The Trouble with Mark Hopper (17 page)

“Hmm, okay. What was your artistic talent?”

“Bassoon,” Mark said.

“Is that like a tuba?”

Mark stopped himself from telling Mark to look it up. “No, it requires far more skill. I'll show it to you one day this week.”

“They won't ask me to play anything on it, will they?” Mark asked, scared.

“They can't if you don't have one with you. Which you won't, because it takes years to learn to play the bassoon, and I'm really advanced at it for my age.”

Even though Mark figured Mark was just being himself and probably wasn't as good at the bassoon as he purported to be, he still prayed a member of the committee wouldn't reach below his chair, come up with a large instrument, and say, “Oh, what do you know. I just happen to have a bassoon here, so why don't you play a piece or two for us? You can warm up with some scales if you'd like. How about F major?”

“Also,” Mark said to cover his tracks, “I put on my application that I like to draw and paint, so if they ask you about that, you can talk about it.”

Mark looked at him in surprise. “You like to draw and paint?” he asked. “But you're not in art, are you?”

“No, band.”

“You should join art club!” Mark said excitedly. “It's so much fun. I can't believe I never knew you liked to draw. What do you like to draw?”

“Oh, you know. Regular things,” Mark said quickly. “Anyway, after the interview you can leave, and the awards ceremony is at night, so I'll go to that and let you know if we win.”

“What if,” Mark said slowly, thinking his latest fear through, “what if the people at the awards ceremony are the judges? And we win. And you go up to get the award and they say you're not Mark Hopper?”

“Hmm. That's actually a good question,” Mark said, impressed. “Well, I am pretty sure that Judy Shane presents the award, and she is obviously too busy to be a judge.” Mark could tell that Mark had no idea who Judy Shane was. “Judy Shane is a congresswoman.”

“Oh, right,” Mark said as earnestly as he could. “
That
Judy Shane.”

Mark shrugged. “Well, if it's Judy Shane, we won't have a problem. But if some of the judges are there, too, I think I will just wear really nice clothes and gel my hair like I usually do and everything, and then they will just think, ‘Wow, Mark Hopper really looks a lot more handsome when he is all cleaned up.' That should work.”

Mark wasn't convinced.

“And if they say I'm not Mark Hopper, I'll just pull out
my
school ID and prove that I am.”

Mark could just see Mark getting worked up and yelling at the judges that
of course
he was Mark Hopper, any idiot would be able to see that from his ID. Unless he, too, threw a fit during the final round, then they'd probably be onto them.

“Well, that's not your problem anyway,” Mark said, “because you won't be there. I'll figure it out. You just make sure I win. Oh, I almost forgot!” He slapped his forehead. “Getting there. How are you going to get to Marius College? We're so lucky it's right in Greenburgh this year. Last year it was all the way on the Eastern Shore.”

Mark had thought about that. “I think I'll have Grandpa Murray give me a ride. I'll tell him it's part of his top-secret present, so I can't tell him why, just that I need to get there.”

“We've got this. We are Mark Geoffrey Hopper, Masterminds. Perfect.”

Yeah, Mark thought. Perfect, but not easy, or honest, or right. But it was too late to back out now. He might as well turn his attention to something else that wasn't honest but was a lot more fun. “Let's go see if Beth is home yet. We need to talk about bugs.”

Though Mark and Mark usually dressed similarly, they dressed extra similarly the day before Thanksgiving. They wore khaki pants and tucked-in, blue, collared shirts to match their eyes. Mark still gelled his hair, and Mark still didn't, but they both parted their hair, as usual, on the side, and had, as usual, freckles splattered across their faces. They still didn't really look alike side by side, but with their matching outfits and features, there was pretty much no way to describe Mark to someone else without also describing the other Mark, and vice versa.

