h ap te r

N one of this stuff would have happened if I hadn’t

been sitting next to Matthew Diaz.
Don’t get me wrong: Matt is my best friend. But he can
be an idiot. But when we were in kindergarten, pretty much
all the boys were idiots, so he didn’t stand out so much, and
we became best friends. So now, even though we’re in eighth
grade, and he’s sometimes unbelievably annoying, I’m kind
of stuck with him.
That’s why I ended up sitting next to him on the plane
on the class trip. I think about that sometimes. If I’d been
sitting anywhere else, I would have had a normal class

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trip, and none of this insane mess would have happened.

On the other hand, when I think about what could
have happened if I hadn’t been sitting next to Matt on that
flight . . .
Okay, I guess this is starting to sound pretty mysterious.
Let me start at the beginning:
My name is Wyatt Palmer. I’m an eighth grader at Culver
Middle School in Miami. I know a lot of people think
Miami is a weird place, but it’s my home, so I’m used to the
kind of things that happen there that don’t happen in normal
places.
Like there was this incident that happened about six
months ago when my dad went outside to get the Miami
Herald off our lawn. My dad likes to read the sports section
while he has his coffee so he can complain about how much
the Dolphins suck. So first thing every morning, he goes
outside and gets the paper off the lawn.
For years he did this wearing only his boxers. My mom
hated this. She was always telling my dad to at least put on
a bathrobe, because what if somebody saw him. My dad said
nobody’s going to be out there at six thirty a.m., and besides
wearing boxer shorts is the same as wearing a bathing
suit. This is not really true, especially if you saw my dad’s
bedtime boxers, which have like zero elastic and a lot of
holes and according to my mom are held together mainly by

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stains. A couple of times, she threw them away, but my dad

went and got them out of the trash. He’s very loyal to his
boxers.
So anyway, this particular morning my dad went outside
as usual to get the paper, and as usual our dog, Csonka, stood
in the doorway to watch him. Csonka likes to keep an eye on
things, but he knows he’s not allowed to go outside without a
leash. Anyway, my dad was out there, bending over to pick up
the newspaper—trust me, you do not want to see that—and
all of a sudden Csonka started barking like crazy. My dad
jumped up and turned around, and he was about to yell at
Csonka to shut up, when all of a sudden he saw what Csonka
was barking at.
An alligator.
We live near a canal. There are canals all over Miami, and
they connect to the Everglades, which means if you live here,
you basically live in a swamp. I mean, we have houses and
roads and shopping centers and stuff, but it’s all built on top
of a swamp, and as far as the swamp animals are concerned,
it’s still a swamp, and it’s still theirs. It’s normal for us to see
snakes in our yards, and lizards, and all kinds of frogs, and
big tall wading birds, and even crabs in some neighborhoods.
And every now and then an alligator shows up.
This particular alligator, which was not a small alliga-
tor, was on our lawn maybe ten feet from our front walkway,

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

which means my dad went right past without seeing it on his

way to the newspaper. But he definitely saw it when Csonka
started barking. And no way was he going to try to walk past
it again.
He started yelling “Rosa! Rosa!” calling my mom. She
and my sister, Taylor, and I all went running to the door to
see what was going on. My dad was out on the sidewalk,
holding up his boxers with one hand and using the other
one to point the Miami Herald at the alligator, like it was a
weapon or something. My mom screamed, and so did Taylor,
and maybe I also made an unmanly noise, because it really
was a pretty major alligator.
“CALL 911!” shouted my dad. “HURRY!”
“Okay!” said my mom, running to the kitchen.
By now Csonka was really going crazy barking. He was
also out of the house, which was a violation of the leash rule,
but I guess he figured he was protecting my dad. What he
was really doing was upsetting the alligator, which started
to move forward in that slow way alligators walk. I think
it was going for Csonka, but it was moving kind of in the
direction of Taylor and me, so my father came running down
the walk, waving the Miami Herald toward the alligator and
going, “Shoo! Get away!”
That was definitely the bravest thing I ever saw my
dad do, but it did not impress the alligator. What it did was

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make the alligator turn more in the direction of my dad, who

turned right around and went sprinting back toward the
sidewalk.
“RUN IN A ZIGZAG PATTERN!” shouted Taylor.
The reason she shouted that was, in Florida, some people
believe alligators can only run in a straight line, so they tell
kids that if a gator is chasing them, they should run in a zig-
zag pattern. But it’s a myth. In fifth grade my science teacher,
Mrs. Buntz, showed us a video of an alligator chasing a dead
chicken being dragged by a guy in a zigzag pattern, and the
gator had no trouble following it. Mrs. Buntz said you should
run in a straight line.
“THAT’S A MYTH!” I
shouted to my dad. “RUN IN
A STRAIGHT LINE!”
“Are you trying to
kill him?” yelled Taylor,
punching my arm. She’s
in sixth grade and very
dramatic.
The truth was,
my dad couldn’t hear
either of us, because
of Csonka’s barking,
which was getting

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

even louder. The alligator was now standing right on the

walkway, and Csonka was getting pretty close to it, which
was not good because alligators, besides being able to zigzag,
can also move really fast when they want to. The one in Mrs.
Buntz’s video caught the chicken and almost caught the guy
dragging it.
The police came pretty fast, three cars in like two min-
utes. They stopped in the street in front of our house with
their lights flashing. All the neighbors came out of their
houses to see what was going on. Also people on their way to
work were stopping their cars to watch.
The police got out of their cars but didn’t get too close to
the alligator, which was still watching Csonka, who was still
barking. So everybody just stood around for a few minutes,
while more commuters stopped their cars, so by now there
was a pretty big crowd out there with my dad.
Finally some animal-control officers showed up. They’re
used to alligators on people’s lawns, and they handled this
one in like five minutes. They snagged it with a noose, duct-
taped its mouth shut, and took it away in a van. The neigh-
bors went back inside, and the commuters drove away, and
Csonka finally shut up, and it was all over except for my mom
reminding my dad that she told him not to wear his boxers
outside but did he listen? No! he did not listen, etc. etc. etc.
like six hundred and fifty times.

