The Fight for Kidsboro

by Marshal Younger

  “So, what if this works out?” Scott asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Will you be happy or sad?”

  “I’ll be happy,” I replied, and meant it. “Maybe Valerie knows what’s she’s doing. If it works, we’ve all made some new friends and the town is better for it.”

  We sat for a little while longer, listening to the sounds coming from the campfire. Just as I was contemplating going back to the fire to get a refill of my drink, we heard a noise that didn’t sound encouraging. It was a scream!

  Both of us dropped our cups and ran outside. There were a few more screams as we approached the campfire. Nelson was running toward his house like he’d just seen a bear.

  “What’s going on?” I shouted.

  “They’re going crazy,” was all he could say as he kept running.

  We ran as fast as we could toward the campfire. Several people were backed up against a house, acting as if they were being rushed at by angry wolves. Then I saw what they were so afraid of—Rodney and Luke were holding burning sticks and poking them at people.

  Rodney was waving his torch and laughing. Luke rushed at Reverend Joey and came within inches of burning his face. Everyone screamed. People were paralyzed with fear, afraid that if they attracted attention to themselves, the two boys would pick them as their next target.

  “Come on, everybody! I’m not gonna hurt you. Come over here and let me show you how friendly I can be.” Rodney waved his torch wildly, and sparks fell to the ground. “Come on, you can trust me.”

  Luke went over to a group of people and scared the daylights out of them. The rest of Rodney’s crew were getting some big laughs out of this. Alice was motioning for kids to run.

  “Drop your weapon!” she shouted at Rodney. He just laughed.

  Valerie was standing to the side and suddenly seemed to realize she was responsible for doing something about this. She stepped forward. “Rodney, stop it! Luke! Cut it out, right now! Put down the torches!”

  Rodney chuckled and said, “Uh-oh, Luke. Look out. Our mayor is telling us what to do.”

  Luke joined him gleefully. “Yeah, we’d better obey or she’s gonna throw us in jail!”

  “I mean it, you guys!”

  “Oh,” Rodney said, “She means it! Luke, I didn’t know she meant it. I guess we’d better mean it too.”

  With that, Rodney ran toward her angrily and poked the torch close to her stomach. Everyone screamed. Valerie backed away from him, but he kept after her. I’ve never seen such fear in anyone’s eyes as I saw in Valerie’s.

  “Come on, Ms. Mayor. I heard somewhere that you liked playing with fire.”

  She started backing away more quickly, but he lunged at her. Dodging the flame, she fell. He came right at her with the torch!

  Without thinking, I dashed toward them. The flame was inches from her stomach. Just as Rodney turned to me, I dove at the torch, knocking it out of his hand. He jumped on top of me and we wrestled on the ground. Luke saw what was happening to his friend, dropped his torch, and ran to help. He tried to pull me away from Rodney. Scott ran over and tackled Luke, sending him sprawling to the ground.

  Rodney was much stronger than me, and he had me pinned. Just as he was about to send his fist through my skull, he glanced to his right. His mouth dropped open. The fire had spread and a house was in flames!

  We suddenly forgot about beating each other up. “Get off!” I yelled and pushed Rodney off of me.

  “Scott!” I shouted. “Go to Whit’s End! Mr. Whittaker has a fire extinguisher!” He ran to get it. “Alice, call 911!” She obeyed. “You people!” I pointed to a group of kids. “Find some buckets or something and get water out of the pool and dump it on these flames!” They all scurried off. “You guys!” I shouted at Rodney’s gang. “Help me put this out!”

  I frantically kicked dirt onto the fire. It had climbed all the way up the wall of a house and was making its way along the roof.

  Mr. Whittaker and Scott ran back with the fire extinguisher. Mr. Whittaker charged the burning house and sprayed. The fire died wherever he hit it, but it had spread too far already. The house was consumed by flames.

  A dozen people came back with glasses, buckets, hats, and anything else that would hold water, and began to pour it on the flames. But it was like trying to stop a tidal wave with a garbage can lid.

  The spray ran out of the fire extinguisher, and we had nothing left to do.

  “It’s too dangerous!” Whit shouted. “Everybody get out of here!” He waved his arms, signaling all of us to move away from the town. I had a fleeting thought in the back of my mind. What if the fire spreads to Whit’s End? We watched the flames from a hundred feet away, and waited for the fire department to arrive.

  The fire department got there in five minutes, but had some problems getting back into the woods, so it was 10 minutes before they were able to do anything to the flames. By that time, four houses were already consumed by fire. Whit’s End was saved, but not by much.

  We got a stern talking to from the fire department. Scott told the fire chief what had happened, and then the fire chief took Rodney and Luke aside and lectured them for a while. Besides the four houses that were burned to the ground, two others were damaged. No one was hurt, though. Everyone just wanted to go home, take a bath, fall asleep, and forget about this night.

  I wanted to go home too, but on my way I saw Valerie. She was sitting on a stump, all alone. She was shivering with a blanket draped around her. She looked in the direction of the burned houses, but probably saw nothing but the memory of a flame being shoved into her face. I sat on the ground next to her.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. She nodded. Just about everyone else had gone by this point, and the crickets were starting to chirp as if nothing had happened. “Maybe you ought a go home,” I said. She nodded again. I guess she didn’t feel much like talking. Neither did I.

