Vince laughed. “We did a dumb science lab today in Bolig’s class. I stole it. Don’t you believe me? Start crying, please.”
I shoved him back a little again and said, “I can get a few going if you give me some space, you needy creep.”
“No, I’m just messing around, Mac. It’s too late to save the Cubs of the past, and the Gettysburg Address would be totally boring, I bet.” He chucked the little vial into the garbage can on the curb. “But I do have a good one for you. For real this time. I thought of it back when Staples had you in a headlock, but I figured that wasn’t the best time to ask.”
“Yeah, no kidding. All right, let’s have it,” I said.
“Who was the first Cub to win the Rookie of the Year award?”
“Oh man . . . that is tough . . . Ernie Banks?”
“I can’t believe it. I’ve finally defeated Mac. I am the new Cubs fan champion!” Vince yelled as he raised his arms into the air. “You’re close, but the answer is Billy Williams in 1961.”
I staggered backward and shook my head. “I declare shenanigans! Get the broom; it’s not legal to ask a question right after I was just in a near-death experience!” I yelled, but I was laughing, too.
“Okay, okay, fine. I’ll give you a pass this one time, being that you just about got a back-alley spinal adjustment a few minutes ago. But I will get you again, Mac,” Vince said while grinning.
“We’ll see about that. Speaking of the Cubs, are we still going to the game?” I asked. I knew this was kind of a tricky question now, since Vince’s family needed money so badly. I mean, is it that easy to give up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that you had dreamed about for your whole life? Could we go to a game costing thousands of dollars in good conscience while Vince’s mom sat at home and wasted away talking about the pros and cons of Swedish politics with a switched-off TV?
“Well, in case you forgot, the Cubs are up three games to none over the Phillies. So if they win tonight, the tickets will go on sale tomorrow morning. The sooner we try for them the better, since they’ll be out of our price range probably by tomorrow night,” Vince said.
“Why don’t you come over and we’ll watch the game together? And if they win, we’ll figure it out right then and there.”
“All right, sounds good,” he said, and rode off down the street.
It wasn’t that simple, though. I had seen the look in his eyes. It was just a glimmer, but it was there: uncertainty. He had been thinking the same thing I had. Could we really spend close to six thousand dollars on one baseball game when his family was in such bad shape? I guessed we’d have to talk about it that night as we watched the game.
It was almost a sure thing, too. Very few teams in baseball history had ever lost a 3–0 lead in a Championship Series. It was as close as a sure thing as you could get in baseball. Just the thought that the Cubs were that close to finally making it back sent shivers up my spine. But right then I wasn’t sure if it was because of the Cubs that I felt so happy. I think it was due more to the fact that I had regained my business, my money, and most important, my best friend.
I went straight to the bathroom and cleaned up. My elbow and back had some pretty good scrapes, but otherwise the damage wasn’t too bad. My parents didn’t even notice that anything was wrong by the time we all sat down for dinner. I tried not to laugh too much as I sat there eating my mom’s chili. I kept wondering what my parents would think if they knew what had happened to me after school. It all seemed pretty funny now that it was over.
Chapter 29
The next morning at recess we all grouped in my office. I thanked everyone with a pretty good chunk of the Emergency Fund. I told Tyrell and the three bullies that I’d never forget what they had done and anytime they needed something they should feel free to stop by my office. They left the East Wing boys’ bathroom much, much richer than they had been before they’d entered.
“Well, Fred, I have to say thanks,” I said after the others left. “I mean, you did betray us all, but what you did to make up for it took a lot of guts.”
“No, Mac. I’m still really sorry for that. I mean, Staples can be pretty mean and I was way too scared to say no to him most of the time,” he said. “I really hated lying all the time, I really did, but my other option was to get beat up. Badly.”
Speaking of Staples, you might be wondering what exactly happened to him. Well, nobody’s really sure. He just kind of disappeared. We rode by his house on our bikes a few days after the incident at the Yard and it was completely abandoned, red tape all across the doors and windows. A few weeks later the house had been cleaned up a little bit and a bright white For Sale sign sat in the front lawn looking like a used car salesman standing next to a lot of rusty bicycles.
I wasn’t sure if Staples had run because he was afraid of my threats to turn him in to the cops, or if it was out of shame, or maybe his dad had gotten arrested and Staples was living with foster parents like his sister was. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care so much, except I did hope that wherever he was, he was in a better place. And I really, truly hoped that he got his sister back someday. Maybe that’s all he really needed to get himself back on the right track. Because deep down, I’m not sure he was all that bad a guy. Maybe I had pushed his buttons a little bit. The last time I saw him was back in the Yard, when he was just sitting there staring at the ground.
