Jake the Fake Keeps It Real

by Craig Robinson

  My jaw dropped open as Forrest and Cody started carefully picking up armloads of garbage eggs.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, hugging the bin to my chest.

  “Apology accepted,” said Mr. Briggs. “Good initiative, The Dentist.” He turned to look at the gaggle of kids who had gathered to watch. “Remember, you can make something out of anything.”

  I spent the next two hours in the Sculpture Lab, trying to make a garbage TV, or an egg-laying garbage dinosaur, or even a garbage nest. But no matter how much glue I used, all I could make was hundreds of eggs.

  Plus, it was really sunny in there, and soon the garbage started to smell pretty bad. So eventually I just gave up and kind of slinked back to homeroom. I was expecting everybody to be really disappointed that I hadn’t created something of Great Importance, but in reality, nobody seemed to remember or notice or care. So neither did I. If anything, I felt free and light and kind of great. I was doing it. Outweirdoing the weirdos. Having fun. And most important, throwing everybody off the scent of my fakeness.

  Now all I had to do was keep it going for another six years.

  The next few weeks passed in a blur. A happy blur. Or at least a blur of not being nervous and miserable. If an idea popped into my head, I went with it, and life was strange and fun.

  Like the No Instruments Band. One day while I was spacing out in science class, which is the only class besides gym that we don’t have with Mr. Allen, and therefore the only one where we do normal boring work like discussing What Killed the Dinosaurs?, I had this thought:

  What is a band?

  The obvious answer is, it’s a group of people who play music together.

  But the problem with that—as you know if you’ve ever seen any movies about bands—is that once a band becomes successful, somebody becomes a jerk and somebody becomes a stick-in-the-mud and somebody starts dating an awful person and soon they all hate each other and say stuff like “It used to be about the music!” and “You’ve changed, maaaaan.” And then they break up, or make a terrible album, or both.

  So I thought: what if you just got rid of the part that causes all the conflict? And that’s when I decided to start a super-rad band, but not allow any instruments or music. That way, we’d all stay friends.

  My plan was to put up flyers around school and see what happened. But Zenobia, Azure, Forrest, and Klaus saw me take out the stack of flyers I’d made and followed me into the hall to see what was going on. The second I put up the first one, they all read it and demanded to be in the band. So that was that. Instant band.

  We started “rehearsing” in one of the music rooms after school, which mostly meant discussing what our name should be and trying to make Klaus understand that yes, he could be our drummer, but no, he couldn’t play the drums. It basically went like this:

  Zenobia: Let’s be the Meat Grinders.

  Me: Why the Meat Grinders?

  Zenobia (shrugs): It sounds punk rock.

  Azure: But we’re not punk rock. We’re mariachi/​bluegrass/​hip-hop. How about the Meadowlarks?

  Forrest: What is punk rock?

  Zenobia (crinkling up her forehead at Azure): Wait, you’re not punk rock? You’ve got a spiderweb covering half your face.

  Azure (shrugs): I like spiders.

  Me: How about the Lark Grinders?

  Zenobia (scowling): What’s that, like, a compromise?

  Me: Yeah.

  Zenobia and Azure: No.

  Forrest: WHAT IS PUNK ROCK?

  Zenobia: It’s an attitude, Forrest.

  Forrest: Am I punk—

  Zenobia and Azure: No.

  Klaus: Vat iz dees? Why we are not playink muzeek?

  Me: Because it’s not that kind of band.

  Klaus: But I am drummer, Ze Denteest!

  Azure: Totally. You’re the drummer.

  Klaus: Zen you allow me to play ze drums?

  Zenobia: Absolutely not.

  Forrest: Is drummer also an attitude?

  Azure: Exactly.

  Forrest: So…am I a drummer?

  Klaus: NO, I AM ZE DRUMMER! KLAUS! NOT FORREST! KLAUS!

  Forrest: I’m not sure I like this band.

  Me: How about if we let you name it? That cool with everybody?

  Klaus: Ve call ze band CRAZY AMERICAN PEOPLE WHO DO NOT MAKE ANY ZENSE!

  Azure: I like it.

