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

by Jonathan Neuman

  Dave frowned.

  “But before you gave me the option of being Dirty Air Conditioning Boy?!”

  “What’s wrong with Clip Kid?!”

  “It’s just that even a grownup can be a boy; a man is still a boy and not a girl. But a kid is always just a kid.”

  John shook his head.

  “Sorry buddy, those are the rules.”

  “What rules? There are no rules! You’re making it up as you go along! In real life there’s not even such a thing as a superhero and his sidekick!”

  John ignored him. Dave continued to stare at the box.

  “And what can I do with a box of clips anyway?”

  Now John was starting to get annoyed.

  “I don’t know Dave, you’re ruining my moment. Pick locks maybe? Or use them to hold your mask in place?”

  John grabbed the mask from Dave, ripped off the rubber band along with some of Dave’s hair, and used two clips to attach the plate to Dave’s head.

  “Ow!”

  “There you go, looks great!”

  Suddenly John and Dave heard the faintest sound of someone screaming out John’s name. John grinned. In his head, John imagined Principal Freeman giving up on trying to remove the paint. He would head to the bathroom to blow-dry himself with the automatic hand-dryer after having gotten wet from the hose. Once he got back to his office, being very hot from running around outside, Principal Freeman would turn on his ceiling fan. Once the blades started to rotate, Principal Freeman would be pelted with the makeshift water balloons. After heading back to the bathroom and blow-drying himself off again, Principal Freeman would return to his office, only to sit onto the makeshift water balloon left on his seat.

  John fell to the floor and started rolling in hysterical laughter. Dave had no clue what was so funny.

  “John? John? What happened? What’s so funny?”

  John continued to laugh for another forty-five seconds. He wiped away some tears from his eyes and looked at his watch.

  “Aahh!” he screamed. “We’re running out of time. Hark, Clip Kid! To the Rubber Cave!”

  Dave looked to his right, then to his left.

  “Umm … we’re already in the Rubber Cave. We can’t go to something if we’re already there. If anything it would be ‘Hark! Away from the Rubber Cave!’”

  John, who was already jumping down the flight of stairs, didn’t hear him. Dave sighed and headed down the stairs after John. In between the second and first floors, he stumbled and dropped the various items that he had been struggling to balance in his arms. John heard the noise and briefly looked back as he continued to run.

  “Fly, Clip Kid, fly!”

  Dave groaned.

  John was halfway to the school’s boiler room when Dave finally caught up to him. Dave was huffing and puffing, and still struggling to juggle everything in his hands. He tripped over his open shoelace, and fell to the ground, sending everything sprawling all over the floor. John heard the commotion, turned around, and sighed. He impatiently looked at his watch.

  “C’mon Dave, we only have a few minutes left!” and with the flip of his cape, John was off and running. Dave clumsily gathered all of the items and began his chase anew. After about thirty seconds, he suddenly came to a screeching halt as he nearly collided with John and dropped everything. John had stopped suddenly and had raised one hand to tell Dave to hold.

  “What is it?” Dave whispered nervously, glancing back and forth.

  John remained silent and pointed toward a spot in the ceiling about twenty feet away. Dave squinted to try and see what John was looking at, and after a few seconds, realized that John was pointing to a little black box on the ceiling in front of the entrance to the boiler room. Had John not pointed it out, Dave would never have noticed it.

  “Is that one of the cameras?”

  John slowly nodded, only paying half-attention to Dave. John was concentrating intently while making calculations in his head. He unzipped his “Rubber Pouch” and pulled out a long, thick rubber band. Holding the rubber band in his left hand, he slowly pulled back with his right index finger until the rubber band threatened to snap, and took careful, calculated aim. He released the rubber band and it went whizzing through the air. The rubber band smacked into the box, flipped over, and hugged around it, completely covering the little glass eye above the beeping red circle. John smiled boastfully, grabbed Dave, and dragged him toward the room.

  “We’re good, let’s go.”

  Dave had never been more impressed.

  “That was awesome! How did you get it to do that?”

  “Oh, so now you admit that I have powers.”

  “No, if I thought you had powers I wouldn’t have asked how you did that. Seriously, how’d you do that?”

  John turned around, and with a big smile he said, “Lots of practice during detention.”

  Dave laughed.

  “At least you’ve been using the time productively. How did you know the camera was there?”

  “During the summer I had to spend time with Principal Freeman in order to make up for all of the leftover detention that I had from fourth grade. One day after he left me alone to go to the bathroom, I began fooling around in his office and found the security monitors.”

  “So you know where all of the cameras are?”

  “Yup! Their locations are all recorded in my secret Rubber Notebook in the Rubber Cave, but the shorthand version is that they have them at all of the entrances to places where we’re not supposed to be.”

  “So then there’s one in the Rubber Cave?”

  “Nah, there was too much water damage up there. That’s why they made the staircase off limits all those years ago. I remember the camera installers telling Principal Freeman that they couldn’t go up there, and that’s when I decided that it would be the perfect place for the Rubber Cave.”

  “So then there are not cameras in all the places where we’re not supposed to be.”

  “No. They are at all places, other than at the Rubber Cave.”

  “Right, so not in all places.”

  John was about to hit Dave again when suddenly Dave covered his mouth and gasped.

  “What?” John asked, quickly glancing around.

  “Maybe the cameras have audio,” he whispered.

  John pulled Dave’s hand away from his mouth and slapped the back of his head.

  “Genius, if there was audio, do you think I’d be talking? You know, up until that point you were actually starting to sound intelligent. Sometimes you come so close.”

  “Is that a compliment or an insult?”

  John sighed.

  “Case in point.”

  Dave followed John into the dark boiler room. Once inside, they lifted their masks so that they would be able to see better. It was damp and dank and it smelled like stinky, rotting cheese. John used the tiny glow from Principal Freeman’s alarm clock as a flashlight. Dave could have sworn that he heard something moving around him, and he edged closer to John.

  “John, I think there are large rats surrounding us in an attack formation,” he whispered in a hushed, scared voice.

  John poopooed him.

  “Don’t be silly. Rats aren’t smart enough to have battle tactics. If there’s anything surrounding us, it’s probably squirrels.”

  That didn’t ease Dave’s concern at all. He crossed his hands over his chest and rubbed the tops of his arms, very scared. His teeth started to chatter involuntarily to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb. They made it across the room and John pointed to a large panel on the wall behind the boiler and said, “There. That’s where the master switches are for all of the lights in the school.” He paused and then added, “And either get another tune or stop chattering your teeth.”

  “Sorry,” Dave whispered, as he put his hand to his mouth. Dave followed John to the wall panel. John grabbed all of the items from Dave and put them on the floor in a pile. He looked intently around the room as he made the final calculations
for his plan. Dave also looked around the room, but he was searching for rats and squirrels. John opened up the wall panel and examined the switches. He started walking back and forth, and alternated between crouching and standing positions. He paused here and there and made swinging measurements with his arms to calculate various trajectories. After about a minute, he seemed satisfied and began to pick up items off of the floor. Dave watched him with extreme curiosity.

  “John, are you sure it’s safe to be fooling around with the electrical switches?”

  “It’s safer than going anywhere with you, and you never seem to have a problem with that.”

  Dave would have responded, except he realized that it was probably true. John rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

  “All right, here we go.”

  First John pulled out the shoelace from the boot and tied it tightly to an overhead horizontal pipe. He then tied the other end to the boot and traced an arc through the air to the panel so that the boot would directly hit into the bottom half of the master light switch. He secured the boot in place by looping some string through the buckle in the back of the boot and tying the string around a vertical pipe behind him. He then carefully placed the scissors in an open position so that when they snapped shut, they would cut the string. He used more string to hold the scissors in place, again using one vertical pipe and one horizontal pipe so that one of the scissor arms was rigidly fixed in place and only the other arm would be able to snap shut.

