Barber is just your typical fourth-grade student. Everyone thinks he’s a dork, but the joke is on them. He knows that if he keeps his head down, and pretends not to be himself while at school, he’ll never reach the title of Dorkus Maximus. There have been two such dorks in the history of Campbell Elementary school. He will not be the third. He just needs an opportunity to be cool. He is sure he will rise to the occasion.
He thinks he might have stumbled onto a spy living in his neighborhood. Barber stakes out the house with his friend Stobe. They don’t see anything incriminating, but they are satisfied that something is definitely fishy with the old man they call Plaid Robe. He is too grumpy. He doesn’t have a TV. He reads for pleasure. The boys decide that his guilt is a foregone conclusion, the tricky part is figuring out of what?
They spend the next night playing computer games. It’s a school night. It stands to reason even a master criminal wouldn’t strike on a Monday. But when the morning sun rises. There it is. The largest act of vandalism Arvada Colrado has ever seen. Someone, TP’d Tommy Hansen’s house. It’s just three doors down from Barbers. He can see the evidence fluttering in the wind from his second story window. Barber is the first on site. He cases it in shame. How did he not see this coming?
All leads dry up faster than the two-ply ultra fished out of the Hansen’s backyard above ground pool. There is nobody in the school who would take on Tommy Hansen. He’s the most popular kid in fourth grade. Maybe fourth and fifth. I’m sure the fifth graders would push back on that statement in normal times, but everyone was a Hansen on Tuesday. Everyone.
Stobe and Barber started to explore some outside theories. What if the Hansen wasn’t the intended victim? Who might have been? Who had been stirring up trouble with the only verified spy in the neighborhood? It was only three doors down from Barber’s house. Maybe the message sent in quilted unraveling arcs was really for him?
Stobe and Barber remark how cool it would be to move the crime scene to the Barber residence. Then who would be the likely TP’er? Plaid Robe. He knew they were onto them and wanted to push back? There was only one way to up the stakes. Stobe and Barber decided to EGG his house in retribution. It was on. It was so on.
Sure, their plan might unravel sending them running into the night with the yolks of defeat nipping at their heels. Or perhaps the shells of justice would prevail. Probably that first one, but Stobe and Barber knew a thing or two about producing an air tight schematic for heroic adventure and righteous retribution. They’d played dungeons and dragons before. They were even considered, masters at it. Before this quest was over, Barber would be less dorky, he could feel it.