  Zenobia: Me too.

  Forrest: But Klaus isn’t American.

  Me: That’s okay. Band names don’t have to make sense. Like, the Dead Milkmen weren’t dead or milkmen.

  Zenobia (nodding): The Eagles were actually people.

  Forrest: How about Klaus and the Croissants?

  Klaus: Klaus Unt Ze Croissants, eh? Eet has a nice ring. Zis eez very gut name.

  Me: Should we vote?

  (Everyone nods.)

  Me: Okay, raise your hand for Klaus Unt Ze Croissants.

  (Klaus raises his hand. Looks around. Raises his other hand, too.)

  Klaus: Vhat ze heck, Forrest? Eet vas your idea!

  Forrest (shrugs): Sometimes I have bad ideas.

  Me: Okay, raise your hand for Crazy American People Who Do Not Make Any Zense.

  (Everyone but Klaus raises a hand.)

  Azure: Looks like we have our name.

  The happy blur (which is also not a bad band name) came to an end when Mr. Allen walked into the classroom one morning and announced—all casual, while he was taking his scarf off—that the end-of-semester talent show was only two weeks away, so we should start thinking about what final project we wanted to perform.

  Right away, Bin-Bin raised her hand. “This is the first time you’ve ever mentioned final projects,” she informed him.

  Mr. Allen frowned. “That can’t be true,” he said. “Is that true? I guess that’s true.” He pointed at Cody. “Cody! Ask me if this is going to be on the test.”

  Cody blinked a couple of times and fidgeted with his chisel necklace. “Is this going to be on the test?”

  Mr. Allen raised his arms in the air like he’d just broken the world record for the fifty-yard dash.

  “YES! I mean, NO. This won’t be on the test, because this is the test. Although really, there’s no such thing as a test. But if there were, this would be it.”

  Azure raised her hand. “So what do we have to do?” she asked. “Get up and, like, perform in front of the whole school?”

  “Exactly. Perform, present, entertain, educate. There’s a holiday party afterward. I’ll be making my world-famous tofu eggnog. Any questions?”

  Every hand in the room shot up into the air.

  Mr. Allen looked at all of our arms for a moment, swaying like slender trees.

  “The answers,” he said, “are in your hearts.”

  Reluctantly, we dropped our hands onto our desks. When he said stuff like that, getting any real information was hopeless.

  There was an answer in my heart, though. Mr. Allen was right about that.

  It was: You had a nice run, Jake, but now it’s time to face the music. The music you can’t really play.

  As if I needed more to worry about, my homework that night was to chew a piece of gum for six hours, then write a play about it.

  The last thing Mr. Allen said, after making us copy down the assignment, was do not, I repeat, do not under any circumstances chew watermelon gum. Any flavor but that. I cannot tell you how important that is.

  It probably tells you a lot about our general state of despair and confusion that not one of us bothered to ask him why.

  Just to be safe, though, I went with grape. After twenty minutes, the gum started to taste less like grape and more like a grape Magic Marker. After an hour, my jaws ached and the flavor had turned kind of gasoline-y, and I was getting tempted to knock myself unconscious.

  I called Evan, and he came right over. Having him there for moral support made it better. Watching him plop down in the beanbag chair in my basement and gorge himself on a delicious twelve-inch chicken parmi
giana hoagie while I sat there chewing and chewing and chewing like some kind of deranged gerbil did not.

  “I can’t do this for five more hours,” I told him. I was pacing in little circles around the beanbag chair, which also seemed like something a gerbil might do.

  “So don’t,” he said, wadding up his paper plate and flinging it at the garbage can across the room. He made the shot, obviously. In my head, I gave myself an H. “Who’s gonna know?”

  “But what if something special happens when you chew for six hours?”

  Evan raised one eyebrow at me, which is a thing he can do. “Like…something magical?”

  “Yeah. Maybe it starts tasting like bacon or something. I don’t know. There must be a reason he has us doing this.”

  Evan balled up his napkin and rainbow-jumpered it into the can. Boom. H-O for me, if we’d been playing.

