by Mike Thayer
I usually stayed pretty cool and collected on discard-day moments like this, but the anticipation of knowing I had Jaxson precisely where I wanted him had me bouncing my leg something fierce. I spun the remote control over and over in my pocket and aimlessly took out my textbook, flipping it open at random.
I waited until everyone was reading and the classroom was still, save the soft scraping of turning pages. A small squeak split the silence, and a few students from Jaxson’s side of the classroom muffled their giggles.
“Quiet, please,” Mrs. Marlow warned, looking up from a book she was reading at her desk.
This was it. In response to Mrs. Marlow’s plea for silence, I went for the kill. I moved my fingers down the remote in my pocket and found the big button at the bottom. A deep, robust, bubbling fart reverberated from Jaxson’s seat, followed by the foul, inescapable stench of rotten eggs. Kids both laughed and covered their noses. One kid in front of me started to gag, and two girls near Jaxson actually stood up and ran to the hallway. Mrs. Marlow looked on in horror as the thick odor spread through her class before making its way to her.
“Good heavens,” she choked, standing to open a window. “Jaxson Johnson, I’m afraid you’ve crossed the line this time. Please excuse yourself to the restroom and continue on to the nurse’s office if you need to.”
“But it wasn’t me!” Jaxson stressed.
Mrs. Marlow didn’t reply. She merely pulled her blouse up over her nose and pointed to the door.
That was the issue with trying to plead your innocence as a chronically disruptive and misbehaving student. Just like with the boy who cried wolf, no one believed you when you actually needed them to. Jaxson, shoulders slumped in defeat, slowly got up, snatched the hall pass from Mrs. Marlow, and left the classroom.
To most people the eggy, gag-inducing funk that hung in the air was nauseating. To me it was the wonderfully rancid scent of victory, and I was just getting started.
Talk of Jaxson’s bad gas filled the hallways during passing time, ranging from something near the truth to him pooping his pants and clearing out the entire room. The more absurd the rumor, the more my discard-day heart warmed with satisfaction.
On the way to lunch, I made a quick stop at my locker to stash my backpack, but not before retrieving a few needed items from my emergency kit.
As I worked my way through the lunch line, I made sure to ask for an extra-large serving of beans, a second bowl of peaches, and two chocolate milks. While I would typically be more than happy to share the extra food with someone like Freddie, I actually had someone different in mind today. I wasn’t just going to share this food. I planned on giving it all to Braxlynn … whether she wanted it or not.
After transferring the chocolate milk from cartons to open cups, I was ready to rock and roll. I scanned the lunchroom and found Braxlynn and the Clique sitting at a table on the far side. I whistled tunelessly as I walked in their direction.
“Hey, where you going?” Freddie asked, appearing at my side just as I was passing Braxlynn. “You gonna play in the BBG?”
“Yeah, I was just gonna check—” I threw my hip out, bumped the chair beside me, and stumbled forward, tipping my entire tray of food on top of Braxlynn’s head.
I let out a yelp as I convincingly tumbled to the floor but was soon drowned out by the shrill shriek that shot above the lunchroom chatter like a fire alarm. Braxlynn slowly rose to her feet, her hair, face, and body covered in a beany mixture of chocolatey peaches. She wouldn’t have looked more horrified had I dumped a gallon of pig’s blood on her head, which was good, because pig’s blood was hard to come by … even for Discard Danny.
“Oh my gosh, I am so sorry. Did I get any on yoooou … oh wow,” I said as I stood and faced Braxlynn. She drilled into me with a gaze that could have turned Medusa to stone.
“Are you kidding me?” Braxlynn screamed. The whole lunchroom stopped and stared, pulling out their phones. I smiled inwardly. Let’s see who the dud was now. “This shirt is Adagio, you idiot. You’ve ruined it.”
I picked a bean off Braxlynn’s shoulder and ate it. “I think it’s quite tasteful.”
My puns were always better on sticky days, when I could think of them ahead of time, but that one wasn’t half bad.
“What the crud do you think you’re doing?” Jaxson announced before shoving me into a nearby table. I had no idea where he’d even come from, but he obviously kept a close eye on Braxlynn. “Keep your hands off her.”
