Dial Books for Young Readers
Penguin Young Readers Group
An imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC
375 Hudson Street • New York, NY 10014
Copyright © 2016 by Lauren Magaziner
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-18941-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Magaziner, Lauren.
Pilfer Academy : a school so bad it’s criminal / Lauren Magaziner.
pages cm
Summary: “When George is brought to Pilfer Academy, a secret school for training young thieves, he has the time of his life . . . until he realizes he’s much too good-hearted to actually steal anything”— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-8037-3919-2 (hardback)
[1. Schools—Fiction. 2. Robbers and outlaws—Fiction. 3. Conduct of life—Fiction. 4. Humorous stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.M2713Pil 2016 [Fic]—dc23 2015017309
Jacket illustration and cover design © 2016 by Andrew Bannecker
Version_1
To Super Poppop and Best Bubbie—from whom I’ve stolen the Gold brains and the Antman heart
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
Navigating North
Pilfer Academy of Filching Arts (We Steal Things)
Orientation?
Quite a First Impression
The Key
Nothing Is Beneath a Thief
As Long as You Don’t Get Caught
Class Rankings
Dastardly Plans! Muahahaha!
The Midterm Exam
What to Do
The Woeful Tale of Reuben Odell
The Lie Detector Test
Friendship Over
Failures for All!
My Best Work . . . Honest!
The Whirlyblerg
The Opposite of Thieving
Mischief Night
A Midnight Swim
Zzzzzzzzzzzt!!!
1-800-We’re-in-Trouble
A Most Indecent Temper Tantrum
The Duke
The Same Old Different George
Doing Good
Acknowledgements
About the Author
The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
The small truck had parked two houses away from George’s home so as not to arouse suspicion. But the neighbors kept looking at it, tapping their feet expectantly before getting frustrated and moving on. One toddler even banged on the side of the window and shouted, “CHIPPITCH!” until her mom dragged her away, still screaming and thrashing about.
“Are you sure this was the right vehicle?” the woman in the truck asked.
The man in the driver’s seat grunted.
“We’re awfully inconspicuous. Or is it conspicuous? I can never remember.”
“It’s spickerous,” the man replied.
The woman thought for a moment. “I suppose . . . if we tried to hide, then we’d look too much like we were trying to hide, so by not hiding, we are hiding even more than if we were hiding.”
“Mmmm.”
The woman adjusted her fake mustache. “Plus we have these handy disguises.”
“Irreputably. We will blend in perfectly with hats, glasses, trench coats, wigs, and fake mustaches. No one will espect a thing!”
The woman laughed, and then the man laughed. It was a nice rousing burst of evil laughter that went wholly unappreciated by the teenager who happened to pass by at the moment. Then, the man and the woman cleared their throats and sobered.
They sat, the people in the van. They sat, and they sat, and they sat. Silent. Still. Patiently waiting.
George never noticed that anything was amiss.
When he woke up, hours after the van had nestled in front of the neighbor’s yard, the only thing he saw was the lazy haze shining through his window. It took him five more minutes to hear the shouts coming from the other kids in the neighborhood, and another five minutes after that to notice that there wasn’t a single noise in the house, an impossible occurrence with his eight-person family.
He knew he was being punished after last night, when he stole Gunther’s dessert right off his plate and stuck it in his mouth before anyone could say anything about it. It was worth it, just to see the look on Gunther’s face. His mom had yelled a lot, though, and called him Naughty George, which was her favorite nickname for him.
As he lay in bed in his silent house and grinned, he couldn’t help but feel that being naughty had its perks sometimes—it was the first time he’d had the room to himself in ages, and he wanted to treasure the moment. It was hard to get any peace and quiet when sharing a room with Gunther. Whenever Gunther was in the room, George somehow always ended up in a headlock. There was no way to describe Gunther except meaty, and there was no way to describe their room-sharing experience except painful. George had the wrestling bruises to prove it.
He rolled out of bed and shuffled downstairs to the kitchen. His parents hadn’t bothered to leave a note, but they rarely did anymore. They were the kind of parents that didn’t dote on their children, and their primary goal was to make their kids as independent as possible as early as possible. George supposed it was working because he hadn’t remembered the last time he felt like he really needed his parents to do anything for him, which made him sad but proud at the same time.
George made a three-egg omelet, fashioned himself a cup of tea, and sat down at the head of the table with his parents’ newspaper, feeling very grown-up indeed. Of course, he didn’t actually read the newspaper; it was terribly boring. He just held it and pretended. It was fun to act like his father sometimes, when no one was looking.
