Pennybaker School Is Revolting

by Jennifer Brown

  “It’s your class, Mr. Faboo,” I said. “We all came out in costume to cheer you on when you pass your test.”

  “Just like we all came out to prepare you for said test,” Chip added.

  Mr. Faboo’s eyes roved over the crowd and then settled on mine. “You believe in me that much?” he asked.

  Chip and I nodded.

  The ATV veered right, bumped over the sidewalk, and plowed across the lawn, going so fast, chunks of grass sprayed around us. It came to a screeching stop right at the bottom of the front porch. I blinked.

  “Grandma Jo?”

  Teddy Roosevelt winked at me and revved the ATV. “I hear someone might need a ride to a test? A very fast ride?” When Mr. Faboo didn’t move, she got off the ATV and removed her helmet. Grandma Jo’s white, curly hair looked funny with Teddy Roosevelt’s brown mustache. “Listen, fella. As I said about a hundred years ago, it is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” She looked proud of herself.

  Mr. Faboo’s eyebrows shot up. “Why, Theodore Roosevelt did say that,” he said in wonder.

  “He also said speak softly and carry a big stick. Now, I can go find a big stick if I need to, but I’d rather tell you softly to hop on and go take that test. You have a lot of kids counting on you.” She gestured behind her. “The best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

  “How does she know all these Roosevelt quotes?” Mr. Faboo whispered.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, pushing his back. “What matters is that you know them. You’re going to ace this test.” His feet started moving, slowly, slowly, but I kept pushing until we were off the porch and standing in front of Grandma Jo.

  “Believe you can and you’re halfway there,” she said. She pushed a helmet onto Mr. Faboo’s head and guided him onto the ATV. She hopped on, and the engine roared to life. She donned her own helmet, let out a whoop, and gunned the engine.

  Paulina Rivers, wearing a tricorn hat and carrying a lantern, climbed onto her unicycle and took off down the street, yelling, “Mr. Faboo is coming! Mr. Faboo is coming!”

  “Technically,” Chip shouted, holding up one finger, “Paul Revere didn’t say—” His voice was drowned out when Grandma Jo throttled her engine again and spun out.

  Grass and dirt sprayed Wesley, who had gotten off the ATV to make room for Mr. Faboo, but they were gone before he could protest, Mr. Faboo’s red robe billowing in the breeze and Teddy Roosevelt’s mustache fluttering to the ground behind them.

  TRICK #31

  THE BIG REVEAL

  Chip and I perfected our secret handshake while we waited for Mr. Faboo to finish his test. It took a really long time. Way longer than we expected. After a couple of hours, kids started to get hungry, or tired, or cold, or bored, and trickled away. But we stayed. Because telling someone you believed in them was important, but sometimes you had to show them you believed in them, too.

  “You boys need a ride home?” Grandma Jo asked. “I can swing you by on my way to the motocross circuit. Quad races tonight. I’ve got to pick up my partner.”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “But don’t worry. I’ll keep your secret, just like I’ve been keeping the others. I sort of owe you.”

  Grandma grinned. “Nope; I told your mother.”

  “You did?”

  “Yup. I figured it was unfair of me to make you lie for me. Plus I was getting tired of sneaking out. Well, that, and she caught me coming in last night. Waited outside in the bushes for me. Like to scare the bejeebies out of me. I was impressed. She’s getting good.”

  “And she’s okay with you going racing?” I asked, even though I knew the answer. No way would Mom be okay with anything having to do with Grandma Jo and racing.

  Grandma Jo grinned. “Who do you think my partner is?”

  Whoa. Mom sure had a way of surprising me sometimes.

  “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” Grandma Jo said. She left, the buzz of her motor vibrating off the building for a long time. The only people left were Flea, Owen, Wesley, Chip, and me.

  “Your grandma’s pretty cool,” Wesley said, watching her go. There were still bits of Mr. Faboo’s front yard stuck in his hair.

  “That was crazy, what she just did,” Flea added.

  “You should see what she does with a clown suit,” Chip said.

  “Huh?” Owen asked. They all seemed confused, but Chip and I just looked at each other and cracked up.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Inside joke.”

  The kind of inside joke only best friends share.

  Not long after the guys left, Chip and I saw Mr. Faboo get up and feed his test into a machine. We waited while his silhouette paced nervously in front of the machine.

  “What do you think will happen if he doesn’t pass?” I asked.

  “I suppose Mr. Smith will become our permanent teacher,” Chip said. “Which means it will be likely that we will have more detentions. On the bright side, you’ll be able to throw away your leggings.” He pointed at my pantyhose, which now sported three giant holes.

