by Dan Gutman
After we got off the regular road, the road we were on wasn’t even a real road. It was more like a jungle or a swamp or something. There were these big plants slapping against the bus windows. The ride was bumpy, and it was still raining. Mrs. Kormel could barely see in front of her.
“This is like the rainforest,” Andrea said.
“I hope we don’t get eaten by alligators,” said Michael.
“Look!” somebody yelled. A family of ducks was crossing the road in front of us.
“They’re cute!” shouted all the girls.
“Let’s run them over!” shouted all the boys.
I didn’t really want Mrs. Kormel to run over the ducks, but it was hilarious anyway.
Mrs. Kormel kept on driving, but I didn’t see the nude kid’s house anywhere. In fact, I didn’t see any houses. Or human beings.
“Where are we?” somebody asked.
“The middle of nowhere,” said Mrs. Kormel.
I said it was too bad we weren’t at the edge of nowhere. Because if we were at the edge of nowhere, we’d be right next to the edge of somewhere. And the edge of somewhere is near the middle of somewhere, which is where we wanted to be.
Ryan said we were probably close to the nude kid’s house. Because if you were nude, you’d probably live in the middle of nowhere. That way, nobody would see you. And that’s where we were. It made sense to me.
Andrea looked at her watch and got all upset.
“We missed DEAR time!” she complained. “We’re very late for school now.”
Ha-ha-ha! This was the greatest day of my life!
“Don’t worry, Andrea,” said Mrs. Kormel. “I’ll get you to school if it’s the last thing I do.”
Just then I had a genius thought. Right after DEAR time is spelling. I hate spelling. And if we’d missed DEAR time and we weren’t even at the nude kid’s house yet, there was a good chance that we were going to miss spelling, too. And that meant we would miss the big spelling test, which I didn’t study for!
I decided that the nude kid was the coolest kid in the history of the world. Thanks to him, we were going to miss the big spelling test.
“Bix blattinger!” said Mrs. Kormel.
“Ooooh!” we all said. “Mrs. Kormel said that bad word again!”
6
The Nude Kid’s Dad
Finally Mrs. Kormel stopped the bus in front of a house and pushed the button to make the magic STOP sign pop out.
“This must be the nude kid’s house,” Ryan said.
It looked like a pretty normal house. There was a swing set on the lawn and a car in the driveway. You would never know that nudists lived there.
Nobody came out of the house, so Mrs. Kormel honked the horn. We all craned our necks to get a look at the nude kid, but he didn’t come out.
“Where is he?” Ryan asked.
Suddenly the front door of the house opened. A guy came out with an umbrella. And it was the most amazing thing in the history of the world. You know why?
Because the guy had clothes on!
The guy with clothes on came over to the bus. He climbed up the steps and said something to Mrs. Kormel.
“Bix blattinger!” muttered Mrs. Kormel after the guy got off the bus. She was probably mad at Mr. Klutz because he made her drive all the way out to the nude kid’s house and the nude kid wasn’t even there.
“What did he say?” we all asked. “What did he say?”
“He said his wife drove their son to school today on her way to work,” Mrs. Kormel told us. “She didn’t want him to be late on his first day of school.”
“Maybe she took him to buy some clothes,” said Michael.
Mrs. Kormel closed the bus door and made the magic STOP sign go back. Before the nude kid’s dad went inside his house, me and Ryan leaned out the window and yelled to him.
“Hey, mister! Do you sleep with clothes on and then take them off after you wake up?”
“Where does your son keep his lunch money if he doesn’t have pockets?”
It was hilarious. The nude kid’s dad just looked at us with this confused expression on his face. Then he went inside.
Nudists are weird.
7
Fighting Evil Under the Bus
Finally we were back on the road. Mrs. Kormel was mad at Mr. Klutz for making her drive to the nude kid’s house for nothing. I was mad because we would be at school soon. Andrea was mad because spelling was over and she didn’t get the chance to take the big spelling test and show everybody how smart she was. Well, nah-nah-nah boo-boo on Andrea! She would go to school on the weekend if it was open.
