by Dave Barry
This announcement brought loud groans from the rest of the group. The four of us were no longer a source of entertainment; we were now officially The Kids Who Wrecked It For Everybody. Mr. Barto pointed at Suzana and Victor and said, “When we get to the hotel, you two will go to your rooms and stay there. You two”—he pointed at Matt and me—“will pack your suitcases. I’ll be taking you to the airport personally.”
“Please, Mr. Barto, please,” I said. “I know it sounds crazy but it’s all true, and unless we—”
“QUIET,” said Mr. Barto. “I will not stand here and have my intelligence insulted any more by your ridiculous lies.” He turned to the rest of the group. “All right, everybody back to the bus.”
Everybody started trudging toward the bus. Suzana, Victor, Matt, and I walked in front, feeling the angry glares from everybody else burning into our backs. It had to be the worst feeling I ever had. The weird thing was, the day had turned really nice—bright sunshine, but not too warm, and with the breeze still blowing strong and steady.
A perfect day for flying a kite.
“... and in all my twenty-seven years of teaching,” Mr. Barto was saying, “I have never seen anything as blah blah blah as the idiotic stunt you pulled, and now thanks to your incredibly irresponsible blah blah blah you have jeopardized the blah blah blah.”
We were in a taxi on the way to the airport, me and Matt slumped in the back seat, Mr. Barto in the front seat reaming us out pretty much nonstop since we left the hotel. I was tuning him out because (a) he was repeating basically the same thing—namely that we were idiots—over and over, and (b) I was busy answering texts from Suzana. She and Victor were in their hotel rooms with a chaperone guarding the hallway, but Suzana, naturally, didn’t plan to stay there, which led to this conversation between her and me:
SUZANA: v&i will sneak out windows
ME: then what?
SUZANA: taxi to wh. u meet us there
ME: can’t barto with us.
SUZANA: get away
ME: how?
SUZANA: think of something
ME: helpful
SUZANA: have 2 go. cu at wh. b there! dont get on plane!!!
I texted her a couple more times after that but she didn’t answer. Probably she was busy sneaking out of the hotel.
I showed the texts to Matt. He whispered, “How’re we supposed to get away?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
Mr. Barto was still blah-blah-ing away in the front seat. I stared out the window, thinking hard. My first idea was, when the taxi stopped at the airport we could just jump out and run away. But I realized that Mr. Barto would see us, and he’d yell, and there’d be a lot of police around at the airport, and we’d probably get caught. So I decided to go with my second idea, which was hope that Mr. Barto wouldn’t go through security with us, because that way, when we got through and were out of his sight, we would wait a few minutes and then sneak back out of the airport.
I whispered this plan to Matt, and he nodded.
We got to the airport and Mr. Barto finally stopped telling us what idiots we were. That was the good news. The bad news was, when he got our boarding passes he also got a special pass for himself, so he could accompany us through security and take us to the plane. He obviously didn’t trust us. Which made sense, actually. We definitely were not trustworthy.
So we got into the TSA security line: Matt and me following Mr. Barto and his giant backpack. We were shuffling forward, slow but steady, heading for the plane that would take us to Miami and Death By Mom, heading farther away from Suzana and Victor and poor Cameron and who knows what it was the Gadakistan maniacs were planning to do.
We were running out of time. I kept thinking about Suzana’s text: think of something. I was thinking as hard as I could, but nothing was coming to me. Ahead of us a TSA guy was saying the same thing over and over—no liquids or gels, take your laptop out of the case and place it in a separate bin, remove your shoes belts and jackets.
Matt tapped my shoulder and whispered, “Wyatt.”
“What?” I was annoyed, because I was trying to think.
“I just remembered something.”
“What?”
“The lighter.”
“What lighter?”
“The one I got at that souvenir store. It’s in my backpack. The security people are gonna think it’s a gun.”
I turned around and stared at him, remembering the lighter.
“I have to throw it away, right?” he said.
“No,” I whispered. “Give it to me.”
“Why?”
“Just give it to me. But don’t let anybody see.”
Matt reached into his backpack, looked around, pulled out the lighter and slipped it to me. I slipped it into my hoodie pocket and turned around to face Mr. Barto’s humongous backpack. It had a zipper pocket on the back with a little Homer Simpson doll hanging on the zipper pull. I looked around to make sure nobody was looking my way, then slowly slid Homer sideways. Mr. Barto moved, and for a second I thought he was going to turn around, but he didn’t. I put the lighter inside the pocket and slowly slid Homer back.
“Ooohhh,” whispered Matt, just figuring it out.
“When you go through the scanner,” I said, “follow me, and keep moving. Don’t stop, no matter what happens. Okay?”
“Okay.”
We kept shuffling forward. Finally we were at the front of the line. A TSA lady checked our passes and we went over to the conveyor belt. Mr. Barto had us go first. We put our backpacks and shoes on it and went through the big X-ray scanner, with Mr. Barto behind us. On the other side we stood next to the conveyor and waited for our stuff. Mine came, then Matt’s. We grabbed it.
Then the belt stopped. I was watching the TSA person running the scanning machine. He was staring at it hard, then he looked over toward us. Then he said, “Supervisor!”
