Pennybaker School Is Revolting, стр. 21

I squinted at her. “You didn’t have that tattoo a week ago.”

She squinted back. “But you’re not one hundred percent sure, are you?” she said. “Part of you thinks it’s possible that I might have gotten it a few months or even a few years ago. After all, I wear a lot of sweaters. As an old, tired, frail lady should.”

The thing about Grandma Jo was that she probably had a rock concert T-shirt on under that sweater, but you would never know it, because she was a good actor when she wanted to be. So good, in fact, that part of me started to think maybe she did have the llama motorcycle tattoo all along. She was right—I couldn’t be 100 percent certain.

My waffle popped up, making me jump. Grandma Jo chuckled.

“Besides,” she said as soon as I turned my back, “your mother would never have let me out of the house for something like that.”

“That wouldn’t stop you from sneaking out,” I said. I smeared peanut butter across my waffle.

This time she laughed hard. “Oh, Thomas, you sure have a heck of an imagination. Me, sneaking out.”

“It’s true,” I said, drowning my waffle with syrup. “That’s why it’s been so cold in here. Because you’ve been leaving my window open.”

She laughed harder. “I’m climbing in and out of windows now? I can barely get up off the floor.” We both knew that wasn’t true. We both knew that Grandma Jo could practically jump up off the floor onto her toes if that was what she wanted to do. “You really need to read more books, Tommy. Engage that imagination of yours with something worthwhile, rather than silly theories. And besides—”

She was interrupted by the doorbell.

“You finish making your waffle,” she said, holding out a hand to stop me from moving toward the door. “I’m done. I’ll get it.” She scooted her chair back, dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her napkin, stuffed it into her sweater pocket, and then was off.

She was out of the room before I realized that the napkin she’d used was black. And looked an awful lot like Grandpa Rudy’s floating cloth.

When Grandma Jo came back, she was followed by Chip, even though I’d told her a billion times never to let him come inside without asking me first. He was a good friend and all, but letting him inside was like letting in a cloud of flies—into everything and impossible to get rid of.

“Thomas!” Chip cried. “Salutations on this fine Saturday. The air is crisp! The sun is fulgent! The day is unfurling into something quite dandy! Don’t you agree?”

My eye twitched. “What is the sun full of?”

“Fulgent! Bright! Brilliant! Daaazzling!” He danced in a circle, accidentally bumping into the edge of my plate and sending my waffle flying through the air. It splatted on his shoe. “Drat. Right on my carousing socks.”

“That was our last waffle, Chip.”

“Oh,” he said. He pushed his glasses up on his nose, looking very serious as he shook the waffle off his foot. He brightened. “Not to worry. You’re welcome to partake of my mom’s homemade organic, gluten-free, vegan sweet-potato muffins. Come on, I’ll take you.” He reached out to grab my arm, but I leaned away.

“Gross, no. And I’ve told you a thousand times to stop saying ‘partake.’ You sound like an old-timey novel. And a sweet-potato muffin is not a substitute for a waffle.” My stomach growled, as if even it was angry with Chip. “Besides,” I said, bending to pick my breakfast up off the floor, “I’m still mad at you.”

“For what? Oh, for that little mishap with the broken bust? Don’t worry, Thomas, detention isn’t—”

“Shhh!” I said, slapping my hand over his mouth, but it was too late. Mom, whose supersonic hearing could pick up words like “broken” and “detention” from a thousand miles away, yelled, “What detention?” from the living room.

I sighed, listening as her footsteps got closer to the kitchen. “What detention?” she repeated. Dad trailed in behind her.

“Hello, Mrs. Fallgrout,” Chip said. “Salutations on this—”

“Not now, Chip,” Mom and I said at the same time. His mouth clapped shut.

“What detention? I’m not going to ask again.”

I had a feeling I was about to be going on a Your Weekend Is So Not Going to Be Fun Adventure. I started to answer, but Chip beat me to it.

“There was a slight accident during a scuffle in the foyer at our esteemed alma mater.”

“Scuffle?” Mom said, looking alarmed. “At school? Accident?”

Great. When Mom starts asking questions in rapid fire, there really is no good answer to any of them. “It wasn’t a big deal,” I said.

“Quite the contrary,” Chip said. “I didn’t take it personally when Thomas attacked me. Jealousy can cause one to act in an unpredictable manner.”

“Attacked?” Mom yelped at the same time I said, “I didn’t attack you.”

“It’s okay,” Chip said. “I’ve forgiven your indiscretion.”

“I did not indiscresh anyone, Mom,” I said. “I swear.”

Chip’s finger flew up in the air. “Technically, ‘indiscresh’ isn’t a word. You were probably looking for ‘discredit,’ although that would not exactly be proper in this sentence, either, and—”

“Shut up, Chip!” I yelled.

“Thomas!” Mom barked. “You can’t talk to a guest that way. Apologize to Chip right this instant.”

“No way,” I said. “I didn’t attack him. He stole my job. He attacked my job.”

“I’m wondering if you might mean ‘hijacked’ in this particular situation,” Chip said.

“No matter what he did with your job, there’s no good reason to attack someone,” Dad said. “You can’t go around attacking people, Thomas.”

“I didn’t!”

“The only casualty was the Heirmauser statue, anyway,” Chip said. He winked at me like he was helping me out. Clearly, he didn’t know Mom.

Her eyes grew big as her lips tightened. “The statue? Again?”

“The nose will reattach easily,” Chip said.

I didn’t think it was possible, but Mom’s eyes grew even wider. “You broke her nose off? Oh, Thomas, what is it with you and that