by T. R. Burns
I wiggle and squirm against the plastic restraints. My K-Pak’s back in my pocket, but I can’t move my arms enough to reach it. The Kilter Katcher rod is on the ground a few feet away. I can’t reach that, either.
I’m stuck. While, by the sounds of it, the biggest troublemaking battle ever waged gets even bigger.
“Lemon!” I shout. “Abe! Gabby! Alison! Carter! Anybody! HELP!”
Under other circumstances I wouldn’t be so loud, because I wouldn’t want the wrong person to hear me. But under these, I have no choice. If Mystery finds me before my classmates free me, who knows what he’ll do?
“Well, what do we have here?”
My heart stops. My limbs freeze.
“I guess what goes around comes around, huh?” a familiar voice asks.
Somehow my head turns. I see Shepherd Bull squatting next to me. Eight dirty Incriminators are gathered behind him.
I force a smile. “Hey, Shepherd! Great to see you! Funny thing happened. I was playing with that fishing pole over there and—”
He clamps one dirty hand to my mouth. Grins. “Did I ask what you were doing? Do I look like I care what—”
“My mom wouldn’t be very happy about this.”
Now Shepherd Bull freezes.
“Elinor?” I mumble against his palm.
She steps out from behind the gang of misfits. Shepherd Bull removes his hand, jumps up, and steps back. He actually looks nervous as she passes him. I feel that way as she walks around me, picks up the Kilter Katcher, and presses the release button.
The plastic line unwinds. In half a second, my arms and legs are free again.
“Thanks!” I scramble to my feet. “That was amazing timing. I was just—”
“Inside,” Elinor barks. “Now.”
I spin toward the building.
“Not you,” she says, her voice softer.
I turn back as the Incriminators sprint to the cafeteria entrance.
“I thought you might need some help,” she says. “And that taking charge of the Incriminators, on my own, might help my mom see I can be the daughter she wants me to be. I’m not working with them,” she adds quickly. “I really didn’t know they were here before you found out they were. But since they are, we might as well work together. There are two parents to every Troublemaker, after all. We could use the backup.”
I’m so happy to see her here, and to know that she’s not so mad that she’d leave me tangled up, I almost laugh.
But I don’t. Because I’m trapped again.
By Annika. Who zips up in a golf cart, pulls me inside, and slams the gas pedal. Before I can ask what’s going on, we jerk to a stop. Annika takes a pouch from the backseat, tosses it to me, and jumps out of the cart.
“Um—”
“Act now, talk later!” Annika yells, then disappears into the cafeteria.
Where did she come from? How did she know we were here? Does she know what’s going on inside?
These are just a few of the many questions bouncing around my head. But I forget them all when I open the pouch and see what’s inside.
The Kilter Academy Faculty Handbook.
Everything You Need to Know to Train Tomorrow’s Troublemakers Today.
Houdini has one of these. So do Samara, Wyatt, Fern, Devin, and Lizzie. Our teachers don’t go anywhere without their copies. Flipping through the book, I see chapters on maintaining decorum. Keeping lessons fun yet informative. How to make know-it-all students realize they have much to learn. There’s also a campus map featuring secret passages and underground tunnels, and a long list of hidden troublemaking tools that teachers can access anytime they need them.
A handwritten note is at the back of the book.
Seamus (or should I say, Professor Hinkle?),
You help me. I help you. Together, there’s nothing we can’t do.
Deal?
—Annika
This book contains top secret information. The fact that Annika has given it to me must mean one thing: She wants me to be a teacher. Not even a tutor, which is the next step in the professional Troublemaker’s career. That means I can stay at Kilter. Teach kids my own age things that I think are important. Never have to worry about having fish sticks taken from me again.
Because I’ll be in charge.
I don’t know what made Annika decide to promote me—at all, let alone now—but we can talk about that later. Already imagining the fun I’ll have, especially after I convince Annika that Lemon, Abe, Gabby, and Elinor should also be on the Kilter staff, I put the handbook back in the pouch and race toward the cafeteria. Before I can get too excited, I have to do two things.