“That’s weird,” I said, making a show of sniffing the air before turning to Jaxson. “I didn’t smell you coming.”
Jaxson vibrated with rage and lunged toward me. I was ready this time and darted away to the other side of a nearby table. A growing crowd of students cheered on the game of cat and mouse as I tried desperately to keep the table between me and my attacker.
“I’m gonna freaking kill you,” Jaxson yelled, pushing away chairs as he stormed after me.
I plugged my nose. “You get too much closer and I’d have to agree.”
Jaxson let out a string of cuss words and made to climb over the table but was wrangled by a pair of teachers coming to my rescue.
“We’re done here,” a burly male teacher said, bear-hugging Jaxson. “Let’s go have another one of our little chats, shall we?”
A second teacher came to check on me while a third attended to Braxlynn. The lunchroom activity soon returned to normal as Jaxson and Braxlynn were ushered away and the janitor rolled in his industrial mop bucket. I stood there, heart hammering in my chest, not believing my good fortune. I’d had no plans other than dumping food on Braxlynn. To get Jaxson hauled away as part of the deal was like reaching into the couch cushions after a quarter and finding a five-dollar bill.
“Holy toad-boogers.” Freddie gawked, taking me by the arm and leading me away to the gamer tables. “That was unreal. You know you’re a dead man, right?”
“Ah well, whatever.” I shrugged it off as we sat down. “She totally had her chair sticking out.”
“Wait.” Freddie leaned closer. “Did you do that on purpose? Oh my gosh. You totally did that on purpose. Jaxson is totally gonna murder you.”
“I’ll be fine,” I reassured her. “Brown bag’s coming.”
Freddie grabbed the bag and slyly put in her two dollars. “Are you not playing?”
“I’m gonna watch this time.”
“Sure?” Freddie said, confused. “I’ll totally pay for you … considering it’s your money anyway.”
“No, no,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
Freddie shrugged, and after a few more minutes the Brown Bag Game was underway. It wasn’t long until Noah started yelling from the end of the table.
“SpudMasterFlex cannot be stopped!” I eyed Noah as he shoved a couple of Tater Tots into his mouth. It was like a ritual. Kill, mock, tot. Kill, mock, tot. I reached in my pocket and fingered the small vial of Texas Atomic hot sauce. Maybe it was time for Noah’s ritual to get a fourth step.
I left Freddie playing and casually walked over to Noah, making a show of checking out gamers’ screens as I passed. Most of the time to pull off a stunt like this you needed a diversion, but every kid sitting at Noah’s table had their eyeballs glued to their screens. I fished a few coins out of my pocket, walked up next to Noah, and dropped the change on the floor. Noah didn’t so much as flit his eyes in my direction as I bent down to retrieve my coins. I placed a hand on the table as I stood back up, quickly reached over, and pinched out a drop of hot sauce onto one of his tots. I only needed a drop. In reality, I probably only needed about one one-hundredth of a drop, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
I retreated to my seat next to Freddie and waited for the show to start. On most days it was unfortunate that Noah got so many kills on Champions Royale, but today wasn’t one of those days.
“How do you like that, BuckinBlueBronco?” Noah yelled, pointing at one of the other players. “That’s what it feels like to get shan
ked!” Noah gave a weaselly chuckle as he grabbed a handful of Tater Tots and slammed them into his mouth. He chewed fast and swallowed. Some hot sauces came on slow, the heat gradually building as the sensation progressed from mild to molten. This wasn’t one of those kinds of sauces.
Noah coughed twice and his eyes bulged as his face turned red as a gym dodgeball.
“Waaaaah!” Noah threw his phone into the air and reached for his milk, chugging it like oasis water in the desert. “It doesn’t help. It doesn’t help!”
“You have been scorched by Texcalibur,” I said under my breath.
