Dr. Brad Has Gone Mad!

  My Weird School Daze #7

  Dr. Brad Has Gone Mad!

  Dan Gutman

  Pictures by

  Jim Paillot

  To Emma

  Contents

  1 Little Miss Perfect

  2 The Genius

  3 Dork School

  4 Dr. Brad Is Weird

  5 The Boys Against the Girls

  6 The War to End All Wars

  7 Love and Hate

  8 Take Me to Your Leader

  9 The Greatest Moment of My Life

  10 Little Miss Not-So-Perfect

  11 A Very Dangerous Situation

  12 The Moment of Truth

  About the Author and the Illustrator

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  Little Miss Perfect

  My name is A.J. and I hate school.

  It was Monday morning. I had just walked into Mr. Granite’s third-grade class. Everybody was putting stuff into their cubbies. My friends Ryan and Michael were talking about a football game they watched over the weekend. Andrea Young, this annoying girl with curly brown hair, was talking with her friend Emily about jewelry.

  “Do you like my new necklace?” Andrea asked Emily. “It says ‘LOVE’ on the back.”

  “It’s really shiny,” Emily said, “and it goes so nicely with your skirt.”

  “I love to accessorize!” Andrea said.

  Ugh. Girls are so annoying. I didn’t even know what “accessorize” meant, but it was obviously some girly thing that girls do.

  “G’day, mates!” said Mr. Granite. “Take out your reading log.”

  Reading log?

  I don’t have a reading log. Who wants to read a log? How would you write on a log, anyway? I guess you’d have to carve into it with a knife. But how would I carry a log to school? My backpack is heavy enough without having to put a log in there.

  “I don’t have a—” I started to say.

  “He means your notebook, dumbhead,” Andrea whispered to me, rolling her eyes.

  “I knew that,” I lied.

  The Human Homework Machine thinks she is sooooooo smart. Me and the guys call her Little Miss Perfect. For fun, Andrea reads the dictionary.

  What is her problem? Why can’t a reading log fall on her head?

  Actually, I didn’t have to take out my reading log after all. Because at that moment, the most amazing thing in the history of the world happened. There was a knock on the door.

  Well, that’s not the amazing part, because doors get knocked on all the time. The amazing part was what happened next.

  “A.J.,” Mr. Granite said, “will you please answer the door?”

  “How can I answer the door?” I asked. “Doors don’t talk.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Andrea, rolling her eyes again.

  Little Miss Perfect opened the door. The school secretary, Mrs. Patty, was standing there.

  “Mr. Granite,” she said, “will you please send A.J. to Mr. Klutz’s office?”

  “Oooooooooooooooooooooh!” everybody oooooohed.

  “A.J.’s in trouble!” said Michael, who never ties his shoes.

  “What did you do this time, A.J.?” asked Ryan, who will eat anything, even stuff that isn’t food.

  “Did you rob a bank?” asked Neil, who we call the nude kid even though he wears clothes.

  “Maybe you’ll finally get kicked out of school, Arlo,” said Andrea, rubbing her hands together.*

  Andrea calls me by my real name because she knows I don’t like it.

  “Your face should get kicked out of school,” I told her.

  I thought about all the bad things I had done recently. Maybe it was the time I put a worm in Emily’s sneaker during recess. Maybe it was the time I wrote KICK ME on a piece of paper and taped it to Andrea’s back when she wasn’t paying attention. I must have done something really horrible to be sent to Mr. Klutz’s office.

  Bummer in the summer! I wanted to run away to Antarctica and go live with the penguins. Penguins are cool. They never get sent to the principal’s office.

  I walked really slowly down the hall. The slower you walk, the longer it takes to get anywhere. If you walk slow enough, by the time you get to the principal’s office, he might forget the bad thing that you did. So always walk to the principal’s office really slowly. That’s the first rule of being a kid.

  Finally, after about a million hundred hours, I reached Mr. Klutz’s office.

  I put my hand on the doorknob.

  I turned the doorknob.

