The Terrible Two Get Worse

by Mac Barnett

  “Chairwoman Chunch,” said Mrs. Chunch.

  “Acting Chairwoman,” said Mr. Sykes. “Only because Jeff isn’t here.”

  “Which, according to bylaw 34(d), makes me chair. I can bang the gavel at my discretion.”

  “If you bang the gavel willy-nilly,” said Mr. Sykes, “it loses all meaning.”

  Mrs. Chunch looked right at Mr. Sykes and banged her gavel some more.

  “That’s just great,” said Mr. Sykes. “Why don’t you show some restraint.”

  “You’re just jealous of my gavel,” said Mrs. Chunch.

  Mr. Sykes didn’t really have anything to say to that.

  Mrs. Chunch cleared her throat and banged the gavel again. “The floor is now open. Citizens of Yawnee Valley are invited to approach the microphone.”

  Miles was the first to speak. He walked up to a microphone stand that stood a few feet in front of the table where the school board sat.

  “I don’t really think we need a microphone,” he said, looking around the room.

  “We always use microphones,” said Mrs. Chunch, into her microphone. “Bylaw 17(t).”

  “OK,” said Miles. He took out a sheet of binder paper. “My name is Miles Murphy.”

  The speakers squeaked hideously.

  “There’s something wrong with his microphone,” said Mr. Sykes. “Gus, could you bring us a new microphone?”

  Gus, who worked at the county library most nights, hurried in with a new microphone and began fiddling with cords.

  “I really think I can do this without it,” Miles said.

  Mrs. Chunch raised the gavel to silence him.

  “Testing, testing,” Gus said into the microphone. “Four score and seven years ago. A screaming comes across the sky. Such were the joys. When we all, girls and boys, in our youth-time were seen on the Ecchoing Green.” He gave the table the OK. “This one should work, folks.”

  Mrs. Chunch banged the gavel. “Resume.”

  “My name is Miles Murphy,” Miles said. “From my first day at school last year, Principal Barkin has been a welcoming presence and a wise and guiding authority figure. He learned my name right away and was a friendly face while I became accustomed to my new school. Principal Barkin believes in my potential and makes sure I achieve my best. And he introduced me to my best friend.”

  Only the first and last sentences of this speech were true, but that was fine.

  Mrs. Chunch smiled. “Thank you, Miles.”

  “Thank you,” Miles said. He took his seat.

  Principal Barkin leaned over and whispered, “A little short, Miles, and light in terms of content related to my principal power, but altogether not too bad.”

  Niles Sparks was the next to step up. “Lady and gentleman of the school board, I’m here today to tell you about my hero. A great man. A powerful man. A principal. Principal Barkin.”

  “Here we go,” Barkin said, pumping his fist a little.

  Niles Sparks praised the leadership of Principal Barkin in a seven-minute presentation, enhanced by visual aids intended to supplement the school board’s understanding: charts, photographs, and even a diorama.

  When he was finished, the school board gently applauded. Barkin cried a little bit.

  “Nice one,” Miles said when Niles sat down.

  “I think we did well,” said Niles. They gave each other a high two.

  “What’s that?” Barkin asked. “A secret handshake? Neat! I think I missed it. Will you show it to me?”

  “Anyone else?” asked Mrs. Chunch.

  Barkin stood hastily. “Me!” he said. He buttoned his blazer and came up to the microphone.

  “Let’s do this, Barry,” he said to himself.

  Principal Barkin was proud of his many accomplishments as a principal, but he was probably proudest of his mastery of a rhetorical mode beloved by principals: the power speech. A power speech is meant to impress the listener and elevate the speaker. And last night Principal Barkin had stayed up late, cooking up a doozy. There was no doubt: This was the speech of his career. Words had flowed. Power had radiated. Metaphors had popped into his mind like . . . like . . . like a self-cranking Jack-in-the-box, but just the Jack, obviously, not the box, the Jack was the metaphor, and it wasn’t a creepy Jack, the kind that was scary, with a creepy clown face, but a nice, smiling Jack, with a face that was beautiful and simple, like his metaphors.

