The Cereal Box Crisis: A Short Story

This one's a riot! Have I already remarked that you remind me of the storytelling style of Bill Cosby?

Actually, if someone I knew had an irrational fear of heights, I _would_ attempt just such a gradual approach as Will used; only, I _wouldn't_ make that quantum leap from four feet to twelve feet. And when we did "graduate" to serious altitudes, I would choose places with safety rails!
 
That short story was hilarious. And Will and J. J. sounded exactly like normal elementary-school boys--great job with their characters.
 
Spaceman Pro vs. Rebel Scout

I know the title sounds like this is a story about a space war or something. It isn’t. Spaceman Pro is a really cool video game, and Rebel Scout is a history book. The ‘vs.’ part means I had to choose between them. The ‘battle’ started one morning in school. Tilly Smith, who was passing out homework assignments, handed me the fifth grade work. I glanced over it. I had one week to read a book called Rebel Scout and write a report on it. I was sure, from the deceiving title, that the book was about Star Wars. Once I got home and actually looked it over, the description on the jacket proclaimed the awful truth. It was a historical novel about this James Wilford person in the American Revolution. ‘Boooooring!’ I thought, and tossed it aside. I had a whole week to read it, so there was no hurry, right?

The next morning, Claudia disturbed me in the middle of Spaceman Pro.
“Willy Cuzzford, did you do your homework yet?”

She didn’t have to be so nosy—and I hate it how my sisters call me Willy. I prefer ‘Will’.

“I have a whole week,” I said. “I’m in the middle of blasting the Cruel
Colonel’s right-hand man to bits, so please leave me alone. I just gotta get past this level. Then I’ll start my homework.”

But when I finished that level (it was Level 45, by the way) the next one looked even cooler! I forgot all about Rebel Scout and settle down to the serious business of wiping an army of mutant robots off of Planet Platinum. By the time that difficult deed was accomplished, it was time to go to bed.

The next day (Wednesday), I rushed home after school, intent on
reaching Level 50 before nine o’clock (which was bedtime in my house). Harvey stopped me halfway down the street. “Say, Will, how far have you read in Rebel Scout? It’s a really great book.”

“Not as great as Spaceman Pro!” I said. “I got up to Level 46 yesterday.”

“How many levels does it have?’ Harvey asked.

“One hundred,” I replied. “I gotta get home and blast a few more mutant robots off the face of Planet Platinum. See you later!”

On Thursday, I got out Rebel Scout and opened up to the first chapter. I read the first few words, then glanced up. My eyes fell on my Spaceman Pro poster. It wouldn’t hurt to achieve Level 51 before continuing, I thought, and headed for the controls. The next thing I knew, Claudia’s voice snapped me out of blowing the mutant robot leader into uncharted space.

“Willy Cuzzford,” she said. “Have you started that homework yet?”

I finished my space mission before answering. “Um—no.”

“Then start it!” she ordered. I meant to, but a new level was on the screen, and I just HAD to continue....

I was shocked on Friday, when the teacher said, “Do any of the fifth graders want to tell the rest of the class about Rebel Scout?”

The cries of “Yes!” from the others drowned out my emphatic “No!” I was relieved when the teacher chose Kateri Felix. Just then, my eyes fell on my Spaceman Pro lunchbox. I immediately forgot the schoolroom, Kateri, and Rebel Scout as I planned how to finish the Cruel Colonel once and for all.

The next thing I knew, Kateri had finished—and I hadn’t heard a single
word!

“Oh, well,” I told myself. “I’ve still got the weekend.”

But, once again, Spaceman Pro took over my homework time, and it wasn’t until Sunday night that I remembered it. Panicking, I rushed to my room and began reading the book. I only got through chapter one before I fell asleep.

The next morning, I scribbled off a summary of what I’d read, aided by the jacket description. Here it is:

Rebel Scout is about James Wilford. He is a Patriot Spy. The Patriots were also called Rebels, like the ones in Star Wars. These rebels are fighting an empire, too, but this empire is British. Anyway, back to James. He has a mean uncle who’s for the empire. He has an mean aunt called Elizabeth and four pesky (and mean) little cousins. James is thirteen and works in his uncle’s store. He didn’t have to go to school because he signed some papers saying he was going to work for his mean uncle for about seven or ten years. His parents drowned eleven years ago, and James and his sister Abigail live with Mean Uncle Robert because they don’t have any other relatives. Abigail is always messing up the moneybox accounts by getting sick and slapping the family with doctor bills.