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That night, when we were eating dinner, I got a text from

a kid in my class saying chan 4 now lol. So we turned on the
kitchen TV and there was our house, in a cell phone video
one of the commuters took. You could see the gator, and
there was a nice close-up of my dad, holding up his holey
boxers, with his belly sagging down and his hair sticking out
every direction the way it does in the morning.
I said, “Real good look, Dad.”
My dad said, “They can’t show that without my permis-
sion, can they?”
Taylor said, “I’m gonna skip school for the rest of my
life.”
My mom didn’t say anything, which is not like her. She’s
Cuban. She just stared at the TV until the alligator story was
over. Then she got up and walked out of the kitchen. About
a minute later we heard the patio door open and close. We
went to look, and there was my mom on the patio next to the
pool, standing over my dad’s boxers.
Which were on fire.
When they were totally burned up, she splashed some
pool water on the ashes and walked back into the house,
right past my dad, not saying a word. I don’t know if they
talked about it later. I do know that the next morning, when
he went out to get the paper, he wore a bathrobe.
But my point (I bet you forgot I had a point) is that stuff

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like that—an alligator on the lawn—happens all the time

in Miami. You get used to it, the way you get used to palm
trees and hurricanes and hardly ever needing a sweater. Also
you get used to hearing Spanish. Like my mom; she grew up
in the U.S. and speaks English without an accent, but when
her family’s around—all the aunts and uncles and cousins,
like seventeen thousand of them—she switches to Spanish.
I grew up understanding it, and at Culver Middle School
some of my classes are totally in Spanish. Other kids take
classes in French and German. Culver is a language magnet
school. What it’s mainly a magnet for, if you want to know
the truth, is nerds. But I’m basically a nerd myself—I admit
it—so I like it.
And it turned out that being nerdy was pretty handy on
the class trip.
The trip was for the Culver eighth-grade civics classes.
Every year they go to Washington, D.C. This year there were
forty-seven kids on the trip, plus two teachers and eight
parent chaperones.
The teachers were Mr. Arnold Barto and Miss Christine
Rector. Mr. Barto is my civics teacher, and he’s a good enough
guy, but he forgets stuff. I mean, a lot of stuff. Like, he’ll say,
“Today we’re going to cover the Sixth Amendment to the
Constitution.” And we’ll be like, “We already covered that.”
And he’s like, “We did? When?” And we’re like, “Last year,

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in seventh grade.” And he’s like, “Wait, you aren’t seventh

grade?” And we’re like, “No, we’re eighth grade.” And he’ll
look at us and blink like he just noticed us, and go, “Oh,
right.”
You probably think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. He’s a
good teacher, but his brain works kind of backward. Unless
something happened two hundred years ago, he can’t remem-
ber it.
I never had a class with Miss Rector, but a lot of kids like
her. She’s pretty, for a teacher, and she’s smart. I was glad she
was one of the teachers in charge of the Washington trip,
because if Mr. Barto was in charge all by himself we’d have
probably ended up in Brazil. Although looking back on it,
that might have been better.
The chaperones were six moms and two dads, and the
most important thing about them was, none of them was my
mom or dad. I mean, I love my mom and dad, most of the
time, but the older I get, the more I like to love them from a
distance, if you know what I mean.
The class trip left early in the morning from the Miami
airport. My parents dropped me off. My dad gave me some
money and told me to spend it wisely, referring to the time
in fourth grade when my class went to the Seaquarium and
my dad gave me five dollars and I used it to buy five bags of
Cheez-Its from a vending machine and I ate them all and on

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

the way back to school I threw up orange glop all over the
bus. My mom hugged me really hard and told me she loved
me very much, and she was going to miss me, and if I did
anything stupid in Washington she would kill me.
When the parents were gone Mr. Barto gathered all
the kids and chaperones together for a little speech. He
told us that it was a privilege for us to be on this trip to
Washington and he expected us to be on our very best behavior
as ambassadors representing Culver Middle School. That
was when Cameron Frank farted. He’s one of those kids who
can fart whenever he wants to. His insides must be like 75
percent gas. Sometimes I think he could actually explode.
A bunch of kids laughed, and Mr. Barto glared at us and
said that if we thought he was going to tolerate those kind
of shenanigans—he actually said “shenanigans”—we were
sadly mistaken, and he would not hesitate to send trouble-
makers home, and did he make himself clear?
Everybody was quiet for about ten seconds while Mr.
Barto looked around at us with a look that I guess was sup-
posed to be scary. Then Cameron Frank farted again.
This time everybody laughed. Even the chaperones were
trying not to crack up. Mr. Barto said a few more strict
things, but I think he realized he was losing us, so he clapped
his hands and said, “All right, let’s go!” He started marching
off, wearing his humongous backpack, like he was a general