With the Staples mess officially taken care of, my first order of business was to make amends with a former employee. I’d never wrongfully fired somebody before, and Brady didn’t deserve that kind of embarrassment. So I called him into my office and offered him a heartfelt apology. And a nice bonus.
You might also be wondering about the Cubs game, too, I bet. As I said before, we were in kind of a predicament, given our access to loads of cash and Vince’s family having a real hard time right then. And it would have been almost impossible to have to choose, but luckily for us we never had to. Because the Cubs chose for us by doing what they do best: choking.
That’s right, the Cubs choked away their last four games and became one of just a few teams to ever lose a 3–0 lead in a Championship Series. So they missed the World Series yet again, which honestly shouldn’t have surprised anybody. It’s like one of those things that are written in some dusty prophecy that old, creepy guys in robes will talk about for years to come while sitting in a circle surrounded by candles and incense. So let it be written, so let it be sealed in fate: The Cubs will be losers forever.
But I’m not bitter, oh no. Definitely not bitter. I mean, I give them my blood, sweat, and tears and they repay me with year after year of losing seasons. Why should I be bitter? Okay, okay, I’m still a little pissed about the whole thing; it was pretty devastating. Vince even cried a little bit. But like I said, what else is new? I’ve already said they’re the worst team in sports history. Losing is like breathing for them—it comes naturally. They don’t even have to think about it; it just happens. Every time. No matter what.
But the one bright side was that it freed up some money for Vince to sneakily give to his mom in small amounts. And we still have a pretty good head start now for saving up for next year. The odds of the Cubs being that good two years in a row are astronomically high, but it’s all us Cubs fans have. Hope.
With the news of Staples’s demise, it didn’t take long at all for our business to get back on track. Most kids didn’t know that Staples had moved away. The rumor that most kids seemed to believe was that we had buried Staples alive out in the Yard and now his ghost haunted the place. I have to say that that’s a pretty gruesome thought, but you have to hand it to the kids at my school: they have pretty good imaginations. Anyways, kids began pouring in and some were there simply to be able to say they talked to the guys who had defeated Staples. It was all kind of embarrassing, to be honest.
Joe stayed on as my strongman, and Vince went back to managing the finances and just being generally brilliant and hilarious. And we also added one more guy to the payroll. It took some t
ime for us all to trust him fully, but eventually Fred proved to be a great addition. He is now the official record keeper. He sits in the stall next to mine and takes notes on his Nintendo DS. We have a pretty good system, and business was positively booming within days of the Staples Incident.
Things really were going well. In fact, they couldn’t have been going any better. At least, that is until she walked into my office on one rainy Tuesday afternoon. I knew she was trouble from the moment I laid eyes on her. Everyone knows that in grade school, girls are more dangerous than shotguns. At least that’s if shotguns are as dangerous as Officer Weston told us they are that one day he came to our class to tell us about how if you basically even looked at a shotgun, then you’d end up a smelly, homeless bum who failed out of school and lost all your friends and family and all that you’d have left in the whole world was a one-armed teddy bear named Oscar.
She walked into my office with damp hair and a swagger that I found both attractive and unnerving. She was tall and impossibly pretty. I didn’t even know if I was making sense when I started talking to her. But it didn’t matter, because she quickly took over the conversation. Her voice was intelligent and confident and it didn’t take long for her to entangle me in a web of brutal lies and problems so complicated that I was sure my head would explode.
But that’s probably a story better left for another day.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the following for all of their help and support: Chris Richman, Theodore Quester, Ruta Sepetys, Mark McVeigh, Mike Rylander, my parents, the Debs, Tenners, and Elevensies, and everyone at HarperCollins and Walden Media. Thanks to my editor, Jordan Brown, for making this book better than I ever thought it could be. Thanks to my agent, Steven Malk, for everything; this book truly would not exist without you. Also important were my beard, it knows why, and cheese, for being really tasty. Finally, thank you to my best friend and beautiful wife, Amanda, who makes everything possible.
Copyright
The Fourth Stall
Copyright © 2011 by Chris Rylander
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rylander, Chris.
The fourth stall / Chris Rylander. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Sixth graders Mac and Vince operate a business charging schoolmates for protection from bullies and for help to negotiate conflicts peacefully, with amazing challenges and results.
ISBN 978-0-06-199496-8
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062069627
[1. Business enterprises—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Bullies—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.R98147Fo 2011
2010016280
[Fic]—dc22
CIP
AC
11 12 13 14 15 LP/RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
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