The Detention Club Read online

  The good news is Sunny’s idea didn’t seem that promising, either. Her idea was to have glass pots for plants, so you could see the roots and stuff, like an ant farm. And there’d be a thermometer on the side of the pot, to tell you the temperature of the soil.

  “Then if a plant wasn’t doing well, we’d know it’s because the soil’s too cold,” Sunny said. “Or if the soil’s too dry, or overwatered.”

  “Very interesting,” Ms. Schoonmaker said.

  “Unfortunately it’s still a niche product, just like Carson’s calculator holster. Only plants that can afford health care would be able to buy it,” I said. Everyone stared at me. “That sounded funnier in my head.”

  “Peter’s right, though,” Graham countered. “An ant farm is cool because you get to watch them build societies and stuff. A plant’s roots, on the other hand, would barely move. It would be boring to watch.”

  Sunny’s cheeks looked like they were boiling.

  “It often takes several attempts before you hit on the right invention, or even perfect a promising one. It took Thomas Edison a thousand tries before he got the lightbulb to work, and he never thought of them as failures. I believe he said something to the effect that the lightbulb was an invention with a thousand steps,” Ms. Schoonmaker said. She looked at me. “How about you, Peter?”

  “So, let’s see—so many ideas to choose from, oh, here’s one. I have an idea for something I call the Urban Sound Machine. It’s for city people like Carson.”

  “City people?” he said.

  “Remember when you moved here from New York and you hated how quiet it was?” I asked Carson, and he nodded suspiciously. “Well, this would be a sound machine to help city people sleep when they’re in quieter areas. For example, there would be a setting on the dial that makes it sound like a construction worker’s outside your window, working a drill all night long.”

  “Have you ever even been to a city?” Carson asked me.

  I ignored him and described the other settings, but everyone frowned.

  “The home-invasion sound would give older people heart attacks,” Sunny said.

  “No, it wouldn’t—it’s the quiet that city people hate, isn’t that true, Carson?”

  “Let’s bring it down a notch, Peter,” Ms. Schoonmaker said.

  “That was just when I first moved here,” Carson said. “Now when I visit my uncle in the Bronx, I can’t stand how loud it is.”

  Sunny pretended to look really thoughtful by twisting her mouth and tapping the table with her pencil. “Maybe this is more of a gag gift, Peter?”

  “It’s not a gag gift!” I shouted.

  The late bell rang.

  “Look!” I said, pointing at Carson. “Everyone jumped a little in their seats when the bell rang except him.”

  Ms. Schoonmaker put down her mini cup of espresso.

  “Peter, what did I say about shouting in class? Okay, good session, everybody, being able to really think about and critique each other’s inventions helps develop the creative mind. For next time, I want you to write a one-page description of the invention you want to focus on this semester, and try to think ahead of time about why people would possibly say no to it.”

  Sunny was smiling at me as we left the library.

  “Urban sound machine?” she said. “What were you thinking?”

  “Hey, look,” I said, pointing at the spider plant in the corner. “I think that leaf just moved . . . how fascinating.”

  It was starting to get dark when I got outside, and we hadn’t even taken our fake party pics yet! I booked it all the way to Drew’s house, climbed up to the tree house, and groaned. He hadn’t decorated the inside so it would resemble a real party, like I’d instructed him.

  “What the heck have you been doing all afternoon?” I asked.

  “I ate a snack inside,” he said, and I scowled at him. “What? That takes time.”

  “Where’s the cake?”

  “I was waiting for you.”

  “Drew, it’s getting dark out!”

  “Wouldn’t the party be at night?”

  “I guess you’re right. Come on, let’s go get it and then set things up.”

