A lot of things had been bothering him lately. Like the printer paper. He still didn’t have any. It was as if an evil spirit were keeping his paper from him. Two more shipments of napkins had arrived, along with five boxes of paper towels, but no paper. And what Miss Peabody had said was on his mind. Could she be right? Were he and the boys soft and flabby? Maybe the Wizzle System should be revised. And Mr. Sturgeon. What did the Headmaster have against expelling Bruno Walton? The boy was obviously a disruptive influence at Macdonald Hall and had more than once earned a one-way ticket home!
Head spinning, he took out a couple of aspirins and headed for the water cooler.
* * *
Saturday afternoon Bruno and Boots were lying in their room in the tiny space that remained. Fifty-four boxes of ink-jet paper took up most of the room. They were stacked everywhere except for the boys’ beds and desks, and the entranceway to the washroom.
“Look at it rain,” said Boots. “I’ve never seen such a miserable day in my life. It’s dark as night out there.”
“Pretty miserable,” agreed Bruno. “Foggy, misty, wet — a real downpour. Too bad Wizzle doesn’t have a picnic planned.”
“I hope Wizzle doesn’t have an inspection planned,” said Boots.” There’s no way all The Committee’s task forces combined could get this paper out in time.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Bruno. “Security knows what they’re doing.”
“Yeah, well, I’d hate to have my life depend on Wilbur Hackenschleimer, especially if it’s suppertime.”
“Hey,” said Bruno, peering through the streaming window, “something’s going on at Scrimmage’s.”
Boots got up and joined him at the window. “In this miserable downpour? Miss Scrimmage never lets them outside without a written guarantee from the weather bureau.”
“All the same, there are people out there around the orchard. I can’t see what they’re doing. It’s too foggy. But it’s a big crowd.”
“They can’t be up to much in this rain,” said Boots.
* * *
“What a beautiful day for war games!” exclaimed Miss Peabody in jubilation.
“Beautiful?” echoed Miss Scrimmage. “It’s horrible! These are delicate young ladies! They’ll catch cold!”
“It’s only water, Miss Scrimmage, and a good soaking never hurt anybody. With the fog and the rain, it’ll make camouflaging all the easier.” She sighed. “If only I could take part.”
Miss Peabody addressed the assembled armies. “All right, girls, you’ll have fifteen minutes to take up your positions and set up fortifications. Remember, if you’re hit with the food colouring, you’re a casualty and that’s it for you. I’m the referee and I’ll be making sure there isn’t any funny stuff. All right, you’ve got fifteen minutes. May the best army win!”
Both armies scattered, the Blue-White toward the northern stronghold, the Red-Green to the south. Miss Peabody listened contentedly to the sound of preparations. She checked her watch. It was one o’clock. The fifteen minutes were up.
“Ten seconds!” she bellowed. Everyone tensed. “Go!”
Behind the lines, Cathy and her officers were manning the catapult they had been up all night building. They loaded it with a gigantic plastic bag full of the blue-dyed water and let fly.
There were screams of shock in the ranks of the Red-Green army as the bomb landed among them and splattered blue in all directions.
“Charge!” screamed Cathy.
The Blue-White army thundered through the gloom of the orchard, some running, some being pushed in wheelbarrows. The enraged Red-Green army opened fire. Streams of red dye cut into the ranks of the Blue-Whites.
“Hit the dirt!” cried Cathy. The Blue-Whites fell to the soggy ground and began establishing their position along a line in the orchard. The wheelbarrows kept on rolling, driving right into the ranks of the Red-Green army. In the lead barrow General Cathy Burton, a water pistol in each hand, sprayed dye on anything that moved. She paused only occasionally to reach for a dye grenade to throw at enemy pockets.
“Look out.”
On the limb of a tree sat a Red-Green sniper. As Cathy’s wheelbarrow surged past, the sniper sloshed down a bucket of red dye.
With a terrified scream, Cathy hurled herself from the barrow to the ground and looked up to see Diane dripping with red dye. Savagely she aimed both her pistols up the tree and shot the sniper down. A stream of red whizzed by her shoulder, missing her, but not by much. She jumped behind the wheelbarrow for cover and began to shoot back.
