Here Comes Trouble

by Kate Hattemer

It didn’t hurt, because it was full of water balloons. But half of them burst and I sank way down. I was doubled up in a V shape, getting more waterlogged by the second.

  “Help! Get me out!”

  A pair of people hurtled into the bathroom.

  Ms. Hutchins and Principal Leary.

  “Uh-oh,” said Ruth.

  It was at that exact moment that the water pressure got to be too much for Alex’s balloon, which had been bobbling around on the faucet. It exploded off. It bounced around in the sink, spraying water all the way up to the ceiling.

  For the first time ever, Ms. Hutchins and Principal Leary were speechless.

  FINALLY, MS. HUTCHINS got her voice back. “What in the world?”

  The balloon in the sink sputtered merrily along. I was stuck in the hamper, trying not to move. I was worried that if I struggled, it’d tip over.

  “The judges asked us why so many students were missing their partners,” Ms. Hutchins told us. “So we thought we’d take a quick look around the school. And—well. Look at this.”

  “More sabotage,” said Principal Leary. His lips were a thin line. “The rash of pranks that have marred our fine school this fall…I’d hoped it was over. But no. Not if you had your way.”

  The girls looked intensely guilty, all staring at the floor and turning red. I lurched a little deeper in the hamper. The water was still leaking out of balloons that had split when I’d landed.

  “Trying to destroy science fair,” said Leary, shaking his head. “It’s hard to believe you’d have so little respect for all the hard work that’s gone into this event.”

  What was hard to believe was that Leary was saying basically the same thing I’d just said. It made me worry I’d grow up to be a principal.

  “We’re sorry,” said Tabitha.

  “No,” I heard myself say. It was a total impulse. “I’m sorry. You had nothing to do with it.”

  “What?” said Leary.

  I swallowed. I reminded myself, Don’t babble. “It was only me,” I said. “I was acting alone. They were trying to stop me.”

  “Soren—” said Tabitha.

  I cut her off. “That’s how I ended up in here,” I said, gesturing at the hamper. A balloon popped at the movement, and I sank another inch. I was so folded up that my legs almost touched my face. “They shoved me down. They didn’t want to resort to violence, but they had no other choice. I was about to take the balloons to the”—but I couldn’t give away that Alex had the key to the catwalk—“to, um, downstairs.”

  Leary nodded slowly. “And these young ladies—these heroes—stopped you?”

  “Right!” Oops. I couldn’t sound too happy about it. I glared at the girls. “I had such a good plan, too. But they must have been tipped off. Maybe I left some evidence lying around at home, a water-balloon receipt, maybe, or…” Don’t babble! “I was an idiot.”

  “That’s not true!” said Ruth. “It was all of us! It was everyone but him!”

  “Don’t try to save me,” I said. “Besides, nobody’s going to believe it was you.”

  “Ruth, honey,” said Ms. Hutchins, “I’m a little sister too, and I know it’s hard to see your big brother in trouble. But you don’t need to take responsibility for his actions.”

  “We do admire your loyalty, however,” said Leary.

  He whispered something in Ms. Hutchins’s ear. I took the opportunity to give Ruth a threatening look. Don’t, I mouthed.

  “Nobody move,” Leary told us. “The floor’s very wet and slippery. We’ll be right back. Your parents need to be here for this conversation.”

  They left the bathroom. The girls waited ten seconds, and then they turned on me. “Soren!” said Ruth, almost in tears. “You can’t do this!”

  “It makes sense,” I said. “I get in trouble all the time. I’m known for it. But you guys, you have perfect reputations. You don’t want to ruin them.” I smiled, but it was shaky. I’d begun to think about what Mom and Dad would do to me when they found out. Taking the blame did make sense. I knew it. But I needed to remind myself why. “You’ll be way more useful for future pranks if you remain above suspicion,” I said.

  “But it wasn’t your fault,” said Tabitha.

