The Joke's on Us

by Gordon Korman

“And so,” Miss Scrimmage went on, “I must insist that you identify the guilty parties and mete out the appropriate punishment.”

  Mr. Sturgeon sat forward in his chair. “An excellent suggestion. Unfortunately, the Macdonald Hall Cream of Wheat detector is not working.”

  Miss Scrimmage rose in a huff. “You mock me, sir!”

  “Would you care for some toast and gooseberry preserves?” put in Mrs. Sturgeon solicitously.

  “Madam,” said Mr. Sturgeon, “if you have an accusation, make it. But I will not start a witch hunt without proof that any of my boys were involved.”

  “I should have known better than to expect cooperation from you!” shrilled Miss Scrimmage. She flounced out, slamming the cottage door behind her.

  “William, I’m ashamed of you,” said Mrs. Sturgeon. “Why do you bait that poor lady? You know she only becomes hysterical.”

  “And the fact that I knew she was coming? And why? Have you nothing to say to that?”

  “Well —” his wife admitted, “yes, you were right. Except you predicted it would be Bruno and Melvin, and Miss Scrimmage said there were three.”

  “There is another O’Neal at Macdonald Hall this year,” replied the Headmaster. “This must have been a training mission for him.” His eyes came to rest on Miss Scrimmage’s hat and gloves, which lay forgotten on the counter. “Who dresses that woman? Somewhere there must be a barn owl running around naked!”

  “You’re so smug,” his wife complained. “Couldn’t you be wrong just once in a while?”

  Her husband regarded her earnestly. “Macdonald Hall can’t seem to surprise me anymore. I think that’s the sign that it’s time to retire.”

  * * *

  “Way to go, Bruno and Boots!”

  The two boys were waiting in the cafeteria line the next morning when Pete Anderson awarded each of them a handshake of congratulations.

  “Yeah, that was great!” chimed in Rob Adams from up by the silverware bin.

  “Now I know I’m back at the Hall,” laughed Chris Talbot.

  Boots was mystified. “What’s going on?”

  “Ha!” Bruno was triumphant. “We’re somebody in this school, Boots. I only wish your moronic kid brother was here to see the kind of respect we get.”

  “Yeah, but what are they talking about?” Boots persisted. “They can’t know about Scrimmage’s the other night.”

  “Good one!” called Gary Potts. “Man, I laughed. I thought the harpoon was a really nice touch.”

  Bruno frowned. “Harpoon?”

  They piled up two trays with muffins and cereal and headed for the usual corner table. There a group of their closest friends interrupted their own breakfast to stand up and applaud the newcomers.

  “I don’t get it,” said Boots. “What’s everybody making such a big deal about?”

  Mark Davies, who was editor of the school newspaper, led them to the window that faced the Faculty Building and the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald that was the centrepiece of the campus. Someone had dressed the statue in a scuba suit, complete with face mask, air tank, flippers and spear gun.

  “Oh,” said Bruno. “That harpoon.”

  Boots laughed. “It’s a great joke, guys, but we didn’t do it.”

  There were guffaws all around the table.

  “Sure you didn’t,” mumbled big Wilbur Hackenschleimer from behind a triple stack of pancakes.

  School genius Elmer Drimsdale was also impressed. “Certain alterations would have to have been made for the diving suit to fit on the statue,” he observed. “How did you calculate where to make the cuts?”

  “We didn’t,” shrugged Bruno, taking his seat at the head of the table. “Much as I’d like to take credit for it, this gag was pulled by somebody else.”

  “Hey, Boots,” piped up Mark, “how does Edward like Macdonald Hall?”

  “Hold it,” interrupted Bruno. “This is Rule Number One: no one mentions that little creep in my presence.”

  “So,” said Boots, anxious to change the subject, “how was everybody’s summer?”

  “Lousy.” Pete Anderson made a face. “I was stuck in summer school to pull up my grades, and I just squeaked through by the skin of my teeth.”

  “I had a concussion,” announced Sidney Rampulsky.

  This got a big laugh. Sidney’s clumsiness was legend at Macdonald Hall.

  Sidney was outraged. “It’s not funny, guys! A mosquito landed on my nose, and when I slapped it, I clobbered my head with the cast.” He looked up as the laughter grew. “Did I mention that I broke my arm?”

