The Worst Class Trip Ever (16 page)

It wasn’t rising as fast as before, and it was wobbling, but it wasn’t coming down. We were swooping across the Ellipse, with me holding on desperately, partly because I wanted to
bring down the kite, but also because I didn’t want to fall to the ground. The little guy was yelling and kicking, and I felt myself slipping down his legs, until I was barely clinging to his
ankles, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hang on much longer.

Which was when I felt somebody grab
me
. I felt a pair of arms grab my legs, and the weight of another person pulling me down. Somehow I managed to keep my grip on the little guy’s
legs. But the weight of two bodies hanging on to him was more than he could handle. Suddenly he screamed and fell out of the dragon. I guess I screamed too as the three of us crash-landed, the
little guy in front of me, and me on top of the person who tackled me.

Guess who it was?

Here’s a hint: The first thing he gasped out, after we stopped tumbling on the grass, was “Thief!”

That’s right. Despite being Raptored by Suzana,
he was still after his fare
. Of all the taxis in Washington, I had managed to get into the one being driven by the world’s most
determined lunatic. He was lying on the ground, looking pretty beat up, but he was
not
giving up.

“Where is my money?” he gasped.

“I’ll
get
you your money, okay?” I said, getting up. “Just
wait
a minute.”

At this point a bunch of things happened really fast.

First, the dragon came down. The big guy had seen me pull the little guy out of the kite, so he stopped running and brought the kite in for a landing near where the three of us fell. Then he
started running toward us.

Also running toward us were Suzana, Matt, and Victor. Behind them a bunch of people were drifting toward us, because this was probably the most exciting thing that ever happened at a kite
festival. I know I was excited. I felt like, for the first time in this whole insane class trip, I did something right. Suzana didn’t stop the Gadakistan guys.
I
did. I was feeling
good. I was thinking maybe everything was going to be okay after all; maybe I was even going to be kind of a hero. The Kid Who Saved The White House. Maybe I would even get a medal!

This was assuming the big guy didn’t kill me first. He got to us in a hurry, but ran past me and knelt down next to the little guy, who was lying in the grass, moaning. They talked in
Gadakistani, then the big guy stood up and came over to me and shouted, “You have broke his arm! His arm is broke!” His face was all red and sweaty, and he looked like he was going to
pick me up, wring my neck, and punt my lifeless body over the Washington Monument, which I think he could probably do.

“Good!” said Suzana, arriving just in time.

The big man turned to her. “Good?
Good?
Why is good?”

“Because now you can’t blow up the White House.”

The big guy stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about your kite, and the bomb you have in there.”

The big guy shook his head. “Is no bomb.”

“Then your missile. Or whatever you were planning to use.”

He was still shaking his head. “You are fools,” he said. “You are children. You do not know what you have done.”

“Well, we’ll see about that when the police get here,” said Suzana, pulling her phone out of her pocket.

“No!” said a voice. We looked over and saw Cameron running toward us, waving his arms. “Don’t call the police!”

“Why not?” she said.

“Because we had it totally wrong,” he said, puffing to a stop. “I tried to tell you on the phone but the battery died. I ran all the way here to tell you. We’re totally
wrong!”

“What are you talking about?” I said. I pointed at the two Gadakistanis. “Aren’t these guys—”

“These are the
good guys
, Wyatt! The bad guys are at the White House right now, and they’re about to kill the president!”

W
e were gathered around Cameron—me, Suzana, Matt, and Victor, all of us totally confused, along with the big guy, who looked mad. He was
still wearing a headset with a microphone. He had a miniature portable TV clipped to his belt, showing the C-SPAN broadcast of the White House press conference with the president and the Gadakistan
leader, Brevalov. The little Gadakistani guy was still lying on the ground, moaning; his headset was on the ground next to him.

The lunatic taxi driver was sitting on the ground also not looking great, having now been both Raptored
and
landed upon. He was staring at me, but for the moment not saying anything. I
think the big guy made him nervous. I wasn’t paying much attention to him, because like everybody else I was trying to follow what Cameron was saying.

What he told us was this:

After the Gadakistani guys captured him, he managed to make friends with them, and the reason—believe it or not—was Worm Wrangler, which is this phone game that has like seventeen
thousand levels and is very addictive. The Gadakistanis—whose names were Woltar (big guy) and Lemi (little guy)—had discovered Worm Wrangler on Matt’s phone. They’d never seen it
before, which tells you how backward Gadakistan must be, and they started playing it, and of course they got addicted. By the time Suzana and I rescued Matt and they captured Cameron, they were
totally obsessed with it. But they were stuck on this one level (the one where the worm is attacked by vampire snails) and it was making them crazy because they couldn’t get past it. So they
broke down and asked Cameron to help them, and fortunately he had beaten that level so he showed them what to do. They were really grateful, and that kind of broke the ice.

They told Cameron they were sorry about capturing him, and they would let him go soon, but they couldn’t risk having the police find them before they completed their mission. Cameron asked
what the mission was, and they said they were members of the Dragon Head rebel group, and they’d been sent to save the U.S. president.

“That’s what they were trying to do just now when you guys showed up,” said Cameron. “They were trying to keep the president from being assassinated.”

“Assassinated by who?” said Suzana.

