Pennybaker School Is Revolting, стр. 24

I hope you didn’t get a crack!

You don’t have to be so cheeky about ballroom dancing, Thomas.

Hey, guys, guess where Thomas sits in his Four Square squad? At the rear!

Chip messed up that last one by pointing out that, technically, I sat third from the rear, and it was Harvey Hinkle who sat at the rear of our squad line. Because Chip didn’t usually get normal jokes. He got the kind of jokes that Mom liked to call “clever” and Grandma Jo liked to call “nerdy.”

The only thing that could have made my long, horrible day even longer was detention. I trudged into the detention room right after the final bell and slumped into a desk, only to pop right up again, hissing through my teeth at the pain, and then lower myself gently back into the seat.

I could hear the hallway commotion of kids leaving for the day, loudly making plans to do this or that after school. Wesley was heading to rehearsal. Some of the guys were meeting up for football in the park. A couple of girls squealed about how exciiited they were to seeee a certain moviiie starring a certain boooy. Why did girls always use so many vowels when they were looking forward to something? A few kids mentioned getting together with Erma to practice their dancing. Gross.

Soon there was a shuffling at the door, and Chip came in. He eyed me curiously before going to the opposite side of the room and setting his books on a desk as far away from me as he possibly could.

“Wait, you’re mad at me?” I asked. He didn’t respond. “You. Are mad. At me?” Still nothing. “Let me tell you, Chip. I’m the one who should be mad at you. You’re the reason I’m here.”

He turned. “I believe you are the reason I’m here.”

“Wow, that actually sounded like a real sentence that a real human would speak.”

“Technically, only an English-speaking human,” he corrected. “And it’s the truth. You’ve been angry with me ever since we were tasked with the dancing assignment. Which is quite unfair, as I did not create nor implement said assignment. And as I also offered to help you learn to dance many times over.”

“Over what?”

“What?”

“Many times over what?”

“Over dancing.”

“Huh?”

“What?”

But before we could continue, Mr. Smith came into the room, with his boring brown suit and boring brown shoes and boring brown briefcase.

“No talking, please,” he said. “Unless you want to spend more time with me here.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Chip said. “I’m sure you’re an unobjectionable conversationalist.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but part of me was pretty sure Chip was going to get more detention for name-calling.

“Silence, please,” was all Mr. Smith said in response. Maybe he didn’t know what it meant, either.

We sat in silence for what seemed like forever, the only sounds the ticking of the clock on the wall and Mr. Crumbs’s tile buffer out in the vestibule. I spent the time thinking about what Chip had said about how I was the cause of us being here, that he was the one who was mad at me, and that I’d been pushed to the side by all my friends since we got the dance assignment. I thought about how crazy Chip used to make me, and how it was weird that I was upset about him being upset. And that I didn’t like being mad at him, partly because being mad was kind of exhausting, but mostly because without even realizing it, somehow I’d gone from tolerating Chip to actually liking him, and I wasn’t sure what to do with myself if I didn’t have him to hang around with. And, more than that, I thought about how this whole Chip-and-detention business was distracting me from the real problem at hand: Mr. Faboo’s disappearance.

After a while, Mr. Smith pushed back his chair and sauntered out into the hallway. As soon as he left, I whispered at Chip to get his attention.

“Psst. Psst.”

He didn’t look back.

“Pssssssst.”

He continued to sculpt a paperclip he’d found into a work of art only he could see.

“Psst! Chip! Psst!”

He turned, surprise on his face. “You were talking to me?”

I looked around. “Who else would I be talking to?”

“Oh. Right.”

I took a deep breath. “Listen. I’m sorry, okay?”

He thought it over. “Okay.”

I scooted my desk a few feet closer and leaned toward him. “Do you have any new leads?”

“About what?”

Seriously? “About Mr. Faboo. The Civil War thing didn’t work out, but maybe the Boone County History-Lovers are doing something else. We know for sure now that he’s a member, and now you’re a member, and they probably have more meetings coming up.”

He bit his thumbnail—thinking, thinking—and then poked his finger in the air. “Eureka!”

“Yeah?” I leaned in.

“I’ll go to another meeting and find out!”

“That was my idea.”

“No, it wasn’t. You said we knew he and I were co-members, and you said that the Boone County History-Lovers Society would likely be having another meeting, but you never specifically said that I should attend said meeting. That part was my idea.”

“I was insinuating—”

“Oh! Great word! You must be washing your vocabulary socks more often.”

Mr. Smith came back into the room, jingling his boring change in his boring pocket. He stopped, examining me. “Mr. Fallgrout, I believe your desk was over there when I left.” He pointed at the spot where I’d been before scooting toward Chip.

“Sorry,” I murmured, moving back.

“So I suppose this means the two of you had a little chat while I was gone. Despite the fact that I specifically said no talking.”

“It wasn’t really a chat,” Chip said. “It was much shorter than what most would consider a proper chat. Just a few sentences, in fact.”

Mr. Smith’s lips went into a straight line. “Defiance now, too, Mr. Mason?”

“No. I was simply suggesting that our very short few sentences were not a friendly and informal conversation, such as is the definition of chatting. If you’d stayed out