Back to School Weird Kids Rule! Read online

  Dedication

  To Jules Boyle and Alex Soumilas

  Contents

  Dedication

  1. My Side of the Story

  2. Plenty of Room

  3. Boys Are Weird

  4. The Ghost

  5. Agree to Disagree

  6. First Impressions Count

  7. The Buddy System

  8. Arguing with Arlo

  9. Camp Ockatollyquay

  10. Miss Janey Is Brainy!

  11. A List of Lists

  Bonus: Weird Extras!

  Professor A.J.’s History of School Supplies

  Fun Games and Weird Word Puzzles

  My Weird School Daze Trivia Questions

  The World of Dan Gutman Checklist

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Back Ad

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  My name is Andrea and I love school!

  Ha! I bet you were expecting this story would be told by my boyfriend and future husband, A.J. Well, think again, silly! Arlo (that’s his real name) and his family are on summer vacation in Bermuda. They’re not coming back until next week, when school starts. So now it’s my turn. Finally, I get to tell my side of the story.

  This is going to be fun! I even got a special notebook to write in. I love writing. Don’t you? (Oh, I guess you can’t answer that question because you’re on that side of the book and I’m on this side.)

  Aren’t parentheses fun? (Answer yes or no here.) I love parentheses because I can pretend that I’m whispering into somebody’s ear (like this).

  Let’s get started!

  Aren’t exclamation points fun? I love exclamation points because I can pretend that I’m shouting (LIKE THIS!). Exclamation points are sort of like the opposite of parentheses. The more exclamation points you use, the louder you can shout!!!!!!!!!!!!! (See?)

  I like question marks, too. (Don’t you?????)

  In general, I’m a big fan of punctuation. (Can you tell?)

  Anyway, as I was saying, I love school. School is cool. You can’t spell “SCHOOL” without “COOL,” right? The only thing I don’t like about school is that we can’t go there during the summer.

  Do you know the reason why we don’t go to school in the summer? It’s because a long time ago when most kids lived on farms, they had to help out in the fields during July and August. I know that’s true because I looked it up in my encyclopedia. (I love looking up stuff.) Most of us don’t live on farms these days, so we should really go to school all year round, if you ask me.

  Anyway, back to the story . . .

  Ding-dong!

  Oh, wait. Hang on a second. Somebody just rang the doorbell. That’s weird. It’s nighttime. Why would somebody be coming over to my house now? I’ll be right back.

  “I’ll get it, Mom!” I shouted.

  “Who could that be at this hour?” my mom asked.

  Well, you’ll never believe who rang the doorbell.

  It was Arlo!

  The #1 reason why I love school . . .

  Our wonderful teachers!

  I love teachers because they are so nice to devote their lives to children (not even their own children!). Maybe I’ll be a teacher when I grow up. Or maybe I’ll be a veterinarian.

  Or a singer. Or a dancer.

  Maybe I’ll be a singing and dancing veterinarian who teaches in her spare time! I’m really not sure what I want to be when I grow up. But I don’t have to decide that right now, do I?

  If you ask me, a teacher should win the Nobel Prize. That’s a prize they give out to people who do something good for the world.

  What, you thought it was for something else?

  When I opened the door, Arlo and his family were standing on our front porch. My mom and Arlo’s mom are best friends. They started hugging because they haven’t seen each other in two whole weeks. I hid my notebook behind my back. Arlo might be mad if he knew I was writing this.

  “Hi Arlo!” I said.

  Arlo didn’t say anything. He looked mad.

  “Say hello to Andrea,” said his dad.

  Arlo grunted.

  “You came back from your vacation early,” my mom said. “Did something happen to you?”

  “There was a hurricane in Bermuda,” Arlo’s dad told us. “It was pretty bad.”

  “Hurricanes usually form over large bodies of warm water,” I told everybody. “The water evaporates and turns into clouds when moist air rises and cools.”

  (I knew that because I looked it up in my encyclopedia.)

