The Fourth Stall Part II Read online

  “Almost done,” the Hutt slurred. Not only did this kid look like Jabba the Hutt, but he also sounded just like him, too.

  In one hand he held a pile of little black pellets; with the other he was picking more up from the bottom of the locker. I made a mental note never to shake that kid’s hand again. I had to say, I knew the Hutt was nasty, but I couldn’t believe he hadn’t used gloves or even a plastic bag. I think Tony Adrian was thinking the same thing because he was practically convulsing behind him. I thought for sure Tony was going to break into a seizure at any moment.

  I looked at the rest of his locker. It was like a hospital or something. Every item inside was carefully wrapped in plastic. And there were stacks of small plastic Tupperware containers with various items inside, such as pencils and erasers and pens. Everything was neatly stacked and symmetrical like a tessellation or pattern or something. I couldn’t decide right then who was actually the weirder kid: the Hutt or Tony.

  “All done,” the Hutt sloshed. He carried his pile of poop to a nearby trash can. When he got back, he held out his hand for me to shake. “Thanks for the job.”

  I hesitated. On one hand it was unprofessional not to shake hands after a business transaction, but on the other that hand had just seconds ago been holding a pile of poop the size of a softball. But in the end my business sense won out. I couldn’t help it: I like to run a sound operation.

  I shook the Hutt’s hand, which was warm and kind of sticky, and I almost gagged. Then the Hutt grinned at me and said, “Let me know when it needs to be cleaned again.” He turned and walked down the hall, slapping kids on the back as he went. Then at the end of the hallway I could have sworn I saw him stick his hand into his mouth for some inexplicable reason.

  “Mac, what did you just do?” Vince said through laughter. “Remind me to never ever share food with you again. Also, I don’t think you can be my catcher anymore. I mean, sure, spitballs have some extra action to them, but I’m not so sure that poop-balls give us any competitive advantage besides maybe kids whiffing on purpose so they don’t get fecal matter on their bats.”

  “Towel,” I said. Then I said it again perhaps more loudly than necessary, “Towel. Towel!”

  I motioned desperately for Tony to get me one of his little wipes while holding my hand out in front me as if I had the Cheese Touch from this hilarious Wimpy Kid book that I read once. I grabbed my forearm with my other hand like a tourniquet to keep the poop from spreading to the rest of my body. Tony handed a towelette to me and then took several steps back. I wiped my hand with the wet towel, scrubbing every finger and my palm as if I was trying to rub all of my skin right off, which was almost the case. Then I asked for another towel and repeated the process until I was sure my hand was as clean as it would ever get.

  Meanwhile Tony was on the floor near his locker scrubbing the bottom with a bottle of cleaner that he’d had inside. He worked furiously but in a controlled and efficient manner, as if this was something he did everyday anyway, with or without poop.

  When he was done, he said, “Thanks, Mac. I hope you figure out soon how this is happening.”

  “We will,” I said.

  Vince and I examined the locker thoroughly with a flashlight that Vince had brought with him. We didn’t see any possible entrance or exit for small animals. It was baffling. How was the poop getting in there?

  “What do you think?” I asked him.

  “Well,” Vince said, “let’s lay down some humane, kill-free traps. Probably best to find out what kind of animal it is first.”

  I nodded. As usual Vince had a great idea. “All right, we’ll have Joe come by tomorrow right before the first bell to lay some down. Can you meet him here?”

  Tony nodded. “Sounds good,” he said, wiping his hands with another towel.

  Chapter 6

  Wednesday—Mr. Skari’s Classroom

  Later that day in class Mr. Skari announced that for the next few days we’d be reviewing materials specifically for SMART preparation. He said it was very important that we do well. And if he was willing to change his class schedule around to help us prepare, then it really must be an important test—because Mr. Skari hated to deviate from his class schedule. One time he even came to school with a shattered arm. Apparently he’d slipped on the ice in his driveway that morning and broken it. Mr. Skari is like six and a half feet tall, so when a guy like that falls, it usually ends in broken limbs. But he was so obsessed with staying on schedule that he didn’t even go to the hospital until after school that day. Some kids claim they could even see bone sticking out of his arm through the makeshift sling he’d made, but there was no way that was true. Right?

  Anyways, the point is if Mr. Skari was willing to deviate from his regular class schedule for this test, then that meant it really was a big deal.

  After talking about some math subjects that would be on the test, he handed out this huge packet of worksheets to complete for the rest of the day. Everybody groaned, even me. Packets are the worst. Nobody likes packets. Well, except for Garret Henley—he loves packets, but he also loves all homework, eating string cheese dipped in grape jelly, and watching the Public Access TV channel. So his opinion doesn’t count for much.

  “Christian?” Mr. Skari said a few minutes after handing out our packets.

  I looked up from my math assignment with a frown. It was never a good sign to have the teacher say your name during classwork time. Mr. Skari motioned for me to come to his desk.

  As I got up, he said, “Better grab your stuff.”

  That was an even worse sign.

  I collected my things, threw them into my backpack, and approached his desk.

  “Yeah?”

