I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to be Your Class

by Josh Lieb

  Tatiana has raised her voice significantly for this summation. Maybe “that thing over there” doesn’t care about what we’re saying, but I notice its eyes are glowing behind the book.

  Tatiana blows confetti off her thumbnail. “Just know—I’m watching you.”

  I manage to stammer out a “Wh-why?”

  This time she blows the confetti in my face. “Because nobody’s as dumb as you act.”

  Two things occur to me as I rush to geometry, five minutes late:• Tatiana is very perceptive.

  • I owe her a pair of sunglasses.

  I squeeze into my seat in geometry as Miss Broadway glares at me. Time to set my latest Great Evil Plan in motion. Step One: Set up a Chump to Run Against Me for President.

  I glance over to see what Randy’s doing, but it looks like he’s skipping class today. I guess he’s waiting for the humiliation to wear off.

  There’s a folder waiting for me, taped to the underside of my desk. I pull it out and start reading. It’s a hastily gathered Probe on Scott Sparks, the Most Pathetic Accountant in Omaha (see plate 13).

  Barely graduated from a bad college. Barely hired by a bad accounting firm. Barely tolerated by his co-workers. No chance for promotion. No social life. Wife left him five years ago. One son.

  Sparks and son live in a small rented house on Dundee Boulevard. The lawn is dying, and the interior photos taken by my Research Minion (who was posing as an exterminator) depict the very depths of lower middle-class hell. Dust everywhere. Abandoned pop bottles and pizza crusts on every flat surface. Towers of file folders and remnants of the just-passed tax season fill half the floor space, and the Sparks men must walk through the narrow caverns created by them just to get to the bathroom (see plate 14).

  One bright spot: the shiny, top-of-the-line dirt bike Scott bought his son for Christmas. Randy rides it for hours after school. Scott always tells him to bring the bike inside when he’s done for the night, but more often than not, Randy just leans it against the front of the house. People are frequently careless with the things they love most.

  PLATE 13: Scott Sparks,

  the Most Pathetic Accountant in Omaha.

  PLATE 14: Interior photos taken by my Research Minion

  depict the very depths of lower middle-class hell.

  The dad and the dirt bike. Those are my points of entry.

  I’m studying these photos, formulating a plan, when a massive shadow envelops me. “What are you looking at, Oliver?” demands Miss Broadway, glowering.

  I’m getting very tired of teachers sneaking up on me.

  “Nothing,” I say, and start to close the file, but she is not to be put off so easily. “Let me see that.” She thrusts her hamlike hands at me.

  “Fire drill,” I murmur. Instantly, the alarm goes off, and Broadway has much more important things on her mind.

  And, quite frankly, so do I.

  Chapter 19:

  NEWS FLASHES

  Excerpted from “Famed Political Operative Retires to Omaha,”78 Omaha World-Herald, April 22:

  [S]he is probably best known for the “Why Does His Wife Look Scared?” commercial she created for the 2004 Democratic presidential primary. Leaders from both sides of the aisle roundly condemned the ad when it appeared, but her services were once again in high demand, by both parties, for the 2005 congressional races. . . .

  [Salisbury], who has no previous connection to Omaha, says she “simply fell in love” with the modest Dundee Dell neighborhood on a trip through the Midwest. “I saw a house I wanted and decided to stay,” she says from the porch of her . . .

  . . . are baffled. “I’ve known Verna for fifteen years. This doesn’t make any sense at all,” says one source who asked to remain anonymous. “She loves the game. She loves running political campaigns. She loves taking some loser and getting him elected.” But Salisbury says she’s “sick of all that” and, even though, at age thirty-seven, she’s at the height of her career and earning potential, her next goal is to “find someone special” to spend her life with. . . .

  Excerpted from “Don’t Be Bad or You Will Have Bad Dreams” by Alan Pitt, The Gale Sayers Middle School Trumpet, Spring Issue:

  [S]ometimes even when your doing something you think is fun, like maybe making somebody suck on your gym sock, in your brain you know that really you shouldn’t be doing that. You wil feel bad later and it will make you have bad dreams.

  [T]he dreams can be so scary you will wake up the next day all bruised and tired and your pajamas are ripped. You will think the dream was a real thing that happened! Until your parents take you to a sykiatrist who tells you it was just a dream.

  Don’t be bad! . . . In conclusion, as much fun as it is to smear your boogers on some little kid’s face, it is not worth the bad dreams.

  Excerpted from “Deposed Dictator Vows Revenge,” West African Gazette, April 24:

  [H]e escaped in a helicopter when his palace was stormed by democratic revolutionaries in last week’s coup. He retains control of bank accounts worth an estimated eight billion dollars, though he was forced to leave several of his most valued possessions behind, including his famous collection of Star Wars action figures.

