by J. G. Kemp

Sometimes Isaac Crumb would go to the old playground too, by himself, but I didn’t think he would go today. He looked scared too, like Olive. During math he actually let out a shout, and I saw him brushing something off his shirt before he kicked my chair.
“Yeah, let’s go.” Spencer answered, and looked over his shoulder to make sure no one had heard. He usually followed the rules too, but sometimes he broke them.
At the end of lunchtime, the bell rang and everyone went outside for recess. Spencer and I ran to the old playground. I turned around and saw Olive - she was watching us run away.
When we were far enough from everyone else, Spencer said, “I think I know how it works. When you colored in the chocolate you said, ‘this is going to be the most delicious chocolate ever’, remember?”
“Um… no,” I answered.
“You did. I’m sure of it. It was right as you finished coloring. Did you say anything, or think anything, when you colored the thing with fangs?”
I thought for a moment. “I don’t remember. Maybe.” And then it occurred to me. I had thought of something. “Yes!” I blurted out and then said quietly, “I remember thinking how big the fangs were, and how they could do some serious damage.”
“Then that’s it,” Spencer said. “That has to be it! You have to think about whatever you want to come out, if you want it to be more… real. You can’t just color it.”
I was getting excited. Spencer might be right. “Let’s try it at as soon as we get home,” I said. I couldn’t wait for the end of the day. I couldn’t wait to try the book again.
* * *
Why! Why did I have to keep coloring in that book!
Chapter 6
huh!?
That day, during silent reading time, Mr. Stale did something he’d never done before. He made me read aloud to the whole class!
At 1:30, instead of saying, “Class, it is now silent reading time,” like he always did, he simply said, “Class, Brandon will now read to you page 24 of A Tale of a Girl and her Dog.”
I stared at Mr. Stale. He was looking at me calmly, waiting. The whole class was looking at me. I turned around and looked at Spencer and he was staring, shocked. This had never happened. Mr. Stale had never made anyone read aloud. Why today? Why me?
“Brandon, please read now. And stand up,” said Mr. Stale. Huh?! Isaac Crumb snickered and kicked the back of my chair. I stood slowly, picked up the book, and turned to page 24. The whole class was silent. They were waiting.
I read aloud, “Jenny and her dog were best friends. They had formed a bond. It was a bond that could not be broken, even if they were miles away from each other. The dog would always live in Jenny’s heart. Forever.” Here there was a picture of the dog licking Jenny’s face. And that was the end of the page.
I looked around at the class. Isaac Crumb was chuckling. Olive Mauve was beaming. Spencer looked embarrassed for me. The rest of the class was either giggling or yawning.
Mr. Stale said, “Thank you, Brandon. Now you will stand on one foot for five minutes while the class reads silently. You may begin.”
Huh?! Stand on one foot? What was Mr. Stale doing? I gave him an “are you serious?” look, and he simply nodded and sat down and began to read. So I stood there, on my left foot, for five minutes. Mr. Stale was acting funny. Why was he acting funny? “Did it have something to do with the book,” I thought. After 5 minutes my leg hurt. 5 minutes passes very slowly when you are standing on one foot in front of your whole class.
Mr. Stale said, “You may sit now, Brandon. 20 more minutes of silent reading time, class. Continue.”
I sat down. I was confused and mad. I looked at A Tale of a Girl and Her Dog on my desk. “I’m glad her dog dies in the end,” I thought. “I’m never going to read that again.” I propped the book up on my desk as usual and took out the quantum coloring book.

When I saw the page with the stick-figure army that I had drawn yesterday, I imagined them fighting Mr. Stale. Then I had an idea. I drew even more tanks, and planes, and more men with swords, and men with guns, and even big hairy monsters that looked like Bigfoot. When I got home, I was going to color them and watch them have a tiny battle. It was going to be awesome. And I was going to draw a miniature Mr. Stale to get run over by a tank.
Chapter 7
my best friend
The rest of that day must have been normal because I don’t remember what happened. After school Spencer and I were going to go straight to my fort. On the walk home, Hazel said she thought I was in a good mood again, like old times, and I didn’t think it was annoying. But then Spencer nodded too and looked at Hazel, like he and Hazel had some secret understanding. That was annoying.
In the fort I showed Spencer the page with the army and told him my idea, but he wasn’t excited about it.
“Um. I don’t know,” he said. “That seems kind of dangerous. What if they get loose and hurt something? Let’s just try chocolate again.”
“No, listen,” I said. “I have it all planned out. I’ll put the coloring book in a box, and when I color the little figures, they’ll stay on the page and fight. They won’t be able to climb out of the box. It’ll be awesome. When one of them walks over the hole where they came from, they’ll disappear and go back into the book. It’s not dangerous at all.”
But Spencer wasn’t impressed. “I still don’t like it. It makes me nervous.”
