The Worst Class Trip Ever Read Online Free PDF Page B

like that, except he wasn’t wearing disguise glasses. That
was his regular look. But he 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 grabbing the microphone about every three seconds to tell us that if we didn’t pay
attention he was going to take away everybody’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 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.
    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