“I’m running out of ammo!” cried Cathy to Diane. “Give me your gun!”
“I can’t! I’m a casualty!”
‘‘Give me your gun!” Cathy ran out from behind the tipped barrow, dodging a barrage of enemy fire, grabbed Diane’s pistol and began to shoot her way back to the ranks of her Blue-Whites. Reaching no-man’s-land, she made a mad dash and leapt behind a mountain of mud the Blue-White army had built up for cover.
“How’s it going?” she asked Ruth Sidwell.
“I’ve never been so terrified in my life! Where’s Diane?”
“Casualty,” said Cathy. “But how’s it going? Are we winning the war?”
“Who can tell in this mud?”
“We can’t use the wheelbarrows anymore!” gasped Wilma Dorf. “They’re all bogged down in the mud!” Suddenly a large red bomb exploded in their midst. Ruth and Wilma were hit, but Cathy threw herself aside just in time.
“Retreat!” she howled, pausing to shoot a sniper in a tree. “Regroup at Checkpoint B!”
At Checkpoint B the Blue-White army was hit by a major enemy offensive. Through a gap in the trees came an onrush of Red-Green troops armed with water pistols and small bombs, carrying large pieces of cardboard for protection.
A small group of defenders retreated, drawing the enemy surge through the thin passageway.
‘‘Attack!” cried Cathy Burton.
From the trees swarms of Blue-Whites appeared, dropping large bombs on the trapped Red-Green forces below. The bewildered Red-Greens fought back as best they could, but were wiped out by superior fire power.
Cathy grabbed the catapult in her arms and the Blue-Whites ran forward to encounter the bulk of the Red-Green army. Onward they charged, slipping and sliding in the mud, wet and filthy, to find that the Red-Greens were gone.
“Oh, those sneaky —” Cathy interrupted herself. “Okay,” she whispered. “They’re waiting to pounce on us. Now what are we going to do?”
“Occupy all their territory and try to corner them?” asked Janice Adams.
“Nah!” scoffed Cathy. “That’s what they’re expecting us to do. We’re going to sit right here and fortify ourselves. We’ll be so strong by the time they come at us that we’ll wipe them out.”
“I don’t understand it,” said one of the lieutenants of the Red-Green army. “Why did we leave our position? We could have had them all.”
“We were losing too many troops,” said the Captain. “Now Burton knows she has three-quarters of the field. She’s going to try to corner us. But when she does, she’ll spread her forces too thin. We’ll just sit here and fortify ourselves, waiting for them to come. And when they do, we’ll punch a hole right through their lines and double back and wipe them out!”
* * *
It was four o’clock and the rain was still pouring down. It had been more than two hours since the armies had started the waiting game, and the tension on both sides had reached the breaking point.
Walter C. Wizzle walked across Miss Scrimmage’s front lawn carrying his umbrella, intent on visiting Miss Peabody. He had resolved to tell her that she was right about physical fitness, and that he was going to begin morning calisthenics at Macdonald Hall first thing Monday. He was also going to ask her advice on organizing the exercises.
Approaching the school, he was startled to find Miss Scrimmage standing on the front porch dressed in her rain slicker and staring about, wild-eyed.
r /> “Good afternoon, Miss Scrimmage. Is Miss Peabody in?”
“Oh, she’s in the orchard!” shrilled the Headmistress. “Oh, how terrible!” She shivered.
“Uh — is something wrong, Miss Scrimmage?”
She pointed wordlessly to the apple orchard, face contorted with horror.
Mr. Wizzle made his way to the orchard, a trifle bewildered. What was wrong with Miss Scrimmage? And why would anyone be outside in an apple orchard on a miserable day like today?
He surveyed the orchard. It would be hard to find a person in there. The trees were thick, and it was dark and gloomy. Well, he would just have to walk around. Surely he would run into her eventually.
Cathy sat beside the loaded catapult, an intense expression on her face. Suddenly her eyebrows shot up. “Someone’s coming!” she whispered to her troops. “The Red-Green army! Battle stations, everybody! Don’t move till I give the word!”
