Slacker: Chapters 12–17

At the meeting, I was so devastated that I almost quit on the spot.

I intended to make myself indispensable to the P.A.G.

She was dressed in so many layers of sweaters, vests, and coats that she waddled. But she still managed to make her approach look menacing.

She was still wielding that claw, and I didn’t have a weapon, except maybe the turnip—which, come to think of it, probably could have taken out a charging rhino.

There he stood in a blizzard of topsoil, his shovel just a blur, bombarding silver-haired ladies with earth, trash-talking some imaginary opponent.

That was when I noticed a familiar slapping sound. I wheeled around.
I gawked.

Beady black eyes watched the touchdown dance while a flat tail whacked at a mud puddle.

Thunk! He swung the big rake. The tines bit into the earth just a few inches behind the beaver’s wide, flat tail.

“I hate to break it to you,” Pavel retorted, “but it’s existing all around you in living color. There’s even a reporter here to record it for posterity.”

It figured—the guy was so occupied with his fan club of old ladies that when he was needed for real helping, he was AWOL.

They all came running, even Xavier, who seemed relieved to abandon his obnoxious taskmaster.

Cam’s so-called lifestyle was just an excuse to be a video-game-addicted couch potato.

We applaud their noble goals, but, intentionally or not, they often do as much harm as good.

These thoughts were uppermost in my mind as I trekked out to the senior citizens’ garden project on Seventh Street to observe the first good deed of the Positive Action Group, a new community service club at Sycamore Middle School.

The kids might have shown a little more sensitivity toward their elderly hosts.

Bad enough my brother conjured up a fake club to fool Mom and Dad into believing he’d changed his slacker ways. But now he was a hero for it?

And Mom and Dad were too preoccupied with the store to realize how unfair their darling son was being.

Speaking of my parents, they were ecstatic over Audra Klincker’s article.

“Yeah,” I agreed without enthusiasm. “I’m ‘every single member.’ I better hire a bodyguard to fight off the paparazzi.”

I was just the resentful little sister jealous of all the attention my brother was getting.

Taped to the wall, obscuring Jabba the Hutt, was today’s Klincker Kronicle.

“Ooooh!” trilled Chuck. “Cam has a girlfriend!” “Romance is in the air!” added Pavel, his nose wrinkled.

“I think she means P.A.G.-er,” Pavel mused. “It’s kind of catchy, actually.”

With a squeal of tires, the Charger lurched past me, then bumped up onto the curb to cut me off.

We peeled away, thumping off the curb. The car’s locks ominously snapped shut.

I was bewildered. “Can’t we all do good deeds? They’re—you know—good.”

“Pretty soon my college application is going in to Harvard, and I’m going to throw the kitchen sink at them. Every piece of civic service, or charity, or good citizenship that could possibly happen in a one-horse town like Sycamore is going to be on there. I'd love to put that I helped the senior citizens clean up their garden. But I can’t—because a bunch of snot-nosed middle schoolers beat me to it!”

Tony turned around, peering over the seat and completely ignoring the road ahead. “That wasn’t very nice of you,” he admonished.

I was up nights brainstorming future projects to suggest.

I ran all through the school, scouring hallways and peering around corners.

By the time I pounded up to the second floor, I was bathed in perspiration.

He walked a little shorter, his head sunk a little deeper into his shoulders. Almost as if he was hoping that this giant ovation was for somebody else.

Audra Klincker was there, too, standing with Mr. Fanshaw next to the gazebo.

“What a waste,” Cam lamented. “A whole day of Rule the World training down the drain. And for what?”

The lawns were lush, green, and well kept.