Principal Rooster squinted at me. “I thought Mr. Smith canceled Act After the Fact.”
“Yeah, but Mr. Faboo will probably want to do it when he gets back. This gives me lots of time to shop.” Seriously, mouth. Get back on the leash.
“Son.” Principal Rooster placed his hand on my shoulder. When guys like Principal Rooster start looking deep into your eyes and calling you “son,” you know it’s bad news. “I think you can just let Act After the Fact go. Mr. Smith is going to be around for a while.”
I swallowed. “For how long?”
“For …” He searched the ceiling as if trying to recall a specific date, then locked his eyes on mine again. “Ever.”
Nope. I refused to accept that we would have quizzes and reading packets forever. No wigs, no quill chalk, no live chickens? Just plain old history? That sounded terrible.
The warning bell rang. “You should probably get to class now,” Principal Rooster said. “You’re going to be tardy.”
I felt my whole body slump as I trudged away from his office. But then I had an idea. I sauntered over to Miss Munch’s desk and went back to flicking imaginary lint. “So, I’m supposed to get Mr. Faboo’s phone number from you,” I said.
“Huh?”
I rolled my eyes dramatically and flapped my hand in Principal Rooster’s direction. “Principal Rooster wants me to call him about something.”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“I already have it somewhere,” I tried. “It would just be a lot easier on me if I didn’t have to search for it.” I fake yawned.
“Not happening,” she said.
“I mean, I know it has a five in it.” A bluff, but chances were pretty high that I was right—especially since everyone in town had a phone number that started with 815.
“Go to class, Thomas,” Miss Munch said, going back to her paperwork.
“Fine,” I mumbled, and turned to go.
“And, Thomas?”
I turned back to her hopefully.
“He’s not coming back. So you should probably give up trying to find him.”
I frowned. Give up? No way.
I was just getting started.
Chip didn’t show up right away after school let out. I tried to get Mom to leave without him, but she swore she could see him kneeling in front of the Heirmauser statue with all the other students, and figured he would be right out.
“You really should spend more time doing that,” she said to me as we watched through the car window.
“Why?”
“Because … people liked her.”
“I didn’t even know her. And she doesn’t really look like someone I would like.” Little did Mom know how much I agreed with her. I should have been spending more time with the statue. Because it was my job.
Chip tumbled out of the school, pushed along by a tide of laughing friends. They were having the time of their lives. With Chip Mason. I wondered if they had ever seen him sing opera into a slice of pizza. Or woken up with him crouching on their windowsill watching them sleep.
No, for real. He really did that.
“Thank you for waiting for me, Mrs. Fallgrout,” Chip said as he climbed into Mom’s car.
“You’re always welcome, Chip,” Mom said. “We aren’t in any sort of hurry, are we, Thomas?”
I clenched my teeth. I wasn’t going to say anything to the statue-polishing nameplate thief. For all I cared, he could talk to the back of my head.
“Thomas?” Mom prompted. I still said nothing. “Thomas, why are you being rude?”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Fallgrout,” Chip said. “He’s probably just working on his ballroom dance in his head. We all are.”
“Do you like to dance, Chip?” Mom asked, and for the whole ride home, I got to hear all about some guy named Vaslav Nijinsky, who was arguably the best male dancer of the twentieth century. And then I got to hear about Chip’s assortment of dancing socks. He had one pair for every type of dance—and two for polka, because polka dancing made his feet extra sweaty.
When we finally got home, Mom pulled into the driveway and paused so Chip could get out. I stared straight ahead, unmoving.
“Are you going with him?” Mom finally asked.
“No,” I said. “I have a magic trick to work on.”
Mom looked skeptical, and I didn’t blame her. Normally I would take off with Chip and we would plan our afternoon activities, which might include riding our bikes or hanging out by the creek or eating cheese and crackers on his front porch.
Ever since Chip and I became friends, after-school time got a lot more interesting and fun.
