Mrs. Kormel Is Not Normal! (4 page)

Finally Mrs. Kormel fixed the flat tire and said we could get back on the bus. She was all sweaty, and her hair was messed up, and her hands were covered with grease. She looked too tired to be mad at me or Mr. Klutz or anybody else. She just got into her bus driver's seat and hit the
gas. The bus lurched forward, and we all fell back in our seats.

It was really late. Andrea complained that we might have missed social studies. Ha-ha-ha! That was fine with me. I hate social studies. Why is it called social studies anyway?

Mrs. Kormel was driving fast! We were far from school. It looked to me like we were still in the middle of nowhere. The road was really bumpy, and it was wet from the rain. Mrs. Kormel was having
trouble keeping the bus in the middle of the road. I was afraid she might drive right off the side of the road.

And what happened next was the most amazing thing in the history of the world.

Do you want to know what happened?

I'm not going to tell you.

Well, okay, I'll tell you.

Mrs. Kormel drove right off the side of the road!

“Bix blattinger!” shouted Mrs. Kormel.

The bus skidded to a stop. Some kids even fell out of their seats! It was hilarious. You should have been there.

“Is everybody okay?” Mrs. Kormel asked.

“Yeah!” me and Michael and Ryan said.
“That was fun. Can we do it again?”

“We're stuck in a ditch,” said Mrs. Kormel. “We're not going anywhere.”

“What are we going to do
now
?” asked Emily. She looked like she was going to cry. I was amazed that Emily hadn't cried yet. She usually can't go five minutes without crying about
something
.

“I don't know what to do,” Mrs. Kormel said sadly. “My cell phone is dead. I guess we'll just have to wait for help to arrive.”

“Too bad Striker Smith isn't here,” I said. “He would know what to do.”

“If you hadn't thrown that dumb doll out the window, none of this would have happened!” yelled Andrea.

“He's not a doll!” I yelled right back at her.

“Zingy zip!” yelled Mrs. Kormel.

Everybody was really depressed. We just sat there on the bus. There was nobody around. No houses. No stores. No nothing. Nobody was going to rescue us. It felt like we had been on the bus a million hundred hours.

It occurred to me that we might not only miss the rest of the school day, we might miss the rest of our
lives
! We could sit there forever. We could die out there!

Suddenly I felt hungry. I wished I hadn't given my sandwich to that first grader. I was starving. I was afraid my stomach might eat itself.

My friend Billy who lives around the
corner from me and was in second grade last year told me he once heard about some guy who was stranded on an airplane, and he ate a seat cushion to survive.

“We might have to eat the seat cushions,” I told Michael and Ryan.

Ryan looked at the seat cushion.

There's something you need to know about Ryan. He will eat anything, even stuff that is not food. One time we gave him a dollar to eat dirt.

Ryan got down on the floor and took a little bite from the corner of the cushion.

“Ugh,” he said. “It's horrible.”

“Put some ketchup on it,” suggested Michael. “Ketchup makes anything taste good.”

Michael gave Ryan a little ketchup packet from his lunch bag. Ryan put it on the seat cushion and took a tiny bite.

“It's not bad, actually,” Ryan said.

Ryan is weird.

It was so boring sitting there waiting for somebody to rescue us. I almost wished we were at school. Almost.

“I saw this reality TV show where some people were stranded on a dessert island,” Michael said.

“It's not a
dessert
island, dumbhead,”
Andrea turned around to say. “It's a desert island. One
s
. ‘Desserts' is one of our spelling words this week.” Then she held up her dumb flash card with the word “desserts” on it.

“Who asked you?” Ryan asked.

“A dessert island would be cool to be stranded on,” I said. “There would be ice cream and candy and treats everywhere.”

“Hey, look,” said Emily, “I just noticed that ‘desserts' is ‘stressed' spelled backward.”

“So what?” asked Ryan. “‘Backward' is ‘drawkcab' backward.”

“Who cares what ‘backward' is backward?” asked Andrea.

“‘Bus' is ‘sub' backward,” I mentioned.

