The Amazing Magnificent Stupendous Incredible Outstanding Unbeatable Exceptional (and Humble) Rubberband Boy

by Jonathan Neuman

  The fun never stops! Visit John and Dave on the web at www.rubbercave.com!

  Copyright 2011 by Jonathan Neuman

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, in whole or in part, without prior written permission of the Author. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  1. The Pirates Are Coming! The Pirates Are Coming!

  2. The Great Baldini

  3. Squirrels and Janitors and Gum, Oh My!

  4. It’s Raining Frogs

  5. Tastes Like Chicken

  6. Revenge is a Dish Best Served During Detention

  7. Welcome to the Rubber Cave

  8. When Zombies Attack

  9. Zero Out of Five Dentists Recommend

  10. The End of Rubberband Boy?

  11. The Cliffhanger

  The school bus came to a screeching halt, tires squealing against pavement as honking cars whizzed by. The children on the bus pulled their faces out of the backs of the seats in front of them and began rubbing their noses and groaning in pain.

  “Vait vone minute, I go get borscht in bottle.”

  The small yellow bus tipped over to the side as the short, heavy, hairy bus driver, Igor, lumbered out. As he wobbled toward a convenience store, Igor’s checkered shirt snagged on a fire hydrant and began to unravel behind him. By the time he entered the store, the shirt was completely gone, and the children heard a number of women shriek. It had already been four years with Igor as their bus driver, and the kids were still amused by his numerous peculiarities. They especially loved his foreign accent and all of the funny-sounding words he used, like “borscht.” In the past, Igor had made the children go to the store for him, but after one kid accidentally got run over by an escaped buffalo from the zoo, numerous phone calls from surprised and angry parents had quickly put a stop to that.

  Toward the back of the bus, Dave, a freckle-faced fifth grader, pulled his glasses out of his curly brown hair. Thanks to the sudden short stop, Dave’s face had plunged directly into an abnormally large glob of pink bubblegum stuck to the back of the seat in front of him. He was now desperately trying to detach his cheek from the gum. With his cheek still glued to the seat in front of him, he held his glasses in front of his eyes in order to get a good look. As he feared, the glasses were now badly bent out of shape.

  “No! The screw popped out again! My mom is going to be so mad.”

  A snickering face popped up from behind. It was Dave’s best friend, John. John looked at Dave, then at the gum, and then back at Dave and smiled.

  John thought back to first grade, the year he had first met Dave. While attempting to check Dave for head lice, Mrs. Beigleeisen, the school nurse, had accidentally breathed in some laughing gas. Suddenly, she got a funny look in her eyes, shrieked, and began chasing Dave. She chased him all the way to the school kitchen, where she grabbed a rolling pin and began swinging at Dave, yelling “Cockroach! Cockroach!” John had been in the cafeteria at the time, and he had come to Dave’s rescue by quickly tipping over the giant pot that was supposed to have been that day’s lunch. The tidal wave of sticky purple glop (the school had called it “Mystery Surprise”) engulfed Mrs. Beigleeisen, trapping her until the effects of the gas had worn off. As a consequence of the two boys having ruined his lunch, an enraged Fatsinoff, the school’s ironically-named 600-pound cook, would spend the next two years trying to exact his revenge (but that’s a story for another day).

  “How do things like this always happen to you?” John asked laughing.

  John reached into his knapsack, dug around a bit, and then pulled out something small and silver. He handed Dave a paper clip. “Here, I saved it from the last time you broke your glasses.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Dave mumbled as he grabbed the paper clip.

  John didn’t mind seeing Dave annoyed, but only if he was the one doing the annoying. He decided to try to cheer Dave up.

  “Well, at least this year you still have your pants.”

  The previous year on the first day of school, Igor had been running late, and so he decided that it would be quicker to get to the school by taking a shortcut. The only problem was the shortcut was through a lake. The bus made it about twenty feet into the water before Igor realized that apparently, buses don’t work the same way as boats. While the kids were on the roof of the slowly-sinking bus waiting to be rescued, they were attacked by a particularly angry flock of birds, attracted to the smell of a tuna fish sandwich that Dave had been keeping in his pocket.

  Dave slowly cracked a smile and then let out a big laugh. He attempted to turn his head to face John, but his face was still very stuck to the gum.

  “Yeah, they never did find my pants.”

  Dave tried to pull his head off of the gum, but to no avail.

  “And at least you got your two seats back,” Dave said as he tried to push off the seat in front of him with his right hand.

  John smiled and nodded in agreement. Ever since the first grade, it had become the unspoken rule that John would get the two back seats of the bus to himself. Last year, however, the bus company combined John’s route with that of their cross-town rivals – the other fourth grade class – and John had lost his second seat. This of course, resulted in much friction, pranking, and bedlam. Eventually, the fighting escalated into a chaotic incident, in which John’s class released a rabid raccoon onto the bus while the other class let loose three pigeons. The resulting damage to the city from the bus ride eventually led to a new city law that required all raccoons and pigeons to be attached to leashes at all times. This year the bus company had thought it wise to once again separate the routes.

