Read The Brotherhood of Rotten Babysitters Online

Authors: Dan Danko,Tom Mason

Tags: #JUV001000

The Brotherhood of Rotten Babysitters (2 page)

BOOK: The Brotherhood of Rotten Babysitters
8.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

King Justice shuffled a foot and turned an embarrassed shade of red.

“Uh...I don’t know. I don’t watch that TV show,” he confessed.

“It’s not a TV show!” the kid yelled back. “It’s
Alias
!”

“If you were on an deserted island, which superhero would you vote off first?” a girl called out.

King Justice puffed out his chest. This was an
easy
question. “I wouldn’t vote anyone off. I’d build a large platform for everyone to stand on, then help The Librarian to fly us off the island.”

“You can’t fly off the island ... unless it’s an Immunity Challenge,” the girl corrected him.

Small beads of sweat formed on King Justice’s brow. “An... Immunity Challenge?” he wondered aloud. King Justice looked to the door, probably hoping it would blast off its hinges and a supervillain would come and strap him to a rocket and blast him into the heart of the sun.

Or something.

Chapter Three

The Chapter in Which Even More Stuff Happens!

“Hey! Hey! Who ordered doughnuts?” Boom Boy asked as he strolled up to the curb. King Justice was gone, picking through the rubble of the League of Big Justice Headquarters of Big Justice while Pumpkin Pete wandered about the parking lot collecting doughnuts and any loose change he could find.

“No one ordered doughnuts,” I explained. “What? What? They just fell from the sky?” Boom Boy replied.

“Yeah. Kind of. After Pete blew up Donutz Village, it just kind of started raining doughnuts.”

Pete looked up. He was on the other side of the League of Big Justice Parking Lot of Big Parking with an armful of chocolate-frosted doughnuts and a fistful of change. “I didn’t do it!” he shouted.

“Wait a second! You’re saying that you blew up Donutz Village without me?” Boom Boy blurted out.

“What do you mean, without you? It’s not like Pete and I got together and said ‘Hey! Let’s blow up Donutz Village, but not invite Boom Boy.’ Pete blew it up by accident. I think.”

“So that’s how it’s going to be, huh? You think you can just go and blow up Donutz Village without Boom Boy?” Boom Boy snarled and balled his fists. “All those months of planning! Ruined! Those doughnuts should be mine, I tell you! Mine! I’ll show you what happens when you blow up Donutz Village without Boom Boy!”

With that, he stepped back from the curb and balled his fists. His face grew redder and redder as he prepared to blow himself up.

“Why’s Boom Boy trying to blow himself up?” Exact Change Kid asked. It was time for the daily sidekicks meeting and soon all of them would be here.

“Because we blew up Donutz Village without him,” I explained.

Boom Boy doubled over and grunted loudly. His face grew more and more red.

“What?! You blew up Donutz Village?” Exact Change Kid cried out. He pulled out his notebook from his utility belt and flipped to the middle. He tore out several pages and threw them at my feet. “All those months of planning! Ruined! Those doughnuts should be mine!”

I picked up one crumpled piece of paper. Across the top it read in large block letters: OPERATION DONUTZ VILLAGE. Below that it read in smaller letters: OBJECTIVE: TOTAL DONUT SUPREMACY. The other pages were filled with schematics, arrows, formulas, and a two-hundred-step plan to get all the doughnuts from Donutz Village.

The last page was a poorly drawn picture of Exact Change Kid sitting atop a mountain of doughnuts. Above his head was a banner that read KING DONUT.

Exact Change Kid doubled over and grunted loudly. His face grew more and more red as he and Boom Boy both clenched their fists tighter and gritted their teeth.

“What are you doing?” I said to Exact Change Kid. “You can’t blow yourself up!”

“I... know,” grunted Exact Change Kid between clenched teeth. “But right...now I’m...so...mad...I wish...I could!”

“If you guys want free doughnuts so badly, just go get some! They’re all over the place!” I pointed out. Suddenly Pete increased his pace of doughnut collecting, as if he knew competition was on its way.

