Pennybaker School Is Headed for Disaster

by Jennifer Brown

  “I tried to catch you before following Reap, but you took off. How come?” Silence. “It was a false alarm, anyway. He didn’t do it.” More silence. “Hello? Earth to Wesley?” Nothing. I tried quoting his favorite Shakespearean play, Hamlet, which I had known absolutely nothing about before I met him but practically knew by heart now. I clenched my fist, raised it high in the air, and made my voice melodramatic-deep. “My day has been bad, but … that it should come to this!” I cried out, which I thought was a pretty good effort, but, aside from the slightest pause of his colored pencil, barely even registered with Wesley.

  “Okay,” I said. “I get it. Don’t speak to Thomas today. Fine. Whatever.”

  I started to slide into my desk when Flea appeared out of nowhere, flanked by Buckley on one side and Colton on the other. They all had their arms crossed.

  “You’re about to be sitting in my seat,” Flea said. He was trying to look tough but only managed to look slightly twitchy.

  “What are you talking about? This is my seat. I always sit here.”

  “Not anymore,” Flea said, and the two boys on either side of him shook their heads slowly, menacingly. “I sit here now.”

  We stared each other down. I could have flicked Flea a hundred yards with my little finger if I wanted to, but I figured that the day everyone decided that Thomas Fallgrout was uniquely gifted at being a bad guy was not the best day to be flicking littler guys anywhere.

  “Fine,” I said, moving my backpack to the desk on the other side of Wesley.

  Buckley sidestepped so that he was standing in front of that desk. “That one’s mine.”

  “Since when?”

  Colton stepped in front of the empty desk just behind Wesley. “And this one’s mine.”

  “You sit by the window,” I said, pointing. “Clear over there.”

  “It’s mine,” he repeated. “No head-stealers allowed.”

  “I didn’t steal anybody’s head,” I said exasperatedly.

  “The head-stealer desk is over there,” Flea said, pointing to the desk in the far right-hand corner of the room. The one pushed so far back it was wedged into Fern Corner with the broken projector and the extra Kleenex supply. The one nobody ever sat in, not even the new kids. We protected them from that chair.

  It was the one-short-leg chair.

  “No way,” I said. “I’m not sitting in the short-leg chair.”

  Buckley and Colton took a step closer to me.

  “Wesley,” I said. “Tell them.” But he simply hunted through his pencil box, as if I hadn’t spoken to him at all. “Oh, come on.”

  Buckley and Colton closed in as Flea luxuriously stretched out in my rightful chair, crossing his arms behind his head. I sighed, resigning myself to an hour of thunking, thunking, thunking every time I made a move. Sneeze, double-thunk. Erase something, thunk-thunk-thunk. Start to doze off, thunk with a feeling of falling that would jerk you awake with your heart in your throat. It would drive a man mad, all that thunking.

  “Okay. But when you all find out who really took that statue, you will owe me the biggest apology,” I said.

  But now they were sitting quietly in their own chairs, looking like kings on thrones. I slid into my chair as carefully as humanly possible, barely breathing …

  … barely moving …

  … just a little … to … the … left …

  Thunk.

  “Gah!” I went for broke, pulling things out of my backpack with wild abandon. Thunk-thunk-thunkity-thunk. And just when I sat up straight again—re-thunk—out of nowhere, a spitwad flew through the air and stuck itself right on my earlobe. I peeled it off and threw it on the ground—thunk—disgustedly. “Who did it?” I practically yelled.

  Everyone stayed facing straight ahead.

  Slowly, Wesley turned around, his eyes dead, his face serious. “When sorrows come,” he recited in his Shakespeare voice, “they come not in single spies, but in battalions.”

  I was no Hamlet expert, but even I could guess what that meant.

  Everyone at Pennybaker School for the Uniquely Gifted was against me.

  Thunk.

  TRICK #15

  SLEIGHT OF FAMILY

  Erma had a dance recital after dinner. Normally, Mom and Dad would have made me go to the recital to “support my sister,” “be a team player,” and “let Erma know the whole family is behind her,” but this time they were noticeably silent at the dinner table. Erma was wearing eye makeup and lipstick, and her hair was pulled up so tight her eyes looked kind of squinty and her mouth didn’t shut all the way when she chewed. Otherwise, I’d have had no idea it was recital night, because nobody mentioned it at all.

