The Amazing Magnificent Stupendous Incredible Outstanding Unbeatable Exceptional (and Humble) Rubberband Boy

By Jonathan Neuman

“Halt you no-good, nefarious ... umm ... nasty ... no wait ... uh ... no-good ... already used that one ... umm ... nerdy ... uh ... well you get the idea!”

School bus-chasing pirates, booger-hurling zombies, a teacher that can fire energy beams from his head, and squirrels seeking to take over the world?! It’s all a day in the life for intrepid 5th grader, John, and his mild-mannered buddy, Dave. A headstrong, “leap before you look” kind of kid, John is not what one might call a model student. His penchant for mischief is outweighed only by his proclivity for detention. Rational and tentative, Dave has found one lucky thing in his life – his best friend John. Only sometimes, the trouble that entails seems like more of the same old bad luck.

When John and Dave are given detention by their strange new teacher, they come up with a scheme to wreak havoc on the school. When it turns out that the teacher is not what he seems to be, John dons his paper plate mask and his mother’s polka dot bathroom towel to become The Amazing Magnificent Stupendous Incredible Outstanding Unbeatable Exceptional (and Humble) Rubberband Boy! Armed with only his guts and an arsenal of rubber bands – and with the assistance of his timid companion, Clip Kid – Rubberband Boy must find a way to stop his teacher and save his classmates from a horrible fate. But even if John and Dave succeed, what dangers await from the two mysterious figures in the background?

A story about friendship, heroism, and the zaniness of elementary school, Rubberband Boy reminds us that we all have the capacity to be a hero, and does so with nonstop laughs along the way. Unique characters that kids will want to be, wacky situations that children crave, and the kind of hilarious universe that exists solely in the world of imagination, Rubberband Boy is sure to keep its readers rolling on the floor for years to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan Neuman
• Release date: Jul 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466049895

Book preview

The fun never stops! Visit John and Dave on the web at www.rubbercave.com!

Copyright 2011 by Jonathan Neuman

Smashwords Edition

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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1. The Pirates Are Coming! The Pirates Are Coming!

2. The Great Baldini

3. Squirrels and Janitors and Gum, Oh My!

4. It’s Raining Frogs

5. Tastes Like Chicken

6. Revenge is a Dish Best Served During Detention

7. Welcome to the Rubber Cave

8. When Zombies Attack

9. Zero Out of Five Dentists Recommend

10. The End of Rubberband Boy?

11. The Cliffhanger

The school bus came to a screeching halt, tires squealing against pavement as honking cars whizzed by. The children on the bus pulled their faces out of the backs of the seats in front of them and began rubbing their noses and groaning in pain.

Vait vone minute, I go get borscht in bottle.

The small yellow bus tipped over to the side as the short, heavy, hairy bus driver, Igor, lumbered out. As he wobbled toward a convenience store, Igor’s checkered shirt snagged on a fire hydrant and began to unravel behind him. By the time he entered the store, the shirt was completely gone, and the children heard a number of women shriek. It had already been four years with Igor as their bus driver, and the kids were still amused by his numerous peculiarities. They especially loved his foreign accent and all of the funny-sounding words he used, like borscht. In the past, Igor had made the children go to the store for him, but after one kid accidentally got run over by an escaped buffalo from the zoo, numerous phone calls from surprised and angry parents had quickly put a stop to that.

Toward the back of the bus, Dave, a freckle-faced fifth grader, pulled his glasses out of his curly brown hair. Thanks to the sudden short stop, Dave’s face had plunged directly into an abnormally large glob of pink bubblegum stuck to the back of the seat in front of him. He was now desperately trying to detach his cheek from the gum. With his cheek still glued to the seat in front of him, he held his glasses in front of his eyes in order to get a good look. As he feared, the glasses were now badly bent out of shape.

No! The screw popped out again! My mom is going to be so mad.

A snickering face popped up from behind. It was Dave’s best friend, John. John looked at Dave, then at the gum, and then back at Dave and smiled.

John thought back to first grade, the year he had first met Dave. While attempting to check Dave for head lice, Mrs. Beigleeisen, the school nurse, had accidentally breathed in some laughing gas. Suddenly, she got a funny look in her eyes, shrieked, and began chasing Dave. She chased him all the way to the school kitchen, where she grabbed a rolling pin and began swinging at Dave, yelling Cockroach! Cockroach! John had been in the cafeteria at the time, and he had come to Dave’s rescue by quickly tipping over the giant pot that was supposed to have been that day’s lunch. The tidal wave of sticky purple glop (the school had called it Mystery Surprise) engulfed Mrs. Beigleeisen, trapping her until the effects of the gas had worn off. As a consequence of the two boys having ruined his lunch, an enraged Fatsinoff, the school’s ironically-named 600-pound cook, would spend the next two years trying to exact his revenge (but that’s a story for another day).

How do things like this always happen to you? John asked laughing.

John reached into his knapsack, dug around a bit, and then pulled out something small and silver. He handed Dave a paper clip. Here, I saved it from the last time you broke your glasses.

Yeah, thanks, Dave mumbled as he grabbed the paper clip.

John didn’t mind seeing Dave annoyed, but only if he was the one doing the annoying. He decided to try to cheer Dave up.

Well, at least this year you still have your pants.

The previous year on the first day of school, Igor had been running late, and so he decided that it would be quicker to get to the school by taking a shortcut. The only problem was the shortcut was through a lake. The bus made it about twenty feet into the water before Igor realized that apparently, buses don’t work the same way as boats. While the kids were on the roof of the slowly-sinking bus waiting to be rescued, they were attacked by a particularly angry flock of birds, attracted to the smell of a tuna fish sandwich that Dave had been keeping in his pocket.

Dave slowly cracked a smile and then let out a big laugh. He attempted to turn his head to face John, but his face was still very stuck to the gum.

Yeah, they never did find my pants.

Dave tried to pull his head off of the gum, but to no avail.

And at least you got your two seats back, Dave said as he tried to push off the seat in front of him with his right hand.

John smiled and nodded in agreement. Ever since the first grade, it had become the unspoken rule that John would get the two back seats of the bus to himself. Last year, however, the bus company combined John’s route with that of their cross-town rivals— the other fourth grade class—and John had lost his second seat. This of course, resulted in much friction, pranking, and bedlam. Eventually, the fighting escalated into a chaotic incident, in which John’s class released a rabid raccoon onto the bus while the other class let loose three pigeons. The resulting damage to the city from the bus ride eventually led to a new city law that required all raccoons and pigeons to be attached to leashes at all times. This year the bus company had thought it wise to once again separate the routes.

The two seats were more than just bragging rights. They also were quite handy. Thanks to the two seats, John’s face, unlike those of the other kids, had avoided being smashed into the seat in front of him. John had been lying down across the seats when the bus had shortstopped, and he had merely rolled over. In fact, the sudden rollover removed some stiffness in John’s back that he had been feeling. Two nights before, John had watched a TV show about bats, and he had attempted to go to sleep by curling his feet over the sidebar of his bunk bed and hanging upside-down. However, some dust had gotten into his nose and he had sneezed and fallen off the bed onto his back. John made a note to himself that next time, just to be safe, he was going to use some glue and tape.

Lucky things like that always seemed to happen for John. Dave, on the other hand, had about as much luck as a boy crossing a black cat while walking under a ladder and stepping on a crack in the sidewalk while breaking a mirror on Friday the 13th. In other words, he was about the unluckiest kid you would ever meet. John enjoyed pointing out Dave’s propensity for bad luck. John, who would normally not read a book under any circumstance, had just spent many summer days in