“Put your shoes on,” I whispered to Matt. I started putting on mine.
The supervisor came over. She looked at the screen, then over at us. She said something to the scanner guy, who started the belt moving again, just enough to let Mr. Barto’s backpack come out. The supervisor pointed to it and said to Mr. Barto, “Sir, is this your backpack?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Barto.
“Get ready,” I whispered to Matt.
“Is there a problem?” said Mr. Barto.
Instead of answering, the supervisor said something to the scanner guy. Three seconds later there were a half dozen TSA people coming our way. One of them, a big guy, stood right in front of Mr. Barto and said, “Sir, I’m going to ask you to step over there.”
“Why?” he said. “What is it?”
“Just step over there,” said the big guy, taking Mr. Barto by the arm.
“Follow me,” I whispered to Matt. I started walking away, and Matt followed. I looked back: Mr. Barto wasn’t looking at us. He was focused on the big guy, and he was starting to freak out.
“Can you please explain to me what this is about?” he was saying.
I saw two police officers—not TSA people, but cops, coming into the security area, walking fast. Then a couple more cops behind them. Mr. Barto had a growing crowd around him. The last I saw him. As Matt and I lost sight of him, was him waving his arms around and asking what the problem was. It would probably be a few minutes more before he noticed we were gone. He wasn’t good at details.
Matt and I were in the airport gate area.
“Now what?” said Matt.
I pointed at a sign off to our left that said EXIT BAGGAGE CLAIM GROUND TRANSPORTATION. “That way.” A minute later we were back outside the terminal. We followed the TAXI signs and got into a line. While we were waiting, my phone burped. It was a text from Suzana:
where r u?
I texted back:
leaving airport
My phone burped again:
hurry
I texted back:
where r u?
I
stared at my phone, waiting. She didn’t answer. We got to the front of the taxi line and got into a cab. The driver did not look thrilled to see that he had two kids for passengers, but he didn’t say anything.
I said, “We want to go to the Ellipse, please.”
“Where on the Ellipse?”
“Um…near the White House, I guess.”
He turned around and started driving.
“What do we do when we get to the Ellipse?” said Matt.
“Look for Suzana and Victor. And then find the kite guys and try to stop them.”
“How’re we gonna do that?”
“I have no idea. Suzana said we’ll figure that out when we get there. Which is pretty much what she always says about everything.”
“Yeah, and look how well everything worked out.”
He had a point there.
We rode quietly for a few minutes, staring out the windows.
Then my phone rang, with the tone I use for actual phone calls, which I hardly ever get. I pulled it out of my pocket, expecting it to be Suzana. But it wasn’t Suzana’s phone calling me.
It was Matt’s phone.
Which meant it was the weird guys.
My finger was shaking when I slid it across the screen to answer the call.
“Hello?” I said.
“Wyatt, it’s me, Cameron.”
Cameron!
“Are you okay?” I said.
“Don’t talk, just listen. I’m almost out of battery. We made a bad mistake. Those guys—”
Then…nothing. I said, “Cameron? You there? Cameron?”
Nothing.
“Cameron, what about those guys?”
Nothing.
“That was Cameron?” said Matt.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think his battery died.”
I tried calling back. No answer.
“What’d he say?” said Matt.
“He said we made a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“I don’t know. The phone died before he could tell me. He started to say something about ‘those guys.’”
“The Gadakistan guys?”
“I think so. But all he got out was ‘those guys.’”
“We made a mistake,” said Matt.
“Yeah,” I said. “A bad mistake.”
For the rest of the taxi ride I stared out the window, wondering what Cameron had been trying to tell me. A bad mistake. What could that mean? That we should have gone to the police in the first place? That we shouldn’t have gone to the weird guys’ house and broken in? That we shouldn’t have let them get the laser jammer back?
And how did Cameron manage to call me on Matt’s phone? Did the weird guys accidentally leave the phone where he could get it? Did they let him go? Did he escape? If he had gotten away somehow, shouldn’t I call the police? But what if he hadn’t gotten away?
A bunch of questions, no answers.
The taxi was back in downtown D.C. I could see the Washington Monument up ahead. The day was still really nice—no clouds, bright sun, blue sky. As we got closer to the Ellipse, I started seeing the kites—all kinds of shapes and colors fluttering and swooping around in the wind. Below them was a huge crowd—there had to be thousands of people. Somewhere in there, I hoped, were Suzana and Victor. Also somewhere in there were the Gadakistan guys and their Death Dragon. Unless we were totally wrong about that. Was that the bad mistake Cameron was talking about?
My phone burped up a text from Suzana:
where r u?
I texted back:
almost there. where r u?
The driver pulled over to the curb and stopped the taxi. He looked back and said, “This okay?”
“Yeah,” I said.
He pointed to the meter, which said we owed him $18.72.
Uh-oh.
You’re going to think I’m an idiot, and I guess this was pretty idiotic, but I had sort of forgotten about the fact that when a taxi driver drives you somewhere in his taxi, he expects you to pay him. I wasn’t sure how much money I had left, but I was pretty sure it was less than $18.72. I got out my wallet and, trying to look calm, counted my money. I had four dollars and some change.
