The Rude and Ridiculous Royals of Classroom 13

by Honest Lee

  “Ahem, I’m a king,” she said.

  “But you’re a girl,” Preeya said. “Girls can’t be kings.”

  “Girls can be anything they want! And who said I was a girl anyway? From here forth, call me King Chloe!”

  No one could argue with the king, so they called her King Chloe.

  Now, as I was saying, Chloe’s first order as king was to make a new law that some might find hard to swallow. She announced to the nation, “From now on, all of you shall live as vegans! No more meat eating!”

  Well! I don’t have to tell you that more than half the population did not like this new law—not one bit. Millions of people like to eat meat. Immediately, they began protests outside the castle. All the folks who loved egg-and-bacon breakfasts, lunch meat at lunchtime, and dead animal meat loaf for dinner? They were furious they couldn’t eat those things anymore. And those people included Chloe’s parents.

  “Chloe Kennedy Canter!” her mom growled. “We’ve always supported you, your protesting, and your veganism—even when we didn’t agree with it. I went out of my way to make veggie options just for you on Family Pizza Night. But now you’ve taken away our choice of pepperoni! We are furious!”

  “You always said meat-eaters and non-meat-eaters could live together in harmony, but what about the animals?” King Chloe asked. “You may disagree with me now, but soon you’ll love being vegan. Have you even tried tofu?”

  Her dad tried it and spit it out. “It doesn’t taste like anything!” And he wasn’t the only one. Her classmates could barely understand how being a vegan worked.

  “Can I eat nachos?” Mark asked.

  “No! Nachos have cheese on them! Cheese comes from milk, which comes from cows!” King Chloe said.

  “What about cake? Surely you’ll say ‘Let them eat cake,’ right?” Fatima asked.

  “No! Cake has eggs in it, and eggs come from chickens!” King Chloe said.

  “How about double bacon burgers?” Liam asked.

  “NO, NO, NO! Bacon comes from pigs, and beef comes from cows!” King Chloe yelled.

  Liam started to cry. “No, it’s wrong! A life without nachos and cakes and burgers and bacon is just plain wrong.”

  “I don’t mind trying something new,” Ms. Linda said, “but what are we allowed to eat as vegans?”

  King Chloe’s royal chef made a sampling of vegan foods. Beef-less burgers. Chicken-less chicken salad. Fake bacon. As they tried it, most of the kids spit it out. “It tastes like cardboard!”

  “Perfect! Cardboard comes from paper, which comes from trees!” Chloe noted.

  Chloe’s classmates hated this new law. Several of them (I won’t say who) came up with an idea to get rid of the vegan law. After Chloe went to sleep, they called her parents and reminded them of something parents love to do.…

  The following day, Chloe’s parents marched to the castle and called King Chloe outside. “You’re grounded, young lady!”

  “I’m not a lady—I’m a king!” Chloe declared.

  “Well, you’re still grounded. Come on. We’re going home. You might be a king, but we’re still your parents!”

  Chloe was grounded for a whole month. That may sound like a harsh punishment, but at least she got to choose her meals while she served her time: veggie pizza, avocado toast, and… whatever that brown thing is.

  “It’s a piece of chocolate cake,” Chloe said.

  “It doesn’t taste like chocolate cake,” Mason said.

  “Well, it’s vegan cake. It doesn’t have milk or eggs or butter, but it’s still really delicious.”

  “If you say so.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Dev

  When it was his turn to be king, Dev didn’t notice. In fact, he didn’t notice anything because he hadn’t looked up from his phone for days. He was so focused on playing (and beating) the new Teddy Bear Bashers mobile game, he didn’t bother to pay attention to the real world.

  “Dev?” Ms. Linda said. “Can you put your game away, please?”

  He tapped furiously on his phone screen. “Can’t talk! Playing! About to beat level forty-nine!”

  “But now’s your chance to lead the nation as king!”

  With all his concentration on the video game, Dev thought she said: “But now’s your chance to eat the crustacean and onion rings.”