The first chapter only described his past, his family, and the current political situation, so the summary didn’t sound too good. I hoped the teacher wouldn’t notice. He probably never read the book, anyway, I thought!

My hopes were dashed when I saw my graded paper—it was a bad grade. Exactly HOW bad doesn’t concern you right now. Along with the depressing grade, I also brought home a new book for school. I was about to begin fighting the evil alien zoids of Planet Radium when I remembered the war of Spaceman Pro and Rebel Scout. There was no doubt about it—Spaceman Pro had won! I glanced at the title of my new book—The Star-Spangled Banner. Time for a new war—and this time, my homework was going to win!

THE END
 
The Mystery of J.J.’s Hat

My name is William Robert Cuzzford, and I’m a cool kid. I’ve got two cool pals—Harvey Hillers and J.J. Jones. This mystery is about J.J. He’s a kid whose top goal is to be Extra Cool. He wears the latest stuff and gets the latest hairdos. Once, when the fads were changing really fast, he combed his carrot-red hair into five different styles in the short space of one month!

One morning when I seven and young enough to be dumb about a lot of stuff, I saw J.J. run into his house and slam the door. He’d just come back from Beachville. Imagine—my best pal, running into his house and not saying, “Hi!” after he just got back from a trip! I got suspicious. I went over and knocked on his door. His mom answered it. “Hello, Willy?” (Everyone called me Willy in those days, so I didn't correct her.)

“I’m here to see J.J.,” I said as I passed her. She was used to me by now, so she didn’t object when I came in without an invitation.

I pounded on J.J.’s door. “Yo, J.J.!”

There was no answer. I got kinda worried. “Hey, J.J.! It’s your old pal Will!”

“Go away!” J.J. snapped without opening the door.

I knew when I wasn’t wanted. I left.

“Hm,” I thought. “He must be hiding something. Hidden ninja gear, maybe? A highly dangerous pet...like a spitting cobra or a rattlesnake? Or maybe he’s hiding his true identity as a super hero or a werewolf!”

(Yeah, I was dumb enough to sort of believe that.)

There was only one way to find out.

Question: Is J.J. a Super Hero?

Mission: Find Out!

I used the box of costume makeup my aunt sent my little sister and made myself look really beat-up and traumatized. (That’s what I thought then. Actually, I probably looked more like I had the measles.) I flopped down under J.J.’s bedroom window and yelled, “Help me! Help me!”

After an hour of shouting and gasping, I gave up. J.J. definitely wasn’t a super hero. No hero would pass up an opportunity to help a pal in need.

Question: Is J.J. a Super Hero?

Answer: Definitely Not

NEW Question: Is J.J. a Werewolf?

Mission: Find Out!

I climbed up the tree next to J.J.’s window and tied a big raw chicken (yuck! but I didn't know much about germs back then) to the sill while my pal was downstairs eating dinner. No werewolf ever passed up a fresh Cuzzford’s chicken dinner, raw or not. To my astonishment, a large gray animal began tearing at the bait a few minutes later. Uh-oh! Would it come after me next? I started to climb down the tree. The creature raised its head. I groaned. It was J.J.’s Husky dog, Wolfie.

Question: Is J.J. a Werewolf?

Answer: Forget It

The next morning, I decided to read up on the detective business. My older sister had some Nancy Drew books. I started reading. Even if they were girly, they were the only mystery books in our house.

Then I had a better idea and borrowed Paul’s Hardy Boys books. Being that kind of detective sounds painful. Frank and Joe get whacked on the head with hammers, crowbars, rocks, guns, and other assorted heavy objects. They must’ve been REAl hardy to survive all that.

I thought hard about how to discover J.J.’s secret. I hoped it was something little, like a report card. I doubted it, though. It was the middle of July.Could it be something sinister? Was it a device that made fake quarters for cheating gumball machines? Or a computer that answered all math homework? I had to know.