When George was done with breakfast, he thought that he ought to make use of an empty house, so he went right to all the places he wasn’t allowed to enter, like Derek and Corman’s room. Derek was about to head off to college, and Corman was going into tenth grade. They were constantly holed up in their room, and they only ever left to go to school, sports practice, and to hang out with their equally peculiar friends. His mom loved to talk about “teenage angst,” “hormones,” “puberty,” and “growing up,” but George was pretty sure that his older brothers were just plain weird.
Still, he couldn’t leave them alone. They were a bizarre teenage mystery. One that George just had to solve.
He stood in front of their door, looking at the signs tailored specifically for him.
GO AWAY, GEORGE.
STOP STEALING OUR STUFF, SQUIRT.
GET OUT. THIS MEANS YOU, GEORGE.
DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES BLAST THE STEREO.
George ignored the signs, walked in, and blasted their stereo anyway.
He opened up their sock drawer, and a positively revolting stench wafted from it. He immediately closed t
he drawer and opened another. He rifled through, finding some paper clips, buttons, and sticks of gum. He pocketed the gum. Then he went to Corman’s night table and found his comics, which he tucked under his arm to borrow and return later (maybe) when Corman was out. In Derek’s night table, he found ten dollars.
George pumped his fist in the air. “Money!” he shouted over the techno-music.
He jumped on their beds, and when he finally got bored, he scurried to the other room he wasn’t allowed to be in—his sisters’ room. Colby, Corman’s twin sister, and Rosie, the five-year-old baby of the family, shared a room that he wasn’t ever allowed to enter because his mom repeatedly reminded everyone that girls needed their privacy.
But George couldn’t really understand why. It wasn’t like Colby’s diary said anything interesting anyway—just a bunch of boring stuff about boys with little hearts in the margins. And Rosie’s side of the room just had Mr. Snuggles, her favorite stuffed animal, but it was hardly breaking news. George cracked the door open and peeked his head inside, wondering if he’d be able to read the latest installment in Colby’s nonexistent love life. But the smells of lotions and the sight of pink lacy pillows were so overwhelming that he grabbed the diary to take with him.
With Corman’s comics, Derek’s money, and Colby’s diary in hand, George slammed the door shut, scampered wildly down the hallway, and—SMACK.
He ran right into his mother, who was carrying shopping bags into her room. The comics, diary, and money flew up in the air and fell down like a hard rain.
“Uh-oh,” George said.
His mother’s eyes narrowed on Colby’s diary and Corman’s comics. “Uh-oh is right, young man! What are you doing with your siblings’ things? I thought we taught you to respect their privacy!”
Colby bounded up the stairs. “YOU’RE READING MY DIARY?” she shrieked when she saw it sprawled on the floor.
“It’s not that interesting anyway!” George said.
“That’s not the point!”
“QUIET!” his mother shouted, putting her hand up, just as Rosie and Gunther popped up the stairs, too. “George,” she said, rubbing her temples like she had a headache coming on, “why are you always getting into trouble?”
“I’m not always—”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you—why do you feel the need to be the naughty one in the family, George?”
“I’m not the—”
“George,” his mother said sternly, “no one else causes half as much trouble as you!”
The door to the garage opened, and George could hear his two oldest brothers horsing around as they walked into the house.
His mother waggled a finger at him. “You’re grounded, George.”
“You can’t ground me for walking around!” George said.
“You were reading my diary!” Colby screeched.
“Not now, Colby! Let me handle this.”
“What’s going on?” called George’s dad from downstairs.
“George was—”
“George? Again?” shouted his father. “He was just punished yesterday!”
George gritted his teeth. He couldn’t take it anymore. Before anyone could say another word, he grabbed the ten-dollar bill off the floor, slid under his mom’s arms, pushed past his siblings, barreled into his dad, ran out of the house, and sprinted far, far down the street.
He walked through the neighborhood, toward the source of all the screaming kids. Every summer, the kids his age always played kickball, manhunt, capture the flag, and four square in the grassy space where everyone’s backyards connected. He didn’t have many friends—he was the kid in class who always caused a ruckus and left whoopee cushions on his teacher’s chair, so he was revered by half the class and hated by the other half. His high jinks left him a little lonely, but he could never stop being mischievous—it was just his nature.
He trudged down the wiggly road, trying to balance on the curb.
Then came a sound.
The most marvelous, glorious sound.
The kind of sound that makes sparrows sing, hearts dance, and grown men fall to their knees weeping with joy.
“THE ICE-CREAM TRUCK!” George shouted.
It was driving right behind him. Had it been there the whole time? He had been so distracted he didn’t even notice.
He started to walk toward it, but the truck zoomed past him.
“HEY, WAIT!” he cried, sprinting as fast as he could and waving his arms wildly. The music was playing, but the truck kept speeding away.
