The Fabled Fifth Graders of Aesop Elementary School (8 page)

Miss Day giggled again. “You didn’t lose your desk, silly-willy. I moved it. As a matter of fact, I moved
all
the desks. I thought it would be fun to mix things up a bit.”

Missy took a deep, shuddering breath. “Mr. Jupiter never moves
anything,”
she explained. “He knows I have trouble keeping track of things, so—”

“So? So? Sew buttons on your underwear!” interrupted Miss Day. “Mr. Jupie-Wupie isn’t here. I am. And today I want to have some fun.” She hopped up and down and clapped her hands. “Oooh, oooh, I know. Let’s play a game. First chickie-wickie to find his desk wins. Ready? On your mark … get set … GO!”

The fifth graders just stood there, stunned.

Then Ham pointed. “There’s my desk, over there behind the Hibernian ceremonial canoe. I’d recognize that choco-roach smudge anywhere.”

“You win!” cried Miss Day. Grabbing Ham’s hand, she dragged him around the room in a victory lap.

“Stop!” panted Ham. He clutched his side. “Slow down!”

“Wait a second,” grumbled Jackie. “That wasn’t a fair game. You didn’t explain the rules. You didn’t give everyone a fair chance. Mr. Jupiter always gives everyone a fair chance.”

Miss Day dropped Ham’s hand and stuck out her tongue. “Stop being such a party pooper!” she cried. Then she clapped and hopped up and down. “Ooh, ooh, we need a prize. What fun is a game without a prize?” She pawed around in her Pretty Pretty Princess backpack a moment, then beamed at Ham. “Come forward and receive your prize.”

“Prize?” said Ham, momentarily suspicious. Then he remembered Mr. Jupiter’s prizes. “What is it? Is it a handful of jelly beans? Mr. Jupiter sometimes has jelly beans.”

“Oh, it’s nothing as boring as that,” giggled Miss Day. She dug around in her bag again and pulled out a tube of …

“Lip gloss!” she exclaimed. “You win a slightly used tube of Poodle’s Breath Pink lip gloss. Isn’t that fun?”

Ham shook his head and backed away.

“That particular color will go great with your complexion,” said Lenny.

“And your purse,” quipped Miss Day.

“Hey, she stole my line
again
!” cried Bruce.

Lenny shook his head. “Mr. Jupiter would never give a prize like that,” he said.

Victoria raised her hand. “Miss Day,” she said with a flip of her hair. “If Ham doesn’t want his prize, can I have it? Poodle’s Breath Pink
is
the perfect shade for
my
strawberries-and-cream complexion.”

Miss Day squinted at Victoria. “Strawberries-and-cream?” she giggled. “I’d call it tad-yellow-and-smidge-green.”

“Hey,” bellowed Lenny, “I’m the smart-aleck around here.”

“Apparently, I’m just a little smarter and aleckier,” joked Miss Day.

“She did it again!” hollered Bruce. “This substitute is a thief—a punch line thief.”

“And a know-nothing when it comes to makeup,” huffed Victoria.

Miss Day slapped her hands over her ears. “I can’t heeear you,” she sang out.

The children stared.

And Miss Day grinned. “That’s better,” she said. She held up their American history textbook. “Mr. Jupie-Wupie wants me to review chapter eighty-six, then introduce fractions, give an organic geochemistry quiz, and go over the steps of the Polynesian commona-wanna-boogie dance, but …” She smiled so widely, her back teeth showed. “I thought it would be more fun for me—and you—to have a free day.”

“Free day?” repeated Humphrey. “Free day?”

Miss Day suddenly squawked like a parrot. “Polly want a cracker?” She burst into laughter. “Free day. Free day.”

“Now she’s stealing
my
lines,” grumbled Lenny.

“Now, time for more fun!” cried Miss Day. She skipped around the room and up and down the aisles, her tennis shoes blinking. “So, class, what else do you want to do today? Should we put on this suit of armor and joust with brooms? How’s about we build a racetrack out of all these old bones and fossils and have guinea pig races? Or maybe …” She picked up the skull on Mr. Jupiter’s desk. “Bowling!”

“Noooo!” cried the children.

“Well, aren’t you all just a bunch of old fuddy-duddies,” said Miss Day. “What do
you
want to do?”

“Let’s learn about American history,” suggested Lenny. He gulped. Had he really said that?

“And wasn’t there supposed to be an organic geochemistry quiz?” added Melvin. Shocked by the words coming out of his mouth, he clapped his foot over it.

Miss Day crossed her arms across her chest. “But none of that is any fun,” she pouted.

“It would be if Mr. Jupiter was here,” said Jackie.

At that moment the door flew open.

