Pennybaker School Is Revolting, стр. 23

“Well?”

“Shhh,” he said. “I think I’m close to getting her to come out.”

“Her?”

“Or him. I won’t know until I figure out what dialect we’re speaking. It’s weird. Not quite badger, and definitely not weasel. It’s like weasel with an otter accent. I just can’t place it.” He made some more clicking noises.

“You really should hang out with Chip,” I mumbled, but when he said “Huh?” I didn’t repeat myself, because the truth was Reap was the only one of my friends who wasn’t hanging out with Chip right now, and I kind of wanted to keep it that way, even if he spent way more time speaking weasel than English.

“Hey, I heard you got detention,” Reap said.

“Yeah.”

“For throwing Mrs. Heirmauser’s head out the window?”

“What? No. Where did you hear that?”

“Just from people. They said you were aiming at Chip Mason. Not true?”

Not that I wouldn’t like to sometimes, but … “No.”

“So why did you get detention?”

“For breaking her nose. And denting her forehead. But it was an accident, I swear.”

“So it’s not true that you and Chip are enemies now?”

I thought about Chip spilling the beans about my detention, and about avoiding his party. It had been days since we’d ridden our bikes together or pilfered Erma’s candy stash, and it had been forever since he’d bugged me to show him a magic trick. Now he was practicing special handshakes with other guys and dancing on the lawn without me and causing me to get detention. “I don’t know,” I said, and for some reason that made me feel sad.

The warning bell rang, and Reap tossed what was left of the bread under the bush. I saw a black paw reach out and drag a piece farther under. I pointed. “Hey!”

Reap looked. “What?”

“I saw a paw. A black paw.”

Reap scratched his chin. “A black paw, you say? Hmm. Maybe it is a badger after all. I’ll have to brush up on my Bornean ferret-badger-ese. I’m a bit rusty.”

“Yep, you really should hang out with Chip,” I repeated.

“Are you going to actually dance today?” Sissy Cork said when our Four Square classes combined.

“Why wouldn’t I?” I asked, although I could think of about five thousand reasons why I wouldn’t.

I still had a pantyhose rash.

My toes were too crooked.

I had an itchy ear.

I was allergic to music.

That whole knocking-an-old-lady-into-a-wedding-cake thing.

“Heads up!” I heard, and looked up just in time to see a basketball whizzing toward my face. I ducked, and it slammed into the folded-up bleachers, getting stuck there.

Sissy Cork was standing with her arms out expectantly, as if a ball hadn’t almost just killed me and it would be totally okay for us to just start waltzing around the room. She shook her arms at me impatiently.

“Sorry, I have to get that,” I said. I took off before she could argue and scrambled up a stack of floor mats. I wrenched the ball out from between the benches and stood on one, holding the ball high over my head.

“Right here,” I heard, and saw an older boy coming toward me with his hands raised.

“I’ll bring it down.”

“Just throw it,” said another boy, who had sidled up to join his friend.

I looked nervously at the stacked mats. They followed my gaze and then elbowed each other. The second boy smiled widely. “Hey, I have an idea,” he said.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” the first boy said to his friend.

“Trick shot?”

“Trick shot.” The first boy placed his hands on his hips and stared at me defiantly. “Bet you can’t do a cannonball onto those mats and shoot a basket at the same time.”

My eyes darted from the mat to the basketball goal to Sissy Cork and back to the basketball goal. “Of course I can.”

“And make it,” the second boy said.

Make it? That was a different matter. But then the music started, and everyone began pairing off to dance. Hurry up, Sissy mouthed to me. Which definitely made me want to try whatever trick shot would get me out of dancing the longest.

“And make it,” I said. “Totally.”

The two older boys laughed and elbowed each other, then stared back at me expectantly. “Go.”

I rolled my neck and shoulders and made a big deal of lining up the shot just right, even closing one eye and sticking out my tongue in concentration.

“Go!” the other boy said.

“Hang on, I need to tie my shoe.” I bent down, but as soon as my knee hit the bleacher, the first boy spoke up again.

“In five seconds, or it doesn’t count.”

“No, wait, I—”

“Five … four … three … two …”

I closed my eyes and jumped, tucking my knees into my chest and launching the ball blindly into space. I heard an oof as the ball landed on someone, but had only milliseconds to open my eyes and realize that person was Coach Abel before I landed on a slab of concrete.

Or at least that was what the mat felt like: concrete, with no cushion whatsoever. The breath was knocked out of me as my rear end lit up with pain. Ow, ow, ow, I wanted to say, but nothing came out. The two older boys scrambled away as Coach stomped toward me and I rolled around on the mat holding my rear end.

Another reason I could not dance:

I had a bruised butt.