Class Is Not Dismissed! Read Free Page B

else hear that chirping sound?” Madeleine asked with an anxious tone. “Out of curiosity, how far away do you
     think
they
are? You don’t suppose they’re on the tram with us?”
    “Does this thing have an emergency phone or radio or flare gun, Schmidty?” Lulu interrupted just as the old man prepared to
     answer Madeleine’s question.
    “I’m afraid not, Miss Lulu. You know Madame, no dubious technologies.”
    “I feel like I need to stand up,” Lulu said as a familiar pounding behind her left eye commenced. For as long as Lulu could
     remember, fear always manifested itself as a harsh pounding sensation behind her left eye.
    “But you
are
standing up, Lulu,” Madeleine explained sweetly.
    “Um,” Lulu said as her face scrunched up, “are we almost there? I feel like we’ve been in here for hours.”
    “Just about, Miss Lulu,” Schmidty said as the SVT jolted to a stop at the top of the mountain.
    Lulu pushed her way off the SVT first, then hunchedover with her hands on her knees and caught her breath.
    “You know I’m not the litigious type, Schmidty, but this is a whiplash lawsuit waiting to happen. I’m a little surprised Munchauser
     let you put this in,” Theo said as he followed the old man off the SVT.
    “Ugh, Munchauser. Simply saying his name leaves a sour taste in my mouth,” Schmidty said with the expression of a cat coughing
     up a hairball.
    Garrison, the last to exit the SVT, had just placed his right foot on solid ground when the tram dropped two hundred feet
     to the base of the mountain. The metal bars slammed into the ground, setting off a thunderous series of sounds.
    “Holy cannoli!” Theo shrieked as he dropped to his knees and covered his head with his hands. “The burglar is trying to kill
     us! There’s a hit out!”
    “How I loathe disappointing you, Mister Theo, but no one is trying to kill you.”
    “Yet,” Lulu chimed in.
    “I merely forgot to pull the brake on the SVT. I tend to do that rather frequently.”
    “Schmidty, I could have fallen two hundred feet andcrashed into the ground! Do you have any idea what an accident like that could do to an athlete’s body? I didn’t think it
     was possible, but this is worse than the wooden crane you dragged us up in last year,” Garrison said angrily. “I mean, sure,
     the wood was cracked and held together by rubber bands and glue, but at least it didn’t drop people!”
    “I feel a tension headache coming on,” Theo said as he massaged his temples. “We haven’t even seen Wellington yet, and already
     I can’t breathe, and my head is splitting.”
    “Um, in case you forgot, Theo, it was Garrison who almost plummeted two hundred feet, not you,” Lulu said pointedly.
    “Always getting caught up with the details,” Theo said as he approached Summerstone’s grand wrought-iron gate. The rusted
     old metal entry connected to a soaring slate wall that enclosed the four-acre island in the sky.
    The foursome followed Schmidty and Macaroni through Summerstone’s gate, where they met a very strange sight. The spotty green
     lawn was covered in tuxedo-clad scarecrows, B EWARE OF B EAUTY Q UEEN signs, and seemingly endless booby traps. Thickly woven ropes crisscrossed the lawn both vertically and horizontally, linking
     cans to ladders to buckets to nets to odd-shaped metal objects to small glass jars to cages to bells, and so much more.
    “Schmidty, you know I enjoy being crafty as much as the next guy—every Christmas I make my own ornaments with a little paste
     and glitter. But I got to tell you, when it comes to home security, you need a professional, none of this do-it-yourself baloney.”
    The old man simply stared in bemusement at Theo. The answer hardly needed to be said: this was security, Wellington-style.

CHAPTER 4
EVERYONE’S AFRAID OF SOMETHING:
Scelerophobia is the fear of burglars.

    S ummerstone’s foyer was grander in scale than that of the average mansion, but then again, this most certainly