Pickle, p.14
Pickle, page 14
“You arranged this? This protest?” I nodded. “The soap in the fountain, the dry ice in the gym, and that disgusting business at the Pioneer Fair? You are responsible for all of it? Am I clear on this?”
“No, not the fair, that was—never mind. Yes,” I said.
“You created such a horrific spectacle with the insects, you caused your own self to become sick.” Principal Lebonsky shook her head. I was almost still mad enough at Sienna to sell her out, but I didn’t.
“Yes,” I said. “I did it. I am disgusting.”
“I am ashamed of you, Ben Diaz. Your parents didn’t raise you to be so disorderly. You should know better,” she said. I wanted to tell her that my parents didn’t raise me to be pushed around, either, but I didn’t. “What exactly does P.T.A. stand for? Pickles, Tomfoolery, and, and ANARCHY?!”
“No, it’s—”
“And, YOU, Hector Lebonsky! You knew about this. You took part,” Principal Lebonsky said. Hector didn’t say anything. He looked green.
“Principal Lebonsky, Hector didn’t—”
“Silence, Ben. That is enough!” She glared at Hector for a long time. He seemed to be shivering. “Hector, I’m not sure what part you took in all of this, but we will deal with it later at home,” she said. I wondered how many new character cards she would make. Maybe she’d pin them to his clothes. She gave Hector a whole lot of stink eye before turning back to me. “Hector, go to class,” she said. “We’ll discuss this tonight.” Hector spun out of his chair and left before I could say anything. Principal Lebonsky sat forward and sighed.
“Out with it, Benjamin. Let’s get everything straight before I call your parents.”
I told her the only thing I could.
50
Repercussions
The phone rang a lot after school let out until my dad turned the ringer off. I wasn’t allowed to answer it. I wasn’t allowed to check my email, either. Or be online at all, so I couldn’t go to the Pickles Forever website. I couldn’t play video games, or watch TV. When my mom and dad went to the restaurant, I went with them every time. The dishwasher quit and moved to Texas, so the timing was pretty bad that way. I got to do all the honors.
“We’re proud of you for standing up for what you believe in, but there need to be consecuencias por los problemas en la escuela,” my dad said. Consequences for the trouble at school. And the money they were saving by not paying a dishwasher could go in my college fund.
I smelled like dish detergent all the time. I dreamed that the halls at school were full of half-eaten food. Horrible.
I thought about what I would tell the P.T.A. when my parents let me hang out with them again, but I didn’t have to wait that long. They were all waiting down on the sidewalk outside my building before school on Monday.
“So, what happened?” Sienna grabbed my sleeve. “What’s happening with the club?” I shook her off and walked toward school.
“Tell us what she said, rat butt.” Bean would have shot lasers out of her eyes, if she was a laser-shooting robot. A robot with rage. A lot of the time she had a look on her face like she thought about smacking me, but she looked a little more wound up now. Her control knob was turned all the way up to Clobber. “Are we going to get in trouble when we get to school?”
“Nope,” I said. “Not at all. She doesn’t know you were involved.”
“You took all the credit?” Frank looked disgusted.
“He didn’t take the credit, he took the heat. You didn’t have to do that,” Sienna said. She hugged me. “I don’t know how we can make it up to you.”
“I don’t know why we should make it up to you,” Bean mumbled. “If it wasn’t for Ben, we’d still have secret identities.”
Sienna ignored her.
“What’s she going to do to you?”
“Detention. I have to help Rick clean after school for a month. Then I have to go help at the restaurant,” I said. “I have to get up extra early for homework. Not a drop of free time.” Frank winced.
“Sorry, man,” he said. I shrugged. It could have been a lot worse.
“What about Hector?” Bean said. “What did she do to that lying, credit-taking worm?”
I could remind them that Hector had saved them from getting busted, but I didn’t think they were ready to hear it. And that might just remind them that it was me that almost got them busted. “She thought Hector was involved, but I told her he wasn’t. He just wanted to help.” I looked at Bean. “And he’s not a worm.”
It wasn’t hard to convince Principal Lebonsky that I had done it all by myself. I think she wanted to believe that Hector behaved. Otherwise, she’d have to admit that her character cards were a bust.
“She said all the clubs and teams could start meeting again next week.” Oliver clapped and Frank pumped his fist in the air.