  Arlo rolled his eyes.

  “It was scary!” said his sister, Amy. “They told everybody to evacuate.”

  Arlo started giggling.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked him.

  “Amy just said they told everybody to evacuate.”

  “So?”

  “‘Evacuate’ is a fancy word for pooping!” Arlo said.

  “It is not,” I told him.

  “Is too.”

  “I’ll look it up in my encyclopedia,” I said. “That will prove you’re wrong.”

  “Go ahead,” Arlo replied. “Look it up in your dumb encyclopedia.”

  I got my encyclopedia, which has a built-in dictionary. It’s really cool because it’s electronic. All you need to do is say a word, and a second later the encyclopedia tells you the definition out loud.

  “Evac-u-ate,” I told the encyclopedia.

  “To discharge from the body as waste,” the encyclopedia replied.

  “See, I told you ‘evacuate’ means pooping,” said Arlo.

  Oooh, I hate it when Arlo is right!

  “You are so immature!” I shouted. “And disgusting!”

  “Your face is disgusting,” Arlo replied.

  “Stop arguing!” shouted Arlo’s mom. “I wish you two would get along better.”

  My parents invited Arlo’s parents inside to have coffee, because that’s what grown-ups do. I poured juice for Arlo and Amy.

  “Didn’t you rent out your house while you were away?” my dad asked Arlo’s dad.

  “Yeah, we can’t go back there for a week,” Arlo’s dad said. “We just stopped by to let you know we’re home. We’re on our way to a hotel tonight. I booked a room for the week.”

  “Hotel?!” my mother shouted. “Don’t be silly! That will cost you a lot of money. You’re staying here with us.”

  “WHAT?!” Arlo shouted.

  “Oh, there isn’t enough room,” said Arlo’s mom. “We don’t want to be a bother.”

  “It’s a great idea!” I said. “Arlo and I will have fun together!”

  “I vote for the hotel,” said Arlo.

  “We have plenty of room,” my mom insisted. “There’s the guest bedroom for the grown-ups. Amy can sleep in my office.”

  “What about me?” Arlo asked.

  “We’ll put a sleeping bag on the floor in Andrea’s room for you,” said my mom.

  “WHAT?!” Arlo shouted.

  The #2 reason why I love school . . .

  School has rules!

  Rules are important. If we didn’t have rules, the boys would misbehave and shoot spitballs and cut in line and shout things out without raising their hands first. Because that’s what boys do. And the next thing you know, all the boys would be running wild in the streets and doing disgusting boy things like burping the alphabet and making armpit farts. That’s why it’s really important to have rules and for everybody to follow them. Especially boys.

  I helped Arlo bring his stuff in from the car.

  “This is going to be fun!” I told him as we climbed the stairs. “We can have a slumber party!”

 
Arlo grunted again. When we got to my room, he covered his eyes like he was shielding them from the sun.

  “So much pink,” he moaned. “It’s blinding me!”

  “Very funny, Arlo,” I said.

  “What are you hiding behind your back?” he asked after he uncovered his eyes.

  “Oh, nothing important,” I told him. “Just my secret diary. It’s not for you to read.”

  “I don’t want to read your dumb diary,” he said.

  “Good,” I told him. “Because you can’t. You’re not allowed. It’s secret.”

  “Well, if you won’t let me read it, then I want to,” Arlo said. He snatched the notebook out of my hand.

  “Hey, give that back, Arlo!” I shouted.

  I tried to get my notebook away from him, but he wouldn’t give it to me. He sat on the floor in the corner and started reading it. There was nothing I could do. I unrolled a sleeping bag on the floor.

  After a few minutes, Arlo closed my notebook.

  “First of all,” he said, “I’m not your boyfriend. I’m not even your friend. I’m your sworn enemy for life.”

  Arlo is always saying things like that to me. But I know he doesn’t mean them. My mother is a psychologist, and she told me that when a boy really likes a girl, he will say he doesn’t like her. That’s what boys do. And the more they say they don’t like you, the more they really like you. So obviously, Arlo is in love with me.