The rain stopped. I was getting hungry. We had missed snack time. It was probably close to lunchtime. We were bored, too, and sick of sitting on the bus.
Ryan flipped his light switch on and off. Michael played with his ball of string. I played with Striker Smith. That’s when I got the most genius idea in the history of the world! We could tie Michael’s string to Striker Smith’s leg and fly him out the window!
Michael and Ryan realized what a genius I was. We tied the string to Striker Smith and opened the window.
“You’re going to get in trouble, A.J.,” said Andrea. “We’re not supposed to hold things out the window.”
“Can you possibly be any more boring?” I asked Andrea. “We’re not holding anything out the window. The string will hold him.”
Ryan tossed Striker Smith out the window.
“Look!” Ryan said. “He’s flying!”
It was cool. Striker Smith was doing loops in the air. You should have been there.
“He’s fighting evil outside the bus!” said Michael.
“Mrs. Kormel!” Andrea whined. “A.J. threw his doll out the window!”
“It’s not a doll!” I told Andrea. “It’s an action figure. And it’s none of your beeswax.”
What is her problem?
It didn’t matter what Andrea said, because Mrs. Kormel didn’t hear her anyway. Striker Smith was flying outside the bus, dipping and diving in the wind. He is so cool.
The only problem was that suddenly Striker Smith dove down so far that we couldn’t see him anymore.
“Where is he?” asked Ryan.
“He’s fighting evil under the bus,” I said.
But I don’t think Striker Smith was fighting evil under the bus. Because that’s when I heard a pop, and then a hissing sound.
Hisssssssss!
8
Striker Smith’s Final Battle
Ryan pulled the string up. There was nothing on the other end! Striker Smith was gone!
Suddenly the ride got all bumpy. Mrs. Kormel pulled off the side of the road. She opened the door and got out to see what was the matter.
“You’re in big trouble, A.J.,” Andrea said.
“So is your face,” I replied.
Mrs. Kormel came back on the bus. She was holding Striker Smith in her hand. Or what was left of him, anyway. His head was gone. So was one of his legs and the arm that used to hold his sword.
I felt bad. My parents probably paid a lot of money to get me this cool action figure, and now it was totally crushed. On the other hand, it is also a well-known fact that crushing stuff and pulling the limbs off action figures is cool.
All in all, I was just happy that Show and Share was over. It wouldn’t be very cool to show the class an action figure that was missing an arm, a leg, and his head.
“Who does this belong to?” asked Mrs. Kormel.
Andrea looked at me. I looked at Ryan. Ryan looked at me. Mrs. Kormel looked at me. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. I had to think fast.
“I said, who does this belong to?”
“Striker Smith belongs to a secret organization of crime fighters,” I said.
I thought Mrs. Kormel was going to be really mad. But she just told us all to get off the bus. She said we had a flat tire and she was going to call Mr. Klutz to send somebody out to fix it. In the meantime, we’d
have to wait outside.
“Now we’re going to miss lunch!” one of the mean fifth graders complained.
“Who cares about lunch?” said somebody else. “We’re going to miss recess!”
“It’s all Arlo’s fault,” said Andrea.
“It is not,” I said.
“It is too.”
“Oh yeah?” I said. “Well, stupid begins with an s and that’s what you are.”
Ha-ha-ha! In her face!
We all got off the bus. It was a quiet road, and there were no other cars or houses or people around. Me and Ryan and Michael went to look at the flat tire. Striker Smith’s sword was stuck right in the tire with his arm still attached to it. It was cool. It was like that story “The Sword in the Stone,” except with a tire.
Mrs. Kormel tried to call Mr. Klutz on her cell phone, but something was wrong, and she started stamping her feet and yelling.
“Bix blattinger!” she yelled. “My cell phone battery is dead!”
