After a while, Mr. Smith pushed back his chair and sauntered out into the hallway. As soon as he left, I whispered at Chip to get his attention.
“Psst. Psst.”
He didn’t look back.
“Pssssssst.”
He continued to sculpt a paperclip he’d found into a work of art only he could see.
“Psst! Chip! Psst!”
He turned, surprise on his face. “You were talking to me?”
I looked around. “Who else would I be talking to?”
“Oh. Right.”
I took a deep breath. “Listen. I’m sorry, okay?”
He thought it over. “Okay.”
I scooted my desk a few feet closer and leaned toward him. “Do you have any new leads?”
“About what?”
Seriously? “About Mr. Faboo. The Civil War thing didn’t work out, but maybe the Boone County History-Lovers are doing something else. We know for sure now that he’s a member, and now you’re a member, and they probably have more meetings coming up.”
He bit his thumbnail—thinking, thinking—and then poked his finger in the air. “Eureka!”
“Yeah?” I leaned in.
“I’ll go to another meeting and find out!”
“That was my idea.”
“No, it wasn’t. You said we knew he and I were co-members, and you said that the Boone County History-Lovers Society would likely be having another meeting, but you never specifically said that I should attend said meeting. That part was my idea.”
“I was insinuating—”
“Oh! Great word! You must be washing your vocabulary socks more often.”
Mr. Smith came back into the room, jingling his boring change in his boring pocket. He stopped, examining me. “Mr. Fallgrout, I believe your desk was over there when I left.” He pointed at the spot where I’d been before scooting toward Chip.
“Sorry,” I murmured, moving back.
“So I suppose this means the two of you had a little chat while I was gone. Despite the fact that I specifically said no talking.”
“It wasn’t really a chat,” Chip said. “It was much shorter than what most would consider a proper chat. Just a few sentences, in fact.”
Mr. Smith’s lips went into a straight line. “Defiance now, too, Mr. Mason?”
“No. I was simply suggesting that our very short few sentences were not a friendly and informal conversation, such as is the definition of chatting. If you’d stayed out of the room longer, perhaps we could have achieved chat status, but as you returned rather quickly, we—”
“Chip!” I whispered. The timer on Mr. Smith’s desk went off.
“May we be excused?” Chip asked.
Mr. Smith grunted, and we hightailed it out of there.
Once in the hallway, I slung my arm around Chip’s shoulders. “Chip, I think you had a great idea in there. It’s time for another meeting. And it’s time we got help.”
TRICK #17
THE ABANDONMENT ANGLE
Sissy Cork was at my house when I got home. She was standing in the living room with Erma, a familiar, horrible ballroom dancing song playing softly in the background while Erma counted aloud—“One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one …”
Erma was wearing one of her dance costumes—a pink thing with a big, foofy skirt. Worse than that, Sissy was wearing one of Erma’s dance costumes, too—a white thing with a bigger, foofier skirt. She scowled at me when I walked in the door.
“It’s about time,” she said. “I’ve been dancing with your sister for an hour. Where were you?”
“Detention,” I said, and both Erma and Sissy went, “Ooooooooh.” “Listen, Sissy,” I continued, “I can’t dance tonight.”
“Coach Abel said having a sore bum is no excuse to get out of dancing,” she said. “Now come on.” She held out her hands.
“I have homework,” I said.
“No, you don’t. I have all the same classes you do.”
“It’s extra credit. It’s going to take me forever. Sorry.”
“Thomas …” Erma warned, but I’d already turned and sprinted upstairs to my bedroom, where I dropped my backpack and grabbed my jacket. This time I wasn’t even inventing excuses. Chip and I had called an emergency meeting at Pettigrew Park.
Wesley, Flea, and Owen were all waiting for us when we arrived.
“What’s this about?” Owen said, tapping on his laptop, as if he could somehow search the answer to his question without us even speaking.
“Yeah. I’m missing didgeridoo lessons, so this better be important,” Flea said.