  Dev didn’t look up from his game. “No, thanks. I don’t really like crab or onion rings.”

  Ms. Linda wondered, What do onion rings have to do with anything?

  “He’s seeing onion rings that aren’t there,” Ms. Linda concluded. “Video games have fried that boy’s mind.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Emma

  Every king and queen has a defining moment. King Arthur pulled a sword out of a stone. Queen Isabella I of Spain sent Christopher Columbus on his map-changing voyage. Henry VIII beheaded two of his wives. And Queen Elizabeth I brought about a Golden Age. Today Queen Emma of Classroom 13 was about to put a pet in every single home around the country.

  Queen Emma announced from the royal podium: “Our country’s newest law: Each and every household must own a pet.”

  The reporters below all started shouting their questions: “But what if people have allergies?” “What do we name our pets?” “Who’s gonna pick up all the pet poop?!”

  Emma answered the questions in order. “Allergy medicine will be provided. You can name your pet anything you want. But each of you will be responsible for your pet. Yes, that means picking up lots of poop, but it also means feeding it, petting it, loving it, and posting cute pics of it online for all of us to look at and go, ‘Awwwwwwwwwww! Wook at dat widdle furry face.’”

  “Now every kid can have a pet,” Emma said. “No matter what their parents say.” Emma couldn’t wait to meet her two new pets. Yes, I said two pets.

  Emma’s royal rule had all kinds of legal stuff that stated, “Each household must have at least one pet per household.” And since Emma’s parents were divorced and lived in two different houses, that meant she had two different houses, and thus two different pets.

  I don’t have to tell you that she felt like a total genius for figuring this out. Emma had always wanted a cat, and now she was going to get two of them. TWO! (And with allergy medicine, which was good because she was super allergic.)

  Emma was so happy, she did cartwheels.

  Her parents did not do cartwheels. They were not happy.

  But there was nothing they could do. Their daughter was queen, and now the happy owner of two fluffy kittens: a gray one she named Cleo and a tuxedo-colored one she named Pepe A. Snuggleman, Purr-veyor of Snuggles.

  She couldn’t wait to show them to her friends. They were all going to be jealous! But when she walked through the castle door, it turns out they weren’t jealous at all.

  Liam had a llama, Mason had a monkey, and Ethan had an elephant! Chloe had a crocodile, Fatima had a flamingo, and Zoey had a zebra! Everyone in Classroom 13 picked super-rare, exotic animals that their parents would never have allowed them to adopt before Emma’s new law.

  “Thanks, Emma!” everyone shouted. Everyone loved her new law. Everyone except Emma.

  Emma hated to admit it, but she was the one who was jealous. After seeing everyone else’s cool pets, she found herself wishing she’d used her imagination a bit more. She could have had a sea turtle, or a red panda, or a fennec fox.

  Or, at least, bigger cats.

  Ms. Linda had a new pet tiger! A tiger!!

  Emma sighed, saying, “My royal plans have ended in total cat-astrophe.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Ethan

  Ethan usually couldn’t make up his mind about anything. But that all changed when he became king.

  “For the first time in my life, I know exactly what I want,” he announced to the public. “I want to veto Chloe’s vegan law.”

  “Veto,” my dear reader, means to reject or undo another law.

  The nation cheered.

  “In its place, I
’m making it mandatory for people to eat ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!” Ethan proclaimed. “I’m going to lead by example, of course, and start eating ice cream right now.”

  Ethan spent the next several days stuffing his face with scoop after scoop of ice cream. We’re talking vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, rocky road, mint chocolate chip, cookie dough chunk, tutti-frutti, banana, bacon, peanut butter, dark cherry, and stracciatella (which is just a fancy way of saying chocolate chip), to name just a few.

  That weekend, when he went to lie down, he burped and warm liquid cream came up in his throat. “I think I’m going to be sick,” he whispered.