But today I was mad at him. And, okay, fine, I was kind of hurt, too. Wesley and the guys were my friends first. It was one thing to be friends. It was another to steal someone’s life. He was stealing mine.
And, worse, he was doing it without me.
“I found it.” Chip’s fist slithered over the seat and opened up, something shiny resting on the palm. It was my nameplate. “I searched all through the dirt Byron had swept up. I even shined it a little. Watch.” He angled the metal plaque until the sunlight caught it and bounced a beam right into my eyes. “Direct hit, human,” he said in a robotic voice. “You are now my pet.” We both cracked up as he dropped the tag into my lap. “Sorry I stole your job. I was just trying to help you out.”
And that was why it was hard to stay mad at Chip for very long. And probably why everybody at Pennybaker already loved him.
“It’s okay, Chip. No hard feelings.”
TRICK #8
SLEIGHT OF SISTER
After dinner, I locked myself in my room to work on my newest plan for getting out of dancing with Sissy Cork: a smoke screen.
I pulled out Grandpa Rudy’s trunk and opened it. Inside were smoke cartridges. Ten of them, to be exact. I’d never used one before, mostly because I was a little bit afraid to. Grandpa Rudy didn’t use them often, and I didn’t have a great idea of how they were supposed to work.
I turned the package of cartridges over. The instructions were old and kind of worn off, but I knew the basics of using a smoke cartridge to make it look like your hand was smoking so something could disappear in a poof of smoke. Which was kind of cool. Especially since disappearing was exactly what I wanted to do.
If I could make a coin disappear in a poof with one cartridge, maybe I could make myself disappear with ten. And if I did it at just the right time—say, right before we started our dumb dance, for instance—maybe it would cause enough of a distraction to give me time to get out of the gym.
I was still trying to read the instructions when Erma bounded through my door. I dropped the package and winced, half expecting the poof of smoke to happen right there in my bedroom.
“Jeez, Erma, haven’t you ever heard of knocking?” I picked up the packet. “I’m busy.”
She ignored me. “I have good news!” she said.
“The circus accepted your application and you’re leaving tomorrow?”
“Very funny, but no.” She hopped onto my bed and began jumping up and down—something she knew I hated, because it made my blankets all rumply and because it made Mom mad, and I always got yelled at for the things Erma did that made Mom mad. Especially when they happened in my territory. Mom never believed that Erma could be a diabolical infiltrator.
“Stop it.”
She ignored me. “I’m going to your schoo-ool,” she sang as she continued to jump.
I dropped the smoke cartridge package again. “What?”
“Mom talked to the coach and told her that I’ve been dancing my whole life, and the coach wants me to come in and help teach a class. I’ll be helping the students who are struggling. And one of those students is you! Isn’t that cool?”
No. That was not cool. That was so opposite of cool, there wasn’t even a word for it. It was like uncool with thirty-five “un”s in front of it. Erma teaching me to dance? Uncool. Erma teaching me to dance in my own school, in
front of all the guys and the girls?
Horrifying.
“No way.”
“Yep. I start tomorrow.” She squealed a little and jumped higher.
“No way. Mom!” I hollered, stuffing the smoke cartridges back into the trunk and slamming it shut. Suddenly, figuring out a way to escape dancing just got a lot harder.
“She’s busy,” Erma said.
“Busy doing what?”
“I don’t know. She and Dad are cutting branches off the oak tree.”
Why would they be cutting branches off the oak tree? “You mean the tree right outside Grandma Jo’s window?”
“Yep.”
Oh. So that was why. Mom was afraid Grandma Jo was escaping down the tree when she wasn’t looking. Mom didn’t stop to think that Grandma Jo would just parachute down if she had to.
“You can’t come to my school, Erma,” I said.
“Can so.”
“Can not.”
“Can so! Who died and made you king of Pennybaker School anyway?”
“I did!”
She hopped off my bed and waltzed to my door, stopping only to turn around and say, “Well, if you’re dead, then you won’t mind me being there.” She stuck out her tongue and was gone.