“And I was halfway through taking off my stage makeup,” Wesley said, pointing to his single penciled-in evil-villain eyebrow.
I climbed up the slide and stood at the top, raising my fists. “This, gentlemen, is about a revolution!”
Chip cheered; everyone else blinked up at me.
“A what?” Flea asked.
“A revolution,” Owen said. He adjusted the soup pot he was wearing on his head.
“What kind of revolution?” Flea asked. “Because I have to be home by dinner.”
“Oh! I’ll be a redcoat!” Wesley said. He cleared his throat, straightened up, and adopted a British accent. “Prepare to be fired upon!”
“Technically,” Chip said, “they were called lobsterbacks. And did you know that Paul Revere never shouted ‘The redcoats are coming’ as he rode alone through the streets? Not to mention, he was not alone. William Dawes and Samuel Prescott were with him, and they picked up many more riders along the way. And they much more likely said ‘The regulars are out’ or ‘The regulars are on the move.’ Only they didn’t yell it, because they were trying to keep their warning quiet. So you see—”
“Chip,” I said, interrupting him. “Do you mind?”
“Oh. Certainly. As you were saying.”
“As I was saying, we are revolting!”
Chip snickered.
“What?”
Chip waved me off and snickered some more.
“What?”
Chip laughed harder, his glasses sliding down his nose.
“What, Chip, what?” I snapped.
He took a breath and wiped tears from under his eyes. “It’s just that … you said we’re revolting. And the first thing I thought was, ‘Well, speak for yourself. I’ve showered today.’ ” He doubled over in laughter while we all stood there and stared at him. Owen snaked his fingers under the pot and scratched his head. “Don’t you get it?” Chip said between guffaws. “ ‘We’re revolting!’ It’s a double entendre.” We flicked glances at one another. Wesley shrugged. Flea made the “cuckoo” motion at his temple with his finger. Chip, red-faced and breathless, straightened. “You know, double entendre. Revolting, as in coming together in rebellion, or revolting as in disgusting. You said we’re revolting, and—”
“Are you done?”
He giggled, hiccupped, and sniffed. “Quite.” But the serious look on his face wavered, as if he could burst into giggles again at any moment.
A random little kid yanked on my pant leg and pointed at the slide. I slid down so he could go. No matter where you were in life, you could always count on some random little kid to make you have to move.
“If the interruptions are done …” I pointedly glared at Chip, who pressed his lips together, barely holding in another laughing fit. “We are going to rise up against Mr. Smith.”
“Rise up against him? How?” Owen asked.
“I’m pretty sure my mom wouldn’t want me rising up against things,” Flea added.
“Not things,” I said. “People. Or person. Ow.” The little kid had slid down the slide and smacked into me, feetfirst. I rubbed the back of my knee.
“I don’t know, Thomas,” Wesley said. “I mean, if I get in trouble, it could hurt my chances of getting the lead in the spring musical. And you know what the spring musical is, don’t you? Grease! And you know I’m a perfect Danny.” He flipped pretend hair back a
nd gave a cocky laugh.
“More like Sandy,” Owen said. Wesley shoved him, and he fell backward into the little kids’ sandpit, laughing.
“You guys. You won’t get into trouble. You’ll be making a difference. You’ll be organizing a movement. Standing up for what you believe in. Isn’t that what your parents want you to do?”
“It’s just … the whole Heirmauser-head thing,” Wesley said.
“I was a hero,” I said.
“But first you got into a lot of trouble,” Flea said.
“Like, a lot,” Owen agreed.
“But don’t you want to get rid of Mr. Smith? He’s so … normal.”
“Yeah, of course,” Wesley said. “But guys like Mr. Smith don’t last long at Pennybaker. He’ll go away.”
“And Mr. Faboo will still be gone,” I said, “because we never bothered to figure out why.”
