by Dan Gutman
“No! Don’t!” shouted Miss Tracy.
That’s when the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened.
Mr. Cooper held the lighter under one of the Ping-Pong balls!
The Ping-Pong ball ignited!
And then the whole hat went up in flames!
“Oh, snap!” said Ryan. “Mr. Cooper set Miss Tracy’s hat on fire!”
Mr. Cooper threw the hat on the floor and stomped all over it to put the fire out. Miss Tracy’s hat was totally ruined.
It was hilarious. And we got to see it with our own eyes!
Well, it would be pretty hard to see something with somebody else’s eyes.
Now it was Miss Tracy who was all upset.
“That was my favorite hat!” she yelled. “I can’t believe you set it on fire!”
“You broke my coffee mug!” Mr. Cooper shouted back at her.
“I was trying to teach the children about gravity,” yelled Miss Tracy. “It was just a mug.”
“It was my lucky mug!” shouted Mr. Cooper.
“Oh, stop being a baby!”
“You’re the baby!”
“No, you are!”
“No, you are!”
They went back and forth like that for a while. Then Miss Tracy stormed out of the room. But a second later she came marching back. She looked really angry.
“I forgot to tell you kids about meteors,” she said as she picked up an eraser from the whiteboard. “A meteor is a piece of rock that falls from outer space into the Earth’s atmosphere. It can cause a lot of damage. Pretend that Mr. Cooper is the Earth and this eraser is a meteor.”
And you’ll never believe what she did next. She reared back and threw the eraser at Mr. Cooper!
It looked like it was going to hit him in the head!
He ducked!
The eraser hit a plant on the windowsill and knocked it over.
“Oh, snap!” said Ryan. “Miss Tracy threw an eraser at Mr. Cooper!”
“I can’t believe you did that!” shouted Mr. Cooper.
“You set my hat on fire!”
“You broke my lucky mug!”
Wow! It was amazing! They were yelling at each other like a couple of bratty kids. I hadn’t seen grown-ups act so immaturely since last week when my mother asked my father to take out the garbage.
“I don’t like to see all this violence,” said Andrea. “I believe it sets a bad example for children.”
“What do you have against violins?” I asked Andrea.
“Not violins, Arlo! Violence!”
It didn’t matter if Andrea liked violins or not. Because after that, things got even weirder. Mr. Cooper was really mad.
He grabbed Miss Tracy!
They started wrestling with each other!
Mr. Cooper picked up Miss Tracy!
He held her over his head!
Then he started spinning around!
“If a planet spins too fast,” he yelled, “the centrifugal force could make it fly out of its orbit.”
“Oh, snap!” said Ryan. “I think Mr. Cooper is gonna throw Miss Tracy out the window!”
I bet he would have, too. But you’ll never believe who walked into the door at that moment.
Nobody! It would hurt if you walked into a door. I thought we went over that in Chapter One. But you’ll never believe who walked into the doorway.
It was Mr. Klutz!
“I just wanted to see how everybody was making out,” he said. “Whoa! What’s going on in here?”
Mr. Cooper put Miss Tracy down.
“Nobody’s making out,” said Michael. “The teachers were fighting.”
“We weren’t fighting!” said Mr. Cooper.
“That’s right,” said Miss Tracy. “Mr. Cooper and I were just teaching the students about astronomy.”
It sure looked like a fight to me.
“What’s that burning smell?” asked Mr. Klutz.
“Mr. Cooper set Miss Tracy’s hat on fire,” said Andrea.
“She started it!” shouted Mr. Cooper.
“I did not!” yelled Miss Tracy.
It looked like they were going to start fighting again, but Mr. Klutz stepped between them.
“Stop this right now!” he hollered. “It doesn’t matter who started it! Miss Tracy! I’m so disappointed. You were supposed to help the students get more engaged.”
“Ugh, gross!” I said. “We’re too young to get engaged!”
“Both of you, go to my office!” shouted Mr. Klutz. “And think about what you did.”
