The Candy Man Cometh (4 page)
“MAAAA PA MAM PAM!” Boy-in-the-Plastic-Bubble Boy yelled in a panic as Super Vision Lad rolled him across the street and into the deserted field.
“Come back here with that hamster ball!” Super Vision Lad’s mother yelled, and chased after him.
“It’s nothing against you,” Exact Change Kid explained. “Boy-in-the-Plastic-Bubble Boy’s got a Giant Hamster Ball of Justice...”
“And you’re just stuck in a stupid brown box!” Boom Boy cut in. “You look like a rectangle turd!”
“Don’t make me smite you with my Giant Cardboard Box of Justice!” Boy-in-the-Cardboard-Box Boy threatened.
“Oh yeah? Oh yeah?” Boom Boy stood up. “You just try and I’ll blow up so good, there won’t be enough of your box left to line a birdcage!”
“I’d like to see you try!” Boy-in-the-Cardboard-Box Boy dared.
And with that, Boom Boy jumped to the other side of the table and balled his fists. He clenched his teeth so tightly that deep lines formed in his cheeks.
“Cardboard Powers, activate!” Boy-in-the-Cardboard-Box Boy shouted. He charged Boom Boy and repeatedly bashed into him with his cardboard box. “Take that! And that! And that!” he yelled with each collision.
“Let’s see... how good are you... with that box... when I blow you ...to the... moon!” Boom Boy threatened between gritted teeth.
“Super Box Attack!” Boy-in-the-Cardboard-Box Boy yelled. He spun in place and bashed Boom Boy with the sides of his cardboard box.
“Oh no! Boom Boy’s losing!” Spice Girl gasped. Earlobe Lad peeked his head out from under the table. Both of his hands were clasped over his ears. “Well I sure wish he’d lose a little more quietly,” he whispered up to us.
“How can you tell he’s losing?” I asked. “Because he looks so sad,” she replied. “Maybe we should move the table back,” Exact Change Kid said. “If Boom Boy really blows up, I don’t want to get his parts all over my costume. My mom just washed it.”
Boom Boy bent over and crossed his arms over his stomach. He grunted twice and his face grew a shade of deep red.
“He’s not going to blow up,” I said.
“How do you know?” Exact Change Kid was already moving his chair back.
“Because he
never
blows up,” I reminded him. Suddenly Boom Boy unclenched his fists and stood up. “Wait! I get it now. I get it. You
want
me to blow up, don’t you?” Boom Boy said to me. “Yeah. ’Cause once I do, I’ll be gone and —”
“Take that! And that! And that!” Boy-in-the-Cardboard-Box Boy yelled. He charged Boom Boy and repeatedly bashed into him with his Cardboard Box of Justice.
“Could you hold on just a second?” Boom Boy said to him, and then turned to me. “Now where was I?”
“Wait! I get it now. I get it. You
want
me to blow up, don’t you?” I mimicked Boom Boy, which was easy enough to do since I’ve heard his speech so many times.
“Oh yeah! That’s right! ’Cause once I do, I’ll be gone and then there’ll be no more Boom Boy and you won’t be able to say that he
never
blows up!”
“But Boom Boy, you never
do
blow up! You just threaten to,” I reminded him.
“And that’s how it better stay, or I swear, I swear... I’ll blow myself up!”
“Okay, okay! How about Boxy: The Box Boy?” Boy-in-the-Cardboard-Box Boy asked hopefully. “Can I be a sidekick then?”
“Are you still here?” Boom Boy asked.
“Why don’t you just leave your name and number and if we ever have a future vacancy, we’ll give you a call,” Spelling Beatrice suggested, a lone voice of reason.
That’s one thing I really, really like about Spelling Beatrice. Not only does she not drive me absolutely insane like the other sidekicks do, but she acts like she actually has a brain in her head. I used to think it was because she was the oldest, but then I realized she seems totally sane because the other sidekicks are just totally insane.
Boy-in-the-Cardboard-Box Boy wrote his name and phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Exact Change Kid. Then he slumped in his box like a sad little piece of cardboard who had just found out he was really only a piece of notebook paper.
I mean, I don’t know if cardboard would be sad if it ever found out it was just a piece of notebook paper, but I’m guessing it would.
Boom Boy looked over Exact Change Kid’s shoulder and eyed the piece of paper. “He just broke Rule #1,” Boom Boy giggled.
“Next!” Exact Change Kid called out.
A kid in a hamster costume stepped up, holding his father’s hand. The cheap, oversized costume head was held on by Velcro. “I’m Hamster Man!” the kid immediately said with a huge smile.
“Sorry!” Boom Boy said quickly. “Boys, Kids, Girls, Lasses, Gals, Lads, and Juniors only. No Mans or Womans allowed. NEXT!”
Hamster Man pulled his hand away from his father. “I told you it should be Hamster Boy! I told you! I told you! I told you!” He lifted his furry paws to his eyes and ran across the League of Big Justice Super Additional-Parking Parking Lot of Justice. “I don’t wanna go back to the pet store!” he yelled.
“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Spelling Beatrice said to me.
“When is anything that we do
not
a bad idea?” I answered.
“I should be practicing my Grammar Powers now.”
Spelling Beatrice’s statement brought two very important questions to mind:
QUESTION #1
How do you practice Grammar Powers?
QUESTION #2
What in the world
are
Grammar Powers?
