After they left, there was silence in the dorm’s entrance corridor again. George stood up and paced the hall—what was taking Tabitha so long? Did she change her mind? Did she get knocked out or something?
THUNK.
THUNK.
THUNKITY-THUNK-THUNK.
THUNK.
It sounded like a ginormous man-eating monster was thumping down the stairs, and George’s heart pounded.
A moment later, a ginormous man-eating suitcase tumbled down the stairs and landed with a THUD at the bottom. Tabitha came running after it.
“What are you doing? We can’t pack our stuff!” He lowered his voice. “It’s far too obvious!”
“This isn’t for home,” Tabitha whispered back. “These are all the thieving tools I can think of that we might possibly need.”
“For crying out loud,” George said, “just take what you can carry in a backpack.”
Tabitha zipped open her suitcase and started to pull out a few things. She was packing so fast that George could barely see the objects she deemed worth taking, but he did notice that she slipped a dinner knife, paper clips, and a few books into her bag.
“By this time tomorrow we’ll either be on the whirlyblerg or free,” George said, his stomach giving quite a jolt.
Tabitha squeezed his hand.
Far from being deserted, every hallway was crackling with energy. Groups of friends were skulking together, shiftily glancing at other people to see what they were doing. The first-years looked a little nervous, the second-years looked eager, and third-years looked menacing. Even all the fourth-years were back on campus for the celebration—and they looked positively evil.
Tabitha led the way, and as they weaved in and out, they caught glances of some pretty impressive pranks in the works. A group of second-years was attempting to glue all the furniture in Ballyrag’s classroom to the ceiling. Robin, Neal, Beth, and Becca were trying to steal the hands off of every clock in the school. Another cluster of first-years was trying to transport a big roll of bubble wrap, while a gang of third-years tried to steal it from them.
The fourth-years had the advantage of being able to go off campus, so they brought back supplies that no one else had. George couldn’t see all of it as he rushed by, but their prank had something to do with purple hair dye, a leaf blower, and one very hungry llama.
At last, they were in the Ma Barker Wing, the barren, empty hall on the right-hand side of the first floor—the same wing that housed the Robin Hood Room and, according to Tabitha, the detention dungeon that hosted a piranha pit.
As they ran past the Robin Hood Room, three third-years were trying to break in. Clearly they weren’t at the top of their class.
“If we just steal the trampoline . . .” one said.
“But how do we get it out? I hear it’s big!”
“Hey! Kids!” the third one shouted, pointing at George and Tabitha. “Either of you got a key to this room?”
“Nope!” Tabitha lied, and they both quickly ran around the corner.
They sprinted all the way down the bare-bones corridor, right to the dead end area, where there were no exhibits, nothing gold or glittery or remotely fancy-pants. Just a single, unassuming door with that crazy sign:
CLEANING SUPPLIES AND VEGETABLE STORAGE
(ESPECIALLY ASPARAGUS)
George had never seen a teachers’ lounge before—not at Pilfer or at his old school—but he thought that it would’ve looked like how he imagined a girls’ bathroom: red carpets, couches, marble floors, lacy drapes, and a gum dispenser.
“This is it? I would’ve thought the entrance to the teachers’ lounge would be a bit more . . . I don’t know, classy.”
“That’s the genius of it,” Tabitha said. “If they hang up a teachers’ lounge sign, everyone would try to break in. And if the sign suggests that whatever’s behind this door is dangerous or forbidden, it’s like practically inviting students to try to sneak in. So they have to mark the door with something so utterly boring that no one would ever bother.”
“If you say so,” George said, reaching forward and putting his hand on the door. “Here we go.” He took a deep breath, picked the lock in a matter of moments, and opened the door.
A Midnight Swim
It was pitch-black inside, and it seemed like the darkness was seeping out into the hall, trying to devour whatever light it could find. George dug into his bag for his flashlight and flicked it on.
Tabitha kept watch as George hopped inside. He shone his flashlight all around, but he couldn’t see anything but a cat-sized door with a combination lock on it.
“Coast is clear in here, Tabitha! Come on in!”
She slipped into the room and shut the door behind her. George flashed his light on the combination lock, and Tabitha walked over to it. “I got this,” she said, crouching near the door. She put her ear to the combination lock and began to twirl the dial. “The first number is forty-two.”
“Great,” George said, shining his flashlight on the ceiling. Some fat, round objects were high up in the rafters. So high—and so deep in the shadows—that he could barely make them out. What are they? he thought. Globes? Dodgeballs? Water balloons?
“George!” Tabitha hissed. “I need that light!”
“Sorry!”
“The second number is zero.”
They were silent as the dial was click click clicking.
He flashed his light up at the ceiling again. The balloons were bobbing up and down on the rafters.
“Uh . . . Tabitha?” he said as the objects began to move faster. “What is up there?”
She stopped turning the lock and looked up. “Pillows?” she said, squinting. “I don’t know, George—but we don’t have time! I need the light!”
He shone the flashlight on the combination lock again.
“Third number is twenty-seven. Got it!” Tabitha shouted, and the door popped open with a creak.
