” Mugman said excitedly.
“I do?” said Cuphead.
He wondered what it could be.
Still, there was no use wasting a perfectly good light bulb. He reached up and plucked it out of the air, and it was a lucky thing he did, too. Because no sooner had he put that brilliant bubble in his hand than he really did get an idea. He was surprised it hadn’t come to him sooner.
Taking a quick peek out of the bush, he cocked back his arm and, with the deadeye aim of a big-league pitcher, tossed the bulb toward the school entrance. It sailed past Silverworth, hurried straight through the doorway, and—CRASH!
“Ouch! I mean, welcome!” cried Mat.
Silverworth, who knew a clue when he heard one, whirled around to investigate. When his back was turned, the shrubbery again sprouted legs and ran to the side of the building. Now that they were under the window, the boys could hear their teacher, Professor Lucien, a very bookish bulb, calling roll.
“Canteen Hughes?”
“Here.”
“Mac?”
“Here.”
“Chip?”
“Here.”
Yikes. He was already halfway through the list, which meant they had to act fast. Fortunately, Ms. Chalice was still at the window.
“Grab hold,” she whispered.
She flung the yo-yo down and Cuphead and Mugman dutifully grabbed it. An instant later, they found themselves rolling up the side of the building. With a quick, hard yank on the string, Ms. Chalice pulled the brothers through the window and spun them across the room like a couple of jumbo-size tops. They bounced from wall to wall and desk to desk and aisle to aisle, then teetered and tottered and—just when it looked like things might come to a disastrous end—wobbled past their classmates and plunked down in their seats. And not a moment too soon.
“Cuphead?” Professor Lucien called.
“Here!” Cuphead wailed. Then his desk toppled over like a top-heavy icebox.
“Are you all right?” the professor asked.
“Oh, he’s right as rain,” groaned Mugman, who was hugging the top of his own desk like a seasick sailor on a life raft. “And he’ll be even better once the school stops spinning.”
Now, for most people, if they were paying any attention at all, the brothers’ behavior that morning would’ve seemed a tad unusual. But this never occurred to Professor Lucien. In fact, he hadn’t even noticed. Please don’t think this was because he was a bad teacher—quite the opposite. Lucien was a very good and kind teacher. But he was also the smartest person on the Inkwell Isles and, as any smart person will tell you, this can be a terrible burden. Regrettably, when your mind is filled with formulas and theorems and equations, there simply isn’t room for very much more. That’s why highly intelligent people tend to miss things like jokes and dental appointments and students being yo-yoed through the classroom window.
It’s just their way.
From his spot on the floor, Cuphead soon realized two things: Professor Lucien needed new shoes, and the class was extremely excited about something. An electric murmur was coursing through the room, and while he couldn’t make out everything, one word came through loud and clear:
Carnival!
Are you going to the carnival, Cuphead?” Ginger asked him.
Ginger was a gingerbread girl who sat in the desk directly behind Cuphead’s. Like most gingerbread girls, she was sweet. A little on the nosy side, maybe, but sweet.
“Well—” said Cuphead, climbing to his feet and setting his desk upright.
“Of course he’s going. Everyone’s going,” Canteen Hughes interrupted. “What kind of lamebrain would miss the carnival? Did you see that roller coaster? It’s a real doozy.”
Roller coaster? There was a roller coaster? Cuphead gulped. He’d seen roller coasters in the newsreels at the movies. They looked like trains that got caught in a tornado and didn’t know how to get out. Suddenly, he imagined his entire row of desks climbing up a tall track, and—SWOOSH—plunging down the other side. It was terrifying! The awful thought made his skin break out in goose bumps and, before he knew it, they were waddling down his arms and making embarrassing honking noises.
“Boy oh boy, a roller coaster,” he said extra loudly. “I can hardly wait!”
It was the best he could come up with at the moment. The truth was, although Cuphead was very brave, the idea of getting on a roller coaster made him queasy. He wasn’t scared, of course—not really scared—it was more of an allergy. Yes, that’s it! He was allergic to being brutally mangled, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. So even though the carnival sounded like a swell place filled with all kinds of things that didn’t twist or turn or flip upside down and give you an upset stomach, and he would give almost anything to see them, his hands were tied. If he were to set one foot in that world of wonders, the rest of the gang would expect him to join them on the dipping, diving death machine, and that was not going to happen.
Still, it was a shame to miss the whole carnival over one little roller coaster. It was like not eating an ice-cream sundae just because someone had put a snake in it. And who knew when he’d have this chance again? Maybe if he was extra careful and stayed waaaaay over on the other side of the grounds, then—
No, no, no, no, no. Elder Kettle had told him to keep away from it, and that’s exactly what he was going to do. The birthday party would be thrilling enough, thank you very much.
“Quiet down, class,” Professor Lucien said. “Your assignment this morning is to write an essay.”
