I began to wonder how Mrs. Potts was going to last the day much less the year. But then I was in for another shock. Just before the closing bell, Mrs. Potts told us how much she had enjoyed having her second-grade class again, and how sorry she was that it was for only one day. Our regular teacher, however, who had been delayed in flight, would be there with us in the morning.
Mrs. Potts only there for a day! A teacher delayed in flight! Flight! The word rang in my ears. Who was there to say it had to be by airplane? Could it mean—could it mean—another form of air transport? I hardly allowed myself to think the word. No, I told myself, stop thinking this has anything to do with Miss Switch. There is no more reason for her to come back now than there had been. Forget it! Forget Miss Switch!
3
COMPUTOWITCH.COM
I finally got to my computer late that night. My parents had already gone to bed. So except for an occasional tiny splash from Caruso climbing off his rock into his pool, or Hector and Guinevere taking a spin on their respective wheels, the house was silent. Except for the small light over my desk, my room was also dark. There was just me, with Fred perched on my shoulder, where he always is when I’m in my room, sitting there in a small pool of light.
to: spook@home.com
From : broomstick@home.com
subject: a very weird day
Hi! Thanks for your Letter. I’m glad your parents decided not to buy a house after all. Maybe your father thinks he’s going to be sent back here. I told you I’d be looking for a crazy magic toadstool, toadstoolius spookus returnicum, but you and I both know I wouldn’t know one if I found one, or how to use it. I’d have to have Miss Switch here for that. And no, as you could probably guess, she wasn’t at school this morning. But it was a very weird day.
Our teacher was Mrs. Potts. Remember her from the second grade? Billy Swanson did his usual and sent off about twenty spitballs. He got sent to the principal, and so did a bunch of the girls, but they were trying to get sent. Which brings me to the real reason why the day was so weird.
Mrs. Grimble had an accident and broke a leg and an arm, so she’s gone for a while. We now have a substitute principal. It’s a man named Mr. Dorking, and he is the best-looking guy I have ever seen in my life. I’m not kidding you, spook. The girls were all swooning. Even Mrs. Potts swooned.
Anyway, at the end of the day, Mrs. Potts announced she was only there for that day, which was probably a good thing because I didn’t think she could make it through another one. She said she was filling in for our regular teacher, who had been “delayed in flight”—her exact words.
I know you’re thinking the same thing I did: flight! Miss Switch! But there are two problems with concluding anything from this, as I see it.
a. Good as she is at her particular means of air travel, I don’t see how she could be delayed by anything.
b. Nothing scary happened today that would bring her running, or in her case, flying, a principal who has all the girls swooning over him is pretty disgusting, but it isn’t exactly a dangerous situation.
Of course there’s always the possibility that Miss Switch needs help herself, like the first time she came seeking the help of my great scientific brain. I still find it hard to believe that Miss Switch was being ordered around by a crazy contraption that was nothing but a dinky, black, old-fashioned cooking stove. Someone had a lot of nerve giving it that scientific name: computowitch!
And that word turned out to be the last one in my letter. As soon as I had entered it, my computer screen instantly turned a sickly green, as if it were about to—well—throw up. Then it started to shiver. My first thought was that I’d hit the wrong key, although I’d never known of any key on the keyboard that produced these results before.
My second thought was that my computer might be about to crash and take the letter I’d spent all my valuable time writing right along with it! I wasn’t about to let that happen. Swiftly, I somehow managed to grab the mouse and shoot the arrow on the screen up to hit “send.” Gone! I’d saved the letter. It was on its way to Spook.
All except that one word—“computowitch.” It remained on the screen, quivering in the sea of pea-soup green. I practically stopped breathing. So that was it! I hadn’t hit the wrong key. There probably wasn’t even any wrong key to hit. It was the word “computowitch.” I continued to stare at the screen, hypnotized, wondering what was going to happen next. I didn’t have to wait long.
The screen turned a fiery, feverish red. Then it changed to orange, then purple, and then back to red again. Meanwhile, the computer began heaving in and out, looking as if it were ready to explode. It must have scared Fred, because he catapulted from my shoulder and flew over to huddle in his cage.
I suddenly realized my computer was behaving almost the same as that crazy computowitch had just before it died! Is that what my computer was about to do? Almost automatically my hand shot out and pulled the plug from the wall. The screen instantly went dark. But was the computer still working? Hesitantly I shoved the plug back in, and the screen turned the good old familiar cool blue. It was apparently back in business!
But how had all that wacky stuff happened? How could just the single word “computowitch” have caused it? Unless
