“What? What man can’t grow a beard? I’m growing a beard,” Ruben said, trying to regain his balance after rolling off the merry-go-round. “Well, not a full beard. More like a mustache.”
“Yeah, right. You have a couple of hairs on your upper lip,” Victoria said wryly. “Peach fuzz. My grandma has more of a mustache.”
“Victoria?” Ruben staggered dizzily to the swing set, grinning broadly. “Thank you for noticing.” Victoria rolled her eyes and pumped her legs harder.
“Hey, some guys can’t grow beards.” Jory laughed, executing a wobbly handstand on top of the monkey bars. Even though his friends weren’t nervous, he did draw some worried glances from nearby parents, who quickly turned to their younger children, pointing Jory out as someone they should not emulate.
“So what are we going to do?” Edie said, still twirling on the swing. “How are we going to approach him?”
“Just walk up to him and say, ‘Hey, we know who you are’?” Victoria added, stretching her legs out at the apex of her swing. She let go of the chains and flew in a wide arc before dropping to her feet without falling. “Gotcha!” she cried, grabbing the air for emphasis.
“Oh, we can have a little more fun with him than that,” Jory mused, turning to Victoria. “Hey, that looked like fun. Did you feel like you were flying?”
“No, I felt like I jumped off a swing,” Victoria said. “But it was fun.”
Everyone switched places. Jory leaped off the jungle gym and sat on the swing, pumping his legs as hard as he could, competing with Victoria and Ruben to see who could jump the farthest. Aliya and Taliya spun each other on the merry-go-round while Edie and Margo mounted the seesaw. Leo’s hole had gotten so big he could sit inside it, which he did, though he gave it up to swing, something that was fun even if you couldn’t see very well. For the rest of the afternoon, the group played in the park. For so long they had considered it to be a place where only little kids played; they’d forgotten how much fun little kids have. As they played they continued to discuss the recent events and how to trip up Sam. By the time the streetlights turned on, they had formulated their plan.
• • •
The next day the journalism students went through all their classes without saying anything about their discovery. If Sam figured out that they were on to him, he might disappear, and they’d never have their questions answered. Finally, at the end of the day, during journalism class, Jory called a meeting.
“Okay, everyone,” he said. “Since Mr. Mister is no longer here, I thought I should check in and see how your stories are coming along. Victoria?”
“My rewrite is almost done,” she said.
“Margo?”
“I’ll have a first draft by the middle of the week.”
“Ruben?”
“Mine’s done. I made all your changes.”
“Aliya and Taliya?”
“We’re also done. We’re thinking of taking a poll on the dress code.”
“Excellent. Leo, how are you doing on photographs?”
“They’re all done. I emailed them to you. At least, I think I did … I couldn’t see the buttons very well. I might have deleted them instead.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll find them. How about you, Edie?”
“I still haven’t managed to track down Dr. Kaboom,” she said with a sigh. “After hitting that dead end on Saturday, I’m thinking of just giving up. I mean, there’s nothing on this guy. I have a feeling he doesn’t even exist. He’s just a con artist, pretending to be someone he isn’t. Why, he’s nothing but a big fat fraud, just like his dad.”
The sultan with the bright blue eyes leaped to his feet. “You take that back! My dad was not a fraud! He was a genius!” Almost immediately, the sultan knew he’d said too much. His mouth hung open as he slowly began backing away. Turning around, he bolted for the door, only to discover Victoria and Margo blocking it.
“Sorry, no exit,” Victoria said.
Sam’s eyes darted from one student to another as they closed in on him. Then, much to everyone’s surprise, he sprang into the air, deftly flipping himself so that his hands and feet hit the ceiling, where he stuck like a giant gecko.
“How’d he get up there?” Aliya gasped.
“He’s got springs on his shoes,” Taliya pointed out.
“They’re called Boing-Boing Boots,” said Jory. “And he’s wearing Sticky Mitts on his hands and knees so he can cling to any surface! They’re advertised on the back of another comic book!”
