Mrs. Lilly Is Silly! (4 page)

“Well,” she said, “there's dirt in the flowerpot on the windowsill.”

“Not
that
kind of dirt!” Andrea told her. “We need a scoop.”

Ms. LaGrange picked a scoop out of the sink.

“Here,” she said, “you can use this scoop to dig up some dirt from the flowerpot.”

“Not
that
kind of scoop!” said Andrea.

“We're making a school newspaper, so we need to interview you,” I told Ms. LaGrange. “Tell us something about yourself that nobody knows.”

“Hmmmm,” Ms. LaGrange said.
*
“When I was a little girl growing up in France, my parents owned a restaurant…”

Ms. LaGrange started telling us all about her parents' restaurant. It sounded like it was going to be boring. But Little Miss Perfect was writing down every word in her notebook anyway.

“Um-hmm,” Andrea said. “Go on.”

“Well, one day,” Ms. LaGrange said, “I was in the restaurant eating my lunch. It was soup. A nice tomato soup with little crackers blah blah blah…”

Ugh. I thought I was gonna die. Who cared what kind of soup it was? This was the most boring story in the history of the world. We were wasting our time interviewing Ms. LaGrange.

“So I was drinking my soup,” she continued, “when I saw the reflection of a man's face in the soup bowl.”

“So?” I asked, bored.

“And do you know whose reflection I saw in the soup?” she asked.

“Who?” asked Andrea.

“Elvis Presley!” Ms. LaGrange said. “He walked right into our restaurant and ate lunch there!”

“WOW,” we said, which is “MOM” upside down.

“Now
that's
a scoop!” Andrea said. “Let's go tell Mrs. Lilly!”

We ran all the way back to our classroom. Mrs. Lilly was sitting at the computer. She had already typed THE ELLA MENTRY SENTRY on the screen, and below it were blank spaces where the articles would go. We told her about our interview with Ms. LaGrange.

“That's great!” she said. “This could be our lead story!”

Then she typed this out in big letters:

LUNCH LADY SEES

GHOST OF ELVIS

IN SOUP BOWL!

Mrs. Lilly was really proud of us for the scoop we got from Ms. LaGrange.

“Great work, you two!” she said. “Now go out there and get us another story like that.”

“Will do, Chief!” Andrea said.

We slinked down the hall like secret agents again. After a few minutes we got tired of slinking, but we bumped into Mr. Docker, our science teacher. He was coming out of the bathroom.

“We're doing interviews for the school paper,” Andrea said. “Can you tell us something about yourself that nobody knows?”

“Hmmmm,” said Mr. Docker, “let me think.”

“Like maybe you have two wives,” I suggested, “or you saw Elvis in a soup bowl.”

“No, nothing like that,” Mr. Docker said. “I guess I lead a pretty dull life. It's just work, work, work all the time.”

It didn't seem like we were getting anywhere with Mr. Docker. He was boring.

“What do you do when you're not working?” asked Andrea.

“Oh, my wife and I like to exercise together,” he told us. “We go running every Saturday. I even won a race last week.”

“Really?” Andrea said, writing it all down in her pad. “That's exciting!”

“Did your wife run in the race too?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” said Mr. Docker. “She did very well. She came in third place.”

“We need to make sure we have all the facts right,” I said. “So you ran in a race over the weekend. You came in first, and your wife came in third. Is that right?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Docker. “We even got free T-shirts.”

“Great!” I said. “Thanks for giving us an interview!”

Mr. Docker went to the science room. Andrea and I rushed back to our classroom.

“Isn't it exciting that Mr. Docker won a race over the weekend, Arlo?” Andrea said. “This is going to make a great article for the paper!”

“No it won't,” I said. “That story is boring. I have a better story to write.”

When we got to our classroom, Mrs. Lilly was at the computer working on
The Ella Mentry Sentry
. I told her we had another big scoop, and she said it would be okay if I typed the headline on the computer by myself. So I typed this:

MR. DOCKER BEATS HIS WIFE!

“You can't write that, Arlo!” Andrea said. “What a horrible thing to say! Mr. Docker doesn't beat his wife!”

“He does too!” I said. “They were in a race. He won, and she came in third place. So he beat her. It's right there in your notes.”

“Mrs. Lilly?” asked Andrea. “What do
you
say?”

Andrea looked at Mrs. Lilly. Mrs. Lilly looked at me. I looked at Mrs. Lilly. Mrs. Lilly looked at Andrea. We were all looking at each other. You could have heard a pin drop, if any of us had been holding pins. But why would anybody bring pins to school? That would be weird.

“This is front-page news!” Mrs. Lilly finally said. “Great job, A.J.! You are a natural reporter.”

“Thank you!” I said.

I looked at Andrea and stuck my tongue out.

When Mrs. Lilly told me I was a natural reporter, Andrea's face got all red. I don't think a grown-up ever said that another kid was better than her at
anything
. It looked like Andrea wanted to yell and scream at Mrs. Lilly. But of course Little Miss Brownnoser would never say anything mean to a grown-up, so Andrea just stood there with her eyes bugging out. I thought she was going to explode! It was the greatest moment of my life.

“Now go out there and dig up some more dirt,” Mrs. Lilly told us. “We only have half an hour left.”

Andrea and I went out into the hallway again. She was all mad, stomping around and making her best mean face at me.

“Anything you can do, I can do better, Arlo!” she said. “I'll show
you
who's a natural reporter!”

“Sheesh,” I said, “take a chill pill.”

We wandered around the hallways for a while until we saw Mrs. Yonkers in the computer room. She was by herself, so it must have been her free period.

Andrea marched over to Mrs. Yonkers and asked her to tell us the most exciting thing that ever happened to her.

“Oh, I'm not a very exciting person, I'm sorry to say,” said Mrs. Yonkers. “I take my son to swimming practice, I go grocery shopping, and on the weekend we have barbecues in the backyard…”

“You say you have barbecues in your backyard?” asked Andrea, writing down every word.

“Sure, almost every week,” said Mrs. Yonkers. “It's fun.”

“Great!” Andrea said. “Let's go, Arlo.”

Having a barbecue in the backyard didn't sound like much of a scoop to me. But when we went out into the hallway, Andrea wrote this in her notebook:

MRS. YONKERS

SETS FIRES FOR FUN!

“She doesn't set fires for fun,” I told Andrea.

“That's what she said!” Andrea insisted. “I have it right here in my notes! You're not the
only
natural reporter around here, Arlo. I can dig up the dirt, too. This is a great human interest story.”

“Whatever,” I said.

We saw our vice principal, Mrs. Jafee, coming down the hall, and Andrea ran over to her.

“We're writing articles for the paper,” she said. “Mrs. Jafee, what's the worst thing that ever happened to you?”

“Hmmm,” said Mrs. Jafee. “I had a sad childhood. My family was very poor. There were even rats in our house. It was so bad, we had to use poison to get rid of them.”

“Great!” said Andrea, writing in her notebook. When Mrs. Jafee left, I looked at what Andrea had written:

VICE PRINCIPAL LIVED WITH RATS!

But then Andrea crossed that out with her pencil.

“I have a better idea,” she said. And then she wrote this:

VICE PRINCIPAL POISONED

DEFENSELESS ANIMALS!

Andrea had this wild look in her eyes like crazy people do in the movies. It was scary! That's when the school security guard, Officer Spence, came over.