My new favorite word. I never knew life for a kid could be so simple. Seventh grade had started just a month ago, and that's probably the one word that could best describe how my school year had gone so far: simple. Even the word itself had a kind of easiness to it, like it wanted you to say it over and over again.

Life was simple. And I liked it. I mean, I still couldn't figure out why other kids were always complaining all the time. School was a piece of cake when that was all that was on your plate and you didn't also run a huge business operation with multiple employees and a healthy cash flow.

This was my first school year since kindergarten that had started without my business up and running. I used to run my business with my business partner and best friend, Vince, in the East Wing boys' bathroom. Basically, if any kid in school had a problem, they knew they could come to me and I'd solve it for them. For a fee, of course. By the time sixth grade rolled around, we pretty much owned the school.

But at the end of last year, we had to end our business after coming clean and sacrificing its secrecy in order to save our school from this sadistic vice principal named Dr. George. At first, Vince and I had planned to shut our business down temporarily while the heat subsided.

But then near the end of summer, we both decided it was kind of nice to not have to worry about it for once. We could just focus on playing baseball, watching the Cubs, playing video games, going to movies, blowing up stuff with fireworks, etc. You know, doing normal kid stuff.

It was so nice that we decided just to shut the doors for good. Or, well, maybe not for good as in “forever,” but at least for all of our seventh-grade year, and probably even longer. I mean, eventually our saved-up money, our Fund, would run dry and we'd maybe need to get some sort of business going again. And eventually kids would get tired of having to solve their own problems and they'd come begging for us to open up shop once again in the East Wing boys' bathroom, fourth stall from the high window.

One thing you can always count on: kids are going to find ways to get into trouble and are going to need someone to get them out of it.

Actually, several kids had come to me already to ask when we were reopening the business or to ask for help or advice. But I had turned them down each time. I was pretty determined to stay retired for now. The business used to be a lot simpler. It used to be just me and Vince and the problems kids brought to us. But last school year had been a nightmare. First we'd gotten involved in that mess with legendary crime boss Staples, and then a few months later a new principal had tried to take down the whole school. And our business had buried Vince and me alive right in the middle of both of those messes.

So, as much as it disappointed the kids who had come asking for help, and as much as I kind of did still want to help them out, I couldn't. I'd turned down every one of them. And they understood, for the most part, why I had to. They knew I couldn't open up business right away given all the attention we'd gotten saving our school last year.

Here's the thing, though: if you asked me, I might have said, even then, that I know deep down that it just wasn't going to be that easy to get out. There's this old trilogy of movies called
The Godfather
. They are some of my favorite movies because they kind of remind me of Vince and me. In fact, the first time I saw them, I had to double-check what year they had come out because I could have sworn the guys who wrote that movie had stolen some of my business tricks. Anyways, in the third movie, the main character says, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

I just hoped it wasn't the same deal for me. Where the only way out was either in handcuffs or a body bag. Well, okay, my business probably wouldn't ever lead to anyone ending up in a body bag, but detention, suspension, or juvenile prison were all bad enough; and those were all definitely possible. Maybe worse than that if some of the juvie horror stories I'd heard were true.

Take this one kid Jack Knife who'd served a four-month stint upstate at the Estevan Juvenile Detention Center last summer. He was a changed kid when he got out but not in a good way. Kids hadn't always called him Jack Knife. No, back before he'd served his time, they used to just call him by his real name, Greg. Well, one day Greg accidentally blew up his friend's dad's car while trying to prove that Twinkies are completely fireproof. Anyways, the string of events that led to the car exploding are so crazy, you'd never believe me, but I was there and I saw it with my own two eyes. And by explode, I mean literally the car burst into a huge ball of fire. One of the tires got lodged right inside the middle of this old oak tree in his front yard. The fire chief had said it was a miracle that nobody got hurt. That kind of thing pretty much automatically earns you an extended stay at one of our state's fine juvenile correctional institutions.

Anyways, the point I'm trying to make is that Greg was a pretty good kid; he wasn't juvie type material. It was really just bad luck that he had happened to be experimenting with Twinkies, lighter fluid, and a blowtorch in the wrong place at the wrong time and caused an explosion so huge that to this day some kids say you can still feel the ground vibrating slightly where the car had been parked. But when Greg got back from juvie, he was a different person. He told me stories that I can't even bring myself to repeat. He said the only reason he'd survived was because he developed a signature move called the Jack Knife. It's pretty complicated and I'm not even too sure how it works, but let's just say at the end of it, the other kid looks like he just got run through a pasta maker, complete with ricotta cheese filling.