Suddenly, there came the noise of one enormous, collective CLUCK!!!!
Then the objects came plummeting down from their perches. George ducked as they zoomed past his head—pecking and flapping and flailing and floundering and squawking. Tabitha ran to help him.
“STRONGARM’S CHICKENS!” George yelped as twenty or more of them surrounded him and Tabitha. They had wicked gleams in their eyes and looked rather hungry.
“The door, George! We have to get through the door!”
But the chickens stood between them and the way forward.
“CLUCK, CLUCK, CLACK, CWAK!” the chickens called angrily.
They looked evil. Murderous.
“We just have to make a run for it,” Tabitha said. “Charge right into the chickens. Through is the only way out.” She gulped. “Okay . . . here I go!” And she ran for it.
George followed behind her, and as they ran, the chickens began to nibble at their pant legs and peck their shoes. “OUCH!” George shouted as one nipped his ankle, and he gave it a big punting kick.
“CLUCKKKKKKKKKKKK!” it screeched as it flew across the room.
“Touchdown!” George said, and with one last sidestep, he dropped to his hands and knees—and crawled through the tiny door.
Tabitha closed it behind him, and they both leaned against it, panting.
“That was terrifying!” she said.
“I know,” George wheezed. “I can still hear clucking.”
“George—that’s because you let a few in!”
Four chickens waddled toward them, inching closer and closer. “Ugh! Go away!” Tabitha cried as one got a good peck at the back of her ankle.
George looked up. This room was softly glowing, and it smelled like a doctor’s office. But it was entirely, wholly, and completely empty. A single door stood directly across from them.
“Too easy! It’s a trap!” Tabitha sa
id, picking up the biting chicken and tossing it away from her.
The chicken squawked as it flew through the air, and it landed in the middle of the room. Then the floor crumbled, like it was made of sand.
DOWN
DOWN
DOWN
The chicken fell. The floor kept collapsing, stopping only at the very tips of George’s and Tabitha’s toes, and they backed against the wall as much as they could to avoid falling in. The pit was a perfect cylinder, and inside were wiggling, wriggling, flopping, flailing stringy things thrashing around.
“It’s moving,” George said. “Tabitha, the pit is moving!”
“Is that . . . a worm pit?”
“No . . . it’s a spaghetti pit!” George gasped as he watched the noodles churn in a giant stirring pot beneath them.
At that moment, three chickens ran off the ledge into the pit. They clucked with glee and began pecking the spaghetti.
“How are we going to get across?”
Tabitha looked around. “I don’t know,” she said faintly. “I think our best bet is to suction ourselves to the wall and crawl. Did you bring plungers?”
“What are you two doing?” said a familiar voice from right behind them. They whipped around—Milo.
“No,” said Tabitha. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.”
George gave Milo a hefty glower. “Are you following us?”
“Is this your Mischief Night prank?”
“None of your business,” George said coolly.
“Go away, Milo,” Tabitha said.
Milo rubbed his buzz-cut head like it was a genie lamp that was about to give him three wishes. “You’re doing something bad, aren’t you?”
“Yes, it’s our horrible rotten prank—now leave us alone.”
“Why are you here?” George said. “To, er, ruin our prank?”
“You’re trying to escape from Pilfer, aren’t you?”
“W-what?” George stammered. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. I’ve spied on you a lot—”
“We know,” George and Tabitha said together.
Milo scowled. “Let me say, it’s been extremely boring most of the time. But I finally overheard something useful when you said you didn’t want to be at Pilfer anymore. When I went to Dean Dean Deanbugle, I was sure he’d throw you out or lock you up—”
“You what?” Tabitha shrieked.
George looked down at his shoes. He couldn’t even believe he’d ever accused Tabitha of betraying him. Suddenly he felt like a fool.
But Tabitha skipped straight to anger. “You complete numbskull!” Tabitha shouted, putting her hands around Milo’s neck and actually throttling him. “Did you want George to go to the whirlyblerg?”
“Whirl! Blerg!” Milo choked.
“Tabitha! Let go!”
Milo’s face was turning almost purple, and he pushed Tabitha to get her off him. They both grappled and wrestled and tussled, tumbling forward—
“NOOOOOOOOO!” George shrieked as the two of them fell into the spaghetti pit and disappeared beneath the noodles.
At last, Tabitha’s hand popped out of the top of the noodle pit, and she wiggled herself up. She took one gasping breath before Milo swam her way, and they began to wrestle in the noodles again.
“AUGH!” Milo said, pulling her hair.
“ERGH!” Tabitha replied, pushing him off her.
George ran his hands through his hair. It was up to him to get everyone out of the whirring, churning pasta pit—before Tabitha and Milo killed each other.
He reached into his backpack and tried to find anything useful, and his hands closed around the dental floss. Everything is a gadget. George unwound the whole string and lowered it into the pit—but it wasn’t nearly long enough. He was about three inches short of reaching Tabitha’s outstretched arms.
“Come on!” she shouted. “Send more down!”
“That’s all I have!”
“Wait!” Tabitha said, inching herself as far up as she could, though it seemed difficult to stand on shifting spaghetti. When she finally got her footing, she could just reach the floss.