Cathy sat ready, hands shaking with anticipation, until a dim figure appeared through the trees.
“Fire!”
She fired the catapult.
With an enormous splash, the blue-paint bomb shot up and struck Mr. Wizzle full in the face, spinning him around, dazed.
“Attack!” Out of nowhere sloshed a bucket of red dye, registering another direct hit on Mr. Wizzle.
The two armies spied each other and pandemonium broke loose. They surged together, meeting in the middle, knocking Mr. Wizzle over. Red and blue dye was everywhere. Streams from water pistols cut the air like laser beams, bombs large and small were splattering all over, and buckets of dye were splashed in all directions. Both armies plowed back and forth through the mud, stepping over the collapsed figure of Mr. Wizzle.
Casualties piled up quickly as the crazed battle progressed, and the very ground and trees began to look solid red and blue. The melee raged on until it became a shoot-out between Cathy, with one of her lieutenants, and five Red-Green soldiers.
Over her shoulder Cathy saw a stream of red dye strike her companion’s back. She was alone. Screaming in defiance, she went up a tree like a monkey and began picking off the enemy, one by one. She caught the last Red-Green with a perfect shot to the centre of the forehead.
Miss Peabody ran onto the scene. “All right! All right! The war’s over! Blue-White wins!”
A crazed expression came over Cathy’s face as she looked down at the Assistant Headmistress. She would never get another opportunity like this.
“The enemy!” she cried, and squirted Miss Peabody full in the face.
She was out of the tree and disarmed in three seconds.
“All right, everybody!” cried Miss Peabody. “Good workout, all of you! Hit the showers! Burton, I’ll see you in my office!” She looked at the ground. One figure did not stir. It was a man covered in dye, mud and grass, holding a mashed umbrella. She grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to his feet.
Mr. Wizzle’s eyes uncrossed and he stared into Miss Peabody’s blue-dyed face. “Miss Peabody?” he asked feebly.
She laughed. “Boy, Wizzle, did they ever give it to you!”
He was too stunned to argue. “Uh-huh.”
“Well, you’d better come in for a while and recover. If we sent you home, you’d never find the place.”
Mr. Wizzle was still in a daze. “Was that the big earthquake? Am I dead?”
“No,” she laughed, “you’re dyed.”
“Boy, Burton, you sure know how to gum up a good thing once you’ve earned it.”
Cathy looked at Miss Peabody questioningly.
“That was pretty nice shooting you did there. You should be proud. You caught Sophie Lipton right between the eyes.” She frowned. “You caught Gloria Peabody right between the eyes, too. That was stupid.”
Cathy assumed what she hoped was a perfectly innocent expression. “Miss Peabody, I’m terribly sorry about squirting you. You see, I was so caught up in the thrill of battle —”
“Balloonjuice! You saw a way to get even for all those laps I’ve handed you, and you took it! You only made one mistake. When you shot me, you were shooting the referee. That’s something to remember, Burton. Never shoot the referee until the prize is already handed out. No trip.”
Cathy was horrified. “No trip? But the girls will kill me!”
Miss Peabody grinned. “I wouldn’t worry about that. They’ll have to catch you first. And you’ll be moving pretty fast — on the track.”
Cathy glared her resentment. Well, all right, so there was no prize. But to have given Peabody a faceful of blue dye — it was worth it!
Chapter 11
A Star Is Born
The Committee held a meeting of all major department heads over dinner on Sunday. The dining hall was buzzing with the news that all students were to turn out on the soccer field at 6:30 the next morning for calisthenics.
“I don’t see how The Fish could have given Wizzle permission to do this to us!” exclaimed Pete Anderson.
“I don’t believe in morning calisthenics,” put in Elmer.
“And it leaves so little time for breakfast,” mourned Wilbur.
“The last time I tried to do jumping jacks I sprained both ankles,” announced Sidney. “I was in a wheelchair for weeks.”
Everybody laughed.
“The worst part,” put in Larry, “is this: I overheard at the office that Miss Peabody is coming over from Scrimmage’s to help out!”
“Oh, no!” moaned Sidney.