  “When are we leaving?” I asked when Mom stood up to clear the plates from the table.

  She and Dad gave each other a funny look. Dad cleared his throat. “Well, pal,” he said. “We thought that maybe this one time you could stay at home.”

  “Work on your homework,” Mom added brightly. She took my plate to the sink, which was filling up with suds.

  “I don’t have any homework,” I said.

  “Excellent.” Dad wiped his mouth with his napkin and tossed it onto his plate. “A free night off. What a nice treat, huh?” He nudged my shoulder with his knuckles.

  “But what about supporting my sister? Being a team player?” I could barely believe the words were coming out of my mouth, because normally I would have been begging to be left home alone while they went to one of Erma’s boring recitals, but it was the fact that they weren’t telling me I had to go that was upsetting. It was one thing to let me off the hook; it was another thing to not want me there. “What about letting Erma know that the whole family is behind her?”

  Mom gave Dad another look. Dad licked his lips, took a drink, and then scooted his chair back from the table. “Look, pal,” he said. “I just don’t know if it’s a good idea right now to … Well, it’s just that with everything that’s … You see, we don’t want to invite any …” He glanced at Mom, and another strange look passed between them. Mom sighed, her eyes going hard and determined.

  “Erma, why don’t you go upstairs and get your ballet shoes?” she said, taking Dad’s plate from the table. Erma scurried out of the room as Mom dropped the plate into the sink. She turned back and started wiping the table with a rag. She was wiping really hard and fast, the way she always does when we’re about to have a You’re Pushing Me to the End of My Rope Adventure. “Thomas, what your father means to say is that with everything that’s going on right now—with the missing statue and everything—it may not be the best time for you to be immersing yourself in big crowds of people who have kids at Pennybaker School. Or who went to Pennybaker School. Or who knew anyone who went to Pennybaker School. Basically everybody. Especially not at times when your sister has worked very hard and would be very sad for things to get ruined. Accidentally, of course.” She stopped wiping and laid a damp palm across my wrist. “You understand what I’m saying, right?”

  “Not really.”

  She stared at me for a second, then picked up the rag and began scrubbing again. “Your grandmother is going to visit some old friends at the nursing home this evening. You should go with her,” she said.

  “But Dad just said I got a free night off.”

  She turned back to the sink. “That was before we had this conversation.”

  “Dad? Tell her.” But Dad wouldn’t meet my eye. He was probably afraid of having a You’re Getting on My Last Nerve Adventure with Mom, too. “Dad?”

  He finally lifted his eyes, guiltily. “Thomas,” he said. “People are talking.”

  I looked back and forth between Mom’s back and Dad’s forehead, which was pointing toward the table again, and tried not to notice that Dad had just called me “Thomas” instead of “pal.” Was I no longer his pal? “So you’re making me go with Grandma Jo because people think I stole that dumb head out of that dumb school’s dumb hallway?” Neither of them answered. “Do you think I did it?
Mom? Dad?”

  “Oh, well,” Dad said, “It’s complicated …”

  “No, of course not … But did you?” Mom asked at the same time.

  “Why would I want it?” I asked, standing up. “Where would I hide it?”

  Mom turned from the sink and placed her fists on her hips. “That’s not exactly a no.”

  “No,” I said. “There. You happy? I didn’t take Mrs. Heirmauser’s head. Now can I go to Erma’s boring recital?” My mouth was such a betrayer. I needed to take it outside and run over it with Grandma Jo’s skateboard.

  “I’m sorry, Thomas, but you can go with Grandma Jo instead. Look at it as an adventure!”

  “Great,” I said. “A So Bored I Want to Eat My Own Dentures Adventure.”

  But it didn’t really matter what I had to say about it. Anyone who knew my mom knew that once she had made up her mind, it was completely impossible to change it.

