Sammy Keyes and the Wedding Crasher by Wendelin Van Draanen Page B

combination of Miss Congeniality and Biggest Flirt, saying, “I’m sorry.… Can I get by? … Thank you! … Excuse me!” as she pushes open windows and props open the door.
    She finally sits down in her seat with a little squiggle and an “Ah, much better!” and everyone gets back to the puzzle. But after a while I look up and notice that Mr. Vince is sitting at his desk like he always does when he gives us busywork, but he’s not clicking around on his computer. He’s pushed away from the desk a little and is kind of hunched over.
    Now, at first I think he’s having a moment of, you know,
reflection
. But then he sits up, and his right arm pulls back and then moves forward. Like he’s just slipped something into the pocket of his slacks.
    Something that seemed to be about the size of a phone.
    Right away, I check for Billy’s phone.
    It’s still there, by the chicken hat.
    So then I’m thinking, Wow—did Mr. Vince have
his
phone out in class? Was he checking messages? Was he
texting
?
    How hypocritical would
that
be?
    But I couldn’t remember ever seeing Mr. Vince use a cell phone, so maybe it wasn’t a phone. Or wait … wow … maybe he had gotten ahold of
Heather’s
phone?
    But how would he have gotten Heather’s phone? He wasn’t even at school when it got lost!
    And Sasha sure wouldn’t give it to him.…
    Would she?
    No, of course not!
    But … what if Sasha never really had it in the first place and she was just playing games with me? She
was
a little odd.
    A little
extreme
.
    So, yeah, I was spiraling into Doubtsville fast. And I knew I was being irrational, but something about Heather’s phone kept nagging at me. It was like I needed to
see
the dead body to believe there
was
a dead body.
    Now, I’ve been told more times than I can count that I have an “overly active imagination.” So I was actually in the middle of trying to rein it in, telling myself that I was being stupid and that the Vincenator was either putting his own phone away or doing another one of his disgusting scratch maneuvers, when all of a sudden the fire alarm goes off.
    “Aaaagh!” I cry, and jump about six feet in the air.
    Heather totally busts up. “Dork,” she sneers across the aisles.
    “Fire drill, people!” Mr. Vince bellows from his desk.
    I tell you. The guy’s a regular brain surgeon.
    But then Mr. Foxmore’s voice comes over the PA. “This is not a drill. File out to your assigned evacuation sites immediately.”
    “Not a drill?” everyone says, looking around at everyone else.
    “You heard the man!” Mr. Vince snaps. “Get moving!”
    So we all hurry to file out, leaving everything behind like we’re supposed to—which feels weird, but those are the rules.
    Only apparently Sasha doesn’t know the rules.
    “That stays here,” Mr. Vince says, pointing to her backpack.
    “But—”
    “They lock up,” Angie Johnson tells her. “It’s the rules.”
    So Sasha leaves her backpack, but you can tell she really doesn’t want to.
    “Our evacuation site is the track!” Mr. Vince calls. He’s standing outside the door now, kind of flagging us along as we all file out. “And don’t think you can ditch this!” he shouts as he locks up. “Roll will be taken!”
    So we head for the track. We can hear sirens in the distance, and there’s a lot of scurrying of adults. Mr. Foxmore is touching base with teachers as they file by, Cisco’s giving instructions to the lunch ladies, and even our phantom principal, Dr. Morlock, is out waving students along, telling them to keep moving.
    After our class is assembled on the track, Mr. Vince barks through the roll sheet. But I notice he starts with Tracy Arnold, not Heather Acosta, and when I look around, I don’t see Heather anywhere.
    So I snicker, “Figures,” and just kind of shake my head, because if I know Heather, she kissed up to him for a bathroom pass so she could suck down a cigarette. And come on. I mean, how pathetic is it when