“We’re learning it again. Now . . . what was I saying?” Ballyrag scratched his mustache. “Ah, yes, you have to hold someone for handsome. So when you’re holding someone for handsome, you have to—yes?”
Tabitha raised her hand again. “But we’ve already learned this. And we haven’t had any new students since the last time you taught it. So no one is learning anything new from this lesson.”
Ballyrag coughed. “Uh . . . so you have to hold someone for handsome. And to do that, you must leave a handsome note. One that sounds very bad and minister—”
“Teach me something new,” Tabitha said, standing up. She wasn’t even raising her hand anymore.
George looked at her in awe and horror. Didn’t she know what would happen if she didn’t sit back down? She could end up on the whirlyblerg!
“Sit down, Tabitha,” George whispered.
“I will not sit down!” she shrilled. Then she pointed a finger at Ballyrag. “Teach me something new!”
Ballyrag’s eyes frantically darted around the room, and his mustache twitched. He clearly did not know what to do. “I . . . uh . . . a threat, a bequest, and constructions are the things you need to remember to make a good handsome note—”
“NO!” Tabitha shouted. “No! This is the third repeat lesson I’ve had to sit through. The first time I thought you were confused, and the second time I ignored it, but I’m not going to sit here and have you waste my time!”
George’s jaw dropped. What was she thinking? How could she talk to a teacher like that?
“Now teach me something new!” she demanded. “I want to be challenged!”
Ballyrag blinked. “So . . . the first rule for making handsome notes—”
Tabitha slammed her books on the desk; Ballyrag jumped and began to whimper.
“NO!” she said again, so angry she was shaking. Her nostrils flared the way they always did when she was livid. “NO, NO, NO! STOP IGNORING ME!”
Ballyrag mumbled incoherent sounds into his mustache.
“FINE,” Tabitha shouted, gathering her books in her arms and marching straight out of the classroom.
George gasped. The whole class began to murmur and chirp and gossip, while Ballyrag stood limply at the front of the classroom, like he had no idea what had just happened or what to do about it. “This has never happened before—somebody call Bean Bean Beandugle.”
When the whole class kept whispering, Ballyrag grunted. “I told the Bean,” he grumbled, “this is exactly why I need an asgarapus in my class—for emergences like this. Now how do I reach him?”
Asgarapus? George thought. He looked around to see if anyone else had heard Ballyrag, but it seemed like everyone was too busy chattering to pay him any attention. Did Ballyrag mean asparagus? And how would a vegetable help him contact the dean?
Eventually, Ballyrag’s brain seemed to start working again, and he stiffened. “Nettle down! Nettle down!” he yelled, and he continued teaching about ransom notes.
But George couldn’t concentrate on the lesson—his brain was stuck on Tabitha. He couldn’t believe she just walked out of class like that. Where in the world did that come from? And what was she thinking? It was like she was trying to get herself thrown on the whirlyblerg!
He spent all afternoon and evening thinking about what she did. But after dinner, he couldn’t afford to think about Tabitha anymore; he knew he needed to complete his homework—so that the dean had no excuse to put him back on the whirlyblerg ever again.
George crumpled into a chair near a poisonous prickled plant in the greenhouse and pulled out his assignment from Ballyrag.
Out of the corner of his eye, a potted shrub scuffled across the grass toward him.
“Hello?” George said to the rubber tree plant. “Who’s there? Inside that plant?”
It seemed to waddle with a little more oomph when George called out to it, so he cooed, “Here . . . planty! C’mere, boy!”
The plant’s body lifted, and George saw two brown ankles and a pair of sneakers shuffle toward him.
“I’m a girl,” said Tabitha’s muffled voice from inside the base of the plant jar. Then she lifted the plant and crawled out the bottom.
“What are you doing in there?” George said.
“Hiding. I didn’t want to get in trouble for skipping class all day.”
“I can’t believe you skipped class.”
“I can’t believe that’s the third repeat lesson they’re trying to make me sit through!”
She sighed and plopped down on the cobblestone walkway.
“What’s wrong?”
“Aren’t you still mad at me?” Tabitha said sadly.
George shrugged. “I guess. But you seem upset.”
She looked around the room, and went around peering in bushes and peeking under rubber tree plants, just to make sure they were alone. Once she had inspected the place rather thoroughly, she came back to where George was sitting and wrung her hands together. “Okay . . . I just . . . I just wanted to say . . .” She looked down and winced. “I suppose. I guess. Maybe. I should just. Ugh.”
“Are you okay?”
“IamreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyREALLYsorry,” she said quickly. She winced like it caused her great pain to say it.
George raised his eyebrows.
“Look, George. Your friendship is more important to me than anything. I . . . I just wanted to let you know that I wasn’t really mad at you. I just didn’t want you to go away.” She sighed. “I swear I didn’t say anything to Dean Dean Deanbugle. And I don’t know who did, but it wasn’t me, I promise! I’d never want you to disappear or end up in the whirlyblerg—”
“Tabitha, I was in the whirlyblerg.”
“You were . . . you were what?”