Finish what we started today.
And tell Annika the truth.
“Seamus! Hurry!”
I’ve just burst through the back door. Annika’s standing on top of the nearby buffet table, ankle-deep in home fries. When she sees me, she points at my feet. I look down—and see a barrel of shiny red apples. Early this morning they were meant to be eaten. Now they’re meant to be thrown.
“You know what to do with them!” she shouts. “So do it already!”
“Hinkle!”
“Seamus!”
“This is out of control!”
My head snaps to the left, right, and left again as I look in the direction of the familiar voices. The room is jam-packed with people running, standing, and crawling, but I see Abe, Gabby, and Elinor. Along with the rest of our classmates and the Incriminators, they’ve switched from pranking parents to defending themselves as moms and dads zoom around the room, following Mystery’s housekeeping orders. As they duck behind chairs and behind dirty breakfast plates, they look confused. Tired. And something I’ve never seen them be before.
Scared.
“Seamus!” Annika hollers. “Now!”
I jump up, stoop down, and grab an apple. As I scan the crowd, Annika shouts some more.
“HE! MUST! NOT! WIN!”
He? Not they?
I look at Annika. Her eyes are on fire as she stares across the cafeteria. My head snaps left again, and I know who he is.
Mystery. He’s standing on a table on the other side of the room. He shouts commands into a megaphone as Harrison, who stands next to him, continues to arm parents.
“Son! There you are!”
My head snaps to the right once more—just as Dad dives under a flying sack of potatoes. He must decide that lower is safer, because he starts crawling toward me. I hurry over to him, reach out one hand to help him up.
“Seamus! My dear, dear boy! Thank goodness!”
My head snaps back to the left—just as Mom opens an enormous red net. Only a few feet away from me, she lowers her head and charges.
One of the first things I learned at Kilter was that too much thinking can get you into trouble—and make it harder to make trouble. So I don’t think now. When I see Mom coming at me, prepared to catch me in her big red net, I stand up straight. Pull back my arm.
And collapse to the floor.
Chapter 30
DEMERITS: 0
GOLD STARS: 0
Enough!”
Lying flat on my back, I blink.
“Do you see yourselves?”
I can’t see anything.
“You’re all acting like children! And half of you are grown-ups!”
I wipe my eyes. My fingers come away wet.
“How is it raining inside?” a woman yells.
“When it’s sunny outside?” a man shouts.
I smell smoke. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And once upon a time, where there was fire . . . there was usually Lemon.
Moving carefully to keep from slipping on the slick floor again, I climb to my feet. I take a plastic cafeteria tray from the table behind me and hold it over my head. Now protected from the water falling from the ceiling, I wipe my eyes dry and look up.
Lemon is here. He’s standing on a table and holding a fistful of long, large matches toward the ceiling. The ma
tches aren’t lit now, but they were. The heat and smoke from their flames must’ve set off the sprinklers, which are still dousing—and confusing—parents, Troublemakers, and Incriminators.
“What is going on?” Lemon asks.
“Yes.” Annika steps onto a chair, hops onto the table next to Lemon, and pushes him aside. “That’s exactly what I’d like to know! Who’s going to fill me in?”
The room falls silent. All I can hear is water dripping from wet furniture, hair, and clothes.
“Nobody?” Annika asks. “Really?”
Abe’s standing ten feet away. I catch his eye. He shakes his head.
Personally, I don’t want to confess to planning this attack in front of the entire camp. In addition to our families, Annika, Mystery, and the cafeteria staff, the Good Samaritans, Nurse Marla, and our teachers are here. They must’ve heard the noise and come running. I want to tell Annika everything, but not like this. I assume my fellow Troublemakers stay silent because they’re trained not to tattle. As for our parents, they seem embarrassed, although I’m not sure if that’s because of their behavior, or because they were caught. They may also have been trained not to tattle on Mystery.