  “Well. I’ve done a bunch of things I didn’t get caught for. So it’s only fair I get caught for something I didn’t do.”

  Olivia tearfully twisted her hands together. “We’ve been working with you all fall,” she said. “We’re just as bad.”

  “But the spelling bee going so wrong, that was my fault. You didn’t know that Ruth and Flynn would care so much.”

  “What about me?” said Alex. It was the first thing she’d said since they’d found us. “It should be me, Soren. It was my idea. And I was always going to get caught. That was the plan.”

  I met Alex’s eyes and gave her a smile, as big a smile as possible for someone who’s soaking wet and stuck in a hamper with their knees around their ears. “Nope,” I said. “I’ve been waiting for this.”

  “What do you mean?” said Ruth.

  “This one’s mine,” I said.

  Alex shook her head. “This is so much worse than a few plastic ants.”

  “Then throw in that catwalk key.”

  “Soren—”

  “Alex.”

  We locked eyes. Slowly, she began to grin. “Deal.”

  “Your moving away,” I told her, “is about the hardest thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m just trying to get okay with it.”

  “I know,” she said. “Me too.”

  Lila stamped her foot. “This is stupid, Soren. We’re not letting you take the blame.”

  “Let me,” I said. “Please.”

  She faced me, her hands on her hips. Lila’s bossy, but I’m stubborn. I was feeling good again, and I knew I was in the home stretch. If I could convince them before the teachers came back, they wouldn’t stop me—and I wouldn’t stop myself—from doing the first truly nice thing I’d done for a very long time.

  “If you don’t let me,” I said sweetly, “I’ll call up your big brother. Ethan, right? I’ll tell him all about what you’ve been up to this school year. Alarm clocks, Jim Bob, water balloons—oh, it’ll be blackmail for years.”

  She twitched. “No! Don’t!”

  “Then keep your mouth shut.”

  She subsided. She tried to glare at me, but I saw the smile tickling the corners of her mouth.

  “I’m only asking for one thing in return,” I said.

  “Anything,” said Tabitha.

  A water balloon popped. I sank an inch deeper. “Help me out of this laundry hamper?”

  RUMORS ARE AMAZING. By the time we made it downstairs, everyone knew that I had tried to destroy science fair with a hundred water balloons. By the time Ms. Hutchins took the stage for the awards, it was a thousand, and at the end of the night, Jéro said, “I heard you built an automatic water-balloon launcher. Like a catapult, except with a motor and a robotic arm for reloading.”

  “Um, not quite.”

  “That’s so cool that I’m not even mad you didn’t tell me. I’m just impressed.”

  “Well, I didn’t—”

  “Sticking to your story even now, huh?” He clapped me on the back. “You’re a pro.”

  Principal Leary had come back to the bathroom alone. He’d told us to return to the gym, because Ms. Hutchins needed to announce the awards and it was getting late. “I’ve already told your parents what you did, Soren,” he said. “You and I will meet with them tomorrow to discuss consequences.” It’d be a painful meeting, I could already tell, but honestly, right now, I was glowing.

  I joined Flynn at the board. Luckily my pants were black so it didn’t look like I’d had an accident. “How was the second judge?” I said.

  “Not bad. He
asked me about the sample-size thing, though. He said, ‘Wouldn’t your results mean more if you had more than one cockroach in each kind of habitat?’ ”

  “Oh.”

  “But he was impressed by our detailed data.” Flynn shrugged. “So we’ll see.” He looked me up and down. “Soup and Freddy told me you were caught with a bunch of water balloons.”

  “I was.”

  “Were you lying to me?”

  “No.”

  “Then,” said Flynn, “I won’t ask you anything else.” He knelt to peer into the fish tank. “The second judge said Cah and Croach were the best-tended cockroaches he’s ever seen.”

  I puffed up with pride. “It’s all in the desserts. Cockroaches are happiest when they get dessert with all three meals.”

  “I think I’ll add Cah and Croach to my mural.”

