Ms. Krup Cracks Me Up! (4 page)

The horrible sound got louder and louder! It got deeper and deeper. I thought I was gonna die. Finally, I climbed out of my sleeping bag to see what was making all that noise.

It was Mr. Docker and Mr. Macky! They
were snoring!

I thought I was in the middle of a herd of hippos! Man, what is the problem with grown-ups? Kids don't snore like that. It must have something to do with the hair growing out of their noses. I hope I never grow up to be a
grown-up.

“Pssssst! A.J.!” Michael whispered. “Are you up?”

“Yeah!”

“I can't sleep with all this snoring,” Michael said.

“Me neither.”

That's when I got the greatest idea in the history of the world.

“Hey,” I said. “You wanna go get candy?”

“Do you have any money?” Michael asked.

“No. Do you?”

“No.”

Bummer in the summer! I really
wanted candy.

“Let's go get a drink from the water fountain,” Michael whispered.

“Okay!”

I stepped over a few kids in sleeping bags, and then my foot bumped into something hard.

“Owwww!”
somebody yelled. “You kicked me in the head, Arlo!”

Ugh, it was Andrea!

“
SOR
-reeee!” I said.

Whenever you have to say you're sorry to someone but you don't really feel sorry, just say “
SOR
-reeee.” Because “
SOR
-reeee” is the opposite of “sorry.” When you say “
SOR
-reeee,” it means
you're not sorry at all. But nobody can punish you, because at least you did say you were sorry. So it's a win-win! That's the first rule of being a kid.

“Do you have any money?” Michael asked Andrea.

“Of course,” she replied. “My mother gave me a ten-dollar bill to buy something educational at the gift shop.”

Everything Andrea does is educational. When she blows her nose, she probably writes an essay about boogers for extra credit.

“Can we borrow some of your money?” I asked. “We wanna get candy.”

“Only if I can get some, too,” she replied.

I didn't want Andrea coming with us to the candy machine, but I did want candy.

“Okay,” I said.

“I have money too,” a voice whispered. “I want to come.”

Oh, man! It was that crybaby Emily. This thing was turning into a party.

The four of us grabbed our flashlights and tiptoed around the other sleeping bags.

“Hey, you know what would be cool?” I said. “We should pick up one of the snoring grown-ups and put them in a diorama! Can you imagine Mr. Docker or Mr. Macky waking up next to a wild yak?”

“That would be hilarious,” Michael
agreed. “But I don't think we could pick them up.”

“We could if they went to Weight Watchers,” I told him.

“Can we
go
already?” said Andrea.

The four of us slinked around in the dark like secret agents.

“How come they don't have a security guard?” Emily whispered. “Anybody could come in here and murder us.”

“The doors are locked, dumbhead,” I told her. “They have chains on them.”

“If there are chains on the door,” Michael whispered, “that means we can't get
out
, either.”

We all looked at each other. I thought I
heard scary music playing again.

“Relax,” I finally said. “Who's gonna murder us? The dead animals?”

We slinked over to the candy machine. Awesome! It had all my favorite candy bars. This was the best night of my life!

Andrea put her ten-dollar bill in the slot, but it popped back out. She tried it again, and it popped out again.

“The machine doesn't take ten-dollar bills,” Andrea said.

This was the worst night of my life!

“Hey, look!” Michael said, pointing to some boxes that were stacked next to the candy machine.

“They're boxes of candy!” said Emily.

“Great!” Michael said. “The candy is free!”

“You mean it can fly wherever it wants?” I asked.

“No, dumbhead,” Andrea told me. “It
means they're
giving
the candy away.”

All right! I was so happy, I didn't even bother saying anything mean to Andrea. We all grabbed the candy and started stuffing it in our mouths. I ate about a million hundred candy bars.

It was the greatest night of my life.

It was dark and quiet. The little hand on the clock was past twelve, so I knew it was after midnight. But I ate so much sugar, there was no way I was going to get to sleep.

“Let's slink around by the animals!” I suggested.

“Yeah!” agreed Michael.

“You're going to get in trouble,” Andrea said.

“I'm going to tell Mrs. Daisy,” said Emily.

“Fine,” I said. “Tell her. And I'll tell her that
you
ate all that candy.”

