The Terrible Two

by Mac Barnett

  “The chicken was just a way to deliver a message. A prankster often communicates with another prankster by writing a message on a rubber chicken.”

  “Oh,” said Miles. “OK. So do you want the chicken back? Or should I just keep him, or drop him somewhere, or—”

  “Forget about the chicken!” Niles said.

  Somewhere in the distance, a cow mooed.

  This meeting was getting away from Miles. “You ruined my birthday party prank!” he shouted at Niles.

  “I saved your birthday party prank.”

  “Saved it? Saved it?” Miles tried to laugh, but his mouth was dry and he could only cough. “That’s insane. You stole all my presents. Or Cody Burr-Tyler stole my presents. Or whoever that was. Who was that?”

  “Some kid from Hillsdale I paid twenty bucks to impersonate Cody Burr-Tyler.”

  “And he has my presents?”

  “Nope. I have your presents, Miles.”

  “And you call that saving my prank?”

  “Your prank wasn’t even a prank.”

  “What?”

  “Let me ask you, Miles, how did you expect your ‘prank’ to play out?”

  “I was going to get up there, tell everybody I’d pranked them, and get a bunch of presents.”

  “So you were just going to walk away with all those presents? After you told the entire school that you’d lied to them?”

  Miles thought for a moment.

  “Yes.”

  “How was that going to work, exactly?”

  “I guess I thought they’d be so stunned by the prank that they’d just watch me go.”

  Niles stared at Miles.

  “All right, I see your point,” Miles said. “But it still would’ve made my name. I would’ve pranked the entire school in one go. Everybody would’ve known Miles Murphy.”

  “Yeah, Miles Murphy, the liar and thief.”

  “Well, when you put it that way . . .”

  “If you prank everyone, who is left to appreciate the prank? Pranking everybody is like pranking nobody.”

  “Huh?” said Miles.

  “You’re forgetting one of the basic rules of pranking,” Niles said. “The goat has to deserve it.”

  “The goat?”

  Niles rolled his eyes. “Do your research, Miles! A goat is what pranksters call their victims. And to be a goat, someone has to have it coming. Everyone loves to see a goat get pranked. That’s why Principal Barkin is a great goat. He always has it coming. Plus he turns purple.”

  “So you were the one who put Barkin’s car at the top of the steps!”

  Niles stared at Miles again.

  “Who are you to lecture me about pranking?” Miles asked. “I was the best prankster at my old school! I was a legend!”

  “You were a yak.”

  “What?”

  Niles sighed. “A yak. A yak is someone who’s always bragging about his pranks. A prankster doesn’t prank for the fame. A prankster pranks for the prank.”

  Miles tightened his grip around the rubber chicken’s neck.

  “Listen,” said Niles. “When people know you’re a prankster, they’re all watching you. Kids are waiting to see what you do next. Principals are tailing you down the halls. To a real prankster, that’s death. The best pranks require a lot of work. They require preparation. To pull truly great pranks, you need to be invisible. The best pranks leave everyone wondering.”

  Niles had a point. If Miles was being honest, his classic Operation: Sandy Shorts would have been a much better prank if his homeroom teacher hadn’t caught him immediately. And the stuff about goats made sense too. By the time Miles left his old town, Carl and Ben, his closest friends and near-constant pranking victims, weren’t really taking his calls anymore. But. But! “But it’s so fun taking credit for your pranks,” Miles said.

  Niles smiled. “I agree. That’s why I sent you the chicken. That’s why you’re here today. I have a proposal.”

  Miles waited.

  “I’m proposing,” said Niles, “that we team up. We become a pranking duo. Co-conspirators. A secret society founded on mutual admiration and the joy of pranking. I even have a name picked out. We’ll call ourselves the Terrible Two.”

  Chapter

  18

  NO THANKS,” SAID MILES.

  “What?” said Niles. It was the first time he’d looked uncertain today.

  “I don’t want to join your dumb society.”

  “But it would be good for you, Miles! I could teach you to avoid suspicion and—”

  “You? You could teach me? You think you could teach me?” Miles’s face was feeling hot. “I don’t need you to teach me anything. I’m a pranking legend.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to offend you,” Niles said. “I agree: You have real potential.”

