I hadn’t asked her yet, and I wasn’t yet sure what I was going to use to bribe her into it, but I had this great idea that somehow Erma could be the one dancing with Sissy Cork, and make it look like it was me. The illusion was called Metamorphosis, and was created by the great Harry Houdini himself. Grandpa Rudy used to talk about Jonathan and Charlotte Pendragon, two magicians who were so quick at Metamorphosis, they got into the Guinness Book of World Records.
The way it worked was a magician would usually stuff himself into some kind of bag and then hop into a trunk, and his assistant would lock the trunk with a padlock. Then the assistant would jump up onto the trunk, hold a curtain over herself for a second or two, and out would pop the magician. Grandpa Rudy’s videos of the Pendragons were really impressive. I’d never tried it before—mostly because I didn’t have a trunk, other than Grandpa Rudy’s magic trunk, which kind of smelled a little, so I didn’t love the idea of being locked inside it—but surely there had to be a way to figure out how to use it to get out of dancing.
“Hey, look, it’s our famous cheerleader,” Colton cried when I walked into the lunchroom that day. “Show us how to do the splits, Thomas.”
“Do a backflip!” Buckley added.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” I mumbled, slouching up to the table with my tray. I sat very gingerly. Chip occupied the space between the other two, happily eating his yogurt parfait. He didn’t seem to mind being teased at all.
“So, Thomas,” Chip said after I got settled. “I have another lead.”
“Oh, really?” I asked, taking a big bite out of my burger. “I can’t wait to hear how I’m going to be humiliated next.”
“Oh, c’mon dere,” Wesley said, trying on his Southern voice to practice for his Oklahoma audition. “It cain’t be all dat bad now, cain it?” He pretended to lob a loogie into a spittoon.
“I don’t know, Wesley. You try going out in public in a dress and tell me how bad it is.”
“Edna Turnblad,” he said in what I’d heard him refer to as his Baltimore voice. I’d forgotten that he’d played the role of the main character’s mother in Hairspray last summer. “One of my best roles.”
“Actually,” Chip said, “I was thinking maybe all of you fellows would like to join us this time.”
Buckley and Colton burst out laughing. “Not likely.”
“Depends,” Flea said, settling onto the bench next to me. His didgeridoo slid over to the side and bonked me on the head. I barely even noticed. It was sort of understood that if you were friends with Flea, you were going to get bonked with his didgeridoo pretty much every day. “Where are you going?”
Chip fussily dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin, carefully laid it on his tray, and leaned forward. “Rumor among those in the History-Lovers Society is Mr. Faboo is the blacksmith out at Old Midwest Town on the weekends.”
“Old Midwest Town?” Owen asked. “What’s that?”
“The year is 1855, and our wagons have happed across a thriving town,” Chip started, spreading his hands as if to paint the picture of Old Midwest Town. “A church stands high and proud in the center.” His hands indicated a very tall church. “A one-room schoolhouse employs the young daughter of the colonel, who lives over here”—we all followed his hands—“in this mansion.”
“Whoa, a mansion?” Flea breathed.
“Well, a three-room house, anyway. With two whole stories. Might as well have been a mansion.”
“Is Mr. Faboo the colonel?” Flea asked.
“No, dummy, he’s the blacksmith. Weren’t you listening?” Colton tossed a wadded-up napkin at Flea; it bounced off his forehead and into his chili. He made a face as he plucked it out.
“Right next to the trading post,” Chip said.
I had been to Old Midwest Town before, but it had been a long time, and I couldn’t really remember it. Had Mr. Faboo been the blacksmith when I was there? It was totally possible. “What does he do all day?” I asked.
Chip shrugged. “Makes horseshoes and stuff. And talks about what it was like to be a blacksmith in 1855.”
“So we’re just going to go out to this place and pretend we need horseshoes or something?” Colton asked.
“There’s a festival,” Chip said. “It’s going on all weekend. We can ride our bikes there on Saturday.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Where did you hear about—”
“We’re in!” Wesley interrupted.
“We are?”
He nodded. “It’ll give me awl kindsa practice with my drawl.”
