The Worst Class Trip Ever by Dave Barry Page B

me to get up.
    “Really?” I said. I could have slept for a week.
    “We’re supposed to be at breakfast by eight,” he said, heading for the door with Matt.
    I looked at my phone and groaned:
7:55
. I got dressed as fast as I could and ran down to the dining room, where Victor, Matt, and Suzana had saved a seat for me at a table for four. We
were all too tired to care about the fact that the entire eighth grade was now openly speculating on how it could be possible that Suzana Delgado, goddess, seemed to be voluntarily spending all her
time with the Dork Patrol.
    “Nice of you to join us,” said Suzana.
    “Do we have a plan yet?” I said.
    Suzana looked at Victor.
    “As far as I can tell from the news stories on the Internet,” he said, “Brevalov will be meeting the president at three o’clock, and after that they’re going to have
a press conference outside in the Rose Garden.”
    “So they’ll be outside sometime after three,” said Matt. “Which is when those guys will use the kite bomb.”
    I said, “And our plan is…”
    “We go to the Ellipse at, say, two thirty,” said Suzana. “We find the kite guys, and we stop them.”
    “How?”
    “However we have to. Cut the kite string, tackle them…”
    “
Tackle
them?”
    “Whatever it takes. At that point we could probably even tell the police, since they’d both probably be there, which means they couldn’t do anything to Cameron. And
they’ll have the bomb.”
    “Suzana, I don’t know. That one guy’s pretty huge.”
    “But there’s four of us.”
    “Yeah, but…”
    “But what? Are you scared?”
    I looked down. “I guess I am,” I said.
    “I am, too,” said Matt. “If it makes you feel any better.”
    It didn’t, but I appreciated the gesture.
    “Well, if you’re afraid,” said Suzana, “you don’t have to go.”
    “No,” I said, “I’m going.” At that moment I realized I had managed to do the worst possible thing, which was commit myself to maybe getting killed by the Gadakistan
maniacs and
still
look like a coward to Suzana.
    Suzana looked at Victor. “What’s the class trip schedule today?”
    Victor looked at his phone, where he had the schedule. “After breakfast we go to the National Zoo.”
    “Why’re we going to a zoo?” said Matt. “We already have a zoo in Miami.”
    “The one here has pandas,” said Victor.
    “So?”
    “So for some reason everybody makes this huge deal about pandas. I don’t know why. They never actually do anything except eat and poop. But they’re really famous.”
    “Yeah,” said Suzana. “They’re like the Kardashians of zoo animals.”
    “So after the zoo, then what?” I said.
    Victor looked at his phone again. “We eat lunch at noon at the zoo. Box lunches.”
    “Again?” said Suzana.
    “I’d rather eat panda poop,” I said.
    “Hey,” said Suzana, “judging from the other box lunches, that might be what we get.”
    “Then at one,” said Victor, ignoring us, “we take the bus to our next thing, which is…a tour of the U.S. Capitol. Which is kind of like the zoo, when you think about
it.”
    “Okay,” said Suzana. “We’ll ride the bus from the zoo to the Capitol. Then we’ll escape from the class trip, go to the Ellipse, and stop the kite guys.”
    “Won’t they eventually notice we’re not on the Capitol tour?” said Matt.
    “Yeah,” said Suzana. “But by the time they notice, it’ll be over, and we’ll be able to explain that we had to do whatever we end up doing.”
    Whatever
that
meant.
    We finished breakfast and got on the bus. This time Suzana didn’t even have to ask Mr. Barto to open her window; he just did it. She totally had him trained.
    I almost fell asleep on the bus ride to the zoo. I felt like I hadn’t really slept since the class trip started. Which was more or less true.
    The zoo was okay, I guess. It was definitely better than walking around inside another giant stone building. The day was sunny, but cooler than