Pennybaker School Is Revolting

by Jennifer Brown

  “Yes?” he said with a sigh.

  “What’s your unique gift?”

  He narrowed his eyes and thought about it. “I suppose I don’t have one, really. I’m just a regular teacher. And I’d like to teach now. Who wants to start reading aloud?”

  Hugo Helmuth, whose unique gift was tightrope walking, raised his hand and began reading. But I didn’t hear any of what he was saying; I was too busy concentrating on the fact that I wouldn’t have to wear spatterdashes anymore, now that Mr. Smith had banned costumes.

  No pantyhose.

  No itchy legs.

  Just regular history class, with a regular teacher.

  Which meant Mr. Smith was normal—totally normal, in a crowd of the most non-normal people you could ever meet in your life. The kind of normal I’d been wishing for since I started attending Pennybaker School.

  Absolutely, positively normal.

  “Thomas Fallgrout?” I looked up. He was consulting a seating chart.

  “Huh?”

  “Not ‘huh.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ Understood?”

  “Yeah.”

  He clenched his jaw. “Not ‘yeah.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ” He straightened his spine. “Listen up, class. The days of tomfoolery in this class are over. You will have respect. You will learn the material. You will read aloud when I ask you to read aloud. And you will pay attention so you know where to begin reading when I call on you. Is that understood, Mr. Fallgrout?”

  I shifted in my seat, feeling the tops of my ears burn with embarrassment. “Uh, yeah. I mean, yes. Yes, sir.”

  “Start reading.”

  Yep, Mr. Smith was normal.

  And kind of mean.

  And I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be teaching us about guys who died from chicken bones. Or about Jacob Meyer or John Pearson. Or about any regular guys who were important to history just by being part of it.

  I missed Mr. Faboo already.

  TRICK #4

  THE HIDDEN GRANNY TRICK

  “Well, that’s it,” I said, tossing my backpack onto the stairs as soon as I walked in the front door. “I have to quit school.”

  “Lucky for the school,” my sister, Erma, said, bounding down the stairs and jumping over my backpack. She stuck her thumbs in her ears and wiggled her fingers at me as she passed. I was still waiting for Erma to get over her “immature phase,” as Mom called it. So far, it seemed that this phase was going to last a long, long time. Maybe forever. Maybe I would be a professional dancer before Erma would be a mature anything.

  Ever since Chip started going to Pennybaker School, Mom and Mrs. Mason took turns driving. Today was Mrs. Mason’s turn, which meant I hadn’t been able to take off my costume in the car. Instead, I took it off in the living room, where I had more privacy.

  “What’s going on now?” Mom asked, carrying an armload of empty soda cans tied to a thin rope. “Why do you have to quit school this time?”

  When she put it that way, it seemed like maybe I threatened to quit school too much. I struggled to free my leg without falling over. Taking pantyhose off was no easier than putting them on. “One word,” I said. “Dance.” I finally got the leg loose and nearly fell over with relief. I bent to scratch every inch of my leg.

  “I don’t understand,” Mom said.

  “Dance. Our new unit in gym class is dance,” I said. “And my partner is Sissy Cork, and she keeps looking at my skinny arms like she means business.” I flexed, just to illustrate how puny my arm muscles were.

  “Oh, Thomas, don’t be dramatic. I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that.”

  “It is.”

  She started up the stairs. “It’s just a little dance.”

  “Remember Cousin Peter’s wedding, Mom?”

  She paused, grimaced, and then kept moving. “That was a long time ago.”

  “Still traumatic.” I yanked my second leg free and followed her in my boxers and button-down shirt. “Did I mention it’s ballroom dance?”

  “Sounds like fun to me. An adventure!”

  “Couples ballroom dance?”

  “I’m sure it will be fine. Besides, Erma can teach you.”

  Erma, who was famous for always hanging around where she shouldn’t be hanging around so she could hear what she shouldn’t be hearing, popped out from under the stairs. “If you can teach a monkey sign language, I suppose it’s possible to teach a monkey to dance,” she said. She mimed scratching her armpits, ape-style.