  I had to borrow his dad’s old ten-speed, but the seat was so high that I could barely pedal, so I ended up sort of rowing with my legs. We finally got to Stop & Shop and picked up the birthday cake. When I saw it, I started feeling better—it was perfect! It read in cursive, “Happy Birthday, Emma!” across the top with blue icing. Drew had five bucks left over, so we visited the florist next to the bakery and bought a red rose to add to the fake decorations. We discovered that the premade bouquets had this wet green foamy square inside the pots that the flowers stuck out of, and it felt neat to poke our fingers into them. But then the florist yelled at us for ruining the bouquets and we took off before she could arrest us.

  We biked back, and Drew got some birthday candles in his kitchen. We took it up to the tree house, then set up a tiny table to go with our two beach chairs inside. We positioned ourselves around the lit candles and put on big smiles as if we were having a great time watching the imaginary Emma blow out her candles. It took some practice, but we figured out eventually how to shoot it so it looked like we were at a huge party. Drew would wear a long-sleeve shirt so his elbow would be in the corner of the picture, and I’d be next to him. Then he’d change his outfit so it would look like I was standing next to someone else in the next pic.

  I even convinced Drew to put on a few of Mrs. N’s dresses to impersonate actual girls at the party—I made sure to only include Drew’s shoulder in the shot so it looked like I was standing next to a hot girl, or at least a girl with a really hot arm. When we were done, we looked through the photos, and I had to admit they looked pretty authentic.

  “Do you really think this will work?” Drew asked.

  “There’s nothing like cold, hard proof to convince everyone we’re cool,” I said.

  On Thursday morning Drew and I took out the camera in homeroom and started looking at the pics. I fake-laughed really loudly to get everyone’s attention. As I’d hoped, everyone huddled around us to see what we were looking at. The plan was working!

  “Oh man, that one’s so embarrassing,” I said, staring at a picture of me with a big mouthful of cake, giving the photographer two thumbs-ups—a girl in a strapless red dress had her left arm draped over my shoulders.

  “What are those pictures of?” Shawn asked.

  “Oh, our friend Emma’s birthday was on Saturday, we had no choice but to go to Emma’s because she went to our birthday parties this summer, and anyway I forgot until this morning that her mom’s camera was broken, so I’d let her use mine,” I explained.

  “Where was the party? Why’s everything made out of wood?” he asked.

  Shawn was right. I looked at the pictures for the first time as if I was someone else, and it really did look like they were taken inside a tree house.

  “Her parents are crazy about wood paneling,” Drew said.

  “That’s Emma,” I said, pointing to another picture of me standing next to Drew’s shoulder, when he was wearing his mom’s yellow dress. I silently prayed nobody would recognize the remarkably Texas-shaped mole on his shoulder, but otherwise Drew was so scrawny that he did make for a pretty good imitation of a girl’s shoulder.

  “These are action shots of when Emma blew out the candles,” I explained. “I’m laughing so hard because they were trick candles and kept relighting. It was funny because she has pretty bad asthma and was starting to hyperventilate or something.”

  “Why did her mom take all these pictures of just Peter? Why wouldn’t she take pictures of her own daughter blowing out the candles?"

  “Um, we’re family friends, we go to Maine together for a week every summer,” I said. Luckily, the bell rang and I quickly turned the camera off. “Okeydokey, time to put the party shots away.”

  Everyone looked really confused. Drew sighed.

  “Okay, ever
yone, quiet down, I have an announcement to make,” Mr. Davis said. “It seems a fair number of students have lost personal items since school started, and Principal Curtis has instructed us to remind you to keep better track of your belongings. Make a mental check before you leave each class to make sure you haven’t left anything on your desks, that sort of thing.”

  “Wait a sec—where’s my hat?” Shawn asked, acting really panicked.

  “It’s on your head,” Sally said.

  Shawn felt his head and sighed really loudly. Then he got that panicked look in his face again.

  “Wait a sec—where’s my shoes?”

  Everyone laughed.

  “Okay, knock it off,” Mr. Davis said, but even he was smiling.

  Drew poked me in the ribs.

