Miss Laney Is Zany! (3 page)

The next day me and the guys were waiting in line for lunch in the vomitorium when we saw some kids nearby sobbing and crying and freaking out. They were talking with Mr. Loring, the music teacher, and Ms. Hannah, the art teacher. Both of them were carrying big cardboard boxes.

“What’s going on?” asked Neil the nude kid.

“We’re going home,” Ms. Hannah replied. “We just got fired. We wanted to say good-bye.”

“WHAT?!” I said. “I thought the school wasn’t closing until June.”

“That’s right,” said Mr. Loring. “But they’re starting to fire the teachers
now
.”

“Art and music are always the first to go,” Ms. Hannah told us. “Some people think the arts aren’t important.”

“What are you gonna do now?” asked Ryan.

“I’m going to make dresses out of old pot holders and sell them on eBay,” said Ms. Hannah.

“I might get back together with the guys in my old rock band and go on tour,” said Mr. Loring.

It was hard to believe that Mr. Loring used to be in a rock band. He’s like a million hundred years old.

“What was the name of your band?” I asked.

“The Rolling Stones,” he said.

We took our trays and found seats next to Andrea and her annoying friends. They looked like they had been crying. Everybody was sad about the teachers being fired. Nobody was in the mood to eat lunch. Not even Ryan, who will eat anything, even stuff that isn’t food. One time he took a bite out of the cushion on the school bus.

We were sitting there quietly when those two guys in overalls carried this big thing out of the vomitorium.

“What’s
that
?” I asked.

“That’s the salad bar,” said Andrea.

“Is that like a candy bar made out of
salad?” I asked. Andrea rolled her eyes.

“You probably never tasted salad in your life, Arlo,” she said.

“I did too,” I told her. “I tasted a salad once. Then I spit it out.”

“I don’t care if they take away the salad bar,” Michael said, “as long as they don’t take away the monkey bars.”

All of us looked out the window toward the playground. And you’ll never believe
in a million hundred years what we saw. That’s right! Two guys in overalls were moving the monkey bars!

“They’re taking the school apart while we’re sitting here!” yelled Andrea.

“It’s not fair!” yelled Ryan.

“We’ve got to
do
something!” yelled Emily, and then she went running out of the room.

Sheesh! Get a grip! What a crybaby!

But Emily was right for once in her life. We
did
have to do something. The question was, What?

I thought and thought and thought and thought.
*
I thought so hard that I thought
my head was gonna explode. But that’s when I thought of the greatest idea in the history of the world!

“Hey,” I said. “Mr. Klutz told us it would take a million dollars to keep the school open, right?”

“Right,” everybody said.

“So if we could get a million dollars, we could save the school!”

“A.J., you’re a genius!” said Michael.

“No wonder you’re in the gifted and talented program!” said Neil the nude kid.

So the solution to our problem was simple. All we had to do was get a million dollars.

After lunch we went outside for recess. Me and the guys went to the playground where the monkey bars used to be. Andrea, Emily, and some of their girly friends came out there too. Everybody was complaining about what was happening to our school.

“Stop whining,” I told them. “All we need
to do is get a million dollars.”

“How are you going to get a million dollars, Arlo?” asked Andrea. “Are you going to rob a bank?”

“Of course not!” I said. “I’ll just go to the bank and get the money from the cash machine. That’s what my mom does.”

Andrea rolled her eyes.

“You have to put money
into
a bank if you want to take it
out
, dumbhead!” Andrea said.

“You’re the dumbhead!” I told her. “What’s the point of putting money in the bank if you’re just gonna take it out?”

“Let’s see how much money we have right now,” Michael suggested.

We emptied our pockets. I had a nickel and three pennies. Ryan had a quarter. We put all the coins in a pile, and Andrea counted it.

“It comes to $1.04,” she said. “And a Life-Saver.”

“That’s not even
close
to a million dollars,” said Neil.

“Sure it is,” I told him. “If we just did that a million more times, we’d have a million dollars.”

“That’s ridiculous, Arlo,” Andrea said.

“So is your face,” I told her.

“We could bake cookies,” Emily suggested. “If we sold a million cookies for a dollar each, we’d make a million dollars.”

“You’re not gonna sell a million cookies,” said Ryan.

“What if we sold just one really
big
cookie and charged a million dollars for it?” I suggested.

“Maybe we could borrow a million dollars from our parents,” said Michael.

“We would have to pay it back,” Andrea said. “So we would still have to get a million dollars.”