Mr. Cooper and Miss Tracy hung their heads and shuffled out of the room.
That was weird.
I never knew that astronomy could be so interesting!
We were all sure that Mr. Cooper and Miss Tracy were going to get fired for fighting. But they weren’t. Here’s what happened. . . .
Right after dinner that night, my mom told me we had to run an errand.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“It’s a surprise,” Mom replied.
So I got in the car and we drove a million hundred miles. And do you know where we ended up?
At Ella Mentry School!
“I have to go to school at night?” I asked my mom. “That’s not fair!”*
“This is going to be fun, A.J.,” my mom told me. “Just go inside.”
I got out of the car. It was getting dark out. I climbed the steps to the front door. And guess who was waiting for me?
Miss Tracy and Mr. Cooper! I guess they made up.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Shhhh! Follow us!” they whispered.
Miss Tracy and Mr. Cooper led me down the hall.
“This is a secret door,” Mr. Cooper whispered. “Nobody knows about it.”
He opened the secret door and we went inside. Then we climbed the secret staircase. It was like we were secret agents. We kept climbing. Then we went through another secret doorway.
And you’ll never believe in a million hundred years where the secret doorway led.
To the roof of the school!
Not only that, but my whole class was up there.
I had been on the roof one time before. That was when Andrea got hypnotized by our school counselor, Dr. Brad, and she went crazy. You can read about it in a book called Dr. Brad Has Gone Mad!
“What are you all doing up here?” I asked.
“We’re going to look at the stars!” said Andrea.
That made sense. I guess Miss Tracy was taking us up on the roof because it’s closer to the sky, so we’d have a better view. That’s the same reason why your nose gets sunburned when you lie on the beach—because it’s closer to the sun than the rest of your face. (I know lots of stuff like that because I’m in the gifted and talented program.)
There were blankets, so we wouldn’t have to lie on the roof, which is yucky. I found a spot next to Ryan and Alexia.
“Do you see anything?” asked Miss Tracy.
“I see the sky,” said Andrea.
Well, duh. Of course Andrea saw the sky. There was nothing else to see up there. What is Andrea’s problem?
“Our eyes have to adjust to the dark,” said Miss Tracy. “Isn’t it peaceful up here on the roof?”
“Yes,” said all the girls.
“No,” said all the boys.
Miss Tracy told us about the Milky Way. I always thought it was just a candy bar. But it turns out the Milky Way is the galaxy that our sun and solar system belong to. She said there were a trillion stars in the Milky Way, and a hundred billion planets.
“WOW,” we all said, which is “MOM” upside down.
“Is that the Big Dipper?” asked Mr. Cooper, pointing at the sky.
“It certainly is,” replied Miss Tracy. She said the Big Dipper is made up of seven stars that form the shape of a dipper.
Huh? What’s a dipper? I never heard of a dipper. I didn’t see any big dipper up there. I just saw a bunch of stars.
&nb
sp; I was going to ask what a dipper was, but I figured everybody else knew what a dipper was, and I didn’t want anybody to know I didn’t know.
“If we’re lucky, we’ll get to see a meteor shower,” said Miss Tracy. “Does anybody know what that is?”
“That’s when a meteor gets dirty, and it has to take a shower,” I said. “And then it sprinkles Comet all over itself to clean off.”
Ryan and Michael were the only ones who laughed at my joke.
Little Miss Know-It-All was going to tell everybody what a meteor shower was, but she never got the chance, because that’s when the most amazing thing in the history of the world happened.
“Look!” said Neil. “A shooting star!”
It was cool watching the shooting star shoot across the sky.
“Actually a shooting star is a piece of rock or even metal that falls from outer space into the Earth’s atmosphere,” said Miss Tracy.
“I’m scared!” said Emily, who’s scared of everything. “What if a shooting star hits our school?”
“Oh, it will burn up long before it could get to Earth, Emily,” Miss Tracy assured her. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“I’m still scared.”
