by Mary Amato
— and
TUESDAY, APRIL 8
The Final Surprise
It was an ordinary day at Delite Elementary School. Outside, the smell of spring flowers floated up from the field next to the creek. Inside, the smell of breakfast sausages floated up from the cafeteria. The students and their teacher, Mr. Pinkerton, had just begun their lesson on writing.
“Today we’re going to take a closer look at a literary device called a cliff-hanger,” Mr. Pinkerton said. “Who can define the word ‘cliff-hanger’?”
Nick jumped up on his chair, reached up to hold on to an imaginary cliff, and looked down at the floor with an expression of terror on his face.
Mr. Pinkerton laughed. “Okay. Nick is hanging from a cliff. Thank you, Nick. Is that what it means? Is a cliff-hanger someone who’s in danger of falling to his doom?”
Kristin raised her hand.
“What do you think, Kristin?” Mr. Pinkerton asked.
“Well, I think—” Kristin said, and then the classroom door opened with a whoosh.
Every head in the room turned to look.
Standing in the frame of the doorway was . . .
To be continued!
Just kidding.
It was Mrs. Penrose!
“Hi, friends,” she said.
We jumped and cheered and basically went wild.
“Baby Ryan is still too small to come to school, but I have pictures!” she said, and pulled out her phone.
We gathered around her to look. He has fuzzy hair and big eyes. In one picture he’s making a hilarious yawn that takes up his whole face. I mean, you could fit a whole piece of chocolate cake in there. In another picture he’s wearing a white hat with bunny ears, which made us all say “Riggy!” In another picture you can see his fingers and his toes. Ten of everything. Perfect.
“Mrs. Penrose, I’m sorry,” Mr. Pinkerton said, “but you’ll have to leave. I was just about to give an important test.”
Our eyeballs almost popped out of our faces we were so mad, and then Mr. Pinkerton said, “Just kidding.”
Ha ha ha ha ha!
The dude has learned how to crack a joke. Actually, I think he picked it up from me, Nick the Slick, thank you very much.
“Can we take Mrs. Penrose to the library and show her our WOW stories?” Tee asked.
“Fine idea,” he said.
We threw our papers and pencils into the air, yelled YIPPIE-AI-AYE at the top of our lungs, and ran out of the room. We left our papers and pencils on our desks and walked to the library.
When Ms. Yang saw her old friend, she was thrilled. They hugged and Ms. Yang oohed and aahed over the pictures of baby Ryan just like we did.
“Your students have been working hard,” Ms. Yang said. “Right, guys?”
We pulled Mrs. Penrose to a shelf that has a colorful label on it (which Alexander made) that says “WOW Stories.”
Mrs. Penrose stood there with a look of deep appreciation on her face. A whole row of our books was there, waiting for their next readers.
“We have even more books than that,” I said. “But people keep checking them out.”
Mrs. Penrose pulled out a book. “‘The Duck Who Wanted a Motorcycle’!” She laughed. She pulled out another. “‘The Lonely French Fry’!” She pulled out another. “‘Zombies on Ice’!” One by one, she read the title of each book. “I want to read them all.”
“This is the one I wrote,” Mr. Pinkerton said, and he showed her his story about the monkeys.
“I was inspired, too, and I collaborated with Alexander,” Ms. Yang said. “Right, Alexander? We wrote one called ‘Ghost in the Library,’ and Alexander drew the pictures.”
Alexander tried to find it, but it was checked out.
“Wow, wow, wow.” Mrs. Penrose kept shaking her head like it was too good to be true.
“Speaking of WOW,” Mr. Pinkerton said, “it is one minute before ten o’clock.”
“Oh!” Ms. Yang jumped. “We have to get moving.”
“What’s going on?” Carly asked.
Mrs. Penrose gave us a big smile.
“Everybody to the rug by the smartboard,” Ms. Yang said.
Once we were sitting down, she made us close our eyes. We heard a sound like a beep, beep, beep, beep from a telephone. Then we heard an unfamiliar voice.
“Hello, writers!”
We opened our eyes.
Skype was up on the smartboard, and a woman with glasses and a pencil stuck behind her ear was smiling and waving at us on the screen. She was sitting in a room full of sunlight with a cup of tea in one hand and a notebook on her desk. Behind her was a shelf full of books.
It was like the room was buzzing with incredible excitement even though we weren’t moving. It was because we knew who she was, and we couldn’t believe it.