“Good morning, children,” said Mr. Jupiter. He strode to the front of the room wearing an overcoat over his footie pajamas. In his arms he carried a grocery bag.

“We thought you were sick!” exclaimed Lil.

“I did feel a bit under the weather earlier,” explained Mr. Jupiter, “but I’m much improved now.” He turned to Miss Day. “Have they behaved themselves?”

“To tell you the truth, they’re kind of dull,” replied Miss Day. “All they wanted to do was study history and take science quizzes.”

“Science quizzes?” repeated Mr. Jupiter.

“Science quizzes,” said Miss Day.

“Polly want a cracker?” squawked Lenny.

The class burst into laughter.

Lenny and Bruce high-fived. “We’re back!” they whooped.

“And I’m off,” said Miss Day. “Farewell, plucky duckies.” Picking up her backpack, she skipped out the door.

Mr. Jupiter turned to his class. “You’ve all been working so hard that I thought you deserved a surprise.”

“A surprise?” repeated Humphrey. “What is it?”

Mr. Jupiter reached into his grocery bag and pulled out a package of hot dogs. “Fifth graders,” he said with a grin, “fire up your Bunsen burners.”

   
MORAL: Things are never as bad as they seem
.

ON THE TUESDAY AFTERNOON BEFORE
spring break, there was a knock on the classroom door and Ms. Bozzetto entered, pulling her art cart behind her. Up until this year, art had always had its own room. But overcrowding had forced the school to add a second kindergarten, so art had become mobile.

“Not unlike the nomadic Xiongnu tribe of the Gobi desert,” Mr. Jupiter had said when he’d heard about the change. “Wonderful people, the Xiongnu.”

Now Mr. Jupiter clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. “Time for art,” he said.
“P-u-t
away your spelling books, please.”

“Hey!” said Amisha.

As the students cleared their desks, Ms. Bozzetto reached into the bottom shelf of her cart and pulled out several large reproductions of famous paintings.

“Today,” she said, “we are going to discuss the role of the cat in art history.”

She held up the first print. “This is a painting by
Mr. Pierre-Auguste Renoir called ‘Sleeping Girl with a Cat.’ Notice the intense blue of the cat’s fur, and how much cuter it is than the sleeping girl.”

She held up the next print. “Here is ‘Geraniums and Cats,’” also by Mr. Renoir. Aren’t those tiger-striped kittens adorable? Obviously, Mr. Renoir adored cats as much as I do.”

She held up the last print. “And here is one of my all-time favorites. It’s called ‘Kitten on a Clothesline,’ by Mrs. Sylvia Renoir.”

“Was that Pierre-Auguste’s wife?” asked Ashlee A.

“No, that’s my landlady,” replied Ms. Bozzetto. “But art is art, no matter who creates it.”

Ms. Bozzetto stowed the prints, then reached into the middle shelf of her cart. She pulled out a purple velvet pillow with gold fringe …

“Lovely,” commented Victoria.

 … and a fluffy white cat with green eyes.

“Yeeeks!” chirped the guinea pigs from their cage. They poked themselves, wiggling, between the bars, sniffing and staring.

In Ms. Bozzetto’s hands, the cat hung limp as cooked spaghetti.

“Is that a
live
cat?” asked Emberly.

In reply, the cat blinked. Then it lolled onto the purple pillow, which Ms. Bozzetto had placed on top of her art cart, yawned so widely the students could see down its pink throat, and closed its eyes.

“Just a little catnap,” snickered Lenny.

In answer, the cat snored,
“ZZZZZZ.”

Ms. Bozzetto wiped away a string of drool forming under the cat’s chin. “Did you know that cats sleep seventeen hours a day? But Mr. Pickles is a particularly heavy sleeper. That’s why I chose him for today’s art project.”

“Today’s art project?” repeated Humphrey.

Ms. Bozzetto nodded. “Like the Renoirs, we are going to paint the feline form in all its adorable, sinuous, furry detail. Mr. Pickles will be our model.” Reaching into her cart again, she pulled out a stack of paper, some brushes, and several bottles of blue tempera paint. “And like Mr. Renoir, we will be working in this lovely ultramarine blue.”

She passed out the supplies.

“Rats,” grumbled Rose, having accidentally smeared blue paint on her skirt. The stain blended in with that morning’s glue-stick smudge and chocolate-pudding print.

“Now then, boys and girls,” instructed Ms. Bozzetto. “I want you to look very closely at Mr. Pickles.”

Emberly whipped out his magnifying glass.

Ms. Bozzetto continued. “All objects have shape, or form. Try visualizing Mr. Pickles’s form by peeling away all the details and leaving only his framework, or skeletal structure.”

