Pennybaker School Is Headed for Disaster

by Jennifer Brown

  The man was wearing blue coveralls, a giant patch with the words Mr. Cheesy Makes Cheese Eesey ironed onto the back. He was pushing an empty metal trolley.

  “Vending machine man,” I whispered.

  “Oh, no,” Chip said. “He’s going to be unloading these boxes. We’re doomed.”

  “Shhh! We’re not doomed yet. But we will be if you keep talking. When he goes back in with another load, we’ll get out and climb the fence.”

  “But I’m not wearing my fence-climbing socks.”

  “Then you’ll just have to wing it. Shhh.”

  Chip was silent, and we both listened as the whistling got closer until it was right in the open doorway. Then there was a grunt, and I watched as the Mr. Cheesy guy hefted the trolley into the back of the truck. And then before I could even stand up and say, “Wait!” he hopped up onto the bumper, reached for a cloth loop, and jumped down, pulling the truck door with him. It clattered shut.

  “No, no,” I said, trying to unfold myself from between the boxes. It was hard work now; the inside of the truck was so dark that it felt like it had weight. “No, no, no!” I fumbled for the door or a wall or … anything. I kept tripping over boxes and coming upon dead ends. “Let us out!”

  But instead of the door opening and saving us, I heard another door thud behind me, and soon after, the truck rumbled to life. I lunged for the wall and started banging on it with both fists. “Help! Help! Chip, pound with me!”

  There was a grinding of gears, and then the truck started moving, making me tumble back into my spot next to Chip. Trapped. I was trapped inside a chip truck with Chip Mason.

  “Now what?” I asked. I kicked a box of cheesy whatevers in front of me. I turned on Chip. “You didn’t even try to get them to hear us. You never said a word. You just sat here.”

  Next to me there was silence. And then some rustling. And then a crunch.

  “You’re eating? How can you be eating at a time like this?”

  “Criminal activity apparently works up an appetite. Look on the bright side, Thomas,” Chip said. “You’re surrounded by all the cheese snacks you could imagine.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I said.

  “But it could help you with your history project,” he countered. “It’s a research trip!”

  There was more crunching, and as we rolled along to who-knew-where, Chip loudly began slurping the excess cheese off his fingers. I secretly hoped it fused his mouth shut.

  I leaned against the box next to me and closed my eyes, imagining Erma’s delight at getting to tell Mom that I disappeared through the back door of the skating rink. Chip could look on the bright side all he wanted, but the truth was the truth.

  We were trapped in this truck.

  And I was going to be in so much trouble when I got out.

  TRICK #24

  I’LL NOW MAKE WATER APPEAR

  By the time the truck rolled to a stop, I was pretty sure Chip was fast asleep next to me. Either that or my cheese-fused-mouth wish had come true, because, for a change, he wasn’t talking.

  I didn’t know how he could sleep at a time like this. It was like nothing could rattle Chip Mason. He was what Grandma Jo would call “cool as a cucumber,” whatever that meant. I would think a cucumber sitting out in a sunny garden would be hot. But I wasn’t a gardener, so what did I know?

  All I knew was there was no way I could have fallen asleep in the back of that truck. All I could think about was the many adventures I was going to have when I got out of here.

  The Mom’s Head Actually Explodes This Time Adventure

  The Taking Away Everything but Your Mattress and a Glass of Lukewarm Water Adventure

  The Erma Is Now and Forever Known as the Good Child Adventure (gag)

  The You’re Grounded Until They Invent JetPacks for School Buses Adventure

  None of those adventures sounded good at all. Which was a real bummer, because I definitely wasn’t having fun on the Trapped in a Cheesy Truck Adventure, either. If I was going to be subject to Mom’s many adventures, I wanted to at least have had fun getting there.

  I stood as soon as the truck stopped, nudged Chip awake with my toe, and felt my way to where I thought the door might be. When it roared open, I threw my hands up to block out the sun and yelped, staggering. The Mr. Cheesy man gasped and clutched his chest, also staggering.