  At this point, Dave could have sworn that he heard a low, deep breathing behind him. He quickly spun around, but couldn’t see anything. He squinted to get a better look, but still saw nothing.

  “John,” he whispered. “I really think that there’s something in here with us.”

  John waved him off, annoyed. “Dave, be quiet, I’m trying to concentrate,” he said as he wedged two popsicle sticks between two overhead pipes. The stick in the front was hanging straight down while the one in the back was angled away from the panel, and thus had its free end higher up. John traced imaginary lines from the free end of the first popsicle stick to the open hand of the scissors and adjusted the sticks accordingly. When he was satisfied that he had the right angle, he affixed a rubber band around the bottom of the first popsicle stick and stretched it until it was just barely being held onto the bottom edge of the second stick. The rubber band was pointing straight down toward the swivel hand of the scissors. John made sure that the rubber band was short and relatively non-elastic, so that it would fire with a fast velocity and hit with sufficient impact.

  “Hey, Clip Kid, pass me a clip.”

  Dave smiled.

  “You called me by my codename.”

  John turned his head and stared at Dave.

  “Do you not want to be my sidekick?” he asked threateningly.

  “Sorry.”

  Dave silently handed John a paperclip, and watched as John used the clip to bore a hole through the back popsicle stick, right above where the rubber band was being held. John stuck some string through the hole, tied one end of the string into a knot, and tied the other end to the alarm clock. John then set the alarm clock to go off at a certain time and positioned it on the very edge of the back-right corner of the boiler, so that the string was taut. He double-checked to make sure that everything was perfect, making some minor adjustments here and there. Once he was happy with the results, he stood up and turned to Dave.

  “So, what do you think?”

  Dave shrugged his shoulders.

  “It seems very elaborate, but what’s supposed to happen?”

  John condescendingly shook his head.

  “Dave, Dave, Dave. Must I explain everything? The lunar eclipse is supposed to begin at 4:30. At 4:31, this alarm clock, which is set to vibrate, will go off. Because of its precarious placement on the edge of the boiler, the alarm clock will fall off and pull the back popsicle stick with it. Because the rubber band is barely on the back popsicle stick, as soon as the stick gets pulled, the rubber band will be released and it will zing through the air and hit the scissors, making the blade snap closed, thus cutting the string. This will release the boot, which will then swing into the light switch, kicking it into the off position, hence shutting off all the lights in the school. It’s as simple as that, how can you not get it?”

  Dave still looked confused. John sighed and continued.

  “It will probably be thirty minutes before anybody even thinks to check out the master switch, during which time we can prank Baldini so badly that he’ll quit and never come back to this school again!”

  “Ohhhhhh,” Dave said, pretending like that made things clearer. Then he frowned and said, “Hey wait a minute. Why did you make me get the hairball?”

  John tried to stifle his laughter but couldn’t contain himself and began laughing hysterically. After thirty seconds, he was able to regain control, and wiping his eyes with a sniffle and a few more giggles, he said, “The hairball was never part of the plan. I just thought it would be hilarious to make you pick it up and carry it.”

  John barely finished the sentence before he once again burst out laughing. Dave was about to give an angry retort, when he once again heard a noise. This time, however, John heard it too, and he grabbed Dave by the arm and quickly moved him away from the setup. The two boys put on their masks and started carefully toward the door. John looked down at his watch and pressed the button that made the time display in the dark.

  “Uh oh! Detention started already. I bet Baldini sent someone to find us.”

  “Yesssss …… find you …….”

  John and Dave both screamed and jumped back as someone suddenly appeared before them. Whoever it was had his arms outstretched and his limp hands reaching out towards the boys. The lack of light in the room made it hard to see, but John was able to squint and make out a figure that looked like … Happy Jack?!

