- Home
- Aaron Starmer
The Magic Eraser Page 2
The Magic Eraser Read online
Page 2
Answer: not very easy.
Want proof? Keep reading.
Chapter Eight
THE “WAIT A SECOND, IS THIS A MATH CHAPTER?” CHAPTER
How long would it take Carson to open Locker 37 if he didn’t have that helpful note from last year’s fourth-graders? Let’s do the arithmetic and see!
(Feel free to pull out a pencil and paper and follow along. Or feel free to skip this chapter. The author and your math teacher will be very disappointed, but hey, it’s your life.)
It takes about 10 seconds to dial a 3-number combination. Try it. Get a padlock. Time yourself. If you can dial a combination faster, pat yourself on the back and take the rest of the day off. Because you’re exceptional. But for most people, it will take about 10 seconds.
ONE 3-NUMBER COMBINATION
=
10 SECONDS TO DIAL
Let’s assume Carson was like most people.
There are 60 seconds in 1 minute, which means Carson could realistically try 6 combinations in 1 minute. That number 6 comes from taking 60 seconds and dividing them by 10 seconds per combination.
1 MINUTE
=
60 SECONDS
60 SECONDS
÷
10 SECONDS
=
6 COMBINATIONS PER MINUTE
There are 60 minutes in 1 hour, so that’s 360 combinations in 1 hour, or 6 combinations per minute multiplied by 60 minutes.
1 HOUR
=
60 MINUTES
6 COMBINATIONS PER MINUTE
×
60 MINUTES
=
360 COMBINATIONS PER HOUR
The Hopewell Elementary school day runs from 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. That’s 7 hours in 1 school day.
1 SCHOOL DAY = 7 HOURS
360 COMBINATIONS PER HOUR
×
7 HOURS
=
2,520 COMBINATIONS PER SCHOOL DAY
Dialing 360 combinations per hour for 7 hours (or 360 multiplied by 7) means that on an average school day at Hopewell Elementary, Carson could try 2,520 combinations.
Pretty good, right?
ZZZ
Pretty tiring, actually.
Because Carson couldn’t stop to eat lunch, chat with friends, or even take a bathroom break! All he could do for the entire school day is turn that dial. And it gets worse!
The dial had 50 numbers on it (0 to 49).
50 NUMBERS ON THE DIAL
To figure out the number of possible 3-number combinations, multiply 50 by 50 by 50. Mathematicians call this 50 to the third power.
50 NUMBERS ON THE DIAL
×
3 NUMBERS IN THE COMBINATION
50 × 50 × 50
=
503
It sounds powerful.
It is powerful! The result is 125,000 possible combinations!
503 = 125,000
To try all 125,000 possible combinations, it would take Carson nearly 50 full school days. That’s 125,000 combinations divided by 2,520 combinations per school day. (Which actually equals 49.6031746032, but why don’t we round up to 50 because we don’t hate ourselves, okay?)
125,000 COMBINATIONS
÷
2,520 COMBINATIONS PER SCHOOL DAY
=
50 SCHOOL DAYS TO TRY EVERY COMBINATION
Since there are 5 school days in a week, we can take 50 school days divided by 5 days per week to learn that it would take 10 full school weeks of doing nothing but turning a dial.
50 SCHOOL DAYS
÷
5 DAYS PER WEEK
=
10 SCHOOL WEEKS
Looks like Carson is going to fail fourth grade!
But wait, it gets worse.
This is assuming Carson knew which locker to try. What if he didn’t?
There were 400 lockers in Hopewell Elementary. Many of those lockers were unused, but Carson didn’t know which ones were full of books, which ones were empty, and which ones were magical.
Assuming Carson tried the lockers in numerical order, starting with Locker 1, he would reach Locker 37 relatively early in the process. This would take 370 weeks of school, or 10 weeks of school per locker multiplied by 37 lockers.
10 SCHOOL WEEKS PER LOCKER TO TRY ALL COMBINATIONS
×
37 LOCKERS
=
370 WEEKS
There are 40 weeks in the school year at Hopewell Elementary. So, 370 weeks of trying lockers divided by 40 weeks per year equals 9 ¼ years.
