Pennybaker School Is Revolting

by Jennifer Brown

  “Hello, Mrs. Fallgrout,” Chip said. “Salutations on this—”

  “Not now, Chip,” Mom and I said at the same time. His mouth clapped shut.

  “What detention? I’m not going to ask again.”

  I had a feeling I was about to be going on a Your Weekend Is So Not Going to Be Fun Adventure. I started to answer, but Chip beat me to it.

  “There was a slight accident during a scuffle in the foyer at our esteemed alma mater.”

  “Scuffle?” Mom said, looking alarmed. “At school? Accident?”

  Great. When Mom starts asking questions in rapid fire, there really is no good answer to any of them. “It wasn’t a big deal,” I said.

  “Quite the contrary,” Chip said. “I didn’t take it personally when Thomas attacked me. Jealousy can cause one to act in an unpredictable manner.”

  “Attacked?” Mom yelped at the same time I said, “I didn’t attack you.”

  “It’s okay,” Chip said. “I’ve forgiven your indiscretion.”

  “I did not indiscresh anyone, Mom,” I said. “I swear.”

  Chip’s finger flew up in the air. “Technically, ‘indiscresh’ isn’t a word. You were probably looking for ‘discredit,’ although that would not exactly be proper in this sentence, either, and—”

  “Shut up, Chip!” I yelled.

  “Thomas!” Mom barked. “You can’t talk to a guest that way. Apologize to Chip right this instant.”

  “No way,” I said. “I didn’t attack him. He stole my job. He attacked my job.”

  “I’m wondering if you might mean ‘hijacked’ in this particular situation,” Chip said.

  “No matter what he did with your job, there’s no good reason to attack someone,” Dad said. “You can’t go around attacking people, Thomas.”

  “I didn’t!”

  “The only casualty was the Heirmauser statue, anyway,” Chip said. He winked at me like he was helping me out. Clearly, he didn’t know Mom.

  Her eyes grew big as her lips tightened. “The statue? Again?”

  “The nose will reattach easily,” Chip said.

  I didn’t think it was possible, but Mom’s eyes grew even wider. “You broke her nose off? Oh, Thomas, what is it with you and that statue?”

  “He thinks it’s a head of horror,” Chip said. He made a wide-mouthed, bulgy-eyed face that actually pretty accurately mimicked the statue.

  “You’re not helping,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “You should probably go, Chip,” Dad said. “Sounds like Thomas has some explaining to do.”

  I glared at Chip.

  “Oh. Okay. But if I may be so bold, I came over to propose a social opportunity for Thomas.”

  “A what?” Dad said.

  “I’m hosting a shindig tonight. We will have snacks and listen to music and possibly play games. My charades socks are freshly laundered and ready to go.”

  “Are you saying you’re having a party?” Mom asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Actually, yes,” Chip said. “Thomas, your mother is a much better listener than you are.”

  “I mean no, I don’t want to go to your party. I don’t even want to see you again until Monday. I need a Chip break.”

  “Thomas,” Mom said. “Now you’re just being rude. First you attack the boy, and then you insult him? I raised you better than this.”

  “No,” I repeated, ignoring Mom. I put my hand on Chip’s back and moved him toward the front door. “No. No. Definitely not.”

  I opened the door and pushed until Chip was outside. “But don’t you want to hear about—”

  “No.” Okay, actually, I kind of did want to go to his party. But sometimes when you’re mad you start talking, and next thing you know, it’s too late to turn things around without having to admit all kinds of embarrassing things about being wrong and sorry and stuff. “I don’t want to go to your party.”

  I shut the door in his face.

  TRICK #14

  I SHALL NOW PUT ON THESE SHACKLES

  Everyone was at Chip’s party.

  Everyone.

  Flea, Owen, Wesley, Patrice Pillow, Samara Lee, Buckley, Dawson Ethan—even Sissy Cork was there.