“That’s where I was on Friday. Dean Dean Deanbugle took me to the whirlyblerg.”
“What—how—are you—”
“It’s a broken spinny amusement park ride, and I was on it for a day.” He told her everything—about the room, about Lionel and Hannah, about the food and drinks that were thrown at the prisoners. Though, he was sure that he didn’t quite capture the horror of being stuck on a circling ride that never ends. When he was done speaking, he buried his face in his hands.
“Don’t do that,” Tabitha said. “You can’t get defeated, George! You just need an action plan. So . . . what are you going to do now?”
George looked around to make sure that no one was nearby, but it was just a bunch of wildflowers and small shrubs. Still, he lowered his voice. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I can do. I guess I could graduate.”
Tabitha nodded, eyes wide.
“But I don’t know if I could. Or really, if I would.” George sighed. “I just think I’d hate it . . . acting like I don’t have a conscience. Pretending not to care about all those people I’d be stealing from. I don’t think I’ll be able to keep up my fake love of thieving for much longer . . . and then it’s back to the whirlyblerg.”
“You can get expelled,” Tabitha whispered, looking around suspiciously, as if she was worried that the flowers had ears.
“I don’t know how possible that is.”
“You could do something good,” Tabitha suggested.
“Good? Like what?”
“Well, thieves steal things, right? So what’s the opposite of thieving?”
George blinked.
“Giving back, of course!” she said. “If you returned stolen items to their original owners, it’d be the total opposite of thieving.”
“Yeah,” George scoffed, “that sounds like the perfect way to be put on the whirlyblerg forever. Or be part of the waitstaff.”
“Good point,” Tabitha said, pulling a pencil out from behind her ear and rolling it between her fingers. She hummed thoughtfully. “It’s like getting expelled doesn’t ex
ist here.”
George scowled and slumped down even farther. Returning all the items in the mansion would definitely be a good way to counteract all of the thieving in Pilfer. But it was a ridiculously impossible idea. There were thousands—if not millions—of stolen items in Pilfer Academy; how could he possibly return them all? He was just one kid, and he’d surely be caught before he could complete the mission.
He was right back at the whirlyblerg again.
Okay, George thought as he watched Tabitha pensively chew on a pencil eraser, maybe I could just return only the most important items. But in a school full of stuff, who knew what the most important items were? It seemed like the whole stinking mansion was important.
George gasped.
“Tabitha!” he said so loudly that Tabitha threw up her pencil in fright. He dropped his voice again. “The whole mansion! The mansion is the key to everything!”
“What are you talking about, George?”
“I have to return the mansion! If I return the mansion, it would shut down the school forever.”
Tabitha jumped to her feet. “George, that’s genius!”
“Now all I have to do—”
“I?” she said, putting a hand on her hip. “I, I, I. Me, me, me. I don’t hear any we here. What about me?”
“What about you?”
“I’m doing this with you,” she said.
“What? But you love Pilfer!”
Tabitha sighed. “To tell you the truth . . . I don’t. Ever since the midterm—”
“The midterm! You too?”
“But for a different reason than you,” Tabitha explained. “At first, it just started with repeat lessons. I thought it was a mistake at first, but it wasn’t. And then there are the teachers—they can’t even speak correctly and make no sense. School’s just not fun anymore because it’s not a challenge. Every lesson, test, and homework assignment is just too easy, and I don’t feel like I’m learning anything useful anymore.”
“So . . . that’s it? You want to leave Pilfer?”
“Don’t get me wrong—I’ve had a great time here! But if I’m being asked to do the same tasks over and over again for months—or years—until our teachers randomly decide I’m ready to advance to year two, well then, it’s just not worth all that wasted time. I want school to be challenging. I want to learn something new every day.”
“Wow,” George said. “Well . . . where will you go?”
“I don’t know yet,” she said thoughtfully. “I’ll just have to find a different school. Maybe one that isn’t so illogical. There are plenty of great schools out there, and I want to go to the best.” She hesitated. “For a while,” she finally said, “I thought it was Pilfer. Because they make you feel really special. But it’s all just part of their scheme. They make you feel important so that you don’t realize that most of what they’re teaching is absolute gibberish.”
It was funny—he hadn’t ever considered that Tabitha might want to leave Pilfer for her own reasons. But the more she opened up, the more he understood her thinking.
Tabitha looked at him fiercely. “The point is, George, that I’m all in. Let’s return this mansion. You and me. Together.”
“Tabitha, are you sure you want to do this with me? I mean, if we get caught, we’d be beyond toast. We’re talking permanent waitstaff. Whirlyblerg for years. Or . . . worse.”
“You need me,” she said firmly. “And I need you, too. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, George. We’re accomplices! Partners in crime!” She scrunched her nose. “Well, I guess now, partners in good deeds—”
George rushed forward and hugged her with a grip as strong as an alligator’s chomp.
He was so glad they were friends again. Together they left the greenhouse and headed out into the very gray day. The sky was flat and dull, like construction paper.
They raced straight into the hedge maze since nothing was quieter or more private than being stuck between fifteen-foot hedges.
