Wayside School Is Falling Down
Read Wayside School Is Falling Down Online
Authors: Louis Sachar
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To Emily, Walker, Annie, Bill, Bobbie, and Corky
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Contents
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Chapter 1
A Package for Mrs. Jewls
Louis, the yard teacher, frowned.
The school yard was a mess. There were pencils and pieces of paper everywhere. How’d all this junk get here? he wondered. Well, I’m not going to pick it up!
It wasn’t his job to pick up garbage. He was just supposed to pass out the balls during lunch and recess, and also make sure the kids didn’t kill each other.
He sighed, then began cleaning it up. He loved all the children at Wayside School. He didn’t want them playing on a dirty playground.
As he was picking up the pencils and pieces of paper, a large truck drove into the parking lot. It honked its horn twice, then twice more.
Louis ran to the truck. “Quiet!” he whispered. “Children are trying to learn in there!” He pointed at the school.
A short man with big, bushy hair stepped out of the truck. “I have a package for somebody named Mrs. Jewls,” he said.
“I’ll take it,” said Louis.
“Are you Mrs. Jewls?” asked the man.
“No,” said Louis.
“I have to give it to Mrs. Jewls,” said the man.
Louis thought a moment. He didn’t want the man disturbing the children. He knew how much they hated to be interrupted when they were working.
“I’m Mrs. Jewls,” he said.
“But you just said you weren’t Mrs. Jewls,” said the man.
“I changed my mind,” said Louis.
The man got the package out of the back of the truck and gave it to Louis. “Here you go, Mrs. Jewls,” he said.
“Uhh!” Louis grunted. It was a very heavy package. The word FRAGILE was printed on every side. He had to be careful not to drop it.
The package was so big, Louis couldn’t see where he was going. Fortunately, he knew the way to Mrs. Jewls’s class by heart. It was straight up.
Wayside School was thirty stories high, with only one room on each story. Mrs. Jewls’s class was at the very top. It was Louis’s favorite class.
He pushed through the door to the school, then started up the stairs. There was no elevator.
There were stairs that led down to the basement too, but nobody ever went down there. There were dead rats living in the basement.
The box was pressed against Louis’s face, squashing his nose. Even so, when he reached the fifteenth floor, he could smell Miss Mush cooking in the cafeteria. It smelled like she was making mushrooms. Maybe on my way back I’ll stop by Miss Mush’s room and get some mushrooms, he thought. He didn’t want to miss Miss Mush’s mushrooms. They were her specialty.
He huffed and groaned and continued up the stairs. His arms and legs were very sore, but he didn’t want to rest. This package might be important, he thought. I have to get it to Mrs. Jewls right away.
He stepped easily from the eighteenth story to the twentieth. There was no nineteenth story.
Miss Zarves taught the class on the nineteenth story. There was no Miss Zarves.
At last he struggled up the final step to the thirtieth story. He knocked on Mrs. Jewls’s door with his head.
Mrs. Jewls was in the middle of teaching her class about gravity when she heard the knock. “Come in,” she called.
“I can’t open the door,” Louis gasped. “My hands are full. I have a package for you.”
Mrs. Jewls faced the class. “Who wants to open the door for Louis?” she asked.
All the children raised their hands. They loved to be interrupted when they were working.
“Oh dear, how shall I choose?” asked Mrs. Jewls. “I have to be fair about this. I know! We’ll have a spelling bee. And the winner will get to open the door.”
Louis knocked his head against the door again. “It’s heavy,” he complained. “And I’m very tired.”
“Just a second,” Mrs. Jewls called back. “Allison, the first word’s for you. Heavy.”
“Heavy,” said Allison. “H-E-A-V-Y. Heavy.”
“Very good. Jason, you’re next. Tired.”
“Tired,” said Jason. “S-L-E-E-P-Y. Tired.”
Louis felt the package slipping from his sweaty fingers. He shifted his weight to get a better grip. The corners of the box dug into the sides of his arms. He felt his hands go numb.
Actually, he
didn’t
feel them go numb.
“Jenny, package.”
“Package,” said Jenny. “B-O-X. Package.”
“Excellent!” said Mrs. Jewls.
Louis felt like he was going to faint.
At last John opened the door. “I won the spelling bee, Louis!” he said.
“Very good, John,” muttered Louis.
“Aren’t you going to shake my hand?” asked John.
Louis shifted the box to one arm, quickly shook John’s hand, then grabbed the box again and staggered into the room.
“Where do you want it, Mrs. Jewls?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Jewls. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” said Louis. “I’ll have to put it down someplace so you can open it.”
“But how can I tell you where to put it until I know what it is?” asked Mrs. Jewls. “You might put it in the wrong place.”
So Louis held the box as Mrs. Jewls stood on a chair next to him and tore open the top. His legs wobbled beneath him.
“It’s a computer!” exclaimed Mrs. Jewls.
Everybody booed.
“What’s the matter?” asked Louis. “I thought everyone loved computers.”
“We don’t want it, Louis,” said Eric Bacon.
“Take it back, Jack,” said Terrence.
“Get that piece of junk out of here,” said Maurecia.
“Now, don’t be that way,” said Mrs. Jewls. “The computer will help us learn. It’s a lot quicker than a pencil and paper.”
“But the quicker we learn, the more work we have to do,” complained Todd.
“You may set it over there on the counter, Louis,” said Mrs. Jewls.
Louis set the computer on the counter next to Sharie’s desk. Then he collapsed on the floor.
“Now watch closely,” said Mrs. Jewls.
Everyone gathered around the new computer. It had a full-color monitor and two disk drives.
Mrs. Jewls pushed it out the window.
They all watched it fall and smash against the sidewalk.
“See?” said Mrs. Jewls. “That’s gravity.”
“Oh, now I get it!” said Joe.
“Thank you, Louis,” said Mrs. Jewls. “I’ve been trying to teach them about gravity all morning. We had been using pencils and pieces of paper, but the computer was a lot quicker.”