  “Thank you,” she said suddenly, “and I’m sorry.” Probably the two hardest things she’d ever had to say to anyone, and she accomplished them both in one sentence.

  “That’s okay,” I replied.

  We sat for a few more seconds, and then she began again. “I’m resigning.” This shocked me, even under the circumstances. “This is your town. I’m giving it back.”

  “Are you sure?” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  “Yes.” She stood up, now ready to go home. “Are you gonna start rebuilding the houses tomorrow?”

  “We’ll do something tomorrow, I’m sure.”

  “Okay. I’ll be here.” Valerie started to leave.

  “Valerie,” I said, and she turned around. “You did some good stuff. The rec center, that’s great. You did something else I didn’t do. I was trying to force people into jobs that didn’t exist. But you created jobs. I’m going to use that.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I might need you in the future. You know, to help me brainstorm ideas.”

  “Sure.” She gave me a half-smile and left.

  I got ready to leave too, but then I saw that I wasn’t the last person there. Jill was looking at her house, which was one of the ones that had burned down. She was on the verge of tears as I walked over to her.

  “The very first issue of the Chronicle was hanging up on the wall of this house,” her voice trembled. “Now it’s gone.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just patted her on the shoulder. She didn’t react.

  “Come on, I’ll walk you home,” I said. She looked at me, and then we turned and walked toward our real homes.

  “Pretty wild night, huh?” she said.

  “That it was.”

  “I guess I’ll be starting from scratch tomorrow.”

  “Well … as for your house,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. You’ve got insurance.”

  13

  BACK TO THE BASICS

  THE NEXT DAY I TOLD Max that he owed six people insurance money, and he informed me that he already knew this.
He had to cough up about 100 starbills to pay for all of it, since his policies didn’t just cover the wood, but also everything inside the houses. Some of the 100 starbills would go right back to him when people started rebuilding their houses with his wood. But he was still out a lot of money. The look on his face was all I needed to see. Justice had been served after all.

  I put Max back up for another vote before the city council. I thought the others would feel, like me, that what he did to those kids on the merry-go-round was grounds for banishment. They disagreed, saying that he had a legal contract and we had to honor that. Plus … we needed wood.

  Well, I’d given it a shot.

  A week later, the town held a new election, and I was voted in unanimously. It wasn’t a terribly glorious victory since there was no one opposing me, but it was sweet anyway.

  Rodney and the rest of Valerie’s friends told her that they weren’t interested in coming back to town, so banishing them was not an issue. I’d been afraid that was going to have to be my first act as mayor.

  Over the next month, we got the rec center going. We had a pool table/ping-pong table that was donated by someone’s parents, and it became the featured activity there. You could also use other sports equipment in a room next to it. People who used the facility had to pay a small monthly fee, just like a real health club. The fees would help pay the salaries of any employees who worked there. James was the first employee, and he enjoyed taking care of the place. He handed out equipment and refreshments and kept the ping-pong players on a time limit. He was very happy with his new position.

  The city council also voted on more government jobs. People took jobs mowing around the trees and building “streets” made out of thin pieces of plywood so that people could ride their bikes up to their houses. Under enormous pressure from people dying for a good cinnamon bun, Sid decided to reopen his business. With more people working now, he felt confident that he would have more customers. He was right.

  Kidsboro suddenly seemed like a breath of fresh air.

  One of the first things I did after I was reelected mayor was to persuade Roberto Santana to once again be a citizen of our town. And he agreed.

  He moved into the same house he had before, and everyone welcomed him back. Some even apologized for accusing him of something he didn’t do.

  Roberto chose his job as well. He decided he wanted to work with Jill at the newspaper. I was surprised, because she had written about his father being in jail, but he told me that she had apologized to him and he had forgiven her. He didn’t seem to have any hard feelings, and he really wanted to work on a newspaper.

  Jill was more than happy to have Roberto on her staff, since he actually had some newspaper experience working for a school newspaper and she was running out of ideas for news. She had bought Max’s extended insurance, so She was able to pay Corey back a good portion of the 30 starbills she owed him. She couldn’t afford to pay Roberto much until she paid Corey off completely, but he wanted the job just the same.

  At the end of the day, Roberto came into my office and told me about his first day on the job.

  “I had a good time,” he said. “Jill’s very nice, and she let me write an article about how it feels to be a new citizen.”

  “Great.”

  “I even put a part in there about you. About how you believed in me.”

  “Well …” I blushed. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I just wanted to come by and say thank you and that it’s nice to be here.”

  “I’m glad you’re with us,” I said.

  He started to leave, but then turned back around. “There is something that I should tell you.”

  “What?”

  “My dad … he really is in jail.” I felt deeply honored that he would trust me enough to tell me this. It almost made me want to share my own secret, just to show him that I trusted him as a friend too. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  Instead, I looked into his eyes and said, “That doesn’t matter.”

  He smiled and turned toward the door.

