Mrs. Roopy Is Loopy! (4 page)

Something was wrong with Andrea. She wasn't raising her hand in class every second. She wasn't bragging to everybody how much she knew about everything. She wasn't pestering me like she usually did. It was like she was sick or something.

“What's the matter, Andrea?” Emily asked her during recess.

“I'm worried about Mrs. Roopy,” Andrea said. “I'm afraid she might have a serious personal problem.”

“You're the one with the serious personal problem,” I said. “Mrs. Roopy is like the coolest lady in the history of the world. Would you rather have some boring librarian who didn't dress up in
costumes or anything and all she did was read boring books to us?”

“No, but my mother is a psychologist,” Andrea said. “She told me that some sick people have more than one personality. Like one minute they think they are one person, and a minute later they actually think they are somebody completely
different. The whole time they actually think they are all these people. I'm afraid that Mrs. Roopy might have this problem. She can't tell the difference between the real world and fantasy.”

“Wow,” Michael said. “That sounds pretty serious.”

“We've got to help her!” Emily said.

“Yeah,” I said. “A librarian who doesn't know the difference between fiction and nonfiction is in big trouble.”

“But what can we do?” Ryan asked.

We all put on our thinking caps. Well, not really. There's no such thing as a thinking cap. But you know what I mean.

After a good long think, I came up with a great plan.

There were five minutes left in recess. Ryan, Michael, Andrea, Emily, and I sneaked in from the playground through the door to the library.

“Shhhhh!” I said as we tiptoed into the library. “Follow me.”

Lucky for us, the library was empty. Mrs. Roopy was probably eating lunch in
the teachers' room.

On our hands and knees, we made our way past the nonfiction books to Mrs. Roopy's office. The door was unlocked. I opened it.

“We're going to get caught,” Emily said.
“We're going to be kicked out of school and thrown in jail for the rest of our lives.”

“In here,” I said, ignoring Emily. “This is where we'll find the evidence.”

We were inside Mrs. Roopy's office. I wanted to turn the light on, but Michael told me that when his father is doing a secret investigation, he never turns the lights on. We tried to see the best we could with the light that came in through the window.

“Do you see any evidence?” Michael said.

“Not yet.”

It was just a bunch of boring stuff.
Pictures of Mrs. Roopy's daughter. Papers. Videos. Junk. No evidence at all.

“Let's get out of here,” Emily said. “I'm scared.”

“Not yet,” I said.

There was a closet by the corner. I pulled the handle. It wasn't locked.

And there, inside the closet, was all the evidence we would ever need. George Washington's uniform. Little Bo Peep's dress. Johnny Appleseed's overalls. Neil Armstrong's spacesuit. Every single costume Mrs. Roopy had been wearing was hanging right there in the closet.

“This is the proof!” Michael said. “All those people were just Mrs. Roopy dressed
up in costumes.”

“I told you so,” said Andrea.

“You did not!” I said.

“Did too!” she said.

“Oh, you think you know everything!” I said. “Well, you're not so smart!”

That's when the light flicked on. It was Mrs. Roopy, standing in the doorway looking at us.

“What's the meaning of this?” she asked.
She had her hands on her hips, so we knew she was mad. For some reason, grown-ups always put their hands on their hips when they are mad.

“I had nothing to do with it!” Andrea said. “It was all A.J.'s idea!”

Everybody was looking at me. I had to think fast. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in jail.

I grabbed George Washington's uniform out of the closet.

“What's the meaning of…
this
?” I said, holding up the costume. “You told us you were home sick in bed and George Washington was here instead of you. How do you explain the fact that George
Washington's uniform is in your closet? Huh?”

We all turned to look at Mrs. Roopy.

She just stood there for a moment and then…she broke down crying. She was sobbing and big tears were running down her face. It was so sad that we all gathered around her and gave her a hug. Emily was crying too.

“This is horrible!” Mrs. Roopy said, wiping her eyes with a tissue.

“You'll be okay, Mrs. Roopy,” Andrea said. “We'll get you some help.”

