Mrs. Lilly Is Silly! Page 2

  “The vomitorium!” we both said.

  The vomitorium is where we eat lunch. It used to be called the cafetorium, but then one day some kid threw up in there, and it’s been the vomitorium ever since.

  The only person in the vomitorium was our lunch lady, Ms. LaGrange. She’s from France, which is this country where they eat frogs’ legs.

  “Bonjour!” said Ms. LaGrange. (That’s France talk for “hello.”) “Lunch will not be ready for an hour. What can I do for you kids?”

  Andrea got her pad and pencil ready so she could take notes.

  “We’re here to dig up some dirt,” I told Ms. LaGrange.

  “Well,” she said, “there’s dirt in the flowerpot on the windowsill.”

  “Not that kind of dirt!” Andrea told her. “We need a scoop.”

  Ms. LaGrange picked a scoop out of the sink.

  “Here,” she said, “you can use this scoop to dig up some dirt from the flowerpot.”

  “Not that kind of scoop!” said Andrea.

  “We’re making a school newspaper, so we need to interview you,” I told Ms. LaGrange. “Tell us something about yourself that nobody knows.”

  “Hmmmm,” Ms. LaGrange said.* “When I was a little girl growing up in France, my parents owned a restaurant…”

  Ms. LaGrange started telling us all about her parents’ restaurant. It sounded like it was going to be boring. But Little Miss Perfect was writing down every word in her notebook anyway.

  “Um-hmm,” Andrea said. “Go on.”

  “Well, one day,” Ms. LaGrange said, “I was in the restaurant eating my lunch. It was soup. A nice tomato soup with little crackers blah blah blah…”

  Ugh. I thought I was gonna die. Who cared what kind of soup it was? This was the most boring story in the history of the world. We were wasting our time interviewing Ms. LaGrange.

  “So I was drinking my soup,” she continued, “when I saw the reflection of a man’s face in the soup bowl.”

  “So?” I asked, bored.

  “And do you know whose reflection I saw in the soup?” she asked.

  “Who?” asked Andrea.

  “Elvis Presley!” Ms. LaGrange said. “He walked right into our restaurant and ate lunch there!”

  “WOW,” we said, which is “MOM” upside down.

  “Now that’s a scoop!” Andrea said. “Let’s go tell Mrs. Lilly!”

  We ran all the way back to our classroom. Mrs. Lilly was sitting at the computer. She had already typed THE ELLA MENTRY SENTRY on the screen, and below it were blank spaces where the articles would go. We told her about our interview with Ms. LaGrange.

  “That’s great!” she said. “This could be our lead story!”

  Then she typed this out in big letters:

  LUNCH LADY SEES

  GHOST OF ELVIS

  IN SOUP BOWL!

  Mrs. Lilly was really proud of us for the scoop we got from Ms. LaGrange.

  “Great work, you two!” she said. “Now go out there and get us another story like that.”

  “Will do, Chief!” Andrea said.

  We slinked down the hall like secret agents again. After a few minutes we got tired of slinking, but we bumped into Mr. Docker, our science teacher. He was coming out of the bathroom.

  “We’re doing interviews for the school paper,” Andrea said. “Can you tell us something about yourself that nobody knows?”

  “Hmmmm,” said Mr. Docker, “let me think.”

  “Like maybe you have two wives,” I suggested, “or you saw Elvis in a soup bowl.”

  “No, nothing like that,” Mr. Docker said. “I guess I lead a pretty dull life. It’s just work, work, work all the time.”

  It didn’t seem like we were getting anywhere with Mr. Docker. He was boring.

  “What do you do when you’re not working?” asked Andrea.

  “Oh, my wife and I like to exercise together,” he told us. “We go running every Saturday. I even won a race last week.”

  “Really?” Andrea said, writing it all down in her pad. “That’s exciting!”

  “Did your wife run in the race too?” I asked.

  “Oh yes,” said Mr. Docker. “She did very well. She came in third place.”

  “We need to make sure we have all the facts right,” I said. “So you ran in a race over the weekend. You came in first, and your wife came in third. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Docker. “We even got free T-shirts.”

  “Great!” I said. “Thanks for giving us an interview!”

