Johnny B. Fast: The Super Spy Part One Page 8

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  Johnny stood glumly in line at the cafeteria. He stared at the cold looking food waiting for him when he finally got to the end. Johnny always tried to remind himself to make his own lunch at home, to spare him the fake looking and tasting food that the school always offered, but he never found the time to make it when he remembered.

  “Next time for sure,” he promised himself.

  The line shuffled forward.

  The Cafeteria Lady plumped a nice helping of fake mashed potatoes and gravy on the next student’s plate, not looking too happy while she did it. No one at the school really knew her name; she never looked at anyone and never initiated or responded much to conversation. Because of that, she was just known as the Cafeteria Lady.

  “Next,” she droned in her bored, tired voice.

  The line shuffled forward again.

  The Cafeteria Lady plunked the next helping of fake food down onto Nancy’s plate, weighing it down considerably and forcing Nancy to compensate to keep her tray up.

  “Thank you,” Nancy said.

  “Next,” replied the Cafeteria Lady.

  Johnny really wanted to talk to Nancy, but he didn’t want to give up his place in line. He looked behind him and saw how far the line stretched back. Johnny would have to start all over again if he lost his place. No one in the line behind him looked very happy; they were probably all thinking the same thing about making their lunches next time.

  Maybe missing lunch wasn’t the worst thing in the world? Nancy weaved her way around students and tables, looking for a place to sit.

  Johnny decided he had to talk to Nancy. He left his place in line, much to the dismay of the student behind him who would now be served his lunch that much faster.

  Johnny trailed Nancy, trying to quickly dodge the students faster than she was so he could catch up to her.

  He wasn’t really looking in front of him and ran straight into a student who purposely moved to block his way. The student was really big; it was like running into a soft wall.

  Johnny looked up, way up, to see Bob looking down, way down at him. Bob didn’t look very happy either; it must have been something that was contagious at school that week.

  Two other students appeared on either side of Bob: Frank and Jim. The three of them were always around each other because no one else in the school was big enough to survive their rough behavior.

  “You weren’t watching where I was going,” Bob said to him.

  “A mistake I will never make again,” Johnny quickly replied as he tried to side step Bob, Frank and Jim.

  The three of them all shifted over to block his way again. Johnny had completely lost sight of Nancy now, but then again he pretty much lost sight of everything except the three of them at the moment.

  “You made the mistake again,” Bob leered down at him.

  Johnny didn’t understand. He never really did anything to bother Bob in the past, and while he always saw the three of them picking on other students, Johnny was never one of their targets. He always felt guilty that he never helped those students stand up to these bullies, and he pretty much knew without a doubt that no one would be coming to help him now. It served him right for turning a blind eye.

  “Looks like you’re surrounded by the Fourth Wall,” said Frank while he hit his fist into his palm.

  Johnny almost laughed out loud. They called themselves the Fourth Wall because they thought they were all so big that if they had one more member they could hold a roof over their heads. At least that’s what Johnny thought they meant. It was hard to tell when each one of them was already as big as a house.

  “I don’t have time for this right now,” Johnny tried as he moved to the right to slide past them again. Predictably, the entire Fourth Wall shifted with him, once again blocking his way.

  Johnny was nervous. Worse, he couldn’t understand why he was nervous. He was a super spy, and could take out entire platoons of guards, sneak past high tech security, and single handedly save the world from evil. Yet here he was being confronted by three bullies and he was at a loss as to what to do. He’d like to think it was because now he was Johnny Clunker, and Clunker kept a low profile, stayed out of people’s way, and didn’t save the world on an almost daily basis.

  “You just made time,” Bob said.

  By now all the students in the cafeteria were watching them. Johnny looked uncomfortably around at everyone, trying to remember how he got into this mess in the first place. It seemed that every time he wanted to talk to Nancy, he was running into people trying to stop him.

  Johnny looked Bob in the eye.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Bob laughed.

  Several people in the cafeteria laughed along. Some of them were laughing because, Johnny had to admit, it was genuinely funny. Bob must have weighed three times more than him, and Johnny could only imagine how odd his warning must have looked. But some of the other people were laughing out of relief because they were usually the target of the Fourth Wall’s attacks. This Johnny didn’t find so funny. People should stick up for themselves. Johnny was going to show them how. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Johnny knew he wasn’t acting in the best way to protect his secret identity.

  “I’m serious. If you continue to get in my way, I’m going to have to put you in your place,” Johnny said with an icy cold stare.

  Wham!

  Bob punched Johnny hard in the stomach.

  Johnny instantly fell to his knees and tried to get some breath into his lungs. He hadn’t seen that coming; must have been a sucker punch. Some super spy he was turning out to be.

  “I think you hurt my fist with all your skin and bones,” Bob laughed.

  “Leave him alone!”

  Johnny looked up through the pain to find that Nancy was standing beside him. He tried to tell her to get out of the way, but he still couldn’t remember how to breathe.

