Pennybaker School Is Revolting, стр. 17
“Okay, friends!” the girls’ dance coach hollered, clapping her hands together three times. “Let’s get started.” She reached over and pushed a button. The music started, and everyone began moving, all eyes on Chip to lead them.
The timing was perfect.
“You ready?” Sissy asked, holding out her arms.
All I had to do was …
“Hello, Earth to Thomas.”
Slip my hand into my pocket …
“I’m not going to stand around waiting all day.”
Grab a cartridge, squeeze the two sides together, and …
There was a long, loud farting noise that made my shorts shiver. Everyone stopped and looked over. The noise was followed by a thin contrail of smoke rising from my backside.
Darn it. That was what I got for using smoke cartridges that had been in a trunk for ten years.
Sissy Cork started to cough, waving her hand in front of her face. “Gross! Did you just—?”
“You guys!” Buckley shouted. “Thomas just ripped one!” He pointed at the smoke. “And it’s smoking!”
“No,” I said, reaching into my pocket. “It wasn’t me.”
Sissy coughed again and turned away. “I can’t believe you, Thomas Fallgrout.”
“It was a smoke cartridge!” I said, pulling out one of the cartridges. The movement set off another cartridge, and a louder, longer fart noise erupted.
The entire class burst into laughter. Except for Sissy Cork, who crossed her arms and stormed off to the girls’ locker room.
Well, at least the trick was successful.
TRICK #11
CAMP CONFUSION
On the way to the reenactment camp, Chip’s mom told us all kinds of stories about the Civil War. She told us about a brave slave named Robert Smalls, who stole a Confederate steamship called the CSS Planter and delivered it to the Union Navy. She told us about Belle Boyd, who was an amazing Confederate spy. And she told us that 620,000 men died in the Civil War, but a lot of them died from mumps, measles, and malaria rather than gunfire.
Chip was a lot like his mom.
In fact, Chip’s mom was planning to join us in the reenactment. She knew a guy who used to be friends with Chip’s grandpa Old Huck Mason, and he told her she could be the camp cook. I didn’t know why anyone would want to cook with all that awesome battling going on all around, but she seemed really happy to get such a fun job.
The camp was bustling with guys in uniforms, guys in ratty clothes, guys with horses, guys with soot on their faces, guys chewing straw, guys drinking out of Aquafina bottles when nobody was looking, guys doing pretty much everything you could think of. The camp was also filled with women who were cooking things over open fires and shaking out dusty blankets and sewing buttons onto jackets. The air was crisp with burning, crackling wood, and rang with the whinnying of anxious horses tied to trees.
Chip’s mom’s friend greeted us outside his tent. He was old and craggy and looked a lot like Huck Mason, except not quite as sick. Chip’s mom called him Bud.
“Welcome, welcome, y’all,” he crowed, climbing out of the tent, his hands extended to each of us. He gave Chip’s mom a quick hug and called her Gert—which was weird, because I thought her name was Sherry—and then clapped Chip and me on the back and asked if we were ready to go to war. “Come on over here, now,” he said, leading us toward another tent. “We can’t have y’all heading out there in Nikes and Levis, now, can we?”
“Technically,” Chip said, “Levis weren’t invented until 1873, which makes us just a few years too early for them.”
“Exactly,” Bud said. “Plus, y’all soldiers need uniforms if you’re going into battle.”
Bud parted the tent flaps, and we ducked inside. It was more of a teepee than a tent, with furry skins laid out all over the floor and trunks overflowing with supplies lining the walls. Bud knelt with a grunt and began pulling clothes out of one of the trunks and tossing them to us. “Pants, shirt, braces.”
“Braces?” I asked.
“Suspenders,” Chip whispered. “The kind that button into your pants instead of clipping on.”
“Here’s a whole load of socks,” Bud continued, tossing a handful of socks at our feet. “And you’ll need these shirts here. And jackets for you Union folks. Those are hanging up over there.”
We gazed at a far wall, where three dark-blue military coats hung. They were enormous and would have hung down to our ankles.
“Technically,” Chip said, “most of the Confederate Army wore regular clothes rather than uniforms. That was one of the things that made them difficult to spot.”
“You are correct, sir,” Bud said. He clapped Chip’s shoulder twice, and Chip looked really pleased with himself. “Y’all are fightin’ for the South, then. Get dressed and meet me outside for instructions. Battle should begin soon, so don’t dillydally.”
Bud left the tent, and we scrambled around trying to find the right clothes. Nothing fit. Everything was either way too small or way too big. My gut hung out the bottom of my shirt, and my pants didn’t want to stay up. What was worse, the braces Bud had handed us were all broken. I was forced to hold on to the waistband of my pants as I walked.
“How am I supposed to go to battle like this?” I asked. “I can’t do everything one-handed.”
We filed out of the tent, blinking in the sun.
“Keep your eyes peeled for Mr. Faboo,” I said. I tried to peer under the brim of every hat for a familiar face, but it occurred to me that without his typical white wig and tights, I might not recognize him. He’d never come to class dressed as a Civil War soldier.
The rest of the camp had already cleared out, and I