Pennybaker School Is Revolting, стр. 6

“Come in, students,” the sub said when he saw us jammed together in the doorway. He waved his hands. “Don’t just stand there. You’re a fire hazard.”

“Who are you?” Owen asked.

“I am Mr. Smith. Now, come in or you’ll all be tardy. I would hate to give a detention on my first day. Take a reading packet on the way to your seats.”

Slowly we inched to our seats, each picking up a heavy packet of photocopied papers, everyone looking at everyone else with questions in their eyes. Mr. Faboo was definitely not a photocopied-papers kind of teacher. Mr. Smith? Flea mouthed to me. I shrugged.

“Excuse me, Mr. Smith?” Clara Willis said, waving and wiggling her hand high.

“Yes?” Mr. Smith already looked weary.

“Where is Mr. Faboo? Is he getting into his costume?”

“I’m afraid not,” Mr. Smith said. “Mr. Faboo has taken a leave of absence.”

“Leave of absence?” Patrice Pillow repeated. “You mean, like, gone for a long time?”

“Maybe forever,” Mr. Smith said. We all gasped. “Now, if you’ll pay attention to the first page of … Yes?”

Clara had raised her hand again. “Why?”

He pointed to the packet in front of him. “Because we’re going to read from it.”

“No, I mean, why isn’t he coming back?”

Mr. Smith smooshed his lips together, making his brown mustache crunch up to his nose. “That, I’m afraid, I am not privileged to share with you. Now, if you—”

“Is he sick?” Clara asked, interrupting him.

“I don’t think so. Page one—”

“Is he dead?” Patrice Pillow interjected, her pencil poised over her notebook. Patrice had been writing a horror novel since she was three. She was always looking for interesting corpses to add.

“No, of course n—”

The questions started coming fast and furious.

“Did he move away?”

“Get married?”

“Have a baby?”

“Is he in jail?”

“Is he on the run from police?”

“Did he get a better job?”

“Perhaps he is on sabbatical in someplace exciting and ancient, such as Ephesus or Teotihuacan, delving into the honorable pursuit of philology.” This from Chip. Of course.

“Phil-what-ogy?” Clara asked.

“Philology. The study of the historical development of language. He being a history devotee, as it were.”

“Teoblahblahtican sounds made up,” Buckley said.

“No, it’s a real place,” Chip said. “It’s in Mexico. Ephesus is in Turkey. Funny thing about Turkey: my mom put my Turkish socks into the dryer and—”

“I like turkey,” Colton said. “Now I’m hungry.”

“You already had Meat and Greet. You can’t be that hun—”

“Enough!” Mr. Smith shouted, making us all jump. “Mr. Faboo is absent. He won’t be back anytime soon. Probably not ever. Why is nobody’s business but his. We are not discussing Turkey or socks or philology. Now, please direct your attention to page one. We are starting the Civil War.”

More confused glances were exchanged.

“Um …” Clara had raised her hand again.

Mr. Smith seemed to wilt a little bit, trying to decide whether to call on her. “Yes,” he said wearily. “What is it?”

“We’re actually in the colonial period,” she said. “Late sixteen hundreds to early eighteen hundreds. We have costumes.” She gestured to the dress she was wearing.

“It’s Act After the Fact Month,” Wesley said. We all nodded.

“Not anymore,” Mr. Smith said. He pointed to Owen, who was scratching his leg determinedly under his desk. “These costumes are a distraction. And they’re silly. Tomorrow I want you all back in your regular uniforms.”

“No pantyhose?” I asked, the words blurting out of me before I could stop them.

“They’re leggings,” half the class said in unison.

“Whatever,” I mumbled.

“No to anything that isn’t part of the usual Pennybaker School uniform,” Mr. Smith said.

“Mr. Smith?” Clara again.

“Yes?” he said with a sigh.

“What’s your unique gift?”

He narrowed his eyes and thought about it. “I suppose I don’t have one, really. I’m just a regular teacher. And I’d like to teach now. Who wants to start reading aloud?”

Hugo Helmuth, whose unique gift was tightrope walking, raised his hand and began reading. But I didn’t hear any of what he was saying; I was too busy concentrating on the fact that I wouldn’t have to wear spatterdashes anymore, now that Mr. Smith had banned costumes.

No pantyhose.

No itchy legs.

Just regular history class, with a regular teacher.

Which meant Mr. Smith was normal—totally normal, in a crowd of the most non-normal people you could ever meet in your life. The kind of normal I’d been wishing for since I started attending Pennybaker School.

Absolutely, positively normal.

“Thomas Fallgrout?” I looked up. He was consulting a seating chart.

“Huh?”

“Not ‘huh.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ Understood?”

“Yeah.”

He clenched his jaw. “Not ‘yeah.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ” He straightened his spine. “Listen up, class. The days of tomfoolery in this class are over. You will have respect. You will learn the material. You will read aloud when I ask you to read aloud. And you will pay attention so you know where to begin reading when I call on you. Is that understood, Mr. Fallgrout?”

I shifted in my seat, feeling the tops of my ears burn with embarrassment. “Uh, yeah. I mean, yes. Yes, sir.”

“Start reading.”

Yep, Mr. Smith was normal.

And kind of mean.

And I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be teaching us about guys who died from chicken bones. Or about Jacob Meyer or John Pearson. Or about any regular guys who were important to history just by being part of it.

I missed Mr. Faboo already.