  “What the …?” he kept saying over and over again. “What the … Where did … What the …?”

  “Hello, sir,” I heard from behind me. “I believe I owe you recompense for your fine cheesy refreshment. I’m afraid, however, that I’m without capital at the moment. Will you take an IOU?”

  I turned and glared at him. “Chip! Not now! You’re not even wearing your vocabulary socks.” And, no, I couldn’t believe I uttered that sentence, either.

  “What the …?” the Mr. Cheesy guy was still saying. “How did you get in there?”

  “At the skating rink,” I said. I held my wrists out and lowered my head in defeat. “You can arrest us now. Just get it over with.”

  To my surprise, rather than be angry, the Mr. Cheesy man laughed. “Well, you sure scared the heck out of me, but I hardly think that’s reason to arrest you. Come on out of there and we’ll call your mothers.”

  I would almost have rather been arrested.

  When Mom got to us (turned out we were in an office building all the way on the other side of town), her whole face was a straight line.

  “Get in, Chip. Your mom is busy with your grandfather, so she asked me to bring you both home,” was the only thing anyone said all the way until we pulled into our driveway and Chip got out of the car.

  Then she turned the straight-line face directly at me.

  “What on earth could possibly be your explanation?” she asked.

  “Erma set us up,” I said.

  She tilted her head to one side. “You expect me to believe that your ten-year-old sister is responsible for you ending up halfway across town in the back of a vending-machine van?”

  “Yes?”

  She made a face that told me she clearly didn’t believe it, even if it was true.

  “Look, Mom, I’m really sorry, but I found some evidence that Chip and I needed to investigate, and we accidentally got trapped in the truck. We tried pounding, but he didn’t hear us.”

  “Evidence? What kind of evidence?”

  “I found something near the pedestal where Mrs. Heirmauser’s statue used to be.”

  The straight line came back. “Thomas, you need to stay away from that statue altogether.”

  “It’s not even there,” I said. “I’m trying to solve the case.”

  She held out her hand to stop me and closed her eyes. “Honestly, I don’t know what’s gotten into you these days. First the statue, and now this. It’s not enough that I have your grandmother to contend with. Did you know she’s been doing parkour?”

  I felt my face redden. Her eyebrows went up.

  “You knew? And you didn’t tell me?” She pulled her keys out of the ignition and opened her door. “I swear, it’s like I don’t even know you anymore, Thomas. You can go to your room to think about everything you’ve done. And don’t come out until I tell you to.”

  There was a knock on my door about two hours later. Dad poked his head into my room while I was right in the middle of hard-core mope. I was lying on my bed cadaver-style, with arms and ankles crossed, staring at my ceiling until the bumps started to blend and move and my eyes started to water. I let the tears run down into my ears. Side bonus: if I looked like I was crying when Mom came to check on me, maybe she would feel bad and let me out.

  “Hey, Thomas. Can I come in?”

  I shrugged. He took that as a yes—which I was hoping he’d do, even if I couldn’t say it out loud. He sat on the edge of the bed, facing away from me.

  “I heard what happened,” he said.

  I said nothing. After a pause, he went on.

  “Your mother says you tried to bl
ame it on Erma?”

  I shrugged.

  “She’s ten years old. You have to give her a break.”

  I rolled my eyes, thinking about poor, innocent, sweet, ten-year-old Erma and how it was completely unbelievable that she could do anything rotten. Boy, did she ever have my parents fooled. He shifted his weight, jiggling me, but I managed to keep myself all crossed up tight.

  “Listen. You’re probably going to need to apologize to your mom for worrying her today. And …”

  He never finished the sentence. I could see him chewing on his lower lip a little, as if he was trying to figure out exactly how to say what he wanted to say.

  “And what?” I asked, when I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Well, if there’s anything you need to talk about … anything you need to tell me—you know, anything you need to confess …”

  I sat up. “Like what?”

