The Candy Man Cometh

by Dan Danko

  “Cardboard Powers, activate!” Boy-in-the-Cardboard-Box Boy shouted. He charged Boom Boy and repeatedly bashed into him with his cardboard box. “Take that! And that! And that!” he yelled with each collision.

  “Let’s see... how good are you... with that box... when I blow you ...to the... moon!” Boom Boy threatened between gritted teeth.

  “Super Box Attack!” Boy-in-the-Cardboard-Box Boy yelled. He spun in place and bashed Boom Boy with the sides of his cardboard box.

  “Oh no! Boom Boy’s losing!” Spice Girl gasped. Earlobe Lad peeked his head out from under the table. Both of his hands were clasped over his ears. “Well I sure wish he’d lose a little more quietly,” he whispered up to us.

  “How can you tell he’s losing?” I asked. “Because he looks so sad,” she replied. “Maybe we should move the table back,” Exact Change Kid said. “If Boom Boy really blows up, I don’t want to get his parts all over my costume. My mom just washed it.”

  Boom Boy bent over and crossed his arms over his stomach. He grunted twice and his face grew a shade of deep red.

  “He’s not going to blow up,” I said.

  “How do you know?” Exact Change Kid was already moving his chair back.

  “Because he never blows up,” I reminded him. Suddenly Boom Boy unclenched his fists and stood up. “Wait! I get it now. I get it. You want me to blow up, don’t you?” Boom Boy said to me. “Yeah. ’Cause once I do, I’ll be gone and —”

  “Take that! And that! And that!” Boy-in-the-Cardboard-Box Boy yelled. He charged Boom Boy and repeatedly bashed into him with his Cardboard Box of Justice.

  “Could you hold on just a second?” Boom Boy said to him, and then turned to me. “Now where was I?”

  “Wait! I get it now. I get it. You want me to blow up, don’t you?” I mimicked Boom Boy, which was easy enough to do since I’ve heard his speech so many times.

  “Oh yeah! That’s right! ’Cause once I do, I’ll be gone and then there’ll be no more Boom Boy and you won’t be able to say that he never blows up!”

  “But Boom Boy, you never do blow up! You just threaten to,” I reminded him.

  “And that’s how it better stay, or I swear, I swear... I’ll blow myself up!”

  “Okay, okay! How about Boxy: The Box Boy?” Boy-in-the-Cardboard-Box Boy asked hopefully. “Can I be a sidekick then?”

  “Are you still here?” Boom Boy asked.

  “Why don’t you just leave your name and number and if we ever have a future vacancy, we’ll give you a call,” Spelling Beatrice suggested, a lone voice of reason.

  That’s one thing I really, really like about Spelling Beatrice. Not only does she not drive me absolutely insane like the other sidekicks do, but she acts like she actually has a brain in her head. I used to think it was because she was the oldest, but then I realized she seems totally sane because the other sidekicks are just totally insane.

  Boy-in-the-Cardboard-Box Boy wrote his name and phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Exact Change Kid. Then he slumped in his box like a sad little piece of cardboard who had just found out he was really only a piece of notebook paper.

  I mean, I don’t know if cardboard would be sad if it ever found out it was just a piece of notebook paper, but I’m guessing it would.

  Boom Boy looked over Exact Change Kid’s shoulder and eyed the piece of paper. “He just broke Rule #1,” Boom Boy giggled.

  “Next!” Exact Change Kid called out.

  A kid in a hamster costume stepped up, holding his father’s hand. The cheap, oversized costume head was held on by Velcro. “I’m Hamster Man!” the kid immediately said with a huge smile.

  “Sorry!” Boom Boy said quickly. “Boys, Kids, Girls, Lasses, Gals, Lads, and Juniors only. No Mans or Womans allowed. NEXT!”

  Hamster Man pulled his hand away from his father. “I told you it should be Hamster Boy! I told you! I told you! I told you!” He lifted his furry paws to his eyes and ran across the League of Big Justice Super Additional-Parking Parking Lot of Justice. “I don’t wanna go back to the pet store!” he yelled.

  “Maybe this was a bad idea,” Spelling Beatrice said to me.

  “When is anything that we do not a bad idea?” I answered.

  “I should be practicing my Grammar Powers now.”

  Spelling Beatrice’s statement brought two very important questions to mind:

  QUESTION #1

  How do you practice Grammar Powers?