“Brevalov,” said Cameron. He pointed at the little television, which was showing the press conference, with the president standing next to a guy with a beard. “Except that guy
isn’t
Brevalov. That’s a guy who had plastic surgery to look like Brevalov. He was sent here on a suicide assassination mission by the real Brevalov.”

“Why?” said Victor. “I thought Brevalov was friendly to the United States.”

“NO!” said the big guy, Woltar. “He pretends to like America, but he hates America. He is crazy. He wants to start war with America. He thinks many nations will join him.
Crazy! We try to warn America, but nobody believes us. They think
we
are enemy. So we try to stop Brevalov. But now…” He pointed at Lemi, moaning on the ground. “Is no
hope.”

“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” said Suzana.

“Suzana,” said Cameron. “These are good guys. I believe them.”

“You hardly know them!” said Suzana. “Just because they played Candy—”

“Google picture of Brevalov,” interrupted Woltar.

“Why?” asked Suzana.

“Do it.”

Suzana got out her phone and tapped the screen. A few seconds later she had an image of a bearded guy. “Okay,” she said.

“Look at ear. On right side.”

Suzana spread her fingers to zoom in on the picture. I leaned over to see. His ear looked normal to me.

“What about his ear?” said Suzana.

Woltar unclipped the portable TV and handed it to her. “Now look at this man who says he is Brevalov.”

We all looked at the screen. It took a few seconds before they showed the bearded guy, but when they did, he turned to look left, and we could see his right ear clearly.

A little piece of the ear was missing. It wasn’t much, but it was clear: There was a V-shaped notch.

“Is not Brevalov,” said Woltar. “Is assassin.”

“Oh, man,” said Matt. “And we stopped these guys from stopping the assassin. We really screwed up.”

My stomach felt like it had a hole in it, because in fact
I
was the one who’d stopped them.
Way to go, Wyatt! Way to go yet again, somehow, some way, manage to make everything
even worse.

“How’s he going to assassinate the president?” said Victor. “I mean, he couldn’t bring a gun into the White House, could he?”

“No gun,” said Woltar. “Snake.”

“What?”
said pretty much everybody at once.

“At end of press conference,” said Woltar, “assassin will give president a gift. Is ceremonial Gadakistan wooden box. Inside box is Gadakistan mountain snake, deadliest snake
in world. Very mean snake. When president opens box, it will bite him, and he will die in seconds.” He looked at the TV screen. “Soon.”

Now the hole in my stomach was the size of the Grand Canyon.

“We have to do something,” said Suzana.

“We could call the police,” said Matt.

“There’s not enough time,” said Suzana. “And they wouldn’t believe us anyway.”

“Then what?”

Suzana pointed to the dragon. “What were you going to do with the kite?” she said.

“We fly kite with Lemi inside. When kite gets near fence, Lemi pulls lever, releases rope. Then he flies kite like glider. It has special controls. He flies over fence.”

“And he has the laser jammer to keep the missiles from shooting him down,” said Victor.

“Yes,” said Woltar. “He lands kite and stops assassin.”

“Stops him how?” said Suzana.

“With throwing fork.”

“With
what?
” said Suzana and I at the same time.

“Traditional Gadakistani hunting weapon,” said Woltar. He went over to Lemi, the little guy, who was sitting up now, but still obviously in pain. Woltar leaned over and gently pulled
something out of Lemi’s waistband and brought it back to us. It was a heavy-looking fork with two prongs and a long handle.

“You
hunt
with that thing?” said Matt.

Woltar nodded. “Very deadly. Also efficient. Kill prey with it, then
eat
prey with it.”

“So your friend”—Suzana pointed at Lemi—“was going to throw the fork at the fake Brevalov before he could release the snake on the president.”

Woltar nodded. “Lemi is expert fork thrower. Was good plan.” He shook his head. “No good now.”

Everybody was quiet for a few seconds.

“No,” said Suzana. “It’s still a good plan. I’ll fly the dragon.”

Of
course
Suzana would volunteer to fly the dragon.

But Woltar was shaking his head again.

“No,” he said. “You are too heavy. Weight makes dragon unstable. Must be somebody same weight as Lemi. Like him.”

Woltar was pointing at me.

Suzana was looking at me.

They
all
were looking at me.

Here’s the thing. I don’t know how to fly a glider. I don’t even like heights. I’ve thrown up on several roller coasters. Also, in case you haven’t already figured
it out, I am not the bravest person in the world. So I knew I was totally one hundred percent unqualified for this mission. It would be a disaster. The only intelligent thing for me to do was tell
these people staring at me that I could not fly the dragon.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll fly the dragon.”

E
verything happened really fast. Woltar picked up Lemi’s headset and put it on me. Then he lifted up the dragon and told me to get under it.
It had an aluminum frame that formed a little cockpit. There were handles on the sides for holding on to the kite during the running takeoff, and a little seat to hop on when it (yikes!) left the
ground. In front of me was a small windshield and the glider controls, which consisted of two levers and a red handle.

Woltar squatted on the ground and ducked his head (which is all of him that would fit) into the cockpit. He pointed to the red handle and said, “When I tell you, pull this to release
rope.” Then he pointed to the levers and said, “Pull left one, turn left. Pull right one, turn right.”