  This time it was his turn to shrug, only it didn’t look nearly as casual as he wanted it to. “Oh, I don’t know. If you got a bad grade on something or you’re behind on your history project or, I don’t know, if you have something you need to return.”

  “I’ve told you,” I said. “I didn’t steal the statue. I’m trying to find out who did steal it so I can get it back. That’s how I got locked in the truck. But nobody believes me.”

  Dad patted my leg. “Sure, sure. I believe you. I do. But if you should change your mind and decide you did accidentally take something, you can come to me.”

  “How do you accidentally take a hundred-pound statue?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “How do you know how much it weighs?”

  I threw up my hands in despair. “I don’t! I was guessing! I didn’t take anything, accidentally or on purpose. I wish you believed me. I wish Mom believed me. I wish someone other than Chip Mason believed me.”

  “I believe you. I do, Thomas.”

  But for some reason, now I didn’t believe him. Probably because he was still calling me “Thomas” instead of “pal.” I flopped back onto my pillow with a grunt. He patted my leg again.

  “So. Movie night? I’ve got Attack of the Killer Koala-Droid.”

  Oh, man. The Killer Koala-Droid was a classic. Dad and I had a thing, ever since I was old enough to cover my eyes in fear. Every week we popped in a ridiculous old horror movie—the kind where you could sometimes even see guys in the background working the monster puppet’s strings—and popped popcorn and kicked the girls out of the basement. It was our “guy time.” I loved it.

  But that was before Dad stopped believing in me.

  “I think I’ll pass,” I said to the ceiling.

  “You sure? The koala has red lasers for eyes that melt buildings right down to the ground.” He made a humming noise and used his fingers to simulate shooting lasers.

  I flicked a glance at him and then looked away. “I’m sure. Just watch it without me.”

  He looked uncertain, maybe even a little stung. He stood up slowly, smoothing the bedding where he’d just been sitting. “Well, okay. But if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

  “I won’t change my mind,” I said to the ceiling. “I wouldn’t want to accidentally steal your time.”

  Dad didn’t say anything; just went to the door. “I’ll be downstairs,” he said, before closing it behind him.

  This time I didn’t have to pretend the tears in my ears were from crying.

  TRICK #25

  I SHALL NOW TURN MY SISTER INTO A HUMAN

  I kept to myself for the rest of the weekend. I didn’t even look outside to see if Chip Mason was doing his usual weird stuff, maybe wearing gymnastics socks or archaeology socks or dog-petting socks or whatever other socks he might have. I didn’t care. I just wanted to be left alone.

  Which wasn’t so easy for Erma to do. She came into my room Sunday morning, just as I was getting ready to give up and go down to the kitchen for some breakfast. I wanted to prove a point. But not as much as I wanted French toast.

  “Hey,” she said. She seemed sheepish.

  “What do you want?” I snapped.

  “To say I’m sorry.” She was twisting the hem of her pajama shirt around in one palm. She was still in her pajamas but was wearing pink lip gloss. I could smell the strawberry all the way across the room. More proof that girls didn’t understand life at all.

  “You said it. Now get out,” I said. I pretended to be really busy fixing the hinge on my magic case, even though it wasn’t broken.

  “Don’t you even want to know what I found out?”

  “No.”

  “After all that, you don’t want to know whether or not Arthura did it? I would think you would at least want to make it worth your while. You’re not even curious?”

  Yes. Of course I was. I was dying to know what Erma found out about Arthura. But I didn’t want to give Erma the pleasure of being the one to tell me anything.

  But she was the only one who knew.

  I sighed. “What did you find out about Arthura?”

  She came in and shut the door. Walked over to my bed and sat on her knees. Leaned in like she had a huge secret. Despite trying to act cool, I found myself absently winding my never-ending handkerchief around my hand again and again while leaning toward her. It got very quiet in my room.

  “She didn’t do it,” she said.

  “That’s it? She didn’t do it?”

  She turned her palms up. “She didn’t do it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because she told me.”