  QUESTION #2

  What in the world are Grammar Powers?

  Chapter Eight

  How You Practice Grammar Powers

  “Well...I put on a blindfold and write noun-modifying sentences with subordinate clauses without dangling my participles or splitting any infinitives,” Spelling Beatrice informed me.

  Did I say she was sane?

  “And then what?” I asked.

  “I take off the blindfold and see how good I did,” she replied.

  “Don’t you mean how well you did?” I asked. Spelling Beatrice went white, like she was choking on an onomatopoeia. Her left eye twitched. She grabbed my elbow and pulled me closer.

  “This stays between you and me!” she begged.

  Chapter Nine

  Princess Floppo the Fish Girl

  Boom Boy held his palm up to his mouth and checked his breath. Satisfied it wasn’t too offensive, he started the difficult line of questioning. “So, what planet do you come from, Princess Floppo?” He sounded excited that he was meeting a real princess from another planet.

  “Earth.” Princess Floppo said.

  “Wow. Her planet has the same name as ours!” Spice Girl gushed and clapped her hands together. “Hurray for Earth!”

  “I think she is from the same planet as us,” I said to Spice Girl.

  “I’m not from her planet, silly! I’m from this one,” Spice Girl said, and shook her head in dis-belief.

  “And she’s from this planet, too,” I explained. “No, she’s not, Mr. Know-It-All.” Spice Girl rolled her eyes. “She said she’s from ‘Earth.’ ” Spice Girl punctuated her remark with finger quotes.

  I don’t even know why I bother.

  “MAAA PAM MAM MAM PAH MAAAAA!” Boyin-the-Plastic-Bubble Boy shouted in terror as Super Vision Lad pushed his Giant Hamster Ball of Justice down a hill in the vacant field across the street.

  “So are you a princess of some country?” Exact Change Kid asked. Luckily, he understood what Princess Floppo meant when she said complicated things like “I’m from Earth.”

  “No,” Princess Floppo replied.

  “An island?”

  “Nope.”

  “An independent conglomeration of city-states?”

  “A what?”

  “What are you princess of?” I asked. “Nothing really, I guess. I just always wanted to be a princess,” Princess Floppo replied. “And I like ponies.”

  Exact Change Kid looked at his clipboard. “I see here that your full name is Princess Floppo the Fish Girl. Can you breathe underwater? Swim super fast? Ride dolphins?”

  “I’m afraid of the water,” Princess Floppo stated.

  “Do you have fish powers?” Boom Boy asked, hopefully.

  “Or any powers?” I added.

  “Of course! I have the power to flop around like a fish out of water.” And with that, Princess Floppo fell to the ground and flopped about like a... like a...well... like a giant fish out of water. She flipped and flopped and flopped and flipped.

  Boom Boy watched for a moment, then leaned back in his chair. “She gets my vote.”

  “What? How is she going to fight evil by flopping around on the ground like a fish?” I snapped.

  “Hey, when you joined the Sidekicks, no one asked how you were going to fight evil by running around!” Boom Boy reminded me.

  “But I can run 108 miles per hour!”

  “And your point is what, exactly?” Boom Boy replied.

  “I have a super power! I don’t just flop around o
n the ground like a fish!”

  “If you think it’s so easy, let’s see you try!” Boom Boy huffed back.

  “You’re missing my point,” I sighed.

  “I’m not,” Spice Girl jumped in. “Your point is that there aren’t two planets named Earth and that Princess Floppo is only saying the name of the planet where she’s princess is ‘Earth’ because she doesn’t want to tell us the real name of her home planet and break Rule #1.”

  “Rule #1?” I inquired.

  “Yes! ‘Never tell anyone the name of the planet you live on.’ Didn’t you listen to anything Peter Pumpkin said?” Spice Girl wondered.

  Right now, I was really wondering what planet Spice Girl lived on.

  “Rule #1 is ‘Never tell anyone your real name,’ ” I reminded her.

  “Nah! That was Rule #9!” Boom Boy joined in. “There is no Rule #9!” I argued.

  “I have a rule for you!” Earlobe Lad whispered from beneath the table. “SHUT UP!”

  “Oh! That’s a good one,” Spice Girl said, and gave Earlobe Lad a quiet thumbs-up. “But I just broke it, didn’t I? Oops! I broke it again! Oops! I did it again!”