My plan was this: I would sneak into J.J.’s clubhouse at midnight and snoop around his desk for clues. That’s not technically legal, but’s it’s been done in the Hardy Boys. Also, being a toddler of seven, I didn’t exactly know that breaking into houses was a crime punishable by incarceration. I did know that being caught meant being grounded, probably for the rest of my life. I quickly solved that small difficulty. I’d dress up like a burglar! If I was seen, no one could identify me as William Cuzzford, Second Grader. They’d think I was somebody like Sneaky Sam, Daring Robber. In my childish stupidity, I didn’t think that that might make it worse if I was caught.

That night, I set out to find some ragged clothes. Since I discovered that I didn’t I have any, I had to make some, using a sharp pair of sewing scissors. Next, I covered my curly hair with a wicked-looking hat. Finally, I added the special effects—a bushy mustache and a matching beard. Great! I looked like a creepy—if a little short—burglar!

I snuck over to J.J.’s and tried the knob on his clubhouse. Locked. I tested out my homemade lock pick—which happened to be a fork. Big mistake—I forgot that J.J. had an alarm on his clubhouse.

J.J. stuck his head out the window. In the dark, all I could see was that he was wearing a floppy hat. “Hey! Stop, thief!”

I shot back to my own room, removed the disguise, and went to bed. That plan was a failure!

The next morning, I though things over. J.J. had been wearing a hat. Was that a clue? I didn’t know how it could be. I finally decided to borrow my sister’s telescope and do a little top-secret spying.

J.J. was playing a video game as I positioned the scope in a nearby tree. To my delight, he began removing his hat. What would be underneath? Donkey ears? A rainbow Mohawk?

My questions were answered in a second—and the answer was more shocking than I could’ve ever dreamed. J.J. was BALD, except for some frizzly red stuff around the edges that must have been the remains of his hair!

I had to tell someone. I phoned Harvey, who was spending a boring week at the beach.

“Hey, Harv!” I said. “Guess what? J.J.’s bald!”

“Quit the teasing,” Harvey said. “J.J.’s only seven.”

“I’ll send you a picture as proof,” I promised—and I did. After about four or five (dozen) tries, I snapped a photo—and got the real story behind my pal’s missing hair. I heard him mumbling angrily and pieced it together. Evidently, he’d bought a cheap brand of gel to put spikes in his hair. It was a cheat! The stuff in the bottle burned off his hair—the reason for the floppy headgear. I resolved to keep it hush-hush, for J.J.’s sake, but since I’d already told Harvey, it wouldn’t hurt to send the photo and the story.

The story of J.J.’s baldness would’ve ended right there, but I managed to make an awful mistake. I mixed up Harvey’s e-mail address with Vince’s! Vince was only eight then, but he was still the worst bully in Beachville and the surrounding ten-mile radius.

Anyway, this is how the mix-up happened:

Harvey’s e-mail is yo-man@zipmail.com. Vince’s is yo.man!@zipmail.com. Now, in case you don’t know, Vince can’t keep a secret. Tell him something confidential, and inside of twenty-four hours it’ll be on the front page of the Beachville paper—guaranteed! (His uncle is the editor of the newspaper. AND he always gives Vince whatever he wants.)

Well, to make a long story short, J.J. got famous (under "Local Humor", not the headlines) and I got in trouble. J.J. despised my nosiness. As a matter of fact, I did, too. Then I had this colossal idea to make Vince stop his teasing once and for all. It wasn’t a nice idea, but that small bit of information slipped my mind at that moment. I WAS seven, you know.

I searched online and bought some trick hair gel. It made spiky hair wilt and curl like a girl’s overnight. It was useful, and therefore expensive. But the bottle was worth every penny of the twenty dollars it cost. Vince used it, all right. He OVERused it. See, his hairdresser had been asking for extra tips lately, and Vince couldn’t afford that. So, when I mailed him a bottle labeled ‘Instant Hair Gel’, he couldn’t resist. Harvey phoned me with the results—Vince came to the beach in a big, floppy hat, with ‘girly curlies’ underneath.

I’d like to end this story here; however, I had to go through tons of apologizing. Needless to say, the next time anyone has a secret, I’ll leave the detective work to the Hardy Boys.