  “About that,” I said. “How come you have a mural of me looking stupid?”

  “Huh?”

  “Every time I’m embarrassed, you draw it on your wall.”

  Flynn still looked confused. “No. I draw happy things. Things I like about Camelot. They cheer me up when I’m feeling cruddy.”

  “You drew the time I sat on poop play dough!”

  “No, I drew the first time Ivan acted like he liked me.”

  “What about everyone ignoring me at the block party?”

  “You mean everyone wanting me to take piglet pics of them?”

  I fell silent. Had I missed the whole point of the mural? “Okay. What about Ms. Hutchins telling the class about the anonymous tip? Explain that.”

  “That’s just a picture of science class.”

  “Then why is she holding a piece of paper?”

  “Because she’s a teacher!”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Are we cool, then?”

  “We’re cool.”

  Flynn stood. He squinched the knot of his silver tie tighter. “Hey. Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “You know.” He gave me the kind of smile he usually flashes at gross food or an especially pleasing banjo chord. “For saving us.”

  * * *

  —

  I HADN’T NOTICED Principal Leary’s necktie earlier. I’d had other things on my mind. As he stepped up to the stage, I saw that it was patterned with test tubes.

  He tapped the mike. For once, it worked on the first try. “Good evening, and thank you for attending the Camelot Elementary School science fair!”

  After some stuff about young minds and STEM and the curiosity inherent to human nature, blah blah, he turned the mike over to Ms. Hutchins. She started with the list of projects that received Superior, the highest designation. “Please,” said Flynn under his breath, “please, please, please…”

  Goldie and Kiyana got it, what a surprise, for Does a Watched Pot Boil? A Scientific Investigation.

  And Soup and Evelyn got it, which actually was a surprise, for What’s Faster at Crawling: A Stinkbug or a Human Child?

  Flynn’s shoulders sagged as the last Superior was applauded, Emily and Jeremiah’s Can People Do Math Problems Better in Peace, or While Listening to Heavy Metal and Being Poked with a Fork?

  “It was the sample-size thing,” Flynn said heavily.

  “That’s my fault! I told Dr. Adams!”

  “She’d have noticed it anyway, and the other judge saw it himself. It’s all my fault. I designed the experiment.”

  “It’s half my fault,” I said.

  Then we got Excellent, which was second best. Flynn cheered up considerably. “Excellent!” he said, admiring our certificate. “You know what? I’ll take it.”

  I plastered the certificate against the fish tank to show Cah and Croach.

  * * *

  —

  MOM AND DAD came over as we were packing up. “Where’s Ivan?” I asked.

  “He’s with a few girls from your class,” said Mom. “They think he’s very cute.”

  “They aren’t letting him near the engineering section, are they?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact—”

  I dropped the board and sprinted to Tabitha and Billiam’s huge ballista. Sure enough, Ivan was toddling toward the lever, a giant grin on his face. He had already loaded the bucket with what looked to be an entire box of pre-chewed graham crackers.

  “STOP HIM!” I panted.

  “Oh, Soren,” said Emily. “He’s just a baby!”

  Ivan stomped on the lever the moment before I reached him. The spring released. The spitty wad of graham crackers sailed up, up, up—

  Everyone in the gym swiveled to watch as it soared through the air.

  It hit the basketball hoop’s backboard, rebounded, fell through, and landed on Ms. Hutchins’s head.

  She looked more surprised than upset as she reached up to investigate. “Oh,” she said. She swiped another clod off her hair, and then gave a queenly wave to the gym of people staring at her in horror. “I’m fine!” she called. “Just another reason I’ll be glad when this evening’s over!”

  Everyone broke into raucous applause.

  “Let’s see if the ballista’s strong enough to shoot him,” I said, delivering Ivan back to my parents.

  “IVAN FLY!” he yelled.

  We were in the parking lot on the way to our car when Mrs. Grandin ran up. “I’m so glad I caught you!” she said to Mom. “How is she? Sleeping, I hope?”

