Pennybaker School Is Revolting, стр. 10

My stomach twisted disagreeably with wedding memories. “No, thanks. I’m not dancing,” I said.

Chip stopped and stared at me, wide-eyed. “You have to. It’s for an assignment.”

“I’ll take the F,” I said.

“What about Sissy?” he asked. “If you get an F, so will she.”

I had already thought about that and had a brilliant plan. “They’ll get her another partner. They’ll have to, because I think I broke my arm.” I carefully placed my palm on the ground while surreptitiously sliding a plastic cup into my other armpit, then began spinning my hand around. Slowly, the crowd stopped moving and leaned in to see what I was doing. Perfect timing. I squeezed the cup, making a crunching sound. A girl squealed and fell backward into her dance partner’s arms.

I moaned, rolled onto my back, and held my shoulder. “Oh. Ow. Ouch. Oh. Oh. Ooooh.”

Chip began laughing, his glasses sliding down on his nose. “You’re so funny, Thomas.”

I glared. “I’m not funny. I broke my arm. Didn’t you hear it? It was an awful crunching sound. I can’t dance with a broken arm.”

Chip laughed harder. “That’s a really good trick, Thomas. You’re getting better every day. Imagine if you borrowed my magic socks.”

I stood up and angrily brushed off my knees. “I don’t need your magic socks,” I said. “And I’m not dancing with you. I have to polish the head of horror anyway.”

“I already did.”

“What do you mean you already did?”

“He got here early so he could help us,” Owen said. He had a tablet on his lap and was busy tapping in notes about pirouettes and chassés, whatever those were. “And he had extra time, so he shined the bust already.”

“But that’s my job. They gave it to me. The hero.”

“You’re welcome, Thomas,” Chip said, even though I definitely had not thanked him. “Anything to help a friend.”

“He’s really great like that,” Wesley added in a cartoon tiger voice, stretching out the R in “great.”

“Yeah. He’s so great,” I said sourly. I didn’t know why exactly, but Chip’s quick rise to stardom at Pennybaker was kind of bugging me. We were all uniquely gifted at something, but he seemed to be gifted at everything—including friend stealing and job stealing. “I’m going to go and …” I trailed off as I pushed through the crowd, mostly because I had no idea what I was going to go and do. All my best friends were busy dancing, and both my levitation and broken-arm tricks had failed. The bust had been polished. And it was too early to go to class.

I was just about to pull open the front door when a movement behind the bushes caught my eye. I let my hand fall away from the door handle and bent to get a look. I was pretty sure I knew what was moving around inside.

“Reap?”

“Hey, Thomas.”

I scooted so that my back was against the wall and crouched down. “I thought Harriett moved away.”

Harriett was a mother hedgehog Reap had been feeding. As soon as her babies were big enough, they had moved on.

“She did. There’s something new under here. It’s a baby.”

I crouched lower, ducking my head to see under the bush where Reap was tossing bread crumbs. All I could see was a pair of eyes, which looked like two shiny black beads.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Reap said. “I can’t get it to come out. I’ve been trying for days. I’ve spoken to it in every language I know, and it doesn’t answer.” Reap’s unique gift was hanging out with, talking to, and just generally being friends with animals. But he kept that a secret, because his entire family’s unique gift was taxidermy, and he didn’t want his animal friends to find out.

I grabbed a slice of bread and started ripping and tossing, too. The bread piled up. The eyes never moved.

“What if it’s dangerous?” I asked, whispering, because that seemed like the right thing to do when you were within bread-tossing distance from something that might be dangerous.

Reap shrugged. “I guess I’ll be in big trouble, then.”

“What if it jumps out of the bush and chews your face right off?”

(Things That Could Happen 12. You could have your face chewed off by that stray. And then you could get rabies.)

Reap laughed. “It wouldn’t do that.” But when he laughed, the animal startled. There was movement inside the bush, and the beady eyes were gone.

“Darn it,” Reap said softly. He closed the bag of bread and stood up. “Hey, Chip!” he called, waving over the bushes. “Thanks for getting the bread.” He paused, listening. “Nope, not today. Maybe tomorrow.” He turned toward me. “Man, Chip is such a great guy,” he said. He sidestepped past me and made his way to the front door just in time for the warning bell to ring.

“Yeah. Really great,” I said, remembering when I was the only one at Pennybaker who knew Reap’s secret spot behind the bushes. And the only one at Pennybaker who knew Chip. “Everybody loves him. He must be wearing his popularity socks.”