The class groaned. Lucien straightened his mortarboard and gave them a long, stern look.
“And the topic,” he continued, “is ‘What I want to be when I grow up.’”
Cuphead’s eyes popped wide open. Usually essays were dull, boring, torturous projects about history or science or books. But this—this was about something important! At last, he could tell the world exactly what the future held for a boy named Cuphead. Then the praise would come rolling in!
He picked up his pencil. Rats! The tip was dull. This would never do—you couldn’t write sharp literature with a dull pencil. With no time to spare, he quickly chewed the end like a wood chipper until it had a shiny new point. Now it was an instrument worthy of the task. He put it to paper.
What I Want to Be When I Grow Up. By Cuphead, he wrote. It sounded boffo already!
Ah, the future. He’d pictured it a thousand times. It was going to be glorious.
Cuphead leaned back in his desk and let the daydream take over. In his thoughts, he wasn’t stuck in some boring ol’ classroom
. He was in a grand stadium, on the pitcher’s mound with a horsehide ball in his hand. All around him, crowds were clapping and cheering as he tugged his cap, hiked up his knickers, and scorched batters like a pint-size flamethrower. Eventually, the fantasy became so big that it drifted out of his head in a puffy dream balloon and bumped up against the ceiling. And that’s exactly where it would’ve stayed if it hadn’t been for one thing.
Ms. Chalice.
You see, in the next desk over, Ms. Chalice was having a dream of her own, one that was every bit as big and bold and real as Cuphead’s. This wasn’t surprising—Ms. Chalice knew all about the dream world. Before she became the most interesting girl on the Inkwell Isles (which she undoubtedly was), she’d been a wise and benevolent spirit called the Legendary Chalice. The story of how she left the astral plane and became the witty, charming, happy-go-lucky best friend of Cuphead and Mugman is one about an incredible, amazing, fascinating quest—but that’s a tale for another day.
Now, where were we? Ah yes, Ms. Chalice’s dream. It was a thrilling adventure in which she was driving a racing car at top speed down a long, looping track. She could see herself in goggles and a helmet, gripping the wheel and zipping past rivals as she roared round and round the speedway. Before long, her dream, like Cuphead’s, formed a puffy cloud that floated out of her head and up to the ceiling. The two dreams hovered side by side, and that’s exactly where they would’ve stayed if it hadn’t been for one other thing.
Mugman.
In the next desk over, Mugman’s head was back and his eyes were closed, and he was soaring away on a pair of dreamy wings. You see, more than anything, Mugman wanted to be a flying ace. It was why he loved the planes he’d found in Porkrind’s store. He could imagine himself high in the sky, having dogfights and doing loop de loops and aerial spins. And on this particular day, his imagination carried him so high that the dream cloud flew right out of the top of his head. When it reached the ceiling (which was unusually crowded that morning), it bumped against Ms. Chalice’s racing dream, which bashed into Cuphead’s ball-playing dream, and before you knew it, the three of them were floating toward the open window.
Here’s the thing about having big dreams and a small window: It’s a tight squeeze. So tight, in fact, that as the clouds tried to get through, they were squashed together into one giant super-cloud filled with ballparks and racetracks and runways and all the other things that had popped out of the young friends’ minds. But after some scooching and squirming, the dreamy blob managed to make it outside. Once there, it climbed into the air and mixed in so well with all the other big, puffy clouds that no one could even tell the difference, and that was the end of that.
Or so it seemed.
If only Hilda Berg hadn’t chosen that exact moment to fly past the school. But you know Hilda, always buzzing around the sky like she owns the place. As a zeppelin, she was at home in the clouds and cut through them as easily as strolling through the park. Truth be known, she never gave it a thought—why would she? Clouds were filled with lots and lots of fluffy, misty nothingness, and not a single thing more.
Still, she did notice something odd about this cloud. For one thing, there was a big, grinning Mugman flying directly at her in what looked like a windup toy airplane. Stunned, she veered off course only to end up on a racetrack surrounded by speeding cars—which, as you know, are rare at that altitude. Before she could pull away, Ms. Chalice’s dream racer blew past and whirled her into another part of the super-cloud, and at the worst possible time, too. Cuphead was just about to throw the final pitch in what was sure to be a no-hitter, when—
BONK.
He hit her.
Not on purpose, of course. Hilda just happened to fly directly into the path of Cuphead’s blazing fastball. So instead of thudding against the leather of a catcher’s mitt, it conked against the side of her head. Dazed and discombobulated, she lost control and flew straight for the stadium scoreboard, which—SMACK!—changed to CUPHEAD 1, HILDA 0.
From there, it was all downhill—literally. Hilda plunged out of the cloud and down to the ground, where she made several uncomfortable-looking bounces across the schoolyard. She wasn’t badly hurt, thank goodness, but Cuphead, who was watching from the window, noticed that when she walked away, her balloonish body moved in and out like a floppy accordion.