Unlike Operation: Mastermind, which needed to be planned and executed in secrecy by only Mark and Mark, Operation: Bug Dump had a crew of seven. Jasmina and Jonathan were excited to be part of the mission, which was deemed a good plan for revenge even by Jasmina, who preferred to settle things with words rather than with tricks. Mark and Mark also requested help from Beth and Beth; Beth for the bug part—she donated an old ant farm and various insects for the cause—and Beth for the dump part—she was a self-proclaimed master at pulling pranks at Ivy Road Middle School. Finally, they brought Grandpa Murray on board, for they and the bugs needed a ride to school from someone who wouldn't ask any questions. Grandpa Murray asked only one question: “If I promise to immediately forget the answer, can you tell me why you are bringing an ant farm, a jar of mosquitoes, and two containers of fruit flies to school?” Mark answered him honestly, and Grandpa Murray patted him on the back proudly before promptly forgetting he had even asked, as promised.

Grandpa Murray drove Mark, Mark, Jasmina, and Jonathan to school at seven-fifteen on Wednesday morning. (“Unless your prank is on the teachers,” Beth taught them matter-of-factly, “the best time for pranks at that dumb school is between seven-fifteen and seven twenty-five. Most of the teachers are already there and in their rooms, so you don't have to worry about them catching you. Early-morning detention is already under way, but the students don't really start arriving until seven-thirty.”) Even though Beth had drawn out a detailed blueprint of Ivy Road and marked obscure entrances and exits, one of which connected to a secret, underground corridor that was occupied by only jani torial supplies and an extended family of mice, Grandpa Murray dropped them off at the regular front entrance so as not to arouse suspicion. Mark and Mark went to their own lockers, casually, while Jasmina and Jonathan casually scoped out the hallways where Frank's and Laurie's lockers were.

Having taken Mark's painting and never gotten caught, Mark felt like a trained and practiced miscreant. He opened his own locker and placed his backpack on the ground in front of it. He took out a PROPERTY OF MARK GEOFFREY HOPPER. PRIVATE AND NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS folder from the top shelf and placed it in the crook of his left arm, on top of another folder—which was bulky from the ant farm inside. With his right hand, he took his thermos from his backpack. Then he walked over to Pete Dale's locker, which was just a few panels down. Glancing around as though looking for a room that he thought might be in the hallway, Mark made sure no one was coming. He set the two folders down gently and unscrewed the cap of the thermos. It was half full with apple juice. He lifted it to the slits in the locker—the same slits in which the invitation to Laurie's birthday party had been crammed in his locker a few weeks ago—and poured it, just a little bit, into the crack. He heard some of the juice hit the metal bottom of the locker, and a small stream actually started to drip out of the bottom. Mark smiled. He dipped his pinkie finger in the juice and then stuck it into one of the slits and rubbed the juice around the inside, to give the ants a starting place inside the locker rather than out. Satisfied, he took a short swig of the juice, screwed the cap back on, set it down on the ground, and glanced around once more.

Still seeing that the coast was clear, he picked up his folders. Without even opening the bottom one, he opened a corner of the ant farm the way Mark's sister had showed him and started to shake it into the cracks. Some of the sand poured into the locker. “Come on, you stupid little ants,” Mark muttered, shaking the farm. “You're free. Free!” As if they could understand, the ants began falling out of the farm along with the sand. “There you go, dummies,” Mark whispered. “Follow the apple juice. The sweet, sticky apple juice. Yummy.” Some big ones crawled out to follow their friends. A few began crawling on the outside of the locker, and that gave Mark an idea. He knelt down and dumped more of the farm out onto the stream of juice that had dripped through the bottom. The ants scurried around like lunatics, but once they got their bearings they began following the juice trail . . . right through the crack at the bottom and into the locker.

Mark glanced around once more and kept himself from cackling. He quickly closed the farm back up and gathered all of his stuff. He gave Pete's locker his best that's-the-last-time-you'll-mess-with-me look before leaving to walk to the hall with the science labs, where he discreetly dropped the ant farm into the garbage bin that Beth had told him got emptied on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Jasmina was waiting for him there, leaning against a water fountain and trying so hard to look casual she looked asleep. She had worn all black for the occasion, and she'd pulled back her tiny braids into a ponytail so that they wouldn't make noise as she walked. “Oh, hey,” she said, feigning surprise at seeing Mark in that hallway. With a large shrug and a big yawn, Jasmina delivered the code they had prepared to signal that the hallway with Laurie's locker was clear: “I just went by Kylie's locker, but she's not here yet.” Then she glanced around the empty hall and winked at Mark.