Me and Michael slinked around the first floor like secret agents. Andrea and Emily, the big copycats, followed us. We looked at the moose again, and the buffalo and the gorillas. The animals looked even
more
real late at night.

That's when I saw it. The most amazing thing in the history of the world.

But I'm not going to tell you what it was.

Okay, okay, I'll tell you. And you don't even have to read the next chapter.

It was a diorama filled with penguins!

Penguins!
I must have missed this before. I'm sure I would have remembered it.

I pressed my nose against the glass. Ever since I was little, I loved penguins. I slept with a stuffed penguin in my crib when I was a baby. I dressed up like a penguin for Halloween. I used to have an imaginary penguin friend. I saw every penguin movie there was to see.

Looking at those penguins close-up, I was hypnotized. I could almost hear them speaking to me.

“Come with us, A.J.!” one of the penguins said. “We'll go to Antarctica! You can play with us forever and ever and ever.”

“Kids don't have to go to school in Antarctica,” said the second penguin. “There are no teachers to tell you what to do. There are no parents to yell at you. There are no problems. It's paradise.”

“In Antarctica we don't care if you
secretly love Andrea,” said the third penguin.

“Come with us and live in peace,” said the fourth penguin. “We'll slide around on the ice all day. It'll be fun.”

“I'm coming,” I told the penguins. “I'm coming with you….”

Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Michael's.

“A.J., are you okay?” he asked. “Who are you talking to, man?”

“Uh, nobody.”

It must have been the sugar.

We slinked around some more, and then I came up with the greatest idea in the history of the world.

“Hey!” I said. “Let's see what's in The Secret Room!”

“A.J., you're a genius!” Michael said.

Andrea and Emily said we would get in
trouble. But me and Michael slinked over to The Secret Room, and the copycat sisters followed us.

Michael put his hand on the doorknob.

“Don't open that door!” I warned.

“Why not?”

“Because when you open a door to a scary place at night, a horrible creature is waiting to jump out and kill you,” I told him. “I saw that in a movie once.”

“That's silly,” Andrea said. She grabbed the knob and pulled open the door.

You'll never believe in a million hundred years what was in The Secret Room.

It was Ms. Krup! She was holding that wild yak fur.

“What are you kids doing here?” she asked.

I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to do. I had to think fast.

“We're…uh…sleepwalking,” I said.

“
All
of you?”

“It's dangerous to sleepwalk alone,” I explained.

“Are we in trouble?” asked Andrea, who I'm sure has never been in trouble in her whole life.

“Of course not,” Ms. Krup said. “You kids must love natural history, just like I do. When I was your age, I snuck into a zoo one night.”

People who sneak into zoos at night
are weird.

“You must be nocturnal,” Michael said.

We looked around The Secret Room. There were heads and other parts of dead animals everywhere. It was creepy.

“What
is
this place?” Emily asked.

“This is where we prepare the animals,” Ms. Krup told us. “You see, I'm a part-time taxidermist. Do you know what a taxidermist does?”

“You drive people to the airport?” I guessed.

“That's a taxi driver, dumbhead!” Andrea said. “Taxidermists mount animals for display.”

“Oh, yeah?” I told Andrea. “Well, maybe she mounts animals for display and
then
she drives them to the airport.”

Ha-ha-ha! In her face! That's why I'm in the gifted and talented program. Nah-nah-nah boo-boo on Andrea.

“So, you stuff stuff?” Michael asked Ms. Krup.

“The animals aren't stuffed,” she told us. “The skin is mounted on its original skeleton, which is covered with wire and plaster. I try to make dead animals come to life.”

People who make dead animals come to life are weird.

“Taxidermy is cool,” said Andrea, the big brownnoser.

“Hey,” Ms. Krup said, “would you kids like to see a
special
exhibit I'm working
on? It isn't even open to the public yet.”

“Sure!” we all said.

“Follow me!”

Ms. Krup led us down the hall to an unmarked door. She put a key in the lock. Then she turned the doorknob.

“Don't open that door!” I shouted.

“Will you calm down, A.J.?” said Emily.

Ms. Krup opened the door. There was a big sign on the wall. This is what it said:
THE AMAZING WORLD OF POOP!