The Terrible Two Get Worse

by Mac Barnett

  “First order of business,” said Niles. “The first-graders made a papier-mâché cow in art class, and Miss S. thinks we should put it in the school entrance.”

  “Of course,” said Principal Barkin. “It’s adorable. Shows bovine pride. Approved.”

  “Great. Item two. Some of the drinking fountains are barely shooting water out at all, which leads to students putting their mouths directly on the metal, and with flu season fast approaching—”

  “I’m sorry,” said Principal Barkin. “I need to talk about the violets.”

  Niles nodded. “Of course.”

  Barkin held up a yellow legal pad covered in scrawls. “I’ve been trying to work out who could have done it. Now, I know what you’re probably thinking: Josh. But I think that camp this summer has helped . . . exorcise whatever got into him last year.”

  Niles’s nod was sympathetic without expressing agreement.

  “Now, this next one might be a little bit awkward,” said Principal Barkin. He whispered: “What about Miles?”

  “What!” said Miles.

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t hear that,” said Principal Barkin. “This is just one reason I would have preferred that he not be at this meeting.”

  “It wasn’t me,” said Miles.

  Barkin sighed. “The Miles Murphy motto. But no, I don’t think it was, either. Last year’s Miles, definitely. But current Miles, the Miles standing in front of me—you—I don’t think so. A principal must trust his instincts, and my instincts are excellent. Which brings me to Stuart.”

  “Hmm,” said Niles.

  “Yes,” said Principal Barkin. “Precisely what I was thinking. I’ll write that next to his name here. ‘Stuart: Hmm.’ What about Holly?”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think so,” Niles said quickly.

  “She doesn’t seem to have much respect for authority.”

  “She’s the president of our class!”

  “The perfect cover . . . I’m going to write ‘Hmm’ next to her name too. Maybe with an extra m.”

  “I wouldn’t use an extra m.”

  “I already did. What about Scotty?”

  “I don’t know much about Scotty,” said Niles.

  “Neither do I,” said Principal Barkin. “And yet he always seems to be around. Very strange. Very strange indeed. Six m’s.”

  “Hmm. Hmmm. Hmmmmmm,” said Principal Barkin. He crumpled up the piece of paper, tossed it at the wastebasket, and missed, hitting Miles. “THIS IS NO GOOD!” he bellowed, looking up at his ceiling fan. “THIS IS NO GOOD AT ALL. WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A PRANKING EPIDEMIC. I CANNOT HAVE THESE CHALLENGES TO MY POWER! THIS SCHOOL RUNS ON POWER. NOT ELECTRICAL POWER. I MEAN, OBVIOUSLY THE SCHOOL RUNS ON ELECTRICAL POWER, LITERALLY. BUT METAPHORICALLY THE SCHOOL RUNS ON MY POWER. PRINCIPAL POWER. MY POWER POWERS THIS SCHOOL METAPHORICALLY, JUST AS ELECTRICITY LITERALLY POWERS THAT FAN.”

  The fan squeaked but did spin.

  “WHICH REMINDS ME, COULD WE GET GUS TO COME IN AND LOOK AT THIS FAN? I’M NOT SURE IT SHOULD BE SQUEAKING LIKE THAT.”

  Miles wrote it down:

  “I’m sorry you had to see that outburst, boys,” said Principal Barkin. “But it’s a peek at what it’s really like to have immense power. It’s not all pumpkin spice and candy corn.” (Principal Barkin sometimes liked to keep his metaphors seasonal.) “Maybe one day you two will understand, when you’re powerful principals like I am, although you won’t be principals exactly like I am, since my son Josh will be principal of this school, and, Miles, if I’m being honest, you probably don’t have what it takes to be a principal. Anyway, great power. It means you answer to nobody, only yourself, and it can be hard to look directly at yourself, especially when your self is so powerful, like staring into the—”

  The phone on Principal Barkin’s desk buzzed, and the school secretary’s voice came from the speaker. “Phone call for you, Principal Barkin. It’s your father.”

  Despite being interrupted, Barkin did not grow purple. Instead he went pale.

  “Put him through,” he said, and then picked up the receiver.

  “BARRY, THIS IS YOUR FATHER, FORMER PRINCIPAL BARKIN.” Miles and Niles could hear his voice from where they stood. “AM I INTERRUPTING SOMETHING?”

