The Magic Eraser Read online

  His pants were still there, and still stained. But they were now floating on top of a geyser of water that was shooting up from where the toilet tank had been.

  Uh-oh.

  He shouldn’t have closed his eyes.

  Because Carson had rubbed the toilet tank instead of the pants.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE FLOOD

  The water shooting from the toilet was covering the floor, and Carson had no choice but to run. He had to leave his pants behind. They were soaked, anyway. There was no way he could wear them now.

  Less than an inch of water had collected on the floor when Carson ran for the exit, but it felt like he was fleeing a tidal wave. And as he broke out into the basement hallway, he screamed, “Take cover!”

  “Holy penne rigate!” Riley yelled. “Where are your pants?”

  “It’s not important,” he said. “We’ve gotta go. Now!”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Riley said as she held up a hand. “Before we go anywhere, answer me this one question: Does your underwear have MONDAY written on it?”

  Monday wasn’t written on it. It was stitched on it.

  Carson’s father had bought him underwear for every day of the week. Carson had nearly a month’s worth of underwear like this: four pairs of Mondays, four pairs of Tuesdays, and so on. His father believed it made getting dressed in the morning easier because it narrowed down the choices. But what it obviously ended up doing was embarrassing his son.

  Carson’s face turned bright red and he mumbled, “Undergarments are unimportant right now. We gotta move.”

  That’s when the water came spilling through the crack under the door to the Dungeon. And Carson didn’t need to say another word. Riley bolted. And Carson followed.

  There was nowhere else to hide in the basement.

  All the doors were locked. So Riley led Carson to a stairway that climbed toward the back of the gym.

  “If we go that way, I have to cut across the gym!” Carson cried. “In the middle of a class. In my underwear!”

  “You mean in your Monday undies,” Riley reminded him. “Sorry, but this is our best option. Because if we go the way we came in, we’ll end up near the teachers’ lounge, and we’re sure to get in trouble then. Plus, I have the perfect plan to sneak you into the equipment room, where you can wait until I find Bryce Dodd and his jeans.”

  “Okay, so what do we need to do?” Carson asked.

  “Gimme the eraser,” she said.

  “What?” Carson said, holding the eraser tight to his chest. “No. Not after what you did to me at lunch.”

  “I’m sorry that I do hilarious things,” Riley said. “But I also do very smart things. You’re gonna have to trust me. We’re running out of time.”

  It wasn’t an exaggeration. They were standing at the bottom of the stairway, and the hall was quickly filling up with water.

  “Fine,” Carson said, and he handed Riley the eraser. “You better know what you’re doing.”

  “I always do,” Riley said as she hopped up the stairs. “Wait here.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  UP A ROPE

  The water was up to the first stair and it was coming faster every second.

  Carson climbed up to the fifth stair to stay dry. He wasn’t sure what was making him more nervous: the water or not knowing what Riley was doing with the eraser.

  She had told him to wait there, but he couldn’t do it. Even though he trusted Riley, he knew her love of mischief often influenced her decisions. He would risk being spotted in his underwear if it meant he could keep an eye on her.

  So Carson climbed to the top of the stairs, which led to a short hallway and a door that opened into the back of the gym. When he got on his tippy-toes, he could peer through a window in the door and see what was happening.

  The gym was full of second-graders practicing gymnastics. There were kids on balance beams, others on parallel bars, and one trying to figure out the pommel horse. None of them seemed to notice Riley, who was climbing a rope in the middle of the gym.

  The higher she got, the more worried Carson got.

  What was she going to do?

  What if Mr. Trundle, the gym teacher, saw her?

  How was she possibly going to distract everyone in the gym so that it was safe for Carson to run to the equipment room?

  When Riley was near the top of the rope, she held on with one hand while holding the eraser with the other.

  Below, the second-graders jumped and tumbled.

  Above, Riley lifted the eraser and rubbed something on the ceiling.

  Then she climbed a little higher and reached her arm up into a hole in the ceiling that she had just created. Carson thought she might be making the lightbulbs disappear. It would be a clever way to make the gym dark enough for Carson to sneak through undetected.

  But all lights remained on.

  And Riley climbed a little higher, until the upper half of her body was hidden in the ceiling.

  And that’s when it happened.

  The unthinkable.

  It started raining cockroaches.

  As in . . . COCKROACHES!

  And not just any cockroaches. Giant Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

  Chapter Sixteen

  THE “WAIT A MINUTE, IS THIS A HISTORY CHAPTER?” CHAPTER

  You want to know about the cockroaches, right?

  Of course you do.

  We’ll get to that. Promise. But first, some history.

  Hopewell Elementary School wasn’t always an elementary school. In fact, it was once a random collection of neutrons, protons, electrons, antielectrons, photons, and neutrinos floating around outer space in the seconds after the big bang.

