After all this we were ready for the burning question of who our teacher was going to be that year.
“Maybe we’ll just get Mrs. Fitzgerald again,” Peatmouse said.
“She’s okay,” Creampuff said. “We liked her most of the time.”
“Yeah,” we all agreed.
“You know what the real problem is, don’t you?” I said. “It’s not Mrs. Fitzgerald. It’s just that once you’ve had the best, nothing else is ever going to seem that good.”
It took them all zero seconds to know exactly the person I was talking about.
“Miss Switch!” Peatmouse said.
“Yeah!” said Banana and Creampuff.
“And the thing is,” said Peatmouse, “that we could never really explain why we were so nutty about her.”
“The whole class was,” said Creampuff. “But looking at her, you’d think we were all just plain nutty.”
I couldn’t argue with that one. I now refer you to some notes I made once regarding her looks:
a. Sharp nose that could crack granite.
b. Ridiculous little old-fashioned wire spectacles (resting on said nose) that instantly stop looking ridiculous when her eyes are drilling holes into some poor fifth-grade victim.
c. Chin that could substitute for a pickax.
d. Black hair rolled into a bun that looks as if it could not be dislodged with a sledgehammer.
e. Ancient, musty gray dress that could have been rescued from somebody’s old attic trunk.
f. General appearance as cuddly as a steel knitting needle.
“She was strict, too,” said Banana. “Boy, was she strict! I mean, on a ‘strict’ scale of one to ten, try fifteen.”
“Then why did we like her so much?” asked Peatmouse. “I mean besides her being the best teacher we’ve ever had?”
We all looked at one another and said it at the same time: “Because she was so fair!”
And that was probably the biggest reason. She wasn’t just the best teacher, but the fairest we’d ever had. When she had something unpleasant to say to you regarding your behavior in class, or your latest rotten English or arithmetic paper, and you watched her nose growing sharper, and felt her eyes turning your blood to ice, and you wondered if your life was about to end right there and then as her pickax chin chopped you to pieces, you always knew one thing: that you’d earned it!
“On a ‘fair’ scale of one to ten, you’d have to pick a number so long, it fell off the blackboard,” said Banana.
“Off the world,” said Creampuff.
“Out of the universe,” said Peatmouse.
“Yeah!” I said.
“Does anyone think she might be back?” Banana asked.
“Not a chance,” I said.
“Why not, Broomstick?” asked Creampuff.
“That’s just my opinion,” I said.
Anyway, how could I tell them exactly “why not”? Spook was the only one I could discuss that with. After all, as 1 said, she was the only one who knew who Miss Switch really was, and that she would probably be back here only if trouble were brewing.
As far as I could see, there was nothing in sight by way of trouble that could possibly need Miss Switch’s special talents. Therefore, we could not expect her to appear in the sixth-grade classroom.
But then how was I to know my opinion was wrong? Dead wrong. For that very night when I sat down at my computer to e-mail Spook at spook@home.com, something sinister was already developing that was aimed right at me, Rupert P Brown III. And not only at me, but also at Peatmouse, Banana, Creampuff, and the whole Pepperdine Elementary School sixth grade!
2
Suffering from Swooning
I don’t know what further discussions we might have had about Miss Switch if the school bell hadn’t rung. We all scrambled down from the monkey bars and headed across the blacktop toward the building. It was then a thought struck me. “Banana,” I said, “isn’t your mother some kind of a big wheel in the PTA?”
“Yeah,” said Banana, looking uncomfortable. “President. Why?”
“I’d think she’d know who our teacher is,” I said. “Didn’t she tell you?”
“No,” said Banana. “If she did, wouldn’t I have said? I think she knows, but she says unless it’s a matter of life or death, I’m going to have to find things out just like everyone else whose mother is not PTA president.”
We all shrugged. There went the pipeline to interesting advance information.
“I did find out something, though,” Banana said quickly, as if he needed to make up for his mother’s unfortunate attitude. “I heard her talking to someone on the telephone about it. Mrs. Grimble had an accident and busted an arm and a leg. There’s going to be a substitute principal until she gets back.”
Substitute? Wasn’t that what Miss Switch had been, a substitute? So what if it was as a substitute teacher? Wasn’t it just possible she could just as well come as a substitute principal? I was having difficulty breathing thinking about it.
“Did you hear any name … er … mentioned, Banana?” I asked, digging for clues.
“No,” said Banana, “but my mother was giggling, and her face was all pink.”
“She must have changed the subject. I never heard of anyone giggling about a new principal,” said Peatmouse.
You couldn’t argue with that. Anyway, first things first, and we were now about to find out who was going to be leading us through the perils of sixth grade. Hands in pockets, being cool-guy sixth graders, we slouched on down the old, familiar Pepperdine hallway, and entered the door of Room Twelve.
Oh, no!
Seated at the teacher’s desk was not our fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Fitzgerald. Instead it was
