Summer School! What Genius Thought That Up? Read Free Page B

him eat, with all of the food in his mouth squishing through the openings in his snaggly teeth? Hasn’t she seen the size of his super humungous feet? Hasn’t she gotten a whiff of his dragon breath that has actually melted the gel in my hair?
    â€œJoelle,” I heard Mr. Rock saying, “turn off your phone. No cell phones in class.”
    Joelle and Nick sitting in a tree,
    K-i-s-s-i-n-g.
    My brain flipped over in my head and spun around, throwing itself against the inside of my skull. It refused to go on with the rhyme. I could hear it yelling “ Ptueey ” like it was trying to spit out the picture of Nick and Joelle k-i-s-s-i . . . Oh, I can’t go on.
    â€œThose of you in summer school will follow Mr. Rock to Ms. Adolf’s classroom on the second floor,” Principal Love announced. “Those of you in the Junior Explorers Program will come with me to the Hawaiian Isles.”
    â€œWe’re flying to Hawaii?” Ashley asked.
    â€œIn our minds we are, Ms. Wong,” Principal Love said. “Oh, the joys of imagination running wild.”
    â€œI guess my imagination is walking slow,” Frankie said, “because I don’t get it.”
    â€œThe theme of this week’s Junior Explorers Program is Passport to Hawaii, a salute to our fiftieth state,” Principal Love explained. “We will be learning to hula dance, and we’ll all be finding out how low we can go as we limbo the night away at Friday’s Hawaiian luau extravaganza.”
    There was a buzz among the kids. A luau and a limbo contest. Wow, it sounded like so much fun.
    â€œMay I introduce you to your hula instructor,” Principal Love said in his tall-man, sports-announcer voice. That big voice always seems so funny coming out of such a small man.
    At that very moment, the hall doors to the teachers’ lounge swung open and Ms. Adolf, my fourth-grade teacher, came out into the hall. She was wearing a grass skirt and a bikini top made out of two coconuts, which she wore over gray Bermuda shorts and a gray long-sleeved shirt. No, I am not kidding you. She had an entire hula-dancer outfit on over her regular clothes. And you’re not going to believe this: The coconuts even had smiley faces on them. It was a sight that for a second made me actually grateful I had not gotten a Passport to Hawaii.
    â€œAloha, pupils,” she said, shaking her hips in a move that looked like a hippo looking for a place to pee. Ms. Adolf isn’t exactly the hip-shaking type.
    I glanced over at Frankie and Ashley. Frankie was biting his lower lip really hard to keep from laughing. Ashley was actually holding her top lip over her bottom lip so she wouldn’t start to giggle. Once she starts giggling, there’s no stopping her.
    â€œAll you explorers follow us out to the white sand beaches of Waikiki.” Principal Love pointed to the sandbox on the playground. They had propped up two huge paper palm trees there and spread beach blankets on the ground in the area around the swings.
    â€œThose of you in summer school, follow me upstairs,” Mr. Rock said.
    The Junior Explorers all ran after Principal Love and headed out the doors onto the playground. The rest of us marched up the stairs and into the classroom. There were no palm trees, no beaches, no blankets.
    What was there was a blackboard, chalk, and—oh, goody—brand-new erasers.

CHAPTER 5
    WE TOOK OUR SEATS in the classroom. Mr. Rock said we could sit anywhere we wanted, so I took a seat next to the window where I could see the Junior Explorers. They were already starting to play beach games on the playground. Boy, that was a tough sight to see. There I was, sitting at my desk looking through my backpack for a sharpened number-two pencil. And just on the other side of the glass, two floors down, were all the rest of the kids, doing the normal summer thing—having fun. If you’re thinking that looking out the window