“The show must go on!” Oliver yelled. “I can’t wait to tell the cast and crew.”
“All right, time for school, you monkey butts,” Bean said. She turned down the sidewalk, and Frank and Oliver followed.
“You guys go ahead,” I said. “I’m going to wait for Hector.” Bean rolled her eyes, and Oliver shook his head, but Frank nodded and Sienna smiled at me.
“See you at school,” she said.
I watched Hector come out of our building. He looked behind him to make sure his grandma wasn’t coming, and then he tossed his protein bar in a trash can. He saw me and smiled. Then he scowled.
“I wanted to say thanks for what you did at the assembly. It was nice of you to protect the club,” I said. Hector scoffed.
“I didn’t do it for those meatballs,” he said. “I did it for you.”
“What?”
“It’s true,” he said. “I think I get why you’ve been doing what you’ve been doing,” he said. “Except the bugs. That was gross.”
“That wasn’t me. That was Sienna,” I said. He looked up.
“Really? The new girl?”
I nodded. Hector shook his head.
“Nasty. But, she’s kind of cute.”
“Yeah?” I said. Hector just shrugged, but he was blushing. I smiled. “I think you’re right. You know, you can throw away the eggs. We don’t need them anymore.” Hector waved me off.
“I threw them away two days ago,” he said. “I was this close to hiding them in your room so they would get all foul before you found them.”
“That would have been awful,” I said. “But kind of funny, too.”
* * *
When I got home from helping at the restaurant that night I snuck onto the computer before bed. I went straight to my email, where I found new messages from Agent Fix-it, Agent 008, Agent Super, and Agent Snow. They all said the same thing.
Pickle.
But then my mom busted me before I could go to the website.
When Oliver, Frank, Bean, and Sienna met me at the janitorial supply closet after school, I figured they had just stopped by to thank me for sacrificing myself. But, that wasn’t it. They had turned themselves in. They told Principal Lebonsky that it had been the League of Pickle Makers all along, so now we were all extra janitors for the month. They didn’t have to do that, but it was pretty awesome that they did. Like, really awesome.
Rick told us about a time in school when he put a whoopee cushion on his teacher’s chair. That’s about a zero for originality, but he seemed pretty pleased with himself so we acted like it was brilliant. He let us off the detention hook a week early.
The end. Mostly.
50 and a half
You Can Call It an Epilogue if You Want
The League of Pickle Makers still meets on Thursdays. We use the website a lot and hang out together at school. It’s funny, because when we started at Fountain Point, I wouldn’t have guessed I’d be friends with any of them. Frank came over to play video games last week, and he brought a couple of seventh graders. They want to join the league. We’ll see. Oliver is teaching Sienna how to play guitar, and he talked Bean into joining the drama club and trying out for the next play. We stopped pickling after the escabeche, but then Principal Lebonsky said we couldn’t collect club funding unless we were “actively pursuing the mastery of preservation.” So we made pickled eggs again. They weren’t terrible.
We don’t really need the money that much. I get paid now when I help in the restaurant, and Sienna’s dad sends checks regularly that she likes to use, um, creatively. We made her swear a solemn vow never to go rogue again. Or buy bugs. At least without asking us first. Frank started a business setting up websites for some of the other clubs so that they could have secret sections, too. He donates some of the money from that when we need supplies. Frank and Bean are working on a project for a contest to win a trip to the International Spy Museum. They won’t tell me what it is, but they do seem to know a lot of details about conversations they weren’t around for.
After detention ended I had a talk with my mom and dad. They’re going to try and ask me to work in the restaurant instead of telling me to, unless they’re in a real pinch or something. I have so much free time, I’m thinking about starting another club. Just kidding. Sort of.
Oh yeah, I found out something interesting. Leo Saylor quit junior baseball AND young golfers without telling his dad. He would just go to the library after school until his dad came to pick him up. Sometimes he napped in the big cozy chair in the back, but he read a lot, too. Leo said he never had any time to read before, but since he quit going to baseball and golfing he’s read all of the Harry Potter books. Twice.
His dad finally busted him on Wednesday, but the really interesting part is that Hector knew about it all along! Leo told him the first day he skipped, and Hector never told anybody. There is definitely hope for that dude.
Frank did a lot of work on the Pickles Forever website, and it’s huge. There’s a message board where we can answer questions and give prank advice. You know, just in case you need any help.
