The theif

All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl,

hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup

sandwich.

Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must’ve been held

back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his

chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life

because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him,

but don’t let that fool you. You should’ve seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she

knew I couldn’t do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had

threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly

entertaining happened on this trip.

“I’m going to kill her,” I mumbled.

Grover tried to calm me down. “It’s okay. I like peanut butter.”

He dodged another piece of Nancy’s lunch.

“That’s it.” I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.

“You’re already on probation,” he reminded me. “You know who’ll get blamed if anything

happens.”

Looking back on it, I wish I’d decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension

would’ve been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.

Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.

He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues

and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.

It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.

He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started

telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on

the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody

around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds,

would give me the evil eye.

Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even

though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had

come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.

From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would

point her crooked finger at me and say, “Now, honey,” real sweet, and I knew I was going to get afterschool detention for a month.

One time, after she’d made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told

Grover I didn’t think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, “You’re

absolutely right.”

Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.

Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around

and said, “Will you shut up?”

It came out louder than I meant it to.

The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story