The Worst Class Trip Ever (13 page)

I can’t tell you much about the other animals we saw. I was too tired, and too worried about what might happen, to pay attention. I stumbled around the exhibits like a zombie. When it was
finally time for lunch we sat at some picnic tables and they handed out the box lunches, which contained something called “veggie wraps.” They looked like some kind of poisonous sea
creature that attaches itself to an underwater rock with suckers.

After we finished mostly not eating our box lunches, it was time to get back on the bus. We rode to Capitol Hill and parked near a bunch of other buses. Then we walked to the Capitol and got on
a long line to go through security. Suzana, Victor, Matt, and I stood together so we could figure out our plan, by which I mean so we could listen to Suzana tell us our plan.

“Okay,” she said. “We’ll do what we did in the Smithsonian museum.”

“I wasn’t there,” said Matt. “What’d we do?”

“We hung back at the end of the group,” said Suzana. “Then when the group went around a corner, we took off.”

“And that worked?”

“Yup.”

“How do we get to the Ellipse?” said Victor.

“We’ll take a taxi,” said Suzana. “I have money.”

So that was our plan.

The security line inched forward until finally we got into the visitors center, where we watched a movie about how historic the Capitol is. I kept looking at Suzana to see if it was time to
escape, but she kept shaking her head, and she was right. The group was too clumped together for us to get away.

After the movie we got an official guide, who led us up some stairs into the Rotunda, which is the inside of the big dome of the Capitol. It’s really big, and according to the guide many
historical things happened there. I realize I’m sounding pretty stupid here, but that’s basically all I can remember. I kept looking at Suzana, and she kept shaking her head. We
couldn’t move to the end of the line because the whole group was still more of a clump than a line. Plus every time I turned around, Mr. Barto seemed to be there.

From the Rotunda we went into Statuary Hall, which is a big room with a bunch of statues of famous dead historical people. When the guide started giving her talk, Suzana motioned for me, Victor,
and Matt to come over to her.

“This is the last stop on the tour,” she whispered. “We have to go now.”

“How?” I said.

She looked around. “One at a time. Go back the way we came in. We’ll meet in the visitors center and go back out from there.”

Matt started to ask a question, but Mr. Barto was giving us the eyeball.

“I’ll go first,” whispered Suzana. “Then Wyatt, Victor, and Matt.” She turned away, pretending to listen to the guide telling us about the statues. She also started
drifting to the outside of the clump. A minute later a big tour group came by, and as they passed Suzana detached from our clump and let herself get absorbed into theirs. In another minute she was
on the other side of Statuary Hall, on her way back toward the Rotunda.

My turn. I decided to do what Suzana did, and it worked. I slid into a passing group and slid out the other side. I walked quickly to toward the Rotunda, kind of hunched over, expecting any
second to hear Mr. Barto yell my name. But nothing happened, and in a couple of minutes I was back downstairs in the visitors center, where Suzana was waiting. Victor was there a minute or two
later, and then Matt.

We were off the class trip now. Outlaws.

We left the visitors center and headed for a major-looking street in the distance, figuring we could get a taxi there. We passed a couple of Capitol police officers, but they didn’t pay
any attention to us outlaws. To them we were just four kids on a class trip. They’d seen a million like us.

The street turned out to be called Independence Avenue. It was pretty busy. None of us—not even Suzana—had ever actually hailed a taxi before. We stood on the sidewalk and kind of
waved our arms randomly at every taxi we saw, but none of them stopped. Sometimes this was because the taxi already had a passenger; sometimes I think it was because the driver didn’t want to
stop for a bunch of obviously clueless kids making random arm movements.

Finally a taxi pulled over and we piled in, all four of us in the back. The driver didn’t look thrilled.

“We want to go to the Ellipse, please,” said Suzana. “Near the White House.”

“You have money?” said the driver.

“Yes,” said Suzana.

The driver looked like he was hesitating, then he put the taxi in gear and started moving.

Then we heard shouting.

Then a crazy person jumped in front of the taxi, yelling at the driver to stop. The driver shouted something in a foreign language and jammed on the brakes, or else he would have hit the crazy
person.

The crazy person was Mr. Barto.

He must have seen us sneaking away. His face was red and sweaty. He looked like his head was going to explode.

“Oh, no,” said Victor.

Mr. Barto ran around the left side of the taxi and yanked open the back door.

“GET OUT OF THAT TAXI!” he yelled. “NOW!!”

He reached in and grabbed the closest person, which happened to be Matt, and yanked him onto the sidewalk.

“OUT!!” he shouted again. “GET OUT!!!”

Victor, Suzana, and I scrambled out of the backseat. The taxi driver was yelling something about money. Mr. Barto yelled something back about calling the police. The driver made a really
unfriendly gesture and shouted something in a foreign language, which I doubt was a compliment, then stomped on the gas and roared away.

Mr. Barto turned his red face to us, the four runaways, and said, “JUST WHERE DID YOU THINK YOU WERE GOING?”

We all looked at each other. Nobody, not even Suzana, knew what to say.

“I WANT AN ANSWER RIGHT NOW!!”

We looked at each other some more, and then Matt said, “Back to the hotel?” Which, give him credit, was not a bad lie to come up with on short notice, especially for an idiot like
Matt.