  Mom finished cleaning the kitchen while Dad got his going-out-on-a-weeknight pants on, and before long they were gone. I was left sitting at the kitchen table, levitating the salt shaker, because I honestly had no idea what to do with myself now that I’d been banned from the recital. Banned from the family.

  After a while, Grandma Jo came in. She was wearing her bright red lipstick—the shade she always wore when she was “going someplace respectable”—and a blue flowery dress with slip-on thick-heeled shoes. Grandma Jo never wore dresses. Whoever we were visiting must have been pretty important to her.

  “So I hear I have company tonight,” she said, picking up her purse and dangling it delicately over one arm.

  “I guess so,” I said in a glum voice.

  “Good,” she said. “You’ll make a good alibi.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Just then there was a honk outside. “Barf’s here,” Grandma Jo said. She opened her purse and pulled out a couple of knee pads and some gloves with padded palms. She bent and unrolled a pair of pantlegs under her dress and kicked off her shoes. “Let me get my sneakers, and we’re out of here. You might want to bring a helmet or something.”

  “Wait,” I said, getting up and following her halfway down the hall. “Barf’s taking us to the nursing home?”

  “Not a chance,” Grandma Jo called from her bedroom. She came out in a pair of black sneakers and had slipped off her dress, revealing a black long-sleeved shirt with a grinning skull on the chest. “Do I look like the kind of person who likes to hang out in a nursing home?”

  “Mom said you had a friend there.”

  Grandma Jo waved me away. “My friends are too young for nursing homes. Plus, my friends are awesome. You’re about to meet one. Come on, don’t lollygag. Parkour awaits.”

  “Parkour?”

  Grandma Jo cocked one hip to the side and gave me the same look Erma gives me right before she calls me a Big Dumb Duh. “Jumping off things and walking on the edges of other things.” She mimicked someone running and then flying with her fingers. “Really high things.”

  “Jumping off … wait. I’m pretty sure Mom wouldn’t approve of you doing that,” I said.

  Grandma Jo came to me and put an arm around my shoulders. “Listen, kid. Your mother doesn’t approve of me doing anything but eating applesauce. Don’t tell me you like the way she’s treating you right now. Like you’re some kind of criminal. Your own mother, suspecting you of stealing the most hallowed head in all of Boone County. If a guy can’t trust his mother, who can he trust?” She was walking me toward the door the whole time she said this.

  “I can trust her. She doesn’t really think I’m guilty.”

  But when I thought about it, Mom definitely seemed to think I was guilty. And Dad did, too. The way he wouldn’t look into my eyes. The way they didn’t want me to be in a crowd of people from Pennybaker School. The way Mom acted all nervous around me since the day the head went missing.

  Grandma Jo was right. If I couldn’t trust my own mother, who could I trust?

  A guy named Barf who liked to jump off buildings, that was who.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let me get my bicycle helmet.”

  “Besides,” Grandma Jo said to my back as I headed toward the garage. “Barf knows a guy. If we need to make a fake statue appear, we can do that. I got your back, kid.”

  I paused.

  Even Grandma Jo thought I was guilty.

  Suddenly jumping off buildings didn’t seem like the scariest thing in Boone County.

  “Actually, Grandma, just go without me,” I said. “I don’t feel so good anymore.”

  TRICK #16

  OUT OF NOWHERE, A PLAN IS HATCHED

  By Tuesday, it was very clear that my best option was just to keep my head down and do my schoolwork. Everyone was mad at me, including Grandma Jo, whom Mom caught sneaking in after a full evening of jumping off things and walking on the edges of other things.

  “Some alibi you make,” Grandma Jo had huffed as she carried her knee pads to her room. “You couldn’ta made up something?”

  “Sorry,” I’d said—something I felt like I was saying all the time these days. Which was weird, because, other than just not liking Mrs. Heirmauser’s head, I hadn’t done anything to be sorry for. And I wasn’t entirely sure I needed to be sorry about that, either.

  Somehow I made it through another day, even though I was still sitting at the uneven desk in Facts After the Fact class.

  “So, Thomas Fallgrout,” Mr. Faboo said, leaning over my desk. “Have you decided on the subject for your Nationwide History Day project?”