  I knew this because they spent about half an hour knocking on my window and running away every time I went to open it. And there was the boom boom beat of music coming from a stereo propped in Chip’s window, and I saw them all dance and play football and eat pizza in his front yard and garage. Chip’s mom had gotten out a fire pit so everyone could keep warm, and I watched as they all ate gooey s’mores. At one point, even Erma was there. Erma. As if it wasn’t bad enough that Chip was stealing all my friends, my sister had to be in on it, too?

  After the s’mores, Wesley came to my window.

  “What?” I said through the glass.

  He made an open-up motion with his arms. I shook my head.

  “Why don’t you come over?” he said, his voice coming through muffled and dim.

  “Because I don’t want to,” I said, even though I really did want to. Really, really bad.

  “Chezzisay.”

  “What?”

  “Chezzisay.”

  “I can’t hear you.”

  He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Chezz-is-say.”

  “I can’t …” Exasperated, I threw open the window, just as he took in a deep breath and bellowed.

  “Chip. Says. It’s. Okay.”

  I slapped my hands over my ears.

  “Oh. Sorry,” Wesley said. “I was using my theater voice. What do you think?”

  What I thought was that he could stand right where he was in my yard and be heard by an audience in Detroit, but I didn’t say that out loud. “You projected,” I said, because I knew that, to Wesley, projecting was a life goal.

  He beamed. “Thanks. You should come over. Chip says it’s okay for you to join us. He forgives you.”

  “He forgives me?” I asked incredulously. “He. Forgives me.” Wesley nodded. “He’s the one who got me in trouble in the first place. If he would’ve just left the statue alone …”

  “You shouldn’t be so hard on him, Thomas,” Wesley said. “We all think he’s a really cool guy.” He said the last in a cartoony voice while swinging his arm and snapping his fingers.

  “I know what you all think. If you’ll remember, I was the one who became his friend first.”

  “Exactly.” He stood primly and cleared his throat. His Mary Poppins stance. “So you would think you’d be a little easier on the poor fellow.”

  Just then, the music switched over to our ballroom dancing sound track. Everyone partnered up, including Sissy Cork, who was dancing with Chip. The crackers I’d eaten as a snack a few minutes before lurched around in my stomach.

  “Tell Chip I’ll see him in detention,” I said. I shut the window and the shades.

  TRICK #15

  THE CANNONBALL CRIMP

  Erma was at Pennybaker, being fawned over by a group of eighth graders, when I arrived Monday morning. Dad had brought her early to work on the dance, and Mom was going to pick her up and take her to her school when she dropped me off.

  “Erma,” I said. She ignored me. “Erma.” Nothing. “Erma!”

  The entire group stared at me with irritated scowls on their faces.

  “Jeez, magic boy, chill out,” an eighth-grade girl said.

  “Yeah. You shouldn’t talk to Ermie like that,” said another girl with really long, really red fingernails.

  “Ermie?”

  Erma flipped her hair over one shoulder. “It’s my nickname,” she said. “You have a problem with that, magic boy?” The entire group of girls giggled with her.

  I sighed. I didn’t have it in me to fight with Erma. Especially not in front of everyone at Pennybaker, who apparently thought she was the most amazing thing since Chip Mason, and definitely not while Mom was sitting at the curb in her car. The last thing I needed was to have a Being Chewed Out by Your Mom in Front
of the Entire School Adventure.

  “Whatever. Mom’s here.”

  I walked away, not waiting to see if Erma moved. Let her deal with Mom. I had to get to class. I trudged up the front stairs and got to the top just as someone came down. In the little sliver of open door, I could see Chip, polishing the pedestal where the head normally sat. Of course.

  Instead of going in, I veered off to the right and ducked behind the bushes. Reap was tossing hunks of bread while making strange noises, just like always. I crawled over to him and crouched down.

  “Well?”

  “Shhh,” he said. “I think I’m close to getting her to come out.”

  “Her?”

  “Or him. I won’t know until I figure out what dialect we’re speaking. It’s weird. Not quite badger, and definitely not weasel. It’s like weasel with an otter accent. I just can’t place it.” He made some more clicking noises.

