Pennybaker School Is Revolting, стр. 43
Which was the first thing Chip said when he walked in. “Secret meetings in all these vines are kind of cool. Oh, hey, Thomas. I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
“What do you mean you didn’t know?”
“I knew Wesley and the howl pack would be here, but that was it.”
“Howl pack? What in the world is a howl pack?”
In response, Chip tilted his face up to the sky—which was a lot closer in the greenhouse—and let out a long howl. A few seconds ticked by, and then three howls responded to his. And one buzz of a didgeridoo. The guys pushed through the door.
What the heck? My friends—all my friends—had formed a pack, and had left me out of it? I liked to howl, too, but how would they ever know? I was getting pretty sick of Chip taking my place in this school.
“You’re letting out the humidity,” Herb complained, rushing to shut the door behind them with a very worried look on his face.
They responded with more howls, which were deafeningly loud in the enclosed space.
“You guys are the howl pack?”
“Ow-ow,” Wesley said.
“Ooowww,” Flea responded.
“How come I’m not in the howl pack?” I asked.
“Oh. I didn’t realize you would want to be. You usually think things like this are dumb. You are certainly most welcome, sir.” Chip bowed low. “Give it a try. Howling is fun.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to be in any stupid howl pack, having to bark at the moon like a dog.”
“We don’t bark, good sir,” Wesley said in his British accent. “We bay. There is a difference.”
“And the moon doesn’t really have anything to do with it,” Owen confirmed. He looked up from his laptop screen. “Although tonight’s supposed to be a full moon. Total coincidence.”
I wanted to lay into Chip. Well, I wanted to lay into all of them, but especially Chip. I can’t believe you started a club without me, I would say. You don’t even have club socks, and it’s not okay that I know that about you and still don’t get to be in your club. I wanted to tell the rest of them that they wouldn’t even have Chip for a friend if it hadn’t been for me, so they’d better appreciate me. But when you started using phrases like “you’d better appreciate me,” you started to sound like you were having a Mom on a Rant Adventure, and nobody wanted to let that guy into their club.
“It’s technically not a club,” Chip assured me, as if he could read my mind. Good. I hoped he could. My mind was making all kinds of ugly faces at him right now, and maybe even calling him a few names, too. “A club would imply a sponsor, membership dues, and regular meetings and bylaws, not to mention a quorum for voting. We prefer the Not It method, which works great for informal friend groups, but when it comes to official clubs—”
“Chip!” I clapped my hands in front of his face to make him stop. “It doesn’t matter.” (It did matter.) “It’s totally fine for you to howl your heads off.” (It wasn’t fine.) “And you don’t have to invite me to everything.” (He didn’t, but I wanted him to.) “Can we get on with our meeting, please?”
“Dude,” Flea said, edging away from me. “The humidity is starting to bring out your skunkiness.”
“Stolen skunkiness,” I heard. I scanned the crowd until I saw Reap’s familiar face, which was scowling. “That spray was supposed to be mine.”
“Well, trust me, you can have it,” I said. I got up and started toward him, lifting an arm—not because there was any smell in my armpit but because if you’re going to wipe a smell on someone, an armpit is the best possible weapon I can think of. The crowd parted. Two girls squealed and jumped out of the way.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Colton said, stepping between us. I bumped into his chest. He looked repulsed and brushed off the front of his shirt. “Let’s all remember why we’re here.” He turned to me. “Why exactly are we here, anyway?”
“Didn’t you hear?” Patrice Pillow said. “Mr. Faboo is dying.”
“What?” I barked.
“No, not dying,” Samara Lee said. “Just moving to Antarctica to study penguins.”
“I thought it was Africa, and he was studying lions,” Flea said.
“I heard he’s running away from a kidnapper,” Colton said.
Suddenly everyone was talking over one another, all with different versions of what happened to Mr. Faboo. I turned a questioning eye to Babette. She shrugged. “You said not to tell them about the test.”
“What test?” Wesley asked, and the whole crowd quieted.
I finally had everyone’s attention, and not because of the way I smelled. “Mr. Faboo is in trouble, yes,” I said. “But he’s not dying or moving or running away from bad guys. He just can’t teach again until he passes a test.”
“So?” Owen said.
“So, he thinks he can’t pass it. He needs help. And that’s where we come in. We all have unique talents, right?” There was a murmur of agreement. “Well, I was thinking we could each use our gifts to coach Mr. Faboo so that he’ll pass the test.”
Now the murmur was much more doubtful.
“Horatio Oliver Williams?” Hilly asked. It took me a few minutes to work out the acrostic. H-O-W? Hilly wanted to know how she could help Mr. Faboo with the test.
“Well, you two”—I gestured to Hilly and Milly—“would be great with mnemonic devices.” They looked confused. “Helping Mr. Faboo remember facts by using acronyms.”
“Like, My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas,” Buckley said. “Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. The planets.”
“Pluto isn’t a planet,” Colton said.
“Yes, it is,” Dawson interjected.
“No, it’s not,” Wesley said.
“Technically,” Chip said, holding up one finger, “Pluto is a dwarf planet, which means it looks like a planet but really doesn’t meet all of the criteria to be an actual planet. So you