  Mr. Docker went to the science room. Andrea and I rushed back to our classroom.

  “Isn’t it exciting that Mr. Docker won a race over the weekend, Arlo?” Andrea said. “This is going to make a great article for the paper!”

  “No it won’t,” I said. “That story is boring. I have a better story to write.”

  When we got to our classroom, Mrs. Lilly was at the computer working on The Ella Mentry Sentry. I told her we had another big scoop, and she said it would be okay if I typed the headline on the computer by myself. So I typed this:

  MR. DOCKER BEATS HIS WIFE!

  “You can’t write that, Arlo!” Andrea said. “What a horrible thing to say! Mr. Docker doesn’t beat his wife!”

  “He does too!” I said. “They were in a race. He won, and she came in third place. So he beat her. It’s right there in your notes.”

  “Mrs. Lilly?” asked Andrea. “What do you say?”

  Andrea looked at Mrs. Lilly. Mrs. Lilly looked at me. I looked at Mrs. Lilly. Mrs. Lilly looked at Andrea. We were all looking at each other. You could have heard a pin drop, if any of us had been holding pins. But why would anybody bring pins to school? That would be weird.

  “This is front-page news!” Mrs. Lilly finally said. “Great job, A.J.! You are a natural reporter.”

  “Thank you!” I said.

  I looked at Andrea and stuck my tongue out.

  When Mrs. Lilly told me I was a natural reporter, Andrea’s face got all red. I don’t think a grown-up ever said that another kid was better than her at anything. It looked like Andrea wanted to yell and scream at Mrs. Lilly. But of course Little Miss Brownnoser would never say anything mean to a grown-up, so Andrea just stood there with her eyes bugging out. I thought she was going to explode! It was the greatest moment of my life.

  “Now go out there and dig up some more dirt,” Mrs. Lilly told us. “We only have half an hour left.”

  Andrea and I went out into the hallway again. She was all mad, stomping around and making her best mean face at me.

  “Anything you can do, I can do better, Arlo!” she said. “I’ll show you who’s a natural reporter!”

  “Sheesh,” I said, “take a chill pill.”

  We wandered around the hallways for a while until we saw Mrs. Yonkers in the computer room. She was by herself, so it must have been her free period.

  Andrea marched over to Mrs. Yonkers and asked her to tell us the most exciting thing that ever happened to her.

  “Oh, I’m not a very exciting person, I’m sorry to say,” said Mrs. Yonkers. “I take my son to swimming practice, I go grocery shopping, and on the weekend we have barbecues in the backyard…”

  “You say you have barbecues in your backyard?” asked Andrea, writing down every word.

  “Sure, almost every week,” said Mrs. Yonkers. “It’s fun.”

  “Great!” Andrea said. “Let’s go, Arlo.”

  Having a barbecue in the backyard didn’t sound like much of a scoop to me. But when we went out into the hallway, Andrea wrote this in her notebook:

  MRS. YONKERS

  SETS FIRES FOR FUN!

  “She doesn’t set fires for fun,” I told Andrea.

  “That’s what she said!” Andrea insisted. “I have it right here in my notes! You’re not the only natural reporter around here, Arlo. I can dig up the dirt, too. This is a great human interest story.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  We saw our vice principal, Mrs. Jafee, coming down the hall, and Andrea ran over to her.

  “We’re writing articles for the paper,” she said. “Mrs. Jafee, what’s the worst thing that ever happened to you?”

  “Hmmm,” said Mrs. Jafee. “I had a sad childhood. My family was very poor. There were even rats in our house. It was so bad, we had to use poison to get rid of them.”

  “Great!” said Andrea, writing in her notebook. When Mrs. Jafee left, I looked at what Andrea had written:

  VICE PRINCIPAL LIVED WITH RATS!

  But then Andrea crossed that out with her pencil.

  “I have a better idea,” she said. And then she wrote this:

  VICE PRINCIPAL POISONED

  DEFENSELESS ANIMALS!

  Andrea had this wild look in her eyes like crazy people do in the movies. It was scary! That’s when the school security guard, Officer Spence, came over.

  “Are you kids supposed to be roaming around in the halls?” he asked us.

  “Sure,” I told him. “We’re writing articles for the school paper.”

