Super Emma Read Online Free Page B

with all the kids watching!
    Maybe
I’ll
be the one to cry—and in front of everyone on the playground, too, just the way Jared wants.
    I scowl and plop down into my seat. “Hmmph,” I say to Annie Pat. “Gee, thanks a lot.”
    Annie Pat’s big navy blue eyes widen even bigger. “Emma, I didn’t mean—”
    “Take your seats, boys and girls,” Ms. Sanchezcalls out. She waves her engagement-ring hand in the air to get everyone’s attention. Our teacher’s boyfriend, Mr. Timberlake (like I said before, not the one on MTV), works at a sporting goods store. He is very handsome, even though he’s not the famous singer. We saw him once, when he came to school.

    Corey Robinson slides into the chair next to me as if he is diving into a swimming pool, which he really does every morning before school. I can tell that he did it this morning, because his hair is all slicked back wet, and I can smell the chlorine.
    “Pee-yew,” I say. I hold my nose with one hand and wave the air in front of my face with my other hand.
    Corey is supposed to grin and say
“Same to you!”
right back, but today he doesn’t.
    “Jared told me to tell you to go over by thetrash cans in the playground at recess,” he whispers instead, as if he is delivering bad news. He gulps and looks over his shoulder.
    I take a peek, too.
    Yeah, Jared’s there, all right. In the back row, the same as always.
    Stanley Washington gives Jared a poke in the ribs with his plaid elbow and starts cackling.
    Jared waves at me, all fake-friendly and everything.

    The whole class is buzzing. It sounds as if there are ten TV sets turned on low in here. “Settle down,” Ms. Sanchez says sharply. She is very beautiful, as I said before, but she has X-ray eyes—and she is now zooming them around the room. “I have an important announcement to make,” she tells us.
    We all sit up straight in our chairs, because maybe it is something about Halloween! We have heard rumors that third-graders usually get to have a party.
    Ms. Sanchez starts out slowly. “It has come to my attention …” she begins.

    Uh-oh. Good announcements never start out that way.
    “It has come to myattention that there have been certain threats floating around this classroom,” Ms. Sanchez says. “A little bird told me,” she adds, as if this is an interesting scientific fact.
    Everyone in the whole room—except Ms. Sanchez, of course—tries to look at me as if they are not looking at me.

    But it is pretty obvious what they are all thinking: that
I
am the little bird who told.
    And I’m not!
    It wasn’t Mom, either. I’m almost positive about that. And it wasn’t Annie Pat, or she would have blabbed about it to me this morning. She could never keep a secret like that.
    Kids are whispering. I want to jump up and say, “Hey, it wasn’t me,” but I can’t, for two reasons. Number one, I am stuck to my seat as if someone has poured a big puddle of the world’s strongest glue there. Number two, it is againstthe rules. In our class, you have to raise your hand first, before you jump to your feet and say
anything
.
    Well, I guess you would be forgiven if the classroom were on fire, or if you happened to see a highly venomous pit viper slither under someone’s desk, but otherwise, no.
    Ms. Sanchez is still talking. “Well, I’ll have no bullying in this classroom,” she snaps. “I don’t care what squabbles are going on in here, I’m not going to allow you children to use violence to straighten things out.”
    Most of us shift back and forth in our seats as if our teacher has just poked us with a fork to see if we’re done yet.
    We
might be done, but she isn’t. “Do you have … that … straight?” she asks us.
    “Yeah,” we all mumble.
    “I want you to say
‘Yes, Ms. Sanchez,’
” she instructs us, hands on her hips. “And I want you to mean it.”
    “Yes, Ms. Sanchez,” we finally chant together after a few lame tries.
    We say it, and some of us might really