  “‘Potential’? ‘POTENTIAL’?” Miles was shouting now, but he didn’t know it. “I have executed pranks you would never dream of. Ever hear of Situation: Cold Oatmeal? The Great Bifocal Caper? You’re such a pranking expert—did you in your research ever come across a little prank called Pile of Potato Bugs?”

  “I haven’t heard of any of those pranks,” Niles said.

  “Then maybe you’re the one who could learn from me. Because I invented them!”

  “OK, OK,” Niles said, holding out his hands. “Miles, I didn’t mean to imply that—”

  “You think I need you?”

  “I think we could help each other.”

  “Ha, ha!” Miles said. (He actually said, “Ha, ha!”)

  Niles just stared, so Miles continued.

  “Well, I’ll say it again: No thanks. No thanks now and no thanks forever. I’m not going to be second banana on your little prank team. In fact . . .” Miles drew in a big breath. “I declare a prank war.”

  “Miles, I don’t want—”

  “You’re scared! You’re scared! The prank expert is scared.”

  “Let’s not—”

  “I’m not taking it back! It’s war. It’s a prank war.”

  “Miles, I seriously think you should seriously think about what you’re saying.”

  “No, Niles, why don’t you go seriously think. Go home and start thinking, start planning, real seriously. You’re going to need every brain cell you own. Because you can think and think and think, but I’ll always be right behind you, one step ahead of you.”

  “All right, then. If that’s what you want. I’m sorry that—”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry too, Niles. I’m sorry your little meeting didn’t go as planned. You probably thought I was going to come here tonight and sign right up to be your stooge. But that’s just it, Niles Sparks: You don’t know me. You don’t know what’s going on up here.” Miles tapped his head with the chicken’s beak. “And that’s why you will never win this prank war.”

  “Suit yourself,” Niles said. “The prank war is on.”

  Miles Murphy watched as Niles walked away. He watched as, in the purple evening, Niles became a Niles-shaped silhouette among cow-shaped silhouettes. He watched so intently that he didn’t notice Josh Barkin coming up behind him until he was already in a headlock.

  “I knew you’d be here, nimbus,” Josh said.

  “How?” was all Miles could get out through his windpipe.

  “That little nimbus Niles Sparks told me. He sold you out! He called me last night and said he’d tell me where you’d be if I agreed not to beat him up for lying about the lunch tray.”

  Miles would have sighed if he could have.

  “Even your buddy isn’t your friend!” Josh said. Then he punched Miles in the gut.

  Miles dropped the chicken.

  Chapter

  19

  DAY ONE OF THE PRANK WAR,” said a cool voice inside Miles’s head as he hid behind a plant outside the teachers’ lounge. “Or day two of the prank war, depending on whether you count that business last night with Josh Barkin, which I don’t.”

  Miles checked his watch. Nine minutes. He had ni
ne minutes to execute his opening salvo. Activity Time, between second and third periods, was a chance for students to grab a snack or step outside. It was fifteen minutes, bell to bell. Six of those minutes had been burned already, waiting for the corridor outside the teachers’ lounge to clear. Now Miles was the only one left, peering out from behind a large philodendron. Since he’d taken his post at the beginning of Activity Time, he’d counted eight teachers entering the lounge. That meant he needed eight teachers to leave, right now.

  Miles unzipped his backpack and removed his pranking folder. The folder was nondescript and had the word FORMS written across it, which was the most boring word Miles could think of. Miles opened the folder and pulled out the thing that would empty that teachers’ lounge:

  Miles looked down the hallway in both directions. All clear. He did a little roll out from behind the plant, scrambled across the carpet, and slipped the bright-green flyer under the door. He knocked twice, jumped back behind the philodendron, and waited.