Now Annika’s trying to break our silence. And she seems to have her work cut out for her.
Or maybe not.
“Abe,” she says. “Spill the beans and I’ll give you a thousand Kommissary credits. You’ll need them, since after that episode, when it was impossible to keep track of who was doing what, I have no choice but to reset your current demerit and gold-star tallies to zero.”
“Two thousand credits,” Abe says.
“Done,” she says.
“We were teaching our parents an important lesson!” Abe declares.
I look at him. Gabby gasps.
“And what lesson would that be?” Annika asks.
“That Angel Makers are no match for Troublemakers.”
Annika pauses. “Angel Makers?”
“That’s a secret club,” Abe explains. “For our parents. It teaches them tricks and pranks so that they can give us a taste of our own medicine, which is what they’ve been trying to do since we got here.”
Annika’s eyes narrow. “Every club needs a leader.”
“That’d be Mr. Tempest,” Abe says. “Or Mystery, as we call him.”
“Stop right there!” Annika’s arm flies forward, her pointer finger aiming at the back of the room.
We all turn around—just as GS George steps in front of the exit, blocking Mystery’s escape. When Mystery tries to push past him, the tall Good Samaritan grabs him by the shoulder and pushes him down into a chair. Then he picks up the pig that’s still roaming around the room, snacking on fallen food, and places it in Mystery’s lap, locking him in place.
Annika frowns at Mystery, then at Abe. “How do you know about this club?”
“We spied on one of their meetings,” Abe says.
“In a cool cave!” Gabby chimes in from across the cafeteria. “With a real secret passage!”
“When?” Annika asks.
Abe shrugs. “A few days ago?”
“And you’re just bringing it to my attention now?”
Abe’s mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
“We wanted to learn more first,” I offer, heart thudding. “So we could tell you as much as possible.”
Annika’s head snaps toward me. “You knew about this too?”
I gulp. Nod.
“You did?” a familiar voice whispers.
Dad. He’s standing somewhere behind me. I’m afraid to look away from Annika to look at him, so I nod again.
“Is this what your parents were up to?” Annika asks coolly. “When they were acting so strangely at home?”
“Yup,” Abe says. “Mystery mailed them pamphlets and training materials. Then when you invited everyone to Kamp Kilter, he jumped at the chance to work with them in person. Whatever they learned during their secret meetings, they tried out on us when we were cleaning their cabins.”
“And why would they do that?” Annika asks.
“To weird us out,” Abe says. “So we’d stop acting up. And maybe even think we need them again. That’s our best guess, anyway.”
“You do need us!” Mrs. Hansen exclaims.
“All children need their parents!” Mr. Ryan adds.
“Not true!” Annika shouts. Then, as if realizing just how loud she was, she lowers her head and is quiet for a second. When she looks up and speaks again, her voice is back to its normal volume. “Well. I have much to discuss with many different people—you know who you are, and I’ll get to you all. But for now, I must say I’m extremely disappointed. This is the thanks I get? For giving your families a fun-filled, free, luxurious vacation to enjoy while we continued working with your terrible kids—”
“They’re not terrible!”
My chin falls.
Mom, who landed somewhere behind me when the sprinklers turned on, now steps forward. She’s clutching the big red net she was about to capture me with before the sprinklers turned on.
“Really, Mrs. Hinkle?” Annika asks, now sounding almost amused. “Is that why you sent Seamus to Kilter Academy for Troubled Youth? The most exclusive reform school in the world? That accepts only the worst kids in the world?”
“Our kids aren’t the worst!” Mom insists. “They’re the best! They just have good days and bad days, like we all do. Seamus, my son . . .” When she turns and looks at me, she has tears in her eyes. “He’s perfect! He doesn’t have a bad bone in his body!”
“Mrs. Hinkle,” Annika says, “most of us know why Seamus is here. You announced it yourself months ago, during Parents’ Day lunch.”