“Harrison!” Alexander whispered. “It’s her.”
Mali Koam. We recognized her from the picture on her books. Mali Koam, sitting at her desk in Maryland, looking right at us.
“Hello, teachers. Hello, Writers of Delite,” she said. “So nice to finally see you.”
“Mali Koam!” Carly yelled. We all started waving and saying hello back.
“Salutations! What a beautiful library,” she said.
Mr. Pinkerton pointed to the shelf behind us. “Those are just some of the WOW stories that you helped to inspire.”
She got this look on her face, and she said, “You have no idea how happy that makes me.”
And it hit me. First an author makes people happy by writing a great book, and then readers make the author happy by wanting to share it. If some of those readers write their own stories, the happiness just keeps growing.
“Mrs. Penrose, how is the baby?” she asked.
Mrs. Penrose held baby Ryan’s picture up to the camera so she could see him.
“Aw,” Mali Koam said. “What a cute little bunny-buddy.”
That made everybody laugh.
“Seriously,” Mrs. Penrose said. “Here’s our chance to ask a real live author some questions. What questions do you have, class?”Harrison raised his hand. He got to stand by the camera.
“Do you ever feel like giving up?” Harrison asked.
“Writing is hard,” Mali Koam said. “But letters from readers like you keep me going.”
“Are you working on a new book right now?” Omar asked.
“I am.” She held up a notebook and showed us her handwriting. It looked very messy. Omar was shocked.
Isabella got to go up and ask a question. “Have all your books been published?” she asked.
“No,” she said. “I’ve written many books that didn’t turn out good enough to publish. It’s just like an athlete. You wouldn’t expect a baseball player to hit a home run every time he or she steps up to the plate. Sometimes I strike out. But I keep trying.”
You can guess who liked that part.
She read the first page of her new book, but she told us to keep it a secret, so I’m not going to write what it’s about.
“We can’t wait to read it,” I said.
“No. We really can’t wait,” Alexander said. “So can you please do it as fast as possible?”
She laughed. “Yikes! A deadline! The pressure!”
“Will you put us in the story?” Carly asked.
She smiled. “You never know.”
We had to say thank you and good-bye on the count of one, two, three. Good-bye, Mali Koam! And then she poofed off the screen. It was like magic.
A few minutes after that, we walked back to our classroom and then it was time for Mrs. Penrose to go. We were so sad.
Carly gave two friendships bands to her. One for her and one for Ryan.
Alexander got this book. “The pages are almost completely full,” he said. “Please, please write one last thing in it before you go. Then Ms. Yang is going to put it in the library.”
“I’d love to,” she said. “Also, baby Ryan sent something he wants to put in the book
.”
We were all curious.
Turn the page to see!
My Dear Writers of Delite,
Ryan loves your writing. So do I.
Your teacher,
If Ryan gets famous, I’m going to sell that footprint for a million bucks!
The End. Not.
One last drop
* * *
Our pens are running out of ink.
Soon they’ll go kerplunk!
Our brains need naps ’cause they’ve been goin’
think, think, thunk!
Our fingers are exhausted, too.
They need to stretch and bend.
Peace out. So long. Ta-ta for now.
This really is . . .
The End.
For the students and staff at Red Rock Elementary School in Woodbury, Minnesota. Their enthusiasm for my book “Please Write in this Book” during our annual Skypes and their amazing follow-up letters inspired this story.
Thanks to Red Rock media specialist Carla Larsen and teachers Laura Loppnow, Tammy Yourczek, Michelle Nelson, Joan Holper, Shanna Miller and Julianne Moore. I’m also grateful to Nina Scott, Claire Bullock, the hilarious Ethan Long for his illustrations and my editor, Mary Cash, for guiding and inspiring the revisions.
Names of characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Mary Amato
All Rights Reserved
HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
www.holidayhouse.com
ISBN 978-0-8234-3610-1 (ebook)w
ISBN 978-0-8234-3611-8 (ebook)r
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Amato, Mary.
Our teacher is a vampire and other (not) true stories / Mary Amato. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: A notebook that is passed from student to student around a classroom becomes a repository for wild rumors, heartfelt confessions, and creative writing and helps the students cope when their teacher has a medical emergency and they must cope with a rigid substitute as they worry about their beloved teacher and her family.
ISBN 978-0-8234-3553-1 (hardcover)
[1. Teachers—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Notebooks—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.A49165Ou 2016
[Fic]—dc23
2015016726