  “You really should hang out with Chip,” I mumbled, but when he said “Huh?” I didn’t repeat myself, because the truth was Reap was the only one of my friends who wasn’t hanging out with Chip right now, and I kind of wanted to keep it that way, even if he spent way more time speaking weasel than English.

  “Hey, I heard you got detention,” Reap said.

  “Yeah.”

  “For throwing Mrs. Heirmauser’s head out the window?”

  “What? No. Where did you hear that?”

  “Just from people. They said you were aiming at Chip Mason. Not true?”

  Not that I wouldn’t like to sometimes, but … “No.”

  “So why did you get detention?”

  “For breaking her nose. And denting her forehead. But it was an accident, I swear.”

  “So it’s not true that you and Chip are enemies now?”

  I thought about Chip spilling the beans about my detention, and about avoiding his party. It had been days since we’d ridden our bikes together or pilfered Erma’s candy stash, and it had been forever since he’d bugged me to show him a magic trick. Now he was practicing special handshakes with other guys and dancing on the lawn without me and causing me to get detention. “I don’t know,” I said, and for some reason that made me feel sad.

  The warning bell rang, and Reap tossed what was left of the bread under the bush. I saw a black paw reach out and drag a piece farther under. I pointed. “Hey!”

  Reap looked. “What?”

  “I saw a paw. A black paw.”

  Reap scratched his chin. “A black paw, you say? Hmm. Maybe it is a badger after all. I’ll have to brush up on my Bornean ferret-badger-ese. I’m a bit rusty.”

  “Yep, you really should hang out with Chip,” I repeated.

  “Are you going to actually dance today?” Sissy Cork said when our Four Square classes combined.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” I asked, although I could think of about five thousand reasons why I wouldn’t.

  I still had a pantyhose rash.

  My toes were too crooked.

  I had an itchy ear.

  I was allergic to music.

  That whole knocking-an-old-lady-into-a-wedding-cake thing.

  “Heads up!” I heard, and looked up just in time to see a basketball whizzing toward my face. I ducked, and it slammed into the folded-up bleachers, getting stuck there.

  Sissy Cork was standing with her arms out expectantly, as if a ball hadn’t almost just killed me and it would be totally okay for us to just start waltzing around the room. She shook her arms at me impatiently.

  “Sorry, I have to get that,” I said. I took off before she could argue and scrambled up a stack of floor mats. I wrenched the ball out from between the benches and stood on one, holding the ball high over my head.

  “Right here,” I heard, and saw an older boy coming toward me with his hands raised.

  “I’ll bring it down.”

  “Just throw it,” said another boy, who had sidled up to join his friend.

  I looked nervously at the stacked mats. They followed my gaze and then elbowed each other. The second boy smiled widely. “Hey, I have an idea,” he said.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” the first boy said to his friend.

  “Trick shot?”

  “Trick shot.” The first boy placed his hands on his hips and stared at me defiantly. “Bet you can’t do a cannonball onto those mats and shoot a basket at the same time.”

  My eyes darted from the mat to the basketball goal to Sissy Cork and back to the basketball goal. “Of course I can.”

  “And make it,” the second boy said.

  Make it? That was a different matter. But then the music started, and everyone began pairing off to dance. Hurry up, Sissy mouthed to me. Which definitely made me want to try whatever trick shot would get me out of dancing the longest.

  “And make it,” I said. “Totally.”

  The two older boys laughed and elbowed each other, then stared back at me expectantly. “Go.”

  I rolled my neck and shoulders and made a big deal of lining up the shot just right, even closing one eye and sticking out my tongue in concentration.

  “Go!” the other boy said.

  “Hang on, I need to tie my shoe.” I bent down, but as soon as my knee hit the bleacher, the first boy spoke up again.

  “In five seconds, or it doesn’t count.”

  “No, wait, I—”

  “Five … four … three … two …”

  I closed my eyes and jumped, tucking my knees into my chest and launching the ball blindly into space. I heard an oof as the ball landed on someone, but had only milliseconds to open my eyes and realize that person was Coach Abel before I landed on a slab of concrete.

