Free Pickle by Kim Baker

too,” I said on Thursday at the beginning of our second pickle meeting. Everybody nodded.
    â€œWe could leave a sign out for everyone to see when we pull off a prank. We should take credit,” Oliver said. Bean agreed. The League of Pickle Makers would obviously blow our cover, so we needed another name, too.
    â€œSomething with cool initials like the C.I.A.,” Frank said.
    â€œG.O.O.F.,” Oliver said.
    â€œWhat does it stand for?” I asked.
    â€œUm … Great … Order … Of … um … Friends,” Oliver mumbled.
    â€œThat … doesn’t … sound … so … great,” Bean said.
    â€œHow about Awesome Secret Society?” Oliver said. I thought he might be onto something for about eleven seconds until I figured it out. Bean hit him in the back of the head.
    â€œHow about the Secret Agency of Pranksters?” I said. It made us sound like covert, funny, super spies.
    â€œYou want to be a S.A.P.?” Frank asked. I did not.
    Bean suggested we just think of words that would match the acronym D.U.M.B. After many, many bad ideas, we finally came up with a name that everyone agreed wasn’t too bad—the Prank and Trick Association. The name itself was only so-so, but if we used the initials our signs could say:
    â€œToday’s entertainment brought to you compliments of the P.T.A. Thank you.”
    It was kind of true, since the P.T.A. gave us money to start the club. Bean would print the cards out with some fancy cursive font on thick paper that they used for wedding invitations at the store.
    â€œWe could make a cool sign for the Pioneer Fair, too,” Oliver said. “But, you know, for the League of Pickle Makers. Not the P.T.A.”
    â€œI guess so,” I said. “As long as it’s not the same color paper or writing as the P.T.A. signs.”
    â€œNo doubt. That would be bad,” Bean said. “The store has a roll of bright green paper that we can use to make a banner for the Pioneer Fair.”
    â€œI don’t know. You two haven’t done your initiation yet. Since you’re not full members, I’m not sure that you’ll get a vote,” Oliver said. He made air quotes when he said “full members.”
    â€œOh, Clevoliver. I’m not sure you’ll get to bend your fingers into cute little quotation marks anymore if you keep talking to us like that,” Bean said. “When I do my prank, you’re gonna know. It’s going to be legendary.” I thought it might be better to do mine before Bean did hers. I just hadn’t thought of anything yet.
    â€œCool it, guys. Listen. Let’s have a website,” Frank said. He said he’d made tons of websites before. But, he wouldn’t tell us what they were—other than Bean’s Cat vs. Dude. We moved the meeting to the library to use the computers. The chess club was already in there, so we had to keep our voices down. We crowded around the computer farthest from the other kids. Frank showed us a site where you could pick a domain name. We found that most sites that have P.T.A. in the name were taken. They were probably all teacher and parent magnets anyway.
    â€œI’m glad that we’re doing this,” Bean said. She elbowed me kind of hard, but when I looked up she smiled. I thought she meant making a website, but then I realized she meant the club. I wanted to tell her that I thought she was cool, that I’d been wrong about her before, but I couldn’t think of a way to do it that didn’t sound bad.

    â€œYeah,” I said.
    â€œPickles forever!” Oliver said. I think he meant “I’m-happy-we’re-friends-too-and-this-is-fun,” but Frank thought it was a website suggestion. He checked, and www.picklesforever.com wasn’t taken.
    â€œWait a minute. We can’t put prank stuff on there. People will know the pickle club is doing it,” I