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leading us into battle, except he was going the wrong

direction. Miss Rector had to catch him and aim him the
right way.
That was how we started our class trip.
We went through security and walked to the gate. I was
technically walking with Matt Diaz and some other kids
who are my friends, but I was trying to walk near Suzana
Delgado.
I really, really like Suzana Delgado, who is the most
beautiful girl in the eighth grade and probably the world.
She has like 183 million Instagram followers. She’s also
really smart and funny and pretty nice for somebody that
beautiful. Basically she’s perfect, except for her height, which
is: tall. Or at least taller than me. I’m kind of short. Okay, I’m
not “kind of ” short. I’m short. My mom claims everybody in
our family started out short and I’ll wind up normal, but that
doesn’t do me any good now.
The thing I wanted to do, more than anything else in the
world, was to date Suzana Delgado. But I couldn’t ask her.
Not because she was tall, but because she was dating Jean-
Philippe Dumas, better known as J.P., who’s in the French
program. He’s also tall, even taller than Suzana. Sometimes I
look at him, standing around being tall without even trying,
and I want to kill him, except he could definitely beat me up.
My plan was to wait for J.P. and Suzana to break up, and

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

then see if she would date me. The problem was, they were
like a permanent couple. When we went on the class trip,
they’d been dating for nearly five weeks, which I think was
a Culver Middle School record. But I still tried to talk to
Suzana or text her whenever I could think of a reason.
Like, we were in the same math class, so every school
night I’d text her to ask what the math homework was. The
truth was, I already knew the math homework, and pretty
soon she figured that out. But she went along with it, and
it turned into kind of a joke, her making up funny answers.
Like she’d say the math homework was to figure out the
square root of a hamster, stuff like that. Sometimes we’d even
make jokes about it in school, talking in person. I definitely
think she liked me. But she was still dating J.P. And he was
still tall.
So anyway, we got to our gate and stood around for a
while, me standing near Suzana but not actually saying any-
thing to her. When it was time to get on the plane, Mr. Barto
told us we all had to go straight to our assigned seats, which
we all did, except for Mr. Barto, who went straight to the
completely wrong seat and had to be steered to the right one
by Miss Rector.
I was in a middle seat next to Matt Diaz, who had a win-
dow seat on the left side of the plane. On my other side, unfor-
tunately, was Cameron “Gas Attack” Frank. Suzana was two

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rows behind me with two of her friends. In the row between

us were an old lady and two guys, probably in their thirties.
One of them was short, with really long stringy hair that
looked like seaweed, wearing sunglasses and a backpack and
purple Crocs, which you don’t usually see on a grown man.
He had the window seat behind Matt. The other one was very
big and very bald. He was wearing a black T-shirt, and he had
huge arms with some kind of snakes tattooed on them. He
was carrying a long black duffel bag, which he spent like five
minutes trying to stuff into the overhead luggage space, hold-
ing up all the people trying to get to their seats. Finally one
of the flight attendants, who was eighty jillion years old and
probably was a flight attendant for the Wright brothers, came
back and told the bald guy he would have to check the bag.
“No!” he said, like really angry. “It will fit!” He had some
kind of accent, but not Spanish. He pushed the bag really
hard and got it to go in. The flight attendant gave him a look,
but didn’t say anything. He looked like a guy you didn’t want
to get any more upset than he already was.
Which is exactly what my friend Matt, who I believe
I already mentioned can be an idiot, proceeded to do. He
pointed up at the luggage compartment and said—too loud,
as usual—“What do you think he has in that bag? A missile?”
The big guy heard this. He looked down at Matt like
he was about to pick him up by the neck and stuff him into

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

the overhead space, which this guy was definitely big enough
to do. The shorter guy with the sunglasses said something to
him, and he sat down.
“Jeez,” said Matt, still too loud. “Maybe it is a missile.”
“Will you shut up?” I said, but it was too late: We looked
back, and the big guy was leaning forward, his head almost
in our row, glaring at Matt, for like ten seconds, just leaning
over us and staring. He was really close, and he looked a little
crazy, and I’ll be honest: I was scared. Then the little guy said
something again, and the big guy sat back. Matt and I looked
at each other, like whoa, but even Matt wasn’t stupid enough
to say anything else.
When the plane was loaded the same flight attendant
came down the aisle checking things, and she told the little
guy he couldn’t hold his backpack in his lap.
He said, “I need to hold it.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, not sounding sorry. “You can’t
hold it during takeoff or landing.”
“Is very important.”
“You can hold it after we take off. Right now it has to go
in the overhead.” She reached for the backpack.
“No!” said the little guy, pulling it away.
“All right,” she said, “then you’ll have to put it under the
seat in front of you.”
“I am not comfortable doing that.”

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“Sir,” said the flight attendant, “you cannot have that in

your lap. Either you stow it now, or you’ll have to get off the
plane.”
This time the big guy said something quietly to the lit-
tle guy, in what I think was a foreign language. The little
guy sighed and stuck the backpack under the seat in front of
him, which was the seat that Matt was sitting in. The flight
attendant gave the little guy a look and walked away.
Matt leaned over to me. “What do you think’s in the
backpack?” he said—whispering, fortunately.
“How would I know?” I said.
“You think it’s a bomb?”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“Because, moron, he had to go through security.”
“Well, then what is it? Why’s he acting so weird? Him
and his friend with the missile . . .”
“It’s not a missile!” I said, too loud—that’s the kind of
thing Matt makes you do—and all of a sudden I realized
the big guy was leaning forward and glaring at us again, so I
shut up. We stayed quiet during the safety lecture where they
show you how to fasten your seat belt and tell you that your
seat cushion floats, which I’m sure would be really helpful
if the plane actually crashed into the ocean at five hundred
miles an hour.

