Pennybaker School Is Revolting, стр. 41

“You have what in your ear?”

“You have to come back,” I said, ignoring his question. “Like, tomorrow. We all miss you. We can’t take it anymore. We’ll … we’ll wear pantyhose every day.” I wasn’t sure if it was okay for me to speak for everyone like that, but I was desperate and saying anything that came to mind.

“Pantyhose?” Mr. Faboo repeated, looking more confused than ever.

“We’ll all dress up as Napoleon on December second.”

“You remember the day he was crowned emperor?”

I nodded. “Trust me, it’s as much of a surprise to me as it is to you, but yeah, I do. And we’ll be good. We won’t ever complain again about anything. Ever.”

Mr. Faboo started to look really pained. He came back to me, set the bags on the hood of Dad’s car, and squatted down, his knickers rising to show his hairy knees under his tights. He rubbed his face. “I can’t come back, Thomas,” he said.

“What? Why not? Of course you can. You can just tell Mr. Smith that he has to—”

“No, no, I can’t. It’s not up to me.”

“Sure it is.” My voice was getting small, though.

He shook his head, and his eyes were all watery, like maybe he was going to cry. “I’m not allowed.” He sank onto his bottom so he was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the car.

“What do you mean?” I asked. I was starting to have a squicky feeling. Something really weird was going on. Mr. Faboo wasn’t the kind of guy who just cried for no reason.

He gave me a look, like maybe he felt a little sorry for me. Or maybe he was feeling a little sorry for himself and it came out wrong. “Oh, Thomas, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Wouldn’t understand what?”

His head hung a little lower—any farther and his wig would topple into his lap. “I have to take a test.”

“What?”

He leveled his gaze at me. “I have to take a test,” he said, louder.

“Okay …?”

“I can’t do it,” he said.

“What do you mean you can’t do it?”

He gripped the front of his shirt, his eyes wide. “I’m not good at tests, Thomas. I’ve never been good at them. I get all …” He waved his hands around. “Panicky.”

“But you graduated college, right?”

“Well …” He raised one shoulder and winced.

“You didn’t graduate college? But you’re a teacher.”

“Pennybaker School is a unique school. It always has been. When I was a student there—”

“You were a student at Pennybaker?”

He gave me a surprised look. “Of course.”

“What was your gift?”

“Well, naturally, it was history.” To be fair, nothing at Pennybaker was naturally anything. For all I knew, Mr. Faboo’s unique gift was dentistry. “Anyway, when I was a student there, we had a principal named Mr. Flockerbit. He was a wonderful principal, and he took me under his wing. So when I graduated, he sort of … bent the rules. He let me teach because he knew I already knew everything there was to know about history. American, world, modern, ancient, you name it.”

“So he gave you a job.”

Mr. Faboo nodded, his eyes getting watery again. “He did. And when he left, and Principal Rooster came along … Well, he never questioned it. I started wearing a lot of costumes so I would look older. Well, and also because I really like costumes. Anyway, it went on for so long, I almost forgot I wasn’t a real teacher myself.”

“So what happened?”

“Someone in the superintendent’s office decided to organize our files, and they realized my file was missing some things.”

“So they fired you? That’s not fair.”

“No, they talked to the state and worked out a deal. If I pass this teaching test, they’ll let me get a certificate.”

“Well, that’s easy,” I said. “Take the test so you can come back.”

He stood and brushed off the back of his pants. “It’s not that easy, Thomas,” he said. “Like I said, I’m no good at tests. Why do you think I don’t give them to you guys? I haven’t taken one since I graduated from Pennybaker School myself. That’s a long, long time, Thomas. I know I’ll fail. So I’ll just find another job instead. I hear they’re looking for someone to run the gift shop at the museum.”

I tried to imagine Mr. Faboo standing behind a cash register in regular clothes, punching buttons and dropping pencils and plastic statues into bags. I couldn’t do it. Mr. Faboo belonged in front of a classroom. Until now, this had been about me, about how Mr. Smith was boring and mean and driving me crazy with textbooks and research papers and detentions. But now it was about more than that. It was about getting Mr. Faboo back into the job that made him who he was.

I stood up, too. “We’ll help you,” I said.

“Oh, no, no,” he said, dejectedly turning away.

I grabbed his wrist. “Yes. We’ll help you. All of us. We’ll figure out a way.”

He patted my hand, then pulled it off his wrist and dropped it. “That’s very nice of you, Thomas, but I’m afraid it just won’t work. It was good seeing you.” He picked up his bags and started to plod away.

I scurried around him to block his path. “It will work. I promise,” I said. “It will work, and you will pass the test with flying colors, and the superintendent will have to let you come back.”

He squinched up his nose. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you sort of smell a little skunky.”

“Never mind that,” I said. “We can do this, Mr. Faboo. You belong in the classroom. Who else could just walk into a classroom and start teaching history? You aren’t just gifted at history. You’re gifted at teaching, too.”

He raised his eyebrows as if startled to hear such a thing, and then a slow smile spread across his face. “Huh. I never thought about it that way, but maybe I am. Maybe I have