Miss Switch online
Atheneum Books by Barbara Brooks Wallace
Peppermints in the Parlor
The Barrel in the Basement
Perfect Acres, Inc.
The Twin in the Tavern
Cousins in the Castle
Sparrows in the Scullery
Ghosts in the Gallery
Secret in St. Something
Miss Switch Online
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2002 by Barbara Brooks Wallace
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Book design by Ann Sullivan
The text of this book is set in Berkeley Oldstyle ITC.
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wallace, Barbara Brooks, 1922-
Miss Switch online / by Barbara Brooks Wallace.
p. cm.
Sequel to: Miss Switch to the rescue.
Summary: Miss Switch the witch returns to save Rupert and the entire sixth grade from the evil Saturna, who is operating a sinister Web site and has installed her brother as principal of the school.
ISBN 0-689-84376-3
eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-3470-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-6898-4376-1
[1. Witches—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Computers—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W1547 Mf 2002
[Fic]—dc21 00-063987
Dedication
To Bizzy and Boo (you know who you are) with lots of love and a couple of genuine magic spells, too
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To Piper, without whose inspiration as a bird of many talents and interests, and as an accomplished shoulder rider, there might never have been a Fred in this book.
CONTENTS
1 Profound Thoughts from the Monkey Bars
2 Suffering from Swooning
3 Computowitch.com
4 Miss Blossom
5 Fred
6 A Midnight Expedition
7 The Stupidest Man Alive
8 An Analysis of Tweet, Tweet, Tweet, Tweet
9 Ominous Gobbledygook
10 A Bunch of Eyewash
11 No Clues to Anything
12 Hocus Pocus in a Janitor’s Closet
13 Not Your Usual Mode of Transportation
14 Toadstools at Midnight
15 The Shrinkage Solution
16 Midnight Rendezvous
17 Together at Last!
18 Anything Is Possible
Miss Switch online
1
Profound Thoughts from the Monkey Bars
Nothing appeared to happen on the day I began sixth grade at Pepperdine Elementary School that pointed to the extraordinary and I have to add dangerous, events about to take place in my life. It’s as amazing that I’m still here to record them as it was for me to be around to record two similar events that happened earlier. Some of you may choose not to believe what I’m writing on these pages. But as a great and dedicated scientist, which I became in the summer following my year in the fourth grade, I feel I must make this report. I’ll be as accurate and truthful as I know how.
The only noticeably different thing about the beginning of this first day of school from every other was the new sixth-grade cool-guy greetings my friends and I exchanged as I sauntered up to where they all sat hunched over on top of the monkey bars of the Pepperdine playground.
“Hey, it’s the Broomster! Yay! Yay! Yay!”
The Broomster—that was me, Rupert P. Brown III, also known as Broomstick.
“Hey, it’s the Peatmeister! Hey, it’s the Creamer! Hey, it’s the Bananapeeler! Yay! Yay! Yay!” I said right back, losing no time in joining them.
Peatmeister, of course, was Peatmouse, otherwise Wayne Partlow. Creamer was Creampuff, otherwise Tommy Conrad. Bananapeeler was plain Banana, otherwise Harvey Robert Fanna. Now, once we’d gotten all this cool-guy stuff over with, we’d go back to being good old Peatmouse, Creampuff, Banana, and Broomstick, which we’d called each other since about the third grade. I was just as long and skinny then as I am now, which is how I got my name. But who could have known back there in the third grade how prophetic that nickname would turn out to be!
“Where’s the Spooks ter?” Peatmouse asked as soon as I’d settled myself down beside them all on the top rung.
“She left,” I replied. “Her father got transferred. She’s about a thousand miles away from here now.”
“That’s too bad,” said Creampuff.
“Yeah,” I said, and let it go at that. I didn’t see any point in going into how “too bad” it was.
Spookster was Spook, otherwise Amelia Matilda Daley. I’m the one who gave her the name Spook in the fifth grade because of the way she always breathed, “Boy, that’s spooky!” when she looked into a microscope. As you may gather, Spook is a fellow scientist as well as a friend. She is the only one who knows the true details of the two earlier events I’ve mentioned. In order for you to have a better understanding of the report I’m about to make, I’ll reveal the most important of those details here.
In the first of the two events, I was introduced to a real, honest-to-goodness, card-carrying witch, Miss Switch. She arrived at Pepperdine Elementary School as our fifth-grade teacher, seeking the help of my great scientific brain to suggest some original witchcraft ideas that would satisfy the command of a goofy contraption called a computowitch. It belonged to a really nasty brand of witch named Saturna. Luckily, I came up with the idea of feeding it the information about what a great teacher Miss Switch was. The computowitch got so excited it practically blew itself up, and thus we got rid of Saturna. Or so I thought.
But back she came, now determined to get rid of the one who had put her computowitch out of commission. That, of course, was me. Saturna tried to have me kidnapped, but it was Amelia who got kidnapped instead. Fortunately, Miss Switch came to the rescue. After some pretty scary events, all ended up well, and once again we got rid of Saturna. Or so I thought!
At any rate, I now return to the conversation I was having with my friends on the top rung of the Pepperdine monkey bars. After the greetings were over with, the first topic of conversation, as it always had been, was noteworthy events of that