“That’s right,” said Suzana, picking up on it. “I wasn’t feeling well, so I asked these guys to take me back to the hotel.”

“Really,” said Mr. Barto.

Matt, Victor, and I nodded hard, like bobbleheads in an earthquake. Suzana made the same helpless-girl face that she used on Mr. Barto when she was pretending she couldn’t open the bus
window.

This time it didn’t work.

“All right,” he said to Suzana. “You want to go back to the hotel, you’ll go back to the hotel. And you’ll
stay
in the hotel for the rest of the day.
You’re grounded.” He pointed to Victor. “You’re grounded, too.”

Then he turned to Matt and me.

“I already warned you two, at the airport,” he said. “You had your chance. You’re off the trip.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I mean you’re going home.
Now
.”

I
stood there with my mouth hanging open like an unusually stupid fish, staring at Mr. Barto, telling myself
Do NOT cry in front of Suzana
Delgado
.

If I got sent home my parents would kill me. Especially my mom. She would kill me, then she would rush me to the hospital so the doctors could miraculously bring me back to life, and then she
would kill me
again
.

Not to mention the problem of the two weird guys who were holding Cameron prisoner and planning to blow up the White House.

I couldn’t get sent home. I just couldn’t.

“I can’t,” I said.

“You can’t what?” said Mr. Barto.

“I can’t go home,” I said.

“You don’t have a choice.”

I looked at Suzana and said, “We have to tell him.”

She nodded.

“Tell me what?” said Mr. Barto.

So we told him everything—about the two weird Gadakistan guys, and how Matt took their laser jammer, and how they came to the hotel and took Matt, and how they got their laser jammer back
at the Boy Scout statue, and how we went to their house and got Matt out but they got Cameron, and how we saw the giant dragon kite and figured out what the weird guys planned to do, and when.

While we were talking, the rest of the class trip came out of the Capitol. Miss Rector came over and joined our little group; the rest of them stood a couple of yards away from us and pretended
they weren’t eavesdropping, although of course they were. Nobody knew exactly what was going on, but it was obvious that we had done something seriously wrong, so everybody was pretty
excited; there’s no entertainment like the entertainment of watching somebody else get in trouble.

Mr. Barto and Miss Rector listened to our whole story without saying a word. When we were done, Suzana said, “So we need to go to the Ellipse and stop those guys, and we might not have a
lot of time. But we can’t go to the police, at least not yet, because they said they’d hurt Cameron.”

Mr. Barto and Miss Rector looked at each other.

“Miss Rector,” said Mr. Barto, “what do you think of their story?”

Miss Rector looked at us, and I could see the disappointment on her face. “I think it’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.”

Mr. Barto nodded. “Me, too.”

“No!” said Suzana. “It’s all true!”

“Really!” I said. “Those guys—”

“QUIET,” said Mr. Barto. “I don’t want to hear any more about that from any of you. It’s bad enough that by sneaking off you could have ruined this whole trip for
everybody else. I won’t have you insult my and Miss Rector’s intelligence with this unbelievable story about mysterious men and their giant attack kite.”

Miss Rector was looking around, frowning. “One thing they said was true,” she said. “We
are
missing Cameron Frank.”

Mr. Barto looked at us. “Where is he? Did he go back to the hotel?”

“We
told
you,” I said. “The two Gadakistan guys have him.”

He glared at me. “Covering for your friend is only going to make it worse.”

“I’m not covering for him! It’s the truth.”

He shook his head, then turned to Miss Rector. “Obviously we need to locate Cameron. I’ll notify the Capitol police, but I have a feeling he probably went back to the hotel. Until we
find him, I’m canceling the rest of the day’s activities.”

This announcement brought loud groans from the rest of the group. The four of us were no longer a source of entertainment; we were now officially The Kids Who Wrecked It For Everybody. Mr. Barto
pointed at Suzana and Victor and said, “When we get to the hotel, you two will go to your rooms and stay there. You two”—he pointed at Matt and me—“will pack your
suitcases. I’ll be taking you to the airport personally.”

“Please, Mr. Barto,
please
,” I said. “I know it sounds crazy but it’s all true, and unless we—”

“QUIET,” said Mr. Barto. “I will not stand here and have my intelligence insulted any more by your ridiculous lies.” He turned to the rest of the group. “All right,
everybody back to the bus.”

Everybody started trudging toward the bus. Suzana, Victor, Matt, and I walked in front, feeling the angry glares from everybody else burning into our backs. It had to be the worst feeling I ever
had. The weird thing was, the day had turned really nice—bright sunshine, but not too warm, and with the breeze still blowing strong and steady.

A perfect day for flying a kite.

“...
and in all my twenty-seven years of teaching,” Mr. Barto was saying, “I have never seen
anything
as blah blah blah as
the idiotic stunt you pulled, and now thanks to your incredibly irresponsible blah blah blah you have jeopardized the blah blah blah.”

We were in a taxi on the way to the airport, me and Matt slumped in the back seat, Mr. Barto in the front seat reaming us out pretty much nonstop since we left the hotel. I was tuning him out
because (a) he was repeating basically the same thing—namely that we were idiots—over and over, and (b) I was busy answering texts from Suzana. She and Victor were in their hotel rooms
with a chaperone guarding the hallway, but Suzana, naturally, didn’t plan to stay there, which led to this conversation between her and me: