by Dan Gutman
We went on like that for a while until the queen of the gifted and talented butted in.
“You boys are dumbheads,” said Andrea. “Learning new things is fun and makes us better people.”
“Can you possibly be any more boring?” I asked her.
Andrea is just like Ms. Todd. They look alike. They talk alike. They smile alike. They’re both perfect all the time. It’s like they are the same person. It’s uncanny.**
I think I hate both of them.
5
Indoor Recess Is No Fun at All
It was Spaghetti and Meatballs Day in the vomitorium, but I always bring lunch from home. I wouldn’t eat the school lunch if I was living in Antarctica and starving.
Ryan gave me his Pop-Tart. I gave him my grapes because I don’t like to eat food with pits in it. Ryan will eat anything. One time he ate a piece of a seat cushion.
We all agreed that Ms. Todd is way too happy.
“Nobody is that happy,” said Michael.
“People who are happy all the time are weird,” I said.
“Did you notice that Ms. Todd smiles all the time?” asked Ryan. “She probably smiles when she gets a paper cut or stubs her—”
He never had the chance to finish his sentence, because at that second Mr. Klutz’s voice came over the loudspeaker.
“I have an announcement to make,” said Mr. Klutz. “It is raining out, so we will have indoor recess today. After lunch please return to your classrooms.”
“Boooooo!” everybody hollered, even the girls.
Bummer in the summer! I hate indoor recess. Recess is the only fun part of the day, and now we would have to stay in the class with that learning lunatic Ms. Todd. After we cleared off the lunch table, me and Ryan and Michael had a race to see who could walk back to our classroom the slowest. I won.
Ms. Todd was in there, all excited and clapping her hands and running around the class for no reason.
“Do we have to learn more stuff now?” Ryan asked.
“Of course not!” said Ms. Todd. “This is recess. Let’s play a game!”
“Can we play cops and robbers?” Michael asked. “I call robbers!”
“That game sounds dangerous,” said Ms. Todd. “How about another game?”
“Let’s play army,” said Ryan. “Boys against girls. Bang, bang! You’re dead!”
“Can anybody think of a game that doesn’t involve shooting?” asked Ms. Todd.
“We could play NASCAR,” I suggested. “There’s no shooting in NASCAR.”
“I never heard of that game, A.J.,” said Ms. Todd. “How do you play NASCAR?”
“We run around in circles,” I told her, “and every few laps we smash into each other.”
“That sounds quite violent,” said Ms. Todd.
“Yeah, and it’s cool, too,” I told her.
I knew that if we didn’t come up with something fast, one of the girls would suggest square dancing or some corny game.
“I know a good game we can play,” I suggested. “It’s called see who can hit the softest.”
“Now that doesn’t sound violent,” said Ms. Todd. “How do you play?”
I told Neil the nude kid to stand up and see how softly he could hit me. He barely tapped my arm.
“That’s pretty soft,” I told Neil the nude kid. “Now it’s my turn.”
I made a fist with my hand and punched Neil the nude kid really hard on the arm.
“Owwwwwwww!” cried Neil the nude kid.
“Oops,” I said. “I lose!”
It was hilarious. Neil the nude kid will fall for anything. All the boys laughed. Well, all the boys except for Neil the nude kid. He just rubbed his arm.
“That’s a terrible game, A.J.!” shouted Ms. Todd. She wrote something down on her piece of paper.
Ms. Todd wasn’t smiling for a change. She told Neil the nude kid to go see Mrs. Cooney, the school nurse. Then she told me to go to Mr. Klutz’s office.
“What did I do?” I asked. “I was just playing see who can hit the softest.”
“Go to Mr. Klutz’s office!” yelled Ms. Todd. “Now!”
6
Good News?
Mr. Klutz’s office is really cool. He has a snowboarding poster on the wall and a punching bag in the corner with a face painted on it.
I wasn’t too worried. The last time I got sent to the principal’s office for being bad, Mr. Klutz gave me a candy bar. It was the greatest day of my life.