  I pulled open the door.

  And you’ll never believe the amazing thing I saw in there.

  I’m not gonna tell you what it was.

  Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. But you have to read the next chapter first. So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on you!

  2

  The Genius

  I knew you’d keep reading!

  When I opened the door to Mr. Klutz’s office, Mr. Klutz was in there. Well, duh! Who else would be in Mr. Klutz’s office?

  But that’s not the amazing part. The amazing part is what Mr. Klutz was doing in his office.

  He was playing Ping-Pong with himself!

  Mr. Klutz had a Ping-Pong table in his office. He would hit the ball, and then he would run around the table to the other side and hit it back. Then he would run around the table and hit it back again to himself.

  Mr. Klutz is nuts.

  “Hello A.J.!” Mr. Klutz said when he noticed I was standing there. “Ping-Pong is great for getting rid of stress. Have a seat.”

  “Where did you get a Ping-Pong table?” I asked.

  “From Rent-A-Ping-Pong-Table,” Mr. Klutz replied. “You can rent anything.”

  Mr. Klutz was all out of breath from running around the Ping-Pong table. He sat down and asked me about the weather and what I ate for breakfast and other stuff that nobody would ever care about. Principals always make chitchat before they tell you the horrible thing that you did. Nobody knows why.

  There was a knock on the door, and Ms. Coco came in. She’s in charge of the gifted and talented program at Ella Mentry School. I didn’t want to be in the G and T program, but she forced me. Ms. Coco made some chitchat with Mr. Klutz before she sat down.

  “A.J., we need to talk to you about something,” said Mr. Klutz.

  Uh-oh. Here it comes.

  “I’m sorry I put the worm in Emily’s sneaker,” I told them.

  “You put a worm in Emily’s sneaker?!” asked Mr. Klutz.

  “Of course not!” I replied. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “A.J., I called you down here because Ms. Coco showed me some of the poems you wrote,” Mr. Klutz said. “They are very interesting.”

  “Interesting” is an interesting word. It could mean something is really good, or it could mean something is really bad. You never know. So if you’re not sure if something is good or bad, just say it’s interesting.

  Ms. Coco handed Mr. Klutz a sheet of paper. He read it out loud.

  Tomorrow’s Window People

  By Arlo Jervis

  Someone only fired should soft become hammer,

  Imagination!

  Because awkward autumn sudden neighbor remain,

  Fishhook!

  Glow shadow oatmeal tomorrow window people.

  When he finished reading, the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened. Mr. Klutz and Ms. Coco started crying! I mean, tears were running down their faces. What a pair of crybabies. They’re worse than Emily!

  “That’s the most beautiful thing I ever heard!” Ms. Coco said.

  The two of them were sobbing and blowing their noses into tissues. Well, they blew the snot from
their noses into the tissues, not the noses themselves. If they blew their noses into tissues, their noses would fall off. That would be weird.

  The truth is, I didn’t even write that dumb poem. My grandma got me some flash cards so I could practice spelling words. We had an assignment to write poetry, and I didn’t know what to write. So I threw the flash cards up in the air, scooped them up, and wrote down the words. It was a lot easier than writing real poems.

  “We think your poetry is brilliant, A.J.,” Mr. Klutz said.

  “We want to have you tested,” said Ms. Coco.

  What?! Tested?

  “Do I have to pee into a cup?” I asked.

  “No, nothing like that,” Ms. Coco said. “A.J., we always knew you were gifted. That’s why we put you in the gifted and talented program. We want to have you tested to see if you might be a genius.”

  What?! A genius? I’m not a genius! I’m just a regular kid!

  “What kind of test are you gonna give me?” I asked.

  “Oh, we’re not going to give it to you,” Mr. Klutz said.

  “Who will?” I asked.

  And you’ll never believe who walked into the door at that moment.

  Nobody. Because if you walked into a door it would hurt. But you’ll never believe who walked into the doorway.

  It was Dr. Brad, our school counselor!