CASE CLOSED
 
Hey! I read the first story and I loved it! There is this magazine called Clubhouse that is produced by Focus on the Family in Colorado. This would make a really good story for their magazine. You should like send it to them or something. I will read the other stories soon. Keep writing!
 
Thanks, I'll check it out!

The Balloon

This story is about one of the most dangerous things that ever happened to me, and it was all Vince’s fault. If it wasn’t for him, we would’ve been safe and sound at home instead of nearly perishing.....wait a minute. I’d better start at the beginning.

Well, Joel Taylor and his family were going to the fair in Springville. Joel invited me to come along—I suspect it was because Paul was busy with a nature project and Danny was grounded (I won’t say for what). Anyway, I agreed and a few minutes later we hit the road.

After a few minor incidents, (e.g. a flat tire and several arguments over what DVD to watch next) we arrived. Joel’s sister Leah took his little brothers Francis and Nathan to the kiddie rides, while Joel and I headed for the more daring area of the fair. We rode the Supersonic roller coaster five times in a row and then stood in line for the Whiplash, a cool new ride. However, we never got around to riding it because someone got sick on it right before our turn and the fair personnel closed it down for a cleaning job.

Disgusted, we went on a tame ride called the Disk Spinner but got off after only two times because the screaming of some weird girls in the seat behind us was getting unbearable.

Joel and I had just left the popcorn stand when I noticed a sign. “Hey! Balloon rides!”

We’d never been in a hot-air balloon, so Joel agreed to try it out. We had just climbed in when Vince zipped by on the ugliest skateboard I ever saw. “Hey! Dudes! Gimme a turn!” He hopped into the balloon and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. “Oops, I dropped a dime. Would you mind?”

The pilot leaned over the basket edge to retieve the coin, and Vince pulled one of his dirtiest tricks yet. He gave the pilot a shove and untied the ropes, screaming, “Hey! We’re loose!”

The horrified pilot made a grab for the nearest rope and missed. The onlookers shouted and yelled as the balloon, minus one pilot, floated into the clouds.

I gulped and turned to Vince. “We’re gonna be dead for sure! What did you do that for?”

“Aw, I watched my uncle steer one of these millions of times,” Vince laughed. “It’s a blast!”

“Last time I checked, you weren’t a certified pilot,” Joel said.

“Look,” Vince said. “You want to be in the news, don’t you? Imagine the headline: Three Boys Safely Land Balloon After Pilot Falls Out!”

“That’d be great, but can we safely land this thing?” Joel asked nervously. “Or will the

headlines be ‘Three Boys Crash Balloon After Pilot Falls Out?”

“Chill,” Vince assured us. “I can do this!” He leaned over the side and lost some of his confidence. “Well, as soon as we get over this forest.”

“Forest?!” Joel and I shouted together. A dense forest lies between Springville and the other towns in the vicinity. As far as I knew, it was mostly uninhabited.

“If we land there we’re goners,” Joel said, glaring at Vince.

“We won’t!” Vince said. “Just to make you babies feel better, I’ll make this bag of hot air go higher.” He tugged a rope, and we skyrocketed higher. “Like I said, it’s a blast!”

“Yeah, it’ll be a real blast when we lose control and blast into outer space,” said Joel.

“Chill,” advised Vince. “We’re O.K. here.”

Joel and I weren’t so sure. And it turns out we were right, and Vince was wrong.

Vince began untying a large bag from the side. “We’re gonna drop some ballast, dudes. Joel, you and Willy take those over there.”

Joel hesitated. “Won’t that make us lighter?”

Vince rolled his eyes. “Dude, you just don’t get it! We don’t want to get stuck in the trees, do we? No. So we hafta sail over them, see?”

“We’re high enough already,” I pointed out.

“Dude. Take it from me.” Vince finished untying the knot and watched the bag disappear into the forest below.

“Wonder if it hit someone,” Joel mused out loud.

“Are you kidding? Nobody’s ever down there. Now, are you gonna listen to the pilot or not?” said Vince impatiently. “Drop the ballast, we get lighter and go higher. We go clean over the trees and end up in the next town. By then we run out of hot air and float down.”