370 WEEKS
÷
40 WEEKS IN THE SCHOOL YEAR
=
9 ¼ YEARS
9 ¼ YEARS!!!
Again, that’s 9 ¼ years.
YEARS!
What that means is this: When most of Carson’s classmates would be starting college, Carson would have failed fourth grade 9 times. But he also would have finally opened that problem-solving locker. Hooray!
But what if he tried the lockers in random order? And what if, by random chance, the last locker he tried was Locker 37?
400 lockers times 10 weeks per locker divided by 40 weeks per school year means Carson would be spinning combination dials for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 40 weeks a year, for . . . 100 YEARS.
4OO LOCKERS
×
10 WEEKS PER LOCKER
÷
40 WEEKS PER SCHOOL YEAR
=
100 YEARS
Congratulations, Carson! You are now 109 years old, officially the oldest fourth-grader in the world. Enjoy the locker that solves problems! Your biggest problem is that you’re now probably dead.
This is all a very complicated (and very educational!) way to say that Carson was lucky. It would be basically impossible for someone to find and open Locker 37 without first discovering that note.
This is a good thing. Because guess what was inside Locker 37?
Chapter Nine
THE THING THAT WAS INSIDE LOCKER 37
An eraser.
A pink eraser.
A pink rubber eraser that fit in the palm of a hand.
That was all that Carson found in Locker 37. He held it, and stared at it, until someone said something.
“Hunter Barnes is a real slime.”
It was Riley Zimmerman, Carson’s best friend. Carson turned to find her lingering in the hall a few yards away.
Closing his hand over the eraser and looking down at the stain, Carson said, “Yeah, Hunter is the worst.”
Riley stepped forward and gave Carson a playful punch on the arm. “You can wear my gym shorts if you want.”
“Thanks, but I don’t know if that’s the solution,” Carson said, because he knew that wearing Riley’s neon green gym shorts would attract even more attention. And Hunter would tease him even more, especially since they were a girl’s shorts.
“What’re you doing down here, anyway?” Riley asked.
Carson shrugged. “A note told me that Locker 37 could solve my problem.”
(Remember: The note also told him that he could tell other fourth-graders about Locker 37, so Carson saw no harm in mentioning it to his closest friend.)
“Don’t believe everything you read,” Riley said as she peered over Carson’s shoulder to Locker 37. “So what’d ya find in there?”
“This,” Carson said, and he held the eraser up.
Snatching the eraser and looking at it closely, Riley said, “Well, it is an eraser.”
“It looks like
it’s for pencils, though,” Carson said with a sigh. “My problem is bigger than pencil marks.”
There was writing on the eraser that Carson hadn’t noticed. But Riley’s keen eye caught it. “It says Rub Three Times,” she told Carson.
“I wish things were that simple,” Carson said.
Maybe they were.
Because out of curiosity, Riley walked to the other side of the hall, where there weren’t any lockers. She held the eraser out and rubbed it on a brick in the wall.
One time.
Two times.
Three times.
Suddenly sunlight poured into the dark hallway. There was now a hole in the wall. The brick had disappeared.
Chapter Ten
DISAPPEARANCES
“Holy ravioli!” Riley cried as she stuck her hand through the hole and felt the warm September air. “It’s gone!”
It sure was. The hole in the wall was the exact same size and shape as the brick. There was no rubble on the ground. There was no dust. It was like popping a bubble. The brick was there, and then—pop!
Terrified, Riley dropped the eraser. Terrified again, she jumped back and yelled, “Watch out! The floor might disappear!”
The floor didn’t disappear. Because the eraser was smarter than that.
“It says Rub Three Times on it,” Carson told her as he picked it up. “Maybe that’s so it doesn’t make things disappear by accident.”
Carson put it to the test. He paced over to a locked janitor closet at the end of the hall. He rubbed the eraser on the doorknob once.
Nothing.
Two times.
Nope.
Three times. Pop. Just like that, the doorknob was gone.
“Holy rigatoni!” Riley cried, and the door swung open to reveal a shelf of laundry detergent and five more shelves stacked with rolls of the world’s driest, scratchiest, cheapest toilet paper.
“We’ve gotta get outta here,” Carson said.
“No, we’ve gotta cover our tracks first,” Riley said.