  “Uh, guys,” Exact Change Kid cut in. “Maybe we should stop Princess Floppo before continuing with this discussion?”

  I looked over to the floor. Princess Floppo still flipped and flopped about like a... like a... well... like a giant fish out of water.

  “She certainly is determined,” I admitted. Princess Floppo the Fish Girl stood up and brushed the dirt from her Spandex costume. Although she had none of the powers of a fish, had no gills, no tail, and wasn’t even a princess, she still wore a small fake-diamond encrusted tiara. Her outfit had large, glittery imitation green fish scales that looked like she had pulled them off an ugly evening gown. On her back was a green fin made from some wavy material that was probably once a kite.

  “My mom helped me stitch it,” she confessed as Boom Boy pulled out a chair for her.

  Luckily, there was only one more person who had come for the sidekick tryouts. She was younger than most of the other hopefuls, but she wore a ninja outfit. Man! It’d be awesome to have a sidekick who could really kick butt, someone who knew the martial arts and could really punch evil in the face! Roundhouses! Spinning kicks! No-shadow punches! Nunchucks! Throwing stars! Butt-kicking —

  “Twick or tweat!” the girl yelled giddily and held out a plastic candy holder shaped like a jack-o-lantern.

  “Ahhh! Leave me alone!” Earlobe Lad called out from under the table. Apparently, the sound of my head repeatedly banging the Sidekick table was hurting his giant ears.

  Chapter Ten

  I Have a Headache!

  “I have the worst headache,” I said after banging my head several times on the table.

  “You have a headache?” Earlobe Lad mumbled from under the table. “Welcome to my life! And stop blinking so loud!”

  That was when my phone rang.

  Chapter Eleven

  Speedy to the Rescue!

  “Spuddy! Spuddy!” Pumpkin Pete’s voice cried out over my cell phone. “I need your help!”

  “It’s not laundry day!” I replied.

  “No! Something worse! I — hey! Hey! Get away from me! Don’t! No! Aaaah!”

  Pete’s phone went dead. He really was in trouble! I leaped from my chair. “Gotta run!” I said, and jumped up to head for the League of Big Justice.

  “Hey! Speedy! You haven’t voted for the new sidekick!” Exact Change Kid said.

  “Can’t vote now! Gotta save Pete!”

  “What’s with that guy and never wanting to vote?” Boom Boy asked.

  “Maybe he just doesn’t like democracy,” Exact Change Kid commented.

  “It’s probably because Spelling Beatrice always beats him when they play it,” Spice Girl commented.

  “That’s Scrabble,” Spelling Beatrice corrected. Exact Change Kid pulled out the ballots and handed them to the other sidekicks. He dropped one under the table for Earlobe Lad.

  “I need a pencil,” he mumbled. “And could you please not drop it so loudly? And whose stomach is gurgling? Aaah! Will everyone please eat lunch before these meetings? Is that too much to ask?”

  I ran through the League of Big Justice Super Justice Lobby and past the League of Big Justice Super Souvenir Gift Shop of Justice, and that was when I saw him. Pumpkin Pete came racing toward me like the building was on fire, or at least like it was Halloween night and an angry pumpkin-carving mob was on the loose.

  “Spuddy! Spuddy! You gotta help me! It’s terrible! Terrible!” Pete shouted.

  “What is it, Pete? Is evil attacking? Is King Justice in trouble? Is it an angry pumpkin-carving mob on the loose?” You never know.

  Pete collapsed and I caught his big, fat, orange pumpkin head with both hands. “The horror! The horror!”

  “What’s happening, Pete?! You have to tell me!” “He’s evil! Pure evil!” Pete’s head slumped in my arms. And that was when I saw it.

  “Where big orange bawoon man?” Super Vision Lad yelled, racing around the corner toward us.

  Pete jumped up and hid behind me. “Get that monster away from me!”

  “Pete! It’s just Super Vision Lad!” I assured him.

  “Super Vision Lad, or the greatest evil the world has ever known?” Pete gasped.

  I looked at Super Vision Lad. He made a spit bubble between his lips. It popped, and he giggled, “I wike bubbose!”

  “The kid’s mother... she tricked me! Promised me ten bucks an hour if I watched him until six o’clock! The kid’s unstoppable! She should pay me a hundred dollars a minute!”