How You Practice Grammar Powers
“Well...I put on a blindfold and write noun-modifying sentences with subordinate clauses without dangling my participles or splitting any infinitives,” Spelling Beatrice informed me.
Did I say she was sane?
“And then what?” I asked.
“I take off the blindfold and see how good I did,” she replied.
“Don’t you mean how
well
you did?” I asked. Spelling Beatrice went white, like she was choking on an onomatopoeia. Her left eye twitched. She grabbed my elbow and pulled me closer.
“This stays between you and me!” she begged.
Princess Floppo the Fish Girl
Boom Boy held his palm up to his mouth and checked his breath. Satisfied it wasn’t too offensive, he started the difficult line of questioning. “So, what planet do you come from, Princess Floppo?” He sounded excited that he was meeting a real princess from another planet.
“Earth.” Princess Floppo said.
“Wow. Her planet has the same name as ours!” Spice Girl gushed and clapped her hands together. “Hurray for Earth!”
“I think she
is
from the same planet as us,” I said to Spice Girl.
“I’m not from her planet, silly! I’m from this one,” Spice Girl said, and shook her head in dis-belief.
“And she’s from this planet, too,” I explained. “No, she’s not, Mr. Know-It-All.” Spice Girl rolled her eyes. “She said she’s from ‘Earth.’ ” Spice Girl punctuated her remark with finger quotes.
I don’t even know why I bother.
“MAAA PAM MAM MAM PAH MAAAAA!” Boyin-the-Plastic-Bubble Boy shouted in terror as Super Vision Lad pushed his Giant Hamster Ball of Justice down a hill in the vacant field across the street.
“So are you a princess of some country?” Exact Change Kid asked. Luckily, he understood what Princess Floppo meant when she said complicated things like “I’m from Earth.”
“No,” Princess Floppo replied.
“An island?”
“Nope.”
“An independent conglomeration of city-states?”
“A what?”
“What
are
you princess of?” I asked. “Nothing really, I guess. I just always wanted to be a princess,” Princess Floppo replied. “And I like ponies.”
Exact Change Kid looked at his clipboard. “I see here that your full name is Princess Floppo the Fish Girl. Can you breathe underwater? Swim super fast? Ride dolphins?”
“I’m afraid of the water,” Princess Floppo stated.
“Do you have fish powers?” Boom Boy asked, hopefully.
“Or
any
powers?” I added.
“Of course! I have the power to flop around like a fish out of water.” And with that, Princess Floppo fell to the ground and flopped about like a... like a...well... like a giant fish out of water. She flipped and flopped and flopped and flipped.
Boom Boy watched for a moment, then leaned back in his chair. “She gets my vote.”
“What? How is she going to fight evil by flopping around on the ground like a fish?” I snapped.
“Hey, when you joined the Sidekicks, no one asked how you were going to fight evil by running around!” Boom Boy reminded me.
“But I can run 108 miles per hour!”
“And your point is what, exactly?” Boom Boy replied.
“I have a
super power
! I don’t just flop around on the ground like a fish!”
“If you think it’s so easy, let’s see you try!” Boom Boy huffed back.
“You’re missing my point,” I sighed.
“I’m not,” Spice Girl jumped in. “Your point is that there
aren’t
two planets named Earth and that Princess Floppo is only saying the name of the planet where she’s princess is ‘Earth’ because she doesn’t want to tell us the real name of her home planet and break Rule #1.”
“Rule #1?” I inquired.
“Yes! ‘Never tell anyone the name of the planet you live on.’ Didn’t you listen to anything Peter Pumpkin said?” Spice Girl wondered.
Right now, I was really wondering what planet Spice Girl lived on.
“Rule #1 is ‘Never tell anyone your real name,’ ” I reminded her.
“Nah! That was Rule #9!” Boom Boy joined in. “There is no Rule #9!” I argued.
“I have a rule for you!” Earlobe Lad whispered from beneath the table. “SHUT UP!”
“Oh! That’s a good one,” Spice Girl said, and gave Earlobe Lad a quiet thumbs-up. “But I just broke it, didn’t I? Oops! I broke it again! Oops! I did it again!”
“Uh, guys,” Exact Change Kid cut in. “Maybe we should stop Princess Floppo before continuing with this discussion?”
I looked over to the floor. Princess Floppo still flipped and flopped about like a... like a... well... like a giant fish out of water.
“She certainly is determined,” I admitted. Princess Floppo the Fish Girl stood up and brushed the dirt from her Spandex costume. Although she had none of the powers of a fish, had no gills, no tail, and wasn’t even a princess, she still wore a small fake-diamond encrusted tiara. Her outfit had large, glittery imitation green fish scales that looked like she had pulled them off an ugly evening gown. On her back was a green fin made from some wavy material that was probably once a kite.
“My mom helped me stitch it,” she confessed as Boom Boy pulled out a chair for her.
Luckily, there was only one more person who had come for the sidekick tryouts. She was younger than most of the other hopefuls, but she wore a ninja outfit. Man! It’d be awesome to have a sidekick who could really kick butt, someone who knew the martial arts and could really punch evil in the face! Roundhouses! Spinning kicks! No-shadow punches! Nunchucks! Throwing stars! Butt-kicking —
“Twick or tweat!” the girl yelled giddily and held out a plastic candy holder shaped like a jack-o-lantern.
“Ahhh! Leave me alone!” Earlobe Lad called out from under the table. Apparently, the sound of my head repeatedly banging the Sidekick table was hurting his giant ears.
I Have a Headache!
