The Worst Class Trip Ever: Chapters 1–5

So everybody just stood around for a few minutes, while more commuters stopped their cars, so by now there was a pretty big crowd out there with my dad.

Finally some animal-control officers showed up. They’re used to alligators on people’s lawns, and they handled this one in like five minutes. They snagged it with a noose, duct-taped its mouth shut, and took it away in a van.

The trip was for the Culver eighth-grade civics classes. Every year they go to Washington, D.C.

He told us that it was a privilege for us to be on this trip to Washington and he expected us to be on our very best behavior as ambassadors representing Culver Middle School.

A bunch of kids laughed, and Mr. Barto glared at us and said that if we thought he was going to tolerate those kind of shenanigans—he actually said “shenanigans”—we were sadly mistaken, and he would not hesitate to send troublemakers home, and did he make himself clear?

“Will you shut up?” I said, but it was too late: We looked back, and the big guy was leaning forward, his head almost in our row, glaring at Matt, for like ten seconds, just leaning over us and staring.

Anyway, we finally got to the altitude where you can walk around, so I got up and started toward the back of the plane.

I noticed out of the side of my eye that the two weird guys behind us actually were looking at something, kind of hunched over it so you couldn’t see what it was.

Do you not understand that the emergency exits are an important safety feature of this aircraft, and it’s a very serious matter to tamper with them in any way?

“Like, I dunno, they’re tourists, and they’ll be walking around the White House area, and they want to see what’s around there, from the air.” Even while I was saying this, it sounded stupid.
Matt shook his head. “Tourists use maps. Not aerial photographs.”

“Now think about it: What does this airplane practically fly right over when we get to Washington?”

Like blow up the plane. Or it’s some kind of high-tech gun, or a thing they can use to smash through the cockpit door.

Then the pilot announced that we were beginning our descent into Washington.

He said there was turbulence and it was going to be “a little bumpy” and everybody should make sure their seat belts were fastened.

There was another huge bump and the whole plane lurched sideways.

He looked at the little guy and said, “Do you mind if I look inside?”
I thought the little guy hesitated just a tenth of a second before he said, “No, is fine.”

The only good part about what happened next was that the Federal Marshal decided not to arrest me and Matt.

Mr. Barto said he was extremely disappointed in us because we were ambassadors for Culver Middle School and it was a privilege to be on this trip and if we pulled one more stupid stunt he was going to blah blah blah.

I shoved him really hard. The two of us stumbled back into the room and fell on the floor, and he finally stopped yelling, because he was laughing too hard to breathe.

But I glanced that way and just for a second she looked at me and smiled and I kind of smiled back and then looked away, trying to look casual, like I had other things on my mind besides her, except of course I didn’t and my face was probably the same color as a stop sign.

I could tell he was about to give us a stern lecture about how he had given us one more chance to shape up and now blah blah blah.

We ate at a restaurant near the Capitol that specialized in feeding tour groups, as opposed to regular humans who would eat there on purpose. Our three entrée choices were The Executive, which was chicken that could have been fish; The Legislative, which was fish that could have been chicken; and The Judicial, which was meat loaf that could have been seat cushions.

This was a violation of all the known physical laws of the Culver Middle universe: A hot girl like Suzana sitting next to a nobody like me instead of with the other hot girls and popular boys.

We heard a rustling in one of the beds. Cameron was sitting up.

He got up and shuffled into the bathroom.