  Okay, to be fair, we were all a random collection of neutrons, protons, electrons, antielectrons, photons, and neutrinos floating around outer space in the seconds after the big bang.

  Let’s talk about more recent history. Like 13.7 billion years or so later.

  Long after the big bang, long after our sun and solar system and Earth were formed, and long after the age of dinosaurs, there was a forest. And in that forest, there was a hole in the ground.

  The hole glowed a beautiful orange and seemed to have no bottom. But if you dropped something into the hole, it always shot right back out, like popcorn popping out of hot oil.

  Animals would come to the hole whenever they were thirsty or hungry or afraid. And somehow, some way, whatever they wanted would appear.

  If a bear wanted blueberries, then a bush would bloom behind him.

  If a fox wanted a drink, a trickle of water would slide down from some leaves above and fall into her mouth.

  If a duck wanted a friend, another duck would suddenly show up, flapping and quacking in delight.

  This hole was a wonderful and magical hole. And it performed its magic every day.

  Until an adult found it.

  This adult was foolish, as adults often are. He didn’t like wonderful, glowing holes in the ground, for some reason. So when he came upon it, he covered the hole with a big flat stone. Then he covered that stone with another stone. He kept stacking stones upon stones until he had made the foundation for a house.

  He built a house upon that foundation and he lived in that house for many years. But the hole didn’t give him anything he wanted because magical glowing holes won’t do that if you’re foolish enough to cover them up.

  The house stood for a long time, long after the adult died. During those many years, other adults with axes and saws cut down the forest around the house. They built roads around the house, as well as farms and stores. The place that was once a forest eventually became a town.

  But they didn’t have a school. So the town turned the house into a one-room schoolhouse. Years went by. The population grew. So they added to
the schoolhouse.

  It became a two-room schoolhouse.

  Then a four-room schoolhouse.

  Then eight. Then sixteen.

  Then they couldn’t add anything more. It was easier to start over.

  They tore it all down and built a big school in its place. But they didn’t move the stone that covered the hole. In fact, they poured concrete over it.

  The big school served every student in town from kindergarten to twelfth grade. They called it the Hopewell School, because, well, they hoped everything went well there. And it did, for the most part.

  They built four hundred lockers in the school, one for every student. One of those lockers was Locker 37. But it was a regular locker back then.

  The population kept growing. The school was not big enough for all of the students. So they built a middle school and a high school at the other end of town.

  This is when the Hopewell School became Hopewell Elementary. It was a very important moment in the history of the universe.

  On the first day that it was officially named Hopewell Elementary, there was an assembly. The fourth-graders piled into the cafetorium, where the music teacher gave them the lyrics to the new school song. It was their job to learn the song and teach it to the younger students. The song went as follows:

  At Hopewell Elementary

  We’re all put to the test.

  Living our lives honorably

  We’re kind to every guest.

  We fill the world with harmony.

  We never, ever rest.

  At Hopewell Elementary

  We always try our best.

  The music teacher taught the fourth-graders to sing the last line as loud as they could and to stomp after the last three words. The fourth-graders happily did as taught, because being loud and stomping is something fourth-graders are quite good at. In fact, they stomped so hard that it shook the floor beneath the cafetorium.

  The shaking floor shook the school’s foundation, which caused the concrete to crack in a spot directly below a hallway full of lockers.

  That crack spread to the rock that covered the hole.

  Orange light snuck through the crack.

  And (cue some glorious music!) magic returned to the spot for the first time in a long time.

  Therefore, when a girl named Charlotte Dover opened her locker later that same morning, she found an infinitely regenerating peanut butter and jelly sandwich inside, which solved her problem: She had forgotten her lunch and had no lunch money.

  Her locker was, you guessed it: Locker 37.

  From that day forward, the fourth-graders knew about Locker 37. But they kept the secret to themselves, as all fourth-graders in the future would agree to do.

  To everyone else, Hopewell Elementary seemed entirely normal.

  It had a playground with a rock in the middle of it that kids sometimes tripped over.

  It had an art room with a window that faced the sun, which would shine in the eyes of kids who were trying to paint pictures of bowls of fruit.

  It had a giant terrarium, next to a heating vent, in a classroom above the gym.

  What’s a terrarium, you ask?

  In simple terms, it’s like an aquarium, but without the fish. Sometimes there are reptiles or amphibians in them. Sometimes spiders.

  This particular terrarium, however, was full of Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

  Chapter Seventeen

  IN THE TERRARIUM

  Madagascar hissing cockroaches are the biggest cockroaches in the world. Fully grown, they’re more than two inches long. But they’re not like the cockroaches so many people fear.

  They don’t hide in your walls and eat your garbage. They’re vegetarians that enjoy fresh leaves for lunch.

  They don’t bite or sting or do anything harmful. But they hiss when they’re scared.