When I opened his door, Mr. Klutz wasn’t sitting at his desk like a normal principal. He was hanging upside down from a bar attached to the ceiling. He had on boots that were attached to the bar. He says that when the blood rushes to his head, it helps him think.
Mr. Klutz is nuts.
“Come in, A.J.,” he said as he pulled himself out of the boots and fell into his chair.
“I’m sorry I punched Neil the nude kid,” I said. “I won’t do it again.”
“I understand, A.J.,” Mr. Klutz said. “I was a boy once.”
“Just once?” I asked. “I’m a boy all the time.”
Mr. Klutz laughed even though I didn’t say anything funny.
“A.J., I have some good news for you,” Mr. Klutz said.
“You’re going to give me a candy bar?” I guessed.
“Oh, better than that,” Mr. Klutz said. “I’m happy to inform you that you have been selected for the gifted and talented program!”
“What?!”
“Remember that test the whole school took a few weeks ago?” he said. “Well, you scored very high. We think you are gifted and talented.
Congratulations, A.J.!”
Gifted and talented? I don’t want to be gifted and talented! Dorks and dweebs like Andrea are gifted and talented. Not cool kids like me! I just wanted to be normal. I just wanted a candy bar.
“There must have been a mistake,” I said. “Can I take the test again? I’m sure I’ll do a lot worse.”
Mr. Klutz laughed again, even though I didn’t say anything funny.
“I’m sure you’re anxious to get back to class and tell everyone the good news,” he said.
No I wasn’t. If the kids in class found out I was gifted and talented, they’d think I was a dork like Andrea.
What could I do? As I walked down the hall back to class, I thought of my options:
I could change my name and wear a fake nose and glasses so nobody would know who I was.
I could keep a paper bag over my head for the rest of my life.
I could go live with the penguins in Antarctica. Penguins are cool.
I could just keep my mouth shut and hope nobody ever found out I was gifted and talented.
“What did Mr. Klutz do to you?” Michael whispered as soon as I got back to class. “Did he kick you out of school?”
No way I was going to tell Michael I was gifted and talented.
“He tortured me,” I told Michael. “He put me in a machine that spun me around until I threw up. Then he made me shine his head with a rag. Then he made me eat smelly cheese. Then he made me listen to some of his old music from the 1980s. It was horrible. I thought I was gonna die.”
“Cool!” Ryan said.
7
Circle of Friends
“I love math!” Ms. Todd said after recess, smiling her smiley face and clapping her hands and running around the class for no reason. Where does she get all the energy?
“I love math too!” said Andrea.
“If you had ten chocolate ice cream cones,” said Ms. Todd, “and you gave me five of them, how many chocolate ice-cream cones would you have left? A.J.?”
“None,” I said. “Because I would throw them all in the garbage. I like mint chip ice cream.”
Ms. Todd wrote something on her piece of paper. Then she made us do addition and subtraction for about a million hundred hours. The worst part was, she made me be study buddies with Andrea. It was horrible.
“Isn’t math fun, A.J.?” asked Andrea.
“Oh
yes,” I said, “and so is being attacked by an angry gorilla.”
Ms. Todd is just like Andrea. She loves school. She loves reading. She loves math. She loves everything. Ms. Todd and Andrea are like two peas in an iPod.
“Let’s draw pictures!” Ms. Todd said after math was over. “I love drawing pictures!”
“Do you hate anything?” I asked Ms. Todd.
She thought about it for a minute.
“I hate people who hate,” Ms. Todd finally said.
“I hate people who hate people who hate,” said Ryan.
“I hate people who hate people who hate people who hate,” said Michael.
“I hate people who—”
I never got the chance to finish my sentence because Ms. Todd told us to be quiet and start drawing.
