The Detention Club Read Free

afraid you were going to say that,” I muttered. “Well, what if I signed a written contract that said if your cat died during some experiments, I’d totally buy you a new, even better cat, would that make you happy?”
    â€œPete, you’re scaring me,” he said. “What the heck are you talking about?”
    Sunny’s bedroom door opened, and I whispered into the receiver, “I can’t say right now. I’ll come over.”
    â€œWhy can’t you just tell me now?”
    â€œBecause these walls have ears!” I shouted, but then I heard her talking to Mom downstairs.
    â€œWell, today’s Counting Day, anyway,” Drew said.
    Drew was right! We’d been going crazy all summer waiting for Counting Day to come, and I guess I got so excited about the letter that morning that I forgot all about it.
    â€œI’ll see you in ten minutes,” I said, and hung up.
    I rolled up the notebook and wedged it into my back pocket, then headed downstairs. Sunny was in the living room with my mom, practicing the flute. She’d been practicing a couple of hours every day all summer, when she wasn’t studying for the SATs, which she’s not even going to take for three more years. Mom’s a nurse, and when she’s home from work she usually sits there while Sunny practices, holding a metronome in her lap, which is this little box that keeps the beat (it’s not much of an invention, really—basically it’s a ticking clock that can’t tell time) and nods along as Sunny plays the same stupid piece over and over.
    â€œWhere are you going?” Mom asked.
    â€œI’m going to work on some inventions over at Drew’s house,” I said.
    Sunny kept playing, but I could tell she was listening because her eyebrows got all scrunched up, as if she was mad at her sheet music.
    â€œThat’s great, sweetie!” Mom said. “You’ve already started a notebook?”
    â€œYou might as well book a flight down to DC in the spring so you can see me win the contest.”
    Sunny blew too hard into her flute and it made an awful squeak, and I made a big show by covering my ears. “I’ve known about the theme for this year’s T.A.G. class since the spring,” she said. “I have a whole notebook full of ideas already.”
    My stomach dropped.
    â€œI’m sure your ideas are wonderful, Peter,” Mom said.
    Drew’s house is a five-minute walk away, at the other end of Brook Street. We met on the bus ride home after the first day of fourth grade. I had gone over to Drew’s house, and he had this huge box full of Matchbox cars on the shelf behind his desk. Even though he no longer played with them, he still collected them, and he was embarrassed when I saw them—but then I brought him over to my house and showed him my stamp collection, my marble collection, and my big bag full of twist ties that I collect every week after my mom gets groceries. I couldn’t care less about stamps, and I don’t even know how to play with marbles—Sunny just had a bunch of them that she lost interest in and I inherited the collection.
    It turned out we’re both really into collecting things, and in school this was a huge advantage. For two straight years our class won the Campbell’s Soups label contest, which is this annual event to raise money for the homeless. The reason our class won was because me and Drew worked together like an assembly line, steaming the labels off of every can in our kitchen pantries in order for the labels to come off perfectly, with no rips. This annoyed my parents because they had to deal with months of Russian-roulette dinners since they had no idea what was in any of the now unlabeled cans.
    â€œOkay, looks like we’re having balsamic chicken and”—Mom would open a tin can and sigh—”pumpkin-pie filling for dinner.”
    â€œI hate you, Son,” Dad would