  Until Riley made it disappear, the terrarium full of Madagascar hissing cockroaches was in Mrs. Rosenstein’s classroom. Mrs. Rosenstein was the health teacher and an amateur entomologist, which is a fancy name for someone who’s really into bugs. She loved beetles and honeybees, grasshoppers and praying mantises. But her favorite insects to study were Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

  Riley knew that there was a vent in the ceiling of the gym, and that vent was below another vent that connected directly to Mrs. Rosenstein’s classroom.

  How did she know this? Because every fourth-grader knew this.

  Even if Mrs. Rosenstein wasn’t their teacher, every kid would visit her classroom and meet the cockroaches by the time they reached fourth grade. And every kid who met the cockroaches would learn that the noise coming through the vents from the gym below would scare the cockroaches and make them hiss.

  “They feel the same way about dodgeball that you do,” Mrs. Rosenstein had joked one day when Riley was staring through the terrarium glass at the dozens of cockroaches.

  “What would happen if they got out?” Riley asked.

  “If there was no vent behind the terrarium,” Mrs. Rosenstein said, “I suppose they might fall into the gym.”

  “Wouldn’t that hurt them?” Riley asked.

  “They’d be fine,” Mrs. Rosenstein said. “They don’t have wings like other cockroaches. But they’re just as tough. It might scare the gym class, though.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  OPERATION COCKROACH RAIN

  It did scare the gym class.

  A few seconds after Riley erased the vents and the terrarium, the cockroaches started falling from above.

  They hissed as they fell onto the mats, and they hissed as they fell into the hair of the second-graders. They hissed as they scurried along the floor. They hissed as the children screamed.

  “Wah!”

  Hiss!

  “Wahhh!”

  Hiss!

  “Wahhhhh!”

  Hiss!

  And Mr. Trundle, the gym teacher, shouted, “Run, children, run! The end of days is upon us!”

  This was an overreaction. The end of days was not upon them. But the end of class was.

  There was a stampede for the exit. In a matter of seconds, the gym was empty. Except for Riley, of course, and the nearly one hundred hissing cockroaches that were now climbing on the balance beam, the uneven bars, and the pommel horse.

  Riley slid down the rope and yelled, “Operation Cockroach Rain is a success! The coast is clear, Carson! Move your Monday undies that way!”

  Then she pointed to the door in the back that led to the equipment room.

  Of all the ways she could have snuck Carson through the gym, this is the one Riley chose? A rain of cockroaches?

  It shouldn’t have surprised Carson. Riley always found the most ridiculous solutions to problems. But she always found solutions.

  She was strangely brilliant. And brilliantly strange.

  Carson opened the door slowly and took a few steps into the gym. A minefield of cockroaches lay in front of him. He didn’t love cockroaches, but he definitely didn’t want to squish any.

  So he tiptoed over the gym mats, whispering “shoo, shoo, shoo,” as he went. But the cockroaches didn’t shoo. Instead, they started climbing his bare legs.

  “This. Was. A. Terrible. Plan,” Carson said through clenched teeth as the cockroaches brushed their antennae against his skin, tickling his knee.

  “Settle down, roach magnet,” Riley said. “They’re harmless.”

  “If they’re so harmless then you should scoop them all up and bring them back to Mrs. Rosenstein,” Carson said as he gently nudged one off his thigh with the backs of his fingers.

  “No time for that. I’m off to find Bryce and his jeans,” Riley said as she tossed Carson the eraser.

  It bounced once on the floor . . . twice . . . and then . . . Carson caught it.


  “Careful,” Carson said. “What if the floor disappeared?”

  Riley shrugged him off. “It didn’t, so who cares? Stop with the what-ifs and go hide. I’m off to get those jeans.”

  No amount of begging and pleading could keep Riley there in the gym with Carson. And by the time she was through the exit, his bare legs were covered in cockroaches.

  Using the eraser on them would’ve been too dangerous. If he slipped, he could possibly erase himself. So instead, he screamed, “Get off of me!” and he shook his body like he was a wet dog.

  Cockroaches flew in all directions and landed on the floor unharmed. They started to skitter back toward Carson.

  He leaped forward.

  And leaped again.

  And again.

  Hopping from spot to spot, careful not to land on any cockroaches, until he had made it all the way to the equipment room.

  Once he was inside, he slammed the door shut.

  Chapter Nineteen

  IN THE DARK

  It was so dark in the equipment room that Carson couldn’t see the walls. He didn’t know where the light switch was. He was worried that if he stumbled through the darkness pawing for it, he’d trip over a hockey stick or a tennis racket and sprain his ankle.

  So he sat down on the floor. And he waited.

  He was so disappointed in himself.

  If he had only used the eraser on the stain as soon as he pulled it out of Locker 37, he wouldn’t be hiding pantless in a dark equipment room. He’d be in math class right now. Even if they were multiplying fractions, which he still didn’t understand, he’d much rather be there.

  His breath quickened. His heart thumped. He felt a tear slip down his face. Then another. Then more than he could count.