Word spread pretty quickly that the five of us were behind everything. People said that they couldn’t believe that a group of sixth graders did it all. I saw Oliver autographing somebody’s missing sense of humor flyer. It’s not just Fountain Point anymore. We get messages from all over. A ninth grader in Missouri had a ghost prank where he started a rumor about a ghost haunting a specific locker that nobody was using. He misted the inside with spray bottles of milk so that there would be a “smell of evil” when it started to go bad.
We’ve even gone international! A kid in Brisbane, Australia, posted last week to thank us for the plastic-wrapped sink instructions, and he shared another idea for fake ghosts. He stacked up books in the library and left some gobs of goop on the table. Just like in that old movie, Ghostbusters. He made the goop out of cornstarch and glue. We didn’t do it, but we put it on the website and somebody else at our school did it last week. You wouldn’t believe how freaked out people can get from some books on the floor. It’s really something. Other kids at our school are doing pranks, and I have no idea who it is. It’s just fun to sit back and watch. Principal Lebonsky calls us in for questioning sometimes, but we usually have alibis for whatever happened. It’s driving her crazy. She’s tried talking to my parents about “implementing a successful character-building program” with her goofy cards, but they’re not buying it.
A seventh grader from Wisconsin posted about stuffing lockers full of Ping-Pong balls, and it’s been happening all over Fountain Point. A ninth grader in Albuquerque shared instructions to get shaving foam into somebody’s room with an envelope through a crack in the door. I came home from school on Tuesday to find a mountain of foam where my desk used to be. A couple of cans of “Forest Glen Scented” shaving cream and a yellow envelope were taped to the window on the fire escape that I keep cracked open. I’m not sure what a forest glen smells like, but my room smelled like one of those pine tree air fresheners my grandpa hangs in his car. My mom said the smell was an improvement. Hector’s room is right below mine with a window on the fire escape, so I’m pretty sure I know who was behind that little trick.
My mom did not even look grateful when I told her that I would clean it up.
So, now you know the whole story. I’ve probably said too much, but this is exactly how it all went down. Well, I left out one little thing about what happened to Hector when someone put some popping caps under the toilet seats in the boys’ bathroom.
That’s what friends are for.
Acknowledgments
Making a book takes enough people to fill a small set of bleachers. I have immeasurable gratitude for everyone who has ever supported me as a writer and/or a troublemaker. I remember each of the teachers and librarians who took the time to imprint a love of books, support my writing aspirations, and/or look beyond any trouble I may have caused to nurture the spark of productive-member-of-society potential. I am in your debt.
My family has always been reasonably patient with my shenanigans and supportive of my creative endeavors, and I love them for it.
I appreciate anyone who read drafts of Pickle and gave their constructive feedback. I received guidance and support from Peggy King Anderson, Dana Arnim, Martha Brockenbrough, Jordan Brown, Karen Chalupnik, Sara Easterly, Lisa Graff, Grace Lin, Joni Sensel, Jolie Stekly, and Laurie Thompson. And especially Jaime Temairik and Sam Baker. Without their influence, Pickle would be profoundly different. And it would stink.
Thank you to the SCBWI tribe for the wisdom, camaraderie, and resources imparted to newbies and pros alike.
Huge hugs and gratitude to my marvelous agent, Sara Crowe. I am so honored to be part of the Crowe’s Nest.
Thanks to Tim Probert for making the P.T.A. come to life. And to the whole team at Macmillan and Roaring Brook, especially my editor, Deirdre Langeland—you guys are tops. Thank you for your vision and guidance. And, you know, for making this an actual book.
I am grateful for a dream come true.
Text copyright © 2012 by Kim Baker
Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Tim Probert
Published by Roaring Brook Press
Roaring Brook Press is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
mackids.com
All rights reserved
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Baker, Kim.
PICKLE : the (formerly) anonymous prank club of Fountain Point Middle School / Kim Baker. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Using a bogus name, the League of Pickle makers, sixth-grader Ben and three recruits start a prank-pulling club and receive funding from their middle school’s PTA.
ISBN 978-1-59643-765-4 (hardcover)
[1. Practical jokes—Fiction. 2. Clubs—Fiction. 3. Middle schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.B174297Pi 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2011045402
eISBN 9781596438583
First hardcover edition, 2012
eBook edition, September 2012
Kim Baker, Pickle
