The Worst Class Trip Ever (5 page)

From there we walked to the White House, and I have to say it was pretty amazing to say we were at the White House, even though we weren’t actually going in, just walking along the big
iron fence outside it.

Gene told us that for a long time, there was no security at the White House. Regular people could just walk in off the street and see, like, Abraham Lincoln. But now there was tons of
security—bulletproof glass, motion sensors above and below the ground, lasers, Secret Service guys everywhere, snipers on the roof, even missiles in case they had to shoot down an
airplane.

“It’s basically a fortress,” Gene said. “An army couldn’t get into that building.” He said every now and then somebody climbs the fence, but they always catch
the person right away. We asked what happens to those people.

“You don’t want to know,” he said.

We walked along the gate on the Pennsylvania Avenue side and took a bunch of pictures of ourselves smiling like morons with the White House in the background, which is also what about ninety
million other tourists were doing. After a while Miss Rector said we had to get back to the bus and started herding us. We reached a corner and turned down a street that ran alongside the White
House grounds near where our bus was parked. We were kind of flowing along in a big river of tourists, and I was looking forward to getting to the bus and sitting down after all that walking. That
was all I was thinking about.

Until I saw a bald head.

It was up ahead, bobbing along in the tourist river, sticking out over the rest of the heads.

The bald head of a big guy.

I sped up, got a little closer, a little better look.

The bald guy was wearing a black T-shirt.

I did
not
want it to be the guy from the plane. I tried to convince myself that it probably wasn’t. I mean, Washington was a big city full of people. There was probably more than
one big bald guy wearing a black T-shirt. This is what I told myself.

But I wanted to make sure. I started walking faster. I got past a bunch of people, so I was maybe ten yards behind the bald guy. That’s when I saw the snakes tattooed on his arms. And the
weird little guy walking next to him.

I stopped so fast that the person behind me bumped into me, which was okay because it was Matt.

“Hey!” he said.

“Problem,” I said.

“What?”

I grabbed his arm and tugged him to the side, so he could see past the people in front of us. I pointed ahead.

“Oh, man,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“We can’t let them see us.”

“Duh.”

We slowed down and let more people go past. We were the last ones in our group now, trailing behind everybody. I could still see the bald guy’s head up ahead. He was a really big guy. We
kept as far back as we could and still see our class group. The White House was on our right now. At the end of the block the bald guy and the little guy peeled off and went to the right, toward
the gate where people were lined up for the White House tour. The two guys walked a few yards, then stopped. Which meant we were going to walk right past where they were standing.

“Uh-oh,” said Matt.

“Just keep walking.”

At that moment the two guys weren’t looking our way. They were staring at the White House. The big guy pointed at the fence and said something, and the little guy nodded. They moved closer
to the fence, studying it.

Matt and I were almost even with them now. We started walking faster.

We were even with them now.

The little guy’s head started to turn.

I looked away and walked even faster.

“Hey!”

The little guy had seen us. I looked: They were both coming after us.

Looking back, I still don’t know whether Matt and I handled it right. The smartest thing might have been to run to the front of the group and get next to Mr. Barto, Miss Rector, and Gene.
The two guys probably wouldn’t have dared try to grab us right in front of grown-ups. On the other hand, they might have told the grown-ups about Matt taking the detonator (or whatever it
was) from the little guy’s backpack, and we might have gotten in even more trouble and been sent home.

The thing is, when it happened, there wasn’t a lot of time to think. There was just these two scary weird guys coming after us looking mad.

So we ran.

We took off to the left, away from the White House, across the street, which was not brilliant because there were cars coming, but we made it to the other side okay. I looked back and saw that
the two guys were waiting for a break in traffic to get across. I also saw that the rest of our class group had reached the end of the block and was heading to where the bus was parked. Nobody had
seen Matt and me take off; we were on our own.

And now the weird guys were crossing the street.

Matt and I took off. We ran down a side street, still heading away from the White House. We got to an intersection. We looked back and saw the weird guys coming. I noticed two things, one bad
and one good. The bad was, they looked extremely mad. Like if they caught us, they would not only kill us, but also eat us.

The good news was, they were not fast runners.

We turned right and started running again. Our plan was to circle around and get back to where the bus was parked. We ran to the end of the street and turned right again. Now we were headed back
toward the White House. We crossed another street and turned left. Up ahead we could see a line of parked buses. I was praying one of them would be ours.

I looked back. The weird guys were a long ways back now.

“That’s our bus,” said Matt, pointing.

We sprinted to the bus. Everybody was already on it except Mr. Barto, who was standing next to the doorway staring at us with his arms crossed. I could tell he was about to give us a stern
lecture about how he had given us one more chance to shape up and now blah blah blah. I was pretty sure our class trip was over.

But every now and then, Matt turns out not to be a complete idiot, and this was one of those times. Before Mr. Barto could say a word, he said, “I had to go to the bathroom.”

“What?” said Mr. Barto.

“Diarrhea,” said Matt. “It was really bad. REALLY bad. I had to go behind a tree.” He waved in the general direction of the White House. “I didn’t have any
toilet paper, so Wyatt had to ask people if they had any Kleenex.”

I nodded. The loyal Kleenex-getting friend. Mr. Barto was frowning, trying to process this. I snuck a glance behind us. I didn’t see the weird guys.