“I wonder what that’s all about,” he said.
“No talking, Cuphead,” Professor Lucien warned. “Keep your eyes on your work.”
Cuphead frowned but picked up his pencil and began writing again. A few seconds later, an airplane made of blue paper landed on his desk. It was from Mugman (who, as you know, was crazy about airplanes).
Be careful, Cuphead! the note said. You can’t get in trouble today. Remember, we have to get Elder Kettle’s birthday present after school.
Cuphead sighed. He took out a piece of green paper and wrote I know!, then folded it into an airplane and sailed it back to Mugman. Before he could even pick up his pencil again, a purple paper airplane arrived.
What are you two fellas talking about? Ms. Chalice’s note asked.
So he pulled out a second piece of green paper, and told her. Then there was another blue plane.
Is Ms. Chalice trying to talk you into going to the carnival? Don’t listen to her!
And another purple plane.
I would never, ever, ever try to talk you into going to the carnival on Elder Kettle’s birthday, Cuphead. It does sound fun, though. Let’s go!
And pretty soon the classroom was filled with so many green, blue, and purple planes it looked like a big-city airfield. Cuphead was just about to launch another note when a neatly made yellow airplane fell on his desk. He opened it.
Cuphead. You have detention.
Sincerely,
Professor Lucien
Detention? It couldn’t be. Not the D word. Not today! Cuphead looked at Ms. Chalice and Mugman. They were each holding a yellow letter of their own.
How could this happen? How could all three of them get detention on the one day they had to get to Porkrind’s shop? Cuphead stared at the agonizing note, hoping he’d read it wrong. He hadn’t. Elder Kettle’s birthday party would be ruined, and it was all his fault.
This was a disaster.
The next few hours crept by like a snail with nowhere to go and several lifetimes to get there. Finally, the bell rang, and everyone burst from their chairs and ran out of the classroom—everyone except Cuphead, Ms. Chalice, and Mugman. They stayed right where they were.
“I’m sorry, but you broke the rules,” Professor Lucien said. Still, he couldn’t help giving them an understanding smile. “Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to go to the carnival. I wouldn’t make you miss out on all the fun and excitement.”
“But—” Cuphead said.
“No buts,” said Lucien. “I’ll be over here working on an experiment, so just sit there quietly at your desks.”
Cuphead slumped forward. He wanted to tell the professor about Elder Kettle’s surprise birthday party, and how the whole town had chipped in to buy him a nice present, and why everything depended on them making it to Porkrind’s shop by four o’clock. He wanted to tell him they had no interest in fun and excitement and once-in-a-lifetime wonders and weren’t even going to the carnival. But it was no use.
When Professor Lucien was working on an experiment, he shut out everything else in the world. Cuphead watched as the brilliant bulb walked to the corner of the room and mixed colorful, strange-looking fluids in his test tubes and beakers. There was no reaching him now. He was lost in a mysterious land called Science.
The three friends pushed their desks close together.
“Jeepers, we sure are in a pickle,” Cuphead whispered. “What are we going to do?”
“Maybe we could… uh, sneak out,” Mugman whispered back.
“I think he’d notice if he were all alone in an empty room,” Cuphead said.
Suddenly, Professor Lucien looked
up at them.
“Did you say something?” he asked.
The three of them smiled innocently and shook their heads. He went back to his experiment.
“Well, what if he wasn’t alone?” Ms. Chalice said.
The boys looked confused.
“Who’d be here with him?” said Cuphead.
“We would,” she said.
They looked even more confused.
“I’ll show you.” She grinned.
Stealthily, Ms. Chalice slipped out of her desk like butter sliding off a pancake. In the blink of an eye, she blazed around the room grabbing as many items as she could carry, then rushed back and sat down in her proper place.
It’s a good thing she returned when she did. Because no sooner had she sat down in her chair than Professor Lucien stopped his experiment and gave them a long, probing stare. But just as before, all he saw were three perfect angels smiling back at him. He raised an eyebrow (which, as anyone will tell you, is a sure sign of suspicion), but quickly put it down and went on with his work.
“Whew! That was close,” Ms. Chalice said.
She pulled out the spoils of her collecting spree. There was a flower vase, a yardstick, a mop, a seat cushion, two paintbrushes, books of various colors and sizes, and an assortment of odds and ends that had been permanently left in the lost and found because no one wanted them back. Working at incredible speed (Ms. Chalice had many talents, but she was especially good at art), she fashioned a bizarre figure out of the materials and sat it in her chair.
Cuphead and Mugman stared at the creation. The resemblance was… actually, there was no resemblance. It looked like a monster made entirely of school supplies had wandered into the classroom, swallowed Ms. Chalice, and taken her place in the desk.