“I know!” I said, snapping my fingers.
“We could clean couches.”

Everybody looked at me like I was crazy. But it made perfect sense. My mom is always picking loose change out of the back of our couch. She calls it her secret couch money. We could go around town asking people if we could clean their couches and keep all the secret couch money.

“I don’t think so, dude,” Michael said.

“We could sell my little brother,” suggested Neil the nude kid.

“That’s against the law,” said Andrea.

“It is not,” I said.

“Is too,” said Andrea.

We went back and forth like that for a
while. Suddenly, Mr. Tony came over. He’s a big guy with a mustache who runs the after-school program.

“Hi, Mr. Tony!” we all said.

“What are you doing here?” asked Michael. “School doesn’t let out until three o’clock.”

“Because of the budget cuts,” he said, “they told me I have to be on duty for recess.”

We all giggled, because Mr. Tony said “on duty,” which sounds exactly the same as “on doody.” The weird thing is, it’s okay to say “duty,” but you’re not supposed to say “doody.” Nobody knows why. So, any time anybody says “duty,” you have to giggle
because it sounds like they said “doody.” That’s the first rule of being a kid.

Mr. Tony asked us what we were talking about, and we told him some of our ideas to get a million dollars. He gathered us around him, like we were having a football huddle.

“I have a better idea,” Mr. Tony whispered. “Here’s the plan. We tell the government we have a
thousand
kids at our school. Yeah, that’s it. And we tell ’em our school is ten stories high. We tell ’em our school is the biggest school in the whole country.”

“Why would
that
get us a million dollars?” asked Andrea.

“Simple,” Mr. Tony said. “If the government thinks our school is the biggest school in the country, they’ll think it’s too big to fail. They’ll
have
to bail us out.”

We all looked at Mr. Tony.

“How can they bail us out?” I asked. “We’re not boats.”

Why is everybody always talking about boats? If you ask me, Mr. Tony is full of baloney.

After recess we went back to Mr. Granite’s class. He was talking about saving energy, like always. It was really boring. If you ask me, Mr. Granite should save energy by not talking so much about saving energy.

I ripped a sheet of paper out of my notebook and wrote this on it…

Ask if we can go see Miss Laney.

I folded my note up until it was tiny and passed it to Ryan. He looked at it and raised his hand.

“Mr. Granite,” Ryan asked, “can I go to the girls’ bathroom?”

Everybody laughed.

“Miss Laney will call for you if she needs to see you, Ryan,” said Mr. Granite.

“Please? Please? Please?
Please?
” Ryan begged.

Any time you want something really badly, just say “please” over and over again until grown-ups can’t stand it anymore. That’s the first rule of being a kid.

“No, I’m sorry, Ryan,” Mr. Granite said.

That’s when I came up with the greatest idea in the history of the world. I raised my hand and Mr. Granite called on me.

“I need to go to spooch,” I said.

“‘Spooch’?” Mr. Granite asked. “What’s ‘spooch’?”

“You know, spooch,” I told him. “That thing Miss Laney teaches.”

“Do you mean ‘speech,’ A.J.?” Mr. Granite asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “spooch.”

“Why are you saying ‘spooch,’ A.J?” he asked.

“I didn’t say ‘spooch,’” I told him. “I said ‘spooch.’”

“A.J. has a spooch in president,” said Ryan.

“You mean a speech impediment?” asked Mr. Granite.

“Yeah, that thing,” Ryan said.

Andrea raised her hand.

“Mr. Granite,” she said, “I think my
tongue is broken. Glub glub glub glub.”

“Help!” yelled Emily. “I forgot how to talk!”

“I think it’s contagious!” Ryan hollered. “The whole class might catch it!”

Mr. Granite looked like he was worried. I grabbed my throat and pretended to be choking. So did Ryan, Andrea, and Emily.

“It’s an epidermis!” I yelled.

“You mean an epidemic?” asked Mr. Granite. “This sounds like an emergency to me! Okay, A.J., Andrea, Ryan, and Emily, I want you to go see Miss Laney right away! Hurry!”

Ha-ha! What a scam. Grown-ups will fall for anything. I knew it would be way
more fun to play cool games with Miss Laney than to sit in Mr. Granite’s class and learn how to save energy.

“A.J., you’re a genius!” Ryan said as we walked down the hall to the girls’ bathroom. “You should get the No Bell Prize for that one.”

That’s a prize they give out to people who don’t have bells.