married?â asked Michael.
I wanted to punch them, but I didnât want Ms. Todd to write anything else down on that dumb piece of paper.
âSee?â said Ms. Todd. âYou can have funwithout being competitive!â
We played that dumb circle of friends game for about a million hundred hours. It was horrible. I thought I was gonna die.
Luckily Emily fell down and started crying as always, so we had to stop playing. Ms. Todd let us go back inside. We still had some time left before the dismissal bell was going to ring.
âLetâs play musical chairs!â I suggested.
Musical chairs is awesome. Everybody walks around a bunch of chairs and when the music stops, you fight over the chairs. Itâs a cool game because you get to knock other kids on their butts.
âMusical chairs is very competitive,â Ms. Todd said. âWhenever there is a winner, there has to be a loser, and thatâs sad. Competition causes bad feelings.â
Can she possibly be more boring?
âI have an idea,â I said. âLetâs have a contest to see who can be the least competitive! The winning team could get a trophy or something that says they were less competitive than anybody else.â
âI donât think you quite understand the idea of not competing,â said Ms. Todd. Then she wrote something on her dumb piece of paper again.
I was afraid that Ms. Todd was goingto come up with some other weird nonviolent game for us to play. But finally the bell rang, and we were allowed to get out of jail. I mean, we were allowed to go home.
I think that was the worst day of my life. The only good thing about it was that my head didnât explode.
8
Getting the Goods on Ms. Todd
I couldnât wait to get to school the next day. Yes, you heard that right! I wanted to go to school for the first time in history. That was because weird Ms. Todd would be gone and good old Miss Daisy would be back. Mom said I could ride my bike to school so I wouldnât have towait for the bus. Mrs. Kormel, the bus driver, gets lost all the time. Sheâs not normal.
It was Flag Day, so we all wore red, white, and blue to school. There were flags of all different countries all over the place. When I walked in the class, Miss Daisy wasnât there yet. But Andrea was sitting there with this pruny mean faceon and her arms folded in front of her like an x .
âWhatâs eating you?â I asked her. âDid somebody steal your dictionary?â
âYou know why Iâm mad, A.J.,â she said.
âNo I donât.â
âYes you do.â
We went back and forth like that for a while, until Andrea finally said why she was mad.
âI found out that youâre gifted and talented,â she whispered. âItâs not fair!â
âWho told you?â I asked.
âMy mother,â Andrea said. âSheâs vice president of the PTA. She knows everything.â
âWell, Iâm not telling anyone,â I whispered. âI donât want the guys to know Iâm a gifted and talented dork like you.â
âIâm not telling anyone either,â Andrea said. âI want to be the only one in the class whoâs gifted and talented.â
âAgreed,â I said. âIt will be our secret.â
The only problem was that Ryan was hiding under his desk listening to us the whole time.
âOooooh!â Ryan said. âA.J. and Andrea are both gifted and talented. They must be in love ! When are you gonna getââ
Ryan never got the chance to finish his sentence because at that very second, guess who walked into the door?
Nobody! It would be dumb to walk into a door. But guess who walked into the doorway?
Ms. Todd!
Oh no! The Andrea clone was back . It was like a horror movie!
âMiss Daisy is still sick,â Ms. Todd said. âThere must be something going around. So Iâll be your teacher again today.â
She didnât