Middle-School Cool

by Maiya Williams

  “Yes, they were very forgiving,” Sam agreed. “They were actually supportive … thankful, even. I really didn’t expect that.”

  “I did.”

  “You did?”

  Edie sighed. “You really need to have more faith in people, Sam. Once you dig down deep enough, most people are pretty decent. They’re just waiting for an opportunity to show it … like us, for instance. We came here to tell you that we forgive you for spying on us and that we really do like the school. We actually absolutely love it. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us. We just wish you were back in the classroom.”

  Victoria stepped forward. “Yeah, we miss our friend Sam and his outlandish costumes and tortured accents.”

  “Well, that Sam doesn’t exist anymore, I’m afraid. There is only me. But once you get to know me, I’m not so bad. And you know,” Sam said, rising from his seat, “you don’t have a journalism teacher anymore. Mr. Mister really likes it in the gardening shed. He wants to be the groundskeeper. Says it will keep him from having to take out his earplugs. Which means I could come back into the classroom as the journalism teacher.”

  “But aren’t you going to be busy expanding the school?” Jory pointed at the yellow pad filled with contact information and notes.

  “Yes … well, maybe. I don’t want the school to get too unwieldy. But no matter what I decide to do about expansion, I still want to know what students are really thinking. Since I can’t be a kid anymore, you guys will have to be my eyes and ears. I want to be in constant contact with you. And I didn’t tell you this before, but those letters my dad sent me while he was in prison? They were filled with designs for new and even more spectacular inventions. I could use some youthful input on their development.”

  “Youthful input? You mean guinea pigs,” Victoria said.

  “It sounds so sinister when you put it that way,” Sam chided. Victoria raised her eyebrows, crossing her arms expectantly. “Okay, fine. Guinea pigs,” Sam admitted with a shrug.

  “You know, it’s not so bad being a guinea pig,” Margo piped up. “I’ve met a few kids who picked that for their detention. Apparently guinea pigs have a wicked sense of humor. You just don’t realize it because they’re so quiet. But when nobody’s looking, they’re cutting up constantly.”

  As the students digested this surprising information, Jory turned back to Sam. “You were saying?” he prompted.

  “Oh, right,” Sam said. “Anyway, I’d just be your journalism teacher in name, because I really don’t know any more about journalism than you do. But obviously, you know a lot—enough to put out an incisive, provocative, and only slightly biased newspaper.”

  “Speaking of which, we have to do it again,” Jory said. “It’s time to start working on our next issue.”

  The teens left Sam’s office, waving to Mrs. Marblecook as they headed down the hallway. Already their minds swirled with ideas for new newspaper articles. Victoria was thinking about the refrigerator-shaped package with the words INFINITY BOX stamped on the side that had arrived that morning for the math teacher. Ruben wondered what to make of the sheet he’d seen tacked to Coach Freeman’s bulletin board that said “Rules for Human Ping-Pong.” Aliya and Taliya had noticed that a desk moved into the science classroom had a card on it stating, “Reserved for Albert Einstein.” Margo was certain something interesting was bound to happen at the school dance next weekend; after all, the theme of the dance was “Intelligent Monkeys.” Jory’s sights were set on the bell tower; he was sure the view and the wind speed would be spectacular from up there. Leo was seriously considering sending in his photographs to compete for various photo contests after classmates remarked on their artistically daring askew composition. And Edie? She had already accomplished her first goal. Her new goal was to find the second-most shocking, jaw-dropping story of the year. But what would it be?

  EPILOGUE

  JORY’S EDITORIAL

  Welcome to the very first issue of the Daily Dynamite. We hope that as you read about our school, you will discover what we on the Dynamite staff have: that Kaboom Academy is not a school but a portal. Once you step through that gate onto school grounds, you don’t know what you will find: peculiar people, inventions that boggle the mind, ideas that confound all reason. Conceived as a place for creative and imaginative exploration, the school has become more than that. It has become a community.

  Back in September, when we first arrived at Kaboom Academy, many of us felt isolated. We felt uncomfortable, like we didn’t fit in anywhere. But after only two months, we have learned to reach out to one another, even when we couldn’t stand each other! We have learned to tolerate and appreciate our differences. We have discovered that a solution to a problem doesn’t always come from where you would expect. We have become friends. We have found ourselves. We have even developed school spirit. Go, Firecrackers!

  How did Kaboom Academy accomplish this? It’s hard to say, except that as an experimental school, it keeps an open mind about everything. The academy’s philosophy reflects that of the man who created it, a man who loves puzzles, games, inventions, and having fun. You will learn more about him on the back page. As you read his story, consider the articles before it, and how every day is extraordinary at Kaboom Academy. There is no other school on the planet that can match it, and here is the proof: so far this year every student has had perfect attendance. Nobody wants to miss a moment.