  “Looks like your mom’s here to save you,” Frank laughed.

  This was slowly turning from bad to worse. It was bad enough that he couldn’t take out the Fourth Wall, but it was worse that he might be rescued by a girl. Again!

  Enough was enough. Johnny struggled to stand up and face down his bullies.

  “Walk away, right now,” Johnny said, a calm inner strength radiating from him before he ruined the effect by coughing and trying to get more air into his lungs.

  Still, the bullies did pause for a moment, and momentarily looked at each other and wondered what they should do. But then they remembered that they were the Fourth Wall, and they backed down from nobody.

  “I’m scared,” Bob said sarcastically, and he took another swing at Johnny.

  Dozens of thoughts raced through Johnny’s mind. First, he started thinking about the quickest way to take down all three bullies, but then he began revising his plan to try and keep his secret identity a secret by not revealing his skills to all the people that were watching the fight. But there simply wasn’t any more time to think.

  Johnny intercepted the swing near his face, making it look like he got hit, and shifted slightly, redirecting the hit toward Frank while pretending to stumble forward. Frank caught the punch right in his face.

  Johnny’s back was towards Jim and Jim wasted no time in taking advantage of an unfair situation. He swung at the back of Johnny’s head with all his might. But before his fist could get there, Nancy dropped down on one leg and swung out with her other one, kicking Jim’s knees out from under him.

  Jim fell to the ground in a large heap.

  Johnny looked over at Jim, and then back at Nancy.

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  Before Bob knew what was going on, he had lost two of his accomplices.

  “Looks like you’ll have to be the First Wall now,” Johnny commented, before realizing that he was screwing up his secret identity again. “I mean, please don’t hurt me!”

  Bob didn’t understand what was going on, was Clunker joking? What ha
d just happened to Frank and Jim?

  “I am going to hurt you!” Bob declared, his simple mind latching onto the last thing he had heard and going with it.

  With a yell, Bob charged at Johnny.

  Bob was a very large kid, and once he got moving there was almost nothing that could stop him. Johnny waited until the last possible moment, and then spun and rolled out of the way, throwing himself sprawling onto the ground to look like he tripped. Bob watched him go out of the corner of his eye, but like a freight train he just kept moving forward, unable to stop.

  The crowd of spectators had a moment to look on in horror before Bob plowed right into them, knocking at least a dozen students to the ground and managing to land on a good number of them.

  Nancy looked on in amazement at the carnage spread out all around them.

  Hands and feet tried to poke out from under Bob’s massive form, there were muffled cries for help and groans of pain. Bob just looked dazed.

  “What do we have here?” an icy cold voice asked from behind Johnny.

  Johnny cringed. He knew that voice; he dreaded that voice.

  Slowly he turned around to see Ms. Sniders’ disapproving look spread out to all of them like a lighthouse beam, slashing back and forth to include everyone in the area.

  She reached down with each hand and clamped her fingers on Frank’s and Jim’s ears. They yelped in pain. She pulled them up. They struggled to stand up as fast as they could before she could yank their ears off of their head. She did it with machine-like precision, and it looked like she would have been able to pick them up all by herself if they didn’t cooperate.

  “We don’t like disruptions in the cafeteria, do we now?” she asked everyone.

  Johnny could see the crowd start to quietly disperse as the students tried to slink away before they were singled out by Ms. Sniders.

  He and Nancy had no chance to do that; Ms. Sniders had already focused her intense, cold, half smile on him.

  Johnny had no idea how someone could show so many outward signs of emotion without seeming to feel them. For some reason her eyes always looked lifeless and cold. It was the worst when she smiled.

  “Do we?” she asked again, directing the question to Frank and Jim beside her.

  “No!” yelped Frank.

  “We don’t,” pleaded Jim.

  Johnny forgot what the original question was.

  She smiled that cold, hard smile at them and released their ears.

  Then she turned to Bob, who was just then struggling to get off of the people crushed under him.

  Bob looked up, saw Ms. Sniders looking at him, and froze.

  “I’m sorry,” he squeaked.

  She nodded a cold, grim nod.

  Finally, Ms. Sniders turned her gaze on Johnny and Nancy.

  “This is quite a ruckus you have caused, isn’t it,” she told them.

  “They started it,” Johnny tried to explain.

  “It seems perfectly obvious to everyone who was the instigator here,” Ms. Sniders continued. “Detention, today, for both of you,” she declared.

  “What?” Nancy all but shouted.

  Ms. Sniders looked at Nancy. Nancy froze under that gaze as if Ms. Sniders was Medusa.

  “Do you think, perhaps, that we are being unfair? Perhaps one detention is not enough, you may need more time to think about what you have done.”

  Nancy and Johnny looked down at the ground. Ms. Sniders continued to glare at them, almost daring them to say anything else.

  Finally, satisfied, her face broke into a thin smile, but her eyes were still cold and lifeless.

  Ms. Sniders turned and walked away from them.