Pennybaker School Is Revolting, стр. 14
Why would they be cutting branches off the oak tree? “You mean the tree right outside Grandma Jo’s window?”
“Yep.”
Oh. So that was why. Mom was afraid Grandma Jo was escaping down the tree when she wasn’t looking. Mom didn’t stop to think that Grandma Jo would just parachute down if she had to.
“You can’t come to my school, Erma,” I said.
“Can so.”
“Can not.”
“Can so! Who died and made you king of Pennybaker School anyway?”
“I did!”
She hopped off my bed and waltzed to my door, stopping only to turn around and say, “Well, if you’re dead, then you won’t mind me being there.” She stuck out her tongue and was gone.
I wasn’t sleeping well to begin with—too many nightmares involving Erma at my school—which was probably why the noise woke me up. It was a kind of grating, scraping, bumping noise.
Also, it was cold. I had pulled the blankets up to my nose again. The very tip of my nose felt frozen solid.
I opened my eyes and peered through the darkness.
The window was open.
“What in the world?” I whispered, sitting up. I glanced around. All the shadows in my room looked like they had heads and eyes and mutant claws at the ends of their mutant arms. Everything seemed to be moving. It was funny how a guy’s totally normal bedroom turned into a monster convention in the middle of the night.
Slowly, I crept out of bed and tiptoed to the window. I stuck my head through and looked down at the ground.
Nothing.
Nobody in my room, nobody outside my room. Just an open window and a whole lot of cold.
Mom had cut the branches away from outside Grandma Jo’s window, but she hadn’t done anything to the trellis outside mine.
I slipped my feet into my slippers and padded across the hall. I didn’t want to be the one to break it to Mom that she was right about Grandma Jo. But at the same time, I was glad, because if Mom was right, it meant I was right, too. And Grandma Jo was a pretty good liar.
I pushed open Grandma Jo’s door, expecting an empty bed and perhaps a few discarded skateboarding kneepads in her place.
Instead, I saw a lump. A Grandma-Jo-shaped lump, curled on her side, her covers pulled up. Her silver hair shivered in the crosswind that came from my room.
I turned back. If it wasn’t Grandma Jo opening my window …
I returned to my room and shut the window. Then I rummaged around in my closet until I found an old baseball bat from my days playing in the rec league, back before I discovered that nobody likes you when you make their baseball disappear in the bottom of the ninth inning.
I climbed into bed, but instead of lying down, I sat with my back against the headboard and tried not to shake too much.
There was no way I could sleep now. In just hours, Erma would be invading my space. And Mr. Smith would still be at Pennybaker. And Mr. Faboo would still be gone. And there was nothing I could do about any of it.
TRICK #9
THE MUTINY MANIFESTATION
“How good do you think you’d be at finding a missing person?” I asked as soon as Chip and I slid out of his mom’s car the next morning.
He thought it over. “Superior. Especially if I were to wear a pair of forensics investigation socks.”
“Does that mean you’ll help me find someone?”
“Sure! Who are we finding?”
“Mr. Faboo,” I said. “We need to figure out why he left, and get him back.” We pushed into the vestibule, where Clover Prentice was waiting next to the head of horror with her arms crossed—and double crossed—and a big frown on her face.
“Excuse me?” she demanded. She looked pointedly from us to the head and back again.
“I thought you were doing it now,” I said to Chip, confused.
“You said it was your job. I specifically remember the words. You said, and I quote—”
“Well, why didn’t you tell me that?”
Chip looked genuinely perplexed. “Why would I tell you something that you told me?”
I gestured to the head, which seemed to be extra scowly this morning, like even it was mad at me for not polishing it. “Because now nobody got it done.”
“Because it’s your j—”
“I don’t care whose job it is,” Clover Prentice shouted. “Just get it done!” She tossed a rag at me, and I caught it. Chip and I looked at each other as she walked away.
Chip brightened. “So I’ll start finding some leads.”
“Really? Just like that?”
“Like what?”
I shook my head. “Just … Never mind. We’ll talk about it later.” I let my backpack drop to the floor, dipped the rag into the bowl of Chip’s (really smelly at this point) homemade polishing agent, and started rubbing it on Helen Heirmauser’s hair.
Chip came over and put his hand on top of mine. “I’ve found that a gentle, circular motion works best. Follow the flow of her curls. Like this.” He started to move my hand with his, but I glared at him. “Right. I’ll go work on those leads. See you in class.”
“I hope Mr. Faboo is back,” Wesley said. We were walking as a group to Facts After the Fact class, as we always did. “Mr. Smith makes me sleepy.” He let his head bob, pretending to fall asleep, complete with loud snores.
“Me, too,” Flea said. “I hate to admit it, but I kind of miss the costumes. And the skits.”
“And Ye Olde English,” Wesley said in an English accent.
“Yeah, that, too,” Flea said.
“Well, Mr. Faboo can’t be gone forever,” Wesley said.
“Technically—”
“Not now, Chip,” I said.
We walked through the classroom door and, one by one, our shoulders slumped. Sitting behind Mr. Faboo’s desk was Mr. Smith. Only he’d reorganized it, replacing Mr. Faboo’s quill and inkwell with regular pencils, and replacing Mr. Faboo’s scroll with a boring old desk calendar.
“Come in, please,” Mr. Smith said. Even he sounded bored. “The bell