  Ruth was carrying our board. I motioned to her, and she lifted it up to cover her face.

  “Who?” said Mom. “What?”

  “Your wonderful son told me about poor Ruthie’s illness,” Mrs. Grandin said. “Earlier tonight, when he was looking for her in the bathroom.”

  “Earlier tonight,” said Mom. “Really.”

  “I was on my way out—that first-floor bathroom is so ridiculous for adults; it’s kindergarten-sized, of course, the toilets about eight inches from the floor—and Soren said you’d sent him to find her. What a kind brother.”

  “The first-floor bathroom,” said Dad. “Really.”

  “You were searching for her in quite a tizzy, weren’t you, Soren?”

  “Quite,” I said.

  “Do tell me she’s being treated,” said Mrs. Grandin.

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine,” said Mom. “Thanks for asking, Gardenia.”

  MOM AND DAD totally knew what had happened. I got two days of in-school suspension from Principal Leary, but they didn’t punish me extra at all, and either they forgave Flynn and me for being out of bed at four a.m. or they forgot. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t ask.

  The one tricky thing about the meeting was when Principal Leary said, “So. I have to wonder, Soren. The alarm clocks? The piglet? Were those you, too?”

  I don’t know what I’d have done if Dad’s lawyer half hadn’t firmly collided with his protective papa-bear half.

  “Excuse me,” Dad said. “Are you suggesting that confessing to one crime is tantamount to confessing to all crimes?”

  “No—er—”

  “Because the fallacies therein, sir, are not only manifold but also problematic, vide Federal Rules of Evidence 404(b), and I, for one, would take serious umbrage—”

  “I just—uh—”

  Dad eyed him. “Yes?”

  “It was just a passing thought,” said Leary. “Let’s move on, shall we?”

  On the way out of the meeting, Dad said to me, “This confession. I assume you know what you’re doing.”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “Well, don’t ever do this again. But I’m proud.”

  “Me too,” said Mom. “Soren, do you remember when Alex first left? And I told you, ‘Keep doing what you like to do’?”

  “Yeah…”

  “If you’re going to retire f
rom pranking,” said Mom, “you should Michael Phelps–style retire.”

  I hoped that didn’t involve the butterfly, because whenever I try that stroke I swallow a gallon of lake water and spend the rest of the day with algae-flavored burps. “What do you mean?”

  Mom put her arm around my shoulders. “Retire, and then make a triumphant comeback in a few months.”

  “Agreed,” said Dad, putting his arm around my shoulders, and for a minute we stumbled down the hallway like that, giggling as our legs got tangled up. Then I saw Tabitha at the water fountain, and I squirmed out of their arms. You don’t exactly want a girl in your grade to see you in a parent sandwich.

  * * *

  —

  FLYNN HAD PLANNED to spend winter break in Brooklyn, but he asked his mom to come to Camelot instead. “I like it here,” he told us.

  “Really?” I said. “Don’t you miss the green tea? The vintage trunk shop?”

  “Soren,” warned Mom.

  “My mom will replenish my supply of green tea,” Flynn said. “And you can only own so many vintage trunks.”

  This was undeniably true.

  “Plus,” said Flynn, “everything I care about is right here in Camelot—”

  “That’s so sweet,” said Dad.

  “My banjo, my rhyming dictionary…”

  “Right,” said Dad.

  “In fact, I’ve written one last song for my concept album. Would you like to hear it?”

  “We wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Mom.

  Flynn strummed. “A remix of ‘Winter Wonderland’!” he cried, and began to sing.

  “Oh, the climate is dismal,

  And the coffee’s abysmal.

  The nearest Thai food’s two hours removed.

  Exiled to a small-town wonderland.

  “But the crops here are top-flight.

  There’s no traffic, one stoplight.

  And what is more posh than prize-winning squash?

  Living in a small-town wonderland!

  “Back in Brooklyn, I was on my lonesome,

  And when I got here, I kept calling out,