  “I fell in love,” said Elmer solemnly.

  Everybody stopped eating and stared.

  “Way to go, Elm,” approved Bruno. “I always knew the right amoeba would come along someday.”

  Elmer’s eyes took on a distant look, and a goofy grin appeared on his face. “I met her at the Summer Science Fair. There was romance in the air — or maybe it was formaldehyde from the dissected frog in the experiment beside ours. I turned to borrow litmus paper, and that’s when I met Marylou Beakman. Her project came eighty-seventh, but the judges erred badly. I would have placed it no lower than seventy-first.”

  Boots bit back a snicker. “She’s into science, too, eh? You guys must have a lot to talk about.”

  Elmer turned beet-red. “Talk?”

  “You didn’t even talk to her?” asked Sidney incredulously.

  Elmer hung his head. “It wasn’t my fault. I was getting ready to say something after the judging, but I was afraid she would think I was dreary and boring. I wanted to show her the real me.”

  “But that is the real you!” blurted Pete.

  “I know,” Elmer admitted sheepishly. “That’s why I went to the bathroom to think of some interesting things to say. When I came back, she was gone.”

  “Aw, Elm,” Bruno groaned. “You let her slip away. Now you’re never going to see her again.”

  Elmer peered at him earnestly through his thick glasses. “But Marylou goes to Miss Scrimmage’s Finishing School for Young Ladies. I have all year to work up the courage to talk to her.”

  Mark stood up and placed his tray on the kitchen conveyor belt. “I’d better get going,” he told the group. “I want to get a picture of Sir John A. in the scuba suit for the school paper. I’ve got the perfect headline: SOMETHING FISHY AT MACDONALD HALL.”

  “Something’s always fishy at Macdonald Hall,” grumbled Wilbur. “Namely the guy who runs the place.”

  Boots snapped to attention. “The Fish! Hey, Bruno, you don’t think he’s going to blame it on us, do you?”

  “Why would he do that?” asked Bruno absently.

  “For the same reason everybody else did — it’s always us!”

  Bruno laughed. “You’re getting paranoid, Melvin. No one’s blaming us for anything.”

  At that moment, Larry Wilson, the office messenger, joined them at the table.

  Boots looked up. “Hi. I thought you were on duty this morning.”

  “This is duty,” Larry said grimly. “The Fish wants to see you guys in his office — right away.”

  * * *

  Bruno and Boots sat on the hard wooden bench in the Headmaster’s office, waiting for Mr. Sturgeon.

  “This is so great!” Bruno chortled.

  Boots stared at him. “What’s so great about being called in by The Fish?”

  “Don’t you get it? We’re innocent! For the first time ever, we can look The Fish in the eye and say that we didn’t do it.”

  “Didn’t do what?” came an all-too-familiar voice. The Headmaster limped into the office, leaning on a wooden cane.

  Bruno jumped to his feet. “Sir! What happened? Are you all right?”

  “Perfectly all right, thank you. It is a medical condition. Now, kindly regale me with the story of what you have not done.”

  They watched as he limped to his chair and eased into it.

  “Well, sir,” said Bruno, “we didn’t put the scuba suit
on the statue of Sir John A. I know it’s our style, and you might even say it’s got us written all over it. But we didn’t do it.”

  “Honest, sir,” added Boots.

  The Headmaster was taken aback. Certainly, Walton and O’Neal were his most mischievous students. But they had never attempted to lie their way out of anything. Bent the truth? Yes. Side-stepped it? Always. But an out-and-out lie was not their style.

  “Very well,” said the Headmaster finally. “I have come to trust you boys over the years, and your word is enough for me. For example, if I were to inquire if you were involved in the incident at Miss Scrimmage’s last night …”

  “You know, sir,” said Bruno carefully, “with all the excitement of a new school year, it’s kind of hard to remember where you were at any given time.”

  “Shall I take that as a confession?” asked Mr. Sturgeon.

  “Yes, sir,” chorused the two boys.

  Mr. Sturgeon pronounced sentence. “Three days’ dishwashing, beginning with dinner tonight. You are dismissed.”

  Bruno and Boots fled the office and left the Faculty Building by the nearest exit. They slowed down to watch a group of groundskeepers remove the scuba gear from the statue.