  Read about our adventures and enjoy!

  Go, Firecrackers!

  Jory Bellard

  Editor in Chief

  Q: We’ve heard you always wear earplugs in your ears and that they make it hard for you to hear. Are you wearing them now?

  A: What a strange question! I’m not wearing an entire cow, just a pair of leather shoes.

  Q: Are you bothered by loud sounds?

  A: Isn’t everybody bothered by proud hounds? I mean, what does a hound have so much to be proud about? Whenever I see a dog strutting around putting on airs, it really ticks me off. Except Labrador retrievers. I think they might actually be better than us.

  Q: Have you always wanted to teach?

  A: I would love to go to the beach, but there isn’t one around for miles.

  Q: Do you have any hobbies?

  A: No, I don’t own any hoggies, piggies, donkeys, duckies, or any other livestock. And I’d appreciate it if you stopped using baby talk. I’m a grown man.

  Q: Do you consider yourself a newsman?

  A: That question is really inappropriate! Of course I’m not a nude man! You can see very well I’m fully clothed!

  Q: How do you feel about your odd name?

  A: I would never feel a cod’s brain. First of all, I’m not sure I could identify it among all the other cod parts. What does it look like? I have no idea. Secondly, I have better things to do with my time.

  Q: How did you spend your summer?

  A: I don’t think spending makes you dumber, though I’ve seen people buy some pretty dumb-looking outfits.

  Q: Are you married?

  A: No, I’m not very merry, I have to admit. I’m more the serious type.

  Q: Do you have any advice for the Kaboom Academy students?

  A: No, all my rice I keep for myself. I certainly wouldn’t use it for stewed ants. I’m not much for eating insects. I prefer hamburgers.

  Q: Thank you for your time.

  A: I haven’t given you my tie, and you can’t have it.

  Q: How did you meet your husband, George Ackerbloom, Dr. Kaboom’s father?

  A: I met George at a toy shop. We were both about twenty-five. He was bringing samples of his gadgets and toys around to different stores, holding demonstrations to get people interested. He was so funny and lively, with his big barbershop mustache and his beautiful blue eyes. His toys were frankly amazing, so I bought one of each, fifteen items altogether. That got his attention. He asked me how many kids I had and I told him I didn’t have any kids, I’d never been married, and the toys were for m
e. He later said to me he knew right then that we were made for each other.

  Q: What was it like being married to an inventor of novelty toys and gadgets?

  A: It was great fun, but I always had to be prepared for a surprise. Once I turned on the television and it showed the news from 1944. That was strange. Another time I lay down in my water bed and discovered it had been turned into a Jell-O bed. It was actually quite comfortable! And delicious!

  Q: We understand that you are a hoarder, someone who accumulates more things than is reasonable. Is that true?

  A: Yes, I collect office supplies. Fun fact: I believe I’ve accumulated enough to supply the Pentagon, which is the largest office building in the United States.

  Q: When did you realize you were a hoarder?

  A: When I collected my sixty-third three-hole puncher. Somehow owning sixty-two three-hole punchers seemed reasonable, but when I got the sixty-third I knew I had a problem.

  Q: What is it like to be a hoarder?

  A. I’m not proud of my hoarding. The worst part is trying to find space to keep all my stuff. My house and backyard are crammed with office supplies, getting dustier by the minute. No housekeeper will ever agree to work for me.

  Q: Do you have any advice for fellow hoarders who would like to kick the habit?

  A: Yes, seek help before you lose all your friends. I mean literally lose them in your junk. It happened to me; it can happen to you too. With help from a psychologist and a bulldozer, I was able to get my habit under control, though I sometimes fall back into old habits. My heart still races when I see a box of paper clips.

  Q: What is your favorite thing to do when you’re not at work?

  A: Arrange my staplers. I have 23,455 staplers of all sizes and colors, so it’s quite a project.

  Q: How did you spend your summer vacation?

  A: Arranging my staplers.

  Q: Have you ever invented anything?

  A: Not yet, but I’m working on a key ring for hoarders. People like me need a key ring that’s so big we can’t miss it. I tried using a shoe, but of course I have hundreds of shoes, so I could never remember which one I’d used. I tried putting it on a little dog so I could just call the dog and get the key, but it was hard keeping the dog in my purse. I tried attaching it to a piece of rotting meat so I could just smell where it was, but you can imagine why that didn’t work.

  Q: What is it like living in a psychiatric hospital?

  A: You get to meet the most interesting people. My neighbor on one side once refused to speak and would only communicate by whistling through a straw he’d stuck in his nostril. The woman who lived across the hall from me insisted she was a chicken. I got fresh eggs from her every morning, so I wasn’t about to tell her otherwise.

