Pennybaker School Is Revolting, стр. 28
“Crowd,” I corrected.
“Yes, crowd. Engages the crowd in recitation of various plaudits perpetuated by the cheerleaders.”
“I know what a spirit leader does—he gets the crowd to go crazy when the team does cool stuff.”
“Exactly as I said.”
I didn’t know if that was exactly what he’d said, but I was too busy thinking Chip’s plan through to argue with him. Besides, he pretty much always won arguments about vocabulary.
“So if I understand you correctly, we’re going to dress up as pioneers, go to the Prairie High basketball game, and pretend to be spirit leaders.”
“Correct.”
This was the dumbest plan I’d heard in a long time. Or maybe just since our last dumb plan, which was also pretty dumb. Chip and I sort of specialized in dumb plans. I thought it over. Crashing a high school basketball game was a bold move.
But it was still better than sitting in detention with boring Mr. Smith.
“Will I have to wear pantyhose?” I asked.
“Of course not.”
“Then I’m in.”
TRICK #19
THE RACING BOUQUET WAND
A click and a whoosh noise woke me up. I blinked at the clock. It was two in the morning. It took me a minute to realize that once again I was cold, and that the noise that had awakened me was the trick I’d planted in my window before I went to bed. I’d collapsed my flower cane and hooked the locking mechanism to the lock on the window using clear thread. When the window was opened, it would unlock the cane, and poof! There would be a beautiful bouquet of feather flowers.
And hopefully Grandma Jo.
But when I sat up, there was no Grandma Jo—only the flowers, dangling from the window shade, something stuck to the end of them.
Quickly, I scrambled out of bed and examined the bouquet. It was sticking right through the center of a piece of paper. I pulled the paper off.
It had a number on it—308—and the words “Boone County Speedway” written across the top, with a black-and-white checkered flag waving above them.
Boone County Speedway, number 308?
“A race car number?” I asked aloud. As if in response, an engine revved outside. I leaned out the window just in time to see a shadowy figure tiptoeing out to a slick-looking car, planting a helmet on its head as it moved along. The figure got into the car and it peeled out, leaving a small cloud of smoke and the rumble of loud rock and roll music behind.
I closed the window and went back to bed, clutching the paper with the number to my chest.
TRICK #20
PICK A DRESS, ANY DRESS
The next day at school, Chip and I invited Wesley and the others to join us in Prairie City that evening, but each of them had an excuse.
I have rehearsal.
I have practice.
I have to babysit.
I have to make dinner for my cat’s birthday.
All the excuses boiled down to one thing—they didn’t want to go. Except maybe the cat one. I was pretty sure that was real.
“So, Mom,” I said when I got home from school, “would it be okay if I went to a basketball game tonight?”
Mom was kneeling, the top half of her inside the hall closet, picking up shoes, flipping them over to examine them, and putting them back down. A hunk of hair hung down over her face, and she looked kind of sweaty.
“I didn’t know Pennybaker had a basketball team,” she said, her voice coming out all closety.
“We don’t. It’s at Prairie High School.”
She sat back on her heels and blew the hair out of her eyes. “Huh?”
“It’s a Prairie High School game,” I repeated.
“Oh, Thomas, I don’t know. A high school game? You know the kind of things that could go on at a high school game.”
Actually, I didn’t. Mom had never let me have a High School Adventure before, mostly because she was worried that a High School Adventure would be a Horrible Things Happen to Thomas Adventure and she would maybe have to bail me out of jail or something.
“Mom, I’ll be with Chip,” I said.
“Oh.” She thought about it, blew the hair out of her face again, and leaned back inside. “Well, I suppose it’s okay, then.”
Mom loved Chip. She would pretty much let me go to a chainsaw-sharpening convention wearing a shirt made of broken glass and eating a dead-fly sandwich made by a guy with the flu as long as Chip was going to be with me. I tried not to take it personally, mostly because I was afraid that taking it personally would give her a reason to think things over and maybe change her mind.
“Thanks!” I said, and started to walk away. Then it occurred to me that she was studying the bottoms of shoes. I turned back. “Hey, Mom?”
“Yes, Thomas,” she said in her closety voice again, sounding a little aggravated.
“What are you doing?”
She sat back on her heels, a shoe in each hand. They were both Grandma Jo’s shoes—one from a pair that Grandma Jo wore when she had to go to a funeral or a fancy dinner like normal grandmas, and one from a pair that I once saw her wear to an archery lesson.
“Checking shoes,” she said, as if that made total sense. I must have made a face that told her it didn’t make total sense at all, because she rolled her eyes, let out an exasperated breath, and held the soles of the shoes up for me to see. “I’m checking the bottoms of your grandmother’s shoes to see if any of them have fresh dirt on the bottom.”
“Why?”
Mom leaned toward me. If she was a cartoon, her eyes would have had swirls in them. “Because she’s up to something, I just know it. And she’s not doing it barefoot.”
I didn’t know why Mom would