The Awesome, Almost 100% True Adventures of Matt & Craz

by Alan Silberberg

  “So where’d the guitar come from? You know what Mom said.”

  “Borrowed it from Foomer. And what Mom doesn’t know won’t kill you. Got it?”

  Matt knew Ricky had been after his parents for the past year to get him a guitar. He’d practically gotten on his knees and begged for one. His parents had even gotten into a big fight about it. His dad had instantly said yes. But his mom thought Ricky should bring his grades up before he got something that would be even more of a distraction from his schoolwork. Of course Ricky’s grades never moved out of the toilet, and even though that didn’t stop his begging, he’d been forbidden to get the guitar.

  “And Mom hates when you put your sneakers on the table.” Matt instantly wished he hadn’t said that. Why did he care what Ricky did?

  “Good thing she’s not home yet, isn’t it?” Ricky glared back at Matt through the slits of his eyes. If looks could kill, then Matt would have been six feet under. Ricky dug deep into the ice cream carton without taking his eyes off his younger brother, then shoved a mega-spoonful into his mouth.

  Matt really missed having a brother who was his friend.

  “Oh, yeah. Mail came for you.” Ricky pointed toward the hall with the spoon, which dripped ice cream all over the back of the couch. “I put it in your room. You can thank me later.”

  Mail? Matt never got mail unless it was a birthday card from his grandparents or an overdue notice from the library. He dropped his backpack onto the edge of the couch and headed down the hallway, curious to see what was waiting for him inside his room.

  “LARRY! TELL MEAGAN TO MOVE HER BARBIE. She’s ruining my zoo!”

  “Am not!”

  “Are too!”

  “Am not!”

  Craz’s head hurt. Becca, his older sister, had band practice, and his older brother, Hank, was at his after-school job at the Shack, which meant Craz was stuck babysitting Meagan and Pete. According to his parents, getting to take care of his younger siblings was the bonus part of turning thirteen.

  Really? He’d been thirteen for three months, and so far becoming an actual teenager had only gotten him more chores around the house and a puny fifty-cent raise in allowance. The “bonus” part seemed pretty much a no-show.

  “Get that rhinoceros off of me,” Meagan whined. “Lar-ry! Pete’s hurting my arm!”

  “Fine!” Craz’s little brother let go of the rhino, then grabbed the Barbie doll by her ponytail and dangled it over his toy crocodile. “But in a real zoo Barbie would get eaten by crocodiles.”

  Meagan snarled. “In a real zoo crocodiles wouldn’t be missing a leg.” She grabbed the toy croc and yanked on its stubby plastic leg until it popped out from the body.

  “Nooooooo!” Pete screamed, then jumped at his sister with flailing arms. “Give. It. Back!”

  Craz sighed loudly, wishing for the hundredth time that he was an only child.

  “All right, you guys. That’s it,” he said, pulling his brother and sister apart before one of them went total commando. It was bad enough that he had to take care of these two. He didn’t need to get in trouble for letting them hurt each other.

  The phone rang, and Craz did what any great babysitter would do. He turned on the TV and told his sister and brother to watch cartoons. Disaster averted.

  He reached for the hallway phone. “Hello? Insane asylum.”

  “Craz, you’re not going to believe this,” Matt said excitedly. “But it’s here.”

  Craz sat back on the carpeted stairway, where he could still keep an eye on his sister and brother, who sat safely glued to the television. “What are you talking about, Matt?”

  Matt paced his room staring at the unopened box on his bed. “The cartooning kit. From online . . .”

  Craz laughed. “Dude, we never even gave them your name or address or anything. The computer crashed. Remember?”

  Matt reached for the shoe-box-size package. “Look, I don’t know how it got here—but it did.”

  Craz was about to tell Matt that he was nuts, when he heard the unmistakable sound of something smashing to the floor. One quick look at the guilty faces of his little brother and sister told the story. “Gotta go. Text me,” was all he said before hanging up.