  The second hand of Miles’s watch ticked eighteen times before he heard the door open. Out came Mrs. Thoren, followed by Ms. Lewis, Mr. Gebott, Ms. Machle, Mrs. Trieber, Mr. Stevenson, and Mr. Maxwell—all on their way to a table in the cafeteria loaded with cupcakes (made with extra egg yolks, so they’d be extra moist, a recipe adjustment Miles had made after the whole dry-cake debacle at Cody Burr-Tyler’s party).

  “I like cupcakes,” Mr. Maxwell said to Ms. Machle.

  “I hope there’s chocolate,” Mrs. Trieber said to Mr. Stevenson.

  “I don’t get why they didn’t just bring the cupcakes to the lounge,” Ms. Lewis said to nobody.

  That was only seven teachers. Miles needed eight. The door swung shut. He waited another full minute. And then another thirty seconds. Six and a half minutes to go. Who was left?

  Miles tried to recall the procession into the lounge. It had all happened so fast. There were kids everywhere, Barkin was shouting somewhere in the distance. Clanging lockers. Swinging backpacks. A flash of silver track pants. Yes! It was Coach O.!

  Miles was confused. Why hadn’t Coach O. left? Coach O. had the look of a man who loved cupcakes. In fact, Miles had seen him eating prepackaged cupcakes every day for the first three weeks of school.

  But only for the first three weeks. Miles slumped against the wall as he remembered a conversation he’d overheard between Coach O. and Coach B. during P.E. last week: Coach O. was going low carb.

  There were definitely carbs in cupcakes.

  If Miles didn’t think fast, the whole prank was shot. How could he get Coach O. to leave that lounge?

  It was almost automatic: Miles pulled out his pranking folder, removed a blank sheet of bright-green copy paper, and began to write.

  He gave the flyer a once-over and then applied the masterstroke: a smear of ink on the bottom right-hand corner that looked just like copy-machine toner.

  Perfect. Roll. Scramble. Slide. Knock.

  Miles was back behind the plant in less than six seconds. Coach O. was out the door in less than three more. The silver track pants swished down the hall and disappeared around the corner.

  Three minutes left. This was it. For the last time, Miles left his cover and hurried across the hall. He grabbed the handle, paused a second, and pushed through into the teachers’ lounge.

  The teachers’ lounge. Off-limits to all students. The sanctum sanctorum. It smelled like coffee.

  Everything was beige except a dark-brown couch with a big white rip down the center cushion. There were mugs everywhere and months-old magazines and nearly finished crossword puzzles. At the center of the coffee table was a platter half full of doughnuts. And there, on the back wall, was a pigeonhole message box with three dozen little cubbies, most labeled with a last name. The teachers’ mailboxes.

  Every step Miles took across the room was imbued with the thrill of the forbidden. He felt like a spy in his enemy’s castle. Miles wasn’t even breathing as he stood in front of the mailboxes, scanning strips of tape scrawled with handwritten names. Alvarez, Andresen, Barkin.

  Miles had practiced this next move the night before: Without looking he reached into his pranking folder, took out a long white envelope, and stood on his tiptoes. He took one last look at his forgery:

  Miles chuckled, kissed the envelope, and plunked it into Barkin’s box.

  He grabbed a sprinkled doughnut on the way out the door. By the time the bell rang, he was in the main hall and the doughnut was in his belly.

  Chapter

  20

  ALL RIGHT, GENTLEMEN, ALL RIGHT! Come on, line up, line up!” Coach O. was shouting between blows on his whistle. “Quit standing around in little clumps! You need to line up and stop clumping!”

  Nobody lined up. Josh Barkin jumped up and touched the net of a basketball hoop while a few other boys watched. Stuart was wearing his shirt inside out. Two boys and a girl were reading on the bleachers. Somewhere outside the gymnasium, a cow mooed.

  “Come on! Line up! Line up!” Coach O. was getting desperate. “Don’t you guys know it’s Thank-a-Teacher Day? Although, really, some thanks—there wasn’t even any bacon. And I’d been told there’d be bacon.”

  “The cupcakes weren’t that good, Tom,” said Coach B. “They were dry.”

  Over by the trophy case, Miles rolled his eyes.

  “Well, it certainly looked like you were enjoying them enough, Mike,” said Coach O. “What did you have, three?”

