That weekend was huge for us. We had more operations and business ventures running that weekend than we’d ever had before times ten. We had a movie and video game booth set up selling dozens of the newest R- and M-rated titles. We had a test answer and homework blowout, for which Vince and I amassed all of the essay papers, book reports, work sheet packets, and test answer keys we’d collected over the years into one giant file cabinet. We priced all the items and put them up for sale at bargain prices. And they sold like we were selling gold for pocket lint. But then, why wouldn’t they? What kid wouldn’t want to buy enough prewritten essay papers to last him a whole school year for a mere fifty dollars?

Other things we had going that weekend were the lemonade stand and conjoined baked good/dessert stands. Lots of kids helping us had asked their moms and dads for treats and then they smuggled them out of the house and sold them to us for cheap. We turned around and sold them for slightly more to other kids. You’d think that that might be kind of a lame business, but with so many parents freaking out about eating healthy these days, you’d be surprised at just how many kids were treat-deprived and desperate to pay for a good old-fashioned chocolate chip cookie or brownie.

Plus, we were just lucky enough to have the hottest weekend of the fall, with temperatures getting up and over one hundred degrees on Saturday and Sunday. And since it was projected to be one of the last nice weekends of the year, everybody was outside trying to take advantage. All of that added up to record profits from the lemonade stands, which Huston ran with an iron fist. And lots of whistle blowing and penalties, such as “illegal use of hands” (for touching the cookies without gloves) or “personal foul” (for trying to embezzle a few bucks from the afternoon sales).

Joe also came through with some business for us from high school kids. Not as much as I felt was possible, but still enough to generate a few hundred dollars of business. And in this predicament literally every last cent would help.

We also got some visits from kids we didn’t know from nearby towns. I guessed word had really spread. Many of those kids were starving for this type of help, so out-of-towners and kids from other schools in town really drove up the movie and video game sales.

Even Staples had found more ways to help out. Some kids offered to pay for pictures with the old crime legend. Sure, I’d taken him down a year ago, but for many kids that didn’t erase the name he’d built for himself. He was still a living legend. And disappearing like he had after our showdown last year only heightened his mysterious and legendary status in some kids’ minds.

Tyrell agreed to partner with me as well and offered his spy services on a freelance basis to kids. He split profits with me 50/50, and there were a surprising number of kids who hired him to do some spying for them.

Between all of our new branches at the high school, in the lemonade business, etc., and pulling triple shifts between Vince, Jimmy Two-Tone, and me, we were doing pretty well. And by doing pretty well, I mean we were taking in boatloads of cash.

Of course it wasn’t all profit. In my economics class that year we’d learned about the difference between gross income and net income, and I don’t want to bore you with specifics, but let’s just say all the money you make isn’t always direct profit that you get to keep.

This size operation called for a lot of employees. Employees who had to be paid, though many of them were working for a discount. We had to pay helpers, pay for the goods sold, pay for bully protection and bully diversions. And I had to say, they had done a pretty good job keeping the Suits so distracted that they had no idea what I was up to.

Some of the confirmed diversions I’d heard about included a fight between Little Paul and a pack of third graders that spanned the whole length of the football field and involved raw eggs, a wad of chewed gum, and a bottle of hand sanitizer. Also, Kitten had been on his game, at one point threatening a teacher with a water balloon filled with iodine. He even got a few days of in-school suspension for that one.

Other notable incidents included the school sprinkler system being set off not once, not twice, but four times; the return of the Graffiti Ninja, albeit a less talented version; and iBully supposedly planting some small bugs into the school’s network. As of right now, the internet home page for every computer in the whole building was stuck as this website called www.gerbilpoop.com, which is this gross site that probably doesn’t need further explanation. And the school computer guy still hadn’t been able to fix it. All in all, the school was a chaotic mess.

Which, yeah, I knew was a little risky considering what had happened last year with Dr. George and almost having the school shut down. But this time was different. This time there was no massive test failure to serve as the linchpin. This time it was just a culmination of petty acts of vandalism and sabotage. It was kind of funny, in a way, that we were sabotaging our own school in order to avoid worse sabotage from an outside source. It barely made sense if any at all. But like Staples said, you can’t get out without making sacrifices.

Normally I’m not the sort of guy who likes to brag about myself. But even I had to admit that we were at the top of our game. Our business had never functioned better, had never made more money. By Monday morning it somehow seemed like we actually might achieve the impossible and be able to pay back Kinko on Tuesday.

The biggest problem still at hand, of course, was that we had only one day left to get the permanent records. Which is why Sunday night I had called a special meeting with Vince and several select kids. We came up with probably our most insane and complicated plan ever.