I wasn’t sleeping well to begin with—too many nightmares involving Erma at my school—which was probably why the noise woke me up. It was a kind of grating, scraping, bumping noise.
Also, it was cold. I had pulled the blankets up to my nose again. The very tip of my nose felt frozen solid.
I opened my eyes and peered through the darkness.
The window was open.
“What in the world?” I whispered, sitting up. I glanced around. All the shadows in my room looked like they had heads and eyes and mutant claws at the ends of their mutant arms. Everything seemed to be moving. It was funny how a guy’s totally normal bedroom turned into a monster convention in the middle of the night.
Slowly, I crept out of bed and tiptoed to the window. I stuck my head through and looked down at the ground.
Nothing.
Nobody in my room, nobody outside my room. Just an open window and a whole lot of cold.
Mom had cut the branches away from outside Grandma Jo’s window, but she hadn’t done anything to the trellis outside mine.
I slipped my feet into my slippers and padded across the hall. I didn’t want to be the one to break it to Mom that she was right about Grandma Jo. But at the same time, I was glad, because if Mom was right, it meant I was right, too. And Grandma Jo was a pretty good liar.
I pushed open Grandma Jo’s door, expecting an empty bed and perhaps a few discarded skateboarding kneepads in her place.
Instead, I saw a lump. A Grandma-Jo-shaped lump, curled on her side, her covers pulled up. Her silver hair shivered in the crosswind that came from my room.
I turned back. If it wasn’t Grandma Jo opening my window …
I returned to my room and shut the window. Then I rummaged around in my closet until I found an old baseball bat from my days playing in the rec league, back before I discovered that nobody likes you when you make their baseball disappear in the bottom of the ninth inning.
I climbed into bed, but instead of lying down, I sat with my back against the headboard and tried not to shake too much.
There was no way I could sleep now. In just hours, Erma would be invading my space. And Mr. Smith would still be at Pennybaker. And Mr. Faboo would still be gone. And there was nothing I could do about any of it.
TRICK #9
THE MUTINY MANIFESTATION
“How good do you think you’d be at finding a missing person?” I asked as soon as Chip and I slid out of his mom’s car the next morning.
He thought it over. “Superior. Especially if I were to wear a pair of forensics investigation socks.”
“Does that mean you’ll help me find someone?”
“Sure! Who are we finding?”
“Mr. Faboo,” I said. “We need to figure out why he left, and get him back.” We pushed into the vestibule, where Clover Prentice was waiting next to the head of horror with her arms crossed—and double crossed—and a big frown on her face.
“Excuse me?” she demanded. She looked pointedly from us to the head and back again.
“I thought you were doing it now,” I said to Chip, confused.
“You said it was your job. I specifically remember the words. You said, and I quote—”
“Well, why didn’t you tell me that?”
Chip looked genuinely perplexed. “Why would I tell you something that you told me?”
I gestured to the head, which seemed to be extra scowly this morning, like even it was mad at me for not polishing it. “Because now nobody got it done.”
“Because it’s your j—”
“I don’t care whose job it is,” Clover Prentice shouted. “Just get it done!” She tossed a rag at me, and I caught it. Chip and I looked at each other as she walked away.
Chip brightened. “So I’ll start finding some leads.”
“Really? Just like that?”
“Like what?”
I shook my head. “Just … Never mind. We’ll talk about it later.” I let my backpack drop to the floor, dipped the rag into the bowl of Chip’s (really smelly at this point) homemade polishing agent, and started rubbing it on Helen Heirmauser’s hair.
Chip came over and put his hand on top of mine. “I’ve found that a gentle, circular motion works best. Follow the flow of her curls. Like this.” He started to move my hand with his, but I glared at him. “Right. I’ll go work on those leads. See you in class.”