“Wait a minute!” said Bruno. “I’ve got an idea. This could be a really big thing for us. Tomorrow morning we’ll all go out and do Wizzle’s calisthenics.”
“What’s so good about that?” asked Boots. “Do we have a choice?”
“We do the calisthenics,” explained Bruno, “and then we ask to do more. Then we all request that we repeat our personal favourite exercises. We just keep asking to do more and more exercises …”
* * *
Morning calisthenics began at 6:30 with Mr. Wizzle and Miss Peabody standing up at the front of the Macdonald Hall student body. They began with jumping jacks, jogging in place, push-ups and sit-ups. At 6:40, Mr. Wizzle announced, “That’s enough for today. You can go.”
Bruno’s hand shot up. “Mr. Wizzle, sir, let’s do that again.”
“All of it?” asked Mr. Wizzle incredulously.
“Yes, sir,” said Bruno enthusiastically. There were cheers from the assembled students.
Mr. Wizzle and Miss Peabody led them through the ten-minute routine again.
Boots’s hand shot up. “Mr. Wizzle, sir, let’s have a morning run.”
“Well,” said Mr. Wizzle, breathing heavily, “we don’t want to overdo it the first day and —”
“Come on, Wizzle,” said Miss Peabody, “if they’re enthusiastic, so much the better.”
“Okay,” he said. “Where do you want to run?”
“Around the campus,” called Pete Anderson. The other boys cheered their approval.
Mr. Wizzle was horrified. “But it’s a big campus and — uh —” He withered under Miss Peabody’s gaze. “Okay, let’s run around the campus.”
“Three times!” called Chris Talbot. More approving cheers came from the boys.
With Mr. Wizzle and Miss Peabody in the lead, the boys began running around the perimeter of the campus. By the time they had finished three circuits, it was 7:20.
Mr. Wizzle was hyperventilating. “Okay, now I guess we can all go and —”
“Mr. Wizzle,” piped Larry Wilson, “we didn’t do enough jumping jacks. That’s my favourite.”
A number of boys called out in agreement.
“Well, we really have been at this a while and —”
“If they want to do them, Wizzle —” began Miss Peabody sternly.
“Okay,” puffed Mr. Wizzle. “More jumping jacks.”
They did jumping jacks until 7:30.
“Okay,” called Mr. Wizzle, gasping for breath, “we’ve done a lot so — uh” — he looked at
them hopefully — “if there are no more requests —”
“Sit-ups!” called Bruno.
“Push-ups!” added Boots.
“Knee-bends!” piped Wilbur.
“Toe touches!”
“Side-bends!”
“Leg lifts!”
At quarter to eight the group was still doing push-ups. At eight they were doing stretching exercises. At 8:15 they were on their backs bicycling, and at 8:20 Mr. Wizzle collapsed in a heap.
“I can’t do any more!” he croaked at Miss Peabody, his voice a rasp.
“Dismissed!” she bellowed. “Come on now, Wizzle. Get up.”
“I can’t!”
“All right,” she said, hauling him to his feet. “Let’s go. Say, I was pretty impressed with those boys. They must be in better shape than I thought. One thing’s sure — they’re in better shape than you are.”
He was too weak to reply.
Bruno and Boots staggered into their room and fell onto their beds.
“Heart attack!” breathed Bruno. “My aching bones!”
“I’m definitely dying!” gasped Boots.
“Well, at least we have the consolation of knowing that Wizzle is, too.”
“Leg cramp!” howled Boots.
“Me, too!” said Bruno in a strained voice. “But I’ll bet Wizzle’s are worse.”
Boots snorted. “And it didn’t help matters much to stay up all night shaking Wizzle’s house. While we were seeing to it that he got no sleep, we didn’t get any either. And we’ve got to go to class in half an hour.”
“Oh,” moaned Bruno. “But at least Wizzle won’t be sitting in on any classes today.”
* * *
Cathy and Diane sat huddled in blankets in their room, their feet in a large basin of hot water. After the war games, the entire student body of Miss Scrimmage’s Finishing School for Young Ladies had come down with colds.
Diane sneezed violently and reached for a tissue. “I still don’t understand how you could have blown our trip! If the girls ever get well, they’re going to kill you!”