  Or at least that was what the mat felt like: concrete, with no cushion whatsoever. The breath was knocked out of me as my rear end lit up with pain. Ow, ow, ow, I wanted to say, but nothing came out. The two older boys scrambled away as Coach stomped toward me and I rolled around on the mat holding my rear end.

  Another reason I could not dance:

  I had a bruised butt.

  TRICK #16

  I SHALL NOW HATCH THIS PLAN

  Mom wouldn’t let me go home, citing that a bruised tailbone due to trying to get out of dancing with a perfectly nice girl was no reason to shirk responsibilities such as school and detention. She told Nurse Hale to give me a pain reliever, and then it was back to class for me. Which meant a whole day of squatting over chairs rather than sitting in them, and listening to about a billion butt jokes.

  Some of the Finer Examples of Derriere Humor at Pennybaker School

  Hey, Thomas, I’ve heard ballroom dancing is a sport you can really … get behind.

  You know why you couldn’t ever be a pirate, Thomas? Because you’d break your booty!

  I hope you didn’t get a crack!

  You don’t have to be so cheeky about ballroom dancing, Thomas.

  Hey, guys, guess where Thomas sits in his Four Square squad? At the rear!

  Chip messed up that last one by pointing out that, technically, I sat third from the rear, and it was Harvey Hinkle who sat at the rear of our squad line. Because Chip didn’t usually get normal jokes. He got the kind of jokes that Mom liked to call “clever” and Grandma Jo liked to call “nerdy.”

  The only thing that could have made my long, horrible day even longer was detention. I trudged into the detention room right after the final bell and slumped into a desk, only to pop right up again, hissing through my teeth at the pain, and then lower myself gently back into the seat.

  I could hear the hallway commotion of kids leaving for the day, loudly making plans to do this or that after school. Wesley was heading to rehearsal. Some of the guys were meeting up for football in the park. A couple of girls squealed about how exciiited they were to seeee a certain moviiie starring a certain boooy. Why did girls always use so many vowels when they were looking forward to something? A few kids mentioned getting together with Erma to practice their dancing. Gross.

  Soon there was a
shuffling at the door, and Chip came in. He eyed me curiously before going to the opposite side of the room and setting his books on a desk as far away from me as he possibly could.

  “Wait, you’re mad at me?” I asked. He didn’t respond. “You. Are mad. At me?” Still nothing. “Let me tell you, Chip. I’m the one who should be mad at you. You’re the reason I’m here.”

  He turned. “I believe you are the reason I’m here.”

  “Wow, that actually sounded like a real sentence that a real human would speak.”

  “Technically, only an English-speaking human,” he corrected. “And it’s the truth. You’ve been angry with me ever since we were tasked with the dancing assignment. Which is quite unfair, as I did not create nor implement said assignment. And as I also offered to help you learn to dance many times over.”

  “Over what?”

  “What?”

  “Many times over what?”

  “Over dancing.”

  “Huh?”

  “What?”

  But before we could continue, Mr. Smith came into the room, with his boring brown suit and boring brown shoes and boring brown briefcase.

  “No talking, please,” he said. “Unless you want to spend more time with me here.”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Chip said. “I’m sure you’re an unobjectionable conversationalist.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, but part of me was pretty sure Chip was going to get more detention for name-calling.

  “Silence, please,” was all Mr. Smith said in response. Maybe he didn’t know what it meant, either.

  We sat in silence for what seemed like forever, the only sounds the ticking of the clock on the wall and Mr. Crumbs’s tile buffer out in the vestibule. I spent the time thinking about what Chip had said about how I was the cause of us being here, that he was the one who was mad at me, and that I’d been pushed to the side by all my friends since we got the dance assignment. I thought about how crazy Chip used to make me, and how it was weird that I was upset about him being upset. And that I didn’t like being mad at him, partly because being mad was kind of exhausting, but mostly because without even realizing it, somehow I’d gone from tolerating Chip to actually liking him, and I wasn’t sure what to do with myself if I didn’t have him to hang around with. And, more than that, I thought about how this whole Chip-and-detention business was distracting me from the real problem at hand: Mr. Faboo’s disappearance.