Pennybaker School Is Revolting, стр. 50
“I’m going to miss these shoes,” Chip said. “They’re making me look a lot taller. But it will be good to get back into regular socks again.”
“Your vocabulary socks?”
“Yeah, those.” I figured. Chip didn’t have regular socks. Chip didn’t have regular anything. “I did put them on this morning, just briefly, to learn the word of the day. Do you want to know what it is?”
“Actually, I kind of do.”
“Stickybeak,” he said proudly.
“Sticky what?”
“Stickybeak.” He giggled. “It’s used to refer to one who is nosy. Get it? Stickybeak? Nose-y?” He pointed to his nose.
“You made that up.”
“No, I swear, I didn’t. It has an Australian origin, and—”
The door opened and Mr. Faboo came out, causing Chip to stop mid-sentence. We both scrambled to our feet.
“Well?” I asked.
Mr. Faboo rubbed his even-more-tired-looking eyes and scratched his chin. He had left his house so quickly, he was only in slippers. The sun had gotten low in the sky, and it was going from chilly to cold. The wind kicked up his robe again, only this time he didn’t move to fix it.
“Well?” I asked again. “Say something.”
Slowly, a grin spread across Mr. Faboo’s face, and then he raised his hands in the air, victory-style.
“I passed!”
THE FINALE TRICK
My throat was dry, probably because every ounce of liquid in my body had gone directly to my palms. My stomach gurgled, but I ignored it. Sissy Cork grimaced when I placed my hands on hers.
“No magic,” she said, tensing her arms so I could feel how strong she was.
“No magic,” I said.
“Okay, five-six-seven-eight!” Erma snapped her fingers in rhythm, and we started moving. I smacked my shin on the coffee table, causing Sissy to lurch backward and fall onto the couch. “Again!” Erma shouted. Sissy got up and grabbed my sticky, sweaty hands, and we tried again.
“You know, you’re not really all that bad a dancer,” Sissy said on our fourth or fifth try. “You spent way too much time being embarrassed about it.”
“I’m better at magic,” I said.
She shrugged. “I’m better at arm wrestling. That doesn’t mean we have to be bad at everything else, you know.”
“True.” Still, I would have made myself disappear if I could have gotten away with it.
After we had successfully completed the dance three times, Erma pronounced us ready. Which was good, because in two hours we would be performing our dance for all the parents of Pennybaker School. Sissy went home, and I went upstairs to get changed. Grandma Jo was sitting in her bedroom, admiring her trophies.
I hadn’t seen Grandma Jo too much since that day at the testing center. Since Mom had given her the okay to leave the house again, she had lots of making up to do with Barf and the others. With winter coming on, there was talk of snowmobiles and maybe even dogsled racing. Grandma Jo lived for the wind in her hair, and I was glad Mom finally saw that.
Except Mom did say Grandma Jo would freeze to death in a snowbank, and there would be no snowmobiling as long as she was around to stop it. Grandma Jo would never be done with her Fighting Mom Adventure. But she didn’t seem to mind it so much. Sometimes I thought she kind of liked it. Maybe fighting Mom was an adventure all by itself.
Because I hadn’t seen Grandma Jo a whole lot, I hadn’t really had a chance to thank her for what she did. Mr. Faboo was back in the classroom, and Mr. Smith was back to substitute teaching for Boone Public Middle School. We had a delayed Act After the Fact Month, and we were so happy about it, we went all out on our costumes. Instead of reading the research papers we had all written, Mr. Faboo had us turn them into screenplays. We acted them out with lots of drama. Mr. Faboo, in a new, super-fluffy white wig, sat on the edge of his desk and watched us with a big smile.
He also started doing relaxation exercises with us before each lesson, turning on soft music and telling us to close our eyes and breathe. Pretty soon all the teachers were stopping into Mr. Faboo’s classroom to see what he was doing so they could do it, too.
We had our crazy strange teacher back, and it was awesome.
As soon as I got to my bedroom, I dropped to the floor and pulled out Grandpa Rudy’s trunk. I opened it, lifted out the creation I’d finished the night before, and held it up to the light to study it. I smiled. It was good.
I took it across the hall and knocked on Grandma Jo’s doorframe.
“Come on in, Thomas,” she said. “I was just doing some sprucing up. I got a new one last night. See?” She held up a gleaming trophy that appeared to be of a woman swinging on a vine. I didn’t even want to ask what that was about. When Mom found it, she would flip, and it was just best if I didn’t have any information to hide.
“I brought you something,” I said.
“Oh?” She scooted over and patted the mattress next to her.
Hiding my creation behind my back, I sat down. “It’s not as good as those, but …” I handed her the trophy I’d made out of Bill’s bowl, Roosevelt’s mustache, and a cinnamon roll. I had added a piece of masking tape and written across it: “1st Place Window Climbing.” She gasped as she took it from me.
“Are you kidding? It’s much, much better than any of those cheap trophies.” She turned it in her hands to look at it from all angles.
“You’ll probably have to eat the cinnamon roll. I’m sure it’ll go bad.”
“Well, we’ll test that theory. This is a special cinnamon roll—the kind you don’t eat right away because you’re too busy appreciating it.” She elbowed me.
“Thanks for getting my teacher back,” I said.
Very gently, she set the bowl next to her swinging vine trophy. The doorbell