Thinking quickly, Riley peeled a poster off the wall. The poster said MISTAKES ARE PROOF THAT YOU’RE TRYING. She placed it over the hole where the brick once was.
Then she wadded up some toilet paper and jammed the wad under the door of the janitor closet. It did the trick. It kept it closed.
“Now can we go?” Carson asked.
Riley’s answer was to run away, as fast as she could. Carson slipped the eraser in his pocket and followed.
Chapter Eleven
THE LEGS DILEMMA
Carson was too scared to use the eraser. It stayed in his pocket through the morning. But of course it was the only thing he could think about.
By the time lunch came around, he decided to take it out of his pocket. He had no lunch to stare at, so he stared at the eraser. It looked like a perfectly normal pink pencil eraser.
Obviously, it wasn’t. It was magic.
Carson’s eyes turned to his pants. The stain was still there. He wanted it gone, and the solution seemed to be in his hand. But again, he was scared.
What if he rubbed the stain three times and more than the stain disappeared? What if his pants disappeared? What if his legs disappeared?
Was that a risk he was willing to take?
“Go for it, dude,” Riley said. Riley was munching on fish sticks when she said this, so it was very possible that she didn’t give the best advice.
“Easy for you to say,” Carson whispered. “It’s not your pants we’re talking about. Or, you know, the lower half of your body.”
Riley nodded and took another bite. “So we test it out on some other things,” she said.
It was a good idea, but they went about it all wrong. Instead of staining a napkin with ketchup and seeing if the eraser would remove the stain, Riley tried something else first.
She snatched the eraser from Carson. And before Carson knew what was happening, his butt was hitting the ground.
“Oww!” Carson yelped from the floor.
“Holy macaroni!” Riley said with a laugh. “It worked on your chair. So cool!”
“Of course it worked on my chair,” Carson said as he stood up. Rubbing his lower back, he surveyed the cafetorium. No one seemed to notice what had happened.
No one, that is, except Hunter Barnes.
Hunter didn’t see the eraser make the chair disappear. He only saw the aftermath.
But that was enough.
“Hey, everyone!” Hunter shouted as he pointed. “Carson is falling on his butt for some reason! Is it because he had another accident in his PANTS? Seems like the only possible answer!”
Carson snatched the eraser back from Riley and said, “Great. Now we have to get outta here, too.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the Dungeon.”
Chapter Twelve
THE DUNGEON
The bathroom in the basement of Hopewell Elementary had been called the Dungeon for as long as anyone could remember. And if Locker 37 was the most amazing thing in the known universe, then the Dungeon was possibly the most depressing.
The Dungeon was rarely used, which is usually good for a bathroom. It usually means the place is in tip-top shape.
The Dungeon was not in tip-top shape. The fixtures on the sinks were rusty. Large, dark, butterfly-shaped stains marked the porcelain. The lights flickered. And there was always a dripping sound, but it was impossible to locate its source.
Carson had never been in the Dungeon. He had only heard stories about desperate kids who had rushed in with their hands on their zippers and rushed out with terrified looks on their faces. These stories were always told in whispers that made them sound like near-death experiences.
“I’m lucky I made it outta there alive,” kids would basically say.
Carson was willing to risk death today, because he knew the Dungeon was probably the most private place in the school. But . . .
“I can’t go in there!” Riley screamed as she stood at the door to the Dungeon.
“Don’t be scared,” Carson said.
“I’m not scared,” Riley said. “I’m a girl.”
The Dungeon didn’t have urinals or a sign that indicated it was a boys’ bathroom, but because of its decrepit condition, everyone assumed it was.
Carson knew it didn’t matter whether girls went into boys’ bathrooms or boys went into girls’ bathrooms. In fact, half the restaurants in town had bathrooms that anyone was allowed to go in. Riley was just making an excuse. But he could understand that. It’s hard to admit you’re scared.
“Fine,” he said. “You stand guard at the door. I’ll go in there, take off my pants, try the eraser, and if my pants disappear, then I’ll call for you.”
“I’m definitely not going in there if you’re pantless!” Riley said.
“You don’t have to go in,” Carson said. “Just find Bryce Dodd. He loves wearing shorts, but he hates cold weather. So he puts jeans on over his shorts every chilly morning, and then he takes the jeans off at lunch when the weather starts to get warm.”