  “DISTINGUISHED SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS, I AM PRINCIPAL BARKIN, THE PRINCIPAL IN QUESTION.” The speakers squealed.

  “There’s no need to shout,” said Mrs. Chunch. “You have a microphone.” She was hard to hear. Barkin had blown out the sound system.

  “Gus!” shouted Mr. Sykes.

  The back doors opened, but instead of a smiling Gus, there stood a frowning Former Principal Barkin.

  The room gasped audibly, which was impressive since there were only five gaspers.

  Bertrand Barkin strode to the front of the room.

  “Sit down, Barry,” he said.

  Barry Barkin backed up and took a seat in the front row.

  Former Principal Barkin adjusted some knobs on an AV cart and tapped the microphone. The speakers were back on.

  “Melinda, Karl, my apologies for showing up in the middle of things. I’m sure you’ll understand that after I retired from the school board, I promised myself not to be present at any more of these meetings than I had to be.”

  Mrs. Chunch and Mr. Sykes chuckled.

  “Let’s be brief. I don’t want to waste any more of your time. As you just witnessed, my son lacks discipline. And so his school lacks discipline. The pranks at Yawnee Valley Science and Letters Academy are out of control. They’re cutting into instruction time. And they’re making our district a laughingstock. I happen to know from colleagues that we’re the butt of many a joke in the teachers’ lounges over in Cherry Valley. No father likes to speak ill of his own son. But I feel I am a man with two children, and one of them is Yawnee Valley Science and Letters Academy.”

  “And Bob,” Principal Barkin said from the front row.

  Bertrand Barkin glared at Barry. “Yes. Bob. Three children. Barry and Bob and the school. And the school is in crisis. And in a crisis, we must take action. And so I submit the following proposal: that Principal Barkin take an involuntary, indefinite leave of absence.”

  “You want to fire me?” said Principal Barkin.

  “That’s your second interruption,” said Former Principal Barkin. “And that’s not what I said.”

  “It’s pretty much what you said.”

  “It’s not what he said,” said Mr. Sykes, looking at his notes. “He said ‘an involuntary, indefinite leave of absence.’”

  “Now, just a minute, Bertrand,” said Mrs. Chunch. “Who would replace him?”

  “A powerful principal who can put an end to all this nonsense.” Former Principal Barkin leaned into the microphone. “Me.”

  “WHAT?” said Principal Barkin.

  “Order!” said Mrs. Chunch.

  “Bang! Bang!” went the gavel.

  “I hereby submit the following motion for a vote,” said Former Principal Barkin.

  “Can he even do that?” said Principal Barkin.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Sykes.

  “That, effective immediately, Principal Barkin take an involuntary, indefinite leave of absence, and that I, Bertrand Barkin, take over in his stead.”

  “Aye,” said Mr. Sykes.

  “Nay,” said Mrs. Chunch.

  It was a tie.

  According to bylaw 98(j), in the event of a tie, the deciding vote is cast by the school board’s member-at-large.

  The school board’s member-at-large was Bertrand Barkin.

  He voted in favor of his own proposal.

  Barry Barkin was out of a job.

  Chapter

  8

  SO, THAT DIDN’T GO WELL,” said Miles Murphy.

  “No, it didn’t,” said Niles Sparks.

  He and Niles were eating piz
za in Niles’s room.

  “What’s this music?” Miles asked.

  “Zither!” said Niles.

  “Right,” said Miles. He swallowed his bite. “So what do we do now?”

  Niles picked a piece of pepperoni off his slice and put it on the side of his plate for later.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do we do about Principal Barkin?”

  Niles smiled. “Well, we welcome him to Yawnee Valley Science and Letters Academy, of course. Did you see him in there? He’s a skunk.”

  “A skunk?”

  “A rotten rascal just asking to get pranked. Mean and humorless. The best kind of target. A good goat is rare, but a skunk? Pranksters wait their whole lives for someone like Bertrand Barkin to come around.”

  “Cool,” said Miles. “But that wasn’t the Principal Barkin I was asking about.”

  “I know.”

  The boys chewed.

