Branded - Eric Walters [10]
“Oh, I’ll mention it to him.” She paused. “But not right now.”
“Why not?”
She leaned in close. “I’m not going to talk to him until I have everything thought out and in place,” she said quietly. “He’s not the only one who can plan an ambush. He won’t even see it coming.”
“See what coming?” I asked anxiously.
“I don’t know yet, but I’ve never seen so many people upset.” She paused and looked directly at me. “But you don’t seem to be one of them. Do you like the idea of uniforms?”
“No, of course not,” I said. Actually I didn’t like or dislike the idea. It wasn’t the big deal Julia was making it out to be.
“So I’m counting on you to come up with something. Are you sure a flash mob wouldn’t work? It worked so well to get back the school dances.”
“I can’t see how to make it work against uniforms.”
“Maybe everybody could show up off school property and be in regular clothing instead of the uniforms,” she suggested.
“Well, we’re allowed to wear regular clothing when we leave school so that won’t be much of a protest.”
“Oh yeah, right. But keep thinking, okay?”
“Sure, I’ll keep thinking.”
“And you can’t tell Mr. Roberts anything about my plans,” she said.
“That’s easy. You don’t have a plan.”
“You can’t even tell him that I’m trying to figure out a plan.”
“No problem, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he finds out anyway.”
She gave me a questioning look.
“It won’t be from me!” I protested. “But you know he doesn’t miss much.”
“Oh, he won’t miss this,” Julia said. “He just won’t see it coming until it smacks him right in the face. Keep thinking about what that plan will be.”
What I was going to think of the most was how to avoid getting myself in trouble. And maybe how to stop Julia from getting in trouble too. Keeping me out of trouble might be hard. The second part, keeping Julia safe, was going to be much harder.
chapter seven
I settled into my desk. Oswald was beside me, wearing his uniform. There was a mustard stain on the bottom of his left pant leg, and the knot on his tie was looking pretty strange. Julia hadn’t arrived yet, and the bell was about to ring. She was probably busy talking to somebody about the uniforms. She’d spent the whole day trying to get people more upset about them than they were. She’d been so busy that she hadn’t even had lunch with us. The good part about that was we didn’t have to talk to her about any of it.
Julia rushed through the door as the bell rang—almost late, but on time.
“Sorry,” she said to Mr. Roberts as she sat down on the other side of me.
“On time is on time,” Mr. Roberts replied. “Let’s get down to business. Could somebody turn off the lights?”
Josh jumped to his feet and flicked off the lights. It was completely dark until my eyes adjusted to the light coming through the blinds. A beam of light shot out from the digital projector and onto the screen.
It was a YouTube clip. Music started up as we looked at a dark screen. I recognized the music, but I couldn’t place it. Wait—it was from a running-shoe commercial, but I couldn’t remember which one. The screen shifted to an ad featuring one of my favorite basketball players. Underneath was written the amount of the endorsement money he got. It was more money than most people would earn in a lifetime! His picture faded to reveal a football star—one of those guys known by only his first name. He wasn’t making as much money as the basketball star, but it was still a small fortune. That changed to a famous golfer—like that was a real sport. But he was being paid real money to wear those shoes when he wandered around the golf course. With that amount of money he could buy his own golf course—on his own island.
After the sports celebrities, the screen showed numbers—money, really big money!
“Wow,” Oswald said, “that is a whole lot of zeroes.”
It read $15,000,000,000—Profit. That was a lot of money for a company. Heck, that was a lot of money for a small country.
The image changed to a factory with long assembly lines. There were workers all along the line and shoes rolling down