  “Actually, yes,” said Principal Barkin. “I’m in a meeting with—”

  “WELL, WHY ARE YOU LETTING ME INTERRUPT YOU? A PRINCIPAL SHOULD NEVER BE INTERRUPTED. THAT’S ONE OF THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF PRINCIPAL POWER. THE THIRD PRINCIPLE, IN FACT, WHICH MEANS IT’S ONE OF THE THREE MOST IMPORTANT ONES. IF—”

  “Father, you—”

  “DO NOT INTERRUPT ME,” said Former Principal Barkin. “I WILL NOT BE INTERRUPTED. DID YOU SEE THAT? EVEN AS A FORMER PRINCIPAL, I’M MORE OF A PRINCIPAL THAN YOU ARE. AND SPEAKING OF NOT BEING MUCH OF A PRINCIPAL, WHAT IS THIS I HEAR ABOUT A PRANK DURING TODAY’S ALL-SCHOOL PHOTOGRAPH?”

  “How did you hear about that?”

  “THAT IS NOT THE QUESTION,” said Former Principal Barkin. “AND THE ANSWER TO THAT NON-QUESTION IS THAT A GOOD FORMER PRINCIPAL MAINTAINS HIS SECRET SOURCES.”

  “Was it Mr. Yeager?”

  “YES. BUT THAT IS NOT THE POINT. NOW, HERE IS WHAT IS THE QUESTION. THE QUESTION IS, HOW COULD YOU LET THIS HAPPEN?”

  “Well—”

  “THE ALL-SCHOOL PHOTOGRAPH IS A HISTORIC DOCUMENT.”

  “I know, but—”

  “AND THIS YEAR THE ALL-SCHOOL PHOTOGRAPH WILL RECORD A SPECTACULAR PRANK, WHICH IS AN AFFRONT TO POWER, AND TO THE BARKIN NAME, WHICH IS SYNONYMOUS WITH POWER.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE SAD THING IS, BARRY? THE SAD THING IS THAT MAYBE THIS YEAR’S PHOTOGRAPH, WHICH RECORDS AN AFFRONT TO POWER, IS HISTORICALLY ACCURATE. BECAUSE I HEAR FROM MY SECRET SOURCES THAT THERE HAVE BEEN A LOT OF PRANKS LATELY. AN EPIDEMIC.”

  “I don’t know if I’d use the term ‘epidemic.’”

  “OH, LET’S SEE. A TEACHER’S DESK FASTENED TO THE CEILING? A CLASS TURTLE PAINTED BLUE? AND THEN OF COURSE THE BUSINESS LAST YEAR WITH THE COWS, WHICH IS TOO EMBARRASSING TO MENTION.”

  “You actually interrupted my investigation—”

  “I DIDN’T CALL TO HEAR EXCUSES. I CALLED TO LET YOU KNOW THAT, ACCORDING TO OTHER SECRET SOURCES, AND I HOPE IT IS CLEAR THAT I MAINTAIN MANY SECRET SOURCES, YOUR LEADERSHIP, OR LACK THEREOF, WILL BE THE MAIN TOPIC OF THE SCHOOL BOARD MEETING THIS WEDNESDAY.”

  “What?”

  “THAT IS ALL. GIVE JOSH AND SHARON MY LOVE.”

  For a few seconds Principal Barkin was too stunned to hang up the phone. When his eyes refocused, he saw Niles and then Miles, who were too stunned to not look stunned.

  “I probably should have asked you to leave while I took that call,” said Principal Barkin. “Let’s continue this meeting next week.”

  Miles and Niles quietly left the office. They walked through the teachers’ lounge and into the hall. It was a few minutes before either of them spoke. But eventually Miles asked a question. It was a question he never thought he would ask.

  “Niles,” he said, “should we feel bad for Principal Barkin?”

  Chapter

  6

  NO,” Niles said.

  It was the same answer he’d given in the hallway, and then after school in the prank lab. Now he was giving it again, while he and Miles walked along Jefferson Street in downtown Yawnee Valley. They passed a brick bank, a feed shop, a seed shop, and an ice cream parlor.

  “No,” Niles said yet again. “Because think about it.” (Niles had been thinking about it.) “Pranks were invented to unstuff stuffed shirts. To pop overinflated balloons. To embarrass the dour. And what’s Principal Barkin if not a dour balloon in a stuffed shirt?”

  “Yeah,” Miles said. “A purple balloon.”

