Mrs. Kormel Is Not Normal! (3 page)

Finally Mrs. Kormel stopped the bus in front of a house and pushed the button to make the magic
STOP
sign pop out.

“This must be the nude kid's house,” Ryan said.

It looked like a pretty normal house. There was a swing set on the lawn and a car in the driveway. You would never
know that nudists lived there.

Nobody came out of the house, so Mrs. Kormel honked the horn. We all craned our necks to get a look at the nude kid, but he didn't come out.

“Where
is
he?” Ryan asked.

Suddenly the front door of the house opened. A guy came out with an umbrella. And it was the most amazing thing in the history of the world. You know why?

Because the guy had clothes on!

The guy with clothes on came over to the bus. He climbed up the steps and said something to Mrs. Kormel.

“Bix blattinger!” muttered Mrs. Kormel
after the guy got off the bus. She was probably mad at Mr. Klutz because he made her drive all the way out to the nude kid's house and the nude kid wasn't even there.

“What did he say?” we all asked. “What did he say?”

“He said his wife drove their son to school today on her way to work,” Mrs. Kormel told us. “She didn't want him to be late on his first day of school.”

“Maybe she took him to buy some clothes,” said Michael.

Mrs. Kormel closed the bus door and made the magic
STOP
sign go back. Before the nude kid's dad went inside his house, me and Ryan leaned out the window and yelled to him.

“Hey, mister! Do you sleep with clothes on and then take them off after you wake up?”

“Where does your son keep his lunch money if he doesn't have pockets?”

It was hilarious. The nude kid's dad just looked at us with this confused expression on his face. Then he went inside.

Nudists are weird.

Finally we were back on the road. Mrs. Kormel was mad at Mr. Klutz for making her drive to the nude kid's house for nothing. I was mad because we would be at school soon. Andrea was mad because spelling was over and she didn't get the chance to take the big spelling test and
show everybody how smart she was. Well, nah-nah-nah boo-boo on Andrea! She would go to school on the weekend if it was open.

The rain stopped. I was getting hungry. We had missed snack time. It was probably close to lunchtime. We were bored, too, and sick of sitting on the bus.

Ryan flipped his light switch on and off. Michael played with his ball of string. I played with Striker Smith. That's when I got the most genius idea in the history of the world! We could tie Michael's string
to Striker Smith's leg and fly him out the window!

Michael and Ryan realized what a genius I was. We tied the string to Striker Smith and opened the window.

“You're going to get in trouble, A.J.,” said Andrea. “We're not supposed to hold things out the window.”

“Can you possibly be any more boring?”
I asked Andrea. “We're not holding anything out the window. The string will hold him.”

Ryan tossed Striker Smith out the window.

“Look!” Ryan said. “He's flying!”

It was cool. Striker Smith was doing loops in the air. You should have been there.

“He's fighting evil outside the bus!” said Michael.

“Mrs. Kormel!” Andrea whined. “A.J. threw his doll out the window!”

“It's not a doll!” I told Andrea. “It's an action figure. And it's none of your beeswax.”

What is her problem?

It didn't matter what Andrea said, because Mrs. Kormel didn't hear her anyway. Striker Smith was flying outside the bus, dipping and diving in the wind. He is so cool.

The only problem was that suddenly Striker Smith dove down so far that we couldn't see him anymore.

“Where is he?” asked Ryan.

“He's fighting evil under the bus,” I said.

But I don't think Striker Smith was fighting evil under the bus. Because that's when I heard a pop, and then a hissing sound.

Hisssssssss!

Ryan pulled the string up. There was nothing on the other end! Striker Smith was gone!

Suddenly the ride got all bumpy. Mrs. Kormel pulled off the side of the road. She opened the door and got out to see what was the matter.

“You're in big trouble, A.J.,” Andrea said.

“So is your face,” I replied.

Mrs. Kormel came back on the bus. She was holding Striker Smith in her hand. Or what was left of him, anyway. His head was gone. So was one of his legs and the arm that used to hold his sword.

I felt bad. My parents probably paid a lot of money to get me this cool action figure, and now it was totally crushed. On the other hand, it is also a well-known fact that crushing stuff and pulling the limbs off action figures is cool.

All in all, I was just happy that Show and Share was over. It wouldn't be very cool to show the class an action figure that was missing an arm, a leg, and his head.

“Who does this belong to?” asked Mrs. Kormel.

Andrea looked at me. I looked at Ryan. Ryan looked at me. Mrs. Kormel looked at me. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to do. I had to think fast.

“I said, who does this belong to?”

“Striker Smith belongs to a secret organization of crime fighters,” I said.

I thought Mrs. Kormel was going to be really mad. But she just told us all to get off the bus. She said we had a flat tire and she was going to call Mr. Klutz to send somebody out to fix it. In the meantime, we'd have to wait outside.

“Now we're going to miss lunch!” one of the mean fifth graders complained.

“Who cares about lunch?” said somebody else. “We're going to miss recess!”

“It's all Arlo's fault,” said Andrea.

“It is not,” I said.

“It is too.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “Well, stupid begins with an
s
and that's what
you
are.”

Ha-ha-ha! In her face!

We all got off the bus. It was a quiet road, and there were no other cars or houses or people around. Me and Ryan and Michael went to look at the flat tire.
Striker Smith's sword was stuck right in the tire with his arm still attached to it. It was cool. It was like that story “The Sword in the Stone,” except with a tire.

Mrs. Kormel tried to call Mr. Klutz on her cell phone, but something was wrong, and she started stamping her feet and yelling.

“Bix blattinger!” she yelled. “My cell phone battery is dead!”

Mrs. Kormel said she would have to fix the flat tire herself. She told us to get our lunches and have a little picnic on the sidewalk while she got out her tools and the spare tire.

Not everybody had brought a lunch bag, because some kids buy the school
lunch. They must be nuts. The school lunch is usually rubber hot dogs, chicken nuggets that bounce, and nachos that glow in the dark. I wouldn't eat the school lunch if I was starving and there was no other food left in the world.

Mrs. Kormel asked us to share some of our food with kids who didn't bring a lunch. I gave my tuna sandwich to one of the first graders, but I kept my pudding treat.

I always eat my treat first anyway. You should always eat your treat first because if an asteroid hits the earth in the middle of lunch and destroys the planet, well, at least you got to eat your dessert. That's
the first rule of being a kid. It would be a major bummer if the earth was destroyed by an asteroid and you didn't have the chance to eat dessert.

“Hey,” Ryan said, “look what I found!”

It was Striker Smith's head! Ryan found it at the side of the road.

We decided right away to hold a funeral for the head. Michael dug a little hole in the dirt, and we dropped the head into it. Some of the other boys on the bus gathered around.

“Farewell, Striker,” Ryan said solemnly. “You defeated the mighty tire. You sacrificed your life, so that others might not have to go to school. You paid the ultimate
price, made the ultimate sacrifice so that we can live in freedom from reading, writing, and arithmetic. Long live Striker Smith. We will always remember you.”

It was really sad. I almost cried when Michael said a little prayer:

We covered up Striker's grave, and Ryan said we should have a moment of silence in honor of our fallen superhero.

It was really quiet. Then, in the middle of our moment of silence, Andrea said, “Boys are dumbheads.”