Sheesh, get a grip!
We looked at the stars for a long time. Miss Tracy told us that they were millions of light-years away. That’s really far.
Looking at the stars makes you think about stuff you never thought about before.
“Where do you think the universe ends?” asked Michael.
“It can’t go on forever, can it?” asked Ryan.
“Nobody knows,” said Neil.
“Do you think there’s life out there?” asked Alexia.
“Maybe there’s somebody up on a roof on another planet looking at the sky just like we are right now,” I said.
“I want to be an astronomer when I grow up,” Andrea said.
“Me too,” said Emily, who always wants to do whatever Andrea does.
“Isn’t the universe amazing?” said Miss Tracy.
After we looked at the sky some more, Miss Tracy showed us something even better: juice and cookies! She had baked cookies in the shapes of the planets.
“I want to eat Mars,” said Ryan, who will eat anything, even stuff that isn’t food.
“I want to eat Jupiter,” I said. “That’s the biggest planet, so it will be the biggest cookie.”
“Ha-ha!” Andrea shouted, holding a cookie up in the air. “I got Jupiter first, Arlo. You’ll have to eat Mercury, the smallest cookie.”
I was going to say something mean to Andrea. But that’s when the most amazing thing in the history of the world happened.
I’m not going to tell you what it was.
Okay, okay, I’ll tell you.
But you have to read the next chapter. So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on you!
While Andrea was holding up the Jupiter cookie, I noticed a tiny dot in the sky. It looked like it was moving.
“Look!” I shouted. “What is that thing? A satellite?”
“I don’t think so,” said Miss Tracy as she picked up a telescope. “And it’s not a shooting star either.”
“What is it?” asked Ryan.
“I really don’t know,” admitted Miss Tracy.
Boy, if she didn’t know, nobody would know. Miss Tracy knows everything there is to know about astronomy.
The dot in the sky looked like it was getting bigger.
“It’s coming closer!” shouted Ryan.
“I hear something too!” said Alexia. “It’s like a buzzing sound!”
The dot in the sky kept getting bigger and bigger. It was silver, and there were flames shooting out the back of it.
“I think it’s a spaceship!” shouted Neil.
Neil was right. It was a spaceship. And it was coming down right over our heads!
“I’m scared,” said Emily.
We were all scared.
“Run for your lives!” shouted Neil.
“No,” said Mr. Cooper. “We must be strong.”
Everybody huddled together and watched. The spaceship hovered for a few seconds over our heads and then it slowly landed on the other side of the roof.
“Maybe they’re f-friendly,” said Andrea, shivering with fear.
“Or maybe they’re going to destroy the Earth,” I said.
“Shhhh,” said Miss Tracy. “Let’s all be as quiet as possible.”
“I can’t look!” whispered Emily.
After about a minute, a hatch opened at the bottom of the spaceship. And you’ll never believe in a million hundred years who climbed down the ladder.
It was Mr. Granite, our old teacher!
“Mr. Granite!” we all shouted as we ran over to hug him.
“I missed you!” Mr. Granite said.
“We missed you too!”
It was great to see Mr. Granite again. We hugged for a long time. He said we had all grown up a lot since the last time he saw us.
“Why did you come back to Earth?” I asked him. “Are you going to be a teacher again?”
“No,” Mr. Granite replied. “I seem to have forgotten my car keys. Did any of you see them?”
WHAT?!
“No,” we all replied.
“Where did you last see your car keys?” asked Andrea.
“If I knew where I last saw them, it would be easy to find them,” said Mr. Granite.
“Wait a minute,” said Miss Tracy. “You flew millions of light-years back to Earth just because you forgot your car keys?”
“They must be here somewhere,” replied Mr. Granite, looking around. “I thought I would be able to find them if I retraced my steps.”
“We could look in the lost-and-found box by the front office,” suggested Alexia.
“Did you check your pockets?” asked Ryan.
Mr. Granite went through his pockets one by one.