  “You should be the one coming up with hilarious jokes like that,” he scolded me.

  “I know,” I said sadly.

  At the beginning of each class that morning, I showed the pics to more classmates, and the results were mixed at best. They weren’t nearly as impressed as I thought they would be, but on the other hand, not a single student accused me of faking the party pics, and I figured that was better than nothing. Plus, there was an added bonus. In English class I was feeling guilty that everyone was taking notes the whole time, but then when the bell rang, Heidi suddenly realized her mechanical pencil was missing, and I think Mr. Vensel was just as bored as everyone else, because he immediately got down on his hands and knees to help her look for it. Anyway, it was this moment when it dawned on me that I could simply take secret pictures of the chalkboard instead of having to take notes! My idea was that the night before a test or something I’d simply zoom the pictures on my dad’s computer and study the photographs until I learned everything. Maybe this thinking-outside-the-box thing hadn’t changed our lives just yet, but it certainly had its benefits.

  * * *

  On Friday I continued to secretly take digital pictures of the blackboard in my classes while my classmates feverishly took notes, and then spent the rest of the time writing in my inventor’s notebook. At lunchtime Principal Curtis showed up and motioned for everyone to quiet down. “Listen up, everybody,” he said. “The Lost-and-Found Forum on the school website is absolutely stuffed, and after interviewing several of the students who have lost items in the last few weeks, we’ve come to the conclusion that either there is a thief in this school or stealing in general has risen abnormally this fall.”

  The students started murmuring nervously.

  “Now, there’s no need for panic, but you really have to be diligent—not only about watching your own things, but also about keeping an eye out for suspicious activity. If you see anything suspicious, just tell a teacher or visit me at my office. That is all, for now. Enjoy the rest of your lunches.”

  Principal Curtis exited the cafeteria, and everyone started chattering real loudly.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” Drew said.

  Surprisingly, some students didn’t believe there really was a thief. Mrs. Farley, who had lunch-monitor duty that day, suggested to Carson at the next table over that there was no thief. “I’ve been teaching for twenty years, and the one thing middle schoolers have in common is that they all lose personal possessions constantly. It’s just a bigger deal nowadays because they have more expensive things to lose.”

  It seemed weird to me that everyone was so freaked out about this thief business. Me and Drew, we had worse things to worry about. These people had such easy lives, to worry about this thief when me and Drew were barely hanging on.

  As the days passed, more students’ things went missing:

  Angie’s favorite bracelet.

  Carson’s scientific calculator.

  An eighth grader’s wallet.

  Sally’s horseshoe key chain.

  A seventh grader’s earbuds.

  It became a daily occurrence where in at least one of my classes someone would find out that they were missing something: a hoodie, a cell phone, a T-shirt, a textbook. In fact, Drew and I at one point realized that we were the only kids who hadn’t gotten anything stolen, it seemed.

  “Even the thief doesn’t include us,” Drew said, and I nodded sadly.

  Unluckily for us, our wish was granted, because when I went to my locker at the end of the day to get Drew’s jacket, it was gone! Drew showed up a moment later, and I gritted my teeth. “Um, I have some not-so-great news that kind of involves you,” I said. “Your jacket’s missing.”

  “You lost my jacket?”

  “Not necessarily, the thief might’ve stolen it,” I said.

  “But you have a history of losing your jacket, so maybe the thief has nothing to do with it.”

  “Either way I’m in the clear, right?”

  “How so?”

  “If the thief stole it, that’s not my fault,” I said. “And if I really did lose your jacket, well, you already knew about this tendency of mine beforehand. So really, to be fair, in a way it’s more your fault that you let me borrow it in the first place, because now I feel bad for losing it and it’s not like I could help it.”