  MATT PUT THE PHONE DOWN AND INSPECTED the package. The postmark was a blurry, unreadable mess, and the only actual writing on it was his name and address, which had been scribbled sloppily with a dark blue pen. But Craz was right. They’d never filled out an address or given any name. How did that Internet site know who Matt was and where he lived?

  Matt put the box on his desk and sat on his bed, trying to decide if he should open it or not. Five seconds later he was on his feet. Of course he’d see what was inside!

  Using the letter opener that had been his dad’s, Matt slit the box open and peeled back the cardboard flaps. The first thing he saw was a layer of packing peanuts. When he was a kid, he’d had a fantasy of filling a swimming pool with these things and then jumping in. He still thought that would be a blast even if he knew he’d never really do it.

  Digging around in the box, Matt was surprised to find a soft velvet pouch, which he lifted out from the sea of peanuts.

  The purple satchel was just like the one the weird guy in the video had held. Matt turned the bag over, feeling the weight of whatever was inside and letting the plush velvet brush against his fingertips. He imagined rubbing the soft bag against his face, but then felt stupid about it.

  Matt reached for the slipknot, loosened the string, and then tipped the bag over onto his desk. Out came a medium-size glass bottle of black ink and a dark leather oblong box with a small clasp that kept it tightly shut.

  First Matt lifted the rectangular box, being careful to open it slowly.

  “Whoa,” he said as he stared at a beautiful pen, which was a shade of green so deep it was almost blue. With its intricate silver designs that went up and down the length of the tapered pen shaft, Matt guessed it had to be an antique. Unscrewing the cap revealed the pen point. It was unlike any pen Matt had ever used. Instead of a simple tip like on one of his crummy ballpoint pens, this pen used a special drawing nib, which was a thin diamond-shaped silver extension that looked just like the beak of a small bird.

  He unscrewed the shaft of the pen, which easily slid off to reveal an empty clear plastic tube that connected to the pen nib.

  “I guess that’s where the ink goes,” Matt said, glancing at the bottle of black ink on his desk.

  Matt screwed the shaft back on and then gripped the pen between his thumb and forefinger. Instantly the pen made him feel special, like a real cartoonist. “Smooth,” he said, imagining how cool he’d look doodling with the ornate pen. “No more cheapo plastic pens for me!”

  He set the pen back in its case and then picked up the ink, which came in a pyramid-shaped glass bottle with a cork stopper on top. Matt held the bottle up to the lamp, but the dark liquid was so thick, no light shone through. Matt shook the bottle and then watched the inky mass swirl like a tornado of darkness inside the glass.

  He held the ink in one hand and the new pen in the other. Obviously the ink needed to go inside the pen. That’s how it works. Matt had never thought about the connection between a pen and its ink before. Pens were just the things you used to make lines, and the lines made shapes, and those shapes became his cartoons. But this kit kept the pen separated from the ink. For the first time Matt thought about how you can’t have one without the other. A bottle of ink won’t do you any good without a pen—and a pen without ink might look cool, but it isn’t going to draw anything.

  HONK! HONK! The car horn startled him. That would be his mom. She only honked twice when she needed help unloading groceries. Fine. Let Ric
ky help her, he thought.

  “Hey, egghead. Go help Mom,” Ricky shouted from the living room.

  “You help her!” Matt screamed back. “I’m busy.”

  “Well, I’m older,” he bellowed.

  The double horn blasts repeated, shorter this time, which meant his mom was getting impatient out in the driveway.

  “Do it, Matt. Now!” Ricky yelled.

  Matt sighed and then put the pen and ink back into the purple satchel. He’d have to wait to try his new cartooning supplies but was already imagining how they were going to make a difference in his comics.

  A huge difference.

  11

  PEN + INK = AWESOME!

  “YOU JUST CAME HOME FROM THE SUPERMARKET,” Ricky complained as he crumpled potato chips onto the steaming plate in front of him and then shoveled a bite into his mouth. “Tonight’s supposed to be something good.”