  I tossed the hanky back into the case, only it was so wrapped around my hand that it didn’t go anywhere. I tried to quickly unwrap it, but it’s basically impossible to look cool quickly undoing something that’s all knotted up around a body part. Especially a never-ending something. “Of course she said she didn’t do it. Did you think she was going to confess?”

  Erma scrunched up her nose and lips, thinking. “Yeah. She would tell me.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way.”

  “No way, Erma.”

  She stood and placed her fists on her hips. “Yes way, Thomas. Besides, she told me how the gum got there.”

  “You asked?”

  “I told you I would.”

  “You also set me up to be stuck in a vending-machine supply truck.”

  “I only set you up to be locked outside,” she said, holding up one finger. “I didn’t know about the truck. I was going to let you back in eventually.”

  I glared at her. Her shoulders drooped.

  “I’m sorry, Thomas, okay?”

  I paused, staring at her long enough to make her feel squiggly inside but not so long that she would walk out and take her Arthura story with her. “Okay,” I said. “Now spill.”

  “So, it turns out that Arthura’s aunt Mandy is a police officer. And she was the one who came when the school called about the missing statue. According to Arthura, her aunt Mandy had borrowed a piece of gum from Arthura that morning and was chewing it when she went on the call. And apparently when she bent down to look for evidence, someone opened the front door and a big gust of wind blew in and blew the dust right off the pedestal and into Mandy’s face. She sneezed out her gum. She couldn’t find it—she looked everywhere—but it was gone. That’s how the gum got there. It was never Arthura’s to begin with.”

  “That’s a dumb story.”

  “It is not!”

  “Yes, it is. It’s a dumb story.”

  Erma’s fists went right back to her hips. She must have had fist-shaped dents permanently imprinted in her skin. “You’re a dumb story!”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. And neither does your story. That gum was covered with glittery lip gloss. Just like Arthura wears.”

  “And like her aunt wears, too,” she said. “Police officers can wear lip gloss, you know.”

  I didn’t know if that was true or not, but I knew my sister, and even though the story was pretty dumb, she totally believed it.
And if she believed it, maybe it would be worth my while to believe it, too. Besides, why would Arthura want the statue? I still had no answer for that.

  “Thanks,” I said. “For nothing.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said, pointing her nose up to the ceiling. “And just so you know, Arthura said she wouldn’t be surprised if her aunt Mandy came to talk to you about the case pretty soon.”

  “Sure, sure,” I said. “Arthura is so reliable.” I rooted around in the magic case for Grandpa Rudy’s old bottle of sulfur hexafluoride. I felt like making something float.

  “Hey, Thomas?” Erma said.

  I didn’t even look up. “What?”

  “I’m sorry that Arthura wasn’t the one. But just so you know, I don’t think you did it, either.”

  She skipped out of the room before I could absorb what she said. I looked up just in time to see her pigtails bouncing through my doorway. Someone besides Chip believed me.

  It was Erma, but Erma was someone.

  Maybe she didn’t have my parents so fooled after all.

  Just then I heard a commotion outside. I pulled up on my knees and peered out my window. Chip Mason, wearing a helmet and knee pads that reminded me a lot of Grandma Jo’s parkour gear, was inside a metal trash can, rolling down his driveway and crashing to a stop against our mailbox. Then he got up, dragged the trash can back to the top of his driveway, climbed inside, and did it all over again.

  I shook my head.

  Erma may have believed me, but that didn’t change the facts. The head was still missing. Everyone thought I stole it. Now a lip gloss–wearing police officer was going to question me.

  And we still had no idea who the real thief was.

  TRICK #26

  ALACAZAM! A PLAN!

  On Monday morning, I awoke to the sound of something tapping against my window. I flew out of bed and grabbed my straw, expecting another snowstorm of spitwads. But when I flung back the curtain, straw poised in my mouth, I found Chip Mason standing on the other side, waving at me excitedly.

  He was still wearing his pajamas, which were basically a big, furry teddy bear suit. Complete with a hood with ears.