The Wednesday Wars Read Online Free PDF Page A

the answers while I write them down on the sheet?"
    "Why don't you figure out the answers while I write them down on the sheet?"
    "Because I know how to write. What's the first state?"
    "Delaware. Do you think Mrs. Baker looks like an evil genius?"
    "Not unless you're paranoid. What's the second state?"
    "I'm not paranoid. Pennsylvania. Mrs. Baker hates my guts."
    "Mrs. Baker doesn't hate your guts, and you are, too, paranoid. What's the third state?"
    "Well, thank you for your vote of confidence. New York."
    Meryl Lee looked over at
Geography for You and Me.
"New York wasn't the third state. It was New Jersey, not New York."
    "How do you know that?"
    "Everybody knows that," she said.
    Oh, out beyond Mr. Petrelli's not-so-clean lower windows it was one of those perfect blue autumn days, when the sun is warm and the grass is still green and the leaves are red and tipped with yellow. A few white clouds drifted high, teased along by a breeze as gentle as a breath.
    "What's the fourth state?" said Meryl Lee.
    That's pretty much how it went for Meryl Lee and me until recess, which had become a whole lot safer since Mrs. Baker's failed assassination plot. I figured that most of her would-be assassins had seen what had happened to Doug Swieteck's brother and were worried I might take them out, too. So when we left Mr. Petrelli and went back to Mrs. Baker's classroom, I believed I could actually run out into the perfect October day and hope to come back alive.
    I could feel the warm sun on my back already.
    But then I found out why Mrs. Baker had been smiling.
    "Mr. Hoodhood," she called from her desk as the school clock clicked to noon, "I have a quick job for you. Everyone else, enjoy your recess."
    I looked at Meryl Lee. "See?" I whispered.
    "You are paranoid," she said, and abandoned me.
    "Mr. Hoodhood," said Mrs. Baker, "there are some pastries that Mrs. Bigio has spent the morning baking for me that need to be brought up to this room. Would you go down to the kitchen and bring them here? And do not start any rumors. These are not for the class. They are for the Wives of Vietnam Soldiers' gathering at Saint Adelbert's this afternoon. Not for anyone else."
    "Is that all?" I said.
    "Don't look so suspicious," she said. "Suspicion is an unbecoming passion."
    I took my unbecoming passion and left to find Mrs. Bigio. This didn't seem like it would take too long, even though the seventh-grade classrooms were on the third floor and the kitchen was on the first floor, at the very end of the hallway—probably so that the wind could blow the fumes away. Sometimes that worked. And sometimes it didn't. When it didn't, the halls filled up with the scent of Hamburger-and-Pepper Surprise, a scent that lingered like the smell of a dead animal caught underneath the floorboards.
    I think that Mrs. Bigio couldn't smell the scents, either because she wore a cotton mask over her face all the time or because she had worked in the kitchen of Camillo Junior High for so long that she could no longer smell.
    But I didn't have a mask and I could smell, so when I reached the kitchen, I got ready to take a deep breath before I walked in. But then I realized I didn't need to. There were no fumes. There was only the delicious, extravagant, warm, tasty scent of buttery baking crust, and of vanilla cream, and of powdered sugar, still drifting in the heated air. And stretched out on the long tables, far from Whatever Surprise was being fed to Camillo Junior High for lunch that day, were a dozen trays of cream puffs—brown, light, perfect cream puffs.
    "Mrs. Baker send you?" said Mrs. Bigio.
    I nodded.
    "You can start with that one," she said, pointing.
    I thought, Shouldn't Mrs. Bigio be grateful for my willingness to help? Wouldn't any human being with a beating heart hand me one of the brown, light, perfect cream puffs? Was that so unlikely?
    Yes. It was unlikely.
    "Now would be a good time to start," said Mrs. Bigio. "And don't drop any."
    I won't drop