  “Welcome back, Roberto,” I said.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Mayor.”

  THE END

  For Bryn, my firstborn.

  The day you were born, the day you were baptized,

  and the day you first spelled “photosynthesis” backward,

  are still three of the best days of my life.

  Thanks for giving those to me.

  BOOK 2

  The Rise and Fall of the Kidsborian Empire

  1

  THE MAD AND THE GLAD

  SNAP! MAX BROKE THE STICK he was holding. I glanced at him, and he looked at me with narrowed eyes and clenched fists. I couldn’t help but smile, and this made him even madder. He glared at me one more time, and then left the crowd to go mourn the end of his reign as the most powerful man in Kidsboro, a community run by kids in Odyssey. Five of us had started Kidsboro months ago and our population had grown. We’d built clubhouses and small businesses in the woods behind Whit’s End, an ice cream shop and discovery emporium owned by Mr. John Avery Whittaker, or “Whit” as most adults called him. And I, Ryan Cummings, was the mayor of Kidsboro.

  Mark continued his presentation, pulling out a pocket-knife and cutting a window out of the tarp. The crowd around him watched with undivided attention. I was the only one who noticed Max leave. I had to follow him. I couldn’t help it. I would enjoy seeing him squirm.

  Max was forever tricking people out of their money. He always had at least three schemes going at one time. I couldn’t understand how he was able to keep up with all of the lies he told.

  Because his father owned a construction company, Max had a practically unlimited supply of scrap wood, which he sold to Kidsboro citizens for high prices. Of course, he was paid in Kidsboro money: starbills and tokens.

  Max was not only the richest citizen in Kidsboro, he was also the most powerful. No matter how many schemes he pulled, I could never get the city council to kick him out because we needed wood. He could get away with pretty much anything.

  But now … O glorious day! Now, we had just voted in a new citizen: Mark. His father worked at an awning company. At this very moment, he was showing us how to make the walls of our clubhouses out of plastic tarp instead of wood. Tarp had a lot of advantages over wood. First, there were no cracks that people could see through. Second, it was better for keeping the weather out. Third, it was easier and cheaper to build with.

  People loved the idea. If everyone decided to go with the tarp, then we wouldn’t need wood anymore and Max would be out of business. Plus, if he tried another one of his schemes and we found out, no one would hesitate to kick him out. At last I could be free of Max.

  I caught up to him. “So, Max … what do you think about this tarp idea?”

  “Go away, Ryan.”

  “Looks like you may actually have to make an honest buck for once.”

  He stopped suddenly and pointed in my face. “Do you really think I care diddly squat about this tarp guy?”

  “It looked like you cared when you demolished that stick back there.”

  “Let’s just keep one thing in mind, partner. The thing that makes me the most powerful man in Kidsboro ain’t the wood. It’s the fact that I’m 10 times smarter than any of you. This tarp thing is a bump in the road. I’ll be back. I’ll own this whole place. And when I do … you’ll be the first person I crush.”

  He took off toward his home and I didn’t follow. I knew he would live up to those words. I was in for a war.

  2

  THE BIG IDEA

  MAX’S MELTDOWN WAS THE most exciting thing that had happened in Kidsboro for at least three weeks. School had been out for summer vacation for about a month, and it seemed like we didn’t have enough going on to fill up the time. As mayor, one of my duties was to hand in weekly Kidsboro reports to Mr. Whittaker. Lately, he had commented on how boring the entries were.

  My daily entries had been getting les
s and less interesting as the summer wore on. For a couple of days the only thing I had written down was, “I bought a raisin bun at Sid’s Bakery.”

  “It seems like everything has come to a screeching halt,” Mr. Whittaker noted.

  “I guess we’re in a rut. We’re all just doing our jobs. Nobody knows what else to do.”

  “I suppose that’s not too much different from real life sometimes. But I certainly didn’t think you’d be bored with Kidsboro in just five months.”

  “What do you think I should do?” I didn’t usually ask this question. As the elected official for Kidsboro, I wanted to solve things on my own instead of asking Mr. Whittaker for advice. He wanted us to solve our own problems too, so for the most part he wasn’t involved with running the town. But This was a question I had been mulling over for a week. I figured I could use some help.

  “It sounds like you need something to stir things up,” he said, scratching his chin. “Maybe a new government project, or a new business, or … something the whole town could be involved in.”

  I agreed with him, but I had no idea what steps to take to make that happen.

  “That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!” my best friend, Scott Sanchez, shouted as the car stopped right in front of him. It was Nelson Swanson’s newest invention: a computer-programmable toy car. Eugene Meltsner, a college student and Odyssey’s resident genius, had helped Nelson create the car. But he stepped back and allowed Nelson to soak in the limelight.

  “Now watch this,” Nelson said, kneeling down next to the car. He began to punch numbers into a calculator that was glued to a couple of pieces of plywood on wheels. From The top, it looked very basic. But underneath was a sophisticated system of wires and computer circuits that would boggle the mind of anyone in Kidsboro—except Nelson. “I’m going to program the car to go to Sid’s Bakery and return with a donut,” he said.