  “Or maybe,” he said, “the point is to see who’s a big enough chump to waste six hours chewing a piece of gum. You ever think of that, dude?”

  I hadn’t, which made me feel very dumb. Last year, Evan had been the one asking to copy my math homework and help him on his English assignments and stuff. I wasn’t sure when things had flipped around and he’d become the smart one. Maybe Music and Art Academy was actually making me dumber.

  Still, I kept chewing. I guess I wanted to see how long I could do it.

  “I’ve got bigger problems, anyway,” I said. “If I blow this talent show, I’m in serious trouble. They might even kick me out.”

  Evan made a snorting sound, like a miniature horse. “Whatever, dude. Just do some more garbage sculpture, or have Crazy American People Who Do Not Make Any Zense come onstage and not play a song.”

  I shook my head and felt my stomach go all queasy with worry. “I don’t think that’s gonna cut it.”

  “So play ‘Song for My Father’ again. It worked before.”

  I was about to tell Evan that playing the same song I auditioned with would be like pointing a giant spotlight on my own fakeness, when I heard footsteps on the stairs.

  “What’s up, Bro-zo the Clown?”

  “Hey, Pierre,” I said as his paint-covered jeans came into view.

  “Hi, Lisa,” said Evan. At first, I thought he was doing some kind of bullfrog impression. Then I realized he was trying to make his voice deep to impress my sister.

  “Hey,” she said. “What are you two chuckleheads doing?” She pushed Pierre into the beanbag chair, then sat down on his lap.

  “Chewing gum,” I said. “For six hours.”

  “Oh my gosh,” said Lisa. “And then writing a song about it, right? I remember that assignment.”

  “A play,” I said. Then I noticed that she was all dressed up. “Where have you been?” I asked.

  “College interview.” She picked up Evan’s can of ginger ale and took a sip. He’d probably keep it forever now that it had touched her lips.

  “How’d it go?” I asked.

  Lisa shrugged. “It turned out that the woman doing the interview likes all the same books, movies, and music that I do. By the end, we were singing duets and baking brownies in her kitchen.”

  I was so unsurprised, I didn’t even react. Of course that is a how a unicorn’s college interview would go.

  “Sweet!” said Evan, and held up his hand for a high five.

  Lisa stared at it for a second, then touched the tip of her finger to the middle of his palm and said, “Thanks, Huckleberry.”

  The gum was beginning to burn my tongue now, as if it had started leaking battery acid.

  I decided to ignore it, and also the stars that were dancing in front of my eyes, like I had just gotten hit in the head with an anvil in some old-timey cartoon from when my dad was a kid.

  “Hey,” I said. “How serious is this talent show thing, anyway? Like, can I just—”

  “Serious,” said Lisa and Pierre together.

  “Super serious,” Pierre added. He looked at Lisa. “Remember Sturgis Vanderhoff?”

  Her eyes got wide. “I do,” she whispered, shaking her head. “That poor thing.”

  For some reason, my palms were clammy. Maybe from all this talk about the talent show, or maybe because the gum was trying to shut down my central nervous system. “Who’s Sturgis Vanderhoff?” I asked.

  “When we were in sixth grade, Sturgis Vanderhoff got onstage at the talent show and had a total meltdown,” Pierre explained. “I heard he works on a fishing boat in Alaska now.”

  “What about Clarice Chen?” Lisa said. “She was supposed to sing a Mariah Carey song, but she flubbed the first high note and panicked, and it was all downhill from there.”

  “She ate her sweater,” Pierre said. “Right there on stage.”

  “Ate her sweater?”

  “Well, part of it. An arm.”

  “She started shoplifting jewelry the next week,” Lisa said. “I think she’s in jail or something now.”

  “Remember Chewie Novato?” Pierre asked. “Talk about flaming out. He—”

  “Okay,” I said. “I get the picture. The talent show matters.”

  “I don’t know, man,” Evan said. “Life on a fishing boat sounds pretty sweet. You love salmon.”

  The gum felt like it was throbbing with evil energy now, and it had the consistency of tire rubber. My number one desire in the world was to spit it as far as possible. Plus, my jaws felt like they were going to come unhinged and fall on the floor, and I was hearing the faint sounds of a violin in my head.