“Huh,” Riley said. “That’s . . . weird.”
“Bryce is weird,” Carson said. “But he’s also nice. Tell him I need to borrow his jeans and he’ll give them to you. I can stay in the Dungeon if I need to. No one will bother me in here.”
“If that’s what you think is the best plan,” Riley said.
It was the best plan, because it was Carson’s only plan.
He nodded, took a deep breath, and stepped through the door and into the Dungeon.
Chapter Thirteen
UNLUCKY
The Dungeon was worse than Carson had imagined.
The smell of mold was overpowering.
The mirrors were all cracked, and so when Carson caught a glimpse of his reflection, it loo
ked like his face had been taken apart and clumsily put back together.
The drip was not the only sound that echoed through the room. There was a high-pitched squeal coming from above. Muffled scream? The cry of a ghost? It was hard to tell. All Carson knew was that he wanted to get this over with.
He hurried to a stall in the back corner and pulled its door shut. The walls of the stall were covered in strange graffiti that said things like:
Greta Hallowell Is Still Invisible
Try Not to Trust Zero Gravity
Flush The Toilet + U Will B Sucked into the Burrito Dimension!
Carson didn’t understand what any of these things meant, but they made him nervous. For a naturally nervous kid in an exceedingly nerve-racking situation, he didn’t exactly need that. He wanted to be done with this and move on.
So as fast as he could, he pulled his pants off. He almost fell over, but he had the graffiti-stained wall there to brace his body against.
Once his pants were off, he wasn’t sure where to put them. The floor was too grimy. It would simply add more stains. And if there was ever a hook on the door, it had been removed years ago.
He didn’t want the pants touching his body when he rubbed them with the eraser. So he had only one option.
The toilet.
The toilet tank was old, but it was the cleanest thing around.
He draped the pants over the tank and crouched down, holding the eraser in front of the stain. He crossed his fingers and closed his eyes.
Then he rubbed.
Three times.
The drip and the high-pitched squeal were now replaced by the sound of rushing water.
Whoosh!
And Carson’s face was suddenly wet.
He opened his eyes to find the toilet tank was gone.
Want proof? Keep reading.
Chapter Eight
THE “WAIT A SECOND, IS THIS A MATH CHAPTER?” CHAPTER
How long would it take Carson to open Locker 37 if he didn’t have that helpful note from last year’s fourth-graders? Let’s do the arithmetic and see!
(Feel free to pull out a pencil and paper and follow along. Or feel free to skip this chapter. The author and your math teacher will be very disappointed, but hey, it’s your life.)
It takes about 10 seconds to dial a 3-number combination. Try it. Get a padlock. Time yourself. If you can dial a combination faster, pat yourself on the back and take the rest of the day off. Because you’re exceptional. But for most people, it will take about 10 seconds.
ONE 3-NUMBER COMBINATION
=
10 SECONDS TO DIAL
Let’s assume Carson was like most people.
There are 60 seconds in 1 minute, which means Carson could realistically try 6 combinations in 1 minute. That number 6 comes from taking 60 seconds and dividing them by 10 seconds per combination.
1 MINUTE
=
60 SECONDS
60 SECONDS
÷
10 SECONDS
=
6 COMBINATIONS PER MINUTE
There are 60 minutes in 1 hour, so that’s 360 combinations in 1 hour, or 6 combinations per minute multiplied by 60 minutes.
1 HOUR
=
60 MINUTES
6 COMBINATIONS PER MINUTE
×
60 MINUTES
=
360 COMBINATIONS PER HOUR
The Hopewell Elementary school day runs from 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. That’s 7 hours in 1 school day.
1 SCHOOL DAY = 7 HOURS
360 COMBINATIONS PER HOUR
×
7 HOURS
=
2,520 COMBINATIONS PER SCHOOL DAY
Dialing 360 combinations per hour for 7 hours (or 360 multiplied by 7) means that on an average school day at Hopewell Elementary, Carson could try 2,520 combinations.
Pretty good, right?
ZZZ
Pretty tiring, actually.
Because Carson couldn’t stop to eat lunch, chat with friends, or even take a bathroom break! All he could do for the entire school day is turn that dial. And it gets worse!
