Pennybaker School Is Revolting, стр. 46
At this point, I wasn’t sure if we were talking about Mr. Faboo or frozen underwear or bunny rabbits or breakfast, but I had a feeling that Grandma Jo was trying to teach me a lesson about appreciating someone while they’re around, because you won’t know how much you’ll miss them until they’re gone and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Which sounded exactly like what had happened with Mr. Faboo.
I wadded up the empty cinnamon roll bag and threw it in the trash. Grandma Jo kept working on her orange. “So you’re off?” she asked.
“You want to come? You’d have to dress up like Betsy Ross or something.”
She waved me away. “Nah. This day has nap written all over it. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
The testing center was just a few blocks away from Pettigrew Park, so Chip and I biked there together. He kept losing his tricorn hat and doubling back to retrieve it, and my bike chain snagged my pantyhose and created a big hole right on the side of my leg, and it was so cold my nose was running, but we got there eventually. Owen, Colton, and Wesley were already there, dressed in their Act After the Fact costumes. They looked somber.
“Where is he?” Colton asked as soon as I hopped off my bike.
“Who?”
“Mr. Faboo.”
“He’s not here?”
All three of them shook their heads.
I went to the front door, cupped my hands, and peered inside. Sure enough, a dozen or so people waited expectantly with their pencils laid out on their desks. Mr. Faboo was not one of them. “Where is he?” I asked.
“How should we know?” Colton asked. “We were asking you the same thing.”
More kids pulled up on their bikes. Patrice Pillow was dropped off by a car. Everyone was wearing their costumes. Unsung Revolutionary War heroes, sea captains, one James Armistead Lafayette—a slave turned double agent spy—and one writer named Judith Sargent Murray. Cars slowed as they passed us, their passengers peering at us curiously, as if this was the first time they’d seen a group of seventh graders standing around in fancy coats and bushy white wigs. Wait. I guess it probably was.
“Who was the last one to tutor him?” I asked.
“Not me,” Owen said. “He got really good at Internet research, so he kind of didn’t need me anymore.”
“Wasn’t me,” Colton said.
“Nope,” Patrice added.
One by one, everyone denied having been the last to see Mr. Faboo. Until I got to Chip. He was twisting his toe into the ground.
“What did you do?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Nothing.”
“Chip. Were you the last one to tutor Mr. Faboo?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?” I repeated.
“I tutored him.”
“On what?”
“On test taking.”
“Oh no,” said Wesley, who had just arrived. “That’s not good.”
“What did you teach him about test taking?”
“I simply told him that test anxiety is a very common occurrence, with twenty percent of students suffering severe test-taking anxiety, and sixteen to twenty percent more struggling with moderate test-taking anxiety. I reminded him that, on average, students who don’t get a grip on their nerves score as many as twelve points lower than their confident counterparts. And, as we all know, twelve points could very well mark the difference between a passing grade and a failing one.”
We all stared at him, our mouths hanging open.
“Don’t worry,” he said, his palms out to calm us. “I reassured him that he is in good company, as Abraham Lincoln and Vincent van Gogh both suffered from anxiety. I did muse, however, that perhaps it was Van Gogh’s anxiety that compelled him to lop off an ear. Although the current theory is that he did it out of jealousy and fear at the news of his brother’s betrothal.”
We all continued staring. Chip started to look uncomfortable. He cleared his throat.
“Anyway, we discussed many anxiety-reducing techniques, such as getting a good night’s sleep and being prepared. So he should be just fine. Ready to take on the challenge, in fact!”
I gestured toward the building. “Do you see him ready to take on the challenge?”
“Perhaps there was traffic.”
“Or perhaps you scared him out of taking the test. He was already afraid, Chip. That was why we were helping in the first place.”
“But I’ve always found knowledge to be calming. The more one knows, the more one is prepared to weather life’s storms.”
“This is not about the weather,” I said. I heard Patrice Pillow snicker lightly. “It’s about getting Mr. Faboo here to take the test so we can get him back in our classroom.”
“Right,” Chip said, looking thoughtful. “I suppose I should apologize, then.”
“Well, I don’t know how, given that he didn’t show up.”
Chip gave me a strange look. “We can just go to his house.”
“Huh?”
He nodded. “We can just go over there and I can apologize, and we can all move on.”
I leaned over Chip so far he kind of bent backward a little. If Chip was saying what I thought he was saying, we had a problem. A big, Civil War–reenacting, cow-pie-wearing, cupie problem. “You know where his house is?”
“Of course,” he said. “It’s the History House, right off the square.”
“How do you know?”
“I learned it at the first Boone County History-Lovers Society meeting I attended.” He pulled a scrap of paper out of his back pocket and unfolded it. An address was scribbled across it. “They gave me his address. I had my mom drive by, and, really, we all should have known that was his house by the way it’s decorated.”
“Are you kidding me?” I yelled. “You knew where he was all this time, and you didn’t tell me? We could have gone right to him, and instead you had me cheerleading and chasing bulls and—”
Chip held up one finger. “Technically, the bull was chasing you.”
I threw up my arms in exasperation. “Why, Chip? Why?”
His eyebrows came together