  “No way. The only thing worse than dancing with Sissy Cork is dancing with Erma.” A Dancing Adventure was bad enough. A Dancing with Erma Adventure might make me actually die.

  “Fraidycat,” Erma said.

  Mom gave Erma a pointed look and then turned back to me. “Really, Thomas, you will survive.”

  I followed her up the stairs. “But, Mom … can’t you tell the coach I can’t do it? Tell him I have too many toes. Or wobbly knees. Or an allergy to arm wrestlers.” I faked a sneeze. “That one might be true.”

  “You just might like it. And you’ll never know unless you try,” she said. “Now, go pick up your costume. You have to wear it again tomorrow.”

  “No, I don’t,” I said.

  “What? Why not? I’m not writing you a special note to get out of it, Thomas. We’ve been through this.”

  “You don’t need to. Mr. Faboo is gone, and we have the meanest substitute ever, and he said no more costumes. And then he gave us homework. Which is another reason why I have to quit.”

  “Homework won’t kill you. And I would think it would make you happy not to have to wear a costume, with all the complaining you’ve been doing about it.”

  I thought about it. Technically, she was right. It just felt wrong. “I guess.” I started to walk away. Mom got to Grandma Jo’s room and stood up on her tiptoes, attaching the soda-can rope to the door frame with a pushpin. “What are you doing?”

  “Huh? Oh.” She drove another pushpin into the rope a little farther down, and then another. “I’m booby-trapping your grandmother’s door.”

  “Why?”

  Mom let the string of cans hang loose. She turned to me and blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Because she’s not getting into trouble.”

  “Do you mean she is getting into trouble?”

  “Nope. She’s not getting into trouble.”

  “Ooo-kaaay. Isn’t that a good thing?”

  “Not when it’s your grandmother. I just know she’s hiding something from me. Sneaking out. Or sneaking in. Or just … sneaking.”

  Mom had a point. Grandma Jo was definitely not the sit-at-home-and-knit-blankets kind of grandmother. She was more the jump-from-one-rooftop-to-another-with-someone-named-Barf kind of grandmother. Grandma Jo crashed her motorcycle once and broke a couple of bones, and Mom freaked out and made her move in with us so she could keep her from getting hurt. Grandma Jo didn’t mind getting hurt, though. She thought danger was the exciting part of life. So Mom was probably right—if Grandma Jo wasn’t doing anything dangerous, she was definitely hiding something.

  I went downstairs and picked up my clothes, then found Grandma Jo sitting in front of the television, a game of solitaire set up on the TV tray in front of her.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She blinked at me. The TV screen reflected off the lenses of her glasses. “What?”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I’m perfectly fine. Why do you ask, Thomas?”

  “When was the last time you went to the skate park?”

  She flipped a card over and placed it on top of another one. “Oh, it’s been a while, I suppose.”

  “What about parkour? The jumping off really high things onto other really high things?” I used my fingers to mimic someone running and jumping, the way Grandma Jo always did when she talked about it.

  She scrunched up her face and rubbed her knee. “Too much bouncing for this old body.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “How’s the skydiving these days?”

&nb
sp; She placed another card. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Rodeo clowning?”

  “Nope.”

  “Motorcycle racing?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  We were silent for a moment, our eyes locked. “I don’t believe you,” I said.

  She put down the card she was holding and scooted the tray out of the way, then patted the sofa next to her. “Sit, Thomas.” I did. “There comes a time in a granny’s life when she needs to slow down,” she said, snaking her arm around me. She smelled like mints and motor oil. Pretty typical for Grandma Jo. “Your mother doesn’t like it when I do dangerous things, so I’m ready to give it all up—to just be a granny and watch your sister dance and watch you do … whatever it is you’re doing in your mother’s pantyhose.”

  “They’re leggings,” I muttered. “And they’re mine, not Mom’s.”

  “And your magic,” she said brightly. “I’ll get to watch you do your magic. I miss magic. It’ll be like having Rudy around again.”

  Rudy was my grandpa, and he was a magician. When he died, Grandma Jo gave his magic trunk to me because she knew how much I liked watching him perform. In the bottom of his trunk, I’d found a bunch of chemicals and instructions on how to use those chemicals to perform science tricks. Sort of like Philadelphus Philadelphia and his alchemy.

