Invincible
We never would have guessed how easy it was to build an entire empire right under Ms. Aussie’s nose.
It all started in the fall of fourth grade. We realized we could sell things, Pokémon cards, candy, chips, even the big ticket stuff like video games and toys. Kids from other classes – we made it a rule to never sell in Ms. Aussie’s class, she’d surely catch on too quickly – would pay top dollar, real money for this kinda stuff. We didn’t make a ton, kids would bring some pocket change, allowance or if we got lucky, a crisp twenty from their dad’s wallet to buy from us in the transition of recess to lunch.
You see, our lunch ended at twelve twenty-five, and we’d only have five minutes to peddle the items from our backpacks to the kids being ushered out of the lunchroom and into the courtyard for recess. The easiest method was to go to the bathrooms, but we had rules about that too. We would never take more than three customers to the bathroom at one time, to avoid looking suspicious. Only one of us carried a backpack at a time, that meant if we were caught, one guy would take the fall – of course there were rules about this too, we switched out the backpack carrier every day, to make it fair and random if we got caught – and everyone else got to go free. This only happened once though, one of us got asked to open our backpack on our way to the bathroom, which has to be a total human rights violation by the way, and there was a bunch of Pokemon cards bunched up in plastic bags. We ended up getting out of it by saying we were gonna play a game of Pokemon during recess, and we all asked the one kid to carry em. Little did the teacher know those cards were about to go for ten bucks a pop. Total waste that day was, we didn’t make a penny.
Word spread pretty quick that we were selling stuff for cheap, and soon we even got the fifth graders involved. Those kids were bigger than us, but they weren’t even smarter. The higher your grade, the more cash you had to spend with us, usually. The fifth graders ended up being our top customers, they would spend big money on the xbox games we stole from our brothers, who we tried to convince that the game just went missing. We probably sold just about every copy of call of duty in our whole town.
There were times that came up when kids didn’t have enough to get an item they really wanted, which is where we came up with the idea of paying us back later, at a higher price of course. Paying us one day later would be an upcharge of one dollar, two days meant two dollars, and so on. There was one kid though, he didn’t pay us for two weeks for a stack of Pokemon cards. Ten bucks turned into twenty-four, he ended up having to pay more than double than what he was supposed to pay for it.
“Come on guys, I told you I’d pay it back I just had to wait for my allowance to hit,” he said.
“Rules are rules man, you can pay us the ten now if you want, but you still owe us fourteen more. Tomorrow it’ll be fifteen, or we’ll ban you from ever buying anything ever again. Up to you.”
He ended up paying, almost his whole allowance went into our hands.
We realized this is how we could actually start making some dough.
---
The new plan: we let kids go home with stuff, and make em pay up heavy the next day.
This worked great, especially with the help of Lincoln. Lincoln was this huge kid, like totally going to play for the Packers one day. He was on this flag football team and he still tackled kids half the size of him for fun. He never made it through a full game without getting benched. Needless to say, everyone was scared of him. We asked him to help us out – like in a big group obviously, none of us wanted to get beat up – to be added to the team and get some of the cut off the top just like the rest of us. We told him it was a top secret job as a body guard.
“Would I have to beat anyone up?” he asked.
“No, no. You’re not beating anyone up, you’re just gonna scare them a little and make them pay,” Justin said. Justin was on the flag football and basketball team with Lincoln. Everyone agreed he was the best option to talk to Lincoln, but he was still nervous.
“And what if they don’t pay? Then do I get to beat em up?”
“You can’t beat anyone up, Lincoln. Then we’ll get caught and everything will be ruined and we’ll all get in trouble.”
“I’ve been in trouble before. I’m not scared of Principal Ballsack.”
“It’s ‘Bossak,’ and not everyone’s dad is friends with him. That’s why we want you. You’re invincible.”
He thought for a moment, putting his hand up to his face to scratch his non-existent facial hair. “Alright fine I’ll be your bodyguard. I don’t want money though. My dad gives me whatever I want anyways,” Lincoln said as he reached his hand in his pocket and pulled out the amount we make in a week. “If I help you, I don’t want to do homework for the rest of the year.”