  Thunk. “I was sort of thinking Louis XIV,” I said, and then wanted to pull my tongue out and impale it on a rusty fork. Impaled on rusty eating utensils. But my mouth wouldn’t quit talking. “I thought maybe I could research the history of the necktie. I could call it ‘Louis XIV’s Necktie Adventure.’”

  He pursed his lips and squished them around on his face from one side to the other. “Been done.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “Twice, actually, two years ago. The first one was clearly superior, but then again Angus Mack’s unique gift was fashion design. He could tell you the difference between lawn cloth and lampas without batting an eye. He was a clear favorite for the project. Besides, there really is nothing interesting about Louis XIV, who, quite coincidentally, was—”

  “The first to wear a necktie for fashion, I know,” I finished for him.

  “Have you considered something a little more unique? For example …” He swept to one side and gestured toward a red-haired boy in the front row. The boy was sweating profusely as he wrestled with two long, squeaking balloons. “Harvey Hinkle over there is working on Henry Maar. The Sultan of balloons.” Harvey Hinkle gave the balloons another twist and one popped. A girl squealed. Harvey’s shoulders slumped.

  “How about Harry Houdini? Since my gift is magic and all.”

  Mr. Faboo leaned over me again. “Think outside the history book, Thomas Fallgrout.”

  He started to walk away, and in a panic I blurted out, “The history of the cheese puff!” I could see Wesley’s back stiffen. Thunk-thunk.

  Mr. Faboo stopped walking and turned. “Intriguing.” He stroked his chin. “Edward Wilson at the Flakall Corporation. Yes, yes. Where would we be without his delicious invention? Brilliant, Thomas Fallgrout! With that kind of thinking, you could have a real future in history.”

  Working out that sentence made my brain hiccup, but it sounded like it was probably a compliment.

  “Carry on!”

  Thunk.

  As soon as Mr. Faboo’s back was turned, Wesley spun around in his chair.

  “That was my idea,” he hissed.

  “So? You gave it to me,” I whispered back. Thunk-thunk-thunk.

  He pointed at me with his pencil. “I did not give it to you,” he said. “You stole it.”

  “I did not!” THUNK!

  “Did too! But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Seems like a lot of things have been stolen since you
got here.” Not true. Only one thing had. But it didn’t seem like a good time to argue with him.

  “You know I didn’t steal that statue,” I said. “I was the one who wanted to catch Reap, remember?”

  “Yes, how convenient that you just happened to see Reap ‘walking out of the school with something under his shirt.’” He used air quotes. “Can you say ‘misdirection much’? Magician?”

  “Are you saying I was trying to frame Reap?”

  He held up his palms. “I’m only saying that it’s pretty handy that, even though the whole school was standing right there, you were the only one to see Reap supposedly steal something.”

  I never wanted to break a promise so bad in my whole life. But I had given Reap my word that I wouldn’t tell a soul about Harriett and the baby hedgehogs, so I had to keep my mouth shut. “Whatever,” I said, going back to my paper. “It’s my brilliant topic now, and I’m using it. No matter who came up with it.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me and leaned farther over the back of his chair. “I’m watching you, Thomas Fallgrout,” he said in a gangster voice.

  “Yeah,” Buckley said, using a voice that was probably supposed to be Threatening Gangster, too, but only really sounded like Seasonal Allergy Mucus. “You better watch your back.”

  Thunk.

  “You look like you’ve had a bad day,” Mom said when I slid into the car. “Your tie is especially, um …”

  She seemed at a loss for words. I pulled down the visor and looked in the mirror. The knot part of the tie had gotten swiveled all the way around to the back of my neck. It looked like the buns Erma wound her hair up into when she went to dance class. I yanked it around to the front, then loosened it and pulled it off angrily.

  “Never mind,” I said. “My day was fine.”

  Mom acted like she wanted to say something more but seemed to think better of it and just drove us home. I turned on the radio to fill the silence but didn’t listen to anything coming through the speakers. All I could hear was the stuff inside my head: “You stole it.” “I’m watching you.” “You better watch your back.”