“Explain it later,” Edie interrupted. “He’s getting away!”
Sure enough, Sam was padding along the ceiling, heading toward the skylight. The ceilings were twelve feet up, much too high for the students to reach no matter how athletic they were. Ruben executed one of his pirouettes, snatching Sam’s cape from his shoulders. It wasn’t enough to bring him down, but the jump reminded him that he had friends who could reach even higher. Ruben gave a sharp whistle. The balls rolled out from under his seat, where they liked to cuddle by his feet. Ruben pointed to Sam. “Fetch!”
Starting low, the balls began building up momentum and altitude with each bounce. Higher and higher and higher they went, until one of them knocked off Sam’s turban. The next ball slammed Sam in the head and bit off his wig, revealing that he was, in fact, bald. The balls became increasingly excited, wildly caroming off the wall, floor, and ceiling with such speed that the students had to duck under the tables to avoid being hit themselves. Still the balls were not able to break Sam’s grip. He grunted as they smacked against him, but he managed to slowly crawl to the skylight in the ceiling. When he pressed the Boing-Boing Boots against the window, the powerful springs hidden within the soles punched the skylight out with a loud thump, sending it flying over the roof.
“Oh no!” Aliya cried.
“He’s going to the roof!” Taliya wailed.
“So? What’s he going to do up there? He can’t possibly jump,” Victoria said.
Sam hoisted himself out the window. Just before he disappeared, one of the balls hit him in the nose, and the sultan Phony Face fell off. Edie ran to pick it up. In her hands the disguise looked cheap and ridiculous, an angular nose with a long black mustache and an even longer beard, split in half at the bottom. Jory had opened the window on the wall closest to the skylight. Sticking his head out, he craned his neck to view the roof.
“I can get up there,” he said confidently.
“Jory, no …,” Leo said, but it was too late. Jory was already on the ledge. In the next instant he was climbing up the side of the building. The others stuck their heads out and watched him ascend, marveling at his ability to find and grasp the narrow fingerholds and toeholds between the bricks, praying that he didn’t fall. Reaching the gutter downspout, Jory grabbed onto it and used it to climb the rest of the way, as quickly as a monkey scrambling up a coconut tree.
“He made it! Jory’s on the roof!” Ruben yelled. “Come on!”
Ruben charged out of the room with his classmates close on his heels. They found the only staircase that had roof access, but it was locked. “Balls! Open!” Ruben ordered. The four balls gave themselves three practice bounces, and then all four came together in a powerful blast against the target, BOOM! The door flew open and the students charged up the steps.
Meanwhile, Jory was in hot pursuit of a short, balding man whom he had known as Sam but who apparently was the headmaster of the school, Dr. Kaboom. Jory had trouble keeping up; after all, Sam had gotten a substantial head start. But Jory figured he didn’t have to hurry since Sam was quickly running out of room on the rooftop. There were no buildings close enough to reach by jumping, and Jory didn’t believe Sam intended to commit suicide.
And yet Sam wasn’t slowing down. He was heading right for the edge at full speed. Then, off in the distance, the horizon seemed to shift ever so slightly. Jory blinked. Then it happened again. The scenery beyond the school moved and then corrected itself. Jory stopped running. He shook his he
ad and rubbed his eyes. Was he dizzy? No, he seemed to be fine. The building under him wasn’t moving either. He turned around, checking the other directions—south, west, north.… It was only the eastern horizon that kept moving. And still Sam was running straight toward that ever-shifting scenery.
In a flash Jory realized what was happening. He laughed, and then increased his own speed, sprinting as fast as he could, as Sam dove forward and disappeared.
Ruben burst through the door on the rooftop and saw his friend racing toward the edge of the building. “Jory! Stop!” he cried. The others emerged from the staircase just in time to see Jory take a flying leap and vanish over the side. Margo and Edie screamed. Aliya and Taliya were stunned into speechlessness. Victoria couldn’t help herself; she started to cry. Ruben rushed to the building’s edge, not willing to believe what his eyes were telling him, that Jory had finally lost his mind and jumped off the roof.