I had no idea what he was saying, but I could roughly translate it to: character, character, blah blah, rehearsal.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Every time I listen to one of Chip’s—”
“No, Wesley’s right. I think it’s a good idea,” Owen said. He turned his laptop around so we could see a photo of the town. Sure enough, right out front, beaming for all the world to see, was a blacksmith. His face was smudged with soot and he was kind of squinting into the sun, so it was hard to tell exactly who it was, but it definitely could have been Mr. Faboo.
“Whoa. Wait a minute. I thought you guys didn’t want to be in my revolution,” I said.
“But Chip makes this sound fun,” Wesley said.
“Yeah, it’s not really a revolution. It’s a festival. And they probably have apple cider and homemade doughnuts and stuff,” Owen added.
I didn’t care if they had doughnuts and pizza and free-range unicorns. It still was unfair that they were all too busy to help me when I wanted to find Mr. Faboo, but were totally excited when Chip wanted to find him. My mind went back to watching Chip’s fancy handshakes with the guys. There was no way around it—they just liked Chip better than they liked me.
“I don’t have didgeridoo practice Saturday,” Flea said. “Okay. I’ll go.”
Buckley whispered in Colton’s ear. Colton listened, then said, “We’ll do it.”
“Splendid!” Chip said. “That’s everyone! Let’s meet at my house at precisely three thirty o’clock, Central Standard Time.”
How many times had I told Chip that he didn’t need to always say “o’clock,” and that he didn’t need to specify which time zone when we were all sitting in the same room?
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Flea said. “It’s not everyone.”
They all slowly turned to look at me. My burger had formed a big lump in my throat. Even though Chip and I were friends again, all I could think about was how uncool and unfair it was that they were all so willing to follow Chip but wanted nothing to do with the idea when it was mine. I wanted to tell them it was fine by me if they all went together, but I was out, because they were traitors. I tried to chew and mind my own business, but I couldn’t handle the stares. Plus, I didn’t want them to find Mr. Faboo and be heroes without me. Not after everything I’d already been through. “Okay, fine,” I said. “We’re all in.”
Mom was standing in Grandma Jo’s room with her arms crossed, one hand holding a dusting rag, when I got home.
“Hey, I’m going for a bike ride with Chip and the guys on Saturday, okay?” I said, pausing in the doorway.
“Uh-huh,” she said distractedly, without even looking my way.
“We’ll probably be out until supper. It might get dark.”
“Sure,” she said in that same distracted voice.
“But it’s a whole bunch of us, so you shouldn’t worry.”
“Yep.”
I walked up next to her, crossed my arms exactly like hers, and stared into the same spot. After a minute, I said, “What are we looking at, exactly?”
She flapped the rag at me. “Oh, nothing, I suppose.” She bent to dust the windowsill, but her head turned back to where she was staring before. She appeared to be looking at Grandma Jo’s bookshelf.
“Nothing?” I asked.
“You see that trophy there?” she said, gesturing toward the shelf. I nodded. “Have you ever seen that trophy before?”
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“I guess.”
She finally turned to me. Her eyes were a little buggy and wild, like Mom was having a Close to Crazy Adventure. “No, not ‘I guess.’ Have you seen that trophy before or haven’t you?”
To be honest, no, I hadn’t seen it. But I also didn’t really spend a lot of time in Grandma Jo’s room. Mom was now tapping her foot at me and had her arms crossed again, and I was starting to notice a little bit of sweat on her temples. Mom was small and soft and sounded really pretty when she hummed, but make no mistake—she could be scary when she wanted to be. And, clearly, she wanted to be.
“No. I don’t think I have.”
“Aha!” she barked, making me jump back a step. She leaned forward and picked up the trophy. “Do you see what it’s for? Do you see?”
I didn’t want to, but I bent over and read aloud. “First place, Boone Raceway Street Stock.”
“Do you know what that is, Thomas?”
“No.”
She plopped the trophy back on the shelf. “Car racing, Thomas. Car racing. Someone took first place in a stock car race. Can you guess who that is?”