I didn’t know that was how hot air balloons operated, but at that moment I guessed Vince must know what he was doing after all. Boy, was I dumb. But anyway, we obeyed and started sawing away with our mini pocketknives. (We won them earlier that day at ring toss.)

“Yeah, baby!” whooped Vince, pulling a few ropes for effect. I was getting more nervous every minute. “I think if we can land it now we’d at least make the second page of the paper,” I said.

Vince adjusted his sunglasses. “Go enjoy the view.”

“No, I mean it! What if we float into space and lose oxygen?” I worried. You have to admit, it was only reasonable to be worried when you’re stuck in a balloon with a crazy kid like Vince.

“Actually, I don’t think we have enough thrust to get all the way into space. And anyway, we’d have to go through the atmosphere first,” Joel objected. “We’d burn up before we could get any higher.”

That was reassuring.

Vince shrugged. “Cool. Now, tell me when you see the nearest town. I’m taking a nap.”

“Uh, maybe a field would be better to land in,” I suggested.

“No one would see the spectacular landing! It’s gotta be in a town. Or maybe we could land this on top of the Empire State Building!”

“We’d get impaled on that giant spike,” Joel pointed out.

“Okay, the roof of the White House, then.”

I could think of ten objections to this off the top of my head (the biggest one being mistaken for a foreign missile and shot by the Secret Service) but I never got a chance to tell them to Vince. As I opened my mouth, Joel yelled, “We’re going down!”

This was true. We WERE going down...and faster than seemed safe.

Vince stayed calm. “Re-LAX!” He pulled a random rope and then gulped. “Uh-oh.”

“What?” I demanded flatly.

“Uh...this must be one of the old models,” Vince said nervously.

“You mean, you can’t...”

“Nope.”

I suddenly remembered what the poster next to the balloon had said. “Um, guys? This balloon was only intended to go up about forty feet, still attached to the ropes!”

“We’re doomed!” Vince screeched. He began to climb onto the side.

“Don’t jump!” Joel and I shouted together.

“I’m not jumping, dudes! I’m gonna swing into a tree when we get close enough!”

This was a dangerous idea, but it was the only idea any of us had. Anyway, we were going down fast enough to cause panic, so we can be excused for almost carrying out Vince’s crazy plan. Fortunately, Joel’s foot kicked over a little basket as he climbed, and a little blue brochure fell out. He snatched it up.

“Wait! This looks like the directions for flying this thing!”

Vince made a grab for it, but Joel jumped back. If this was a movie, a fight would have followed, and Vince would have gone over the edge with a loud, “NOOOO!” Fortunately for Vince, this was NOT a movie.

“You already caused enough trouble. Will and I are gonna do this.”

Vince rolled his eyes. “Sure. Don’t blame me when...”

Joel was already on page three of the instructions. “Okay, Will, pull that rope—the thickest one. Good. Now that other one.”

To my relief, we started going up.

“Once we see some signs of life, we go down,” Joel said. “One thing Vince said is right—it’s better if we land in a town than in the woods...not because of publicity, but because we’d probably get lost.”

Vince smirked but said nothing.

After fifteen minutes or so (it seemed like ten hours, but Joel’s watch claimed otherwise) I spotted a little house in a large field. “A farm!”

“Okay, we’re going down,” Joel said.

“And squish those cabbages or whatever those little round green things are?” Vince snorted.

“Better to squish them than us,” Joel said. “We can pay later.”

I followed Joel’s instructions as he read from the directions, and soon we landed. It was a lettuce field, and the landing was bumpy, but that was better than crashing.

The farmer, his wife, and his kids all came running out of the house.

“Greetings, earthlings,” said Vince.

Joel elbowed him. “Shut up! We don’t want to make things worse than they already are.”

The farmer was a little mad about the squished lettuces, but when he found out what had happened, he said we didn’t need to pay. (Nice guy.) He called our parents and then drove us to Springville, where there was a big mushy scene as our families hugged us and cried.

We did end up in the news...the front page! But the headlines were not very complimentary. Joel and I did get some praise for safely landing the balloon, but Vince...uh...well, his reputation suffered. His parents made him pay for the lettuce and the balloon man’s hospital bills (seems he injured his wrist when he hit the ground). Last I heard, he’s still weeding and watering the lettuce on that farm to make the money.


