Revenge of the Green Banana by Jim Murphy

Author:Jim Murphy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

13

Plausible Deniability

TIME FLIES WHEN you’re having fun. At least that’s what my mom always said. She usually added, “So make sure you always have fun. But not too much.” Not having too much fun was very easy to do at St. Stephen’s.

Anyway, the amazing thing is that my time-flying fun started right after I came back from chatting with Philip. We were at dinner when Dad suddenly said, “I took up the red kitchen tiles, and I’m wondering who ripped up the green ones.”

Jerry immediately pointed across the table at me with his fork and announced, “I didn’t do it. He did!”

This was an understandable reaction. Better to place blame for a crime as soon as possible and not get caught up in the investigation. I said, “Yeah, I did. I thought you wanted to get rid of them.”

“I do,” Dad said. He snapped his fingers as if he’d just had a brainstorm (even though it was obvious he’d been thinking about it for a while). “I have an idea. Why don’t you rip up and bag all the rest of the tiles? I’ll pay you a dollar a bag. I brought a bunch of bags home tonight.”

Jerry quickly put in, “I can do that too,” but Dad shook his head gently and said, “No, no, that’s okay, Jerry. Jimmy started the job, so he should finish it.”

“But I want to make some money too,” Jerry pleaded, and here’s where my day got even better. For me, anyway.

My mom said, “I know. I’ll give you a dollar to clean the oven.”

“You mean I have to stick my head in a disgusting oven for a buck?”

I was tempted to say something snotty, but I didn’t—​not a word to rub in Jerry’s attempt to blame me. Which was unusual for me.

Mom managed to make my night even better when she suggested that if Jerry didn’t want to clean the oven, he could spread manure around the garden. “The roses need a good feeding before winter. And you can deadhead them, too.”

Jerry looked clueless about this last part, so Mom explained. “Deadheading means cutting off the dead flowers.”

“Oh,” was Jerry’s response, followed by, “How much do I get for each deadhead?”

Even school got a little better in the following days. I leaned left, then right, just enough that Sister Angelica didn’t bother me at all. Still, she kept calling on Philip and making him answer questions in English, so that his cheeks and ears always seemed to blaze a red glow. I managed to get most of my homework done and even got a 75 on a spelling quiz, thanks to Ellen’s constant calls, prodding, badgering, and advice. Only the scores weren’t read out loud, so Kathy Gathers never knew that I’d improved on my 30 percent grade.

I had to go to the auditorium on Thursday to practice being the Green Banana, but even that wasn’t so bad. Well, it wasn’t a lot of fun, but I kind of liked it when I

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