  3

  Dork School

  Dr. Brad looks like one of those mad scientists in the movies who straps people to a dentist chair and removes their brain. He’s an old guy who wears a bow tie, suspenders, and those weird glasses that only cover one eye. What’s up with that? And he has crazy hair, like he put his finger into a lightbulb socket. Somebody should get that guy a comb for his birthday. He is scary looking.

  Dr. Brad isn’t like a camp counselor. Camp counselors play games, sing songs, and take you on hikes. Dr. Brad is the kind of counselor who just talks to you, which is no fun at all. Talking is boring, especially when you’re talking to grown-ups.

  Counselors are for kids who are different. Like kids who are smarter or dumber than everybody else. Or kids who learn faster or slower than everybody else. Or kids who have problems. Or kids who don’t have problems. Or kids who are left-handed or color-blind. In other words, counselors are for everybody.

  “So zees is zee young genius I heard about,” Dr. Brad said.

  He talks funny.*

  Dr. Brad took out a magnifying glass and looked in my eyes. Then he looked in my ears. Then he looked in my mouth. Then he looked up my nose.

  “You can tell if somebody is a genius by looking at their boogers?” I asked. “That’s amazing!”

  “Aha-ha-ha-ha,” laughed Dr. Brad. “Most amusing.”

  “What if I am a genius?” I asked. “Would that mean I wouldn’t have to go to school anymore because I already know everything?”

  “No, no, no!” Dr. Brad said. “Zat vould mean vee vould zend you to a special school for genius kids.”

  “Did you ever hear of Dirk School, A.J.?” asked Ms. Coco.

  Dirk School?! Of course I heard of Dirk School. Everybody in our town knows about Dirk School. We call it Dork School. It’s filled with genius dorks.

  “We’re afraid that we might be holding you back here at Ella Mentry School,” Mr. Klutz told me. “You always say school is boring.”

  “A.J., you’re like a young flower,” Ms. Coco said. “If you went to Dirk, they would water you and give you sunshine to help you grow and bloom.”

  “I don’t want to be a flower!” I yelled. “I don’t want to get watered! I want to stay here with my friends! Dork School is filled with dorks! I promise I won’t say school is boring anymore. Please don’t send me to Dork! Please? Please? Please?”*

  “Calm down, A.J.,” said Ms. Coco. “Dr. Brad just wants to run a few tests.”

  I didn’t want to go to Dork School. I decided that nobody would ever think I was a genius. I wouldn’t let them.

  “I vant to ask a few qvestions, A.J.,” Dr. Brad said. “Vut is two plus two?”

  “Five,” I lied.

  “Hmmmmmmm,” said Dr. Brad.

  Grown-ups always say “hmmmmmmm” when they’re thinking. Nobody knows why.

  “How vould you spell zee verd ‘cat’?” asked Dr. Brad.

  “D-O-G,” I lied.

  “Hmmmmmmm,” said Dr. Brad. “Who vas zee first president of zuh United States?”

  “A penguin named Binky,” I lied.

  “Hmmmmmmm,” said Dr. Brad.

  “What do you think, Doctor?” asked Mr. Klutz.

  “Zees young man is a very interesting subject,” Dr. Brad said.

  Uh-oh. He said I was interesting. That could mean anything.

  “Do you think he might be a genius?” asked Ms. Coco. “The poems he has written are very creative.”

  “I vill need to do furzer tests,” Dr. Brad said. “A.J., come vis me to Room 104.”

  No! Not Room 104!

  Room 104 is a mysterious secret room where they put the crazy kids! There are strange sounds and weird machines in there. Everybody says that’s where Dr. Brad takes out your brain and puts a monkey brain in its place. When kids go to Room 104, they never come out again!

  I thought I was gonna die.

  4

  Dr. Brad Is Weird

  Dr. Brad gave me a little push into Room 104. There were signs on the walls: RESPECT OTHERS. BE CONSIDERATE. EXPRESS YOUR FEELINGS. There were a lot of bookshelves, too, some weird-looking machines, and a couch. That’s what you lie on when they remove your brain.