“No, it's horrible!” Mrs. Roopy cried. “George Washington must have left his uniform in my closet when he was here.
Do you know what this means?”

“What?”

“It means George Washington is running around somewhere with no clothes on!”

It was no use. Even after we proved to Mrs. Roopy that she was dressing up as all these characters, she still wouldn't admit it.

“Mrs. Roopy is in denial,” Andrea said when we got back to the classroom. “I'll bet you don't know what that means, A.J.”

“Sure I know what ‘denial' means,” I said. “It's that river in Africa.”

“Not the Nile, dumbhead! Denial! It means she can't admit to herself that she has a problem.”

“So what are we supposed to do now?” Michael asked.

“There's only one thing we can do,” Andrea said. “We've got to tell Mr. Klutz.”

Mr. Klutz is the principal, which means he is like the king of the school. One time I got into trouble and was sent to Mr. Klutz's office. When I got there, he didn't punish me. He gave me a candy bar. Mr. Klutz is nuts!

We told Miss Daisy that we had to speak with Mr. Klutz and that it was a matter of
life and death. She called the office and in a few minutes Mr. Klutz arrived.

Mr. Klutz has no hair at all. We told him all about the crazy things Mrs. Roopy had been doing and how Andrea's mother is a psychologist and she thinks Mrs. Roopy might have a big problem.

“We're really worried about her,” Emily said.

“Hmmm, this sounds pretty serious,” Mr. Klutz said. “Maybe we'd better go have a little chat with Mrs. Roopy.”

Mr. Klutz led us down the hall to the library. When
we got there, Mrs. Roopy was lying on the floor under the tree house. She was holding her head like it had been hit. Not only that, but Mrs. Roopy was really fat. It looked like she had gained about a million hundred pounds!

“What happened, Mrs. Roopy?” Michael asked. “Are you okay?”

“Mrs. Roopy? Who's that?” Mrs. Roopy said. “My name is Humpty Dumpty. I was sitting on that wall up there, and I had a great fall.”

“Don't tell me,” Andrea said. “All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put you back together again. Right?”

“How did you know?” Mrs. Roopy asked.

“You're not Humpty Dumpty!” Andrea said. “You're Mrs. Roopy, our librarian! Just admit it!”

“It doesn't matter who it is,” Mr. Klutz said. “There has been an injury. I need to write a report and give it to the Board of Education.”

“You can give it to me,” I told Mr. Klutz.
“I'm bored of education.”

Everybody laughed even though I didn't say anything funny. Mr. Klutz said he had to go call a doctor for Humpty Dumpty. Mrs. Roopy got up off the floor and dusted herself off.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I have a question.”

“Yes, A.J.?” asked Mrs. Roopy.

“Your name is Humpty Dumpty, right?”

“Right.”

“What I want to know is, why did your parents name you Humpty? I mean, if their last name was already Dumpty, they could have named you John or Jim or Joe or something normal. But they had to go
and name you Humpty?”

“Well, actually, Humpty is just my nickname,” Mrs. Roopy said. “My real name is Lumpy.”

“Lumpy Dumpty?” I said.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Roopy. “So you can see why I'd rather be called Humpty.”

Andrea was getting all angry now. Mrs. Roopy was simply not going to admit she wasn't Humpty Dumpty.

“Nursery Rhyme Week is over, Mrs. Roopy!” Andrea said. “You can be yourself. You can stop pretending to be other people.”

“Don't you like nursery rhymes?” asked Mrs. Roopy.

“Sure I do,” Andrea said. “But enough is enough!”

“I hate nursery rhymes!” I said. “Nursery rhymes are dumb. I'm sick of nursery rhymes. Nursery rhymes are boring.”

Humpty, I mean, Mrs. Roopy, looked hurt.

“Everything is boring to you, A.J.,” she said sadly. “I've tried so hard not to bore you. Please. Tell me. What is not boring to you?”

I put on my thinking cap (well, not really) and tried real hard to think of something that wasn't boring.

“Trick bikes,” I said. “Trick bikes aren't boring.”