Pickle Read online

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  To Jack and Molly. And to mischief makers everywhere. This one’s for you.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  1. Top Secret

  2. The Balls

  3. In the Morning

  4. Character Building

  5. The Stink of Room 121

  6. The List

  7. An Invitation

  8. The Meeting

  9. A Side of Bean

  10. A Cryptic Message

  11. The Club

  12. Service with a Smile

  13. A Twist in the Plot that Could Not Have Been Foreseen

  14. The First (or Second) Prank

  15. Bubbles

  16. Bolted

  17. My Plan

  18. Sienna’s Surprise

  19. Reward

  20. Suspects

  21. Banana Bread Bribery

  22. A Club with No Name

  23. Check-In

  24. Trick #3

  25. The Fog

  26. Emergency Democracy

  27. Nobody Expects the Pickle Inquisition

  28. The Invisible Barrier

  29. A Visitor

  30. Principal Pickles

  31. We Pickle

  32. El Matador

  33. Bad Eggs

  34. Sitting Fine on the Good Laws of Finland

  35. Zoo Break

  36. The Next Twenty Minutes

  37. Just a Second

  38. Extreme Volleyball

  39. Emergency Meeting

  40. The Day Before

  41. Pioneer Preparations

  42. The Fair

  43. No Blue Ribbon

  44. Another Announcement

  45. A New Pickle

  46. Getting the Word Out

  47. Waiting

  48. We Assemble

  49. The Jig Is Up

  50. Repercussions

  50½. You Can Call It an Epilogue If You Want

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  1

  Top Secret

  Can I trust you? I mean, to tell you this story I need to know that you can keep a couple of secrets. I’m already in a whole lot of trouble, and it’s not just me. But I want to tell you everything that happened. Everything. I’ll assume that you can keep the important stuff secret and not pass this book on to anyone older than twenty. I’ve been paying attention, and I’m pretty sure that’s when a person’s sense of humor starts leaking out. If somebody is that old, this isn’t their kind of story, anyway.

  I’m talking about the League of Pickle Makers. Can you think of a club a person would be less curious about? That’s the point. Five of us meet on Thursdays, after school in the science lab. You’d expect somebody would think it was fishy that a group of kids are excited enough about making pickles to meet every week. On meeting days we take turns making a show out of carrying around some vinegar or a sack of cucumbers. We even have a website. Check it out—www.picklesforever.com. Click on the “Fizzy Pickle Soup” recipe, and then click on the word “simmer” down at the bottom. The password is “cheese.”

  Now you know we’re not really an organization of picklers. Honestly, I don’t even like pickles that much. Only a few people know how it all started. Us—and if you think you can handle it—you.

  2

  The Balls

  One day after school, I looked through the online classifieds while I waited for my best friend, Hector, to get back from shoe shopping with his grandma. Finn Romo had told Hector and me that he found a practically new skate ramp in the free classifieds the week before. Someone just gave it away. I didn’t believe him, so I walked over to his house to check it out. It wasn’t that big, but it still took up the whole yard. The plywood wasn’t even scuffed. Hector and I live in the same apartment building. We don’t have a yard, so a ramp wouldn’t work, but I wanted to see what other stuff people were just giving away. There were some cool things. Somebody was trying to get rid of a ferret named Bill, and someone else was giving away a unicycle with a sparkly red seat. I thought about emailing them, but something else caught my eye. Pete’s Pizza, the local pizza place with all the games and stuff, had a post for free ball-pit balls for anyone who would come pick them up. The post said the balls were free “as is.” I dropped a blue raspberry slushy in the ball pit at Pete’s when I was five, and I know Katie McLeod’s little brother puked in there at his birthday party, so I had a pretty good idea what “as is” meant. Still, free!

  Hector had been flaking out a lot lately, so there was only a fifty/fifty chance he’d even want to hang out when he got back to our building. I called the pizza parlor. The guy who answered said the balls would go to the first person who came and got them. So I grabbed a couple of black trash bags and ran down to Pete’s Pizza like my butt was on fire.

  For future reference, there are more than two bags of balls in a ball pit. A lot more. It smelled funky, but I still took a few bag-filling breaks to jump around and do some belly flops. Pete asked me how long I was going to take, so I filled up the second bag, ran home, and stashed them in my bedroom. I grabbed a box of garbage bags on my way out and made six more trips. I’m not going to lie: the closer I got to the bottom, the dirtier the balls got. I found a purple earring, two different sets of keys, three half-eaten lollipops, more than a few pizza crusts, and a copy of A Cricket in Times Square with a ripped cover.

  I think Pete was getting pretty tired of me carrying bags of stinky balls out of his pizza parlor, because he said I could use the safety nets around the pit to haul the rest of the balls. After I scooped out the very last ball, Pete gave me some free pizza, like I’d done him a favor.

  It was a really big pit. My bedroom was full after the first twelve bags, so I left the nets in the living room.

  I didn’t really have a plan for what I would do with the balls, so I figured I’d watch some TV until Hector got back. My dad came home just as Best Bloopers ended, and the first thing he said was “What’s that smell, Ben?”