“But nobody had any Kleenex,” said Matt, getting into the dramatic story of him having imaginary diarrhea. “But this one lady had a
People
magazine, so Matt brought me
that and I tore out some pages and used that. It was a feature on One Direction. You know them, Mr. Barto? One Direction? It’s like this boy band. There’s five of them, so that was like
five pages. But like I said this was a
really
messy situation, so I had to tear out another article, which was about this girl with no legs who becomes a baton twirler and tries out for her
high school—”

“Diaz!” shouted Mr. Barto.

“What?”

“Shut up and get on the bus.”

Matt gave me a look.
Mission accomplished.

“Hey!”

The shout came from behind us. Matt and I didn’t have to look to see who it was. We quickly followed Mr. Barto onto the bus, and the driver, who’d been waiting for us, shut the door.
We scurried to our seats as the bus started moving. I looked out the window, and there were the two weird guys, running after us. They were waving their arms and shouting, and their faces were
bright red. They were too far away to catch us. I sat back in my seat and whooshed the air out of my lungs. My heart was pounding and I was covered in sweat. As far as I could tell, the rest of the
kids on the bus hadn’t seen the guys chasing us.

“Pretty fast thinking, huh?” said Matt. “Diarrhea?
People
magazine? One Direction?”

“Yeah, you’re a genius. Except you’re also the reason they’re after us. Whatever that thing is you took, maybe you should just give it back to them.”

“The detonator?”

“You don’t know it’s a detonator.”

“It’s
something
, Wyatt. They want it back
bad
. Which is why we shouldn’t let them have it.”

“Why should we care?”

“Think about it. On the plane they were looking at aerial photos of the White House.”

“So? They said—”

“I know what they
said
. But they’re weird guys, and I still say that was a weird thing for them to be doing. And it’s really weird that they brought a
detonator.”

“You don’t know it’s a—”

“Just
listen
. And when we see them again, where are they? At the
White House
.”

“So?
We
were at the White House, too.”

“Right. But we were looking at the White House, because we’re tourists. They were looking at the fence. You saw them.”

I thought about it. They
had
seemed interested in the fence. “So what do you think they’re doing?”

“Scouting.”

“Scouting what?”

“I dunno. But maybe we should tell Mr. Barto.”

“Tell him what? That the two guys we accused on the plane because they seemed weird still seem weird? And they want us to give them back something that belongs to them? Which you stole
from their backpack?”

Matt thought about that. “It doesn’t sound so good, does it?”

“It sounds like a way to get us sent home.”

“So what do
you
think we should do?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Look, either they’re planning something bad, or they’re not, right?”

“Right.”

“So if they’re
not
, and they’re just weird guys, then doing nothing is the best thing, right?”

“Right.”

“And if they
are
planning something bad, and that’s why they want that thing you took, then they can’t do whatever it is, because you have the thing, and they
don’t know where you are. Right?”

“I guess.”

“So we don’t have to do anything.”

“But what if they keep looking for us?”

“How’re they going to find us? In this whole giant city?”

Matt frowned, looking like he wasn’t sure.

“They’re way back there,” I said, waving in the general direction of the back of the bus. “We’re not gonna see them again.” I hoped this was true.

Matt looked out the window. Finally he said, “Yeah, I guess not.”

We both got quiet then. Gene was back on the microphone, telling us more historic stuff about Washington. Then Mr. Barto got on and told us the schedule for the evening. Then Miss Rector got on
and told us the real schedule for the evening, because Mr. Barto had actually given us the schedule for the following evening. We were going to eat dinner at a restaurant and then go to a concert
by a military band.

By the time we got back to the Warren G. Harding I was feeling pretty good, like everything really was going to be okay. That feeling lasted until we got off the bus in front of the hotel, which
was when Matt grabbed my arm.

“What?” I said.

“That.” He pointed at the bus.

“What?” I said again.

He went closer to the bus and pointed to writing painted on the side:

Underneath there was a phone number.

“So what?” I said.

“So what if those guys call the bus company and find out where this bus went?”

“But how would they know which bus we…” I stopped, because I could already see the answer, painted on the side of the bus in big numbers:
147
.

“This is bad,” said Matt.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s say they call the bus company. They probably won’t tell them anything.”

“You don’t know that.”

I pulled out my phone. “Let’s find out.”

I dialed the bus company number. A lady’s voice said, “Shroder Transportation.”

“Hi,” I said. “I’m…uh…I’m a student on a class trip here in Washington, and I’m…uh…trying to find my bus.”

“You lost your bus?”

“Yeah, I got separated from the group. But I know the bus number. It’s 147.”

“Right now bus 147 is at the Harding Hotel.” She sounded kind of annoyed.

“Um, thanks,” I said.

“You people need to keep better track of that bus.”

Suddenly I had a bad feeling in my stomach.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I mean you’re the second person to call about it. That’s how I know off the top of my head where it is.”

“Somebody else called about bus 147?”

“Maybe ten minutes ago.”

“Who was it?”

“A man.”

“A man?”

“Said he was a teacher.”

I looked toward the hotel entrance and saw Mr. Barto and Miss Rector. They were the only Culver teachers on this trip. I started to ask the bus company lady another question. “Can you tell
me—”

But she had hung up.