  The two seats were more than just bragging rights. They also were quite handy. Thanks to the two seats, John’s face, unlike those of the other kids, had avoided being smashed into the seat in front of him. John had been lying down across the seats when the bus had shortstopped, and he had merely rolled over. In fact, the sudden rollover removed some stiffness in John’s back that he had been feeling. Two nights before, John had watched a TV show about bats, and he had attempted to go to sleep by curling his feet over the sidebar of his bunk bed and hanging upside-down. However, some dust had gotten into his nose and he had sneezed and fallen off the bed onto his back. John made a note to himself that next time, just to be safe, he was going to use some glue and tape.

  Lucky things like that always seemed to happen for John. Dave, on the other hand, had about as much luck as a boy crossing a black cat while walking under a ladder and stepping on a crack in the
sidewalk while breaking a mirror on Friday the 13th. In other words, he was about the unluckiest kid you would ever meet. John enjoyed pointing out Dave’s propensity for bad luck. John, who would normally not read a book under any circumstance, had just spent many summer days in the library researching superstition and bad luck. Not expecting to be able to use his newfound knowledge so quickly, he was overjoyed at the sudden opportunity.

  “Hey Dave, did you recently hear an owl hoot three times?” he asked.

  “What?” Dave replied, not really paying attention. Now in addition to his cheek, Dave’s right hand had gotten stuck to the gum as well. He was pulling on his right wrist with his left hand and trying to push off the seat with his left foot.

  “Did you get out of bed with your left foot first this morning?”

  “John, what are you talking about?” Dave asked exasperated. His hand slipped off his wrist and he accidentally slapped himself across the face. The shock made him jolt back suddenly, detaching his face from the seat. The gum was still attached to both, however, and so now there was a large strand of gum bouncing up and down in the air. Dave tugged at the gum to pull it off his cheek, but it refused to let go. Dave tried to let go of the gum, but now his hands were stuck as well.

  “Get off, get off, GET OFF!” Dave howled in frustration.

  John looked at Dave with a slight grin on his face.

  “Dave, you do know that gum doesn’t understand English, right?”

  “I KNOW!”

  Dave picked up his right knee and tried to kick the gum off with his shoe, but that just made the gum wrap around his leg. He then tried to push it off with his elbows, and pretty soon Dave was entangled in a web of sticky, pink bubblegum.

  “Maybe you should try talking to it in Chinese.”

  “ARGH!!!”

  Dave gave up and starting to sob. John looked out the window and saw Igor returning from the convenience store, an empty wooden pickle barrel over his chest and a bottle of dark purple liquid in his hand. John had no idea what “borscht” was or why anybody would want to drink it. It sounded like the noise a cow would make in the bathroom if it ate some bad grass and got food poisoning. John shuddered, trying to get the thought out of his head. Then he thought about how difficult it would be for a cow to open the bathroom door in the event of an emergency. There were separate doors for men and for women, why shouldn’t there be a door for cows? One day, John resolved, he would champion the fight for equal rights for all animals with hooves.

  Igor got back onto the bus just as his name came over the bus radio.

  “Umm, Igor, we just received a call from a parent who says that her son was chasing your bus for three blocks before you sped away and left the child behind. Please respond.”

  Igor pulled a large chunk of raspberry pie out of his big bushy mustache and swallowed it, causing a few of the girls on the bus to gag. Igor picked up the radio and cleared his throat. It sounded like a garbage truck crushing a large metal trash can.

  “Zis is Igor calling khome base. I come to khouse, but boy not come for ten minutes. Zen I see pirate vit eye patch chasing bus so I qvuickly drive avay.”

  John loved the sounds that Igor made while talking. There was no “kh” sound in the English language. It sounded like the noise that John made whenever he tried to scratch an itch in his throat. Of course, every time he made the noise he would get in trouble, because his throat only seemed to itch whenever his mother had important guests over for dinner. John never thought that was fair. If you have an itch, you have to scratch it. Like breathing. Nobody gets in trouble for breathing.

  John turned to Dave. “Yeah, I come to kkkkkkhhhhhhouse,” John mimicked as he rained spit all over Dave.

  “John, cut it out! That’s disgusting! You’re getting me soaked!”

  John’s face lit up.

  “Dave, that’s it!”

  John grabbed his knapsack off the floor and started to ruffle through its contents.

  “John?” Dave asked worriedly. He tried to see what John was doing, but he was still stuck in the contorted mess of gum. “That’s it? What’s it? John? John? What does that mean?! WHAT’S IT? John? John? JOHN!”

  Dave started to panic and doubled his efforts to escape. He was really struggling, but he could feel the gum loosening as John exclaimed “aha, here it is!” Dave pulled his head and arms free and turned just as John unscrewed a bottle of water and splashed it in Dave’s face. Dave turned bright red and he glared at John in shock as water slowly fell from his chin. John stared back at him, trying as hard as he could to not burst out in laughter. Finally, John couldn’t hold it back any longer.