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

I noticed that after we took off, the little guy immedi-

ately reached down and got the backpack out from under
Matt’s seat. But then I stopped thinking about him and
started trying to figure out how to talk to Suzana, two rows
behind. My idea was to pretend I had to go to the bathroom,
and then, when I walked past her, I would say some funny
thing that would make her laugh, and we would start hav-
ing a conversation, with me standing in the aisle, which was
good because I would be standing and she would be sitting
down so I’d be taller.
This seemed like a solid plan, except for one thing: I didn’t
have anything funny to say. I spent the first half hour of the
flight trying to think of jokes, which wasn’t easy because
Matt kept whispering to me about the guys behind us, who
he was convinced were terrorists planning to blow up the
plane.
Finally I came up with a joke: I’d walk by, and I’d say
to Suzana, casually, like I just thought of it, “Do you know
where the emergency exit is?” And she’d say something like,
“Why are you looking for the emergency exit?” And I’d say,
“Because I’m sitting next to Cameron Frank, and I need
some fresh air!”
I’m not saying this was hilarious. I’m saying this was the
best I could do under the circumstances. I was going over my
lines in my head (“Do you know where the emergency exit

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is?”), rehearsing for my big moment. Meanwhile Matt kept

sneaking peeks back at the weird two guys behind us and
whispering reports to me.
“They’re looking at something,” he said.
“So what?” I said.
“We need to find out what it is,” he said.
“No we don’t,” I said.
Anyway, we finally got to the altitude where you can
walk around, so I got up and started toward the back of the
plane. I noticed out of the side of my eye that the two weird
guys behind us actually were looking at something, kind of
hunched over it so you couldn’t see what it was. But I was
focused on Suzana. I was so focused on Suzana that I didn’t
see that the man in the seat right across the aisle had his leg
sticking out.
What happened next was the kind of horrible embar-
rassing failure that your brain memorizes every single detail
of so it can torture you by playing it in your head over and
over and over for the rest of your life. This is how it went:

ME (to Suzana, pretending I am just thinking this

up as I pass by): Hey, do you know where th— WHAM
(sound of me tripping and falling on my face in the
aisle).
SUZANA: Ohmigod! Wyatt! Are you okay?

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

ME (getting up, trying to look like nothing

happened): I’m fine! I’m fine!
SUZANA: Are you sure?
ME (thinking for some moronic reason that I should still
do my moronic rehearsed joke): I was just wondering if
you knew where the emergency exit was.
EIGHTY-JILLION-YEAR-OLD FLIGHT ATTENDANT (coming
down the aisle to see why I fell down and not looking
happy): What’s going on here?
ME: Nothing. I fell down.
SUZANA: Why do you need the emergency exit?
EIGHTY-JILLION-YEAR-OLD FLIGHT ATTENDANT: What
about the emergency exit?
ME: Nothing!
SUZANA: You just asked me where the emergency exit is.
ME (reaching new heights of being a moron): I did?
SUZANA: Yes, you did.
EIGHTY-JILLION-YEAR-OLD FLIGHT ATTENDANT (to me):
Do you not understand that the emergency exits are an
important safety feature of this aircraft, and it’s a very
serious matter to tamper with them in any way?
ME: No.
EIGHTY-JILLION-YEAR-OLD FLIGHT ATTENDANT: No?
ME: Yes! I mean, yes, I understand. I wasn’t really . . . I
was just . . . There’s this kid who farts. . . .

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EIGHTY-JILLION-YEAR-OLD FLIGHT ATTENDANT:

What?
MR. BARTO (coming down the aisle from his seat): Is
something wrong?
EIGHTY-JILLION-YEAR-OLD FLIGHT ATTENDANT: This
young man seems to think there’s something amusing
about the emergency exits.
MR. BARTO: Wyatt, do you think there’s something
amusing about the emergency exits?
ME: No. I was—
EIGHTY-JILLION-YEAR-OLD FLIGHT ATTENDANT: He also
said something about farts.
MR. BARTO: What about farts, Wyatt?
ME: No! I was only . . . nothing. Never mind.
MR. BARTO: Wyatt, I want you to return to your seat right
now, and if you don’t want to be sent home from this
trip, there had better be no more of this behavior, am I
clear?
ME: Yes.

I went back to my seat. Behind me I could hear Suzana

and her friends giggling. Now I really did wish I could jump
out the emergency exit.
“What was that all about?” said Matt.
“Shut up,” I said.

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

“Listen,” he said, not shutting up, “the guys behind us

were watching you.”
“Great.”
“No, listen. While they were watching you, I got a look at
what they were looking at.”
“Good for you.”
“And get this. They’re looking at aerial photographs.”
“So?”
“They’re aerial photographs of the White House.”
I looked at him. “Are you sure?”
He nodded twice really fast, up-down-up-down, and
whispered, “Aerial photographs of the White House.”
I thought about that for a couple of seconds. “There could
be a simple explanation,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Like, I dunno, they’re tourists, and they’ll be walking
around the White House area, and they want to see what’s
around there, from the air.” Even while I was saying this, it
sounded stupid.
Matt shook his head. “Tourists use maps. Not aerial
photographs.”
I ducked down and snuck a peek between Matt’s and my
seatbacks at the weird guys behind us. They were looking at
something, and they were definitely hunching over it like
they didn’t want anybody walking past in the aisle to see. But

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from my angle, I got a quick glimpse. And Matt was right: It

was a photo of the White House, taken from the air. I looked
back at Matt. He raised his eyebrows.
“See?” he said.
“What do you think they’re doing?”
“Add it up,” he said. “There’s two weird guys, both carry-
ing things that they’re acting all weird about, right?”
“Right.”
“And now they’re looking at an aerial photograph of the
White House, right?”
“Right.”
“Now think about it: What does this airplane practically
fly right over when we get to Washington?”
I thought about it. I went to Washington with my
family in fourth grade, and I remembered that when the
plane was landing, it flew over the Potomac River, and my
dad was pointing to famous stuff out the left-side window,
really close—the Washington Monument, the Lincoln
Memorial . . . and the White House.
“Oh, man,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Matt. “And you laughed when I said they
had a missile.”
“But they can’t have a missile. They got through airport
security.”
Matt snorted. “Did you see those airport security people?

