My Weirdest School #2

To Emma

My name is A.J. and I hate it when my school gets attacked by monsters.

I should explain.

It all started the other day when our new teacher, Mr. Cooper, came flying into the room. And I do mean
flying
! Mr. Cooper thinks he's a superhero. But he's not a very good one, because he knocked over
the garbage can and fell on the floor. Stuff spilled all over the place.

We all ran over to help him up. Mr. Cooper had a black plastic bag in his hand and a letter
A
on his cape.

“It is I,” he announced. “Apple Man!”

“Apple Man?” asked Ryan and Michael.

“Whoever heard of a superhero named Apple Man?” asked Alexia, who rides a skateboard all the time.

“Today we're going to learn about apples,” said Mr. Cooper.

“Why?” asked Neil, who we call the nude kid even though he wears clothes.

“Because it's part of the Common Core!” said Mr. Cooper. “Get it?”

Nobody got it. But Mr. Cooper didn't care. He took some apples out of the bag and passed them around.

“When I was a kid, we used to say ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away,'” Mr. Cooper told us.

“You threw apples at doctors?” I asked. Then everybody laughed
even though I didn't say anything funny.

“Did you know there are seven
thousand
kinds of apples grown all over the world?” Mr. Cooper asked us. “But only
one
is native to North America—the crabapple.”
*

“I know something about apples,” said Andrea Young, this annoying girl with curly brown hair. “If you put an apple in water, it won't sink. Apples have a lot of air in them.”

“Very good, Andrea!” said Mr. Cooper.

Andrea fist-bumped her friend Emily, the big crybaby. Then she smiled the smile that she smiles to let everybody know that
she knows something nobody else knows. She thinks she is
so
smart. Why can't a truck full of apples fall on her head?

Mr. Cooper told us it was time for math.

“If there are six apples on a table and you take away four of them, how many do you have?” Mr. Cooper asked.

Andrea was waving her hand in the air like she needed to be rescued from a desert island.

“Two apples!” she said. “Because six minus four is two.” Then she made her smiley smile again.

“No,” said Mr. Cooper. “If there are six apples on a table and you take away four of them, you have four of them, of course.
You just took four of them away!”

“B-but . . . but . . .”

We all laughed because Andrea said “but,” which sounds like “butt” even though it only has one
t
.

Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Nah-nah-nah boo-boo on Andrea.

Mr. Cooper taught us lots of interesting stuff about apples. Did you know that gravity was discovered when an apple fell on some guy's head? Me neither.

That's when the most amazing thing in the history of the world happened. The morning announcements came over the loudspeaker.

Well, that's not the amazing part,
because the morning announcements come over the loudspeaker
every
morning. The amazing part was what happened after that.

I'm not going to tell you what it was.

Okay, okay, I'll tell you.

But you have to read the next chapter. So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on you.

Our school secretary, Mrs. Patty, does the announcements every morning. We pledge the allegiance, and then she tells us the weather, what's for lunch, and who has birthdays that day. It's pretty boring.

At the end of today's announcements, Mrs. Patty said, “All students and teachers,
please report to the all-purpose room for a surprise assembly.”

We had to walk single file a million hundred miles to the all-purpose room. Mr. Cooper made us sit boy-girl-boy-girl so we wouldn't sit next to anybody we liked. I had to sit between Andrea and Emily.

Our principal, Mr. Klutz, climbed up on the stage. He has no hair at all. I mean
none
. He used to have hair, but it fell out or something. Everybody was buzzing.

Well, not really. People don't buzz. Bees buzz. It would be weird if people buzzed like bees. But we were all talking. Mr. Klutz held up his hand and made a peace sign, which means “shut up.”

“Thank you,” he said. “We have a
very
special guest at Ella Mentry School today.”

We all buzzed some more. And you'll never believe who walked out on the stage at that moment.

Nobody! Because somebody
rolled
out on the stage . . . in a wheelchair.

It was Mrs. Ella Mentry!

Ella Mentry is a really old lady who used to teach at our school a million hundred years ago. She must have been
a good teacher, because after she retired the school was named after her. There's a big sign on the grass out front that says
ELLA MENTRY SCHOOL
.

One time when Mrs. Mentry came to our school, things got out of hand and there was a food fight. Pickle chips and
meatballs and burritos and Tater Tots were flying through the air. It was cool.

We gave Mrs. Mentry a standing ovation. A standing ovation is when everybody gets up from their seats and claps their hands. When you stand up and clap your hands, it's a lot better than when you just sit there and clap your hands. Nobody knows why.

At first I wasn't going to stand up. But all the teachers stood up. Then a few kids stood up. And then a lot
more
kids stood up. And then I felt like I would look like a dork if I
didn't
stand up. So I stood up.

While we were clapping, Mr. Klutz dragged out a big, white piece of cardboard.
It was about the size of a door.

“Mrs. Mentry has brought a gift for the school today,” Mr. Klutz announced.

“She's giving us a
door
?” I asked. “What do we need a door for? We have plenty of doors.”

“It's not a
door
, Arlo!” Andrea said, rolling her eyes. She calls me by my real name because she knows I don't like it. “It's a
check
. Mrs. Mentry is donating
money
to our school, dumbhead!”

I wanted to say something mean to Andrea, but all I could think of was “Your
face
looks like a door.”

In my head, I was wondering why Mrs. Mentry's check was so
big
. My parents
use checks, and their checks are about the size of a dollar bill. Why would anybody need to have a check the size of a
door
? I can imagine how big Mrs. Mentry's wallet is.

Mr. Klutz handed the microphone to Mrs. Mentry.

“Thank you for that wonderful welcome,” she said. “I will always have a special place in my heart for this school. And to show my appreciation, I would like to give this to you.”

Mr. Klutz turned the check around so we could see the other side. This is what it looked like. . . .

WHAT!?

“A million dollars!” I shouted.

“A million dollars!!” shouted Alexia.

“A million dollars!!!!” shouted Ryan.

In case you were wondering, we were all shouting, “A million dollars.”

Everybody started yelling and screaming and shrieking and hooting and hollering and generally freaking out. You should have been there!