  “Three days’ dishwashing!” said Bruno in disgust.

  “What a drag,” Boots agreed.

  “Are you kidding?” Bruno exclaimed. “It’s nothing! Last year we would have gotten two weeks for rousting Miss Scrimmage. Plus punishment essays!”

  Boots was mystified. “You want to go back in there and tell him it’s not enough?”

  “Don’t you get it?” Bruno persisted. “He’s hobbling on a cane; he lets us off easy. Something’s wrong with Mr. Sturgeon, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it!”

  “We can’t mess around in The Fish’s private life,” Boots protested. “He won’t stand for it.”

  “He won’t even know,” Bruno assured him. “We’ll start by asking Larry to keep his ears open around the office …”

  Chapter 3

  The Voodoo Curse

  Phil, the assistant kitchen chief, exchanged high fives with Bruno and Boots as they reported for dishwashing duty.

  “My buddies! How was your summer? I knew you’d be here soon, but the first day? What was the rap — the scuba suit on Sir John A.?”

  “Scrimmage’s,” shrugged Boots.

  “Yeah?” laughed Phil. “You got caught? Boy, you guys must be getting old or something.”

  Bruno winced. “Don’t say that, okay?”

  “I love it when you get put on dishwashing duty,” Phil went on. “You’ve both got so much experience. I mean, you know exactly how to scrape the plates and load the machine. You’re a couple of pros.”

  “Thanks, I think,” said Bruno, accepting the hairnet that all kitchen workers had to wear. “Hey, Phil, just for old times’ sake, how about you let us work without these things?”

  “No can do, buddy. School rules. Okay, here come some trays. It’s show time.”

  Bruno and Boots set to work, scraping and stacking. In minutes, they were bathed in sweat from the heat of the kitchen.

  “Hello, suckers. Nice hair.”

  Both boys looked up. There, his head sticking through the tray window above the conveyor belt, was Edward O’Neal.

  “Suckers?” repeated Boots. “You were at Scrimmage’s, too. We could have ratted you out to The Fish, but we didn’t. You’re welcome.”

  Edward placed his tray on the belt. “My plate is especially dirty tonight,” he informed them. “So you’re going to have to put a little extra muscle into scraping off the hardened gravy and the fossilized mashed potatoes.”

  “Get him out of here,” said Bruno without looking up, “or he’s going through the pot-scrubber cycle.”

  Suddenly, Phil’s voice rang out in the kitchen. “What the —?”

  Bruno and Boots wheeled. The assistant kitchen chief was crouched in front of the big industrial dishwasher, trying to stop a wall of suds. The white soapy froth was pouring through the steam vents, from the bottom and out of the gasket around the door. Phil backed up as it advanced.

  Bruno and Boots waded into the bubbles.

  “I’ll turn it off!” called Bruno.

  “No!” shrieked Phil. “You don’t stand in water and touch an electrical switch!”

  “Then what do we do?” called Boots. The suds were waist-deep and still coming.

  “Get some help!” cried Phil, his voice muffled as he tried to clear a path through the suds.

  “Fi-i-i-i-re!” howled Bruno.

  Instantly, the chef and his crew stampeded onto the scene.

  “What fire?” the chef demanded. “There’s no fire!”

  “Yeah!” cried Bruno. “But you wouldn’t have come if I yelled ‘bubbles!’”

  The chef marched to the dry end of the kitchen, opened a fuse box and flipped a circuit breaker. All at once, the lights went out, and the dishwasher fell silent. The mountain of suds began to settle slowly with the whispering sound made by popping bubbles.

  The chef looked around the room with blazing eyes. “This doesn’t just happen by accident! There must have been a box of detergent in that dishwasher! Now, who put it there?”

  There was dead silence as suspicious glances darted like laser beams around the kitchen. Finally, all eyes came to rest on Bruno and Boots.

  “What’s everyone looking at us for?” Bruno demanded, outraged.

  Phil frowned thoughtfully. “It’s kind of a coincidence that this happens right when the two biggest practical jokers in the school are washing dishes.”

  “But we didn’t do it!” squeaked Boots.