Then he backed up. Rising from the edge of the building was a strange oblong inflated object that looked very much like a miniature blimp, except this blimp blended in so perfectly with the sky that it was practically invisible. All he could see was a thin oval outline, detectable only by a slight delay in the mechanism creating this amazing visual effect.
Beneath the blimp hung a compartment large enough for perhaps two children or one small adult. The same sort of invisibility mechanism cloaked the compartment; however, the compartment was made more obvious by the boy dangling from its open window: Jory. Sam could be seen through the opening arguing with him, but after a short exchange, he grabbed Jory’s arms and helped him inside. Slowly, the blimp lost altitude, sinking toward the courtyard.
That is what Ruben saw. Jory, however, knew perfectly well as he made his dive over the side of the building that he was not on a suicide mission. He had recognized the Invisiblimp from the advertisement on the back of his comic books. As it rose slowly before him, he made a quick calculation of its distance, his speed, his jumping ability, and his strength, and once he made that calculation, he knew that this was the opportunity he’d been waiting for all his life. He sprinted toward the edge of the building, feeling no fear, only excitement. He pushed off the edge of the roof, lunging for the passing window with complete focus, like an arrow heading for a target. His fingers grabbed the window opening perfectly. He felt gravity jolt his body as he slammed against the compartment, but he had strong arms and knew he could hang on. Jory had, in fact, practiced for just this sort of situation using the chin-up bar in his bedroom doorway.
Sam immediately appeared at the window, shouting that their combined weight was too much for the Invisiblimp to bear. For a moment Jory feared that Sam would peel his fingers away from the windowsill one by one until he plummeted to his death, but fortunately, Sam was no villain. Jory felt a great deal of relief when Sam helped him inside.
As they drifted downward, Sam showed Jory how to work the Invisiblimp, how to steer it, how to make it accelerate, and how the cloaking mechanism worked, though the science behind it was much too advanced for Jory to fully comprehend. By the time they landed, the rest of the journalism class, along with the balls, were there to meet them. Jory threw open the compartment door, euphoric.
“Did you see that? Did you see it? For a second there I was flying! Oh man, there is nothing like it! It was … it was … glorious!”
“You idiot!” Victoria strode up to Jory, punching him hard on the shoulder. “You scared us!”
“I did?”
“Of course you did!” Aliya blurted.
“We thought you were dead!” Taliya added.
“Don’t you know we care about what happens to you?” Margo said.
“I don’t know what they’re talking about; that was pretty awesome, dude,” Ruben said.
“I didn’t see it,” Leo said. “But I got some pictures anyway.”
“What about Dr. Kaboom?” Edie said. They all turned to the Invisiblimp, which was now blending in perfectly with the surrounding grass of the courtyard. Sam had stepped out of the compartment and immediately the balls circled him threateningly.
“Call off the balls, Ruben,” Sam said sadly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Ruben gave a sharp whistle. The balls stopped circling and bounced happily into the compartment, perhaps to explore; nobody was sure what the balls might want in there. But the teens had bigger issues at hand than figuring out the peculiar interests of dodgeballs.
“May I have my interview now, Dr. Kaboom?” Edie asked.
“Yes, but please, don’t call me Dr. Kaboom. It’s Sam Ackerbloom. Dr. Kaboom is just one of my inventions … but I think you already know that.”
The journalism students followed Sam into his office in the administration building, passing Mrs. Marblecook, who had created an interesting tower out of several hundred Wite-Out bottles.
“Hi, Mom,” Sam said as he passed her. Mrs. Marblecook just waved and went back to her project.
Once they had all gathered in his office, Sam closed the door. “Sorry I ate all the chocolates in your appointment book,” Edie admitted.
“That’s all right,” Sam said, gesturing to the sofa and chairs, indicating that the students should sit. Four of them wedged themselves onto the sofa. Edie settled in the armchair with Victoria, and Jory perched next to her on the wide armrest. Leo sat on the floor, trying to figure out where to point the camera. Sam took his place behind the desk, facing them.