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

I think you could drive a tank past them, as long as it didn’t

contain any liquids.”
“No, seriously, there’s no way they could—”
“Okay, okay, say it’s not a missile. Maybe it’s some other
kind of weapon, something that has two pieces, and it’s only
dangerous if you put them together. One piece is in the big
guy’s black bag up there, and the other’s in the weird little
dude’s backpack. When we get near Washington, they put
the pieces together and it forms some kind of new thing that
does something bad.”
“Like what?”
“Like blow up the plane. Or it’s some kind of high-tech
gun, or a thing they can use to smash through the cockpit
door. I don’t know what it is. But it’s something.”
I thought about it some more. Matt can be an idiot, but
he’s not a complete idiot.
I said, “So what should we do?”
“Maybe we should tell the flight attendant.”
I looked toward the front of the plane. The mean eighty-
jillion-year-old flight attendant was glaring around the cabin
like she was about to cast a spell and turn everybody into a
frog. I imagined what it would be like to go up to her and tell
her that we thought the two guys behind us were terrorists,
based on . . . based on not a whole lot, really.
“Why don’t you tell her?” I said.

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“I’m not gonna tell her,” said Matt. “Why don’t you tell
her?”
“She already hates me,” I said.
“I think she hates everybody,” said Matt.
“Okay,” I said. “We won’t say anything now. But we’ll
watch them. If they do anything weird, especially when we’re
getting near the White House, we’ll do something.”
“Like what?”
“Like yell. Or something.”
“That’s our plan? We yell? Or something?”
“Do you have a better plan?”
“No.”
“Then that’s our plan.”
For the next hour or so we just sat there feeling nervous.
I was so nervous I didn’t even think about Suzana. Every
now and then we snuck a peek back between the seats at the
weird guys. They had put away the photograph and mostly
talked in low voices. The little guy kept the backpack on
his lap.
Then the pilot announced that we were beginning our
descent into Washington. He said there was turbulence and
it was going to be “a little bumpy” and everybody should
make sure their seat belts were fastened. They told us to turn
off our laptop computers and put everything away. Matt and
I peeked back and saw that the weird little guy still had his

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

backpack in his lap. The eighty-jillion-year-old flight atten-

dant came by and stopped next to him.
“Sir,” she said. “You have to put that away.”
“I would prefer to hold it,” he said.
“Sir,” she said, and you could tell she was about to lose it,
“you have to put it away.”
The little guy looked like he was about to say something.
But then he put it away. The backpack was now right under
Matt’s seat.
We could feel the plane descending, then turning. We
were over the Potomac River now. Matt and I were sneaking
a lot of peeks back. The two weird guys were staring out the
window. The air started getting bumpy. Really bumpy. Stuff
on the plane was rattling and people were making nervous
sounds. The plane was really low now. I could see buildings
out the left-side window. I peeked back. The two weird guys
were glued to the window, the big guy leaning over into the
little guy’s seat, the two of them staring out.
“We’re coming up on the White House,” said Matt.
Right then the plane bumped hard. It felt like we
slammed into an elephant in midair. Some people screamed.
I was really scared. There was another huge bump and the
whole plane lurched sideways. More screams.
Suddenly Matt grabbed my arm and said, “He’s getting
the backpack!” I looked back and saw that the little weird

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guy was leaning down toward the storage area under Matt’s
seat.
“We gotta stop him!” said Matt.
I was going to ask him how, but before I could say any-
thing he turned around and slid down off his seat onto the
floor, into the foot space.
“What are you doing?” I said, but then I saw. He was
reaching under his seat and grabbing the guy’s backpack, try-
ing to pull it through the opening under his seat.
“No!” shouted the little weird guy, from behind us. “Let
go of that! Let go!”
Now there was a tug-of-war going on, with Matt trying
to pull the backpack forward and the little weird guy try-
ing to pull it back. The little weird guy kept yelling at Matt to
let go, but he wouldn’t. The big weird guy leaned forward
over the seat, also yelling at Matt and trying to grab him,
but he had his seat belt on, so Matt was too low for him to
reach. People around us saw what was happening, but the
plane was still bumping and shaking pretty hard, so most
of the passengers were too busy being nervous to notice.
Outside the window I could see the land getting closer, and
then whump the plane touched down hard, bounced,
and then stayed down. Some people cheered. Meanwhile
Matt and the little weird guy were still fighting their tug–
of-war, the little guy still shouting at Matt to let go of the

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

backpack. The big weird guy was standing up now, leaning

over into our row.
“Sir! Sit down!” This was the eighty-jillion-year-old
flight attendant shouting over the P.A. system. The big guy
sat down, but he kept trying to reach Matt. The plane was
slowing down. More people were looking at our row, trying
to see what the yelling was about. The eighty-jillion-year-old
flight attendant was coming down the aisle toward us, look-
ing very unhappy.
“Got it!” said Matt, pulling the backpack all the way
through the seat.
“GIVE IT TO ME!” shouted the little guy, practically
diving over the seat, grabbing at Matt.
Matt was leaning over the backpack, protecting it with
his body. I could see he was unzipping one of the side pock-
ets. Now both the big guy and the little guy were leaning over
him. The big guy grabbed him under his arms and started
lifting him, pulling him right up through the seat belt.
“Wyatt, here!” said Matt. He shoved the backpack at me,
and without really thinking about it, I took it. Which meant
I was holding it when the flight attendant got to our row. The
plane had just rolled to a stop, and pretty much everybody
was now looking in our direction.
“What’s going on here?” said the flight attendant. “Why
are you holding that boy?”