“But how do we return the mansion?” George asked as they got to the heart of the maze.
“Easy! With one perfectly placed phone call.”
“A phone call? But . . . we have no phone! And even if we did, we couldn’t call the police. We’d end up on the whirlyblerg.”
“I know that!” Tabitha said. “We wouldn’t be calling the police. We’d be calling France.”
“France! What’s in France?”
“Croissants,” she said, and George looked at her incredulously. “I’m kidding, George. The Duke of Valois is in France!”
“And . . . ?”
“Honestly, George! The Duke of Valois has been chasing Dean Dean Deanbugle for thirty years. So all we have to do is tell him where to find us.”
“But where is that, exactly?”
“Haven’t the foggiest,” Tabitha said, wrapping her sweater even tighter around her. “But if we give the duke a vague area, then he can scout it out himself.”
“And where are we going to find a phone? We can’t call—”
George cut off.
Call. The word sparked his memory. Somebody call the Bean Bean Beandugle, Ballyrag had said that very morning. This is exactly why I need an asgarapus in my class.
“Asparagus!” George whispered, practically shaking with excitement. “Ballyrag said today—after you left—how he wished he had an asparagus, so he could call the dean from his classroom. Didn’t he mention asparagus during your detention after our kitchen raid?”
Tabitha’s jaw dropped. “Oh! Ballyrag told Strongarm that someone was on the asparagus—”
“And that time Dean Dean Deanbugle came and took over our class!” George interrupted. “He said Strongarm could use the asparagus instead of teaching—”
“It’s a code word!” Tabitha squealed. “Asparagus is a code word for . . . for telephone!”
“And that door on the first floor—the one with the sign about asparagus—”
“There has to be a phone in there!”
George leaned against the hedge maze and found it to be surprisingly prickly. “Why do you think they keep a phone in there? What’s in that room?”
Tabitha gasped. “I bet it’s the teachers’ lounge!”
“Teachers’ lounge? What makes you say that?”
“Every school has one! Teachers always have a secret, special place where they can go to gossip about students. And it would make sense to keep a phone in there.”
Footsteps grew louder. A group of second-years ran past them, headed deeper into the heart of the maze.
“It has to be during Mischief Night,” George said, lowering his voice. “With Mischief Night, curfew is off. If everyone’s sneaking around the mansion playing pranks on everyone else, no one is going to notice us missing.”
He started to feel a little wobbly, thinking about what they would do. By the end of the week, he’d either be forever free or forever whirlyblerged.
Tabitha gulped, looking slightly green herself. “So, we have a half-baked idea,” she said sensibly. “And, what, you’re thinking that our smarts and thieving talents will pull us through?”
“That,” George said, “and a whole lot of luck.”
Mischief Night
October 30th started out with a BANG.
Because a bunch of fourth-years set off fireworks on the roof.
From the first crack of sunrise, it seemed like everyone was getting ready for the night. People were stealing supplies, conferring in corners, and shouting threats. George and Tabitha were getting ready, too, but they weren’t pulling off a prank. This was the real deal.
They ran through their plan about fifteen times, mostly on Tabitha’s request. She wanted to nail down every detail exactly right: break into the teachers’ lounge, find the phone, dial an operator, have her connect them to the Duke of Valois, a
nd stay on the line with him until he could get the police to his house to trace the call to their location.
The problem—as George pointed out multiple times—was that they had no idea what to expect once they entered the teachers’ lounge.
“We’ll just have to wing it, George,” she said, in a most un-Tabitha-like manner. “It’s the best plan we’ve got.”
By dinnertime, George was a nervous wreck. He pushed food around his plate but couldn’t eat much of anything at all, even though Tabitha nagged him about sneaking around on an empty stomach.
“You need your energy,” she said.
“Tabitha, please! If I’m not hungry, I’m not hun—”
BANG. Milo thumped his fists on their table. “I’m going to destroy you guys tonight!” he snarled.
“We don’t care,” Tabitha snapped. “We have something better to do tonight.”
George kicked her under the table.
“Like what?”
Milo looked at them suspiciously, but they ignored him until he finally walked away. Then, George scarfed down a few bites of food. Milo was the least of his worries tonight.
After that, it was time. George and Tabitha headed back to the dorm and separated to pack their bags. George buzzed around his room, grabbing things he thought he might need and shoving them in his backpack: a flashlight, two pairs of gloves, and a small throw pillow. Then he ran around grabbing any and every object he would probably never need: extra-strength dental floss, socks, a baseball cap, bubblegum, a dustpan, a candle, and a broken mop that he stole from the janitor’s closet.
He rushed back downstairs and waited fifteen minutes before he heard footsteps coming down the stairs.
But it wasn’t Tabitha.
“You headed out for Mischief Night, George?” Robin said.
“Yeah. Soon.”
Beth winked. “Hope you and Tabitha have something good to compete with us! We have the best prank planned.”
“See you in the morning,” Neal said with a wave. “And here’s hoping we’ll all be school legends by then.”
Oh, I’ll be a legend all right, George thought, his stomach writhing like a bucket of worms.
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