by J. G. Kemp
“On three,” Spencer said. “One, two, three.” We both took a bite. It felt like chocolate. It tasted like chocolate. It was the most delicious chocolate I had ever eaten!
Spencer’s eyes grew wide. “Wow,” he said. “That’s good.”
“Yeah,” I took another bite. “You know what this means? We have unlimited candy!”
Spencer pointed to the hole in the coloring book where the chocolate bar had been. “Almost unlimited,” he mumbled with his mouth full.
“Oh yeah. I guess you’re right.”
“How many pages are there? 50?” he asked.
“Yeah, maybe,” I flipped through the book. “That’s still a lot of candy.”
“Brandon! Time for dinner!” It was my mom calling from the house.
Spencer licked the last bit of chocolate off his fingers and pointed to the book. “Where are you going to keep it?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not letting this out of my sight,” I said and closed the book. “I’ll bring it to school tomorrow.”
Spencer and I crawled out of the fort. “See ya later,” he said and turned to leave.
Before he went through the gate, he called back, “Don’t make any more of those things with fangs, okay?” as he rubbed the spot on his arm where the monster’s fangs had landed.
“Okay,” I called back. “I promise.” As I walked towards the house, I felt like the most powerful kid in the world. I didn’t care if Hazel saw the book. My coloring book could make anything! I smiled to myself and went inside and joined my family for dinner.
Chapter 10
the book broken?
That night, before I went to bed, I tried drawing some more things in the coloring book. I drew money and colored it green — it came out looking fake, like board-game money.
“Maybe if I were better at drawing,” I thought, “I could make the money look real.” And then, “Why do I need to draw money? I can just draw whatever I would want to buy.”
I drew some more marbles — red ones and blue ones and black ones. I drew some orange and yellow cubes. I colored in a drawing of a car, but it showed up looking silly, not like a real car at all.
I tried drawing more chocolate bars but they came out as hard brown rectangles. Why had the green monster been so real? Why did the chocolate that afternoon taste like real chocolate? Why didn’t it work anymore?
Frustrated that I’d wasted a page in the coloring book, I jammed it into my backpack and went to sleep.
* * *
And that’s how it began. That’s how the quantum coloring book came into my life. It all started out so simply. A few blue marbles, a ferocious thing with fangs, a candy bar.
If I knew then what I know now, I would have destroyed the book. I never would have kept drawing. I never would have figured out how to draw anything. ANYTHING I tell you! — just as real as the thing with fangs!
But I did figure it out, and now here I am, sitting on the edge of this black hole. Scared to do what I know I have to do.
But before I do it. Before I travel back in time to destroy the book, let me tell you how I figured out how to draw BIG things. And how the very next day I unleashed an army of giants which destroyed Ms. Violet’s house and half of the houses on my street. Let me tell you…
Brandon Black’s story continues in…
the Quantum
Coloring Book
episode 2: bigger, better, and BAD!
Prologue - Episode 2
the BAD book
Hey. My name is Brandon. Brandon Black. I found this book, the quantum coloring book, and anything I draw in it, and then color, comes out — into our world!
At first it was fun, because I could only make small things, things as big as my drawings. But then I learned how to make BIG things, and eventually I drew a black hole that devoured my entire town and everyone in it!
Soon I’m going to draw a time machine and travel back to before I ever found the book, and destroy it. But I’m scared, and I’ll tell you why. Because nothing good comes from this book!
And if you ever find a book like this one, you must NEVER USE IT!
My name is Brandon Black, and this is my story…
episode 2: bigger, better, and BAD!
Chapter 1
strange dreams

Do you ever get that feeling before you fall asleep that everything is growing? Not like your bed or your house or the trees outside, but the space in your mind, the darkness behind your closed eyelids?
I know it sounds weird, but maybe you’ve felt it too. It’s just a funny feeling, I can’t quite describe it. Or sometimes it feels like a landscape that is sharp and spiky, or other times like the universe is super smooth and goes on forever and ever.
Well, that happens to me sometimes, and that first night, the night after I discovered the quantum coloring book, it was stronger than ever. I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time because it felt so strange, as if everything was growing bigger and bigger. And when I did fall asleep, I kept tossing and turning in my bed, still half awake, slipping in and out of dreams.
I dreamt that Isaac Crumb was my teacher and Mr. Stale sat behind me and was smiling and kicking the back of my chair.
I dreamt that Olive Mauve and my sister Hazel were siamese twins and shared the same body but had two heads - they kept saying, “Color with us, Brandon,” like they were zombies.