  [“A]ny aggressive move on his part will be swiftly, completely, and devastatingly countered,” said the newly elected president, who added that his government is keeping a close eye on the recently deposed strongman.

  [T]he former despot spoke belligerently from the throne room of his court in exile in Basel, Switzerland. “I know who did this to me. . . .”

  Chapter 20:

  “MEET CUTE”

  A photo essay featuring:

  Randy Sparks, the Most Pathetic Boy in School;

  Scott Sparks, the Most Pathetic Accountant in Omaha;

  Operatives 11, 52, 53, and 108;

  and introducing—Verna Salisbury!

  PHOTO 1: A beloved dirt bike is carelessly left unguarded!

  PHOTO 2: A Black Ops team extracts the bike.

  PHOTO 3: “Oh, woe! My bike is stolen!”

  The theft is reported to the proper authorities.

  PHOTO 4: Meanwhile, in a dark and dirty alley,

  the bike is given to a mysterious woman.

  PHOTO 5: “Excuse me, sir. Is this your lost bike?

  I wrestled it from a team of ruffians.”

  PHOTO 6: Joy! Boy and bike are reunited!

  “Thank you, Madame, for returning my son’s toy.

  How can I repay you?”

  “You can start by taking me to dinner.”

  Love is in the air!

  Chapter 21:

  LOVE IS IN THE AIR

  Traditionally, the most effective way to stop a pair of cats from mating79 is to turn a garden hose on them. It causes them no lasting harm, while ending the disgusting yowling they make while doing it. Plus, it ends the threat of unwanted kittens.

  Kwame Kirkland and Cheri Munson are kissing in the hallway, and they couldn’t care less who sees them. Kwame is tall and almost old enough to shave. Cheri is short and could probably get pregnant. They’re in eighth grade, so I guess they think they’re grown-ups now. What they actually are is a repulsive two-person sound machine that makes a slurping noise you can hear from five feet away.

  Once I’m safely past them, I mutter, “Sprinkler malfunction, sector fifteen.” The slurping instantly stops, replaced by the much more pleasant pitter-patter of water spraying from the ceiling and the squealing complaints of Kwame and Cheri. Animals and people—not so very different after all.

  I’m brought up short by a sharp pain in my side. I look down for its cause and see a sharp brown elbow attached to a short brown girl. “Jeez, Jumbo,” says Tati. “How thick is your stomach, anyway? I had to poke you like five times to get your attention.”

  “Mudlark,” I mutter.

  “Mudlark, to you too,” says Tatiana. “Listen, I got good news. The campaign is in full swing.”

  “I already won,” I tell her. “I’m the onl
y one running.” Soon that won’t be true—but I’m the only one at school who knows that.

  Tatiana wrinkles her perfect, pert nose and pushes her pink plastic bangles up her arm. “You can never be too careful,” she says. “Politics is tricky. But don’t worry, I’m getting out the vote for you. Look!”

  She points down the hallway. Logan Michaels, her slave, stands by the cafeteria door, looking miserable. Liz Twombley, the ex-Most Popular Girl in School, stands next to her, looking delighted. They’re both wearing cheap white T-shirts that read TEAM TUBBY. Underneath these words is a drawing of a snowman—you know, three circles stuck on top of each other.

  “Vote for Oliver,” says Logan, with real sadness in her voice, to the mob pushing its way into the lunchroom. “Vote for Oliver!” says Liz, all sunshine and light.

  “You like?” says Tati. “I designed those shirts myself.”

  “They’re pretty,” I say. Liz sees us and smiles. “Hi Oliver! Don’t die!”

  “I won’t.”

  Liz beams like I just gave her a pony. Up close, I can see that the snowman is supposed to be me. “Thanks, Tati,” I say.

  “No, thank you,” she says. “This is the most fun I’ve ever had at school.” Then she pushes her way into the throng, taking french fries, cookies—whatever she wants—off of other peoples’ trays. Laws do not apply to Nature’s nobility.

  Randy Sparks is sitting at my table, looking distracted. There’s a strawberry fruit roll-up hanging out of his mouth that he’s forgotten to finish eating.80 I sit down and pull out my fluffernutter, but he doesn’t notice I’m there.

  I get it. He has a lot on his mind. His dad has a girlfriend, for one thing. That’s crazy. Especially because Verna is smart and beautiful and successful. Even weirder, she wants Randy to do the craziest thing.81

  And I know all this because I’m the one who’s paying Verna to date Randy’s dad. I’m the one who really wants him to do the crazy thing

  “Hi, Randy.”

  It takes him a second to process this—it’s the only time in our entire career as lunchmates I’ve ever said hello to him first. And one of the few times I haven’t acted completely terrified of him. But I want to get a gauge of his mental state.