  I studied them. “Eh, I don’t mind ’em so much anymore.”

  “I’m going to miss these shoes,” Chip said. “They’re making me look a lot taller. But it will be good to get back into regular socks again.”

  “Your vocabulary socks?”

  “Yeah, those.” I figured. Chip didn’t have regular socks. Chip didn’t have regular anything. “I did put them on this morning, just briefly, to learn the word of the day. Do you want to know what it is?”

  “Actually, I kind of do.”

  “Stickybeak,” he said proudly.

  “Sticky what?”

  “Stickybeak.” He giggled. “It’s used to refer to one who is nosy. Get it? Stickybeak? Nose-y?” He pointed to his nose.

  “You made that up.”

  “No, I swear, I didn’t. It has an Australian origin, and—”

  The door opened and Mr. Faboo came out, causing Chip to stop mid-sentence. We both scrambled to our feet.

  “Well?” I asked.

  Mr. Faboo rubbed his even-more-tired-looking eyes and scratched his chin. He had left his house so quickly, he was only in slippers. The sun had gotten low in the sky, and it was going from chilly to cold. The wind kicked up his robe again, only this time he didn’t move to fix it.

  “Well?” I asked again. “Say something.”

  Slowly, a grin spread across Mr. Faboo’s face, and then he raised his hands in the air, victory-style.

  “I passed!”

  THE FINALE TRICK

  My throat was dry, probably because every ounce of liquid in my body had gone directly to my palms. My stomach gurgled, but I ignored it. Sissy Cork grimaced when I placed my hands on hers.

  “No magic,” she said, tensing her arms so I could feel how strong she was.

  “No magic,” I said.

  “Okay, five-six-seven-eight!” Erma snapped her fingers in rhythm, and we started moving. I smacked my shin on the coffee table, causing Sissy to lurch backward and fall onto the couch. “Again!” Erma shouted. Sissy got up and grabbed my sticky, sweaty hands, and we tried again.

  “You know, you’re not really all that bad a dancer,” Sissy said on our fourth or fifth try. “You spent way too much time being embarrassed about it.”

  “I’m better at magic,” I said.

  She shrugged. “I’m better at arm wrestling. That doesn’t mean we have to be bad at everything else, you know.”

  “True.” Still, I would have made myself disappear if I could have gotten away with it.

  After we had successfully completed the dance three times, Erma pronounced us ready. Which was good, because in two hours we would be performing our dance for all the parents of Pennybaker School. Sissy went home, and I went upstairs to get changed. Grandma Jo was sitting in her bedroom, admiring her trophies.

  I hadn’t seen Grandma Jo too much since that
day at the testing center. Since Mom had given her the okay to leave the house again, she had lots of making up to do with Barf and the others. With winter coming on, there was talk of snowmobiles and maybe even dogsled racing. Grandma Jo lived for the wind in her hair, and I was glad Mom finally saw that.

  Except Mom did say Grandma Jo would freeze to death in a snowbank, and there would be no snowmobiling as long as she was around to stop it. Grandma Jo would never be done with her Fighting Mom Adventure. But she didn’t seem to mind it so much. Sometimes I thought she kind of liked it. Maybe fighting Mom was an adventure all by itself.

  Because I hadn’t seen Grandma Jo a whole lot, I hadn’t really had a chance to thank her for what she did. Mr. Faboo was back in the classroom, and Mr. Smith was back to substitute teaching for Boone Public Middle School. We had a delayed Act After the Fact Month, and we were so happy about it, we went all out on our costumes. Instead of reading the research papers we had all written, Mr. Faboo had us turn them into screenplays. We acted them out with lots of drama. Mr. Faboo, in a new, super-fluffy white wig, sat on the edge of his desk and watched us with a big smile.

  He also started doing relaxation exercises with us before each lesson, turning on soft music and telling us to close our eyes and breathe. Pretty soon all the teachers were stopping into Mr. Faboo’s classroom to see what he was doing so they could do it, too.

  We had our crazy strange teacher back, and it was awesome.

  As soon as I got to my bedroom, I dropped to the floor and pulled out Grandpa Rudy’s trunk. I opened it, lifted out the creation I’d finished the night before, and held it up to the light to study it. I smiled. It was good.

  I took it across the hall and knocked on Grandma Jo’s doorframe.

  “Come on in, Thomas,” she said. “I was just doing some sprucing up. I got a new one last night. See?” She held up a gleaming trophy that appeared to be of a woman swinging on a vine. I didn’t even want to ask what that was about. When Mom found it, she would flip, and it was just best if I didn’t have any information to hide.