  “Do we have to go through this every week, Ricky? First we use up last week’s food, and then we eat the new stuff,” Matt’s mom said. “Besides, it’s Thursday. Tuna Noodle Casserole night. Right, Matt?”

  Matt felt his brother’s kick under the table but just smiled back at his mom. “Yup. You don’t mess with Tuna Noodle Casserole night.”

  “I’d sure like to mess with you,” Ricky muttered.

  Matt usually took Ricky’s bait and ended up in an insult slugfest with him, which always lead to his mother’s screaming for them to both grow up, before excusing herself from the table and slamming her bedroom door.

  But tonight Matt let Ricky’s put-down roll off his back. He just wanted dinner over with so he could retreat to his room and start using his new pen and ink. That’s why he skipped dessert, and instead of a ten-minute argument over who would do the dishes, he simply got up to do them himself. Right away.

  Ricky left the house to go study at Foomer’s, which meant he was really going to hang out behind the 7-Eleven and try to meet girls.

  While Matt dried the dishes, his mom disappeared into the family room to read the newspaper, which she always did with the TV on, as if having one of those dull CNN news guys blabber in the background was the same as having someone to talk to. At least it filled the house with noise that wasn’t what he’d grown used to—his parents’ fighting.

  Finally Matt was back in his room, staring at the fancy pen and bottle of ink that now lay beside the empty purple satchel.

  First things first: Matt carefully filled the pen’s cartridge using the black ink, which was so dark and dense, he could almost see his reflection in it.

  Once the pen was full of ink, he pulled a clean sheet of paper out from his desk drawer. “Here goes nothing,” he said as he lifted the pen up like a saber he imagined could cut down an army of skeletons. Or draw them, anyway.

  Whoosh. The first line just slid out from the pen tip. It was like skating on a perfectly smooth sheet of ice, he thought as the pen just glided across the white paper, leaving a thick, wet line behind.

  Matt spent the next hour getting used to his new pen.

  After filling several sheets with practice sketches, Matt drew one of his old standby characters, a ten-ton ninja potato, who just happened to be a hundred feet tall.

  Spudzilla looked killer, Matt thought, proud of the cartoon that stared back at him with its dark black eyes. He let his mind wander, imagining how cool it was going to be to finally have his cartoons seen, and not just by Craz but by kids at school and people on the bus and strangers who might see one of his cartoons and say, “Now that’s a funny comic.”

  And what about Cindy? What would it feel like to know she was admiring his cartoons? Maybe his cartoons would actually help him talk to her.

  He looked again at his new cartooning supplies. That Boyd guy was right. Matt was ready to take his cartooning to the next level. And for the first time in a long time, he felt like his dream was possible—to one day be a famous cartoonist and actually make money from drawing comics.

  An idea popped into his head, and he was so excited by it that he grabbed a fresh sheet of paper and drew the comic right away.

  It took two hours and several tries to get it right. But Matt was finally happy with the way the cartoon turned out. Placing the cap back onto the fancy pen, he leaned back in his chair and admired the new comic.

  “Cartoon Kings,” he said aloud. “That’s what we’re going to be.” And then he lifted the pen into the air and drew an invisible crown above his head and sighed, “Cartoon Kings.”

  12

  OFF LIMITS

  “DUDE, THAT’S A CRAZY COMIC.” CRAZ WAS LOOKING over Matt’s “Cartoon Kings” for the fifth time in twenty minutes.

  “The lines are pretty sweet, aren’t they?” Matt pulled the new pen from his shirt pocket and admired it again. “This sucker really knows how to draw.”

  Third period was their study period, and both boys had gotten library slips so they could quietly brainstorm some new comic ideas. They sat at the round table by the back stacks across from a table of giggling girls busy taking a boy-crush quiz inside some glossy magazine.

  “You know what, amigo?” Craz said, holding up the new cartoon. “This comic is going to kick butt. I say we take it right to Turkle.”

  “Hold on,” said Matt. “No more originals. I can’t watch him destroy another cartoon.”

  “Good call,” said Craz. “Let’s make a few copies of this masterpiece.”