  The Barkin Miles was talking about, Barry Barkin, sat behind the wheel of his yellow hatchback, parked in the driveway of his house. The music was turned way down, and he was having a long talk with himself.

  “This is a good thing, Barry,” he said. “This is probably the best thing that has ever happened to you. You’ve been a principal for over fifteen years. Think of all you’ve missed! You haven’t had any time for your projects! And I know what you’re thinking, Barry. You’re thinking, ‘What projects?’ But that’s just it! You haven’t even had the time to think of the projects you’re interested in. That’s Project #1: Start a list of projects.”

  He unzipped his Principal Pack, which after the board meeting was now technically just a fanny pack, and pulled out a notebook. The cover of the notebook said PRINCIPAL IDEAS, the first word of which he crossed out and replaced.

  He flipped past pages he’d already written on—WAYS TO MENTOR MYSELF, LEADERSHIP TECHNIQUES FOR LEADING TOMORROW’S LEADERS, PARENTS WHO HAVE NEVER VOLUNTEERED—and got to a blank page. PROJECT LIST, he put at the top.

  He tapped his teeth with the tip of his pencil.

  He wrote:

  Then he put a big check mark next to it.

  “Barry,” he said, “the starter pistol has fired, and you’re off to the races!”

  He began writing furiously now.

  • • •

  “It does feel like it’s sort of our fault,” said Miles.

  “Look,” said Niles, “the picture-day prank wasn’t nasty or cruel. We had no intention of destroying anything! We couldn’t know Barkin’s dad was a skunk! And it was his dad who got him canned, not us. That whole mess at the school board meeting, that was between the two of them. There was nothing we could do. Miles, we have to move forward and do what we do best. School starts in less than fourteen hours. We should have something ready for Old Man Barkin first thing in the morning.”

  “Well. OK.”

  “OK,” said Niles. “Now, what do you know about the Scoville scale?”

  • • •

  Distance is measured in feet. Weight is measured in pounds. Milk is measured in gallons, or imperial teaspoons. The height of a horse is measured in hands. The brightness of light is measured in lumens. And the spiciness of a hot pepper is measured in Scoville heat units.

  Here is a bell pepper.

  It scores a zero on the Scoville scale. It’s not spicy at all.

  Plenty of people have trouble with jalapeños, which rate up to 10,000 Scoville heat units.

  Serranos are getting serious: 25,000 SHUs. Bird’s-eye chilies clock in somewhere above 100,000 SHUs. You can find them in curries and they look like this:

  The next time you get Thai food, dare somebody to eat one.

  Moving up, we have the habañero (300,000 SHUs), the ghost pepper (1 million SHUs), and the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion (1.2 million SHUs).

  And then there is the hottest pepper in the world. It fries tongues, burns throats, makes stomachs want to leap from bodies. If a pepper can be evil, this pepper is evil.

  Its name is the Carolina Reaper.

  A Carolina Reaper is red and bumpy. It has a bright green stem at its top and an impish tail curling off its bottom. Take a look at this beauty:

  This pepper is from a plant that had been growing on Niles’s windowsill for a year and a half.

  “I’ve been saving these peppers for a special occasion,” he said.

  Niles wiped his hands off on a napkin and put on a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves. He plucked a fat little fruit from the bottom of the plant and gingerly set it down on top of the table between Miles and himself.

  “Over 2.2 million Scoville heat units,” he said. “That’s 220 times hotter than the hottest jalapeño.”

  “Whoa mama,” said Miles.

  They stared at the pepper for a few seconds, silently, in awe.

  “Should we try it?” Miles asked.

  Niles grinned. “Really?”

  “I mean, don’t we kind of have to? Just to see?”

  “Oh man,” said Niles. “OK.”

  Miles pulled his Swiss Army knife from his pocket and split the pepper in two. Niles picked up his half with a gloved hand. Miles speared his with the knife and held it inches from his mouth.

  “One,” said Miles.

  “Two,” said Niles.

  “Three,” said Miles.

  They each nibbled off a tiny bite.