“What’s not to like? It’ll be a mini army having a real battle right before our eyes. I even have this little Mr. Stale. I’m hoping he’ll get run over by a tank.”
Spencer was shocked. “Brandon, you can’t pretend our teacher gets run over by a tank!”
“He didn’t make you read in front of the whole class,” I said. Spencer and I didn’t fight very often, but when we did, it was always like this: he didn’t want to do something that I wanted to do.
I always argued with him, and then he left, and I did the thing anyway - like when my baseball went into Mr. Brown’s yard. Spencer wanted to ring the doorbell and ask if we could get it, but I just wanted to sneak in and take it without saying anything. Spencer went home, and I snuck through Mr. Brown’s back gate and got the ball without being seen. But then I didn’t have anyone to play catch with.
“You never do things my way,” I said.
“Hey, that’s not true,” Spencer argued back. “Come on, let’s just make the chocolate. Maybe that will cheer you up.”
Oh, I couldn’t believe Spencer said that. It made me so mad when anyone said that. As if I needed cheering up. “You just want the book for yourself, don’t you!” I shouted. “Well you can’t have it. It’s my book and I’ll do what I want with it!”
Spencer was shocked. “No… I…”
“If you don’t want to color the army, just go home,” I added and crossed my arms and looked away.
And Spencer did just that. He left, and I was alone with the quantum coloring book. “Good riddance,” I thought, and began to dig in my backpack for colored pencils.
* * *
I should have listened to my best friend. I should have listened to Spencer.
Chapter 8
tiny sword fight
I was mad. Too mad to worry about getting a box to contain the army. “I’ll just squish anything that gets off the page,” I thought to myself.
I lined up the colored pencils beside me. “This is gonna be great,” I said and colored in a tank. I colored it black. That’s right - a black tank. As I colored, I tried what Spencer had suggested. I thought, “This tank is going to be a real tank.” And it worked! - kind of.
The tank that came out looked real, much more real than the car I had drawn the night before, but it didn’t do anything. It didn’t move. I put the tank in my pocket and tried again.
I colored in one of the swordsmen and thought, “That sword could do some serious damage.” It was the same thought I ha
d had when the thing with fangs came out. And there he was! It worked! There was a little man with a sword. And then he was swinging the sword. And then he was slashing at the coloring book.
He was only half-an-inch tall but he looked fearsome. He searched around, like he was trying to find something to damage. I quickly colored in another swordsman, this time thinking, “these two are gonna have an awesome battle.” And that worked too!
As soon as the new swordsman came out of the book, he jumped at the first swordsman. I heard a tiny clink clink as their swords hit. I watched them, entranced. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen! Two tiny men, sword fighting on my coloring book: dodging and ducking, stabbing and lunging, swinging and thrusting.
The first swordsman was more fierce. When he swung at the second man he usually missed and cut a small tear in the coloring book. He did look like he wanted to do some serious damage.
The second swordsman was more agile, more defensive. He spun and rolled out of the way like he was putting on a show, like he could defeat the first man at any moment but wanted to make the fight worth watching. My eyes were glued to the battle. It was amazing.
After a few minutes, I thought I should try to get them back in the book. I carefully nudged the fighters towards the part of the page where I had drawn them. At first I pushed them with my finger but then it got sliced. “Ouch!” I said, and moved it just in time to avoid another cut. “Those tiny swords are sharp." Then I prodded the sword fighters with my pencil instead, corralling them back to the holes as they continued to fight.
The first fighter went back in the book, and as soon as he did, the second fighter started to stab the paper over and over, right on the drawing of the first fighter. Then he threw his hands up in the air and did what looked like a little victory dance. As he was celebrating, I gently pushed him over on to the spot where he had been drawn, and he was gone - back in the book.
My mind raced with possibilities. I had done it! I had solved the puzzle of the book! But then I had another idea…
Chapter 9
bigfoot disaster
On the same page as the sword fighters was the math problem that Mr. Stale had us work that morning, the one about the pennies doubling: from 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 to 32. “What if…?” I thought.
I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have been so careless. I just wanted to see if it would work. I didn’t have an exit plan. I didn’t think it through. I picked up the brown colored pencil and colored in the tiny Bigfoot and thought, “I want this to be alive and to double, just like the pennies in that math problem.” And there was the Bigfoot, half an inch tall, standing on my book.
It looked confused. It didn’t look fearsome or ready for battle like the swordsmen. I waited, watching. Nothing happened, the miniature beast just stood there. Then I remembered that in the math problem the pennies doubled every day. I would have to wait a long time.
I pushed the Bigfoot over with my finger and he fell onto the hole in the book and became a drawing again. I colored the Bigfoot beside him and thought, “this Bigfoot is going to be alive and grow bigger, and be just like the pennies in my math problem, but double in minutes, not days.”
