shouldn’t even joke about things like that.”
A few minutes passed, and Coke suddenly looked up from his book.
“Something’s burning!” he said, alarmed.
“I told you I smelled smoke!” Pep replied.
They jumped up and saw puffs of smoke coming out of the vent in the back of the room.
“We gotta get outta here!” Coke said.
“Where’s Mrs. Higgins?” Pep asked.
“Who cares about her?” Coke said with a snort. “Let’s worry about us .”
“She’s the only one who can open the door for us!” said Pep. She ran to the door and turned the knob. The door was locked. Coke tried to yank it open. Nothing. The door was made of thick wood. It felt warm to the touch. Smoke could be seen through the narrow slit of a window.
“The dead bolt is locked from the other side!” Coke said.
Smoke was pouring out of the vent now. It was starting to fill the room. The roaring sound of a fire could be heard, too.
“Help!” Pep hollered. “Mrs. Higgins! We’re locked up in here!”
“She probably ran out of the building to save herself,” Coke said. “She doesn’t care about us. She hates kids.”
Pep was getting frantic. She let out a scream in a frequency that only girls can produce—another advantage females have over males.
“Stop that!” Coke yelled, putting his hands over his ears.
“We’re gonna suffocate in here!” Pep yelled at him. “I’m gonna call Mom and Dad on the cell!”
“You can’t get a good signal in this room,” Coke told her. “I’ve tried plenty of times. I’m gonna break down the door. It’s the only way out.”
Pep rolled her eyes as Coke paced off ten steps and prepared to take a running leap at the door.
“If you do your famous Inflictor move, you’re gonna break your leg again,” she said as she stepped aside to give him some running room.
“I’m not gonna kick it down,” Coke told her. “I’m gonna use my shoulder.”
He backed up as far as he could go and sprinted for the door. At the last instant, he turned and leaped against the door. Then he crumpled to the floor.
“Did you dislocate your shoulder?” Pep asked, running to him.
“Shut up.”
Smoke was snaking under the door. The fire was in the hall. In the detention room, it was becoming hard to see. Worse, it was getting hard to breathe.
Coke was becoming enraged. Despite his sore shoulder, he got up and picked up a desk with both hands. Then he heaved it against the door. It clattered to the ground harmlessly after doing no more damage than nicking off a little paint.
Pep looked around frantically for something she could use to open the door.
“The fire extinguisher!” she yelled as she ran across the room and lifted it off a hook on the wall.
“We’ll die from smoke inhalation before the flames get to us!” Coke yelled at her. “The whole school could be burning down! You think you’re gonna put out the fire with a little fire extinguisher?”
“No!” she replied. “We can use it as a battering ram!”
Coke immediately understood what his sister had in mind as she held the fire extinguisher against the wooden door.
Newton’s first law of motion states that every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. If they could put enough force against a single point on that door, they might be able to crash right through it. Coke picked up the desk again.
Despite everything that was happening, he couldn’t help but think how much fun it was to bust up stuff. Busting up stuff was one of the most fun things you could do. Building things is a long, slow, and difficult process. But busting up stuff was nothing but fun, as long as you didn’t have to clean up the mess afterward. He had often thought that the ideal career choice would be to work in the demolition business, blowing up old buildings and stadiums. The money probably wasn’t very good, but nothing beat the thrill of demolishing things.
Pep