“I hope Mr. Faboo is back,” Wesley said. We were walking as a group to Facts After the Fact class, as we always did. “Mr. Smith makes me sleepy.” He let his head bob, pretending to fall asleep, complete with loud snores.
“Me, too,” Flea said. “I hate to admit it, but I kind of miss the costumes. And the skits.”
“And Ye Olde English,” Wesley said in an English accent.
“Yeah, that, too,” Flea said.
“Well, Mr. Faboo can’t be gone forever,” Wesley said.
“Technically—”
“Not now, Chip,” I said.
We walked through the classroom door and, one by one, our shoulders slumped. Sitting behind Mr. Faboo’s desk was Mr. Smith. Only he’d reorganized it, replacing Mr. Faboo’s quill and inkwell with regular pencils, and replacing Mr. Faboo’s scroll with a boring old desk calendar.
“Come in, please,” Mr. Smith said. Even he sounded bored. “The bell is about to ring, and we have lots to discuss.”
We filed in and took our seats just as the bell rang. Mr. Smith stood, smoothed out his suit jacket, and went to the blackboard. “Essay Topics,” he wrote in really big letters across the top of the board.
“What’s an essay?” Colton asked.
Mr. Smith turned and stared at him. “It’s a paper. You know, the kind you write in English class.”
“English class?” I heard someone whisper, and then someone else responded, “It’s what they used to call Lexiconical Arts in the olden days.”
“We’ve never written an essay,” Patrice Pillow said. “Mrs. Codex has us write poems or limericks or screenplays or novels. You know, the usual stuff.”
“That is not the usual— Never mind,” Mr. Smith said. “An essay is a paper discussing a particular topic. In this case, your essay is going to be an informative piece about the character you’ve chosen for History Month.”
“What’s History Month?” Buckley asked.
“It’s Act After the Fact Month,” I said.
“Oh, so you’re having us write an essay and then act it out? Brilliant!” Wesley exclaimed. “I haven’t really had the chance to do a nonfiction reading.”
“No, no, you’re going to write a biographical piece about your character,” Mr. Smith said. “Like what’s in your textbooks.”
We all turned and looked at the bookshelf that held o
ur textbooks. The shelf was thick with dust, and the white spines on the books were yellowing. There was a spiderweb stretching across half of them.
“We’ve never read them,” Flea said.
“Yeah, Mr. Faboo says they’re way more boring than history. Those books won’t tell you that Napoleon once got attacked by rabbits. Or that there was a baboon named Jackie who was promoted to corporal in World War I.”
“Or about the ghost ship,” Patrice Pillow said.
“The SS Ourang Medan,” Owen added. “The ship that sent out a desperate SOS, and then when everyone got there …”
Wesley made a noise and flopped his head to one side, his tongue hanging out. Very realistic. His acting classes were really paying off.
Samara Lee squeaked and slapped her hands over her eyes.
“No, no, no,” Mr. Smith said. “We’re not studying ghost ships or rabbits or army baboons. We’re studying real history. No … nonsense.”
We all gasped. Mr. Faboo would have never called those things nonsense.
“But that is real history,” Flea said.
“It’s not the kind of history we learn in this class,” Mr. Smith argued, and again we all gasped.
“Technically,” Chip said, “history—and one would assume this denotes what you call ‘real history’—is defined as the study of events, particularly in human affairs.”
“Exactly!” I said. “And what could be more human than ghosts, rabbits, and baboons?”
“Actual humans?” Wesley said.
“You know what I mean,” I muttered.
“I’ll tell you what,” Mr. Smith said, rocking back on his heels. He scratched one eyebrow. “Since you seem to enjoy definitions so much, Mr. Mason, I’m going to assign you an extra little project for History Month. Let’s say you write a paper, five pages, detailing the American Revolution, starting with the first shot at Lexington and going all the way through until you reach Cornwallis at Yorktown.” He bent over at the waist so he was looking Chip in the eye. “And don’t forget to include lots of definitions.”
Pennybaker School Is Revolting Page 5