“Sorry, Thomas.” Flea grabbed Owen’s wrist to get a look at his watch. “My parents pretty much want me to stay out of trouble and get into a good college with a solid didgeridoo program. Speaking of, I think I can still make the end of my lesson if I hurry.” He walked along the balance beam on his way out.
Owen stood and brushed off the back of his pants. “Yeah, Thomas. I really have too many clubs right now, anyway. Robotics club, gaming club, coding club, Future Hackers of America …”
“No, you’re not getting it. This isn’t a club.”
But Owen was sauntering away, continuing to list all his extracurricular activities as he went. “Architecture and engineering club, cupcake club …”
“Can you believe those guys?” I said to Wesley and Chip.
“Tell you what, pardner,” Wesley said in a cowboy drawl. “If’n you need someone to rustle you up some beans for yer club meetins, I’m yer feller.”
“There won’t be any club meetings, because it’s not a … Oh, forget it.”
Wesley wandered off, singing a song about drive-ins.
I groaned and stomped to the merry-go-round. I plopped down—grimacing as my bruised rear end panged—and dug my toes into the dirt to keep it from spinning. Chip sat next to me.
“So I suppose this makes me vice president of this revolution club,” he said. He saluted me. “I’m ready for the job, sir. I should go home and change into my leadership socks.”
“Chip, it’s not a club. It’s a mission to find Mr. Faboo and get him back to Pennybaker School. He has to be out there somewhere. And there must be something keeping him away from school. Maybe we can help him out.”
Chip’s brow furrowed, and then he stuck his finger up in an “aha” pose. “So it’s not a club!”
“That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“And it’s not a revolution, really, either.”
I shrugged. “Revolution just sounded cool. Like there might be guts involved or something. Besides, it doesn’t matter what it is if nobody is willing to help me.”
“I’m willing to help you.”
“Us. I meant nobody is willing to help us.” Not really true—mostly because the Chip half of us was totally unhelpful.
Chip stood and paced back and forth in front of me, scratching his chin. “Maybe they don’t want to help because you called it a revolution when it is not strictly a revolution. It’s more of a …”
“Mystery,” I finished for him.
He stopped abruptly, his whole body tense with excitement. “Exactly!” He grabbed the merry-go-round and gave it a mighty shove. Which, with Chip’s size, meant it inched slowly in a half circle. I used my toes to bring me back to facing him. “And you know what we’re good at?”
“What?”
He sat next to me and slung an arm around my shoulder. “Solving mysteries.”
“You know what, Chip? You’re right,” I said. “Who needs those other guys anyway? We’ve got this.”
TRICK #18
THE PRAIRIEBALL PASS
So I didn’t have a revolution to lead, but I had a mystery to solve, and a partner to help me solve it. If you could call Chip a partner and his help actual help. Both were iffy, especially if an interesting bug or flower or hat or shoe or just about anything at all happened to grab his attention.
But Chip was better than nobody. The important thing was finding Mr. Faboo and getting our school back to normal.
Or whatever passed for normal at our school. Which was not at all normal.
So getting our school back to not at all normal, but in a better not-at-all-normal way than the not-at-all-normal way it had been recently.
Chip promised to find out what the History-Lovers Society was doing, and I went home to sit on a pillow and work on another magic trick that might get me out of ballroom dancing so I could focus on solving the mystery.
Sissy Cork was the last person I wanted to see still at my house, now at my kitchen table, squaring up for an arm wrestling match with Grandma Jo. A mound of candy sat on the table between them. Dad stood next to them, a baseball cap on backward and a whistle dangling from his mouth. He was bent at the waist to get eye-to-elbow with Sissy and Grandma Jo.
The minute my eyes landed on Sissy, I tried to back out of the room, but it was too late. Erma had spotted me.
“It’s about time,” she said. “Sissy’s been waiting here ever since you left.”
“And she’s robbed me blind,” Grandma Jo added, rolling up her sleeve. “I’m completely out of butterscotch.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” I said, trying again to get away.