  Matt beamed. He never got tired of hearing Craz rave about his artwork. “Okay. We can swing by Copy-Copy after school.”

  “Nah,” Craz said. “Why spend cash when we can do it for free here at school?”

  Matt looked at his friend. “Craz, you know students can’t use the school copy machines.”

  “Correction. We can’t get caught using the school copy machines.” Craz grinned.

  Matt slumped a little lower in his chair. It was clear that Craz had a plan that Matt knew he was about to go along with.

  MATT KEPT WATCH IN THE HALLWAY WHILE CRAZ opened the door to the empty teachers’ lounge and slipped inside unseen. They’d both gotten bathroom passes from the librarian, Ms. Gallaro, and had left the library minutes apart.

  Kids were always talking about the mysterious room where teachers disappeared in between classes, but Craz had never actually seen the place up close. Sure, he’d peeked in through the smudged door window and glimpsed his teachers laughing and drinking coffee. But it had always been just a passing glance, like he was looking in at the animals in a zoo.

  Now that he was on the inside, he saw the truth: Teachers were pigs. Crumpled newspapers, mismatched furniture, a grease-stained doughnut box that still had a half-eaten chocolate-covered and two jelly doughnuts inside. And there was the tiny sink swollen full of dirty coffee cups and ancient, mold-covered plates that looked like they were science experiments gone horribly wrong.

  “And I thought I was a slob,” Craz said as he moved away from the awful sink stink and walked toward the Holy Grail of his quest: the teachers’ copy machine.

  Back in the hallway Matt paced nervously, hoping Craz would just hurry up and get this over with. He wasn’t good at being on lookout. He was antsy and nervous, and his mind always thought about the worst-case scenarios, which in this case meant he was already picturing getting caught and landing a month-long detention . . . at least!

  Craz went over to the counter and grabbed one of the jelly doughnuts and shoved it into his mouth. He grabbed a second one and held it up to see if Matt wanted a doughnut too, but Matt just rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Whatever,” Craz said as he stuffed the extra doughnut into his back pocket and then walked to the cramped alcove where the copier sat. This was it. Mission acco
mplished.

  Craz looked over his shoulder at the door, and Matt quickly gave him the thumbs-up sign. The coast was clear.

  Perfect. Craz pulled the “Cartoon Kings” comic out from beneath his T-shirt and was glad he hadn’t ruined it with any of his body sweat, though he did give it a quick whiff to make sure it hadn’t absorbed any unwanted smells. “Stink-free,” he said, and then lifted the copier cover and placed the drawing down on the glass.

  Back in the hall Matt was a wreck. He was chewing on his thumbnail when all of a sudden his English teacher, Mrs. Bentz, rounded the hallway corner and waddled straight toward the teachers’ lounge. Lucky for him, she was busy pulling down student council campaign posters that Jake Greenberg had plastered on every classroom door and empty wall space. The vote had been last Monday, and Jake had gotten a total of eight votes, which was pretty lame.

  “‘Vote Green’? I think not.” Mrs. Bentz snorted as the stack of bright handmade posters grew in her clutches. She was glad he hadn’t won. Based on an unfortunate episode involving a rubber band and several well-aimed paper clips, she did not think that Jake Greenberg was student council president material.

  Matt’s first instinct was to run—but he remembered the plan and gave Craz the warning signal—three quick knocks on the door.

  And then he ran.

  Craz had finally made all the correct settings on the copier, when he heard the warning signal, and he froze in place. He had to make a choice—copy the cartoon and risk getting caught, or quickly hide. Though he was seconds away from success, he decided to play it safe and slid behind the ratty couch by the window, leaving the cartoon still under the lid of the copy machine.

  Mrs. Bentz opened the teachers’ lounge door with an armload of posters, which she easily dropped into the recycle bin. “Bye-bye, Mr. Greenberg.”

  Though he couldn’t see who it was, Craz knew from her voice that his awful English teacher had just walked in, and he quickly ducked lower behind the couch.