The dial had 50 numbers on it (0 to 49).
50 NUMBERS ON THE DIAL
To figure out the number of possible 3-number combinations, multiply 50 by 50 by 50. Mathematicians call this 50 to the third power.
50 NUMBERS ON THE DIAL
×
3 NUMBERS IN THE COMBINATION
50 × 50 × 50
=
503
It sounds powerful.
It is powerful! The result is 125,000 possible combinations!
503 = 125,000
To try all 125,000 possible combinations, it would take Carson nearly 50 full school days. That’s 125,000 combinations divided by 2,520 combinations per school day. (Which actually equals 49.6031746032, but why don’t we round up to 50 because we don’t hate ourselves, okay?)
125,000 COMBINATIONS
÷
2,520 COMBINATIONS PER SCHOOL DAY
=
50 SCHOOL DAYS TO TRY EVERY COMBINATION
Since there are 5 school days in a week, we can take 50 school days divided by 5 days per week to learn that it would take 10 full school weeks of doing nothing but turning a dial.
50 SCHOOL DAYS
÷
5 DAYS PER WEEK
=
10 SCHOOL WEEKS
Looks like Carson is going to fail fourth grade!
But wait, it gets worse.
This is assuming Carson knew which locker to try. What if he didn’t?
There were 400 lockers in Hopewell Elementary. Many of those lockers were unused, but Carson didn’t know which ones were full of books, which ones were empty, and which ones were magical.
Assuming Carson tried the lockers in numerical order, starting with Locker 1, he would reach Locker 37 relatively early in the process. This would take 370 weeks of school, or 10 weeks of school per locker multiplied by 37 lockers.
10 SCHOOL WEEKS PER LOCKER TO TRY ALL COMBINATIONS
×
37 LOCKERS
=
370 WEEKS
There are 40 weeks in the school year at Hopewell Elementary. So, 370 weeks of trying lockers divided by 40 weeks per year equals 9 ¼ years.
370 WEEKS
÷
40 WEEKS IN THE SCHOOL YEAR
=
9 ¼ YEARS
9 ¼ YEARS!!!
Again, that’s 9 ¼ years.
YEARS!
What that means is this: When most of Carson’s classmates would be starting college, Carson would have failed fourth grade 9 times. But he also would have finally opened that problem-solving locker. Hooray!
But what if he tried the lockers in random order? And what if, by random chance, the last locker he tried was Locker 37?
400 lockers times 10 weeks per locker divided by 40 weeks per school year means Carson would be spinning combination dials for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 40 weeks a year, for . . . 100 YEARS.
4OO LOCKERS
×
10 WEEKS PER LOCKER
÷
40 WEEKS PER SCHOOL YEAR
=
100 YEARS
Congratulations, Carson! You are now 109 years old, officially the oldest fourth-grader in the world. Enjoy the locker that solves problems! Your biggest problem is that you’re now probably dead.
This is all a very complicated (and very educational!) way to say that Carson was lucky. It would be basically impossible for someone to find and open Locker 37 without first discovering that note.
This is a good thing. Because guess what was inside Locker 37?
Chapter Nine
THE THING THAT WAS INSIDE LOCKER 37
An eraser.
A pink eraser.
A pink rubber eraser that fit in the palm of a hand.
That was all that Carson found in Locker 37. He held it, and stared at it, until someone said something.
“Hunter Barnes is a real slime.”
It was Riley Zimmerman, Carson’s best friend. Carson turned to find her lingering in the hall a few yards away.
Closing his hand over the eraser and looking down at the stain, Carson said, “Yeah, Hunter is the worst.”
Riley stepped forward and gave Carson a playful punch on the arm. “You can wear my gym shorts if you want.”
“Thanks, but I don’t know if that’s the solution,” Carson said, because he knew that wearing Riley’s neon green gym shorts would attract even more attention. And Hunter would tease him even more, especially since they were a girl’s shorts.
“What’re you doing down here, anyway?” Riley asked.
Carson shrugged. “A note told me that Locker 37 could solve my problem.”
(Remember: The note also told him that he could tell other fourth-graders about Locker 37, so Carson saw no harm in mentioning it to his closest friend.)
“Don’t believe everything you read,” Riley said as she peered over Carson’s shoulder to Locker 37. “So what’d ya find in there?”