George ran down three streets and cut across a stranger’s lawn—finally catching up to the ice-cream truck. It had parked in an emergency lane just outside his neighborhood. For a fleeting second, he wondered why an ice-cream truck would stop where there were no houses around. Wouldn’t it make more sense to park the truck closer to all the backyards? With all the kids playing capture the flag, the ice-cream scooper was sure to make hundreds of bucks.
But the thought passed when he walked up to the ice-cream truck and saw the menu. Did he want a Chipwich? Or a Choco Taco? Or a Fun Cone?
“I’ll have an ice-cream sandwich, please,” George said.
“We’re not serving that today,” a bony, lanky man said. He had a deep and rumbling voice, like a rattling engine.
“Okay, I’ll have a lime fruit pop, then.”
“Don’t have that, either.” The man leaned over the counter, and George noticed he had a sharp, angular face—and a funny black mustache that looked a little too groomed to be real.
“Well, what do you have?”
“We got Triple-dipple Ultra-deluxe Melty Creamy Creamer Rainbow Swizzle Milk Munch ice cream.”
“What else?” George asked.
“That’s it,” the man said.
“I’ve never heard of it before. How much?”
“Ten bucks.”
“TEN bucks?” George choked. “What a rip-off!”
“Take it or leave it, kid, but it’s the best ice cream on this side of the continent.”
George dug into his pocket and fished out Derek’s money. “Okay, fine.”
“I can give you Triple-dipple Ultra-deluxe Melty Creamy Creamer Rainbow Swizzle Milk Munch ice cream on a cone, or Triple-dipple Ultra-deluxe Melty Creamy Creamer Rainbow Swizzle Milk Munch ice cream in a cup.”
“Cone, please.”
The man went in the back and rustled around. There came CLANGs and WHUMPs and CRASHes and BAMs. It sounded like he was building a robot, not scooping triple-dipple whatever ice cream.
At last, the man with the thin face popped up over the serving counter again. “Okay, kid, your ice cream is all ready. Just come around the back of the truck to get it.”
George scurried to the back of the truck. The doors swung open, and the man stood there, his mustache askew. Except that the man wasn’t a man at all—he was a woman.
George furrowed his eyebrows. “Hey! What are you—?”
The woman threw something that looked like a bouncy ball at him. With a POP! and a hiss and a flash of smoke, the ball expanded into a net that trapped George in its web. George tried to run away, but he tripped over the netting and fell on the ground.
“HELP!” he screamed. “SOMEONE HELP ME!”
The woman jumped out of the truck and plucked George off the ground with ease. He screamed and tried to bite her, but the netting was small and thick, and George ended up with a mouthful of mesh.
She pulled him all the way into the ice-cream truck and locked the door. “DRIVE!” she shouted to the man in the driver’s seat—an actual man this time. George could tell from his big hulking frame, and the fact that, when he turned around, he was wearing one of those fake black mustaches over his already-prominent, golden-colored handlebar mustache.
He grunted, put his foot on the ga
s, and away they drove.
Navigating North
George was tossed around in the back of the van like scrambled eggs as the truck sped down the highway. The woman fastened him down with some heavy-duty duct tape. George spat at her, and he only narrowly missed her face.
“THIS IS ILLEGAL,” George screamed. “THIS IS KIDNAPPING!”
“This is not kidnapping,” the woman said. “This is a highly successful mission of person-stealing.”
“I have two parents and four older siblings who are going to beat you up if you don’t return me.”
The woman leered at him.
“WHO ARE YOU?” George said, pushing against his bonds. “WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME?”
The woman ignored him and went back to navigating the double-mustached driver. She peered at a clearly upside-down map and pulled out binoculars to look out the window. After about a half hour on the road, she made the double-mustached man stop the car.
The woman left the door wide open as she stepped out onto the side of the road. She licked her finger and held it up in the air. “The wind is blowing from all directions, which means we should head NorthWestSouthEast,” she said matter-of-factly.
The man hopped outside and leaned on the van, which wobbled when he put his weight on it. “We just have to fellow the North Star,” he grunted.
“Magnificent idea, Ballyrag!” They made a big show of looking high and low and left and right and up and down for the North Star.
“I’m going to check under the car,” the woman said.
“STOP!” George shouted, struggling with the heavy-duty tape tying him down. “It’s the middle of the afternoon.”
“It is?” said the man named Ballyrag. “Strongarm! It’s the middle of the afternoon.”
“It is?”
“It is.”
There was a pause. Ballyrag scratched his head.
“You know what that means?” George prompted.
“Undubiously!” Ballyrag said. “It’s time for tea and rumpets with raspberry preservatives.”
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