For the second time today, the lunchroom stopped and turned in the direction of a student gone mad. Noah sprinted around the room, desperately grabbing any food he could find and shoving it into his mouth like some kind of ravenous savage breaking into a banquet hall. Peanut butter sandwiches, crackers, fruit, juice boxes. The whole room was in chaos as students scrambled to protect their food from Noah’s spice-driven rampage. Like any dedicated prankster, I took the opportunity to retrieve Noah’s cell phone … and superglue it to the lunchroom table. It would seem that Noah’s mouth had finally caught up to him.
After Noah was restrained and carted off to the nurse’s office, the rest of lunchtime was abuzz about Noah’s, Braxlynn’s, and Jaxson’s outbursts. It seemed like the whole school was going insane. The conversation continued in the hallways as I made my way to fifth-period science. Normally, both Noah and Braxlynn were in my class, but their seats were predictably empty. Noah’d be down and out for at least an hour. I knew because I had spent one fateful discard day personally acquainting myself with the power of Texas Atomic hot sauce. As far as Braxlynn was concerned, I had no idea what the recovery time was for getting your designer clothes dirty.
I leaned back in my chair and smiled. I had done good work today, great work actually. In fact, I’d made such short work of everything that I was running out of bullies. Just when I thought the fun was winding down, however, a voice came over the intercom. Danny Day was wanted in the principal’s office.
CHAPTER 12
BE A BUDDY
(Discard Wednesday—Sept. 8th)
I hummed softly as I sat in one of the two chairs in the hallway outside Principal Picatilly’s office. In the other chair was a smaller boy with messy blond hair. He sat hunched forward with his head down as if he was saying a silent prayer.
I tapped him on the arm and leaned over. “So what’d they get you for?”
“Throwing my gum in the teacher’s hair,” the boy mumbled without looking up.
I clicked my tongue. “Savage.”
“What about you?” he asked.
“Hmmm,” I said, rubbing my chin. “I’m not sure yet.”
The door opened, and Principal Picatilly’s head leaned into view. “Daniel Day,” he intoned from beneath a large brown mustache.
“Looks like I’m up,” I said as I swung out of my chair and strolled into the principal’s office. For most kids, this was like the long walk to the electric chair. For Discard Danny, it was the dessert after one of my very favorite meals. Sometimes I got caught right in the act and there was no mystery or suspense, but in cases like this one, I was genuinely curious as to how they traced any bit of the chaos back to me.
“Take a seat, Daniel,” Principal Picatilly ordered, gesturing to one of the large, high-backed chairs across from his desk. He was a predictably stern-looking man with a wide mustache that looked like a mini version of the janitor’s push broom.
I sat down in the unnecessarily large chair and felt like I was one of the twins sitting in my dad’s recliner. “What can I do ya for, Mr. Piccolo?”
“Principal Picatilly,” the principal growled. This guy was already furious. It took my last principal way more goading to get to the growling stage. “And what you can do for me is start by explaining why you think you’re in my office right now.”
Ah, the ol’ “you tell me what you did” technique. Over my life of discard-day mischief, I learned that adults usually did this when they knew you did something but didn’t know everything and were hoping you’d spill the beans … well, I had spilled the beans, but those beans were on Braxlynn’s head. I wouldn’t be giving up any information in this office without a fight. It was time to see who I was dealing with in the principal of Snake River Middle School.
“I am in your office because you called me down and I am an obedient boy.” I nodded.
Principal Picatilly pressed his lips together, bristling his mustache. “But why do you believe I called you down here?”
“It’s hard for me to say.” I paused and looked to my shoes for dramatic effect. “But I think it may be because you are lonely.”
The principal clenched his fists when he spoke, and I could sense he was right on the edge of going full-on nuclear. “I know you are new here, but trust me when I say this, Daniel Day, that I do not suffer fools. You are here because of this.”
Principal Picatilly pulled out a remote and turned on the large flat screen hung on the wall to my left. The screen showed a still image of the lunchroom. From the angle and time stamp in the corner I could only assume that it was from one of the school’s surveillance cameras. He pressed play, and the video zoomed in on me walking up to Noah, dropping my coins, and then briefly reaching across his basket of Tater Tots, where the principal paused the footage.
“Care to explain?” He leaned forward menacingly. I was quickly understanding why that kid out in the hall seemed so nervous and defeated. If I had to meet this principal on a sticky day, I think I’d be wetting myself by now.