  “Bwahahahahahaha!”

  Dave tried not to smile, but he felt the onset of a snicker. John continued to howl in laughter. Dave couldn’t hold back either. The two boys laughed and laughed until they collapsed onto one another from exhaustion. Dave sat back up and began wiping the water off of his face.

  “You know I was free already, right?”

  John gulped in some oxygen as he laughed a bit more.

  “I know, but I had to do something with the water. It had been sitting in my knapsack all summer and there were already things growing inside.”

  Dave stopped smiling and he stared at John.

  “Wait, you’re not … are you … you’re serious … there was really … in the water … and you … and now … on me?”

  For a moment neither boy moved, and then Dave started screaming and swatting at himself.

  “Ewww! Ewww! Get them off! Get them off!”

  John began furiously laughing anew.

  “Dave, calm down, my mother gave it to me this morning.”

  Dave stopped hitting himself in the face and looked at John.

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Ok …” Dave said as he cautiously lowered his arm and did one more cursory check for bugs.

  “But I didn’t say that there wasn’t stuff growing in it,” John muttered.

  “What was that?”

  Before John could answer, the dispatcher came back on the radio.

  “I’m sorry, Igor, did you just say that you thought that a pirate was chasing you?”

  John smiled. The “pirate vit eye patch” was Cayden, another fifth grader who lived near John. During that previous summer, Cayden had fallen off of a tree branch and scratched the cornea of his left eye while trying to catch a caterpillar. The doctor instructed him to wear an eye patch for six to eight weeks until his eye fully healed. Cayden had named the caterpillar Fuzzy Wuzzy. He then lost Fuzzy Wuzzy the next day.

  In the four years that they had been going to school, Cayden had never once made it to the bus on time. In first grade alone, seven bus drivers quit over a span of three months out of sheer impatience. The drivers would wait ten minutes, leave, and then invariably have to go back after Cayden’s mother would call to complain. This happened every day without fail. Igor, the kids’ eighth bus driver, hadn’t quit yet, but he was no fan of Cayden.

  Seven drivers in three months would have been impressive enough, but what made it even more extraordinary was that in the entire history of school bussing, not one driver had ever quit because they had to wait too long for a kid. This had inspired John to invent the “Cayden Award For Excellence in Annoyance.” The annual award was subject to a vote by John’s entire grade, and on the last day of school, a trophy would be given to the kid who got a bus driver or teacher to quit for that year’s best reason. John had been the recipient three years running, and this year he planned on getting his fourth in a row.

  Igor cleared his throat again and held the radio communicator to his mouth.

  “Ven I vas little boy, I khad nightmare zat pirates took me avay from family and sold me to traveling circus owned by monkeez. So now, I alvays vatch for pirates and monkeez, and of course, monkey pirates.”

  John loved it. Igor never disappointed. John decided that one day he would have to write a book about Igor. E
ither that or sell him to a traveling circus. The kids heard a loud, long sigh followed by a head banging on a desk.

  “Igor, you are going to have to go back and pick up the boy. NOW.”

  The kids started shouting in protest that if they went back for Cayden they would be late for school. Normally they would be all too happy to be late, but after being late 179 out of 180 school days the previous year (there was one day that they had been on time because they were actually 24 hours late from the previous day), the kids had been told that the next time they were late they would spend a day in detention with the gym teacher, Mr. Bumberry. The kids wouldn’t have minded detention. What they did mind was that Mr. Bumberry didn’t know that he was the gym teacher, or that his name was Mr. Bumberry. Instead, he insisted that the kids call him Helga, and he would spend every class teaching them how to yodel. Understandably, the kids were in no mood to yodel.

  “Now now, children, if zat is vat ve khave to do, zen zat is vat ve vill do. I don’t vant to khear shouting. I must make men out of you so that you can grow up like me.”

  The kids shuddered at the thought. Igor jerked the wheel suddenly and the bus made an immediate u-turn into oncoming traffic. The kids clutched onto each other in absolute terror as cars zoomed past the bus, honking, swerving, and smashing into each other. Igor took a sip of his borscht and burped contently. Thirty minutes later the bus pulled up to Cayden’s house. Cayden was nowhere to be seen. Igor honked for ten minutes and then gave up. As the bus started to leave, Cayden came stumbling out the door dropping pencils and notebooks, papers flying out of his open knapsack into the heavy winds. Igor noticed Cayden in the rearview mirror and his face turned white.

  “Pirate! Pirate!”

  Igor slammed his foot on the gas and the bus took off. Cayden frantically ran after it. The kids were in no mood to have to come back a second time, and so they all started yelling at Igor that this was the boy that they were supposed to pick up, and as incredible as it sounded, not a pirate. Igor slammed on the breaks, once again resulting in smashed noses and moaning. Igor cupped his hand around his chin and looked out into the horizon, deep in thought. He stroked the few scraggly hairs that littered his chin, stuck his head out of the window, and yelled, “Fly, tiger, fly!” John smiled as he wondered whether tigers had wings where Igor came from.