  Boys are weird.

  “Who wants a toasted marshmallow?” my dad hollered from downstairs.

  “I do!” Arlo and I hollered back. (Who doesn’t like toasted marshmallows?)

  We ran downstairs. Our dads had fired up the grill in the backyard and gave each of us a really long stick so we could toast marshmallows.

  Arlo stuck his marshmallow right into the fire, and then he waved it around like a torch.

  “Look! I’m in the Olympics,” he said, running around the backyard. Then he slid the blackened marshmallow off his stick and ate it. Ugh, gross!

  “You’re eating pure carbon, you know,” I told him.

  “Carbon tastes great!”

  I slowly turned my marshmallow until it was golden brown on all sides. It took a few minutes to make it perfect. By the time I was finished toasting my marshmallow, Arlo had already eaten three or four of his burned carbon balls.

  We toasted a bunch of marshmallows, and then our parents said it was getting close to bedtime. Arlo and I went upstairs.

  “I have a great idea!” I said. “Let’s tell ghost stories!”

  “I’m tired,” Arlo said as he climbed into the sleeping bag.

  “Aren’t you going to brush your teeth?” I asked.

  “No,” he grunted.

  “If you don’t brush your teeth regularly, you’ll get cavities,” I told him. “Your teeth might even fall out.”

  “Can you stop talking now?” Arlo said. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  “Did you ever hear of gingivitis?” I asked him. “That’s a disease where your gums get inflamed.”

  “I don’t think my gums are gonna catch on fire,” Arlo grunted from inside the sleeping bag.

  “I brush my teeth seven times a day so I won’t get gingivitis,” I told him. “Once when I wake up, once after breakfast, once before lunch, once after lunch, once before dinner, once after dinner, and once at bedtime. And of course I floss and use mouthwash every day too. You should really pay attention to your dental hygiene, Arlo. Arlo?”

  I looked down at the floor. Arlo was asleep.

  The #3 reason why I love school . . .

  There’s no TV at school.

  TV is filled with shows about people eating worms and beating each other up and shooting guns and acting mean. That’s not very nice, and it’s a bad influence on children. No wonder people in the real world beat each other up, shoot guns, act mean, and eat worms.

  Do you know what my favorite week of the year is? TV Turnoff Week.

  I don’t know how long I was sleeping. But sometime in the middle of the night, I heard something moving in my room. And then I heard an eerie voice.

  “Andrea . . . Andrea . . .”

  I was in a deep sleep. I had forgotten that Arlo was sleeping on my floor. I just heard that creepy voice. When I opened my eyes, there was a big, shapeless creature standing next to my bed and scary shadows on the wall behind it.

  “Eeeeeeeeeeek!” I screamed.

  Then I realized it was just Arlo. He had the sleeping bag over his head.

  “Andrea . . . Andrea . . .”

  “Knock it off, Arlo!” I told him. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  “I’m not Arlo,” he replied. “I’m the ghost of Arlo.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I said. “If you’re the ghost of Arlo, that must mean Arlo is dead.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “He ran away to Antarctica to live with the penguins. But he fell off an ice floe and froze to death. It was tragic.”

  I decided to play along.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Name?” he said. “My name is . . . the ghost of Arlo.”

  “That’s not a name,” I told him. “You’re supposed to have a name. Ghosts have names.”

  “How do you know what ghosts are supposed to have?” Arlo said. “Have you ever met a ghost?”

  “This is silly, Arlo! Take the sleeping bag off your head. You almost scared me to death.”

  “You should be scared,” Arlo said in a scary voice. “After you go to sleep, I’m going to paint your pink room black.”

  “You are not.”

  “Yes, and I’m going to hide under your bed,” Arlo said. “And when you go to sleep, I’m going to replace your Barbies with G.I. Joe action figures. Because that’s what Arlo would do. If he was still alive. Which he isn’t.”