  “You need to go see Dr. George.”

  “Why?”

  Mr. Skari gave me one of those looks that said, You know why. For the most part Mr. Skari and I got along pretty well. For him being a teacher anyways. So he’d probably tell me if he knew exactly why I needed to go see Dr. George.

  He handed me my hall pass and I headed off toward the administration offices.

  The place where happiness goes to die.

  So it seemed I was going to get my first meeting with the new vice principal. I would get to see what he was all about firsthand. I’m going to admit that I was a little nervous. I mean, you don’t get reputations like Dr. George’s by being an empty threat.

  As bad as Head Principal Dickerson was, Dr. George would probably be even worse. They were both clearly old cranky guys with little to no hair whose faces would shatter into gory messes of blood and skin if they ever smiled, but the difference was that Dickerson was kind of a bumbling idiot, whereas Dr. George had a reputation for being razor sharp, the sort of guy you couldn’t just talk your way around. He was still a doctor, after all, even if it was the fake kind.

  I shuffled inside the door to the administration offices, and the secretary held out her hand. I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to shake it or something, but then I looked at the hall pass clutched in my own hand and held it out to her. She snatched it away as if she thought I might pull it back at any moment.

  I had never been called to the principal’s office before. I was just a simple businessman, not a troublemaker.

  The secretary pointed at a door to my left.

  The silence could have suffocated me.

  The door was huge, but the nameplate on it was tiny and slightly crooked. I reached to knock, but the door opened before I could. He’d been expecting me, I guessed.

  Dr. George held the door open and swept his other hand toward a chair across from his desk. I sat down. He closed the office door and sat across from me. He was a normal-sized guy. He had a lot of wrinkles, and his eyes moved too much, but other than that and his two-toned fake hair, he looked just like any other crusty old guy.

  We sat there looking at each other for a while. His breathing was loud and his nose wheezed with each exhale. He stared right at me, and I tried to hold his gaze as long as I could,
but it was hard. The guy was making me nervous—even more so than adults usually do. What was his game?

  “Well?” he said finally.

  “Well,” I said back.

  He frowned.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” he said.

  “For what?” I dug my fingers into the wooden armrests on my chair.

  “Don’t play games with me, Mr. Barrett.”

  “I’m not playing games. I wish I were,” I said.

  He pounded a fist on the desk. “I’m tired of this attitude from you kids! Show some respect!”

  He startled me, and I jumped, suddenly more afraid than I ever expected to be in my own school. His voice echoed deep into my brain even after he’d finished yelling.

  “I’m sorry, sir, I just don’t know what I did wrong.”

  “You don’t.”

  “No.”

  He sighed and leaned back in his chair. He grabbed a folder from a drawer behind him and slapped it onto the desk. Then he leafed through it briefly before closing it again. He was making a big show and I knew it.

  “You were caught trespassing in the kitchen,” he said, pounding the folder with his index finger to emphasize each word. “We’re not going to tolerate any funny business around here anymore. None.”

  “Oh, that. Yeah. I wasn’t trespassing, I was doing research for—”

  “The newspaper, right. This school doesn’t have a student-run newspaper, Mr. Barrett.”

  A little detail I wish I’d remembered before opening my mouth back in the kitchen. But I’d just assumed that the cooks wouldn’t have a clue either way.

  “So?” he said.

  “So,” I repeated back.

  His face reddened considerably. I almost regretted saying it for a second, but then I realized how hilarious his wrinkled face looked right then, all orange and shriveled like a dusty, old, popped basketball.

  “What were you doing back there?” he demanded.

  “I was just asking them about our school menu. It’s been so different lately.”

  “Don’t you like the food we serve?”

  “Well, yeah, I suppose,” I said, even though I hadn’t eaten a bite of school lunch in over four years. But if anyone should be concerned about the health value of school lunches, shouldn’t it be George?

  Then he dropped the bombshell.

  “I know you’re up to something, Mac. May I call you Mac?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  He didn’t say anything else, letting his last few sentences sink in. I sat there and let them. And I didn’t like it. I didn’t like those words a single bit.

  “I’m going to find out what’s going on. I’ll be watching you closely. I don’t tolerate funny business in my school, as I said. Maybe you kids got to do whatever you wanted before, but now that I’m here, all of that will change. This school is more important than any of you realize, and nothing is going to get in the way of me cleaning it up, understand?”

  I wasn’t sure if he’d emphasized the word “business” on purpose or if my mind was just playing tricks on me. The effect was the same, regardless. My business was in danger from the worst source possible: the Administration. I could handle rival businesses, tough customers, rats, snitches, and general troublemakers. But the one thing I couldn’t have against me was the Administration. As dumb as the Suits usually were, they still held the power to shut me down for good.

  “You hear me?” Dr. George practically screeched.

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, then. I’m giving you an hour of detention for the next two days after school for your stunt in the cafeteria today. And just know that I’m going to find out what you’re up to. Understood?”

  I nodded. I was furious that this would cause me to miss a day of baseball tryouts, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good to argue.

  “That’ll be all,” he said, and turned his chair so that he was facing his computer.