  “That’s not a good excuse.”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “We’re different people,” I said. “I guess I’m just the type of kid who, when I put a quarter in the claw machine at the arcade and fail to pick up a toy, I don’t get angry because I know there was always that risk that I wouldn’t succeed.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  He didn’t say anything else, and this kinda annoyed me—I wanted to point out that if he was a bigger man he’d apologize for putting me in this situation in the first place, but this was one of those rare moments in life where I knew to quit while I was ahead. Then I thought of something.

  “Hey—what if it was the thief?” I asked.

  For the first time we really considered this possibility, and it gave us the chills.

  By the end of the following week, more students had stuff go missing. Everyone was talking about it, because in any group of friends in any grade, at least one person had lost something at school, and there was no doubt about it at this point—there was definitely a thief at the school.

  Chapter Sixteen

  MRS. RYDER HANDED BACK OUR first pop quizzes in math class on Monday.

  “To give you an idea of where you stand in class, the average score was 81 percent. That’s not very high. It means some of you aren’t paying enough attention. If you have questions, don’t be afraid to ask. If you scored below a 65 percent, you received an F, which means you have to get your quiz signed by your parents tonight.”

  I looked around to see who got F’s, but nobody frowned or groaned when they got their quiz back. Either everyone had really good poker faces or Mrs. Ryder was exaggerating about the bad grades. She finally dropped off my quiz and patted it on the desk. “Make sure you get this back to me tomorrow,” she said out loud, and everyone in class went, “Oooooh!”

  I looked down at the quiz, and on top it read:

  14%. F–

  An F–? I didn’t even know that was possible. A 14 percent? How could I have scored so low? After class I pleaded my case with her. “I’ll show my parents the quiz, but do they really have to sign it?” I asked. “They hate signing stuff. They’re paranoid about having their identities stolen. We have an uncle who lost it all because he talked to a telemarketer one day. Now he’s in a shelter, eating unlabeled cans of soup.”

  “You also have to answer all the questions again, on a separate piece of paper.”

  “You’re giving me more homework?” I asked, although technically I hadn’t done any of it all semester, but still.

  That night I couldn’t eat during dinner. Mom had made chicken potpie, which I can’t stand to begin with, because the fact is, pies should always be filled with dessert. I do like the square-shaped carrots, though, because the shape makes them feel futuristic. I can’t wait for the day when we just eat pills instead of food, but I’
m getting off topic, and I have a feeling I wouldn’t even think this way if I had a mother who could actually cook. The point is, my stomach was in knots, and I ended up nibbling on a couple of soupy square carrots.

  “You have to eat more than that,” Dad said. “Your mom spent a long time defrosting this meal.”

  Sunny ate heartily. She could afford to, since she had all A’s.

  “By the way, I have something you have to sign later,” I said real casually.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Oh—nothing important, just something for math class.”

  “Are you going on a field trip?”

  “Maybe, I don’t even know, you just have to give me your signature on some silly piece of paper, it’s nothing, really. Just let me know next time you’re signing bills and checks, and I’ll have you add your John Hancock to it. No biggy.”

  “Nonsense, go run upstairs and get it.”

  I exhaled softly. I trudged up to my room and took out my math folder. I turned the quiz upside down and slid the bottom of it out of the folder so you could only see blank white space. I went back downstairs.

  “Okay, sign here,” I said.

  “What is it? Let me see,” Dad said.

  “He’s hiding something,” Sunny said. “Make him show you the whole page.”

  “Believe you me, it’s just not worth your time,” I said, giving Sunny the evil eye. “I’m trying to save you from boredom. Just sign it, okay?”

  Everyone stared at me. I sighed, and slid the folder over to my parents.

  Dad took out the quiz and Mom cried, “Fourteen percent?”

  Sunny’s eyes got big. She scooted out of her seat and stood over Mom.

  “You only answered one out of ten questions right,” Sunny said, and her forehead crinkled. “That means she gave you four bonus points for writing your name correctly.”

  “How did you do so terribly on this quiz?” Dad asked.

  “Well, for one thing, it was a pop quiz.”