  “Well, Pete, what’re you going to do?”

  “I’m not going to do anything! It’s your problem now!” Pete informed me, and pushed me toward Super Vision Lad.

  “Me? I don’t want to babysit this kid! I’m a sidekick! I have to be ready to fight evil at all times!” I couldn’t believe Pete was trying to pawn this kid off on me.

  What am I saying? Of course I could believe it. “You want to fight evil?” Pete asked. “Just turn your back on that kid for ten seconds. I swear, he needs constant supervision!”

  “Tacos are funny!” Super Vision Lad shouted, and started banging his head against the display stand of Pumpkin Pete action figures at the League of Big Justice Super Souvenir Gift Shop. One of the action figures fell off the top shelf.

  “I have all the powers of a pumpkin!” the action figure boasted when it hit the floor. Super Vision Lad picked up the doll and began to chew on its big, fat, orange pumpkin head.

  “You break it, you buy it!” Pete shouted, and then immediately ducked behind me again.

  “Look, Pete, I have to get back to the other sidekicks and vote,” I informed him. “By this time, they probably think I really, really hate democracy.”

  “And well you should!” Pete snorted. “I hear that Spelling Beatrice always kicks your butt when you play.”

  I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. But then, I almost never had a clue about what Pete was talking about. Or Exact Change Kid. Or Spice Girl, Boom Boy, Earlobe Lad, and Boy-inthe-Plastic-Bubble Boy.

  Oddly enough, though, I knew exactly what Boy-in-the-Cardboard-Box Boy had been talking about.

  “Sorry, Pete. I have to go,” I told him, and started to head down the hall. “I have to play in my first football game tonight.”

  It’s a long story, but basically, I lost my temper one day at school when Mandrake Steel (a.k.a. Charisma Kid) was taunting me in front of Prudence Cane (a.k.a. The Girl I Have a Crush On But Doesn’t Even Know I’m Alive Even Though I Sit Next to Her in Class). So I used just a little bit of my super speed to make Mandrake look stupid, and the school’s football coach saw me. Let’s just say he made me the starting running back on the spot.

  Sure, I’m too small to play. Sure, I’d never played real football before the first team practice, and sure, I was more scared to play in tonight’s game than when I saw Pum
pkin Pete blasting off from Pluto in the final escape rocket, but I figure a little super speed goes a long way.

  Or at least it goes far enough to help me avoid any broken bones when the padded giants on the other team try to squish me.

  I was almost safely out the door when Pete shouted, “Wait! You can’t go! Don’t you remember Rule #2?”

  I froze. Nailed on a technicality!

  I turned around, and in a deeply sighing breath said, “ ‘Rule #2: No matter how crazy it sounds, no matter how dangerous you think it may be, always, always do what a superhero asks you to do.’ ”

  “Nah!” Pete scolded. “That’s Rule #9!” “There is no Rule #9!”

  “If there’s no Rule #9, then how come you just recited it to me, smart guy?”

  “Because that was Rule #2!” I said. “Weren’t you paying any attention when I trained you yesterday?” Pete slapped his forehead with his viney hand. “Rule #2 is — and please try to pay attention this time — Rule #2 is: You have to baby-sit. See ya!”

  Pete turned and raced down the League of Big Justice Super Justice Lobby. “Pumpkin feets, don’t fail me now!” he yelped.

  “Do I at least get to keep the ten dollars?” I shouted.

  Pete skidded to a stop at the door to the League of Big Justice Inner Sanctum of Justice. “Are you kidding? All money earned by a super-hero goes to charity!” he called back.

  I thought for a moment, then shook my head. “And let me guess, you’re donating this money to the Charity to Help Persons with Big, Fat, Orange Pumpkin Heads?”

  “Bingo!” Pete said and slammed the door behind him.

  The thing is, Pumpkin Pete is the only person with a big, fat, orange head.

  Like a pumpkin.

  Chapter Twelve

  2 + 2 = EVIL!

  I looked at Super Vision Lad as he chewed the head off the Pumpkin Pete doll and spit it onto the floor. The head bounced across the gray marble and rolled to a stop at the edge of the Hall of Heroes of Big Justice.

  “Since I’m stuck babysitting you for a few hours, you might as well tell me your real name,” I said.