“That’s one way to skin a cat,” quipped Lenny. He looked at Bruce for a response.

Nothing.

“Cat got your tongue?” asked Lenny.

Bruce grinned.

For the next thirty minutes, the students filled their papers with blue tails, blue paws, and blue whiskers.

Mr. Pickles continued to snore and drool and twitch in his sleep.

The guinea pigs kept watching.

Then Ms. Bozzetto clapped her hands. “We’ve only a few minutes left, so let’s begin finishing up,” she said.

But the fifth graders never got a chance to finish. At that moment, the school bell began clanging hysterically.

“Fire alarm,” Mr. Jupiter said calmly from the back table, where he’d been grading the students’ macroeconomics papers. He stood. “You know the drill.”

Just as they had practiced dozens of times before, the fifth graders lined up quickly.

Ms. Bozzetto hurriedly checked to make sure the windows were closed, wiping blue paint on her smock as she went.

Mr. Jupiter picked up the guinea pig cage and flipped off the lights. Then he led the students and the art teacher down the hallway and out the nearest exit.

The fifth graders burst out the door and onto the blacktop.

Theatrically, Lenny and Bruce fell into each other’s arms, gasping and panting.

“We’re alive!” Lenny fake-wheezed.

“Fresh air!” Bruce fake-coughed. He pounded on his chest.

“Knock it off, you two,” said Mr. Jupiter. “Fire drills are serious business.” He began counting heads. “Is everyone here?”

Rachel shook her head. “Pffft. Pffft.”

“What’d you say?” asked Ham.

“Pfcat,” repeated Rachel. “Pfcat.”

“Did you say ‘cat’?” asked Ham.

“Cat!” shrieked Ms. Bozzetto. “We forgot Mr. Pickles!” She lunged toward the school.

But Mr. Jupiter restrained her. “Katrina, you know you can’t go back inside. That’s a violation of the fire code.”

Ms. Bozzetto slumped, then nodded.

“Besides,” added Mr. Jupiter, “it’s just a drill. Mr. Pickles is completely safe. Mark my words, we’re going to return to class to find him peacefully dreaming on his pillow.”

But when the students were finally allowed back into their classroom, they found Mr. Pickles—

“Missing!” wailed Ms. Bozzetto. She pressed the now catless pillow to her heart, mixing white cat hair with the smears of ultramarine blue.

“She may be even messier than I am,” Rose said to Missy. Then—“Oops!”—Rose stepped backward into the guinea pig cage, which Mr. Jupiter had just returned to the table. Guinea pig fur mingled with her pudding.

Still clinging to her pillow, the art teacher cried, “Oh, where, oh, where has my precious pussycat gone?”

Emberly whipped out his magnifying glass. “This is a case for Emberly Everclass,” he declared.

“Get serious,” snorted Stanford. “What do you know about detecting?”

“Plenty,” replied Emberly. He added proudly, “I’ve read all six hundred and thirty-six McFardy Boys books, mysteries featuring Marty and Arty McFardy and their bull terrier, Beans.”

“Whew,” whistled Ham. “I’m impressed.”

“I am too,” said Mr. Jupiter, “and as much as I want to encourage the discussion of books, Ms. Bozzetto needs our help.”

The boys nodded.

“We will organize ourselves into two search parties, just like the time Colonel Wesley Wimberly-Kemp’s hot-air balloon was lost in the wilds of Patagonia and I—”

“Focus, Mr. Jupiter,” Ms. Bozzetto said.

“Of course,” said Mr. Jupiter. “Boys will come with me. Girls will go with Ms. Bozzetto.”

“But that’s not how it’s done,” argued Emberly. “This is a mystery. You don’t just go searching willy-nilly when you’re investigating a mystery. You’re
supposed to follow clues. You’re supposed to use your powers of deductive reasoning. You’re supposed to look through a magnifying glass.”

“I appreciate your enthusiasm for the detectival arts, Emberly, but Mr. Pickles has gotten a head start.” Mr. Jupiter turned to the students. “Class, spread out.”

Emberly hung back. That was what the McFardy boys always did when investigating a mystery. They hung back so they could look for clues … alone.

Once his classmates were gone, Emberly began searching—slowly, methodically, and with his magnifying glass pressed to his eye. On the door frame, he uncovered a drip of blue paint. In the hall, on Rose’s locker, he found a faint blue smudge. And then—

“Aha!”

Outside Nurse Betadine’s office, he found half a blue paw print.

“The scoundrel is afoot,” he muttered.

Emberly rocked back on his heels and jiggled the coins in his pocket, just the way Arty McFardy always did when
he
was using his powers of deduction. Finally, Emberly said, “I deduce that Mr. Pickles went
that
way.”