“Wait!” Boom Boy said, and opened his eyes. “I get it now. I get it. You
want
me to blow up don’t you? Yeah. ’Cause once I do, I’ll be gone and then there’ll be more free doughnuts for you.”

“But I don’t want any of the doughnuts,” I informed him.

“And that’s how it better stay, because if you do, I swear, I swear I’ll blow myself up!”

“Yeah! I swear I’ll blow myself up, too!” Exact Change Kid threatened.

I dropped my head into my hands. Right about now I really wish one of those big buttons had blown
me
up.

“Maaa pam mam maa pah ma mam pamh mam?” Boy-in-the-Plastic-Bubble Boy asked as he rolled up in his Giant Hamster Ball of Justice. Large doughnuts were flattened all around the outside. The clear shell of his hamster ball looked as if it had acne.

Chocolate acne with pink and yellow sprinkles. “You’ll never guess,” Exact Change Kid said. “Speedy blew up Donutz Village.”

“MAAA PAM MA MA PAAA!? MA!? MA-HAHA-HAAAAAH!” Boy-in-the-Plastic-Bubble Boy yelled, and ran forward so fast he hit his forehead against the inside of his Giant Hamster Ball of Justice and slid down the inside like a big, pink hairless hamster who had just found out his favorite doughnut shop had been blown up by a guy with a pumpkin for a head.

“Technically,
I
didn’t blow it up,” I corrected. “It’s a little too late for apologies now,” Boom Boy grumbled. He peeled a squished doughnut from the side of Boy-in-the-Plastic-Bubble Boy’s Giant Hamster Ball of Justice, sniffed it once, shrugged his shoulders, and took a bite.

Boy-in-the-Plastic-Bubble Boy sat at the bottom of his giant ball and let out a sad whimper. He pulled a small, crumbled piece of paper from his utility belt and stared at it as if it were an old photograph. I could see only the top of the worn piece of paper.

PROJECT DONUTZ VILLAGE, it said.

“Did you guys hear?!” Spelling Beatrice yelled as she and Spice Girl raced up. “Someone blew up Donutz Village!!”

“Someone ... ?” Boom Boy asked in a sarcastic tone, and kicked me with his toe.

“Do you know how much more sad I could be right now?” Spice Girl asked. “None more. That’s how much more.”

I sat on the curb and watched Boom Boy and Exact Change Kid join Pumpkin Pete in his doughnut collecting. Boy-in-the-Plastic-Bubble Boy sat in the bottom of his Giant Hamster Ball of Justice and stared blankly at the failed ambitions of “Project Donutz Village.” King Justice returned with the broken left arm of his statue from the destroyed Hall of Heroes of Big Justice, and Spelling Beatrice quietly looked around the area.

“Where’s the Sidekick Super Clubhouse?” she finally asked.

All the other sidekicks froze. They joined Spelling Beatrice in her search and then, one by one, they turned and glared at me. I dropped my head into my hands, wishing that a supervillain would come and strap me to a rocket and blast me into the heart of the sun.

Or something.

Chapter Four

The Chapter That Is Not About Doughnuts

“I really, really, really, really think this is a terrible idea!” I said to my mom again, but this time I added a fourth “really” because three “reallys” just didn’t seem to faze her.

And don’t think I’m not desperate enough to use five “reallys.” Someone much smarter than me and much more dead once said, “Desperate times call for more reallys.” Or something like that. I wasn’t paying very much attention in class that day.

“It’s the least I could do,” my mom explained. “After all, you
did
blow up their secret fort.”

“It wasn’t a secret fort, and I didn’t blow it up!” I defended.

“Don’t talk back to your mother,” Pumpkin Pete said, and closed the refrigerator door. He had a POW! soda in one hand and last night’s leftover meatloaf in the other. He tossed the meat-loaf into the microwave, popped open the top on the POW! soda, leaned against the kitchen counter, and asked, “So, this dump get cable TV, or what?”

I grabbed my mom by the arm and led her from the kitchen. I moved her through the living room and past King Justice, who was eagerly pushing a vacuum across the carpet.