I dreamt that my best friend Spencer and I were playing catch, and in midair the baseball turned into a water balloon. The water balloon was filled with red jello that exploded all over my baseball glove. I couldn’t clean it off no matter how hard I tried.
Spencer suggested that I use the quantum coloring book to make a super-cleaner that could clean anything. So I did, and when I used the cleaner on my baseball glove, it cleaned off the red jello, but then it slowly melted my glove. It dripped on the ground and burned a hole through the Earth that went all the way to the other side.
Then principal Snort and Mrs. Goop yelled at me to fill in the hole with dirt, but I didn’t have any, so I drew a picture of dirt in the coloring book, but it wasn’t nearly enough to fill the hole.

They were still yelling when I woke up, and it was morning.
Chapter 2
my dad
Every morning, before school, my dad made breakfast while my mom slept. My mom was a nurse who worked late at night so she always slept in the mornings. My dad usually made us cereal or oatmeal, and not the good kind. Not the kind with marshmallows or clumps of sugar, but the kind that tasted like cardboard. I know, I’ve tried it.

One time Hazel dared me to eat cardboard, and I did, and it tasted better than the cereal my dad gave us for breakfast. We weren’t allowed to put sugar on our oatmeal either.
I liked french toast, and bacon and eggs, and hash browns, but we never had that anymore. We used to have breakfast like that a few times a week, and at least once on the weekend, but now my dad says he’s “too busy” to make a big breakfast. He has to rush around to get ready for his job every morning. He’s always in a hurry now.
“Hey, Brandon, my big buddy,” he said as I walked into the kitchen that day.
That’s my dad. He always calls me his “big buddy”. I wish he wouldn’t. I guess it’s better than what my mom calls me though. She calls me her “little guy”. I wish they would just call me Brandon.
“Hey, Big Buddy. Guess what? Mr. Crunch, gave me two tickets to see the Grayville Grayers this weekend, and I’m gonna take you.” He tousled my hair and then kissed me on the head. Hazel smiled at me. She knew I didn’t like it when Dad kissed me on the head.
Mr. Crunch was my dad’s new boss at work. He was always giving things to my dad: free car-washes, ties called “power-ties”, this black stuff that made shoes shiny. One day my dad’s shoes were shiny. He never used to have shiny shoes.
> 
The Grayers were our town’s baseball team. Can you believe that? They called the baseball team the Grayers. What’s a Grayer?
“Great,” I mumbled to my dad. I wasn’t about to get excited. The Grayers weren’t very good. In fact, I don’t think they had won a game in three years. “Can we get another ticket for Spencer?” I added. “It’d be fun if Spencer could come.”
My dad frowned. “Well… no, we only have the two tickets. It’ll just be you and me. Like old times.” He winked at me, and I smiled back, and he hurried off to finish getting ready for work.
The last three times my dad said it would “just be you and me”, he forgot, and it ending up being “just me”. I turned to Hazel. “Do Mom and Dad know what happened at the school yesterday?”

Hazel shrugged. “I don’t think so, why would they?” she said and took a bite of the cardboard cereal.
Chapter 3
chippers the dog
On the way to school that day, Spencer and I walked far behind Hazel and Aubrey so we could talk about the coloring book.
“So, nothing you drew came out like the chocolate, or the thing with fangs?” Spencer said after I told him what had happened the night before.
“No, the chocolate was just a hard brown rectangle. I tried to bite into it, but it tasted like colored pencil.”
“Huh, that’s weird.” Spencer rubbed his chin, thinking. “Did you do anything different when you made the chocolate the first time? Like stay inside the lines, or use any shading?”
I tried to remember and said, “No, I don’t think so.”
“Oh, hello Ms. Violet!” It was Hazel’s voice. She was waving to the woman across the street.
“Hello children,” Ms. Violet answered. I think that was the first time I ever heard Ms. Violet say anything. I didn’t know Hazel knew about Ms. Violet. I didn’t even know Ms. Violet could talk.

“How is Chippers today?” Hazel asked. Chippers was Ms. Violet’s dog. It was a dachshund, a weiner-dog. Ms. Violet was standing in her driveway, holding Chippers on a leash, and Chippers was running around in circles happily.
“Oh, he’s just wonderful,” Ms. Violet answered. She smiled at Hazel. “Thank you for asking, dear.”
I would often watch Ms. Violet walk Chippers in circles in her backyard. Ms. Violet was older. She lived alone. While Ms. Violet walked in circles, Chippers would walk around her in circles. It made me think of the Moon going around the Earth. I imagined Chippers, flying through the sky, as large as the Moon, and chuckled.
“What you laughing at?” said Spencer.
“Oh, nothing.” I smiled at Ms. Violet as she waved to us.
“What are we going to do about the book?” Spencer asked urgently.