  Actually, I had been in this room before. One time our security guard, Officer Spence, went crazy and used Dr. Brad’s lie detector machine to see if I stole my own peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That was weird.

  Officer Spence makes no sense.

  “Lie down on zee couch, A.J.,” Dr. Brad told me.

  “Are you gonna take out my brain and give me a monkey brain?” I asked.

  “No, no, no,” Dr. Brad said. “I just vant you to look at zeez pictures and tell me vut you see.”

  I lay on the couch, but I was ready to jump up and run away in case he tried to cut open my skull.

  Dr. Brad held a piece of white cardboard in front of me. It looked like somebody spilled ink on it.

  “Vut do you see here, A.J.?”

  “It looks like somebody spilled some ink on that cardboard,” I replied.

  “Ees zat all?” Dr. Brad asked. “Don’t you see a giant spider who ees jumping on a pogo stick inside a volcano?”

  “Uh, no,” I said, looking at the card more closely.

  Dr. Brad didn’t look happy. He took out another card with a different ink blot on it and put it in front of my face.

  “And vut do you see here?”

  “Looks like another ink blot,” I told him.

  “Look very closely,” Dr. Brad said. “Don’t you see a hot dog chasing donuts through a tunnel? Or a big piece of cheese playing Scrabble with two unicorns? Or a man in a red coat eating pistachio nuts in a swimming pool?”

  Dr. Brad was getting all excited. His eyebrows were jumping up and down. I looked at the card again.

  “Nope,” I said. “Looks like an ink blot to me.”

  “Hmmm, interesting,” Dr. Brad said as he shook his head and took out another card. “How about zis vun?”

  “I guess maybe it looks a little like a cloud,” I said, trying to be helpful.

  “Don’t you see zee umbrella being crushed by zuh hippopotamus? Zee bicycle in zuh sky vis no rider on it? Zee train zat ees being svallowed up by zuh giant boa constrictor?”

  “Nope,” I said, “I don’t see any of those things.”

  “How can you not see zat?!” Dr. Brad yelled, waving his arms around. “Eet ees so obvious! Are you blind? Eet ees right zare! Can’t you see zee big snake? Vy can’t you see zat?”

  “I don’t know!” I said. “I just don’t see it!”

  Dr. Brad ripped the last picture into a bunch
of little pieces.

  “Go back to your class, A.J.,” Dr. Brad said. “I vill have to do furzer tests.”

  I made a dash for the door before he had the chance to change his mind and give me a monkey brain. As I ran down the hall, I could still hear him saying “Hmmmm, interesting” over and over again.

  5

  The Boys Against the Girls

  By the time I got back to Mr. Granite’s class, everybody was at lunch. So I went straight to the vomitorium to join the guys. Andrea, Emily, and two of their girl friends were sitting at the next table.

  Michael had a bag of Crispy Cheezeballs. Neil the nude kid had a bag of Cheezy Crispballs. Ryan was eating carrot sticks. Ugh! Ryan will eat anything.

  “You were in Mr. Klutz’s office for a long time, A.J.,” Michael said. “Did you get in trouble?”

  “Yeah, what did he do to you?” asked Neil.

  “Are you gonna get kicked out of school?” asked Ryan.

  “Nah,” I told them, “but Dr. Brad is doing some tests on me. They might send me to Dirk School.”

  “Dork School?!” the guys yelled.

  “Isn’t that the school for genius kids?” asked Ryan.

  That’s when Little Miss Perfect jumped up from her seat.

  “What?!” Andrea shouted. “You’re switching to Dirk?! My mom has been trying to get me into Dirk ever since I was in kindergarten! They keep turning me down. If anybody should be sent to Dirk School, it’s me! Not you!”

  “That’s right,” said Emily, who always agrees with everything Andrea says.

  “I wish you would go to Dork School,” I told Andrea. “So we wouldn’t have you around here anymore.”