Pennybaker School Is Revolting, стр. 47

in confusion. “Because we were having exciting adventures,” he said, like it was the simplest answer he’d ever had to give. “Just like old times. I like our adventures. They’re quite exhilarating.” I didn’t know what to say, but partly because I knew he was right. And that only made me angrier. “I should go apologize to him now,” Chip said.

“No, you should make it right,” I said. “Come on. We’ll do it together.”

The crowd parted as we saddled up on our bikes and strapped on our helmets. We took off, the air biting through my clothes and making me cold. Every now and then I heard Chip shout “Wait up!” or “Slow down!” or “My legs are getting tired.” But I was pretty mad, so I kept going fast. It wasn’t just about him scaring Mr. Faboo out of taking the test after we had worked so hard to get him ready for it. It was about the wolf pack and the secret handshakes and the dance lessons and the Heirmauser head. It was about Chip being more popular than me when I had been at Pennybaker longer. It was about everyone accepting New Kid Chip right away when they had treated New Kid Thomas like the enemy. And, yeah, it was a little bit about his “leads” always ending up being disastrous, but really disastrous only for me. He always came away exhilarated while I was hobbling and humiliated.

It was so many things, honestly, and I was really starting to think that maybe this was the end for Chip and me. We would fix the Faboo problem, and then we would stop being friends. He would go his way, and I would go mine.

I was officially done with Chip Mason.

Until I heard a crash behind me.

I skidded to a stop and turned around. Chip was crumpled in a heap next to his bike, which was lying on the ground, half on top of him, the front wheel spinning in the air. I let my own bike drop to the sidewalk and rushed toward him.

“You okay?” I asked. I crouched next to him, resting my hands on my knees. There were tears streaking down Chip’s cheeks, and that scared me. I had seen Chip wipe out more times than I could count. Sometimes—such as when he was “conducting a crash-test study” on an old tractor tire that his grandpa Huck had left behind—he wiped out on purpose. I’d seen him take dodgeballs to the face and baseball bats to the back. I’d seen him fall off his bike at least a hundred times. And never—not once!—had I seen him cry about it.

He flailed a bit and then sat up and wiped his cheeks. “I’m not hurt in the physical sense,” he answered. “But I can’t help thinking you’re angry with me, and I don’t know why.”

Oh. So that was what the tears were about. Ridiculous. I stood, placing my hands on my hips. “Why do you care?”

He turned his face up to me. He looked kind of pathetic, the way his helmet smushed his forehead into creases. “Huh?”

I let my hands fall to my sides. “I mean … you’ve got a lot of friends now, so why do you care what I think?” He looked at me the way I’d once seen him look at a wasp’s nest—full of curious concentration mixed with a little bit of disgust and fear. I went on. “You’re always dancing on the lawn or howling or making up a bunch of stupid handshake moves.” I waved my arms around to mock his secret handshake. “The guys want to sit with you at lunch, and most of the time it’s like I don’t even exist. You took my head-polishing job, Chip.”

His expression jumped into one of surprised confusion. “I took that job to help you out. You think the head is creepy, so I figured the least I owed you was to not make you have to look straight into its eyes every day.”

“Sure, it wasn’t about the glory of being the head polisher,” I said doubtfully.

“No! Absolutely not! It was about helping you.”

Well. That changed things a little. But only a little. There was still the matter of—

“And I dance to take the attention off you. You’re the bravest person I know, so I figure if you’re afraid of dancing, there must be a really good reason. Everyone is complaining about how you won’t do it, so I thought if I held a few dance lessons, they would get so wrapped up in it they would forget about you not doing it.”

That was actually kind of working, by the way. It had been days since anyone had bugged me about dancing. And I hadn’t even realized Chip was behind it.

“And the real handshake was supposed to be with you, but you said it was babyish. I was just waiting for you to come around and choreograph one for us. And I was trying out moves on the other guys so I would be prepared for our own secret handshake. I even saved some of my better movements.” He snapped his fingers three times, clapping his hands in between each snap, then tucked his hands into his armpits and flapped his arms like a chicken, chin jutting forward, then wheeled his arms three times, brought his palms together, and looked like he was praying. I had to admit, it was kind of cool to watch. “That’s without the hips, of course,” he said quietly.

“So you were doing all these things for me?” I asked, but it came out really skeptically. Maybe because I was really skeptical. Maybe being skeptical was my true unique gift. Maybe I could be a professional doubter. Actually, that didn’t sound like very much fun.

Or maybe it was because sometimes it’s hard to go from really, really mad to un-mad after just a couple of sentences.

“But … why? I thought you actually liked those guys.”

A scraped patch on his elbow