  “Don’t you dare touch my Barbies,” I warned him.

  “Then I’m going to take away your encyclopedia,” Arlo said. “And I’m going to change all your As to Fs on your next report card.”

  “Go to sleep,” I told him. “There’s no such thing as ghosts. You’re Arlo.”

  “I am not.”

  “Are too!”

  “R2D2.”

  At that moment, the door opened.

  “Eeeeeeeeeeek!” Arlo and I screamed.

  It was Arlo’s dad and my dad.

  “We heard a noise,” Arlo’s dad said. “Is everything okay?”

  “I’m dead,” Arlo said. “This is my ghost.”

  “Go to sleep!” they both shouted. And then they slammed the door.

  The #4 reason why I love school . . .

  We get to learn new things!

  Learning new things is fun. But more importantly, it makes the world a better place. The more you know, the better you are.

  Last year for Christmas I got my electronic encyclopedia. It’s like a paper encyclopedia except that you can jump around from topic to topic just by clicking on words. I like to look things up in the encyclopedia for fun. You never know what you might find.

  The other day I looked up “gopher” in my encyclopedia. While I was reading about gophers, I clicked on a link to pests. I started reading that, and then I clicked on a link to germs. That looked really interesting, too, so I started reading it. There was a link to cheese, so I clicked on it.

  Did you know that there are four-thousand-year-old pictures of cheese in Egyptian tombs? I never would have learned that if I hadn’t looked up “gopher.”

  When we woke up the next morning, I could smell the yummy smell of waffles cooking. I love waffles! Arlo and I ran downstairs. We got to pour the batter. When you help make the waffles, it makes them taste even yummier.

  “You kids go play,” my mom told us after we finished. “A.J.’s mom and I will have coffee.”

  Grown-ups sure love coffee. They drink it all the time. At school one day the coffee machine broke down, and the teachers were walking around like zombies because they didn’t have their morning coffee.
br />   I tasted coffee once. It was yucky. But when I’m a grown-up, I’ll force myself to drink it, because that’s the rule. I always follow the rules.

  “What do you want to play?” I asked Arlo.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “What do you want to play?”

  “Too bad we can’t start working on our homework to get a jump on it,” I told Arlo. “I know! We can finish our summer reading!”

  “WHAT?!” Arlo exclaimed. “It’s summer! I hate reading! We have to read all year long. I don’t even like reading street signs during the summer. They should have summer not reading.”

  “Do you want to play dress-up?” I asked Arlo. (I love playing dress-up!)

  “No!”

  I realized that Arlo was just going to say no to anything I suggested. Because that’s what boys do. So I came up with a plan to make him say yes.

  “Do you want to play with my Barbies?” I asked.

  “No!” Arlo replied. “Boys don’t play with Barbies.”

  “That’s just what grown-ups tell you,” I said to Arlo. “Are you going to let a bunch of grown-ups tell you what you can or can’t do? That doesn’t sound like you, Arlo. A man like you makes up your own mind, right?”

  I was using psychology to get Arlo to play with my Barbies. My mom taught me how to do that. She’s really smart because she went to Harvard.

  “Okay, okay,” Arlo agreed. “Get out your dumb Barbies.”

  “Yay!”

  I got my Barbie collection out of my closet. I have Ice Capades Barbie, Angel Princess Barbie, and Halloween Glow Barbie (with a glow-in-the-dark hair extension).

  “Can we cut their heads off?” Arlo asked.

  “Of course not!” I said.

  “Can we go outside and melt their faces with a magnifying glass?” Arlo asked.

  “Absolutely not!”

  “Can we throw them out the window and see what happens when they hit the ground?” Arlo asked.

  “No!”

  “Then I don’t want to play with your Barbies.”

  “That’s not fair!” I told Arlo. “You said you’d play with them.”

  “Cutting their heads off, melting their faces, and throwing them out the window is playing with them,” Arlo said.