Slob - Ellen Potter [49]
I stared at him in astonishment. His eyes shot away from mine.
“Let’s just say I’ve spent most of my life avoiding humiliation,” he muttered by way of an explanation.
I couldn’t help it. Thoughts of werewolves went through my mind.
I wasn’t astonished at his plan, though, as good as it was. I was astonished that he had thought this all out for me! He had shown up for gym even though he didn’t have to, and faced with Wooly’s diabolical obstacle course, he was more concerned about me than he was about himself.
Personally, I was beginning to think that Mason Ragg might be a little like The Fonz. Tough on the outside but heart of gold on the inside. Practically the very next second, the gym door opened and in marched Arthur. No kidding. It was like she had ultrasonic hearing for anything related to The Fonz and would appear on the spot if someone even thought about him. Stranger still, she was dressed in a boy’s gym uniform—white T-shirt, blue shorts. Right behind her was Jennifer Crawford, a.k.a. Benjamin, then came Emmie Wiltshire, a.k.a. Robert, then Chantal Samms, a.k.a. George, then three more members of GWAB whose names I didn’t know. They were all dressed in boys’ uniforms. I don’t know where they got them from, but except for Arthur, they didn’t fit the GWAB members very well. Then came Sybil Tushman with her camcorder. Last of all came Jeremy. I knew she would be there, of course. It came to me in a flash that this was The Blue and White Rebellion they had been plotting (blue and white being the colors of the gym uniforms), and now I realized with horror that she was going to watch Wooly wipe the floor with me. And so were her friends. If she was ashamed of me before this, she was going to want to disown me as a brother after this debacle.
Jeremy’s gym uniform was so big that the shorts reached below her knees, and the T-shirt was almost as long as the shorts. But what shocked me, what made me literally suck back my breath in a gasp, was her hair. The long red mane that she had always refused to cut because our mother had loved it so much had been completely lopped off. Her hair was as short as a boy’s. It struck me as the final betrayal. With a few bold snips of the scissors, she had cut us all out, along with her hair—Mom, Dad. Me.
Still, I didn’t think she looked very happy as she followed the others to the back end of the gym where we all stood, gawping at them (for the moment, everyone had forgotten about me and Mason and every head was riveted to the GWAB parade). Her head was lowered and her eyebrows were pinched together. She looked mad. Fighting mad. By comparison, the other girls just looked like they were pretending to be angry, but mostly they looked self-conscious as they stood in a clump by the rest of us, tugging at their badly fitting uniforms.
Suddenly I had two thoughts:
1. Watch out, Arthur. Jeremy is going to become the president of GWAB in no time.
2. The Blue and White Rebellion might actually save the day. Wooly was going to have to deal with them, and that would eat up precious pain-and-suffering time that he’d allotted for me and Mason.
I considered donating a charitable contribution to the organization.
Like the rest of us, Mr. Wooly watched the members of GWAB in bewildered silence. Then he collected himself and boomed:
“Excuse me, ladies!”
Our class was so used to being called “ladies” that all our heads turned toward him. So he made a lassoing motion with his arm in the direction of the GWAB members and clarified things by saying, “You lot! The girls in boys’ uniforms! Out!” His invisible lasso was now tossed toward the gym doors.
Arthur stepped forward. It wasn’t a big step and