  And he was. The king spent the night on the throne—and I don’t mean the royal throne. No, I mean the other throne, the porcelain one.…

  (The toilet.)

  Ethan had never felt so awful. When he stopped barfing (and you know… barfing out of his bottom), he appeared on the royal balcony to announce he was undoing his ice cream law.

  “It turns out there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. So I’ve decided people should just decide for themselves what they want to eat,” Ethan said. “I’m banning food laws forever. You want to be vegan, be vegan. You want to eat meat, eat meat. You want to eat ice cream every day? Well, I wouldn’t recommend it. But first make sure you’re not lactose intolerant.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Fatima

  “What if I don’t want to be queen?” Fatima asked.

  Ms. Linda was confused. Didn’t every kid want to be in charge? Ms. Linda didn’t know how to answer, so she looked to Touchdown Mandy, the new teacher’s assistant, who looked at the castle’s garden grass—then started eating it.

  (Ms. Linda still hadn’t realized her teacher’s assistant was a cow. You see, teachers are too busy looking after children to notice such things.)

  “Mandy must think Chloe’s vegan law is still in effect,” Ms. Linda said to herself.

  13 walked up to Fatima. “I know I haven’t been human very long, but why wouldn’t you want to tell everyone what to do?”

  “Too much responsibility,” Fatima answered. “I’d rather read comic books. Comics are like books, but with fewer words and more pictures. Plus, they’re all action and adventure and awesomeness all the time. Comics transport me to another world, where anything’s possible. I wish every kid could have access to comic books—”

  “What did I say about wishing for things?!” Ms. Linda cried. (She still had bad dreams about djinns genies in magic lamps.)

  Suddenly, Fatima had an idea.

  “I will be a queen. And my first law will be to open free comic book libraries around the nation for everyone to read any comic book they choose!”

  Comic book libraries began to appear in every city. At first, parents didn’t want their kids to go. They’d say, “Comics aren’t literature!”

  But librarians explained that “all books are books!”

  Soon, more people than ever were reading, including the other students from Classroom 13.

  “I like the ones where the bad guy is the hero,” Liam said, reading Super-Mean Vampire Villains.

  “For me, it’s all about outer space adventures,” Lily said, reading Astro-Bats from Planet Mars.

  “Mooooo!” said Ms. Linda’s teaching assistant. Touchdown Mandy didn’t read, but she was eating the latest issue of The Pet-tastic Adventures of Fur Force!

  The nation cheered for Fatima. Even people who didn’t like reading enjoyed reading comic books. Everyone—from mayors to barbers to garbage collectors to parents—found a comic they loved.

  Except for 13. It kept trying to read them, but its head would light up red. “How do I know which bubble to read first?!”

  “Top to bottom, and left to right,” Fatima said. “Unless it’s Arabic, Hebrew, or manga. Then you read right to left.”

  “Yeah, that’s not confusing at all,” 13 grumbled. “Whatever happened to good old books without pictures? I like those.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Hugo

  Comme Hugo était français, il trouvait ridicule qu’on appelle les frites “French fries” parce que les frites n’ont pas été inventées en France. Les “French fries” viennent en fait de Belgique, où, d’après les historiens, les pommes de terre étaient frites dès le XVIIe siècle.

  Après être devenu roi, Hugo créa une loi qui interdisait que les pommes de terre frites portent le nom de “French fries.” Dorénavant, on devait appeler les frites tout simplement “fries” ou encore “Belgian fries,” mais absolument jamais “French fries.”

  Tout le monde ignora cette loi.

  CHAPTER 11

  Isabella

  As soon as she took her crown, Isabella commanded: “Cars are now illegal—ride horses instead!”

  The queen claimed to have put this law into effect because “cars pollute the air with their gas fumes,” and “oil is a shrinking resource,” and “the world should be concerned for the environment.” But I think it was really just because Isabella is obsessed with horses.

  Within days, every car and truck and SUV was taken off the road. The nation’s highways and roads filled up with horses of every color and shape. Grown-ups rode stallions to their jobs, while kids rode ponies to school. Horses stopped at red lights and trotted forward at green lights. Best of all, no car accidents!