  Grandpa Rudy’s magic trunk was what had landed me at Pennybaker School, after I turned some pennies silver. It was just a reaction between copper, zinc, and sodium hydroxide, but Mom was convinced I was a genius and sent me off to be with other geniuses. So when it came down to it, this whole dancing situation was Grandpa Rudy’s fault.

  “It’s just time for me to focus on being a granny, Thomas,” Grandma Jo said. She started pulling the TV tray back in front of her. Two cards fell off. I bent down to pick them up for her. “Besides, there are some really great shows on TV nowadays. Today I learned how to bake pumpkin pull-apart bread and get bloodstains out of carpet. Of course, only one of those will be handy for me to know.” She smiled, patted me on the head, and went back to her game.

  It wasn’t until I was all the way upstairs and hanging up my costume that I realized she had never specified which one.

  TRICK #5

  LOADED LEVITATION

  I still wasn’t sure if I was on Team Mom or Team Grandma Jo, but my conversation with Grandma Jo had reminded me of something. After I hung up my clothes, I dropped to my knees and pulled Grandpa Rudy’s old trunk out from under my bed.

  I opened it and found Bill’s food dish. Bill was Grandpa Rudy’s rabbit. One day, Grandpa Rudy put Bill in a hat, and he never came out again. We suspected he had hopped away during the show, but Grandpa Rudy could never let his dish go, just in case Bill was in another dimension and would return wanting dinner. I guess traveling between dimensions could make a rabbit pretty hungry.

  I pawed through the trunk, carefully setting aside the carnival bottles and linking rings and the coin you could bite right through, and finally found the tiny reporter’s notebook that Grandpa Rudy had filled with lists of tricks. I remembered all of them, down to the very last breakaway fan. I ran my finger down the list until I found what I was looking for.

  “Levitation,” I whispered, tapping the paper.

  According to Grandpa Rudy’s chicken scratch, levitation was one of his easiest tricks, and he could do it a bunch of ways. He could make his assistant, Irene, float above a table. He could make a pencil lift out of someone’s pocket and drift to his hand. And he could even make himself levitate while standing up.

  In other words, he could make it look like he was hovering in the air, like a leaf. Or a feather. Or … a dancer.

  It was a long shot. Sissy wasn’t a genius, but she was probably close enough to know the difference between hovering and dancing.

  Still, it was worth a try. If Chip and I could pull off the greatest disappearing-head trick of all time, like we’d done with the Heirmauser head, I could pull off a floating-dance trick.

  Besides, whenever Grandpa Rudy did the levitation thing, it seriously weirded people out. And if I couldn’t get people to believe I was dancing, I could distract them long enough not to have to do it. Maybe if I rolled my eyes around in my head and let my tongue hang out and a little bit of drool drop down, people would get scared enough that Coach Abel would have to cancel the dancing unit altogether.

  Yep. Definitely worth a try.

  I worked on levitating until Mom called me down for dinner.

  “What on earth were you doing up there?” she asked when I got to the kitchen.

  “Hey, pal,” Dad said at the same time. He’d just gotten home from work and hadn’t changed out of his work clothes yet.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said, rubbing my elbow. “Sorry, Mom, I was working on something.”

  “You were crashing around like a scared buffalo,” Erma said, scooting in her chair. “Crash, boom, mooo.”

  “Sounds exciting,” Grandma Jo said. She scooped a big spoonful of corn onto her plate.

  Erma giggled. “Scared buffalos aren’t exciting.”

  “They are if you’re in their way,” Grandma Jo said. I avoided her eyes. I was the only one in the family who knew that Grandma Jo had a hobby that involved being in the way of big animals.

  Mom pointed at Grandma Jo with a spatula. “Aha! I knew it! You’ve been scaring buffalo!”

  “Are you even listening to yourself right now?” Grandma Jo said. “Where would I get a buffalo around here?”

  Mom thought about it, chewing her lip, then lowered the spatula back down onto the platter of burgers. “I suppose,” she murmured. “But if anyone could …”

  “What were you working on, pal?” Dad asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Oh, just doing some magic.” I said it lightly, the way you would say Oh, just watching TV or Oh, just taking a shower or Oh, just having a snack.