  “Exactly! Look, we witnessed something weird in there today. But what if Robin Hood had accidentally seen the Sheriff of Nottingham crying during ‘Greensleeves’? Does that mean the sheriff gets to overtax the poor? Should the Merry Me
n disband and go work for the Crown?”

  Miles and Niles had paused in front of the ice cream parlor, and they stopped talking for a second so they could inhale the smell of waffle cones.

  “Anyway,” said Niles, “we can go to the school board meeting and testify on Principal Barkin’s behalf. We’ll make sure nothing happens to him. Everything will be fine. Now, let’s get to this week’s étude.”

  For the past few months, Miles and Niles had engaged in a series of exercises designed to develop their pranking muscles: the études—or as Miles liked to call them, the Hey Dudes. Lately they’d been exchanging a set of objects. They each had twenty-four hours to design a prank using only those materials. Last week Miles had given Niles a soccer ball, a bicycle pump, and a tube of industrial-strength superglue. Too easy. This week Niles had something really special.

  “Here you go.”

  He held out a big spool of thread.

  Miles stared at the thread. “Thread? That’s all?”

  That wasn’t all. This wasn’t just thread. Niles had found this spool in his mom’s sewing kit, and he couldn’t wait to tell Miles what it did. “This isn’t just—”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Miles said.

  “Wait,” said Niles. “You don’t know—”

  But Miles was already approaching a man wearing denim shorts and a shirt that said THE EDGE: WORLD’S HARDEST TRIATHLON.

  “Excuse me, sir.” Miles smiled. “My friend and I are doing a math project where we have to measure various streets in Yawnee Valley. Would you be able to help us?”

  The man looked skeptical. He opened his mouth but Miles kept talking.

  “It will only take a minute. All you have to do is stand here and hold this end of our thread.” Miles put on a vulnerable expression. “It’s really important for our grade.”

  He thrust the thread toward the man.

  “Sure, I guess,” the man said.

  “Thank you! Thank you!” Miles said. Holding the spool in his hand, he backed away. “We won’t be long, sir! Just stay there and don’t move. We need an exact measurement!” He and Niles disappeared around the corner and took off down the street, the spool unwinding in Miles’s hand. They slipped behind a coffee shop, turned down an alley, and nearly made it to a fire escape before the thread ran out.

  “We need something to tie it to,” said Miles, holding the thread taut. “The fire escape!”

  “Wait!” said Niles. “Wait. I have a plan.”

  A man in a gray suit came around the corner, talking on his phone.

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

  Niles waved and put on a cornball grin as the man approached. “Sorry to interrupt your call, sir!”

  The man looked irritated. “Hold on,” he said into his phone, which he kept near his ear.

  “My friend and I are doing a math project where we have to measure various streets in Yawnee Valley,” said Niles. “Would you be able to hold on to the end of this thread for a moment? You’d be able to continue your phone conversation and help two students with their math grade at the same time!”

  The man seemed perplexed, but Niles was already handing over the thread.

  “Please just hold it tight and stand right here,” he said. “We won’t be a moment.”

  As Miles and Niles walked out of the alley, Niles called out a series of numbers. “Fifty point three,” he said, and Miles nodded seriously. “Sixty point eight five.” They made it to the corner. “Thank you, sir!” Niles shouted. “We’ll be right back!”

  As soon as they were out of sight, they sprinted back to Niles’s house.

  “Incredible!” said Niles, in the safety of the prank lab.

  “Amazing!” said Miles.

  Their faces were flushed with the joy of a prank well done, their bellies full of tangerines. (The Terrible Two liked to celebrate with feasts.)

  “But, Miles,” said Niles, “I didn’t even get to tell you what that thread does.”

  Miles shrugged. “It’s thread, right?”

  Niles smiled. “Nope. Hold on.”

  Niles left the prank lab and returned with another spool.

  “Read the label,” he said.

  “My mom uses it for quilts and stuff,” explained Niles. “It dissolves in water.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yep.”

  “Cool.”

  Niles frowned. “I just wonder if the prank needed to include dissolving.”

  “No way!” Miles said. “That was a great prank.”

  Niles paced. “It was. It was.”

  Miles sighed. This was his least favorite part of the études: the part where Niles endlessly pondered how the prank could have gone better.

  Niles picked up the chalk and aimlessly drew on the wall. “I kind of feel like it’s a Chekhov’s gun thing, you know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Chekhov was this Russian—”

  “And he had a gun?” Miles sat up straight. “Was he a spy?”