The Bigfoot appeared. I watched. It stood there. It scratched its head. It made a grunting noise, which sounded like a chirp coming from its tiny mouth. It scratched its head again. And then there were two! Two Bigfeet! Or, Bigfoots, I don’t know, but there were two of them! I felt a surge of pride. “I did it!” I said out loud.
And then the beasts started to grow. GROW! “Wait, did I say grow bigger?” I thought. I had! The hairy things were standing there on the book and before I knew it they were one inch tall, and then two inches tall, and then there were four of them. Four Bigfoots, growing bigger by the second!
They were no longer just standing there, scratching their heads, they were starting to move around. The sound of their tiny grunts was getting deeper. There were 8 of them! Each 8 inches tall!
“Oh no!” I said. The danger of the situation suddenly occurred to me! “This is bad. This is BAD!” Just then one of the beasts stepped on the hole where he had been drawn and disappeared back into the book. The hole was gone, the Bigfoot was a drawing. But there were still 7 left!
“Oh no. This is really bad.” I froze. I didn’t know what to do. It was happening right in front of me, and I was powerless to stop it.

There was a box in the corner of my fort where I kept things: baseball stuff, and old bottles that I liked. I dumped it out and stuck it over the beasts. It barely fit. And suddenly the box ripped apart from the inside as 14 creatures were standing there, each a foot and a half tall! They were almost the size of Ms. Violet’s dog, Chippers.
They still looked confused and grunted and scratched their heads but there wasn’t enough room for all of them. They were pushing each other. They were walking around inside my fort!
“Oh no. No, no, no, no!” I said. “Go back. Go back in the book. Go away, NOW!” They all looked at me dumbly. One of them sniffed my shoe. Another one tried to scratch my head. “Get OFF!” I shoved him away and crawled out of the fort as fast as I could. “I have to stop this!” I thought.
I looked around my yard frantically for something - anything. Anything I could use to stop the beasts! But there was nothing, no swords or spears or weapons, just the tongs and spatula hanging from my dad’s grill. “Where is my baseball bat?” I thought out loud, and then remembered that I’d left it at Spencer’s house.
I peeked back in the fort. There were more of them. 28! 3 feet tall! They were packed in my fort like sardines. It was horrifying! They smelled bad and were furry and gross and there were so many of them!
I pushed on the walls of my fort, trying to knock them down, trying to squish the beasts inside. “Go AWAY!” I shouted again, and then I was launched off! My fort had exploded like the box. I flew through the air and landed on the grass a few yards away.
The 3-foot-tall Bigfoots had become 6-foot-tall Bigfoots. There were 56 of them! The big hairy things were getting mad. I panicked. I turned and ran…
Chapter 10
after-MATH
I ran into my house. My mom and Hazel weren’t in the kitchen. “Maybe they’re in the basement watching a movie,” I thought. They watched movies sometimes after school. I didn’t say anything or look for them, I just wanted to get away from those things. I had to get away from what I had done!
I ran to my room and closed the door and ran to my bed and hid under the covers. The things outside were getting bigger and multiplying every minute.
“This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening,” I thought as I listened to the crashing and stomping noises outside. After a few minutes the house started to shake, like from an earthquake. The herd of hundreds of giant Bigfoots must have been over 50 feet tall by now.
I heard sirens. I heard screaming. I plugged my ears and waited, under the covers, in the dark. I don’t know how much time passed but then I heard, “Brandon! Brandon! Where are you?” It was my mom. She threw open my bedroom door and a look of relief washed across her face.
“I’m here mom. What’s wrong?” I asked, but I knew exactly what was wrong.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re okay.” She hugged me and then said, “Brandon, something has happened, something terrible—” And as she told me how an army of giant hairy giants had destroyed Ms. Violet’s house and half the houses on our street, I had a horrible feeling in my stomach.
“They were huge!” said Hazel from the doorway. “And they were stomping on everything, and then suddenly, they were gone! Just gone!”
“Oh, thank goodness you’re okay,” my mom said again. “Thank goodness everyone’s okay.”
“No one was hurt?” I asked.
“No one was hurt, except for…” My mom looked up at the door where Hazel was standing. “Ms. Violet’s dog, Chippers, he’s missing, they think he might hav
e been—” she didn’t finish, she just shook her head sadly. “We’ve invited Ms. Violet to stay with us, since her house is gone.”
Just then someone knocked on the back door. It was Spencer. I walked outside with him and surveyed the damage. The back fence was flattened, and a trail of destruction led away from my house and down the street, as if a tornado had passed through.
Ms. Violet’s house and about ten other houses were gone! Just smushed to smithereens. I couldn’t believe it. It was my fault. I could tell Spencer felt guilty too - it was his idea that helped figure out the coloring book. We both just stared at the scene in silence.