“Flee before my sucking might, villainous dust bunnies!” King Justice yelled, and jabbed the vacuum hose under the couch. The long vacuum extension looked like a slender toothpick in his massive, heroic hands. “Your grime! Spree! Is! Over!”

“Mom? Why is King Justice wearing an apron?”

“He didn’t want to get his Spandex dirty,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, as if there was nothing more natural than Earth’s greatest superhero draped in an apron that had KISS THE COOK emblazoned across the front in letters shaped like carrots and broccoli.

I led my mom to the bathroom and closed the door. “I know the League of Big Justice Hall of Justice was blown up, but do you really think it’s a good idea to let them use our house as a temporary headquarters?” I asked.

My mom thought for a moment. “Well...it
is
just temporary. And I told them they weren’t allowed in your room. I know how embarrassing you think that is.”

Embarrassing? I’ll tell you what embarrassing is. Embarrassing is wearing brightly colored Spandex. Embarrassing is when that brightly colored Spandex creeps up your butt and you’re dying to pick it out, but you’re in the middle of a grand opening ceremony for a new supermarket and are surrounded by ten thousand people with cameras. Embarrassing is when you’re surfing the Web a few days later and find out that one of those ten thousand people with a camera followed you around the corner and took a photo while you “secretly” did a little Spandex-picking. Embarrassing is when the other sidekicks start calling you “Picky” for a week.
That’s
embarrassing.

Having your mom drive up in the car while you sit on the curb in front of a mountain of rubble that
used
to be the League of Big Justice Hall of Justice and then offer to let the League of Big Justice use your home as their headquarters until the rubble is cleared out is
not
embarrassing.

It’s the most humiliating day in your life is what it is.

At first King Justice had turned down my mom’s “generous offer to use her humble and common two-story domicile to house the greatest good the world has ever known.” But then Pete pulled out the League of Big Justice Super Emergency Manual for Really Bad Emergencies and read aloud, “In the event of a really bad emergency” — here he looked at the smoking ruins of Donutz Village — “in the event of a really bad emergency, protocol calls for the League of Big Justice.. .” he lowered the book again and stated, “That would be us,” then returned to reading, “... the League of Big Justice to convene at the most immediately available location, especially if said location is supplied by the Sidekick responsible for blowing up Donutz Village in the first place.” He slammed the book shut with a triumphant nod. “So it’s settled!”

“WHAT?!” I exploded. “It doesn’t say that!” “Well, maybe not
that
exactly, but it’s the basic gist. More or less.” Pete shrugged.

And so there we were, the League of Big Justice doing yard work, the Sidekicks laughing at me, and Pumpkin Pete eating everything that wasn’t nailed down.

“But what if evil attacks? Did you ever think about that?” I asked my mom as we stood in the bathroom.

“Honey, the best place to hide an egg is in the chicken coop,” she replied.

“What? I don’t even know what that means!” My mom opened the bathroom door and headed out. “You can use that super speed of yours to run around evil invasions and death rays, but you can’t use it to run around life.”

“Couldn’t you at least wear the Identity Containment Apparatus like you did at the League of Big Justice Family Picnic of Egg Salad or whatever that thing was called?” I thrust the ICA unit into my mom’s hands.

“You want me to wear a paper bag over my head in my
own house
?” my mom huffed.

“It’s not just a paper bag,” I quickly pointed out, hoping to convince her it wasn’t just a paper bag, which would be rather difficult because it
was
just a paper bag. “It’s an Identity Containment Apparatus designed specifically to protect your identity and make sure that no supervillain knows you’re related to —”

BOOK: The Brotherhood of Rotten Babysitters
8.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Karavans by Jennifer Roberson
Cold Death (D.S.Hunter Kerr) by Fowler, Michael
Guilty by Karen Robards
Skinwalkers by Hill, Bear
2 The Judas Kiss by Angella Graff
It's a Tiger! by David LaRochelle
Unlocked by Ryan G. Van Cleave
Pietr el Letón by Georges Simenon