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The big guy let go of Matt, who plopped back down into
his seat.
“That boy has my property!” shouted the little guy, point-
ing at me.
So now everybody on the plane was looking at me. Not
Matt. Me.
“Is that his backpack?” said the flight attendant.
“Um,” I said. Which I admit was not a brilliant statement,
but it was definitely smarter than what Matt said, which was,
quote: “It has a bomb in it!”
You can imagine what a big hit that was, on a crowded
airplane. People started screaming and trying to get away, but
we were still taxiing on the runway, so the doors were closed,
and there was nowhere to go.
“QUIET!” shouted a deep voice, so loud that people
actually got pretty quiet. “Everybody back in your seats now.”
The deep voice belonged to a wide man in jeans and
a sweater who was coming down the aisle from first class.
People were getting out of his way and sitting back down.
“I’m a Federal Air Marshal,” the wide man said. “What’s
going on here?”
The flight attendant pointed to me and said, “He says he
has a bomb.”
This was not really true, but before I could point that
out, the marshal said to me, “What’s your name, son?”

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

“Wyatt Palmer.”
“What’s in that backpack?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why’d you say it was a bomb?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then who did?”
“I did,” said Matt.
The wide man looked at Matt.
“And you are?”
“Matthew Diaz.”
“Okay, why did you say it was a bomb?”
Matt pointed at the two weird guys behind us and said,
“It belongs to them and they were acting weird.”
“How were they acting weird?”
“They were looking at aerial photos of the White
House.”
The marshal looked at the two guys and said, “Is that
true?”
The big guy said, “Yes.” He held up a book. On the cover
was an aerial photo of the Capitol. The book was titled
Washington from the Air. “We are tourists,” said the big guy.
“We are first time coming to city of Washington, so we are
reading this book.”
The marshal looked at Matt. “So that’s why you thought
they had a bomb?”

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“Not just that!” said Matt. He pointed at the little guy.

“When the plane was coming over the White House, he was
reaching for his backpack!”
The marshal looked at the little guy and said, “Were you
reaching for the backpack?”
“No,” said the little guy. “I was reaching for this.” He held
up a barf bag. It looked full.
“Ew,” said Suzana Delgado.
The marshal looked at me and said, “Give me the back-
pack.” I gave it to him. He looked at the little guy and said,
“Do you mind if I look inside?”
I thought the little guy hesitated just a tenth of a second
before he said, “No, is fine.”
The marshal unzipped the backpack and looked inside.
He looked up at the little guy and said, “Mind if I take it
out?”
The little guy nodded. “Of course,” he said. “But please
be careful.”
The marshal set the backpack down on a seat, reached
inside, and pulled out . . .
A dragon’s head.
It was made out of some lightweight material and painted
a million colors. It had big buggy eyes and an open mouth
filled with long sharp fangy-looking teeth.
The marshal held it up and looked at it. “Nice,” he said.

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

“Thank you,” said the little guy. “I made it. I am artist. I

make traditional folk art from my country.”
“And what country is that?”
“Gadakistan. Is near—”
“I know where it is.” The marshal put the dragon head
back into the backpack and handed it to the little guy. He
looked at Matt and me. It wasn’t a friendly look.
“Listen,” said Matt. “I still think . . .”
I grabbed his arm. “Shut up,” I said.
“But there’s—”
“Just for once shut up, okay?”
The plane was at the gate now, and the front door was
opening. People were standing and getting their stuff down
from the overhead storage. I reached down to get my back-
pack, hoping that somehow all this would just go away.
But . . .
“Hold it,” said the marshal, putting his hand on my
shoulder. “You boys are staying right here.”
Matt and I sat in our seats while everybody else got off
the plane, except Mr. Barto, who stood with his arms folded,
staring at us. The worst was when other kids went past us.
Some of them were laughing. Suzana looked at me and just
shook her head.
The two weird guys took their time getting ready to leave,

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so they were almost the last ones off. The big guy got his
long black bag down from the overhead, and the two of them
headed for the front of the plane. When they got there, the
little one turned and looked back. He made sure the marshal
wasn’t looking his way. Then he looked straight at me and
Matt, held up his backpack, and smiled at us.
A really creepy smile.

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 h ap te r
C

T he only good part about what happened next was that

the Federal Marshal decided not to arrest me and Matt. He
said he seriously considered it, but in the end he decided to
let us off with just a lecture on the general theme that we
were a pair of idiots.
The worst part was when I had to call my parents from
the airport and tell them that Mr. Barto was maybe going
to send me and Matt home from Washington. I didn’t really
need my phone after I said that, because I could have heard
my mother—did I mention that she’s Cuban?—yelling all
the way from Miami. Basically she said she was going to kill

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me and ground me and take away my Xbox for the next three
hundred years. Which didn’t make any sense, but it was not
a good time to point that out to my mom.
After that Matt and I had to listen to another lecture,
this one from Mr. Barto, which he delivered to us next to the
bus at the airport with the entire class trip sitting on the bus
watching and making faces. Mr. Barto said he was extremely
disappointed in us because we were ambassadors for Culver
Middle School and it was a privilege to be on this trip and if
we pulled one more stupid stunt he was going to blah blah
blah.
In the end he said we could stay on the trip. He claimed
this was because he was a forgiving man, but I think mainly
he was a man who didn’t want to deal with trying to get us
home.
I was just glad I wouldn’t have to face my mom yet.
When Matt and I finally got on the bus the only seat left
was (of course) right behind Cameron Frank, whose gen-
eral area smelled like a Porta Potti in July. And of course
Suzana was sitting far away with the other hot girls, near
Jean-Philippe. But at least we were on the bus, instead of
on a plane home. I was starting to feel less bad, maybe even
almost a little good.
That feeling lasted about thirty seconds.
I didn’t see them coming. The bus driver had just closed