Mrs. Kormel said she would have to fix the flat tire herself. She told us to get our lunches and have a little picnic on the sidewalk while she got out her tools and the spare tire.
Not everybody had brought a lunch bag, because some kids buy the school lunch. They must be nuts. The school lunch is usually rubber hot dogs, chicken nuggets that bounce, and nachos that glow in the dark. I wouldn’t eat the school lunch if I was starving and there was no other food left in the world.
Mrs. Kormel asked us to share some of our food with kids who didn’t bring a lunch. I gave my tuna sandwich to one of the first graders, but I kept my pudding treat.
I always eat my treat first anyway. You should always eat your treat first because if an asteroid hits the earth in the middle of lunch and destroys the planet, well, at least you got to eat your dessert. That’s the first rule of being a kid. It would be a major bummer if the earth was destroyed by an asteroid and you didn’t have the chance to eat dessert.
“Hey,” Ryan said, “look what I found!”
It was Striker Smith’s head! Ryan found it at the side of the road.
We decided right away to hold a funeral for the head. Michael dug a little hole in the dirt, and we dropped the head into it. Some of the other boys on the bus gathered around.
“Farewell, Striker,” Ryan said solemnly. “You defeated the mighty tire. You sacrificed your life, so that others might not have to go to school. You paid the ultimate price, made the ultimate sacrifice so that we can live in freedom from reading, writing, and arithmetic. Long live Striker Smith. We will always remember you.”
It was really sad. I almost cried when Michael said a little prayer:
Ashes to ashes,
Dust to dusted.
We buried Striker Smith,
Because he was busted.
He was really cool,
But now he’s dead.
It’s hard to live
When you don’t have a head.
We covered up Striker’s grave, and Ryan said we should have a moment of silence in honor of our fallen superhero.
It was really quiet. Then, in the middle of our moment of silence, Andrea said, “Boys are dumbheads.”
9
We Are Survivors
Finally Mrs. Kormel fixed the flat tire and said we could get back on the bus. She was all sweaty, and her hair was messed up, and her hands were covered with grease. She looked too tired to be mad at me or Mr. Klutz or anybody else. She just got into her bus driver’s seat and hit the gas. The bus lurched forward, and we all fell back in our seats.
It was really late. Andrea complained that we might have missed social studies. Ha-ha-ha! That was fine with me. I hate social studies. Why is it called social studies anyway?
Mrs. Kormel was driving fast! We were far from school. It looked to me like we were still in the middle of nowhere. The road was really bumpy, and it was wet from the rain. Mrs. Kormel was having trouble keeping the bus in the middle of the road. I was afraid she might drive right off the side of the road.
And what happened next was the most amazing thing in the history of the world.
Do you want to know what happened?
I’m not going to tell you.
Well, okay, I’ll tell you.
Mrs. Kormel drove right off the side of the road!
“Bix blattinger!” shouted Mrs. Kormel.
The bus skidded to a stop. Some kids even fell out of their seats! It was hilarious. You should have been there.
“Is everybody okay?” Mrs. Kormel asked.
“Yeah!” me and Michael and Ryan said. “That was fun. Can we do it again?”
“We’re stuck in a ditch,” said Mrs. Kormel. “We’re not going anywhere.”
“What are we going to do now?” asked Emily. She looked like she was going to cry. I was amazed that Emily hadn’t cried yet. She usually can’t go five minutes without crying about something.
“I don’t know what to do,” Mrs. Kormel said sadly. “My cell phone is dead. I guess we’ll just have to wait for help to arrive.”
“Too bad Striker Smith isn’t here,” I said. “He would know what to do.”
“If you hadn’t thrown that dumb doll out the window, none of this would have happened!” yelled Andrea.
“He’s not a doll!” I yelled right back at her.
“Zingy zip!” yelled Mrs. Kormel.
Everybody was really depressed. We just sat there on the bus. There was nobody around. No houses. No stores. No nothing. Nobody was going to rescue us. It felt like we had been on the bus a million hundred hours.