  “The thing about the talent show is that the Board of Trustees is there,” Lisa explained. “They’re the people whose money keeps the school going, and they definitely don’t want to spend millions of bucks so turkeys like you can sculpt with trash or play imaginary music.”

  That was seriously bad news. I wanted to beg Lisa to tell me what I could possibly do to avoid embarrassing myself, or ask her what would happen if I just played sick on the day of the show, or see if she knew how much those Alaskan fishing boats paid and whether you got to eat for free.

  But I couldn’t, because the gum had turned to rubber cement inside my mouth and I couldn’t move my jaw. I had no idea how I was going to turn this into a play.

  The Evil Aliens of Planet Graaaaypghum Six

  A PLAY IN ONE ACT BY

  The Dentist

  Out of the darkness of Deep Space, a super-rad ship slows down from light speed and sits hovering motionless above the Earth. Making this happen is not my responsibility because I am just the writer, not the set designer.

  Inside the ship are two hideous, slimy, squid-type aliens, Grzplybzzk and Fred. They both munch Alien Potato Chips.

  Grzplybzzk: I can’t wait to make the people of planet Earth go insane so we can steal all the water and build an awesome water park on Graaaaypghum Six!

  Fred: You said this was just a vacation!

  Grzplybzzk: I lied. Ha ha ha! Now listen: here’s the plan.

  Grzplybzzk takes out a small rectangular thingamajig wrapped in paper.

  Grzplybzzk: This looks exactly like what the Earthlings call gum. But anyone who chews it will never be able to stop, and it will cause madness and mayhem! All we have to do is sneak it into the 7-Elevens of Earth, then sit back and wait for the planet to destroy itself.

  Fred: Where did you get that?

  Grzplybzzk: I had our most diabolical scientists whip it up for me the day before we left.

  Fred: You said you were going to the gym!

  Grzplybzzk: I lied. Ha ha ha!

  Fred: You are a real jerk, you know that? Also, how are we going to sneak that stuff into 7-Elevens? Also, what is a 7-Eleven?

  Grzplybzzk: You didn’t read the guidebook at all, did you? 7-Elevens are where Earthlings go to purchase food that is not really food. Like hot dogs that have been turning slowly on little metal turny things for weeks, and microwave burritos that taste like they are made of spackle and wood putty. Also these drinks called Big Gulps that give the Earthlings type two diabetes
just from looking at them.

  Fred: Oh. But how will we sneak the gum in? We can’t pass for Earthlings.

  Grzplybzzk: Oh yes we can! Because tomorrow is Halloween!

  Fred: What’s Hallowe—

  Grzplybzzk’s tentacle shoots out and knocks Fred unconscious.

  Grzplybzzk: Oh, sorry, did I interrupt your stupid question? Ha ha ha.

  The curtain closes.

  The curtain opens on a 7-Eleven. Two kids, Snake and Devin, walk in. They are dressed like a pirate (Snake) and a cowboy (Devin) for Halloween. They also talk like a pirate and a cowboy.

  In the background, we can see Grzplybzzk and Fred, holding trick-or-treat bags.

  Snake: Arrr! Avast, ye maties. I sure could go fer a bit o’ chewin’ gum, if ya understand my meanin’.

  Devin: Dagnabbit, pardner, I reckon I do.

  Snake buys a pack of chewing gum, and they each pop a piece into their mouths. Behind them, Grzplybzzk and Fred giggle in a sinister alien way.

  Snake frowns.

  Snake: Yar. This gum be weird, says I.

  Devin: I do declare, it is a mite bit funny-tastin’.

  Snake: Narr, matey! It makes me want ta walk the plank and swim down ta Davey Jones’s locker!

  Devin: It makes me wanna slap a saddle on a mule and sup on rattlesnake tongues!

  Snake: Sixteen men on a dead man’s chest! I feel like a wharf rat gnawin’ on a mast! But I can’t stop chewin’!

  Devin: Me neither! I feel like some kinda prairie varmint, just a-chewin’ and a-chewin’!