Mark rolled his eyes. If he ever decided to continue his criminal ways, he would not ask Jasmina to join his band of outlaws. “See you in homeroom,” he said.

Jasmina looked at him to make sure he understood the code. Mark gave her a yes-I-got-it-five-minutes-ago look. Jasmina watched him make his way briskly toward Laurie's locker before leaving to go to her own.

The hallway was still empty when Mark reached Laurie's locker, but it was 7:24, so he needed to be quick. He removed one arm from his backpack and swung it around on the other shoulder to open it and remove the jar of mosquitoes. This was going to be a little trickier. Once again, he spilled some apple juice inside, and then, to get rid of the last of the juice, he poured some into the locker next to Laurie's, which belonged to a girl whose name he didn't know but whose laugh and whisper he could recognize across the most crowded hallway. He lifted the jar to look inside. A few of the mosquitoes were lying on the bottom, dead, while most of them were lounging around the slice of potato Beth had put in there. One was zooming around frantically, ricocheting off the sides. Mark thought he heard footsteps down the hall. He stuffed the jar into his sleeve and looked back. The boys' bathroom door was swinging closed. Quickly, he removed the jar, unscrewed the lid, and covered the top with his hand. No mosquitoes escaped, not even the wild one, which was now bouncing up and down against his hand. Mark murmured to himself, “One, two, three!” and in one swift motion, removed his hand and pushed the jar up against the locker. He did it a little too forcefully, and the
ding
resounded throughout the hall. (He could imagine Jasmina, around the corner, jumping out of her skin.) A couple mosquitoes flew out and around Mark, though many of them began to buzz around the outside of the locker, trying to find a way in. He pushed a few in, and, presumably having found the apple juice, they didn't come out. Others found their way to the juice on the next locker. This time Mark did let himself laugh.

A toilet flushed, and Mark capped the lid on the jar and dropped it into his backpack. He was about to run away when he heard the bathroom door open, so he began to turn the dial on Laurie's lock instead. A boy came out of the bathroom, whistling. Mark stole glances at him while pretending to look through his backpack. The boy walked to a locker one panel over from where Mark was and began to unlock it. Mark panicked. He couldn't just stand there pretending this was his locker when he didn't know the combination! The boy glanced at him and gave him a head nod, which probably meant he didn't know who he was. Mark spun the lock once more, forcefully, tugged on it as though to make sure it was locked, and walked the other way. Hopefully the boy didn't get a good look at him.

And hopefully he didn't see the mosquitoes circling Mark's head or fingers as he walked away.

 

Meanwhile, at a corner on the opposite side of the building, Jonathan was standing guard while Mark stood poised in front of Frank Stucco's locker. Frank's locker was easy to spot, for he had engraved FRANK ROCKS in it with the pointy end of a compass. Mark unzipped his backpack and placed it on the floor in front of him. He opened his small carton of orange juice and stuck a bendy straw in it. He took a sip through the straw and placed his finger over the hole. The juice stayed in as he lifted the straw out of the carton and slid the tip of it into the slit in the locker, just above the letter
N
. He bent the straw so that it was aimed toward the center of the locker. And then, with a glance at Jonathan, who grinned and gave him a thumbs-up, Mark released his finger and jiggled the straw to scatter the juice all over. His eyes were wide, his heart was pounding, and his hands were shaking, which only scattered the juice more. He took the straw out and repeated the process twice more. He was doing it one last time to ensure that Frank's books—or whatever he had in there—were properly juiced, when the straw slipped from his fingers and fell into the locker. “Oh no,” Mark said aloud.

“What?” Jonathan whispered from his post at the corner.

“I dropped the straw,” Mark said.

“Don't worry about it.”

“But it has my fingerprints on it. And my DNA and everything!”

Jonathan shrugged. He gasped. Someone was coming down the hall. “Becky Tummelstein is coming!” he hissed.