“You can do it!” George shouted down at her.
“George?” said Tabitha.
“Yeah?”
“Stop talking! I need to concentrate!”
Tabitha’s fingertips brushed the floss, but she was too short to grab it. She pawed at the floss like a cat swipes at dangling string.
“Milo,” she said. “Make yourself useful and lift me up a bit.”
“You’re going to leave me in the pit if I help you reach that string!” Milo protested.
“Will not! You can grab onto my foot.”
“Let me go first!”
“No way! You’ll leave me behind, and I can’t reach!”
They continued to bicker, and George let out a shaky breath. This fight could go on forever, and they really needed to move forward before they were caught by a teacher trying to get into the lounge.
“Tabitha,” George called down the pit, “we’re wasting time. Let Milo go first. Then we can both help you up. Promise, Milo?”
“Fine. Promise,” he said grumpily, and he treaded through the spaghetti to the dangling floss. He was a few inches taller than Tabitha, which put him at a perfect height to grab the string.
“Pull me up, George!”
George tugged on the extra-strength floss with all his might. The string dug painfully into his hands, but he kept on pulling. It was like a tug-of-war that he had to win.
At last, Milo’s hand reached the platform, and George ran to the edge to pull him up out of the pit. With a yank, tug, pull, George dragged Milo onto the ledge, and they paused there for a moment.
“Okay,” George said, helping Milo to his feet. “Do you have any gadgets for Mischief Night that we can use? Like more string to tie to our denta—AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”
Without warning, Milo pushed George into the pit. He squashed right into the spaghetti.
“SUCKERS!” Milo shouted, and there came a sound like a door slamming shut.
Tabitha gritted her teeth. “That no good, backstabbing, little—”
“He’s going to tattle on us!” George said in horror. “I bet he’s going to get Dean Dean Deanbugle right now!”
“I hope the rest of those chickens peck his eyes out,” Tabitha grumbled.
“We have to hurry. How do we get out of here? I have nothing useful in my backpack.”
The pit churned, and they swirled around with the spaghetti. All the stirring reminded him of a slower whirlyblerg, and the thought made him nauseous.
“My backpack! That’s it!” Tabitha said. “I lost my backpack during the fall into the pit, but I have extremely adhesive tape inside! If we can find my bag in the spaghetti, we can get the sticky tape and use it to climb up and across the wall.”
A wave of spaghetti came tumbling toward him, and George strained to keep his head above the noodles. “I’ll dive down and try to find your bag!”
“Be careful!” Tabitha shouted.
George gulped an enormous breath and sank beneath the spaghetti. He did the breaststroke through noodles and reached around blindly for Tabitha’s backpack. Every time he took a breath, he seemed to get noodles up his nose.
His hand brushed something—
“Cluck!”
Rats! he thought. Just a chicken that sunk to the bottom.
He fumbled around, hands outstretched, certain that he was tying himself into some huge spaghetti knot. He ate a few strands of pasta, but they tasted a little mushy and overcooked. In the distance, he thought he heard Tabitha shouting, but it sounded muffled. He moved his right hand forward. Nothing. He moved his left hand forward. Nothing. He moved his right foot—whump!
His foot hit something small and lumpy—Tabitha’s backpack.
He did a front flip in the noodles, grabbed the bag, and propelled himself upward.
“Found it!” he said as he broke the surface.
“Took long enough!”
George kicked his feet, treading pasta. He already felt himself slipping down again, being dragged under by spaghetti arms. “I had to eat my way out! That takes time!”
“So much time,” Tabitha said, “that I was beginning to think the noodles had eaten you!”
They dug the tape out of Tabitha’s bag. Then Tabitha wrapped the tape around George’s hands—sticky side out—before doing her own. They swam over to the wall, put their hands against it, and began to crawl up.
The sticky tape gave George a few slippery scares, but it held his weight all the way up. Tabitha followed, as fast and nimble as a centipede.
Standing in front of a new door, they brushed themselves off and walked in quickly. They’d lost so much time swimming in spaghetti; they had no more to waste.
But as soon as Tabitha closed the door behind them, the lights flicked off, and red laser beams zoomed across the room. They zigzagged and crossed in every-which-direction, humming with the sound of impending doom.
“Through is the only way out,” Tabitha said meekly, and George gulped.
Zzzzzzzzzzzt!!!
“This is just great,” Tabitha said, tossing her hands up. “We don’t learn how to dodge lasers until third year!”
George fished a sock out of his bag and threw it into the middle of the room. ZZzzzzzzzt!!!! It hit a laser and exploded into a cloud of dust.
“Yup,” he said. “They’re deadly.”
“What do we do?” Tabitha whispered. “We can’t cross this! We’ll be toasted alive!”
George frowned. As far as he could see, they had two options: turn back or move forward. He knew what was waiting for him if he turned back. It might be the safer choice—but it was one he didn’t want to make. He needed to get out of Pilfer. And if he didn’t go forward now, he wasn’t sure when he’d have an opportunity like this again.
“I have to keep going,” George said. “I have to try.”
Pilfer Academy Page 14