  “Oh. Hi, Ollie,” he says, finally. The fruit roll-up falls to the floor. He doesn’t notice.

  “Randy, do you think they’ll let me be a policeman?”

  “Who?” says Randy.

  “When I grow up. Do you think they’ll let me be one?”

  His hands fiddle nervously with his lunch bag. Randy’s pencil-thin forearms are covered with downy hair, and a lot of it. It’s like baby hair. “I guess so,” he says. “I don’t see why not. I didn’t know you wanted to be a policeman.”

  “I don’t,” I say, “but they better let me.”

  He doesn’t have anything to say to that.

  “Randy, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

  His hands get more nervous. “I don’t know,” he says. “My dad’s an accountant.”

  I make my eyes as big and impressed as they can be. “Wow,” I say. “A Naccountant! Is he happy?”

  Randy doesn’t say anything for a while. He looks inside his lunch bag and seems confused that it’s empty. “I don’t know,” he says. “Probably not.” Then he adds, quickly, “He has a girlfriend.”

  “Wow!” I say. “Is she a policeman?”

  Randy looks at me funny. I’m pushing the dumb act a little farther than usual, and he may be noticing. Then he shrugs and lets his eyes take a tour of the room. They linger on Pammy Quattlebaum, who’s telling a loud nerd story to her loud nerd friends. Then he looks at Jack Chapman, who sits nearby with his buddies, flicking paper “footballs” through one another’s fingers. They’re all laughing at some joke. He looks at Rashida Grant, who’s talking into a cell phone she snuck into school. Megan and Shiri are using their bodies to shield her from Coach Anicito, who’s on lunch duty today and’ll take the phone away if he sees it.

  Randy looks back inside his paper bag, then he crumples it up and pushes it away. “When I grow up,” he says, “I guess . . . well . . . I just want to be normal.”

  There’s a conversation killer if ever I’ve heard one.

  “Oh,” I say. “Good luck with that.”

  “Thanks,” he says. Then he gets up without saying goodbye and walks out to the school yard.

  I watch him go, with a curious emotion in my chest. Is it possible for me to feel guilt?

  No.

  Thank God!

  Chapter 22:

  I WILL STAND ATHWART THIS GLOBE LIKE A TERRIFYING COLOSSUS AND I WILL STEP ON YOU IF YOU TRY TO LOOK UP MY SHORTS

  Moorhead’s latest cigarette reads CARRY A COPY OF GRAVITY’S RAINBOW. He stares at it with alarm.

  I don’t really blame him. Lest you forget, receiving mysterious messages on cigarettes is a pretty alarming proposition, any way you look at it.

  Plus, this message tells him to carry a copy of Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon’s legendarily unreadable novel. Eight hundred pages long. Dense, wordy, kooky. Exactly the sort of thing to impress a smarty-pants like Lucy Sokolov, but a daunting prospect for a tiny brain like Moorhead.82

  But I guess the most alarming thing about this particular cigarette is where he found it: inside an orange he just peeled. That was childish of me.

  There he stands, in the middle of the hallway, slack-jawed. Ripped-open orange in one hand, pulp-covered cigarette in the other, getting jostled by the class-bound hordes. He turns warily in a circle, scanning the vicinity for someone—a magician, perhaps? A playful god?—who could have done this. But there’s only me. And I’m scratching my butt with my pencil case.

  Vice Principal Hruska storms past, mentally calculating the number of seconds until he can retire. He plucks the cigarette from Moorhead’s fingers. “Not on school property, Neil.”

  Moorhead points urgently as Hruska walks away, “Wait! Read it. . . .”

  But Hruska has already crushed the cigarette in his hand and dropped the soggy shreds in a garbage can. “Read what?”

  Moorhead stares at the old man, then at the garbage, then back at the old man.

  “Read what, Neil?”

  Moorhead turns and walks silently back to his classroom, letting the orange slip from his limp fingers. It’s like he’s forgotten he was holding it.

  See, not everyone likes surprises. Some people love ’em; some people have heart attacks. It’s a matter of taste.

  Does Randy Sparks, the Most Pathetic Boy in School, like surprises? Let’s find out.83

  He’s put up with some pretty surprising stuff lately. Like his father getting a girlfriend. And it’s all happened so fast! Wasn’t it just a few days ago that she returned Randy’s bike? After single-handedly taking it away from the motorcycle gang that stole it?

  Kind of hard to believe when you think about it, but when Verna starts talking, it all makes sense. She can be very convincing—about almost anything, if the price is right. Not that Randy knows that.

  The thing he mostly hears her be convincing about is the beauty of the democratic process (she used to run campaigns for national elections). As it turns out (and, I’ll grant you, this is improbable), the elections she’s really interested in now are middle-school ones. They are, apparently, incredibly important in shaping the character of “our next generation of leaders.”