  Seeing all the horses galloping together was a beautiful sight, like a scene out of a fairy tale. “This is the best day of my life,” Queen Isabella said. “Even better than that time I got a unicorn!” But like most fairy tales, there was something wicked coming… in the air.

  You see, true to the queen’s word, no cars on the roads meant no more fumes. Well, no more exhaust fumes.

  There were, however, poop fumes. And they stunk real bad.

  Highways and byways and toll roads were covered in horse poop. Driveways and parking lots? More horse poop. Intersections and crosswalks? Still more horse poop.

  Why, you ask? Simple. Horses go to the bathroom wherever and whenever they feel like it.

  Horses aren’t like you or me; they don’t go to the toilet and flush. They don’t worry about others stepping in it. They just shake their tails and trot in the other direction like they weren’t the ones who smelt it—and dealt it. Plop!

  Horses, as it turns out, are kind of jerks.

  And thanks to the queen’s law, jerks were now everywhere—which meant their poop was everywhere. People refused to leave their homes because of the smell. Soon, it was decided that, like the poop outside, Queen Isabella’s reign really, really STUNK.

  CHAPTER 12

  Jacob

  “For someone just crowned king, you sure seem like you’re in a bad mood,” Ms. Linda said to Jacob.

  “I am,” Jacob said. “All my favorite shows are finished for the season. That means I have nothing to watch for the next few months. What am I gonna do with my free time—READ A BOOK?!”

  “Yes!” Ms. Linda said. “Reading is fun!”

  It certainly is, as you, dear reader, can attest to—but probably only if you’re reading a series of books about Classroom 13. But since Jacob was part of Classroom 13 (who was somehow an actual student now—which hardly makes sense), he couldn’t read about himself. Now could he?

  “You like TV, right?” 13 said.

  “Boy, do I! It’s my favorite thing in the whole world,” Jacob answered.

  13 said, “Well, now you’re king. You can make a law that says your favorite TV shows can’t go on break anymore and that they have to make more episodes right away. You can make it a law.”

  So King Jacob made a proclamation (which is a fancy word for an official, public statement): “As of today, none of my favorite shows can go on break. They must keep going… forever!”

  Jacob called the TV people over in Hollywood on the phone and told them the news. “Your vacations are officially canceled. Get off the beach, nix your travel plans, and tell your families to unpack their bags. You’re all goin
g back to work to make more episodes of my favorite shows. I expect new episodes as soon as possible, so be prepared to work around the clock to make it happen, with zero bathroom breaks. Doesn’t that sound fun?!”

  It wasn’t. Not for the TV people. Everyone had to pee really bad all of a sudden, and now they had to hold it. Plus, if they had to make shows forever, when did they get to go home?

  Jacob’s answer? “Never. This is their reward for making such great TV.”

  CHAPTER 13

  13

  13 looked at the top of this page and noticed that it was the 13th chapter. Which meant it was 13’s turn to be king, um, I mean, queen, ur, how about, ruler.

  “Yup, that’s me,” 13 said. Its cube head glowed. 13 snapped its fingers, and a crown appeared.

  “Hey, wait a minute! I thought Ms. Linda said we were going in alpha-flex-tubble order,” Liam said. (He had a hard time pronouncing “alphabetical.”) “Since Jacob just went, that means it’s Jayden’s turn!”

  “It’s cool. You can go first, 13,” Triple J said.

  “What?!” Liam squealed. “If you’re passing on your turn, then it should be my turn. I come next in roll call! It goes J, then K, then L. In fact, 13 is a number, not a letter, so I don’t even know when he goes!”

  “Liam brings up a good point,” Ms. Linda said. “We agreed to go in alphabetical order, but I didn’t account for 13, which is technically a number. I suppose we could go in numerical order, which would make 13’s turn after Liam, who is the twelfth student to make a law.…”