  Q: Do you ever feel like collecting something other than office supplies?

  A: No, I’m trying to live more simply. From now on I just want to collect friends.

  Q: You know everything about this facility. Are there any secrets?

  A: Yes.

  Q: What are they?

  A: If I told you, they wouldn’t be secrets anymore.

  Q: What did you do before you had this job?

  A: I worked for the government. That’s all I can say.

  Q: What’s the biggest mess you’ve had to clean up?

  A: Before the school opened, there had been talk about it being a self-sustaining enterprise; that is, growing the food that the kids would eat in the cafeteria right here on campus, on a farm at the back of the facility. Lunch Lady Lois started experimenting with potato-chip trees, but when the time came to harvest the chips it was a disaster. The chips were carried on the breeze. They floated all over the place and landed everywhere. Once they hit the ground, if they were there for more than five seconds we couldn’t feed them to the kids. And because the chips were all over the campus, it was impossible to sweep, shovel, or spray them away. I ended up bringing in a drove of pigs to clean it up. Of course, then I had to clean up what the pigs left behind, which was even worse.

  Q: Is the construction of the school finished?

  A: Because this is an experimental school, the campus is constantly changing. We’ll get rid of the things that don’t work and try to add buildings, classrooms, and other elements to the facility that we think will be of use. For instance, right now we have a very nice library that contains resources to supply students with factual information, but we are planning to build a lie-brary to supply them with an equal amount of nonsense.

  Q: Do you have any advice for students?

  A: Please pick up after yourselves. Kaboom Academy has an aggressive recycling program. Anything left lying around on the ground will be collected and recycled, including sleeping students.

  Q: Are you married? Do you have a family?

  A: I am not married. I live right here on the Kaboom Academy campus, in the silo that looks like a rocket ship.

  Q: Is it a rocket ship?

  A: As far as you know, no.

  Q: You teach several different science classes at Kaboom Academy. Which is your favorite?

  A: I teach earth science, life science, and biology, but my specialty is theoretical science, which deals with hypothetical speculations rather than practical applications.

  Q: That’s a difficult concept. Could you explain what theoretical science is in more detail?

  A: Think of it as science of the imagination. My job is to theorize about abstract notions, then make conjectural guesses about ideas that are wholly academic.

  Q: Could you please simplify your description even further?

  A: I think about science stuff.

  Q: As the dean of discipline you use hypnotism to relax students serving detention by getting them to focus on lab animals and “become” the animal for several hours. How did you happen upon this method?

  A: I call it “hypnotherapy.” I had some very disruptive students in my class, and as I tried to think of ways to quiet them down, I noticed the class guinea pigs lying calmly in their cage, eating carrots. At that moment I thought how wonderful it would be if the hooligans could find the same inner peace as the guinea pigs. The hypnotism achieves just that. An extra benefit is that the therapy encourages the students to eat more vegetables, which are sorely lacking in the diets of most middle schoolers.

  Q: What about students who focus on nonvegetarian animals, such as the snakes or the frogs? Have their diets also improved?

  A: Well, the school’s rodent and mosquito populations have been reduced considerably. That’s all I’ll say about that.

  Q: What is it like working with Dr. Kaboom?

  A: As you can imagine, it is very gratifying to work with a visionary inventor like Dr. Kaboom; however, he has a habit of turning my theoretical musings into reality, so I have to be careful what I say to him. We were talking about genetic splicing and I told him a joke: What happens when you cross a cat with some wood? You get a catalog. Get it? Cat-a-log? The next thing I knew there were some very disturbing cords of wood with yellow eyes and persnickety attitudes. I hadn’t meant for my mild and frankly unfunny joke to be used as a suggestion for an actual science experiment, but there you have it.

  Q: Are you saying there are living feline logs somewhere on the Kaboom Academy campus?

  A: Yes, but they’re hard to find. Like most cats, they won’t come when you call them. Many of them climbed into trees and have blended in so that you can no longer tell they’re there.

  Q: We understand that you have a particular dislike of yo-yos and had them banned from the campus. Are there any other toys that you don’t like?

  A: I’m not fond of jacks either. I’ve had more than one jack fly into my ear after being hit by that little pink ball and then ricocheting skyward. People don’t talk a lot about jacks-related injuries, but those little things are killers. They’re like miniature ninja throwing stars.

  Q: Do you have any advice for the students?

  A: If you do happen to get detention and must
undergo hypnotherapy, consider focusing on the mealworms. Nobody ever chooses the mealworms, and they’re beginning to take it personally.

  About the Author

  Maiya Williams attended Harvard University, where she was an editor and vice president of the Harvard Lampoon. She lives in Los Angeles. When she’s not writing novels, she writes and produces television shows.