“Bix blattinger!” shouted Mrs. Kormel. “Will you please zingy zip?”

I couldn't blame Mrs. Kormel for being mad. It was a rough day for her. We had to whisper after that.

“Hey,” whispered Michael, “I just thought of something. Maybe we're on a reality TV show right now and we don't even know it.”

“That's impossible,” Ryan whispered. “If we didn't know we were on a reality TV show, we wouldn't be talking about us being on a reality TV show.”

“I think Michael is right,” I said, looking around to see if there were any hidden
cameras. “Maybe this was all planned in advance for the reality TV show we're on right now.”

“Oh yeah?” said Andrea. “Who planned for you to throw your doll out the window and cause a flat tire?”

“It's not a doll!” I said. “Don't you have any respect for the dead?”

“If this
is
a reality TV show,” Ryan said, “we're going to have to vote somebody off the bus.”

“Why?” asked Emily.

“Because that's what they
always
do on reality TV shows, dumbhead!” I said. “You vote somebody off and they have to leave.”

“But why?” asked Emily.

“Because that's the rule!” Michael told Emily. She doesn't know anything about reality TV shows.

“I vote for Andrea,” I said.

“I vote for A.J.,” Andrea said.

“Ooooh!” Ryan said. “A.J. and Andrea voted for each other. They must be in
love
!”

“When are you gonna get married?” asked Michael.

If those guys weren't my best friends, I would hate them.

We couldn't just sit around on the bus forever. Soon we would die of starvation or kill each other, like they do in the movies all the time.

“We've got to
do
something!” Emily said.

For once she was right. That's when I
got the most genius idea in the history of the world. There must have been at least twenty kids on the bus. If we all got out and pushed, maybe we could push the bus out of the ditch!

I got up and and told Mrs. Kormel about my genius idea. At first she thought I was crazy and told me to go limpus kidoodle. But I guess she thought it over and decided to give it a shot.

“Okay, everybody off the bus!” she yelled.

We all got off the bus and went to the back.

“When I say push, everybody push,” Mrs. Kormel yelled out the window.

“One…two…three…PUSH!”

I pushed with all my might. Everybody was grunting and groaning and moaning. The bus didn't move.

“Harder!” yelled Ryan.

And then the most amazing thing in the history of the world happened.

The bus started moving!

“Hooray!” everybody yelled.

Mrs. Kormel steered the bus back onto the road, and we all piled in. She told me my idea was great, and promised to drive carefully the rest of the way to school.

The only one who wasn't happy was Andrea. She was looking at her watch.

“Now we've missed music class,” she complained.

That was fine with me. I hate music.

“Y'know,” Michael said, “maybe Mrs. Kormel isn't a bus driver at all. Did you ever think of that?”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Maybe she captured our real bus driver and has her tied up in a cave. Stuff like that happens all the time, you know.”

“Stop trying to scare Emily,” Andrea said.

“Maybe we're being kidnapped,” I added. “Maybe Mrs. Kormel is driving us to her secret underground hideout at the North Pole, where she's going to do unspeakable things to us.”

“Like what things?” Emily asked, all worried.

“I can't tell you,” I told her. “They're unspeakable!”

“We've got to
do
something!” Emily said. “I don't want to go to the North Pole!”

That girl will fall for everything. Emily probably wanted to run away. But there was no place to run. She was stuck on the bus. So she started crying. What a baby!

Once Emily started crying, it set off a
chain reaction and other kids started crying, too. Some of the first graders said they wanted their mommies. Some kid peed in his pants. Everyone was freaking out.

The fifth graders made a sign and put it in the back window—
HELP
!
OUR BUS DRIVER IS DRIVING US CRAZY
!

I didn't cry. I figured that it would be pretty horrible to be kidnapped and driven to the North Pole, but at least we wouldn't have to go to school anymore. And they have penguins at the North Pole too. Or maybe that's the South Pole. Either way, penguins are cool.

“Are we there yet?” somebody asked.

“KNOCK IT OFF!” yelled Mrs. Kormel.