Erma sidestepped so she was blocking the door. “You are going to dance whether you like it or not. Come on, Sissy.”
Sissy started to get up, but Grandma Jo grabbed her wrist and pulled her back down. “Oh, no you don’t, sister. You’ve got to give me a chance to win back the caramels at least.”
Dad blew the whistle and grabbed his own wrist with his other hand. “Foul!” he called out one side of his mouth. “Illegal clutch of the wrist.”
“Oh, it’s okay,” Sissy said, pushing the mound of candy across the table. “You can have it all back.”
“Not the one you ate,” Grandma Jo grumped. “Cheater.”
“Grandma!” Erma said. “Let’s go.” She grabbed Sissy’s hand with one of hers and my hand with the other. “You’re not getting away this time.” She pulled us both out of the room.
Dad’s whistle sounded. “Forfeit!”
“Nobody likes a quitter!” Grandma Jo called to our backs.
“Okay, so the first step to good dancing is posture,” Erma said. Sissy stood stiff as a board. A very angry board, glaring at me. Erma placed her hand on my back and shoved. I stumbled forward.
“Hey!”
“Straighten up!” she said, clapping her hands with every syllable. I straightened. “And put your shoulders back.” I did so. “Chin!” she barked. I lifted my chin.
“I can see up your nose now,” Sissy said.
I slumped. My stomach started up. “Erma, do we have to—”
“Posture!” Erma said, shoving my back again.
“Ouch! I have a bruise.”
“Stop whining. There is no whining in dance.” She was really pushing my limits. “Hands, please.” Sissy held up her hands, and Erma grabbed mine and placed one on Sissy’s back and the other in her hand. “Close your fingers, Thomas.” I didn’t want to, but I did it, just to make her quiet. “Get a little closer.” We closed the gap between us by about a centimeter. “Good. Now, Thomas, you’re going to step forward with this leg, and Sissy, you’re going to step backward with that one. I’ll clap out the beat. Ready?” I wasn’t, but I figured the quicker I got this over with, the quicker I could be put out of my misery. “Okay, one-two-three-four-one-two-three-four-one—”
A knock on the front door interrupted us. I dropped Sissy’s hand and practically bolted out of the room, thinking I owed whoever was on the other side of the door a candy bar or a gold star or a pony.
Of course, it was Chip.
“I’ve got a new
plan,” he said the minute I opened the door.
“Already?”
“Thomas,” Erma called.
“Sorry, I’ve got to take care of this,” I said over my shoulder, and prodded Chip out of my way and off the porch. “Your house,” I said.
The best thing about Chip’s house was that there was no Erma there. And, right now, no Sissy Cork, either. The second best thing about Chip’s house was that the basement had an old-timey pinball machine, and Chip didn’t mind if I played it for as long as I wanted.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked, grabbing a coin from Chip’s cup of quarters and plugging it into the machine. It instantly came to life with a bunch of dings and whistles.
“You know, you’re going to have to dance at some point,” he said, sidling up next to me. He bumped the machine with his hip, sending the little metal ball right into a jackpot hole.
“Not if I can help it,” I said. “So far I’ve been pretty good at avoiding it.”
“Not true,” Chip said. “So far you’ve gotten lucky. Pretty soon Sissy is going to start demanding it.”
“I’ll figure out my strategy then,” I said. I missed the ball, and it rolled into the gutter behind my flippers. “Darn it.”
“It’s not really all that bad. It’s kind of fun, actually.”
“Says you,” I said.
“Anyone can dance. You want me to show you?” He bumped the machine again, and the ball fell back into the jackpot hole. Chip was really good at being the kind of friend who helps people get a jackpot when they need one.
“No. I want you to tell me what your new lead for finding Mr. Faboo is,” I said.
“The Prairie High Pioneers!” he said, sticking his finger in the air.
I lost my last ball, and the machine shut down. I reached for another quarter. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“The Prairie High Pioneers.”
Pennybaker School Is Revolting Page 9