“This,” Carson said, and he held the eraser up.
Snatching the eraser and looking at it closely, Riley said, “Well, it is an eraser.”
“It looks like
it’s for pencils, though,” Carson said with a sigh. “My problem is bigger than pencil marks.”
There was writing on the eraser that Carson hadn’t noticed. But Riley’s keen eye caught it. “It says Rub Three Times,” she told Carson.
“I wish things were that simple,” Carson said.
Maybe they were.
Because out of curiosity, Riley walked to the other side of the hall, where there weren’t any lockers. She held the eraser out and rubbed it on a brick in the wall.
One time.
Two times.
Three times.
Suddenly sunlight poured into the dark hallway. There was now a hole in the wall. The brick had disappeared.
Chapter Ten
DISAPPEARANCES
“Holy ravioli!” Riley cried as she stuck her hand through the hole and felt the warm September air. “It’s gone!”
It sure was. The hole in the wall was the exact same size and shape as the brick. There was no rubble on the ground. There was no dust. It was like popping a bubble. The brick was there, and then—pop!
Terrified, Riley dropped the eraser. Terrified again, she jumped back and yelled, “Watch out! The floor might disappear!”
The floor didn’t disappear. Because the eraser was smarter than that.
“It says Rub Three Times on it,” Carson told her as he picked it up. “Maybe that’s so it doesn’t make things disappear by accident.”
Carson put it to the test. He paced over to a locked janitor closet at the end of the hall. He rubbed the eraser on the doorknob once.
Nothing.
Two times.
Nope.
Three times. Pop. Just like that, the doorknob was gone.
“Holy rigatoni!” Riley cried, and the door swung open to reveal a shelf of laundry detergent and five more shelves stacked with rolls of the world’s driest, scratchiest, cheapest toilet paper.
“We’ve gotta get outta here,” Carson said.
“No, we’ve gotta cover our tracks first,” Riley said.
Thinking quickly, Riley peeled a poster off the wall. The poster said MISTAKES ARE PROOF THAT YOU’RE TRYING. She placed it over the hole where the brick once was.
Then she wadded up some toilet paper and jammed the wad under the door of the janitor closet. It did the trick. It kept it closed.
“Now can we go?” Carson asked.
Riley’s answer was to run away, as fast as she could. Carson slipped the eraser in his pocket and followed.
Chapter Eleven
THE LEGS DILEMMA
Carson was too scared to use the eraser. It stayed in his pocket through the morning. But of course it was the only thing he could think about.
By the time lunch came around, he decided to take it out of his pocket. He had no lunch to stare at, so he stared at the eraser. It looked like a perfectly normal pink pencil eraser.
Obviously, it wasn’t. It was magic.
Carson’s eyes turned to his pants. The stain was still there. He wanted it gone, and the solution seemed to be in his hand. But again, he was scared.
What if he rubbed the stain three times and more than the stain disappeared? What if his pants disappeared? What if his legs disappeared?
Was that a risk he was willing to take?
“Go for it, dude,” Riley said. Riley was munching on fish sticks when she said this, so it was very possible that she didn’t give the best advice.
“Easy for you to say,” Carson whispered. “It’s not your pants we’re talking about. Or, you know, the lower half of your body.”
Riley nodded and took another bite. “So we test it out on some other things,” she said.
It was a good idea, but they went about it all wrong. Instead of staining a napkin with ketchup and seeing if the eraser would remove the stain, Riley tried something else first.
She snatched the eraser from Carson. And before Carson knew what was happening, his butt was hitting the ground.
“Oww!” Carson yelped from the floor.
“Holy macaroni!” Riley said with a laugh. “It worked on your chair. So cool!”
“Of course it worked on my chair,” Carson said as he stood up. Rubbing his lower back, he surveyed the cafetorium. No one seemed to notice what had happened.
No one, that is, except Hunter Barnes.
Hunter didn’t see the eraser make the chair disappear. He only saw the aftermath.
But that was enough.
“Hey, everyone!” Hunter shouted as he pointed. “Carson is falling on his butt for some reason! Is it because he had another accident in his PANTS? Seems like the only possible answer!”
