Ms. Coco Is Loco! Read Online Free Page A

how unfair it was that Miss Daisy made us write a poem every day.
    That’s when I got the greatest idea in the history of the world.

9
Stalling for Time
    That night I used my secret flash-card system to write ten poems. I brought them with me to school the next morning.
    â€œDid everybody write a poem last night?” asked Miss Daisy as she went around the room collecting our homework.

    â€œMy dog ate my poem,” said Neil the nude kid.
    That was a total lie. Neil doesn’t even have a dog.
    Miss Daisy looked mad. It was the second day in a row that Neil didn’t turnin a poem. He looked like he might cry or something, so Miss Daisy said he could go get a drink of water. I waited a minute. Then I asked Miss Daisy if I could go to the bathroom. She said okay.
    Neil wasn’t at the water fountain in the hall. I went in the boys’ bathroom and saw legs in one of the stalls. It sounded like the kid was crying. I went and sat in the stall next door.
    â€œ Psssst! Hey, Neil…is that you?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œYou need a poem?” I asked.
    â€œYou got an extra one?”
    â€œ Shhhhh! Quiet!” I whispered. “Sure I have an extra one. You wanna buy it?”
    â€œHow much?” Neil asked.
    â€œYour lunch money will cover it,” I said.
    â€œIs it a good poem?”
    â€œOnly the best for you, Neil.”
    â€œLemme see it,” Neil whispered.
    I opened the door a crack and looked out to make sure nobody else was in the bathroom. Then I took a poem out of my pocket and slipped it under the stall to Neil.
    â€œHey,” he said after reading it. “This poem doesn’t rhyme.”
    â€œPoems don’t have to rhyme, dumbhead,” I whispered. “Do you want it or not? I don’t have all day.”
    â€œI’ll take it,” he said, handing me abunch of coins. “But now I won’t be able to buy any lunch.”
    â€œLunch is way overrated,” I said.
    â€œThanks, A.J.,” Neil whispered. “You saved my life.”
    â€œDon’t mention it,” I told him. “There’s plenty more where this came from. Just don’t tell any girls where you got the poem.”
    â€œI won’t,” Neil said. “You won’t tell Miss Daisy you sold it to me, will you?”
    â€œMy lips are sealed,” I told him.
    But not with glue or anything. That would be weird.

10
You Snooze, You Lose
    Every day, the tote board in front of the school had a new number on it: 650…700…750. We were getting close to a thousand poems.
    Word must have been getting out about me. In the next week, I sold poems to Ryan and Michael and some of the other boys in my class. During recess, some boys fromthe other classes came over to buy poems from me too.
    I was raking in the dough! Writing poems was a great way to make money. I almost didn’t want National Poetry Month to end.

    Meanwhile, Andrea was speed-reading her way through her encyclopedia. Every day she would annoy me with some dumb new fact she learned about tigers and unicorns and walruses. *
    â€œSoon I’ll be finished with my encyclopedia,” she told me on the way to Ms.Coco’s room, “and then I’ll be the smartest person in the world.”
    I hate her.
    After we got to the G and T room, Ms. Coco came running in.
    â€œSorry I’m late,” she said. “I had to put on my face.”
    â€œWhere was it before you put it on?” I asked.
    Ms. Coco laughed and told us that today’s assignment was to write a rhyming poem about animals.
    â€œI love animals!” Andrea said. “This will be easy.”
    I thought for a while, tapping my pencil on my desk. I peeked at Andrea’s paper. She was writing some lame poemabout a cat. It was a total rip-off of The Cat in the Hat .
    Suddenly I got an idea. I started writing a poem called “Animals Are Weird.” The words just flowed out of my brain:
    Â 
    Bats