  “No, he was a writer. And he thought that if you introduced a gun into a story, it has to go off before the end. He meant stories should contain nothing extraneous, nothing irrelevant. It feels like the same thing is true of pranking, right? If the thread can dissolve, it should dissolve, or else the dissolving is extraneous.”

  “I was just trying to keep it simple, man.”

  Niles snapped the chalk in half. “Occam’s razor!”

  Miles rolled his eyes. “Another Russian guy?”

  “No. He’s English. And he thought the simplest solution was the best. A more complicated solution might work, but if you have a choice, a simpler one is preferable. So what’s more powerful? Chekhov’s gun or Occam’s razor?”

  “Probably the gun,” said Miles. “It’s a gun.”

  Niles ignored him.

  “Maybe Chekhov’s gun is better for stories, and Occam’s razor is better for pranks.” Niles nodded. “Yes, I think that’s right.”

  He pulled out a notebook and started writing something down.

  “What is this music?” Miles asked.

  “It’s Bach!” Niles said. “On a Moog synthesizer!”

  “I don’t know why I even asked,” said Miles.

  Miles peeled a tangerine with his Swiss Army knife.

  “You know you can just use your thumbnail,” Niles said.

  “I know,” said Miles.

  Outside, a horn honked three times. It was Miles’s mom.

  “I have to go,” said Miles. “Me and my mom are going out to dinner.”

  • • •

  That night, Niles made himself spaghetti and meatballs. He ate in his room and put on the Bach again. Twirling noodles around his fork, Niles sat and thought about that afternoon’s prank. How long had the two men stood there? Which one had first decided to follow the thread and see where it was going? Where did they meet? What had they said to each other? There was something beautiful about a prank that paid off when you weren’t around. Sure, it was fun to see the chaos you created. But a prank like this afternoon’s afforded the prankster a peculiar kind of pleasure. You could sit and picture the strange happenings you’d brought about in the world. There were so many ways it could have played out, and Niles sat in his big chair and imagined as many as he could. All those possibilities, and all of them strange and delightful. The mental exercise focused an unquiet mind (and that day Niles’s mind was unquiet). Thinking about the thread kept Niles from thinking about things he’d rather not think about.

  Chapter

  7

  NOBODY LIKED TO GO TO MEETINGS of the Yawnee Valley School Board, not even the Yawnee Valley School Board. That Wednesday, only two of its five members were in attendance: Mr. Karl Sykes and Mrs. Melinda Chunch. Mr. Sykes wore an unappealing mustache, and so did Mrs. Chunch. The audience was small too. Miles Murphy, Niles Sparks, and Barry Barkin sat in the basement of the library, surrounded by twenty-seven empty chairs.

  Principal B
arkin gave Miles and Niles two thumbs-up. “The dynamic duo! Here to save the day! Looks like we’ve got the naysayers outnumbered, boys, 3–0.”

  Mrs. Chunch banged a gavel loudly, which she loved doing, and which was really the only reason she’d shown up.

  “This should be interesting,” Niles said. (It was the first time anyone had ever said this about a Yawnee Valley School Board meeting.)

  It took a while to get to the interesting part. First there was a roll call, which took much longer than it should have. The board approved the minutes of the last meeting and the agenda for the next meeting. Mrs. Chunch read aloud the mission statement of the Yawnee Valley Unified School District (Principal Barkin grunted approvingly throughout the recitation, and when Mrs. Chunch finished, he applauded a little bit). Then came votes on whether to approve the new Recess Restriction Policy (two ayes), the Supplemental Services Memorandum of Understanding (two ayes), and a contract to refinish the floors of the gym at Yawnee Valley Science and Letters Academy (two ayes). If you think this paragraph was boring to read, imagine what it was like to sit in a metal folding chair while it actually happened.

  Thirty-six minutes into the meeting came AGENDA ITEM K: OPEN PUBLIC HEARING ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF BARRY BARKIN.

  Mr. Sykes read from a crisp sheet of paper. “There has been recent concern over Principal Barkin’s stewardship of Yawnee Valley Science and Letters Academy, arising first with the cancellation of school on April first of last year, and increasing due to an ongoing epidemic of practical jokes—”

  “Epidemic,” muttered Principal Barkin.

  “—an epidemic apparently unchecked by principal power. This meeting invites members of the community to speak about the Barkin administration.”

  “The floor is now open,” said Mrs. Chunch, banging the gavel.

  “You didn’t need to bang the gavel for that, Melinda,” said Mr. Sykes.