So that's what I was worried about. Becoming a human ravioli someday and getting sucked back into my business made it likely that this was going to be one of those things where the only way out was to go to juvie. And as much as having a cool nickname like Flint Cracker and a killer reputation to match sounded awesome, I didn't really want to go through what Jack Knife had told me he'd had to in order to earn them.

If only it could have been that simple.

It all started one day when I was walking home from school. I was walking because I was still grounded from using my bike due to the exposure of my business last year. I mean, I had helped take down an evil psychopath, so I had gotten off fairly easy, but that still didn't mean I escaped punishment altogether. Anyways, that's beside the point. The point is I was walking home one day and got a surprise visit from someone I'd thought I'd never see again.Â .Â .Â .

I
t was a pretty nice day, sunny and warm but not melt-your-face-and-start-your-hair-on-fire-if-you-stay-outside-longer-than-eleven-minutes hot like it could sometimes get in September. It was pleasantly warm on this particular day. Why is it that the worst things always seem to happen on the nicest days? Like when I'd almost gotten killed out at the Yard nearly a year earlier. The weather on that day had been almost perfect as well.

It was actually pretty funny that I was thinking about that whole thing at that very moment. I mean, not funny ha-ha but more funny-that-weird-coincidences-always-have-to-end-up-being-terrible.

So, anyways, I was walking home from school. Vince wasn't with me because he had to be home within fifteen minutes of school ending every day to watch his little sister. His mom had gotten a new job recently, which was cool because then she could, like, pay her bills again and stuff, but it also stunk because that meant he couldn't hang out until later in the day. So I'd been walking home from school alone this year. It wasn't so bad, really. I lived fairly close, and the trip always gave me time to think about how easy life was now. So far, every walk home had been entirely uneventful.

But on this particular day I heard a voice call out from behind me.

“Hey, Mac.”

I didn't stop walking. Probably someone looking for help who hadn't understood that I wasn't in business anymore.

“Mac!” the voice said, louder this time. I was annoyed, and I didn't turn around. But I did stop walking.

“What?” I said.

“I need your help.”

Just as I thought.

“I'm sorry,” I said, as I had said so many times since school had started back up. “I'm not in that business anymore. I can't help you.”

“I bet you'll make an exception for me.”

The voice was closer now. Whoever it was had come out from wherever he'd been concealed, likely the bushes that lined the sidewalk. I could tell he was pretty much right behind me now. I could feel the cold of his enormous shadow engulf me. And that's when I realized who it was.

I'd know that shadow anywhere. I'd never forget it for the rest of my life. Which is why it was also impossible that I was seeing it; the owner of that shadow had skipped town shortly after I took him down. Everyone knew that. A circus family that had yard sales every other weekend lived in his house now.

Vince and I went there to check out the rummage sales every once in a while because they always had the craziest, funniest stuff. Like a purple feather vest designed to fit an elephant. Or a Poo Sling, a slingshot designed specifically to fling animal poop. And haggling with them was the best part. I wasn't as good of a negotiator as I expected. For my first purchase I managed to negotiate the price for a talking wig from seven dollars up to nine dollars. Yeah, I was that bad. But the wig was pretty sweet just the same. It could say only a few lines, but they were all awesome and insulting, such as, “Stop pulling on me, Scum Bucket” and “You make me look ugly, Crap Waffle.”

Vince, however, was a master negotiator. He'd worked the price of a car down to two bucks. Okay, so maybe it was only a model clown car and not a real one, but still, the original price had been twelve dollars.

But all this was beside the point. The point was that the circus family was there, living in the former house of the owner of this shadow. He'd left town. If he hadn't, we would have known about it. He was so legendary that someone would have seen him lurking about and said something. Right? Right?!

It didn't matter. All I could do now was turn around.

His smile hadn't changed much; it was still all teeth and menace. And his laser-beam stare could still melt a penny at a hundred yards. And he was still huge. And he still looked like he could crush a pair of fifth graders in each hand like soda cans.

“Hello, Mac,” Staples said, smirking as always.

Other books

Chocolate Box Girls: Coco Caramel by Cathy Cassidy

Fighting Temptation (Bay State Series Book 1) by Tiffany Hachey

CUL-DE-SAC (On The Edge Book 1) by YILDIRIM, M.E.

Jo Ann Brown by The Dutiful Daughter

London Belles by Annie Groves

Concealed Attractions (Cedar Island Tales) by Vale, Kate

Sex and the Single Vamp by Covington, Robin

The Boyfriend Bet (Boyfriend Chronicles #2) by Chris Cannon

A Zen For Murder (Mooseamuck Island Cozy Mystery Series Book 1) by Leighann Dobbs

The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six by Jonathon Keats