“I dunno,” I sighed. I was frustrated that the book didn’t work anymore. I didn’t really want to talk about it. Not yet. Yesterday I felt like I could make anything. But now it seemed like just a dream.
“Did you bring it today?” Spencer asked.
“Yeah, it’s in my backpack.”
“Good, let’s try it at lunch or recess. That should be safe.”
“Okay. Maybe.” I said, trying to sound like I didn’t want to talk anymore. I looked down at my feet. Spencer took the hint, and we walked in silence the rest of the way to school.
Chapter 4
the math problem
That day at school Principal Snort was standing at the front doors greeting everyone with a large frown. There was a new sign above the doors, just below the sign that said “Grayville Elementary School.” The new sign read, “SILENCE IN THE HALLS”, in big red letters, and underneath it was written, “no talking about that thing with fangs!”
When I walked into the school, I saw that everything had been fixed. The carpet was patched, the scratch marks on the walls had been painted over, there were new posters up that said MATH!! in exciting fonts.

Mrs. Goop even had a new hairnet. I don’t know why she wore her hairnet at 9:00 in the morning, when she wasn’t in the kitchen, but she did. She wore her hairnet like it was a baseball cap - everywhere - even at baseball games. I saw her at the Grayers once.
In the hallways, the teachers were all standing outside of their classrooms holding signs that also read, “no talking about that thing with fangs.”

When Spencer and I got to Mr. Stale’s class, I hung up my backpack like I always did. I took out my lunchbox and the quantum coloring book and went to my desk. I never had any food in the lunchbox, but I carried it around anyway. It was black. No patterns or designs. Just black.
“Class,” Mr. Stale began as he closed the door and stepped into the classroom. “It is Tuesday. And on Tuesdays we begin with…?” he paused, waiting for someone to finish his announcement.
Olive Mauve shot her hand up in the air and shouted, “Math!” and jumped slightly out of her seat. “Math!” she said again. Olive was bursting with nervous energy. It must be very hard for Olive to be “silent in the halls”, I thought.
“That’s correct,” said Mr. Stale. “And first I would like to discuss your homework.”
“Homework? What homework?” I thought.
“Brandon,” Mr. Stale said and looked right at me. “Did you have any questions on the homework?”
“Um… no sir,” I said. Which was true, because I didn’t even know about the homework.

“Then you will have no trouble solving this problem,” he said and pointed to a sentence he had written on the chalkboard. He was still glaring at me. I could hear Isaac Crumb chuckling. “Class,” Mr. Stale continued. “Please use your math notebooks to work on this problem. When you finish, double check your work, and then triple check your work, and continue to solve the same problem until everyone in the class has finished. Begin now,” he said calmly and just stood there staring at me. It reminded me of the way the thing with fangs had stared at Isaac Crumb before it attacked him and ate his shirt.
I reached into my desk and felt around for my math notebook. It wasn’t there. I must have left it at home. I couldn’t just sit there, with Mr. Stale staring at me, without writing on something, so I took out the quantum coloring book. “It’s just plain paper now, anyway,” I thought.
I opened it to the page where the thing with fangs had come out. Next to the hole it had left behind was the drawing of the stick figures with swords. I looked at the desk - the two large gouges that had been stabbed into the wood by the thing’s fangs were there. I picked up my pencil and read the problem on the board:

You have two pennies. Every day your pennies double. How many pennies will you have after 5 days?
“That’s easy,” I thought. I worked the problem in the coloring book:
2 pennies on the 1st day, then 4 on the 2nd day, then 8 on the 3rd day, and 16 on the 4th day, and 32 on the 5th day. I circled the number 32.
I looked around, everyone else was still working. I double checked the problem. Yep, 32. I looked around again, everyone else was still working. I added more things to my drawing of the army. I drew another jet, and two more tanks. And then a piece of paper landed on my desk. It was a note.
I turned and looked at Spencer. He was motioning for me to read it. “We HAVE to talk at lunch,” the note said, “I think I figured it out.”
Chapter 5
spencer’s idea
At lunch I couldn’t talk to Spencer because Olive Mauve was sitting next to us. She usually sat by herself, but she looked scared today. In fact, she had looked scared all day, and she was extra jumpy - maybe because yesterday the thing with fangs had been hiding in her hair and she didn’t know it.
She kept feeling the back of her head. I’m sure she was checking for the thing. I wanted to ask her but I knew she wouldn’t talk about it. Principal Snort said it wasn’t allowed, and Olive always follo
wed the rules. They never found the thing, and I think that made Olive very nervous. So, instead of talking about the coloring book, Spencer and I talked about baseball.
Halfway through lunch, I knew exactly how to get rid of Olive. “Hey Spencer,” I said. “At recess do you wanna sneak into the old playground?” I knew Olive wouldn’t follow us there because the old playground was off limits. The teachers never checked it though, so I knew Spencer and I wouldn’t get in trouble.
The old playground was made of big tires and rusty metal and splintery wood. It looked like an old abandoned castle, and there were lots of areas to hide. It was actually pretty awesome, and much better than the new playground. The new playground was built for “safety”, Mr. Snort had said. It was made of fake rubber wood-chips, and that’s all it was. There weren’t any stairs, or slides, or swings, it was a big pit of rubber wood-chips.