It occurred to me that we might not only miss the rest of the school day, we might miss the rest of our lives! We could sit there forever. We could die out there!
Suddenly I felt hungry. I wished I hadn’t given my sandwich to that first grader. I was starving. I was afraid my stomach might eat itself.
My friend Billy who lives around the corner from me and was in second grade last year told me he once heard about some guy who was stranded on an airplane, and he ate a seat cushion to survive.
“We might have to eat the seat cushions,” I told Michael and Ryan.
Ryan looked at the seat cushion.
There’s something you need to know about Ryan. He will eat anything, even stuff that is not food. One time we gave him a dollar to eat dirt.
Ryan got down on the floor and took a little bite from the corner of the cushion.
“Ugh,” he said. “It’s horrible.”
“Put some ketchup on it,” suggested Michael. “Ketchup makes anything taste good.”
Michael gave Ryan a little ketchup packet from his lunch bag. Ryan put it on the seat cushion and took a tiny bite.
“It’s not bad, actually,” Ryan said.
Ryan is weird.
It was so boring sitting there waiting for somebody to rescue us. I almost wished we were at school. Almost.
“I saw this reality TV show where some people were stranded on a dessert island,” Michael said.
“It’s not a dessert island, dumbhead,” Andrea turned around to say. “It’s a desert island. One s. ‘Desserts’ is one of our spelling words this week.” Then she held up her dumb flash card with the word “desserts” on it.
“Who asked you?” Ryan asked.
“A dessert island would be cool to be stranded on,” I said. “There would be ice cream and candy and treats everywhere.”
“Hey, look,” said Emily, “I just noticed that ‘desserts’ is ‘stressed’ spelled backward.”
“So what?” asked Ryan. “‘Backward’ is ‘drawkcab’ backward.”
“Who cares what ‘backward’ is backward?” asked Andrea.
“‘Bus’ is ‘sub’ backward,” I mentioned.
“Bix blattinger!” shouted Mrs. Kormel. “Will you please zingy zip?”
I couldn’t blame Mrs. Kormel for being mad. It was a rough day for her. We had to whisper after that.
“Hey,” whispered Michael, “I just thought of somet
hing. Maybe we’re on a reality TV show right now and we don’t even know it.”
“That’s impossible,” Ryan whispered. “If we didn’t know we were on a reality TV show, we wouldn’t be talking about us being on a reality TV show.”
“I think Michael is right,” I said, looking around to see if there were any hidden cameras. “Maybe this was all planned in advance for the reality TV show we’re on right now.”
“Oh yeah?” said Andrea. “Who planned for you to throw your doll out the window and cause a flat tire?”
“It’s not a doll!” I said. “Don’t you have any respect for the dead?”
“If this is a reality TV show,” Ryan said, “we’re going to have to vote somebody off the bus.”
“Why?” asked Emily.
“Because that’s what they always do on reality TV shows, dumbhead!” I said. “You vote somebody off and they have to leave.”
“But why?” asked Emily.
“Because that’s the rule!” Michael told Emily. She doesn’t know anything about reality TV shows.
“I vote for Andrea,” I said.
“I vote for A.J.,” Andrea said.
“Ooooh!” Ryan said. “A.J. and Andrea voted for each other. They must be in love!”
“When are you gonna get married?” asked Michael.
If those guys weren’t my best friends, I would hate them.
10
Mrs. Kormel Is Driving Us Crazy
We couldn’t just sit around on the bus forever. Soon we would die of starvation or kill each other, like they do in the movies all the time.
“We’ve got to do something!” Emily said.
For once she was right. That’s when I got the most genius idea in the history of the world. There must have been at least twenty kids on the bus. If we all got out and pushed, maybe we could push the bus out of the ditch!
I got up and and told Mrs. Kormel about my genius idea. At first she thought I was crazy and told me to go limpus kidoodle. But I guess she thought it over and decided to give it a shot.