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

the door. I was looking forward when Matt, who was sitting
next to the window, grabbed my arm.
“Uh-oh,” he said.
“What?”
He pointed out the window. I almost yelped when I saw
them.
The two weird guys from the plane. Running toward our
bus. Looking very unhappy.
Their eyes were scanning the windows, and it wasn’t hard
to figure out who they were looking for. I was about to tell
Matt to duck, but it was too late: The little guy saw us. He
ran straight to our window. He was holding up his backpack
and pointing to it and yelling something at us. The big guy
was right behind him. They looked really mad.
“What do they want?” I said.
Matt didn’t say anything.
Just then the bus started moving. This totally freaked out
the two guys. They started running toward the front, shout-
ing, but the bus was pulling away into the airport traffic. The
weird guys started to chase us, but they ran into a cop direct-
ing traffic. We saw him block their way, holding up his hands
for them to stop. They were arguing with him and pointing
at us. The last thing I saw before we got out of sight was the
little guy’s face. He looked really, really, really mad.
Mr. Barto and Miss Rector, at the front of the bus, missed

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all of this. The kids around us saw it, and they were asking us
what was going on. I said I didn’t know, that maybe the guys
were still mad about what happened on the plane.
Matt still didn’t say anything. Which, if you know any-
thing about Matt, is very unusual. Suddenly I had a bad
feeling.
“Wait a minute,” I said to Matt, keeping it quiet. “You
know what that was about, don’t you.”
“Um, maybe.”
I grabbed his arm. “What? What?”
“Okay! Let go!” He yanked his arm away. He looked
around to make sure nobody was looking our way, then
reached into his pocket and pulled something out. He kept
it low and showed it to me. It was some kind of electronic
thing, a greenish-brown box with a little Plexiglas dome on
the top and some switches and buttons on the side.
“Where’d you get that?” I said, even though I pretty
much knew.
“From the weird guy’s backpack. It was in the outside
pocket.”
“Why’d you take it?”
“I thought it was maybe a detonator. I thought he was
gonna blow something up with it.”
“Blow up what? His dragon head?”
“I didn’t know he had a dragon head in there.”

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

I looked at the box. “Why didn’t you tell the marshal

about it?”
“I was gonna. But you told me to shut up. Then I decided
it was better to just keep quiet about it. I didn’t want to get
in any more trouble.”
We both looked at the box for a few seconds.
“Maybe I should just throw it away,” he said.
I shook my head. “He seemed really upset about losing it.
It might be valuable. We should give it back.”
“How?”
“I dunno.”
“How would we even find those guys?”
“I dunno.”
“Do we even want to find those guys?”
I looked out the window. The bus was out of the airport
now, on a highway. I thought about the two weird guys back
there, probably still arguing with the cop. I pictured the little
guy’s face, the way he looked at us as the bus pulled away.
“Not really,” I said. “I hope we never see those guys again.”

38
 h ap te r
C

P retty soon we crossed a bridge into Washington. Up

ahead we could see the Capitol and a bunch of other
Washington-y stuff. Mr. Barto got on the bus P.A. micro-
phone and started pointing out historic things, but since he’s
Mr. Barto he kept getting them wrong. Like he’d say, “Over
here to the left you can see the Lincoln Memorial,” and Miss
Rector would whisper something to him, and he’d say, “I
mean the Jefferson Memorial.”
Our hotel was a big grayish building called the Warren
G. Harding Hotel. It was really old. I think it was the offi-
cial hotel of every Washington class trip since the Civil War.

39
THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

The lobby had saggy sofas that looked like some kind of
farm animals gave birth on them. One kid claimed he saw
a rat heading into the coffee shop. But nobody really cared,
because we were in a hotel and our parents weren’t.
Mr. Barto gathered us all together to tell us he was
expecting everybody to behave in a manner blah blah blah.
Meanwhile Miss Rector got the room key cards from the guy
at the front desk and handed them out. I was in room 313
with three roommates: Matt, Cameron (of course), and a kid
named Victor Lopez, who was new to Culver, so he didn’t
have a lot of friends, which is why he ended up with us. He
was in my science class and didn’t say much, but he seemed
pretty smart.
We got into an elevator that made clunking noises and
moved really slow, like it was tired of being an elevator and
wanted to retire and just be a closet or something. We got off
on the third floor and found room 313, which smelled like a
small animal once died in it and they never found the body.
It had a rattling air conditioner and an old boxy TV that
probably ran on coal. We unpacked our suitcases and put our
stuff away. Matt put the detonator, or whatever it was, under
his clothes in his drawer.
We decided that, between the room smell and Cameron,
we needed to open the window, which was hard because
it was kind of painted shut. When Matt and I finally shoved

40
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it open I leaned out and saw that our room was right over the
roof above the hotel front driveway. While I was leaning out
I heard a voice say “Hello,” which surprised me so much that
I jerked my head straight up and banged it on the window
frame. The voice giggled, and I looked to my right and saw
it was Suzana leaning out of the next window over. She gave
me a smile that made my stomach jump.
“Does your room smell as bad as ours?” she said.
“Worse,” I said. “We have Cameron in here. I’m thinking
of sleeping with my head out the window.”
She laughed—I really like it when I make her laugh—
then said, “So what was that about back there? In the plane?”
I shook my head. “Those two weird guys . . . You saw
them, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I let Matt convince me they were trying to blow
up the White House.”
“On the plane? Blow it up how?”
“With a missile. Or something.”
She blinked. “A missile?”
“I know it sounds stupid. It is stupid. I can’t believe he got
me to take it seriously. I think Matt has this ability to lower
the IQ of everybody around him. It’s like a superpower.”
Suzana laughed again. Suddenly this was seeming like
not such a totally horrible class trip.