Andrea drew a picture of her face with a butterfly on her nose. Emily drew a picture of flowers from all different countries holding hands with each other. (What a dumbhead! Flowers don’t even have hands.) I drew a picture of some alien spaceships attacking a school with laser beams. Then I drew this cool action figure named Striker Smith flying in on a jet plane and shooting the aliens until they were all dead. It was awesome.
“That’s quite violent, A.J.,” Ms. Todd said when she walked around the class, looking at our pictures. Then she wrote something down on that dumb piece of paper of hers.
What was her problem? Every time I said anything, she wrote something down on that dumb piece of paper. I couldn’t take it anymore.
“What are you writing on that piece of paper?” I asked.
“Oh, you’ll find out,” Ms. Todd said.
After we finished our pictures, Ms. Todd said the rain had stopped so we could go out to the playground to burn off some energy.
“Can we play tag?” I asked. “Please please please please please?”
“Tag can be a very violent game,” Ms. Todd said. “Let’s play circle of friends instead!”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a lot like tag,” Ms. Todd explained, “except that when you tag people, they don’t become it. They become your new friends. The object of the game is to see how many friends you can make.”
If you asked me, that sounded like the dumbest game in the history of the world.
Emily got to go first. She tagged Andrea. Now Andrea was in her circle of friends. Andrea tried to tag me, but I play peewee football, so I knew how to get away from her. Nah-nah-nah boo-boo on her!
The only problem was that Ryan and Michael play peewee football too. They thought it would be funny to sneak up from behind and tackle me. So that’s what they did. When I was on the ground, Andrea ran over and tagged me.
“Oooooh!” Ryan said. “A.J. is in Andrea’s circle of friends. They must be in love!”
“When are you gonna get married?” asked Michael.
I wanted to punch them, but I didn’t want Ms. Todd to write anything else down on that dumb piece of paper.
“See?” said Ms. Todd. “You can have fun without being competitive!”
We played that dumb circle of friends game for about a million hundred hours. It was horrible. I thought I was gonna die.
Luckily Emily fell down and started crying as always, so we had to stop playing. Ms. Todd let us go back inside. We still had some time left before the dismissal bell was going to ring.
“Let’s play musical chairs!” I suggested.
Musical chairs is awesome. Everybody walks around a bunch of chairs and when the music stops, you fight over the chairs. It’s a cool game because you get to knock other kids on their butts.
“Musical chairs is very competitive,” Ms. Todd said. “Whenever there is a winner, there has to be a loser, and that’s sad. Competition causes bad feelings.”
Can she possibly be more boring?
“I have an idea,” I said. “Let’s have a contest to see who can be the least competitive! The winning team could get a trophy or something that says they were less competitive than anybody else.”
“I don’t think you quite understand the idea of not competing,” said Ms. Todd. Then she wrote something on her dumb piece of paper again.
I was afraid that Ms. Todd was going to come up with some other weird nonviolent game for us to play. But finally the bell rang, and we were allowed to get out of jail. I mean, we were allowed to go home.
I think that was the worst day of my life. The only good thing about it was that my head didn’t explode.
8
Getting the Goods on Ms. Todd
I couldn’t wait to get to school the next day. Yes, you heard that right! I wanted to go to school for the first time in history. That was because weird Ms. Todd would be gone and good old Miss Daisy would be back. Mom said I could ride my bike to school so I wouldn’t have to wait for the bus. Mrs. Kormel, the bus driver, gets lost all the time. She’s not normal.
It was Flag Day, so we all wore red, white, and blue to school. There were flags of all different countries all over the place. When I walked in the class, Miss Daisy wasn’t there yet. But Andrea was sitting there with this pruny mean face on and her arms folded in front of her like an x.
“What’s eating you?” I asked her. “Did somebody steal your dictionary?”
“You know why I’m mad, A.J.,” she said.
“No I don’t.”
“Yes you do.”
We went back and forth like that for a while, until Andrea finally said why she was mad.
“I found out that you’re gifted and talented,” she whispered. “It’s not fair!”
“Who told you?” I asked.