  It took an extra hour to clean up the kitchen after dinner that evening. Bruno and Boots were there for every mop stroke and squeegee. The dirty looks from the kitchen staff didn’t make things any more pleasant. No one seemed to believe that the caper had not been their doing.

  “This year is really starting to get on my nerves,” said Bruno, wringing his rag into a plastic pail. “First I meet your lousy brother, then The Fish shows up on a cane and now this. What idiot pulls a stupid stunt like this?”

  Boots laughed mirthlessly. “Us, if we’d thought of it first. It was pretty funny.”

  “It’s only funny when you don’t have to clean it up,” muttered Bruno. “If I ever get my hands on the kid who did this, he’s a goner!”

  Boots picked up a sponge to wipe off the counter. He paused. There, in a small puddle on the Formica, was a single brown feather. “Yeccch! What do they do — pluck the chickens right in here?”

  “Either that or we drowned a pheasant,” commented Bruno.

  “It’s not fair,” said Boots feelingly. “They treat us like criminals over something that’s not even our fault, while they run this kitchen like a pigsty.”

  “Life isn’t fair,” agreed Bruno. “Not this year, anyway.”

  * * *

  “Mark!” Bruno Walton pounded on the door of room 114 in Dormitory 1. It was Friday morning, and this week’s Macdonald Hall Student Times had just hit the stands. “Mark!”

  The door opened, and Sidney Rampulsky, Mark’s roommate, peered out. “Hey, Bruno — Boots. What’s all the yelling about? What do you guys want?”

  “Mark Davies’s head!” bellowed Bruno, elbowing his way into the room.

  Mark looked over from his desk. “What’s up?”

  Bruno shoved his copy of the Student Times right under Mark’s nose. A banner headline blazoned: KITCHEN SOAP-O-RAMA.

  Underneath was a large picture of a soaked Bruno and Boots, waist-deep in suds.

  Sidney leaned his elbow on Mark’s desk and moved in for a closer look. “You guys should have taken the hairnets off for the picture,” he observed.

  “We didn’t exactly pose for it,” said Boots bitterly.

  “What’s the big deal?” asked Mark. “I had to write about it. It’s news.”

  Savagely, Bruno pointed to the bottom of the page, where the
last two sentences were circled in Magic Marker:

  The identity of the practical joker is not known. Bruno Walton and Melvin O’Neal were on dishwashing duty at the time of the incident.

  “That practically says we did it!” Bruno stormed.

  “Didn’t you?” put in Sidney.

  “No!” exclaimed Boots.

  “The article doesn’t accuse you of anything,” Mark said calmly. “It’s just the facts.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Bruno sarcastically. “Facts like ‘Someone got punched out in room 114 today. Mark Davies lives there.’”

  “We were hauled down to the office to see The Fish over this!” added Boots hotly. “He believed us, but we had to do some fast talking.”

  Mark was thoughtful. “Maybe I can put a retraction in next week’s paper. You know, something like ‘Bruno and Boots deny all responsibility …’”

  “That’s even worse!” Boots protested. “It sounds like we’re weaseling out of something!”

  Sidney’s elbow slid out from under him, and he whacked his jaw on the edge of the desk. He teetered for a moment, then shook his head to clear it. “Hey, if you guys didn’t do it — who did?”

  “How should we know?” growled Bruno. “Just because we didn’t do it doesn’t mean we know who did!”

  He was still seething as he and Boots walked across the campus toward the Faculty Building and their classes.

  As usual, Boots’s anger dissipated first. “Don’t you think you were a little hard on Mark? I mean, he is one of our closest friends.”

  “Hah!” sneered Bruno. “No true friend would ever publish a picture of a guy in a hairnet!”

  A bustling figure crossed their path, almost sideswiping them.

  Bruno recognized the crew cut first. “Hey, Elm, what’s the hurry?”

  Elmer stopped and stood there before them, hugging a brown paper parcel to his chest. “I–I have to take this to the mailbox — r–right away!”

  “Another experiment for the museum to analyze?” asked Boots.

  Elmer turned beet-red. “Not exactly. It’s — personal.”

  Bruno caught sight of the address on the parcel. “Marylou Beakman,” he read. He broke into a broad grin. “That’s that girl you like. Way to go, Elm. I never thought you had the guts.”