  Happy Jack used to be the school’s official substitute teacher. His real name was Larry. The boys first had Larry as a substitute teacher in third grade. At the time, John had noticed that because of Larry’s big bushy orange beard, his plaid shirts, and the fact that he wore boots and suspenders, Larry looked like a cliché lumberjack. Larry also never smiled. It was only natural that the kids started to call him Happy Jack. Larry hated the name, and it only made him angrier, which of course made the kids happier.

  As John got a better look, he noticed that Happy Jack’s skin looked like it had been drained of its color and was kind of saggy. John thought that maybe it was just the poor lighting.

  The last time that the boys had seen Happy Jack, it had been the beginning of the fourth grade. Happy Jack was assigned to be their Computers teacher. The class was cancelled after two days, however, because somebody had hacked into all of the school’s computers and replaced the background picture of a flower pot with one of Principal Freeman stuffing his face at a pie-eating contest. John had been suspiciously respectful during the subsequent interrogations of the students.

  Happy Jack had not been seen since then, and the rumor was that he was either the school’s new security guard or was living in the school’s basement. The fact that he had now found the boys could have meant that either one was correct, but John thought that it made the basement rumor a little more believable. Come to think of it, that would also explain Happy Jack’s sickly appearance.

  Happy Jack started to moan as he advanced toward the children. John thought that his odd voice and apparent lack of personal hygiene might have been due to months of lack of human contact. Then again, he seemed to recall that Happy Jack never seemed to be all that comfortable functioning in a normal social setting.

  “Want … you … Lich … eat … your … brains …”

  “Eat our brains?” John thought to himself. “Sounds like a zombie.”

  Dave was starting to shake and John could not tell whether the puddles on the floor underneath Dave were from a leak in the ceiling or not. He grabbed Dave and the two of them slowly backe
d up. Happy Jack advanced until he had them trapped in a corner. John tried desperately to remember anything he could about Happy Jack. His mind drew a blank.

  “Uhhh, look over there, there’s some nice juicy brains running away,” John said, pointing in the other direction.

  “Err?” Happy Jack groaned as he turned around to look at where John was pointing.

  John grabbed Dave and the two of them ran. As they passed, Happy Jack clumsily attempted to grab them. John and Dave ducked under his swinging arms, easily avoiding his slow movements. The two boys raced out of the boiler room and down the halls, with Happy Jack lumbering slowly behind them.

  “Dave, did you hear that?! He said something about Mr. Lich and brains!”

  “What does that mean? Do you think that Happy Jack finally snapped and ate Mr. Lich’s brains?”

  Dave was white as a ghost and breathing hard. As the boys rounded a corner, however, they suddenly stepped into some sticky orange slime, and slipped onto the floor.

  “Ugh, what is this stuff?” Dave asked.

  “I think it might be zombie slime,” John replied, his voice lacking its usual confidence.

  Could John actually be scared? Dave thought to himself.

  The two boys struggled to extricate themselves from the slime, but found that the harder that they struggled to get out, the more stuck they became. In the distance, they heard Zombie Happy Jack getting closer and closer.

  “Dave, think! Didn’t this just happen to you this morning? How’d you get out?”

  Dave thought back to the morning bus ride.

  “Umm … moisture! We need to get wet!”

  The boys looked around for a nearby water fountain, but there was none to be found. John looked up and noticed the fire sprinkler.

  “Hey Dave, do you think they reset these yet?” John asked as he pulled out a rubber band and took aim.

  Dave kept his fingers crossed as he watched the rubber band smack into the sprinkler. A shower of water rained down upon the boys. John and Dave smiled as the water mixed with the slime. Dave had been right; the water made the slime less sticky and the boys were able to drag themselves out. As soon as they had pulled free, they got up and began running again. John looked back just in time to see Zombie Happy Jack round the corner. A look of relief swept over Dave’s face as the boys neared the classroom.