  “Yes,” Andrea said. “Security guards must lead very dangerous lives. Can you tell us about a time you beat up a bad guy, or something exciting like that?”

  “No, I never beat up any bad guys,” said Officer Spence. “But before I got this job, I was a security guard in a prison. That wasn’t much fun.”

  “How long did you work in the prison?” I asked.

  “Oh, about five years.”

  Andrea got that crazy look in her eyes again while she was writing notes. It was almost like the time I hypnotized her and she climbed up on the roof. When Officer Spence walked away, she showed me what she had written in her notebook:

  OFFICER SPENCE WAS

  IN JAIL FOR FIVE YEARS!

  “He was not!” I told Andrea.

  “He was too!” she insisted. “I have it right here in my notes!”

  We went back and forth like that for a while. Andrea was getting out of control!

  After that she marched up to interview Ms. Coco, our gifted and talented teacher.

  Ms. Coco told us that her car broke down the other day, and she had to use somebody else’s car to drive to school. So Andrea wrote this in her notebook:

  MS. COCO IS A CAR THIEF!

  Then we went over to the office to interview Mrs. Patty, the school secretary. She told us a really sad story about the time her dog died in an accident when she was a little kid. But this is what Andrea wrote in her notebook:

  MRS. PATTY—DOG KILLER!

  I slapped my head. I was a little worried about all the dirt Andrea was digging up.

  “I’m not sure we should put those articles in the paper,” I told her as we walked back to our class. “We might get into big trouble.”

  “Oh, take a chill pill, Arlo,” Andrea said. “Mrs. Lilly told us to dig up some dirt. I’m just doing what she told us to do.”

  Andrea always does what grown-ups tell her to do. A grown-up could tell her to go jump off a bridge, and Andrea would do it. What is her problem?

  “We should probably interview Mr. Granite,” I suggested. “After all, he is our teacher.”

  “We don’t need to interview Mr. Granite,” Andrea said. “I know exactly what to write about him.”

  She wrote this in her notebook:

  THIRD-GRADE TEACHER

  IS AN ILLEGAL ALIEN!

  Well, at least that one was true. Mr. Granite is from another planet.

  Andrea and I did a bunch of interviews with the grown-ups at our school. When we got back to the classroom, Ryan was the only other kid who was there. He said that he and Michael didn’t find anything interesting when they were going through the garbage can, so they decided to split up and work separately.

  Andrea was all proud of herself for digging up dirt, and she showed Mrs. Lilly her notebook:

  MRS. YONKERS SETS FIRES FOR FUN!

  VICE PRINCIPAL POISONED

  DEFENSELESS ANIMALS!

  OFFICER SPENCE WAS

  IN JAIL FOR FIVE YEARS!

  MS. COCO IS A CAR THIEF!

  MRS. PATTY—DOG KILLER!

  THIRD-GRADE TEACHER

  IS AN ILLEGAL ALIEN!

  “These are terrific stories, Andrea!” Mrs. Lilly told her. “You and A.J. make a great team!”

  “Oooooh!” Ryan said. “A.J. and Andrea make a great team. They must be in love!”

  Andrea said she took a typing class after school (of course), so she was allowed to type her stories into the computer. She had that crazy look in her eyes the whole time.

  Everybody else started filing back into class.*

  “Did you dig up any good dirt?” Mrs. Lilly asked everyone. This one kid came in with a bucket full of dirt. Real dirt.

  “Not that kind of dirt!” we all yelled at him.

  What a dumbhead.

  Neil the nude kid came running into the classroom. He looked all excited.

  “Did you dig up any dirt?” Mrs. Lilly asked him.

  “I put a tail on Mr. Macky like you told me to,” Neil said. “I followed him around for an hour, and guess what I caught him doing?”

  “What?” we all asked.

  “I saw Mr. Macky and Mrs. Daisy together,” Neil said. “They were standing near the water fountain. And they were … kissing!”

  Everybody gasped.

  “Ewwww, disgusting!” me and the guys and Alexia went.

  “Wait a minute,” said Emily. “Mr. Macky and Mrs. Daisy are married.”

  “Ewwww!” I said. “That’s even more disgusting.”