THE END
 
Hey! I read the second story about the summer camp and I loved it. Every time I read one of your stories it feels like I am reading my magazine, except it's on the computer! I think that if you can't get a deal with Clubhouse Magazine or anything, then you should consider trying to publish like a bunch of children's books. These stories are great! And I know a lot of people who would buy tons of these books if they were published! Please keep writing!!!!!
 
Aslan's Child_1996 said:
Hey! I read the second story about the summer camp and I loved it. Every time I read one of your stories it feels like I am reading my magazine, except it's on the computer! I think that if you can't get a deal with Clubhouse Magazine or anything, then you should consider trying to publish like a bunch of children's books. These stories are great! And I know a lot of people who would buy tons of these books if they were published! Please keep writing!!!!!
Click to expand...

Thanks! :)
 
TRAIN ROBBERS

I, William Cuzzford, was in the Springville Movie Theater with my friends Harvey and J.J. watching the local premiere of a movie entitled ‘Trauma on the Tracks; Terror on the Trains.’ We nibbled our popcorn nervously as Black Breechley, the evil masked train menace, slipped
aboard the Speeding Express, bomb-shooting high-powered machine gun clasped tightly in one hand. In the other, he held a long, thin knife. We held our breaths as he entered the passenger car. We held our ears as he fired his grenades at the people. J.J. decided not to eat any more popcorn after the first five minutes.

Black Breechley threw some kicking, screaming victims out of the train when it was rolling across a trestle. This was repeated several times during the two-hour movie. Black Breechley took over at LEAST ten trains. When the last train was empty, he took over the controls and began to take the train, which, by the way, was carrying a shipment of money, to his hideout. For cinematic effect, he removed his mask, revealing to us, the audience, his true identity.

“Nooooo! Not the leader of the Crimefighters!” shouted J.J. loudly.

As if to answer his question, Black Breechley cackled to himself, “Yes, it is me! No one will ever know my secret!” That’s what all villains say in movies. And it’s never true.

Suddenly, he lost control of the train. He screamed and tried to find the ‘stop’ lever, and randomly chose one. Unfortunately for him, it was the emergency door opener. The door flew open, and he tumbled out, right when the train was crossing another trestle over the Rushing River. “Nooooo...” SPLASH!

One less bad guy to trouble the world.

When the movie ended, we were sort of shaken up. So were a few other people, who discarded their train tickets and rented cars instead. Suddenly it occurred to J.J., Harvey and me that we would be taking the train home.

“Are you scared?” I suddenly demanded of Harvey. I knew I was.

Harvey put on a brave front. “If that Breechley guy came on the train, I’d at least hold him until the police arrive.”

J.J. was more honest. “I’m so scared that I feel cold.”

“That’s because of the snow,” snorted Harvey. “But I’m not going to let any old Breechley scare me. Besides, he was killed, remember?”

I wasn’t so sure. “Weeeeelll...when villains fall off things in movies, it’s usually because the film people don’t have to him actually dying and it’ll be possible for him to return.”

“Return, huh?” said Harvey thoughtfully.

“He’d probably be in disguise,” I said eerily. I half-believed it. Maybe more than half. Maybe I really believed the whole thing.

We reached the train station. Perhaps because of the misty, swirling snow in the night, and perhaps because of the movie we’d just watched, all the people there seemed tall, dark, and sinister. We boarded a train which had the main goal of Knoxport but would pass by our hometown train station. All the passengers headed for Knoxport seemed to be wearing gray and
black, and they looked really creepy. In fact, everything was creepy—the snowstorm, the sound of the frozen train creaking back into motion, the “overall silent and foreboding mood”, to quote an engineer in the movie. He said that right before Black Breechley snuck up and got him.

The scream of the train whistle announced that we were on our way. I tried to focus my thoughts on looking out the window. The scenery was snow, falling and being blown in the strong night wind—just like the scene in the movie before Black Breechley jumped the train.

A nudge from Harvey nearly caused me to make a noise like the train whistle. Happily, I stopped myself in time.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered. Something about the quiet terror made me afraid to raise my voice.