  Why oh why oh why did they do it? Immediately a numbness spread from the taste bud on the tip of Niles’s tongue across his tongue’s whole top. Then the bottom went numb, and the inside of his cheeks. If only the numbness had lasted: In less than a second his whole mouth was aflame. Niles had to get the pepper out of his mouth. He swallowed. Bad idea. It was like his esophagus got napalmed.

  Meanwhile, Miles had begun hiccuping furiously.

  “My insides are melting,” he said between spasms.

  “Your eyes are bugging out!” Niles said.

  “Your whole face is red!” said Miles.

  “You’re crying!” said Niles.

  “We’re both crying!” said Miles.

  Niles stripped off his rubber gloves and rubbed his eyes furiously. He was sweating. His head was hot and getting hotter. It was awful. It was spectacular.

  “Oh man oh man.”

  “I need water!” Miles said.

  “That makes it worse!” said Niles.

  “I need something!” Miles said.

  “Ice cream!” said Niles.

  He ran from the room and returned in less than a minute with a tub full of mint chip and two spoons.

  They tore off the lid and dug in. Ice cream ran out the sides of their mouths.

  “My mouth feels better, but my whole body’s burning up,” Niles said.

  “Mine too,” said Miles. He ripped off his shirt.

  “Good idea,” said Niles.

  Miles ran to the window and threw it open. He and Niles lay shirtless on the floor, rolling around with mouths full of ice cream, laughing and crying, saying, “Why oh why oh why.”

  Chapter

  9

  BERTRAND BARKIN WAS THE KIND of man who wore a belt and suspenders. Usually, this is just a saying, but in Bertrand Barkin’s case it was actually true. He wore a belt, and he wore suspenders. On the same day. At the same time. Of course, he was also the kind of person the saying refers to: a puritanical twit, an overstarched prig, a prude, a killjoy, a fuddy-duddy, a skunk.

  This particular skunk was having a great morning. It felt good to put on the old belt and suspenders, drive to the school, and pull into the principal’s parking space. It felt even better to be in the old office. He hung up his coat on the old rack and sat behind the old desk, in the old chair. Bertrand frowned. The old chair was at a new height. That needed to be fixed. The chair sighed as Bertrand lowered it three and a half inches. Perfect.

  Bertrand nodded. The place still smelled the same. Wet wool and burnt coffee. There was a faint whiff of bergamot—Barry had always had a weakness for Earl Grey tea—but Bertr
and could clear that up by brewing up a pot of the old Bertrand blend. He removed a zippered bag of coffee grounds from his briefcase and poured some into the machine. The switch glowed orange and the stuff started to drip.

  Bertrand Barkin rinsed out a mug. WORLD’S GREATEST PRINCIPAL. Well, that was finally true again.

  All right, it was time to make this official. He reached over the desk and removed the brass nameplate that said PRINCIPAL BARKIN, replacing it with a brass nameplate that said PRINCIPAL BARKIN.

  “Barkin’s back,” he said to himself.

  “Specifically, Bertrand Barkin,” he said.

  Bertrand allowed himself thirty seconds of leisure, during which he surveyed the portraits of Barkins that lined the walls: Thadius, Roger, himself, and Barry. All the Principal Barkins, except one, a lenient principal who’d brought shame upon the Barkin name and whose portrait Bertrand had ordered removed. That principal’s name was Jimmy, although Bertrand had called him Father, although Jimmy had wanted to be called Dad.

  Bertrand wondered: Should there be two portraits of himself on the wall, since he had now been principal twice? Or should he take down Barry’s portrait, erasing that little blip, the blank spot in Bertrand’s period of power?

  Power. That reminded him. Bertrand pulled out a manual typewriter, which he’d lugged with him this morning.

  Feeding a piece of yellowed paper into the platen (he’d brought the paper from home too), Bertrand felt the old spirit waxing within him. He had a hunch these kids had never heard a real power speech before. Well, he would soon remedy that. Things were going to change around here, and it was important to start things off on just the right note.

  Chapter

  10

  THE STUDENTS FILED into the auditorium. “What’s happening?” Holly asked.

  “Principal Barkin got FIRED,” said Stuart.

  “Technically he’s taking an involuntary, indefinite leave of absence,” said Niles.

  “So he got fired,” said Holly. “What for?”