CHAPTER 13

AFTER MATH

Here’s the good thing: once we got over that wall, nobody came chasing after us. I biked home without any other problem. My friends were all waiting on the island, where Jack explained what had happened.

My friends had unwrapped Wilt. He thought they were all dads and ran away yelling for his mom. I couldn’t believe it. We had done it! When I returned home, I was pretty scratched up and messy, but my parents didn’t question me about it. They just thought I had been staring at the moon.

At school the next day Wilt avoided all of us. In fact, he went out of his way to make sure no one saw him.

The news of what we had done traveled around the school like the wind. People I didn’t even know started coming up to me in the halls and thanking me for whatever I had done to Wilt. It was like we had blown up the Death Star of bullies and now we were free.

As I walked out of my math class, I was stopped by Principal Smelt.

I know from experience that every time Principal Smelt wants to have a word with me, it’s usually bad. Not that he’s a mean principal; in fact, he’s pretty interesting and very nice. Also, he plays the pan flute in what he calls a …

His progressive rock group is actually just him and some other old guy singing about things they think kids need or like. Their group is called Leftover Angst, and they perform at every assembly and school event we have. They write their own embarrassing songs. A couple of months ago, after a kid came to school with lice, they wrote a song about it and called a special assembly.

Principal Smelt cleared his throat and smiled. He then tugged at his mustache, which meant that he had good news. Of course, his version of good news was a lot different from mine. A couple of days ago, he had told me …

Like I said, he and I view good news differently. Today Principal Smelt told me that his progressive rock group had been invited to perform at the Average Chef tryouts tomorrow. I tried to look happy, but suddenly the tryouts didn’t seem as cool as they once had. He told me how proud he was of me for being brave enough to, as he put it, “give it a go.” He then added that he couldn’t cheer for my team any louder than he could cheer for Janae’s. He insisted that he needed to be an impartial cheerer and that, as principal of Softrock Middle School, he was required to like us all equally.

Principal Smelt had pulled out the gender sticks that he used when talking about the differences between boys and girls. The bell rang for my next class, but he just kept talking. He went on and on about how girls are important and began listing some of the things he thought women had invented.

Then, to be fair, he listed a few things that men might have invented. He didn’t really have any idea what he was talking about, so he just went with things that sounded right.

I thanked him for the information and told him that I should probably get to class before I was marked tardy. I tried to pull away, but he had one last thing to say.

I just stood there in shock as Principal Smelt patted me on the back and went on and on about brotherhood. He felt I should include Tuffin in my cooking tryout because things like wars and hatred were caused by brothers not getting along.

I broke free and took off to class. I couldn’t believe my mom had called my principal. There was no way I was going to include Tuffin now.

Before reaching my class, I ran into someone much prettier than Principal Smelt—Janae.

Janae was walking down the hall by herself. I thought it was a sign of how perfect we were for each other, us both being late to our classes. I could even see us as an old couple talking about it.

Or maybe she was late because the vice principal had pulled her aside and told her she needed to include her sister in the tryouts. We both stopped a few feet away from each other. I knew I was supposed to be mad, and strong, and driven by the competition coming up, but Janae still made me weak in the neck.

I don’t know why she made my whole body stop working. The two of us had known each other since we were little kids. We had even been through things like Imagination Camp together.

Ever since I had won the dramatic poetry contest, she had been extra nice to me at school. But now Average Chef was making everything more uncomfortable than ever. The whole reason I had wanted to try out was because I thought it would make Janae like me more. That was before I put my foot in my mouth and told her we would win.

Janae asked me if I was ready for the tryouts tomorrow, and in true nervous fashion, I replied …

My face turned bright red, and Janae looked like I had just stepped down hard on her toes. I had no idea how to talk to girls. I was going to take off running, but she had something else to say.

I tried to move my lips to speak, but they just sort of flopped open and closed. Not only did I say dumb things like “yeppy smeppy,” my mom was calling Janae and bothering her. Janae shook her head and walked off.

By the time I got to science, I was double tardy, and feeling triple dumb.

Right before bed that night, Libby came into my room to announce that she was going to sleep, so everyone needed to be extra quiet. I was playing Yo Mama with Hairy, which is just like Old Maid, but instead of calling the lady the Old Maid we call her Yo Mama.

I didn’t have a chance to hide Hairy before Libby barged in. She saw him on my floor holding cards, and gasped. Hairy just froze.

I pushed Libby out of my room and then tried to calm Hairy down. He thought she was out of line telling people lies like that.

He finally cooled off and we finished our card game. We then spent the rest of the night reading cookbooks and trying to prepare for tomorrow.