I didn’t want to guess.
Fortunately, she didn’t let me. “Your grandmother, that’s who. But do you think she’ll own up to it? No. She insists that she’s had that trophy forever. Just like the tattoo. She’s going out and racing at night, Thomas, I just know it. And I’ll prove it.”
I thought about the figure leaving my window the other night, leaving behind a racing bib. I’d had my suspicions then, but now I was sure. Mom was right. Grandma Jo was sneaking out.
TRICK #23
THE SMELLY EARPLUG
The guys were waiting for me on Saturday when I rolled into Chip’s driveway. The sun was out and it had warmed up a little, but it was still a chilly November afternoon. Owen had a GPS strapped to the handlebars of his bike; it was talking to him in a robotic voice, and he was tapping something into his watch.
“We should get moving if we want to be back before dark,” he said.
“Everyone have their smithing socks on?” Chip asked, holding one foot out to the side so we could see the peach-colored socks he was wearing.
“Smithing?” Colton mocked.
“You are correct in your dubiousness. In the eighteen hundreds, a blacksmith would have worn a leather apron and trousers that would protect him from sparks and molten metal and flames and such. I’m sure we will see Mr. Faboo in such garb. It will be unlikely that he will be wearing smithing socks, although we can ask.”
“Let’s go,” I said, and started rolling out.
Chip and I rode our bikes together pretty often. Sometimes we circled our block, racing each other. Sometimes we rode to Pettigrew Park to hang out on the monkey bars. Sometimes we went all the way into town to get ice cream. Those were my favorite times. We always played I Spy while we sat on the curb eating, and I always won, because Chip was awful at I Spy.
This was our first ride out to Old Midwest Town. As we got closer, the road became more gravelly, and fields of dry, dead grass opened up on either side of us.
It felt like we were the only people in the world.
“Hey, Thomas,” Chip said, whizzing past me.
“What?”
He turned around and came back. “Why was the blacksmith mad at his boss?”
“I don’t know, why?”
He circled back. “Because every time he made a horseshoe, he got fired.” He laughed maniacally.
“I don’t get it.”
“You know, fired?” Wesley said, pulling up next to me. “A blacksmith had to heat up metal with fire in order to pound it into a shape. Good one, Chip!”
“I have one,” Flea said. He had to pedal furiously to keep up with us. “Why was the blacksmith so cranky?”
“Why?” Owen said.
Flea grinned. “Because every time he went to work, he got a pounding headache.” We all groaned.
“I’ve got one,” Owen said. “What was the blacksmith’s favorite kind of music?”
“Oh! I know!” Wesley cried. “Heavy metal!” He stuck his tongue out and pretended to be bouncing his head to loud music.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Why didn’t the blacksmith’s wife ever visit him at work?”
“Why?” Chip asked.
“Because every time she got near the fire, it would poke her.” There was silence. “Get it? Poker? Like a fire poker?” Everyone groaned and laughed, and for a few minutes, it was pretty cool that Chip and I had the same friends, even if it did sometimes feel like they chose him over me.
“Dead frog!” Wesley shouted, pointing ahead. We all veered around a smashed blot on the road.
“Oh, hey, I have a song about that,” Flea said. “I learned it at Scout camp.” He started singing, and pretty soon we were all singing about smashed animals.
To be honest, it was awesome, and I almost didn’t want to find Mr. Faboo if it meant we could keep riding our bikes together forever.
“Hey, Thomas,” Chip said, just as we turned onto a dirt road that led to the Old Midwest Town gate.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think Mr. Faboo left because he was tired of teaching us?”
“Nah.”
“I mean, we used his wig for spitwad target practice a lot,” Wesley said.
“I don’t think so.”
“And there was that time we stole his Frida Kahlo unibrow and put it in Miss Pancake’s hamster cage,” Colton said.
“He wasn’t mad about that.”
“What about when we all made fart noises every time they said the word ‘Texas’ in that Alamo song he played for us?” Owen added.
I thought about it, coasting. “He was a little mad about that.”
