Slob - Ellen Potter [12]
I must have looked unimpressed because he added, “Also, it is good for your karma. You do good thing, good thing happen for you. You do bad thing—” He shook his head gravely. Then he smiled. It’s hard for Nima to stay too serious.
“Fine,” I said. “So I stay calm and think nice Buddhist thoughts about Mason. Then tomorrow he goes pawing through my lunch bag and takes my cookies again.”
“Possibly you could leave a note,” Nima said.
“A note?!” My voice grew shrill. “And what do you suggest I say?”
“You could say, ‘Kindly not to take my cookies.’”
“Ha!” Sometimes Nima was very unrealistic. I think it came from him always assuming that people were sensible.
“Or maybe . . . actually . . .” He glanced at me as though he were about to suggest something he thought he shouldn’t.
“What?” I asked.
“You could make a thing. Like your Crap Catcher. Only a Teef Catcher.”
He had trouble with the th sound, so it took me a moment to realize that he meant “Thief Catcher.”
I blinked.
“I could,” I said.
“Just to prevent him from doing so again. Not harming him, of course.”
“Of course not.” I was liking the idea more and more with each passing minute.
Nima, on the other hand, looked more and more apprehensive. He was probably wondering if this suggestion was going to bring on some bad karma for me or something like that.
“But maybe you give this kid another chance. Maybe it was such kind of one-time mischief. Like flirting with your wife’s cousin.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll wait till tomorrow. I’ll give him another chance. We’ll see if it happens again.”
4
It happened again. My three Oreos were gone. And the top of the eco-container was sealed tight. It felt like Mason Ragg was leaving me a message. Something like: I can get in and out of your lunch so easily that I even have time to seal up your eco-container. And PS, an eco-container is very hard to seal. You are powerless against me.
Maybe that sounds paranoid to you. You’ll see, though, that it wasn’t.
When I got home that afternoon, I put aside my work on Nemesis and started working on my new idea right away. It had to be small and inconspicuous. And lethal.
Just kidding.
I only wanted it to inflict a moderate amount of pain.
I rummaged through my cardboard box and pulled out the half a handcuff that Jeremy and I had found. It looked like someone had managed to smash the chain link between the two manacles. Why they did that, I have no idea. Jeremy suggested that the person may have been handcuffed to a top secret briefcase, like you see on old movies, and a thief had smashed the chain to get it away from him. Seemed far-fetched, but who knows. Anyway, I always wanted to use it for something, but I’d never had an opportunity before now. I pulled out my yellow graph paper notebook and my mechanical pencil and began to draw my plans. When I was satisfied, I dug around through my box and found a spring from the hood latch of an old Buick, a Swiss Army knife, and a dog collar with some very nasty spikes on it. I opened my toolbox and pulled out my trusty soldering iron, and I borrowed a tiny sewing kit from Mom’s desk.
By the time I was finished, I had lined my lunch sack with a mechanism that looked like it had come straight out of the Spanish Inquisition. Spiked handcuffs, high-tensile springs. I dubbed it the Jaws of Anguish. It was genius. I actually felt sorry for Mason. I imagined him shrieking in pain as the Jaws of Anguish snapped tight around his wrist, my sack of lunch attached to his hand. Teachers would poke their heads out in the hallway. Busted. Immediate suspension. If there was such a thing at our school.
I called up Izzy and told him my plan, fully expecting him to be as excited as I was.
“I don’t know, Owen,” he said guardedly.
“What? Come on, it’s perfect!” I said.
“Yeah, but you’re dealing with Mason Ragg, dude. The guy is capable of anything. Do you really want to be pulling that particular tiger’s tail?”
“Well, I have to do something,” I said.
But once I was lying there in bed, in the dark, I kept imagining Mason’s