Carson snatched the eraser back from Riley and said, “Great. Now we have to get outta here, too.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the Dungeon.”
Chapter Twelve
THE DUNGEON
The bathroom in the basement of Hopewell Elementary had been called the Dungeon for as long as anyone could remember. And if Locker 37 was the most amazing thing in the known universe, then the Dungeon was possibly the most depressing.
The Dungeon was rarely used, which is usually good for a bathroom. It usually means the place is in tip-top shape.
The Dungeon was not in tip-top shape. The fixtures on the sinks were rusty. Large, dark, butterfly-shaped stains marked the porcelain. The lights flickered. And there was always a dripping sound, but it was impossible to locate its source.
Carson had never been in the Dungeon. He had only heard stories about desperate kids who had rushed in with their hands on their zippers and rushed out with terrified looks on their faces. These stories were always told in whispers that made them sound like near-death experiences.
“I’m lucky I made it outta there alive,” kids would basically say.
Carson was willing to risk death today, because he knew the Dungeon was probably the most private place in the school. But . . .
“I can’t go in there!” Riley screamed as she stood at the door to the Dungeon.
“Don’t be scared,” Carson said.
“I’m not scared,” Riley said. “I’m a girl.”
The Dungeon didn’t have urinals or a sign that indicated it was a boys’ bathroom, but because of its decrepit condition, everyone assumed it was.
Carson knew it didn’t matter whether girls went into boys’ bathrooms or boys went into girls’ bathrooms. In fact, half the restaurants in town had bathrooms that anyone was allowed to go in. Riley was just making an excuse. But he could understand that. It’s hard to admit you’re scared.
“Fine,” he said. “You stand guard at the door. I’ll go in there, take off my pants, try the eraser, and if my pants disappear, then I’ll call for you.”
“I’m definitely not going in there if you’re pantless!” Riley said.
“You don’t have to go in,” Carson said. “Just find Bryce Dodd. He loves wearing shorts, but he hates cold weather. So he puts jeans on over his shorts every chilly morning, and then he takes the jeans off at lunch when the weather starts to get warm.”
“Huh,” Riley said. “That’s . . . weird.”
“Bryce is weird,” Carson said. “But he’s also nice. Tell him I need to borrow his jeans and he’ll give them to you. I can stay in the Dungeon if I need to. No one will bother me in here.”
“If that’s what you think is the best plan,” Riley said.
It was the best plan, because it was Carson’s only plan.
He nodded, took a deep breath, and stepped through the door and into the Dungeon.
Chapter Thirteen
UNLUCKY
The Dungeon was worse than Carson had imagined.
The smell of mold was overpowering.
The mirrors were all cracked, and so when Carson caught a glimpse of his reflection, it loo
ked like his face had been taken apart and clumsily put back together.
The drip was not the only sound that echoed through the room. There was a high-pitched squeal coming from above. Muffled scream? The cry of a ghost? It was hard to tell. All Carson knew was that he wanted to get this over with.
He hurried to a stall in the back corner and pulled its door shut. The walls of the stall were covered in strange graffiti that said things like:
Greta Hallowell Is Still Invisible
Try Not to Trust Zero Gravity
Flush The Toilet + U Will B Sucked into the Burrito Dimension!
Carson didn’t understand what any of these things meant, but they made him nervous. For a naturally nervous kid in an exceedingly nerve-racking situation, he didn’t exactly need that. He wanted to be done with this and move on.
So as fast as he could, he pulled his pants off. He almost fell over, but he had the graffiti-stained wall there to brace his body against.
Once his pants were off, he wasn’t sure where to put them. The floor was too grimy. It would simply add more stains. And if there was ever a hook on the door, it had been removed years ago.
He didn’t want the pants touching his body when he rubbed them with the eraser. So he had only one option.
The toilet.
The toilet tank was old, but it was the cleanest thing around.
He draped the pants over the tank and crouched down, holding the eraser in front of the stain. He crossed his fingers and closed his eyes.
Then he rubbed.
Three times.
The drip and the high-pitched squeal were now replaced by the sound of rushing water.
Whoosh!
And Carson’s face was suddenly wet.
He opened his eyes to find the toilet tank was gone.
Spontaneous
The Whisper
The Only Ones
The Storyteller
Dweeb