“See?” Chip said. “We’ve done a lot of things to Mr. Faboo. What if he’s gone because he wants to be rid of us?”
True, we had done a lot of things to Mr. Faboo. But we did a lot of things to a lot of teachers. We wrote poems about stinky cheese for Mrs. Codex. We sculpted barf for Miss Pancake’s realism unit. The only teacher we didn’t mess with was Coach Abel, because he was the one teacher who could make us do stuff like run laps or drop for push-ups. But everyone else was fair game. And Mr. Faboo seemed to have a good sense of humor about it. He never really got mad. He had never, ever yelled at any of us.
“No, Chip,” I said, going back to peddling. “Mr. Faboo is a good sport. Who knows why he’s gone? I just know we have to get him back.”
The parking lot, which was just a field that had been mowed kind of short, had a few cars in it. We parked our bikes by a row of dead corn plants and headed to the front gate, excited about what we might see inside, because festivals were exciting, even when we were there on a totally non-festival mission.
“Hello, fellas,” the man at the gate said. “Coming to enjoy the fair?”
Wesley stepped up. “Yes, sir. We’uns hopin’ to get a look-see at yer blacksmith thar.”
The man at the gate looked stunned. “I don’t … I don’t know what you just said. Brochure?” He held out a pamphlet. Wesley took it and tipped an imaginary hat.
“We were hoping to talk to your blacksmith,” I said. “He’s our teacher.”
The man brightened. “Well, sure! You come right on in and have a gab at him.” We started to walk, but stopped abruptly when the man’s outstretched hand bumped Colton’s chest. “That’ll be three dollars each.”
“We don’t have any money,” Buckley said.
“Oh; then I’m afraid I can’t let you kids in.”
“But we’ll only be a minute,” I said.
“Well, technically, that wouldn’t be possible, as we wouldn’t even be able to get to the blacksmith shop within one minute,” Chip said.
“Five minutes, tops,” I said, reminding myself to give Chip a death glare later.
The man shook his head mournfully. “Sorry. If it was up to me, I’d let everyone in for free, but it’s not my rule.”
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�I promise we will just go straight there and straight back,” I said. “Please?”
Owen was tapping the screen on his smartphone. “Oh. You guys. We missed it. It’s right here on the website. Three dollars admission.”
“You mean we’re not even going in? I could have been home practicing my didgeridoo this whole time?” Flea asked.
I let out a sigh. “Okay. Everyone empty your pockets. We’ll just send in however many of us we can afford.”
Everyone reached into their pockets and produced a variety of treasures—Colton a slingshot; Buckley a handful of rocks; Flea a leftover cookie and an anonymous love note from Samara Lee that he was supposed to give to Dawson Ethan in band and forgot. Owen’s pockets were filled with flash drives—nine of them, to be exact. Wesley was carrying a Gatorade cap, two seashells, a folded piece of paper that had been through the wash and was now blank, a cell phone, a pencil stub, and his spitwad straw. My pockets were completely empty.
Not one of us had even a nickel, much less three dollars.
“Seriously, you guys?” I asked. “Nothing at all?”
“I had an overdue book fine,” Flea said sadly.
I turned back to the man at the gate. “Are you sure you can’t just let one of us in for five minutes?”
“Sorry, son.”
I sighed. “Can you at least send a message to the blacksmith? Can you tell him his students want him to come back?”
“Tell him that his substitute doesn’t even like history,” Colton suggested.
“And that he’s making us write papers,” Buckley added.
“And we don’t dress up at all anymore,” Wesley said sadly.
“Actually, that part I’m okay with,” I said. “Especially the pantyhose.”
“They’re leggings,” all of them said at the same time.
“Whatever. Tell him that we got detention for no good reason,” I said.
“Well, technically, we did damage school property. Very important school property, at that,” Chip said.
Correction: I owed Chip two death glares.
“Just tell him, okay?” I said.
The man at the gate nodded, looking like he wouldn’t remember a single word of what he was supposed to tell Mr. Faboo. “Okay, sure. I’ll see if I can catch him on his break,” he said.
Pennybaker School Is Revolting Page 12