  “What kind of magic?” Dad asked.

  “Blowing things up, probably,” Erma said.

  “Eat your burger, Erma,” I said.

  “Make me.”

  “Stop it, you two,” Mom said. “Blowing things up isn’t magic.”

  Sometimes it is, I wanted to say, but I figured saying that to Mom wouldn’t be in my best interest. As it was, Mom was always worrying about things that could possibly happen.

  Things That Could Possibly Happen, by Thomas Fallgrout’s Mom

  You could break your leg.

  You could break your neck.

  You could break your leg and your neck if you don’t get off that thing right now, and I mean it, young man.

  You could knock your eyeball out with pretty much anything.

  You could make the whole family a laughingstock with a stunt like that.

  You could regret that you even thought about it, mister.

  You could get sick, and who would put their mouth on something like that, anyway?

  You could set your hair on fire. (To be fair, she was right about this one. We don’t really talk about it anymore.)

  You could bust your head wide open, so both of you put down those rocks.

  Your face could get stuck that way. (Hint: it is never a good way.)

  “Blowing things up can be pretty magical,” Grandma Jo said.

  “Aha!” Mom cried, pointing with the spatula again. “What have you been blowing up?”

  Grandma Jo held her burger like a shield. “Down, woman. I haven’t blown up anything more than a baked potato in the microwave.” She leaned toward me and winked. “It was awesome,” she whispered. “Spud guts everywhere.”

  “That’s it,” Mom said, tossing down the spatula. It rattled on the plate, then flopped off and clattered to the floor. “I don’t know what you’re up to”—she pointed at Grandma Jo, with her finger this time—“or what you’re up to”—she pointed at me—“but it stops this instant.”

  “I’m not doing anything!” Grandma Jo and I said at the same time.

  Mom huffed. She scooted in
her chair, primly spreading a napkin on her lap. She got settled, took a deep breath, and picked up her burger. “So. What did you do today?” she asked Dad.

  He chewed and swallowed, looking very thoughtful, then ran his tongue over his teeth and said, “When I was a kid, we used to blow up dog poop with firecrackers.”

  “Cool!” Erma, Grandma Jo, and I all said.

  Mom grunted and bit into her burger angrily.

  We ate in silence after that. I imagined Dad, Grandma Jo, and I were all thinking about the same thing—the awesomeness of blowing up dog poop. Erma, meanwhile, was humming and swinging her feet. Mom was chewing her food like she expected it to fight back. They all forgot to ask again what I’d been doing upstairs. Which was a good thing. I was pretty sure nobody would understand why I wanted to float out of ballroom dancing.

  “May I be excused?” I asked when I was finished.

  “Sure, pal,” Dad said. “Got homework?”

  “He’s got to dance,” Erma said. She giggled and pantomimed monkey gestures again.

  I scooted away from the table and took my plate to the sink.

  “Thomas, let your sister help you,” Mom said.

  “Mom—”

  “I’m not asking,” she said.

  She didn’t need to finish the sentence.

  You could push Mom to say, “I’m not asking; I’m telling,” and then she would yell at you so hard your eyelashes would blow off.

  “So what song are you dancing to?” Erma asked, coming into the living room where I was trying to do some math homework.

  “I’m not,” I said, not looking up.

  “You get to choose your own?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, Thomas.” She stood in front of me, her arms out as if to dance.

  “I don’t want to,” I said.

  “I know that. But you can’t dance on your sit bones. Get up.”

  “No.”

  “Mom said.”

  “I’m doing homework.”

  “I’m telling.”

  “Fine.” I tossed my pencil onto my math book and stood up. No better time than the present to try out my new trick. I turned my body forty-five degrees away from Erma, straightened my left leg, and started to rise onto the toes of my right foot. “Oh. Wait. Uh-oh. I feel … I feel funny … I feel … like flying …” Slowly, I lifted into levitation. “Oh no! This isn’t right! People don’t float! Run away, Erma! Run! Before it happens to you!”