We all looked around at each other, was it really worth doing his homework for the rest of the year? We could split it up between all of us, it would only be a little bit more per day. That also meant we could keep his split of the money for ourselves.
We agreed to his terms, and then had the scariest guy in the school on our side, one that ruled over the students and the principal.
The Lincoln method made us absolutely rich. We’d let kids go a few days without paying, racking up the sum, and then Lincoln would give them a visit. They always paid the day after Lincoln talked to them.
The problem became clear when kids started snitching. We knew that would happen. If Lincoln got in trouble for threatening kids or whatever, his dad would bail him out. What we didn’t plan for were the kids snitching on us. Our stupid customers turned out to be smarter than we thought. They knew that if they snitched on Lincoln, he’d go coming for them to get payback, but they knew we wouldn’t. They started telling their teachers they bought something from us fair and square, and then we made them pay way more money. This was partly true, but they coincidentally left out the part that they agreed to the terms when they told their teachers what happened.
All of these tips got collected across almost every second, third, and fourth grade teacher in the school, eleven in total. Ms. Aussie was still blind to our empire. Apparently a few of them met during lunch one day and talked about The Market, the name we recently decided on. They brought it up to Principal Bossak and he called all of us to his office over the intercom at once, near the end of the school day. Ms. Aussie watched from the front of a classroom as a fourth of us look at each other in fear and slowly started standing up and making our way towards the door.
“Good luck boys,” Ms. Aussie said with a chuckle as we left. We never would’ve guessed it at the time, but she totally knew what we were up to.
---
We were anything but quiet as we walked down the long hallway to Principal Bossak’s office, taking turns pointing fingers at each other in blame, trying to figure out who was gonna say what, and getting a couple tears out before we walked in.
We all filed through Principal Bossak’s door and formed a semicircle in front of his desk, some of our hands in our pockets, others fiddling with our fingers in front of us. Bossak sat while the secretary stood behind him by his side. Lincoln wasn’t there, his name was probably never even mentioned to the teachers, and if it was, they didn’t care enough to mess with him.
Bossak spoke first, “Who can tell me why you all are in here today?”
Silence. That was our pact. See what he knew, then leave as many gaps unfilled as possible so we wouldn’t get in trouble. We looked around at each other to see if anyone would squeak. Nothing.
“I see how it is,” Bossak said. Then he opened his desk drawer and pulled out a Ziplock bag full of Pokémon cards. He put them on the desk and slid them across to us, the yellow sticky note still stuck to the front boasting a five-dollar price. “Can anyone tell me what this is?”
Silence.
What felt like a full minute passed until the secretary chimed in. “You know you brats can go to jail for this.”
“Martha, please,” Bossak said. “You boys aren’t going to jail, but there are rules at this school and every student has to follow them. Look, I’ve heard a lot of stories as to what’s going on behind Ms. Aussie’s back, and they aren’t making you lot look very good. Until someone tells me your side of the story, I have to assume that you threatened to kidnap a kid’s sister if they didn’t pay for these cards. And then I would actually have to send you to some sort of jail. So loop me in.”
What?! Was what everyone was probably thinking. Confusion was on everyone’s faces as we looked at each other to try to find someone to blame for kidnapping someone’s sister, like that’s just crazy? We all came to the realization at once. Lincoln. Nobody went with him on his money collecting missions, who knows what he was telling these kids.
Silence.
“Alright, you’ve left me no other option. I’m calling officer Monty to this office in 10 seconds, and he can decide what to do with you from there,” Bossak said. He picked up the phone, and looked into each of our eyes. We didn’t know if he was bluffing. We didn’t plan to get sent to jail, maybe a call to the parents, after school cleaning, sure, but not this. We didn’t know if we should say something and break our pact or keep going with the plan.
Seeing this on our quickly-turning-red faces, our hands that started to fiddle faster, he started dialing on that black corded phone.
Beep.
Silence.
Beep.
Silence.
Beep.
Silence.
The fourth beep never came, as Justin opened his mouth. Seeing this, Bossak paused his finger midair before hitting the next button. “Principal Bossak,” he started. He reached his hand in his back pocket. Something we all seemed to have forgotten that it was Justin’s day to hold the collections, and that idiot must have forgotten to put it in his backpack after the sales lunch. A wad of cash almost as big as Lincoln’s allowance was in his hand – mostly ones – as he looked at all of us for agreement.
