by Dan Gutman
“Hey, look!” Ryan said. “A.J. and Andrea are in love!”
Everybody laughed.
“Shut up, Ryan,” I said.
“When are you gonna get married?” asked Michael.
Some friends! My face was all hot, and I would have beat up the two of them if I hadn’t been tied to Andrea.
“A.J.,” Andrea whispered, “I know how you can get back at Ryan and Michael.”
“How?”
“Let’s beat ’em!”
“Beat ’em?” I said. “Aren’t you the one who said competing is icky?”
“I changed my mind,” she said. “Let’s beat ’em! Let’s beat ’em bad! That will show ’em!”
“We can’t beat ’em,” I told her. “They’re the best athletes in second grade. You’re a girl.”
“We can do it, A.J.!” Andrea said. “Three-legged races are a lot like clog dancing.”
“Clog dancing?” I asked. “Is that some dance that plumbers do when the sink gets clogged up?”
“No, silly. It’s a step dance that you do with your heel keeping time with the music. I go clogging every Thursday after school.”
“I’m not doing any clogging. Clogging is dumb.”
“You want to win, don’t you?” Andrea said. “Look, all you have to do is move your leg forward whenever I count to two.”
“All right, all right,” I said.
I didn’t like the idea of Andrea Young ordering me around. But what else was I gonna do? Our legs were tied together.
Everybody lined up on the starting line.
“To win a three-legged race, you need cooties,” Miss Small said. “Cooperation. Teamwork. Sportsmanship.”
“Let’s stomp ’em into the ground!” Andrea whispered in my ear. “Let’s make ’em wish they were never born!”
“On your mark,” Miss Small hollered. “Get set. Go!”
Me and Andrea took off.
“One…two…one…two…” Andrea said, “one…two…one…two…”
Andrea and I went clogging down the field. Some of the kids fell down. We were in first place. Ryan and Michael were right behind us.
“You’d make a great clogger, A.J.!” Andrea shouted.
“Quiet, I’m trying to concentrate!”
“One…two…one…two…”
Me and Andrea were out in front of everyone.
“One…two…one…two…”
Me and Andrea were pulling away from everybody else!
“One…two…one…two…”
Michael and Ryan fell down!
“One…two…one…two…”
Me and Andrea won the race!
“Ha-ha!” I called to Ryan and Michael. “Eat my dust, losers!”
I was so happy that I almost wanted to give Andrea a hug.
Almost.
11
Grown-ups Are Weird
Recess is the best time of the day because that’s when we get to go out on the playground while the teachers do all the boring things grown-ups do when kids aren’t around.
Lately Andrea was practicing her juggling during recess. She put on her dumb show, and kids in the other classes would gather around and watch. Like she was famous or something.
But today Andrea wasn’t juggling. She and Emily were just sitting on the monkey bars looking all serious, like the world was about to end. Me and Michael and Ryan couldn’t resist going over to bug them.
“What’s the matter with you?” I asked Andrea. “Did you set your house on fire while you were juggling?”
“No,” she said, “we’re worried about Miss Small.”
“What about her?” asked Ryan.
“We’re afraid she might die,” Emily said.
“What!” I said. “You’re nuts! All she did was break her leg.”
“Miss Small is a quarter of a century old,” Andrea said. “That’s like, ancient. Old ladies aren’t supposed to run around and jump up and down and play games all the time. Old people are supposed to sit around talking about the weather and eating and reading the newspaper and complaining about the kids today and telling us to be quiet. Miss Small doesn’t do any of those things. She’s like a big kid. She grew tall, but she never grew up.”
“My dad is a doctor,” said Emily. “He told me that when old people fall down, they can get hurt really badly. They can even die.”
Wow. I didn’t know that.
“If Miss Small dies, it will be our fault,” Andrea said.
For a while nobody said anything. Maybe Andrea was right, for once in her life.
“We’ve got to do something,” said Emily.
“We should talk to her,” Andrea said. “We need to tell her she has to grow up and act mature like other adults.”
So all of us—me, Michael, Ryan, Andrea, and Emily—went around the school to the gym. We figured that’s where Miss Small would be during recess.
“Shh!” Andrea said as we snuck around the corner. “If Principal Klutz catches us, we could be in big trouble.”
Me and Michael and Ryan got down on our hands and knees and pretended to be undercover agents on a secret police mission. It was cool.
Finally we reached the back door to the gym.
“We may have to pick the lock like they always do in police movies,” Ryan whispered. “Then they run inside and shout, ‘Freeze, dirtbags!’”
“No,” Michael said, “in the movies they kick the door in with their feet and shout, ‘Freeze, dirtbags!’”
“No, they don’t,” I told them. “They use bombs to blow the door off the hinges. Then they run inside and shout, ‘Freeze, dirtbags!’”
“Maybe the door isn’t even locked,” Emily said.
“The door is always locked, dumbhead,” I said. “Why else would they have to blow it off the hinges?”
Andrea put her hand on the doorknob and turned it. And you know what? The door opened!
Me and Michael and Ryan ran inside the gym, just like they do in all the police movies.
“Freeze, dirtbags!” we shouted.
And there, in the gym, was the most amazing sight any of us had ever seen.
All the grown-ups who work in the school were there. Every one of them! And they were going crazy!
Mr. Klutz, the principal, was doing the Chicken Dance. Our teacher, Miss Daisy, was playing hopscotch. Mrs. Roopy, our librarian, was hula hooping. Ms. Hannah, our art teacher, was jumping rope. Miss Small was clapping her hands and singing that annoying hillbilly music. All the other teachers were doing the limbo and other equally weird stuff.
They all stopped what they were doing and stared at me and Michael and Ryan.
“What are you doing here, boys?” Miss Small asked.
“Uh…”
I looked at Ryan and Michael. They were doing that whistling thing you do when you want to pretend you didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. I had to think fast.
“The question is, what are you doing here?” I asked. “Why aren’t you all sitting around talking about the weather and eating and drinking coffee and reading the newspaper and doing other grown-up stuff?”
“We’re having fun!” Mr. Klutz said.
“Why should you kids have all the fun?” said Miss Daisy.
“Yeah, we want to play too,” Mrs. Roopy said.
“This is the only time we have all day to relax,” said Ms. Hannah.
“Yeah!” said all the other grown-ups. “Lighten up.”
Grown-ups are weird.
Me and Michael and Ryan ran out of there as fast as we could and went back to the playground. I hoped that Miss Daisy wouldn’t tell my mom and dad that I called all the grown-ups at our school dirtbags.
Back on the playground, we decided that Miss Small really does have a serious problem. And now it’s spreading to all the other teachers. Somehow, we’re gonna have to think of a way to make Miss Small grow up and act mature and boring like a normal adult.
But it won’t b
e easy!
About the Author and the Illustrator
DAN GUTMAN has written many weird books for kids. Dan lives in New Jersey (a very weird place) with his weird wife and two weird children. You can visit him on his weird website at www.dangutman.com
JIM PAILLOT is a talented but weird illustrator who lives in Arizona. He also has a weird wife and two weird children. Isn’t that weird? You can visit him on his weird website at www.jimpaillot.com
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Credits
Cover art © 2005 by Jim Paillot
Cover © 2005 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Copyright
MY WEIRD SCHOOL #5: MISS SMALL IS OFF THE WALL!. Text copyright © 2005 by Dan Gutman. Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Jim Paillot. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Epub Edition SEPTEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061973451
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