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

So of course Matt had to ruin everything.

He stuck his head out next to mine and said, “Hey,
Suzana! You know Wyatt loves you, right?”
“Shut up, idiot,” I said, trying to push him back inside.
“Wait for him, Suzana!” shouted Matt. “He’ll get taller
someday!”
“Shut UP,” I said, still pushing.
“Maybe not this year, Suzana!” shouted Matt. “Maybe
not for many years! But some day, when you’re seventy, you
might start shrinking, and Wyatt could catch up to you! Wait
for him!”
I shoved him really hard. The two of us stumbled back
into the room and fell on the floor, and he finally stopped
yelling, because he was laughing too hard to breathe. I got
back up and stuck my head out the window.
Suzana was gone. I turned around and looked down at
Matt.
“You are such an idiot.”
“Maybe,” he said, catching his breath. “But at least I don’t
think Suzana Delgado might actually like me.”
“She does like me.”
“As a friend. Which is also how she likes her dog. And
which is not how she likes J.P.”
I didn’t have an answer for that, since it was true.
Victor was standing by the door, watching us with a

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frowny expression, like he was looking through a microscope

and we were some kind of fungus cells.
“We’re supposed to be in the lobby,” he said. “For the bus
tour.”
So we got into the sad old elevator and clunked down
to the lobby and stood around in clots waiting for the bus.
I didn’t even want to look in the direction of the Hot Girl
clot because I was so embarrassed about what Matt yelled
out the window to Suzana. But I glanced that way and
just for a second she looked at me and smiled and I kind
of smiled back and then looked away, trying to look casual,
like I had other things on my mind besides her, except of
course I didn’t and my face was probably the same color as a
stop sign.
How do girls do this?
The bus came and we got on for our tour and I was happy
about two things:
1. I didn’t get stuck next to Cameron.
2. Instead of Mr. Barto, we had an actual professional
tour guide. His name was Gene Weingarten. You know those
joke disguise glasses that make you look like Groucho Marx,
with the big nose and the huge bushy black eyebrows and
the bushy black mustache? Well, Gene—he said we should
call him Gene—looked exactly like that, except he wasn’t
wearing disguise glasses. That was his regular look. But he

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

was a way better guide than Mr. Barto, because he seemed to

actually know what he was pointing to.
We drove around Washington looking at famous things,
with Gene explaining what they were and Mr. Barto grab-
bing the microphone about every three seconds to tell us that
if we didn’t pay attention he was going to take away every-
body’s phones and blah blah blah. Some of the things were
pretty cool to see, like the Capitol. Some of the things
were basically just big buildings where, according to Mr.
Weingarten, something historic happened inside, but from
the outside to be honest they just looked like buildings.
The bus parked near the Washington Monument and
we all got out and sat on the grass and Miss Rector handed
out box lunches with sandwiches containing some kind of
slimy meat that looked a cross between a really sick chicken
and a really pale ham. Chickham. I ate the potato chips and
gave my sandwich to Cameron, who ate it in like three bites,
which probably explains the way his digestive system works.
After lunch we had a few minutes of free time. A bunch
of boys, including Matt and me, went to this kind of dumpy
store that sold supposedly funny T-shirts and joke items
and patriotic souvenirs of Washington made in China. Matt
bought a cigarette lighter that looked like a gun. You pulled
the trigger and the flame appeared at the end. I bought a
T-shirt that said u.s. secret service on the front, although

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I imagine a real Secret Service agent would never wear it

because then they wouldn’t be very secret.
After that Gene took us on a walking tour to the World
War II Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, the Lincoln
Memorial, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, and the
Vietnam Memorial, which is a lot of memorials and a lot of
walking, plus it was a warm day, not Miami warm, but warm.
Mr. Barto, who was carrying that giant backpack he always
had on, looked like he was going to pass out. After those
monuments we stood in line to go up in the Washington
Monument, which was a long wait but a pretty great view
from the top.
When we came out there were a bunch of guys flying
kites near the monument. Gene told us they were practicing
for a huge kite festival that was going to happen in a few
days. Some of the kites had really cool designs, like a fish,
or a centipede, or a giant spider, or just a lot of weird shapes.
Sometimes you couldn’t even imagine how they could fly, but
they did. Some of the kites were huge. One of them actually
lifted the guy holding it off the ground for a few seconds
before he could get control of it.
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.

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

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.
“Every now and then somebody climbs the fence, but
they usually catch the person quickly,” Gene said. 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, stick-
ing out over the rest of the heads.

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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

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

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 com-
ing 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

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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 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 one was, they looked extremely
mad. Like if they caught us, they would not only kill us, but
also eat us.

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

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 com-
plete 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

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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

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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.”

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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?”

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“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 micro-
phone, telling us more historic stuff about Washington.
Then Mr. Barto got on and told us the schedule for the eve-
ning. 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.

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He went closer to the bus and pointed to writing painted

on the side:
SHRODER TRANSPORTATION
NEED A BUS? CALL US!
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.

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THE WORST CLASS TRIP EVER

“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.

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