“Matt,” I whispered. “Do you have any money?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Give it to me.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small wadded-up clump of bills that were stuck together with what looked like melted chocolate. He handed it to me and I started pulling the bills apart. I could feel the cab driver staring at me. I unwrinkled and counted Matt’s disgusting bill wads…two, three, four…
He had five dollars. Which meant we had nine and my change, which was thirty-six cents.
“Do you have any change?” I whispered to Matt.
The driver was staring harder now.
“I think so.” Matthew dug into his pockets and handed me, one at a time, a penny, a quarter, another penny, and two green Skittles. Which brought our total to $9.63, which was not enough to pay the fare, let alone a tip.
Now the driver was giving me a look that reminded me of something that happened involving my parents and a taxi driver one time when my family went to New York City. We landed at LaGuardia Airport and we got into this cab with a driver who smelled like he was carrying a dead squirrel somewhere in his pants. Also he drove like a maniac. My family is used to bad driving, because we live in Miami, where according to my dad they’ll give a driver’s license to anybody including Csonka, who in case you forgot is our dog. But this New York taxi driver was a whole different level of crazy, honking his horn, yelling at people, swerving all over the road, and the whole time yakking on his Bluetooth in what sounded like Martian. So when we finally got to our hotel my dad made a big point of paying exactly what was on the meter, no tip. The taxi driver totally freaked out. He jumped out of the cab and got in my dad’s face, yelling in both English and Martian, telling my dad he was cheap, and my dad was yelling back, telling the driver he was a maniac, and a crowd started gathering on the sidewalk to watch. My mom started yelling at my dad to stop acting like a macho teenager and just walk away from this maniac, which I think my dad secretly wanted to do, but he didn’t want to look like a chicken in front of all these people. So they kept yelling at each other, and the taxi driver got a little too close and kind of chest-bumped my dad, I think by mistake. My dad, who has never been in hand-to-hand combat with anybody and once knocked himself briefly unconscious on a tree while trying to set up a hammock, staggered backward a couple of steps and then staggered forward. I think he was trying to chest-bump the taxi driver back, but he missed completely, stumbled, and fell face-forward onto the sidewalk, cracking a tooth that later turned out to cost twelve hundred dollars to fix. At this point my mom (I believe I have mentioned she is Cuban) marched up to the taxi driver and—remember, this is the person who was telling my dad to stop acting like a macho teenager—smacked him on the side of the head with her purse, which doesn’t sound so bad unless you know that my mom always travels with a major purse containing enough food and medical supplies that if our family got marooned on an uninhabited island, we could survive for months, so when she nailed the taxi driver with it he collapsed like a defective lawn chair. So now there were two people lying on the sidewalk with a big crowd gathered around, and some police officers showed up and threatened to arrest everybody but finally decided to let everybody go, I think because they didn’t want to have to get into a police car with my mom, who can be loud.
The point is, the look on the D.C. taxi driver’s face was reminding me a lot of the look on the New York taxi driver’s face when he realized my dad wasn’t going to give him a tip. Except my situation was worse, because I didn’t even have enough money for the fare.
“Is there a problem?” said the driver.
“Um,” I said. I have a way with words.
My phone burped up another Suzana text:
meet under big butt
What?
&n
bsp; “You owe me eighteen seventy-two,” the driver said, pointing to the meter.
“Here’s the thing,” I said. “We don’t actually have the total amount.”
“How much do you have?”
I held out my hand with the money and Skittles in it. “We have nine sixty-three.”
“I might have some more Skittles,” said Matt.
Yes, he actually said that. He probably thought it would lighten up the situation. He was wrong.
“You think this is funny?” the driver said. “You think this is a joke?”
“No,” I said. “I’m really sor—”
“THIS IS NOT A JOKE. THIS IS STEALING!”
“Look,” I said, “if you give me your address, I swear I’ll send you the money.”
“No!” said the driver. “You are thieves!” He opened his door and got out.
“What’s he doing?” said Matt.
“I don’t know,” I said. Then I saw a police car parked a little ways up the street. The taxi driver was walking toward it.
“Oh no,” I said. “He’s going to tell the cops.”
“What do we do?”
I was already opening the door. “We run,” I said.
I got out of the taxi. The driver looked back, saw us, and yelled. I took off running toward the Ellipse with Matt right behind me. I could hear the driver shouting for the police but I didn’t turn around. I felt pretty awful; the driver was right, and we were wrong. Maybe some day I could explain to him about the Gadakistan guys and Cameron and the White House and everything. But this was not a good time.
We ran into the kite festival, trying to lose ourselves in the crowd, which was pretty huge. I stopped and looked back and didn’t see the taxi driver. Now we had to find Suzana and Victor. I pulled out my phone and read Suzana’s text again:
meet under big butt
“Okay,” I said to Matt. “Do you see a big butt?”
“That’s one’s pretty big,” he said, pointing to a lady in jeans who did, in fact, have a major butt.
“I don’t think that’s what she means,” I said. “I think she means a kite.”
