The Worst Class Trip Ever Read Free Page B

looking at aerial photographs.”
    “So?”
    “They’re aerial photographs of the
White House
.”
    I looked at him. “Are you sure?”
    He nodded twice really fast, up-down-up-down, and whispered, “Aerial photographs
of the White House
.”
    I thought about that for a couple of seconds. “There could be a simple explanation,” I said.
    “Like what?”
    “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.”
    I ducked down and snuck a peek between Matt’s and my seatbacks at the weird guys behind us. They were looking at something, and they were definitely hunching over it like they didn’t
want anybody walking past in the aisle to see. But from my angle, I got a quick glimpse. And Matt was right: It was a photo of the White House, taken from the air. I looked back at Matt. He raised
his eyebrows.
    “See?” he said.
    “What do you think they’re doing?”
    “Add it up,” he said. “There’s two weird guys, both carrying things that they’re acting all weird about, right?”
    “Right.”
    “And now they’re looking at an aerial photograph of the White House, right?”
    “Right.”
    “Now think about it: What does this airplane practically fly
right over
when we get to Washington?”
    I thought about it. I went to Washington with my family in fourth grade, and I remembered that when the plane was landing, it flew over the Potomac River, and my dad was pointing to famous stuff
out the left-side window, really close—the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial…and the White House.
    “Oh, man,” I said.
    “Yeah,” said Matt. “And you laughed when I said they had a missile.”
    “But they can’t have a missile. They got through airport security.”
    Matt snorted. “Did you
see
those airport security people? I think you could drive a tank past them, as long as it didn’t contain any liquids.”
    “No, seriously, there’s no way they could—”
    “Okay, okay, say it’s not a missile. Maybe it’s some other kind of weapon, something that has two pieces, and it’s only dangerous if you put them together. One piece is
in the big guy’s black bag up there, and the other’s in the weird little dude’s backpack. When we get near Washington, they put the pieces together and it forms some kind of new
thing that does something bad.”
    “Like what?”
    “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. I don’t know what it is. But it’s
something
.”
    I thought about it some more. Matt can be an idiot, but he’s not a
complete
idiot.
    I said, “So what should we do?”
    “Maybe we should tell the flight attendant.”
    I looked toward the front of the plane. The mean eighty-jillion-year-old flight attendant was glaring around the cabin like she was about to cast a spell and turn everybody into a frog. I
imagined what it would be like to go up to her and tell her that we thought the two guys behind us were terrorists, based on…based on not a whole lot, really.
    “Why don’t you tell her?” I said.
    “
I’m
not gonna tell her,” said Matt. “Why don’t you tell her?”
    “She already hates me,” I said.
    “I think she hates everybody,” said Matt.
    “Okay,” I said. “We won’t say anything now. But we’ll watch them. If they do anything weird, especially when we’re getting near the White House, we’ll
do something.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like yell. Or something.”
    “That’s our plan? We yell? Or something?”
    “Do you have a better plan?”
    “No.”
    “Then that’s our plan.”
    For the next hour or so we just sat there feeling nervous. I was so nervous I didn’t even think about Suzana. Every now and then we snuck a peek back between the seats at the weird