Pennybaker School Is Revolting, стр. 35
“No. I don’t think I have.”
“Aha!” she barked, making me jump back a step. She leaned forward and picked up the trophy. “Do you see what it’s for? Do you see?”
I didn’t want to, but I bent over and read aloud. “First place, Boone Raceway Street Stock.”
“Do you know what that is, Thomas?”
“No.”
She plopped the trophy back on the shelf. “Car racing, Thomas. Car racing. Someone took first place in a stock car race. Can you guess who that is?”
I didn’t want to guess.
Fortunately, she didn’t let me. “Your grandmother, that’s who. But do you think she’ll own up to it? No. She insists that she’s had that trophy forever. Just like the tattoo. She’s going out and racing at night, Thomas, I just know it. And I’ll prove it.”
I thought about the figure leaving my window the other night, leaving behind a racing bib. I’d had my suspicions then, but now I was sure. Mom was right. Grandma Jo was sneaking out.
TRICK #23
THE SMELLY EARPLUG
The guys were waiting for me on Saturday when I rolled into Chip’s driveway. The sun was out and it had warmed up a little, but it was still a chilly November afternoon. Owen had a GPS strapped to the handlebars of his bike; it was talking to him in a robotic voice, and he was tapping something into his watch.
“We should get moving if we want to be back before dark,” he said.
“Everyone have their smithing socks on?” Chip asked, holding one foot out to the side so we could see the peach-colored socks he was wearing.
“Smithing?” Colton mocked.
“You are correct in your dubiousness. In the eighteen hundreds, a blacksmith would have worn a leather apron and trousers that would protect him from sparks and molten metal and flames and such. I’m sure we will see Mr. Faboo in such garb. It will be unlikely that he will be wearing smithing socks, although we can ask.”
“Let’s go,” I said, and started rolling out.
Chip and I rode our bikes together pretty often. Sometimes we circled our block, racing each other. Sometimes we rode to Pettigrew Park to hang out on the monkey bars. Sometimes we went all the way into town to get ice cream. Those were my favorite times. We always played I Spy while we sat on the curb eating, and I always won, because Chip was awful at I Spy.
This was our first ride out to Old Midwest Town. As we got closer, the road became more gravelly, and fields of dry, dead grass opened up on either side of us.
It felt like we were the only people in the world.
“Hey, Thomas,” Chip said, whizzing past me.
“What?”
He turned around and came back. “Why was the blacksmith mad at his boss?”
“I don’t know, why?”
He circled back. “Because every time he made a horseshoe, he got fired.” He laughed maniacally.
“I don’t get it.”
“You know, fired?” Wesley said, pulling up next to me. “A blacksmith had to heat up metal with fire in order to pound it into a shape. Good one, Chip!”
“I have one,” Flea said. He had to pedal furiously to keep up with us. “Why was the blacksmith so cranky?”
“Why?” Owen said.
Flea grinned. “Because every time he went to work, he got a pounding headache.” We all groaned.
“I’ve got one,” Owen said. “What was the blacksmith’s favorite kind of music?”
“Oh! I know!” Wesley cried. “Heavy metal!” He stuck his tongue out and pretended to be bouncing his head to loud music.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Why didn’t the blacksmith’s wife ever visit him at work?”
“Why?” Chip asked.
“Because every time she got near the fire, it would poke her.” There was silence. “Get it? Poker? Like a fire poker?” Everyone groaned and laughed, and for a few minutes, it was pretty cool that Chip and I had the same friends, even if it did sometimes feel like they chose him over me.
“Dead frog!” Wesley shouted, pointing ahead. We all veered around a smashed blot on the road.
“Oh, hey, I have a song about that,” Flea said. “I learned it at Scout camp.” He started singing, and pretty soon we were all singing about smashed animals.
To be honest, it was awesome, and I almost didn’t want to find Mr. Faboo if it meant we could keep riding our bikes together forever.
“Hey, Thomas,” Chip said, just as we turned onto a dirt road that led to the Old Midwest Town gate.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think Mr. Faboo left because he was tired of teaching us?”
“Nah.”
“I mean, we used his wig for spitwad target practice a lot,” Wesley said.
“I don’t think so.”
“And there was that time we stole his Frida Kahlo unibrow and put it in Miss Pancake’s hamster cage,” Colton said.
“He wasn’t mad about that.”
“What about when we all made fart noises every time they said the word ‘Texas’ in that Alamo song he played for us?” Owen added.
I thought about it, coasting. “He was a little mad about that.”
“See?” Chip said. “We’ve done a lot of things to Mr. Faboo. What if he’s gone because he wants to be rid of us?”
True, we had done a lot of things to Mr. Faboo. But we did a lot of things to a lot of teachers. We wrote poems about stinky cheese for Mrs. Codex. We sculpted barf for Miss Pancake’s realism unit. The only teacher we didn’t mess with was Coach Abel, because he was the one teacher who could make us do stuff like run laps or drop for push-ups. But everyone else was fair game. And Mr. Faboo seemed to have a good sense of humor about it. He never really got mad. He had never, ever yelled at any of us.
“No, Chip,” I said, going back to peddling. “Mr. Faboo