“My mother,” Andrea said. “She’s vice president of the PTA. She knows everything.”
“Well, I’m not telling anyone,” I whispered. “I don’t want the guys to know I’m a gifted and talented dork like you.”
“I’m not telling anyone either,” Andrea said. “I want to be the only one in the class who’s gifted and talented.”
“Agreed,” I said. “It will be our secret.”
The only problem was that Ryan was hiding under his desk listening to us the whole time.
“Oooooh!” Ryan said. “A.J. and Andrea are both gifted and talented. They must be in love! When are you gonna get—”
Ryan never got the chance to finish his sentence because at that very second, guess who walked into the door?
Nobody! It would be dumb to walk into a door. But guess who walked into the doorway?
Ms. Todd!
Oh no! The Andrea clone was back. It was like a horror movie!
“Miss Daisy is still sick,” Ms. Todd said. “There must be something going around. So I’ll be your teacher again today.”
She didn’t look all that happy about it. She wasn’t nearly as smiley as she was the day before. “Open up your math books.”
Ugh! We had to do reading and writing and math all morning. I thought my head was going to explode. Then Ms. Todd forced us to play more of her dumb games where nobody wins or loses. What’s the point of playing? I thought I was gonna die. I couldn’t wait for lunchtime.
“I miss Miss Daisy,” Ryan said as soon as we sat down in the vomitorium.
“I miss miss Miss Daisy,” said Michael. “Ms. Todd is weird.”
“Do you notice that every time I say anything, she writes something down on her piece of paper?” I asked. “What’s up with that?”
“Subs have to write a report about what happens in class,” Andrea said. “You’re going to be in big trouble when Miss Daisy gets back and reads Ms. Todd’s report.”
“All Ms. Todd ever does is teach stuff,” said Ryan. “She’s like a robot teacher.”
“Hey, maybe Ms. Todd isn’t a teacher at all,” I said. “Did you ever think of that?”
“What do you mean?” asked Emily.
“Maybe she’s a robot in the body of a human, and she was sent here to take over the Earth,” I said. “I saw that in a movie once.”
“Stop trying to scare Emily,” Andrea
said.
“I’ll bet that robot Ms. Todd murdered Miss Daisy so she could take over her job,” Michael said. “Subs do that all the time, you know.”
“Yeah,” I said, “after the robot subs murder all the human teachers, they’ll probably create a race of robot zombie clones to brainwash kids and take over the world.”
“If Ms. Todd finds out we know,” Ryan said, “she might murder one of us to keep us quiet.”
“We’ve got to do something!” said Emily, and she went running out of the vomitorium.
Emily is weird.
“Maybe we should call the police,” Ryan suggested. “They could arrest Ms. Todd.”
“We need to find some evidence first,” said Michael, “so we can get the goods on her.”
“What goods?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Michael said. “But you always have to get the goods on criminals.”
Michael’s dad is a policeman, so he knows all about crime and murder and stuff.
After lunch we headed back to class. Me and Ryan and Michael tiptoed around the hallway pretending to be detectives so we could get the goods on Ms. Todd. It was cool.
“If there has been a murder,” Michael told us when we got to our classroom, “there has to be a murder weapon. You guys look around for one. I’ll see if I can find a few strands of Ms. Todd’s hair.”
“Why do you want her hair?” I asked.
“So my dad can do a DNA test on it,” Michael said. “Once we get her hair, we’ll have the goods on her and we can throw her in the slammer.”
I still didn’t know why we needed Ms. Todd’s hair. I didn’t know what a slammer or DNA were either. But I didn’t say anything because I figured gifted and talented kids like me should know stuff like that.
No one was back from lunch yet. Ms. Todd was probably still in the teachers’ lounge. That’s a room where teachers sit around in hot tubs all day. So me and Ryan looked around the classroom for murder weapons. A piece of chalk? A flag? The blackboard eraser? It would be really hard to murder somebody with an eraser.