  “I brought you something,” I said.

  “Oh?” She scooted over and patted the mattress next to her.

  Hiding my creation behind my back, I sat down. “It’s not as good as those, but …” I handed her the trophy I’d made out of Bill’s bowl, Roosevelt’s mustache, and a cinnamon roll. I had added a piece of masking tape and written across it: “1st Place Window Climbing.” She gasped as she took it from me.

  “Are you kidding? It’s much, much better than any of those cheap trophies.” She turned it in her hands to look at it from all angles.

  “You’ll probably have to eat the cinnamon roll. I’m sure it’ll go bad.”

  “Well, we’ll test that theory. This is a special cinnamon roll—the kind you don’t eat right away because you’re too busy appreciating it.” She elbowed me.

  “Thanks for getting my teacher back,” I said.

  Very gently, she set the bowl next to her swinging vine trophy. The doorbell rang, and I heard Erma’s footsteps bound to open it. Grandma Jo grabbed each of my hands in hers. “I just provided the ride,” she said. “You’re the one who made him reappear. It was your magic.”

  “Thomas!” Erma yelled from the bottom of the stairs. “Chip is here for you!”

  “Nah,” I said to Grandma Jo. “It wasn’t just mine.” I stood and kissed Grandma Jo on the cheek, rushed to my room to grab something off my bed, and then jogged to the stairs. Chip met me at the top of them.

  Before I could chicken out on being all squishy, I held out the socks I had gotten from my room. They were purple-and-yellow-striped, so bright I had to squint. Mom had chuckled when I asked her to buy them. But Mom knew Chip, so she wasn’t really surprised. She even did that Mom thing where she put her fingertips up against her chest and said she was so proud of the man I was becoming.

  “What are these?” Chip asked, reluctantly taking them from me.

  “Best friend socks,” I said. I pulled up one pant leg. “I have a matching pair. They double as vocabulary socks. Do you want to know what the friendship word of the day is?”

  Chip looked from the socks to me. “Thomas, I …”

  I continued before he could start crying on me or something, because that would be even more uncomfortable than what Mom had done. “Consonance. The word is ‘consonance.’ ”

  He beamed, squeezing the socks in his hands like he was afraid if he let up, they would disappear. “Thank you, Thomas.”

  “C-O-N-S-O-N-A-N-C-E,” I continued. “You want me to use it in a sentence?”

  He held up one finger. “Technically,” he said, “the vocabulary word of the day is …” He trailed off, thinking it over. “You know what? Sure, consonance it is. Please continue.”

  We sat on the top step, and Chip put on his socks while I told him all about it.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing a book takes a lot of help and support, and I’m so grateful to the people who help and support me. For that reason, Chip and I are pulling on our acknowledgment socks and going on a Thank You Adventure.

  For Cori Deyoe, agent and friend, Chip has brought you a shiny pair of encouragement socks, because your encouragement is one of the best things about my writing day.

  For Brett Wright, Mary Kate Castellani, Allison Moore, Ben Holmes, Sandy Smith, Oona Patrick, and Melissa Kavonic, Chip has brought you matching polishing socks for helping chart Thomas and Chip’s adventure course and making sure they always stayed on it. In fact, Chip brought an entire package of hard work socks—a pair for everyone at Bloomsbury who worked so hard to get Pennybaker’s antics onto pretty pages and into readers’ hands.

  For Marta Kissi, Chip is giving you rainbow-striped, sparkly, fluffy illustration socks, double layered with amazing talent socks. Thomas, Chip, and friends really come to life thanks to you.

  My husband, Scott, here are your story hero socks, because you are the reason I write stories in the first place.

  And to my kids … pick up your dirty socks. They’re revolting! (See what I did there?)

  Love you all!

  BLOOMSBURY CHILDREN’S BOOKS

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  First published in the United States of America in July 2018 by Bloomsbury Children’s Books

  Text copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Brown

  Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Marta Kissi

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Brown, Jennifer, author.

  Title: Pennybaker School is revolting / by Jennifer Brown.

  Description: New York : Bloomsbury, 2018.

  Summary: Strange things are happening at Pennybaker School for the Uniquely Gifted, and sixth-grader Thomas Fallgrout must stage a revolution to set them right.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017049962

  ISBN 978-1-68119-176-8 (hardcover) • ISBN 978-1-68119-177-5 (e-book)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Gifted children—Fiction. | Boarding schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Mystery and detective stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.B814224 Pc 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017049962

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  Jennifer Brown, Pennybaker School Is Revolting