We all panicked then, this was gonna be the end. Everything we had built up about to go down the drain.
Little did we expect, Justin’s sentence never got finished, as Lincoln burst through the door, almost knocking half of us down along with it. “Guys, I’m here,” Lincoln said, out of breath. “Sorry, I was taking a crap when I heard your names on the speakers.”
“What in the world are you doing here, Lincoln? Get out this instant!” Martha said - or screamed, is the better word for it.
“Yeah, Yeah, shut it Fart-tha,” Lincoln said, waving her away with a hand almost the size of hers.
“Lincoln don’t you dare talk to her like that!” Bossak said, as Martha started to tear up.
“Listen Dave, these guys didn’t do anything wrong. It was all me. I started selling my dad’s old stuff for some money end of story. So why don’t you just send us all back to class and we can forget about it,” Lincoln said. “Or, I could tell my Mom about how you and Fart-tha kiss in your office when you don’t think anyone notices. You know my mom gets word around fast,” he said, spinning the picture of Bossak and his wife, who was not Martha, to us, the ultimate trump card.
Seeing this, Justin stuffed the money back into his pocket, and closed his mouth, back to the plan.
Principal Bossak tensed up, then quickly dialed four more numbers into the black phone, which he had been holding this whole time. Beep Beep Beep Beep.
“No. No. No! I won’t let my life be controlled by some insolent little brat that thinks he’s untouchable! Officer Monty can deal with you! And you and you and all of you!” Bossak yelled.
That’s when we all realized just how scary Lincoln could be, what all of the kids we sent him to terrorize must have felt and what made them pay up so quickly. He rammed through two of us and went for his chance at the phone cradle. He grabbed it and ripped it off the desk, the power cord getting unplugged.
Silence, like, everyone in the room froze and watched Lincoln to see what he’d do next.
He stared at Bossak, who had his mouth open wide in complete disbelief, for about two seconds, when the final bell to end the school day rang loud. Everyone looked up towards the speaker, everyone except Lincoln, who turned on his heels, and yelled, “Run!” sprinting out Bossak’s door and into the mass of kids racing to get the best seat on the bus or to their parent’s cars.
We didn’t really have any other choice. All of us ran out of the office, hearing Martha and Bossak stumbling and yelling at us from inside. We grabbed our backpacks as quick as we could, which Ms. Aussie had lined up for us in the hallway outside of our classroom. She really must have known us bunch well, doing that. Then we ran outside, both scared out of our minds, and giggling, feeling the freest and lightest we’d ever have, while we scattered to our buses, parent’s cars, or to the sidewalk on the path to our houses.
---
We all nervously expected a call to our parents’ house that night, which never came. Then those of us that didn’t fake being sick to avoid the punishment of the next day, expected to get chewed out in front of the whole school as soon as we walked in. That didn’t happen either. We found our seats and after the pledge of allegiance, Ms. Aussie read the morning announcements.
After a cheer from the whole class that pizza was on the menu, Ms. Aussie resumed, “And an announcement from Principal Bossak himself! There have been some young entrepreneurs that have started a business right here in our school! Although I appreciate the hard work and determination that came with this business, all buying and selling of items, on school grounds, during school hours, is now officially prohibited. If you have bought something from one of your peers and feel pressured in any way to pay them back, please take that up with me. I hope we can all have respect for each other in this school and continue to learn and grow together, have a great day!”
We looked around at each other, and felt relieved. Bossak must have been too scared of all of us knowing his big secret, that he gave us a get out of jail free card.
“I was also informed that there has been some technical difficulty with the phones today, so I’ll have to assign a runner to deliver messages for me. Any volunteers?” Ms. Aussie asked, looking to see if any of us boys reacted to the whole phones part.
Justin did smile at that.
After that everything went back to normal. No more systems of selling and hiding and secrets, but we found ways to make some games that mimicked our business routines.
We never did see Lincoln again though. Some of us heard he transferred to a school with a better football team, his family moved away, or that he got arrested and sent to a maximum-security prison. Justin assured us that last one didn’t happen. Wherever he is, we know that he’s doing alright. He is invincible, after all.