“Oh, wait a minute!” he suddenly shouted. “Here they are! They were in my pocket the whole time! Silly me. Never mind!”
“As long as you’re here, are you going to stay on Earth for a while?” asked Neil.
“No, I’m sorry, but I have to go,” Mr. Granite said as he climbed the ladder of the spaceship again. “My car is double-parked.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Granite!” we all said, waving to him.
“Good-bye!”
The hatch closed. A few seconds later the engine fired up and Mr. Granite’s spaceship blasted off.
That was weird.
The next morning at school, Mr. Cooper came flying into the classroom. And I do mean flying. Mr. Cooper thinks he’s a superhero. But he’s not a very good one, because he bumped into Ryan’s desk, tripped over the garbage can, and fell on the floor.
“I’m okay!” he said, jumping to his feet. “Everybody open your math book to page twenty-three.”
Ugh, I hate math. I was about to open my math book, but I never got the chance. You’ll never believe who poked her head into the door at that moment.
Nobody! Why would anybody want to poke their head into a door? You should know that by now. You really need to work on your reading comprehension.
But you’ll never believe who poked her head into the doorway. It was Miss Tracy! She was holding a bunch of big circles made out of cardboard.
“It is I,” she announced, “Miss Universe!”
“Not again,” Mr. Cooper grumbled, closing his math book.
“We need to work on our astronomy play,” Miss Tracy said.
Oh, yeah, the play. Ugh. We had to put on a play for the whole school to cap off Space Week. The parents were invited to come and everything.
“I thought it would be fun to take the school on a tour of the solar system,” Miss Tracy told us. “One of the second-grade classes made these beautiful planets. Each of you can be a different planet.”
“Ooooh,” I shouted, “I have dibs on planet Earth.”
Ha! In Andrea’s face! I beat her to it for once. So nah-nah-nah boo-boo o
n Andrea.
“I like your enthusiasm, A.J.,” said Miss Tracy, “but I don’t think we need any of you to be planet Earth. Kids already know a lot about our planet. But who wants to be Saturn? It’s such a beautiful planet, with those pretty rings around it.”
“I’ll be Saturn!” said Andrea, jumping out of her seat. “My mom is always saying that I’m beautiful.”
“Okay, Andrea, you can be Saturn,” said Miss Tracy, handing Andrea one of the big cardboard circles.
“How come she gets to be Saturn?” I shouted. “It’s not fair!”
“I’m sorry, A.J.,” Miss Tracy told me. “Andrea asked first. Let me see here. The rings of Saturn need to be attached. A.J., will you please come up here and give Andrea the rings?”
“Ooooo,” Ryan said. “A.J. is going to give Andrea a ring! They must be in love!”
“It’s a wedding ring!” shouted Michael.
If those guys weren’t my best friends, I would hate them.
I gave Andrea the rings of Saturn, complaining the whole time that it wasn’t fair. Mr. Cooper had been sitting in the back of the room, but he got up and came to the front.
“I’d like to make a suggestion,” Mr. Cooper said. “Instead of having the kids fight over which planet they get to be, maybe we should put all their names in a box and pick them randomly. That would make it fair to everyone.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Miss Tracy. “Does everybody agree that would be fair?”
“Yes,” we all said.
Mr. Cooper found a cardboard box and put in slips of paper with all our names on them. Then he mixed the names up and handed the box to Miss Tracy.
“Let’s start with Mercury, the planet that is closest to the sun,” she said, reaching into the box and pulling out a name. “Emily will be Mercury.”
“Yay!” shouted Emily.
“Next will be Venus,” said Miss Tracy as she reached into the box. “Venus was named after the Roman goddess of love, and she will be . . . Alexia.”
“Yay!” shouted Alexia.
Ugh. Miss Tracy said the L word. I’m glad she didn’t pick me to be Venus. The guys would make fun of me for the rest of my life.
“Next comes Mars, which was named after the Roman god of war,” said Miss Tracy. “Mars will be played by . . . Michael.”