“Principal Pinocchio, you want me to explain the underground video-gambling tournament that has happened every day right under your nose for the past three years? Well, it’s called the Brown Bag Game, you see, and while I know it sounds like a stupid name, it’s actually quite—”
“Mr. Day!” the principal bellowed, hammering down both fists. A cup fell over, clattering pens and pencils across the desk. I almost shot out of my chair, Discard Danny or not. “You think this is a joke, do you? That student is still running cold water through his mouth.”
“You should really use bread and milk,” I added mildly. “The water just kind of sloshes it arou—”
“You will not speak!” The principal jabbed a finger toward my chest. “I don’t need you to admit to it—I just need you to know that you’ve been caught. The janitor is also still trying to pry Noah’s cell phone from the lunchroom table. I’m sure your parents will be thrilled to learn you now have to buy Noah a brand-new phone. New here or not, Mr. Day, if I decide not to expel you, let me make this crystal clear: We do not tolerate bullying here at Snake River Middle School, of any sort.”
I burst out laughing. It wasn’t even to intentionally provoke the principal; I honestly just couldn’t restrain myself. “You don’t? No bullying at all? Well, I can’t even tell you how relieved that makes me feel.”
After several more minutes of being dressed down like I was being dishonorably discharged from boot camp, the principal finally kicked me out of his office. I walked out the door, and the small blond kid looked up at me in shock, face pale and eyes wide as an owl’s.
“I softened him up for ya.” I leaned down and patted him on the knee. “Good luck in there, buddy.”
* * *
Zak sat next to me on the bus ride home. Whether he knew about my day’s exploits or not, he didn’t let on. The secretary had tried to call my parents to come get me, but my dad couldn’t get out of work, and my mom was at a doctor’s appointment with the twins. A hint of nausea brewed in the pit of my stomach. It was nothing near what I would have been feeling if this had been a sticky day, but I still didn’t enjoy going home and seeing my parents’ irate and disappointed faces. It wasn’t like Discard Danny was a complete unfeeling monster. I’d be greeted by my parents in utter shock for having their perfect Danny act so completely out of character for the first time in his life. They wouldn’t know how to ha
ndle it, how to react, whether they should ground me, sit down and talk to me, or what. They will have never been in that situation before … that they could remember. For me it would be only one of hundreds of other times. There was something deeply strange about that. Even I recognized it, and I’d known no different my entire life.
“So, how you liking Poky so far?” Zak finally asked.
“No shortage of excitement,” I replied, staring out the window. Today had been a solid day of pranks. Rarely had I been able to cleanly pull off so many before getting caught. I took a deep breath. I should have felt proud of myself, happy that someone was able to put those punks in their place for once, but instead I felt a growing emptiness. And filling that emptiness came a flood of something I thought Discard Danny would never feel: actual guilt.
Most of the time when kids got caught misbehaving, they only felt bad because they got caught. For Discard Danny, even when I got caught, I didn’t really get caught. You’d have to catch me on a sticky day for that. My pranks hadn’t done any lasting damage to anyone. The only remaining effect from today’s actions would be yet another funny memory. So why were my insides souring like I’d just eaten my grandma’s warm egg salad?
“You okay?” Zak said, waving his notebook in front of my face to get my attention.
“Dude, I’m good,” I said unconvincingly.
“Sure there’s not something I can do, man?” Zak asked.
I exhaled loudly, my internal conflict pressurizing to a sudden breaking point. “You can act like a normal freaking human for once, stop being so friggin’ perfect all the time, and give me some blasted space! Can you do that?”
The whole bus grew quiet, and Zak leaned back, a confused look on his face like he didn’t quite know if I was joking or not.
“Fair enough.” Zak stood, shouldered his backpack, grabbed his violin case, and moved to an empty seat a few rows back.
I couldn’t even meet the kid’s eyes. Zak didn’t deserve that. He’d only ever tried to be helpful, but that was precisely the problem. His notion of the double day had ruined me. I should have been celebrating today’s accomplishments, not feeling guilty for them. What use was the double day if I couldn’t enjoy the discard day?