  “Nobody’s keeping you from eating cupcakes but yourself, Tom,” said Coach B.

  “I’m low carb!” said Coach O. Then he started blowing his whistle again. “Line up!”

  The many clumps gradually coalesced into one big clump.

  “You call that a line? I call that a clump!” said Coach O.

  “Or a blob,” said Coach B.

  After much shifting and shuffling and some shoving from Josh Barkin, the clump thinned out into a line.

  “Now there’s a line!” said Coach O.

  “Good line,” said Coach B.

  Coach O. blew his whistle for no immediately identifiable reason. “We’re starting a new unit today—indoor hockey. The most important rule of indoor hockey is what? It’s this: No. Swinging. Above. The knees.”

  “Keep those sticks low,” said Coach B. Coach B.’s whistle was in his mouth and it blew faintly as he talked. “Swing those sticks high and you could accidentally hit someone in the face.”

  Josh looked at Miles and smiled.

  “Now,” said Coach O. “We’ve got sticks over there, pucks over there, and cones over there. Grab a stick, partner up, get a puck, and practice passing to each other. Then I’ll tell you what to do with the cones. Go!”

  Coach O. blew his whistle and the line immediately dissolved back into clumps.

  “These kids just don’t listen,” Coach O. said to Coach B. “It’s making me nuts. Look at my hands shake.”

  “Tom, maybe you should eat some crackers or something.”

  “I can’t eat crackers, Mike! Crackers aren’t on the diet!”

  “Stop shouting, Tom.”

  The coaches got deep into an argument punctuated by the occasional blasting of whistles at each other.

  Miles watched as Niles dutifully plucked a rubber puck out of a mesh bag. Look at him, Miles thought. He almost felt bad for him. Poor Niles. Niles didn’t even know what was coming. And what was coming was the thrilling conclusion to a devastating prank.

  All day, Miles had been waiting for Barkin to show up, purple faced, and pull Niles out of class. It hadn’t happened in science, or in history, or during silent reading. It hadn’t happened in art class. And so it would have to happen now, in P.E., the last period of the day. And oh, how perfect! P.E., which meant that Niles would be called into Barkin’s office wearing his gym clothes. How embarrassing! And then he’d get suspended. Or maybe even expelled! No matter what, Niles Sparks would be a goat. Because here is what Miles had placed in Principal Barkin’s mailbox earlier that mo
rning:

  Miles didn’t know what Niles’s signature looked like, and so his masterstroke was that illegible scrawl at the bottom of the paper. And now here was Niles, his size-small gym clothes at least two sizes too big, loping over with a plastic hockey stick under his arm.

  “Want to partner up?” Niles asked.

  Miles shrugged. “I don’t have a stick.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant. Have you given more thought to the pranking partnership?” Niles checked to make sure nobody was within earshot. “The Terrible Two?”

  “Oh, that,” said Miles. “What’s the matter? Regretting starting this prank war with me?”

  “You started the prank war.”

  “Whatever. You know what, Niles? It sounds to me like you’re scared. It sounds like you’re thinking it would be better to have me close instead of out in the wild, dreaming up stunning and masterful pranks.”

  Miles checked the door to the gym. Now would be the perfect time for Barkin to show up.

  But Barkin didn’t show up.

  Instead, Niles reached into the pocket of his gym shorts and pulled out an envelope.

  Not an envelope.

  The envelope.

  For the first time in today’s P.E. class, Miles felt out of breath. “Where’d you get that?”

  Niles gave a matter-of-fact shrug. “I sort and deliver Principal Barkin’s mail—it’s one of the duties of the School Helper. As you can probably imagine, I was surprised to find a letter from myself in Barkin’s mailbox. So I steamed it open over the electric teakettle and found your confession.”

  “Amazing,” Miles said, in spite of himself.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Miles! If you never yak and keep a low profile, you’re above suspicion. And if you’re above suspicion, you can get access to the inner workings of the whole school. I’ve worked my way into a place where I can execute spectacular pranks.” He paused, then added, “And foil underwhelming almost-pranks.”