“I know. But I was wrong. I lied! Seamus didn’t do it. His substitute teacher? She’s alive! The apple he threw left a bump, and that was it! Just like I told you in an e-mail last—”
“She’s right!” I chime in. Mom was about to tell Annika about the e-mail she sent her last semester—the one I deleted from Annika’s K-Pak before she could read it, because I didn’t want her to know the truth then. It’s hard enough telling her the truth now, let alone the lengths I went to to keep it from her. “I didn’t do what you thought I did. I know I should’ve told you way sooner, but—”
Annika holds up her hand. Everyone is silent. Feeling dozens of curious eyes on me, I’m tempted to crawl under Mom’s big red net.
But then I feel a little better. Because Elinor weaves through the crowd and stands next to me. Her fingers find mine. Our arms brush together, and I feel the braided rope around her wrist.
She’s wearing her friendship bracelet again.
“It’s our fault!” Mom cries out, shattering the silence.
“Mrs. Hinkle,” Annika says, “you’ll need to—”
“No! I won’t be quiet. I can’t! Because it’s my fault that Seamus is here. He didn’t start down the wrong path on his own. I pushed him there!”
“Judith,” Dad hisses. “This isn’t the time to—”
“Yes! It is!” Mom faces me and turns me so I face her. Then she drops to her knees and holds my face between her palms. “It’s my fault, Seamus. All my fault.”
Still seated under a pig at the back of the room, Mystery snorts. Mom ignores him and continues.
“You see, when I was a little girl, I was painfully shy. Kids picked on me. I never stood up for myself. My parents, fearing I’d break under the negative attention, were incredibly overprotective. They never taught me how to fight back and be strong. So when you were really little, and Bartholomew John walked all over you, and you came to me instead of defending yourself . . . well, I panicked. I didn’t want you to live in fear the way I always had. So I pushed you to become harder. Tougher. So you could take care of yourself. And I admit, when you threw that apple in the school cafeteria—I was overjoyed! I thought finally, finally, my son has proven that he has that confidence, that fire, to take a stand and hold his own against whatever and whoever comes at him! I rea
lly believed I was doing my job the way it was meant to be done.” Her eyes water more. She blinks quickly, sending tears down her face. “But then everything got so . . . messy. And you went away to Kilter, and I missed you. At first I was so proud to send you to a place that would nurture your natural troublemaking—”
“Who’s cold?” Annika shouts suddenly.
Parents exchange looks. Shivering, most raise their hands.
“Let’s towel off and warm up in the sun. Staff members, please escort our families and other guests”—she shoots a look at Shepherd Bull, who stands with a dozen Incriminators—“to the beach. We’ll resume our group discussion shortly.”
Scattered throughout the room, Houdini, Fern, Lizzie and my other teachers lead everyone toward the nearest exits. Still on her knees, Mom watches them go. Dad continues staring straight ahead. My friends and I exchange waves as they leave.
“Mr. and Mrs. Hinkle,” Annika says, “you may join the others.”
“But—” Mom and Dad say at the same time.
“I’d like a word with your son. Alone.”
Mom looks at me. Dad looks at her, then at me. I’m about to reassure them that it’s fine—even though I have no idea if it is—when Dad drops to his knees too. They both throw their arms around me and squeeze tighter than they ever have.
“I’m sorry, Seamus,” Dad whispers near my ear. “I was just trying to help. I wanted everything to go back to normal. So when Mr. Tempest sent the Angel Makers information, I thought it was worth a shot. I know I went overboard, but—”
“Mr. Hinkle!” Annika barks. “We’ll have plenty of time for heart-to-hearts later. Please join the others. Now.”
As Annika picks up her K-Pak and starts typing—probably an e-mail to our teachers to make sure they don’t lose sight of Mystery—my parents’ arms tighten around me even more. Then Mom kisses my right cheek. Dad kisses my left cheek. They both stand and start to leave.
Annika and I are having a staring contest that I’m about to let her win when Mom spins around and sprints back to me. She pulls me into another hug and talks fast.