  I got up and somehow ended up back in class, though I don’t remember actually walking there. Other than it causing me to miss baseball tryouts, I didn’t really care at all about the detention; I’d just use that time to work on some of my current cases. But I was concerned about the fact that the Administration was now on my tail. It’d been hard enough to keep up with business anyways; now I had to worry about being cased by Suits. All I could do, though, was be more careful and hope that Dr. George really didn’t have a clue what was going on, that it had just been an empty threat.

  Vince got detention, too, for the cafeteria stunt. But he hadn’t gotten any cryptic threats from Dr. George, just the standard lecture and detention. He didn’t like what I told him at the start of afternoon recess that day.

  “What are we going to do? We’ve never had the Administration on our tails before,” Vince said. “This is, like, almost worse than that one time I tried to prove that gravity was a myth using nothing but a box of toothpicks, the big oak tree in my backyard, four packages of grape Kool-Aid, and a lawn gnome with a missing hand.”

  “I remember that,” Joe said.

  I did, too, and it had been pretty funny, aside from Vince’s crooked ankle and two months of him in a cast ordering me around and whining about being one limb down. But I really wasn’t in a laughing mood just then.

  “I guess the only thing we can do is keep focusing on our current customers. And also be more careful,” I said. “Hey, Fred?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How about for a while you can be our official lookout instead of keeping records? You can sit in the first stall and watch the hall camera through a small portable TV hooked up to the DVR. You can watch the end of the west hall and tell us if a Suit or teacher is coming. Then maybe we can get Brady to watch the west entrance near my office.”

  “Sure, Mac,” Fred said.

  “That sounds like a plan,” Vince said.

  “Then maybe today after detention, Vince and I will take a look around Mr. Kjelson’s office. See what we can find.”

  “What about baseball tryouts today, Mac?” Vince asked. “We’re going to miss due to detention. The last thing we need as sixth graders trying to make the team is to give the coach any reason at all to cut us.”

  I thought about that. “We’ll just have to talk to Kjelson and make up for it on the field . . . or in the gym or—you know what I mean.”

  Vince nodded but still looked concerned.

  “All right. There’s a line forming outside, so let’s open up for business for the rest of recess,” I said.

  Our first customer that day was a dual customer—and an odd pair to be showing up together, at that. A lanky, pale kid and a small kid with neat hair, a collared shirt, and a sweater vest with a goose on it stepped into my office. They were Great White and Kitten, two of the more notorious bullies in the school.

  Great White was British and had blond hair and pale skin. He also had a real mean streak and was one of the best fighters and toughest kids in the school. Kitten was meek and mild with a soft voice and neat clothes. But his appearance was deceiving. He was quite possibly the most insane person in the entire state. He probably belonged in a psych ward. Seriously, if he and I didn’t get along so well and he hadn’t helped my business so much in the past, I’d have turned him in to state officials a long time ago. If you crossed him, he was more dangerous than anyone in the city, probably. He’d eat your dog right in front of you with a knife and fork and a napkin tucked under his collar if you made him mad enough. But he and Great White weren’t friends, so it was weird to see them together like this.

  “Have a seat,” I told them.

  They sat down in the two chairs across from me. For the first time I noticed that Great White had a black eye and a large bandage on his neck. I remembered that some kids had complained about him picking a lot of fights lately due to the lack of punishment from the school. I wondered if this could be related.

  “What seems to be the problem?” I asked.


  “Well, besides the fact that this little git over here bit me in me neck like some sort of vampire?” Great White said.

  “You bit him in the neck?” I said to Kitten.

  Kitten looked calm, collected, and small as usual. “He started the fight. I just finished it,” he said quietly.

  I held back a laugh. Didn’t Great White know any better than to mess with Kitten? “So why are you both here? Also, if you started the fight, Great White . . .”

  “No, no, I’m not, like, here to tattle on the little psycho. We’re here because of the punishment we got for scrapping on school property, yeah? I mean, we was just knockin’ about, minding our own business, and then some little squealer had to go and tattle on us. Anyway, lately I is only be gettin’ like two days’ detention, tops, for fighting, but now this Dr. George guy be giving us two weeks’ detention for one little scrap!”

  I looked at Kitten for confirmation and he nodded. “Yeah, I’ve never gotten two full weeks for simply defending myself.”

  So George was apparently pretty serious about ending the funny business in our school. Which was fine, in a way, but he was a direct threat to my business and maybe even more than that.

  It was official. I had to get rid of Dr. George.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said. I suddenly felt kind of like I was suffocating. I just didn’t have the manpower to handle all of these problems. Getting teachers and coaches fired was hard enough, but now I had to worry about getting rid of a Suit? I’d never messed with the Administration before, and I didn’t exactly want to start, but it was looking like I might not have a choice.

  Chapter 7

  Wednesday—The Detention Room

  “Okay, Vince, are you ready?” I asked.

  “When aren’t I? Seriously, Mac. We always ask each other if we’re ready and we always are.”

  “Good point.”

  “Quiet down! This is detention not social hour,” Mr. Daniels said from behind his computer.