  I told him about the major free ball score, but he didn’t share my enthusiasm.

  “You can’t keep them here” was the second thing he said. Did I mention that my dad is over twenty, and therefore has sprung a humor leak? He walked around the apartment opening windows. “Get rid of them. It smells like a Parmesan cheese factory in here.”

  “I think they smell like feet.”

  “Parmesan cheese smells like feet,” he said. He was right. But I didn’t think I could take the balls back to Pete. I had eaten the pizza already, so it felt like a done deal. He might not be happy to see me back, and Pete’s a big guy.

  “You can’t keep them here. Comprendes?” My dad said. When he starts out in English and ends in Spanish, he means business.

  I thought about just dumping the balls straight out of our living room window so they would roll down the street. We live on a pretty big hill, and a million balls bouncing and rolling away would be something to see.

  But it would be less than awesome to clean up the balls, or have cars crash when they got pummeled with giant colored hail. The police might not like it, and I’m pretty sure Pete would rat me out if they started asking questions. For a guy who runs a pizza place with video games and stuff, he doesn’t seem crazy about kids. I got a jolt like I had slammed an energy drink and I knew what I could do.

  “I’ll take care of it,” I said, and headed the six blocks back to school.
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  The school was still open for clubs. Hector and his grandma were in the front hall talking to Leo Saylor and his dad. Hector held a bag from the Shoe Station. I couldn’t see what kind of shoes were in the bag, but I could guess. Hector’s grandma usually picks his shoes out. They never have shoelaces, because she doesn’t want him to trip. They usually have Velcro straps, and thick heavy soles that are supposed to keep his spine straight, or something.

  I ducked behind the big fountain in front so they wouldn’t see me. I was on a mission.

  Hector’s grandma is the principal, which is why Hector always stays out of trouble. I thought about getting his attention and filling him in about my ball plan, but I knew what his reaction would be. He looks like a tough guy, but having the principal for a grandma has done something to his nerves.

  Our homeroom is around the back on the first floor, so it was easy to scope out. It was empty, and the windows were open. Perfect.

  I went straight back to my apartment for the bags. My dad was watching a movie in the living room, so I dropped them off of the fire escape as quietly as I could. If I wasn’t gone by the time the movie finished, he would ask where I was taking them. I heard the end music just as I climbed out of the window. I carried the bags back down the hill to our school and stashed them in the bushes under the windows. Then I ran back for more.

  I was on the last trip, carrying one of the big nets full of balls over my shoulder when I smacked into Leo’s dad, coming out of the school. Mr. Saylor is huge, so I almost dropped the balls all over the sidewalk. He talks a lot about how he played football and water polo in college, and I believe it. Leo is in soccer, junior baseball, young golfers, wrestling, and basketball. He falls asleep in class sometimes.

  I started to fall, but Mr. Saylor grabbed my shoulder. It was dark out by then, so I hoped he wouldn’t be able to see well enough to recognize my face. I thought about running away, but Mr. Saylor held on to my shoulder with he-man strength.

  “Easy, Ben,” he said. So much for nonrecognition. He smiled at me and glanced down. “Some sort of game tonight?” In the dark, the net just looked like an equipment bag.

  “Yeah. Game,” I said. I held my breath and waited for him to ask what sport Leo wasn’t playing yet.

  “GO BEAVERS!” he shouted, and walked past me down the sidewalk.

  I ran back to the classroom window and started throwing balls in like I was warming up for the mound. I might play more sports if they were as exciting as this. It gave me goose bumps, and I may or may not have been laughing like a lunatic all by myself.

  I could have stayed there all night, throwing them in one by one, but I had to get back home before my dad freaked out. I poured the rest of the bags through the opening, and then it was done. I shut the window so everyone would be more confused about where the balls came from, but the smell sticking to my hands was already grossing me out. I didn’t want to sit in a class that smelled like that tomorrow, so I reopened it. I couldn’t see into the classroom very well, but it looked like the balls were pretty deep. I just stood there taking it in until I heard footsteps. I ducked into the bushes and Leo and Hector walked by. I worried that they had heard me giggling to myself and would investigate, but they didn’t. I stayed hidden until I heard the gym door slam and the night was quiet again.

  3

  In the Morning

  I woke up about ten times that night to check the clock. It felt like the balls were bouncing around in my stomach, but in a good way. I got dressed before my mom finished making her morning coffee and went downstairs to grab Hector. He sat waiting for me in the hall outside of his apartment, with his breakfast on a paper towel in his lap. Hector had been on the dried fruit and protein bar train for a while. He held a brown rectangle out to me.

  “It’s a date bar. My grandma made them. Want one?” he said. I took half of one and jogged down the sidewalk. “Dude, why are you going so fast? We’re going to be early.”

  “I’m just in a good mood,” I said.

  “I was in a good mood until I tasted this date bar. Yech.” He shook his head. I nibbled the corner off of mine. It tasted like peas, even though I couldn’t see any green stuff in there. We stopped at the bodega for pan dulce and orange juice to wash the taste out of our mouths.

  “Come on, Hector!” I held the door open, but he’d stopped to check the baseball scores in the paper.

