Edwood’s eyebrow raised almost imperceptibly, but everyone happened to be blinking at that precise moment, so his act was, in all actuality, imperceived. He stabbed at his potato (or was it potatoe?)-made voodoo doll of Jakob. He had done many things to the spud… effigy… spudigy thing that he had secretly kept in his pants since chapter fourteen. Over the course of the past few days, he had molded it into many shapes, including his favorite failed politicians, Michael Dukakis and Dan Quayle, and a potato bug. And have you ever seen a potato bug? Those things are disgusting. My sister once found one in her shoe when we were kids. I think it scarred her for life. Anyway, Edwood even molded the spud into a snaggle-toothed Shark Boy at one point. But for now, since no one in the Gap seemed to be fawning over his perfectly-coiffed beauty, or even approached him to see if he needed assistance, he was content to jab a perfectly-formed finger into the eye of what now looked like normal old Jakob.
Elsewhere, Jakob screamed and clutched at his eye. Bela and Woeisme were right next to him, but paid no attention. Since they hadn’t done anything to make him scream, he obviously wasn’t screaming because of them, and that meant he wasn’t paying any attention to them, so they had no use for him at the moment. Which really made that moment no different than any other moment.
El Patata seemed content to scream “Santora!” and admire himself in a mirror near the registers, so Bela and Woeisme decided to shop. One might think that a mother and daughter shopping together might be a time for bonding, but they inevitably kept reaching for the same clothes, even though Bela’s motherly hips were sadly too old for the fashions she unfortunately mistakenly thought she wasn’t too old for.
Still, she was let in to the dressing room to try the clothes on by a middle-aged boy named Sue, who only let Bela take five garments in to try on. She took the five pairs of horribly outdated acid-washed jeans, and had to leave the velour pantsuit behind. A slightly-too-furry arm reached up from behind the counter and grabbed the pantsuit.
Inside the changing room, Bela was beside herself. No, wait, that was Woeisme beside her. Bela couldn’t decide which pair of jeans properly expressed her level of teen angst, even though she wasn’t a teen anymore, and was a Mom, and her child would be older than she by her next birthday.
Elsewhere in the ladies’ changing rooms, Jakob was about to try on the velour pantsuit he had absconded with. Sue, who couldn’t figure out why he always got stuck watching the ladies department, but didn’t actually mind as he had installed webcams in several of the dressing rooms, called over the brute of a security guard.
“Hey man, can you check out room two?” he asked Lou. “I think a dude might of snuck in there. At least I hope that’s a dude with legs that hairy.”
Lou scratched his head for a moment.
“Okay. Lou go see.”
Moments later, Jakob was flying through the store, a velour pantsuit trailing behind him.
—
“Mom, will you just hurry up and pick a pair so we can leave already?” Woeisme said, both disgustedly and exasperatedly.
Bela held her hands to her head as if to keep her scant brains from exploding out of her head.
“This is all happening too fast!” she cried. “How can we go through two hundred pages so quickly?”
“Because it’s printed in really big type.” Woeisme replied, sighing and rolling her eyes because she was disgusted by her mother. “And it’s written at a seventh-grade level.”
“SANTORA!”
El Patata the potato or potatoe rolled out from behind the registers. No longer content to admire himself, he started toward Woeisme as fast as his little potato legs could carry him. Which wasn’t very fast, which was good, because that gave everyone time to do more stuff before he reached them.
Bela and Woeisme looked each other and simultaneously said at the same time, “I have a bad feeling about this.”
—
Frustrated with the spudigy’s inability to stand on it’s own two feet – much like an old-school Star Wars action figure that has taken one too many rides on a cobbled-together catapult cobbled together by a mischievous eight-year-old and can no longer stand up on its own – Edwood spied a used lollipop stick stuck to the side of a nearby trash can. He slid the stick into the back of the spudigy and placed it on top of the garbage can, where it finally stood erect.
Jakob stood up, unsure of where to go. On one side, he had Lou the ape man barreling toward him. On the other was El Patata. Woeisme and Bela walked up to him, looked down, and laughed.
“I bet there’s no way you can get us out of this mess.” said Bela slightly rudely.
Jakob stood, and for the first time in his life, four books, one unpublished manuscript, an upcoming graphic novel and a ridiculously convoluted parody, showed some backbone. Unfortunately, since he had been ejected from the ladies’ changing room in mid-change, he was not clothed. And his proximity to the air conditioner did nothing to enhance his chances with Bela or the underage-but-kinda-only-for-a-few-more-weeks-better-check-countdowntolegality.com\woeisme Woeisme. Yet there he stood, fists on his hips, hair tossed defiantly in the arctic breeze of the climate control system, and he defiantly responded in the only way he could:
“Always bet on Blaq.”
• 
This is one of my favorite chapters. From the Shark Boy joke to the final line, it’s all pretty dámņ funny.
Yeah, it’s awesome to see some Potato Moon action, it’s been 10 long days, I was starting to get the shakes. Great to see some continuity with the oft-neglected Jakob voodoo doll that Edwood’s been carrying around. and to finally have Jakob stand up and be assertive. I’m sure he’ll screw up and fail miserably somehow.
Worth the wait.
Thanks, folks! I’m glad you enjoyed it. The Shark Boy gag was one of the first I came up with, and I’m really glad (and a little surprised) that no one beat me to it.