Apparently Harvey had the same feelings. “Those two men,” he whispered in return. “The two near the back of the train. See?”

I nodded, stiff with fear. They held dark-colored suitcases, a sure calling card of their profession. “Robbers.”

Harvey looked grim. “Or worse.”

J.J.’s teeth chattered. I glared at him. Noise might attract the robbers to us. I wasn’t sure about Harvey and J.J., but I didn’t want to become their first victim!

Harvey checked his watch. In an hour, we would reach home and safety. We stiffened as we heard one robber speak. He patted his suitcase significantly.

“This cost a lot of money,” he told his companion in sinister undertones...you know, a wicked whisper.

I exchanged nervous glances with Harvey and J.J.—the only things he could possibly have were a BOMB FIRING MACHINE GUN or a LONG, SKINNY KNIFE, just like.....

“He’s Breechley,” J.J. whispered.

"No, Breechley's FICTIONAL," I pointed out. "But he COULD be a robber."

We had a quiet debate. J.J. suggested that we escape the train. Harvey thought the best plan of action was to knock out and tie up the two men.

“Which one should we DO?” wailed J.J.

I put on a solemn face. “We do the honorable thing. We warn the engineer.”

“How could the long skinny knives fit in those suitcases?” asked Harvey suddenly.

I wasn’t ready to shrug them off as harmless, however. “Collapsable handles.”

Harvey, who had been trying to reassure himself, gave up. “We’re doomed.”

I stood up courageously. “Say good-bye to me. I’m taking those suitcases! No guns, no robbery and, uh, no....you know. What Black Breechley’s famous for doing to train passengers.”

I bravely stalked up to the two men. A second before I was to snatch the suitcases, I lost my nerve. I fled back to Harvey and J.J.’s seat.

“You were so CLOSE!” whispered Harvey.

“Sorry—I panicked!” I replied, also whispering.

Then, we devised a Serious Plan of Courageous Action. SPCA #1. J.J. waited until the men were absorbed their newspapers. He carefully snuck to their suitcases. Suddenly, one of the men raised his head. J.J. scampered back.

We devised again. The results—SPCA #2. Harvey was daring. He walked past the men and dropped a quarter as if by accident. “Oh, excuse me!” he said loudly, noisily searching under their seat for it and hiding the noise of me trying to drag the heavy suitcases away. Unfortunately,
the conductor interfered. “Sit down,” he ordered us. Time for SPCA #3.

I raised my hand. “Excuse me, but I have an announcement! Those men...”

The conductor was ignoring me. Bad idea. Enter SPCA #4. The most carefully constructed plan of them all. Harvey, very luckily, had a one of those neat little firecrackers that make that fizzly smoke in his suitcase. He bought it right before the movie from the “Terror on the Train” souvenir stand. (It was supposed to resemble the grenades used in the movie.) Now, it’d come in handy.

“Wait a sec,” I warned him. “That could...”

But it was too late. Harvey had already lit it, and of course he had to throw it after that or get his fingers blown off. He tossed it slyly across the train, unnoticed, and held his ears. The BANG, however, was far from unnoticed. The smoke threw the passengers into a panic.

The train was stopped. Everyone had to evacuate the train while the conductor and engineer tried to search for and put out the supposed fire. We crawled under the smoke and dragged the suitcases to our seat and hid them under our own luggage. While we were at it, we also removed the firecracker. SPCA #4 had been a success.

Things were straightened out. Passengers were let back on, and the train continued. We saw that the robbers were reading and took the chance to open the suitcases, which, fortunately, didn’t have locks.

What we saw felt like a punch with a boxing glove. One held a Glitter Flower Sticker Kit with the note, “Dear Heather: Happy Birthday! Love, Dad.” The other suitcase, the one which contained the thing which had “cost a lot of money”, held a pair of professional ballet shoes and a bag with a ballet costume inside. This read, “Happy Birthday Heather—From Uncle Russell.”
We felt really...dumb.

“J.J., Harvey,” I announced to my friends, “Time for ROSS—Returning Of Stolen Suitcases.”

THE END
 
Some more of the characters:

(left to right)
Harvey, Paul, Danny, Joel, and Vince. :)
 

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