  “No, it’s a great story!” Andrea said. Then she typed this into the computer:

  MR. MACKY SPOTTED

  KISSING MARRIED WOMAN!

  “I love it!” said Mrs. Lilly. “Put that on the front page! What else have you kids got?”

  “Emily and I snuck into the teachers’ lounge,” said Alexia.

  “What did you find in there?” asked Mrs. Lilly. “Any good dirt?”

  “Did you see the hot tub?” I asked.

  “No, nothing very exciting,” Emily said. “There were just a bunch of teachers eating lunch.”

  “That’s all?” asked Mrs. Lilly. “That’s not a story.”

  “Yeah, it was really boring,” Alexia said. “The most exciting thing that happened was that Miss Laney spilled some apple juice and had to clean it up.”

  Andrea suddenly looked up from the computer screen with those crazy eyes of hers. “What?” she asked. “Did you say Miss Laney spilled juice? That’s a great human interest story!”

  Then she typed this into the computer:

  SPEECH TEACHER HAS

  A DRINKING PROBLEM

  “That’s genius!” said Mrs. Lilly. “You are a great reporter, Andrea!”

  “Thank you!”

  Andrea had a big, crazy-eyed smile on her face, like she just won the No Bell Prize or something.* She just loves it when grown-ups tell her how wonderful she is.

  “Hey,” Neil the nude kid suddenly said, “where’s Michael?”

  We all looked around. Everybody was back in the classroom except for Michael.

  “Yes, where is Michael?” asked Mrs. Lilly.

  “The last time I saw him,” Ryan said, “he was climbing into the Dumpster in the playground. He said he was looking for a scoop.”

  We didn’t wait around for Michael to come back to class. We had a newspaper to finish.

  Andrea typed her stories into the computer. Mrs. Lilly used a laptop computer to look up photos we could use. She found a picture of Elvis Presley and made it look like he was standing next to Ms. LaGrange. Then she found a picture of Officer Spence and drew bars in front of his face to make it look like he was in jail. She cut out a picture of Mrs. Yonkers smiling and put it in front of a picture of a house that was burning down.

  Mrs. Lilly showed us how to put the photos into our classroom computer, and Andrea wrote captions under them:

  Ms. LaGrange had an Elvis sighting while sipping soup.

  Officer Spence behind bars.

  When she’s not teaching, Mrs. Yonkers enjoys setting fires.

  The front page of The Ella Mentry Sentry looked great.

  “I say this paper is done,” said Mrs. Lilly. “Let’s print it!”

  Andrea hit the PRINT button, and the printer started printing. Because that’s what printers do. But you’ll never believe who ran into the door at that moment!

  Nobody. Why would anyone run into a door? That would hurt. But you’ll never believe who ran into the doorway.

  It was Michael! He was wearing his backpack, and he was all out of breath.

  “Did you get a scoop?” Mrs. Lilly asked him.

  “I got the best scoop in the history of the world!” Michael replied.

  “STOP THE PRESSES!” shouted Mrs. Lilly. “Michael has a scoop!”

  Andrea stopped the printer. We all looked at Michael.

  Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking the same thing I was thinking. You’re thinking that Michael pulled a plastic scoop out of his backpack. You’re thinking that we all yelled at him, “Not that kind of scoop!”

  But Michael didn’t pull a scoop out of his backpack. So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on you.

  “What did you find out, Michael?” asked Mrs. Lilly.

  “Mr. Klutz … doesn’t wear underpants!” shouted Michael.

  Everybody gasped! We were all freaking out!

  “No!” shouted Alexia.

  “It can’t be true!” shouted Neil the nude kid.

  “This is the scoop of the century!” shouted Andrea.

  “Wait a minute,” said Mrs. Lilly. “Calm down, everyone. We have to make sure we have our facts straight. Michael, do you have any proof that Mr. Klutz doesn’t wear underpants?”

  “Uh, not exactly,” Michael said. “But I don’t have any proof that he does wear underpants either. So I figure there’s a fifty-fifty chance that Mr. Klutz doesn’t wear underpants.”

  We all looked at Mrs. Lilly. She was a grown-up, so the decision would be up to her.

  “Hmmm,” she said. “Fifty-fifty, eh? Well, that’s good enough for me. Andrea, put that on page two!”