It was obvious to the students, seeing Sam for the first time without the phony face or a costume, that he was not a teenager. His thinning light brown hair revealed a shiny bald spot, and a crinkle around his eyes betrayed his age. Still, he looked young for a middle-aged man. He was a little more than five feet tall—Edie’s height—and slender. His face was cherubic, and his eyes were so big and bright he resembled a baby. Sitting there at the desk, he looked like a kid making believe he was an adult.
The students sat in silence, all thinking pretty much the same thing: if they thought Sam looked ridiculous before in all of his costumes, he looked just as ridiculous now as a real person. But Edie had been waiting for this moment for a week. Finally, she could confront the man who had been evading her.
“Dr. Kaboom …,” she began, “or should I call you Mr. Ackerbloom?”
“Please, call me Sam. After all this time I feel like we’re friends.”
“Friendship is based on honesty and trust,” Victoria interrupted. “Which I’m afraid you have not demonstrated.”
Sam bit his lip. Edie almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
“All right, Mr. Liar, why don’t you tell us how you came up with this dastardly middle school scheme?”
“Dastardly? Scheme? You make it sound dishonest.”
“Hello? It is dishonest! You hired somebody to play a fictional character with made-up credentials. You totally misrepresented yourself to our parents. You pretended to be a very weird kid just to spy on us. You hired unlicensed, inexperienced teachers, some of whom I believe were inmates at this facility when it was a madhouse.”
“Patients. They’re called patients. And it was an asylum.”
“Whatever. And you are using highly questionable teaching materials that are nothing more than your father’s fraudulent inventions.…”
Sam jumped to his feet. “Those inventions were not fraudulent!” he declared, his face turning red.
“Sit down, Sam,” Ruben cautioned. “The balls don’t like sudden movements. Sure enough, the four balls had bounced in through the open window and were clustered warily around Ruben’s feet. He patted them gently until they calmed themselves and rolled behind him.
“We’ve got you, Mr. Ackerbloom,” Edie said. “The jig is up. Once we print this story, you’ll be finished. Done. Through. But we only have half the story; we need your side. It’s our obligation as journalists to report everything and not hold anything back. Mr. Mister may have been crazy, but he was right about that. So if you would, just start at the beginning. It will save
me having to ask a lot of pointless questions. Spill.” Edie poised her hand over her notebook, her pen at the ready.
Sam closed his eyes as the students shifted around in their seats, uncomfortable in the silence. Even the balls bumped against the wall impatiently. Finally, after a full minute passed, Sam opened them and spoke.
“When I was growing up, I thought my dad was the greatest man in the world,” he began. “George Ackerbloom dreamed up some of the most amazing inventions. Many of them didn’t have any point except to be used for fun, to make you laugh, just some odd piece of whimsy. That’s what he thought, anyway, but for the kids who played with them, the toys were keys to unexplored worlds, passports to exciting adventures … they were the sparks that lit the imagination.”
“But they didn’t work,” interrupted Leo.
“They did work!” Sam jumped up from his seat, slamming his hand on the desk as he did so. “They did! The problem is, nobody ever read the instructions!” He noticed the balls becoming visibly agitated and sat down again.
“Why would people not read instructions?”
“People never read instructions, not well. Maybe they’re in too much of a hurry or maybe they don’t think it’s necessary or maybe the writing is too small or they just get so excited about the toy that they don’t even bother to look for instructions. But the fact is, if you followed the instructions, my father’s inventions did work. They worked perfectly. Dad got blamed for his own customers’ oversight. People called his inventions junk. But because they were so inexpensive, nobody bothered to ask for a refund. If they had, my father would have sent them another set of instructions or he would’ve replaced the item. Dad was a good businessman. Customer satisfaction was important to him. He didn’t know the extent to which people considered his inventions to be worthless until … well, until the accident.”
“You mean the drowning,” prompted Edie.
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