  “What’s the hurry?”

  “I just don’t want to be late,” I said. He looked at me like I was crazy, but he put the paper down and followed me out. I tried not to walk too fast, but it was hard.

  Ms. Ruiz keeps the classroom locked, and she doesn’t come to open the door until the bell rings. I bounced from foot to foot while we waited in the hall and Hector talked about some shark show he’d seen on TV. I spotted Ms. Ruiz down the hall. She seemed to be dragging her feet even more than usual. There are posters up all over our room saying things like “Excellence Through Determination!” with marathon runners and rock climbers, but the posters are the only enthusiastic thing I have ever seen about Ms. Ruiz. I could have crawled to the classroom faster than she walked.

  The bell rang just as she finally stopped in front of the classroom door. It’s like she timed it precisely so she wouldn’t have to get there a second too soon. She opened the door, and a couple of the people closest to the front of the crowd gasped. Everybody got quiet, beholding the awesomeness. The balls sat in a pile three feet high under the windows. They were spread across the floor, under desks, all the way to the other wall. The open windows hadn’t done much for the stench.

  “It’s like one of those ball crawls!” Hector said. I raised my eyebrows and made my eyes big, which hopefully looked like surprise. Then everybody was pushing into the room at once and the smell didn’t stop anybody from diving in. We jumped around like a bunch of sugared-up four-year-olds. A few kids ran around kicking balls. Frank Lenny grabbed a couple of balls and started juggling.

  Finn yelled, “Ball fight!” And then it got really crazy. Balls were flying everywhere. Maggie Rubio did a belly flop and hit her head on the math center. Bean Lee pulled her camera out and started filming a video. I whacked Hector in the stomach with a dented green ball.

  “Cut it out! That hurt,” he said. He rubbed his stomach with one hand and threw a ball at Bean Lee with the other. I know I didn’t hit him that hard, but I apologized anyway. I definitely did not hit him as hard as he hit me in the eye a minute later. He didn’t say he was sorry, he just laughed.

  Ms. Ruiz called someone on the phone, and I tried to read her lips to see if it was Principal Lebonsky. I’d passed her in the hall on the way into class, and she did not look particularly happy. Not that she ever did. Even when she was smiling it was more like she was just showing her teeth. Frank grabbed three more balls and tried to juggle five at once. Ms. Ruiz hung up and yelled, “Everybody just calm down.” She watched Oliver Swanson lie down on his stomach and pretend to swim through the balls across the room. Then she gave up and sat down at her desk. I kind of wanted her to freak out a little bit more, but I guess freaking out is not her style. A ball landed smack in her coffee and she pulled it out and chucked it back onto the floor. Then she yawned and took a drink. Yuck.

  I ducked a flying red ball and kept an eye on the door. I was waiting for Principal Lebonsky, but Rick the janitor opened it. Rick came in, muttered something that sounded like “Sweet cheeses,” and left. He came back with a box of trash bags and handed one to each kid without a word.

  “Come on, man! Just let us have a few more minutes,” Oliver said.

  “Why don’t we ask Principal Lebonsky if she thinks you should have a couple more minutes,” Rick said. We started scooping, even though I think he was bluffing. He didn’t want to talk to her any more than anybody else. I’ve seen the look on his face after she’s told him to clean the toilets.

  Even scooping up the balls was fun. Everybody got into the cleaning. Except Maggie. She played the head-injury card and
sat down at her desk while the rest of us scooped. Ms. Ruiz said she had to go back to the teacher’s lounge for a few minutes. Kids tried to throw balls into other kids’ bags across the room until Rick said to cut it out.

  “Did you do this?” I asked everyone, just in case anyone suspected that it had been me. I made a let-me-in-on-the-joke face. The other kids wanted to know how the balls got there, but nobody had a clue. By the time Ms. Ruiz got back with a new mug of coffee, the leading theory was that some seventh- or eighth-grade criminal mastermind was behind the whole thing. I just nodded and tried to keep all the happy I was feeling on the inside.

  We set the bags of balls out in the hallway for Rick, and Ms. Ruiz started a lecture on Greek myths. I drew balls and stars in my notebook while she wrote names of Greek gods and goddesses on the whiteboard. Then I passed Hector a note.

  THAT WAS AWESOME!!!

  He nodded and tucked the paper into his notebook. Then he got it back out and scribbled something down on it.

  I wonder what’s going to happen next.

  4

  Character Building

  “We should try something like that,” I said when Hector and I were alone on the way home after school.

  “Like what?”

  “The balls. Something fun.” Hector picked up a crumpled soda can and threw it into a trash can fifteen feet ahead of us. It didn’t even touch the side. Usually when he makes a great shot, he’ll make a whoop, or a fist pump or something. He just put his hands in his pockets and kept walking.

  “Nah. I can’t.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Because, dude. Whoever put the balls in there is going to get into trouble. My grandma heard about it from Rick. She asked if I knew who started it, and if I ‘participated in the foolery.’”

  Hector made quote marks with his fingers, but I would have already guessed that those were Principal Lebonsky’s words, and not his.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I said I didn’t know who put them there, and I didn’t throw any.”