Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger (14 page)

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Chapter 25

Guilty

Some of the children were working in their workbooks. Others were reading in their readers. And still others were computing on the computer.

Miss Nogard looked from one to another.
Eenie … meenie … minie … Maurecia!
she thought.

Maurecia was stamping a stamp.

“Maurecia,” said Miss Nogard. “Will you come here, please?”

Maurecia walked to the front of the room. “Yes?” she said cheerfully.

“Don’t ‘yes’ me, young lady,” said Miss Nogard. “You know what you did.”

Maurecia looked back at her teacher.
What did I do?
she wondered.

Miss Nogard waited patiently. Everyone was guilty of something.

I didn’t do anything, did I?
thought Maurecia.
I’ve been good, I think. Unless she found out about that dictionary page I accidentally tore. No, she couldn’t know about that! It happened before she even got here. And I don’t think anybody saw me do it.

“I didn’t do anything,” she said.
I probably should have told Mrs. Jewls about it,
she realized,
but it wasn’t even my fault! I was looking up how to spell ‘journey’ for my journal, and the page just ripped all by itself.

“It is one thing to do something wrong, Maurecia,” said Miss Nogard. “But when you do, you should admit to it. We all make mistakes. But when you lie about it, you make matters much worse for yourself.”

Maurecia nodded as she tried to figure out what to do. If Miss Nogard knew she tore the dictionary page, then of course she should admit to it. But there was no way Miss Nogard could know! It was impossible.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said innocently. “I didn’t do anything wrong.” She smiled at her teacher.

Miss Nogard stared at her a long moment, then said, “Will you please bring me the dictionary?”

The smile dropped off Maurecia’s face and crashed on the floor.

The dictionary lay on top of the bookcase. Maurecia numbly went after it.
How could she know?
she wondered.
It’s impossible! Maybe she just wants to look up a word.

She carried the heavy book back to Miss Nogard.

“Thank you, Maurecia,” said Miss Nogard, flipping through the pages. “I need to look up ‘journey.’ ”

Maurecia couldn’t take it any longer. “I ripped it!” she cried out. “I tore the dictionary. I’m sorry. I don’t even know how it happened. I was just turning the page, really! Maybe pages only have a certain amount of turns in them. Like, nine hundred and ninety-nine. Then when you turn the page for the thousandth time, it will rip, no matter who turns it.”

Miss Nogard sadly shook her head. “I am very disappointed in you,” she said. “Not only did you vandalize the dictionary. But then you lied about it. I thought I could trust you, Maurecia. I guess I was wrong.”

“I’m a horrible person,” Maurecia agreed. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me,” said Miss Nogard. “It’s not my dictionary. It belongs to the class.”

Maurecia had to stand in front of the class and tell them she was sorry. Then, since nobody would ever be able to use that page again, she had to read it aloud to the class.

She struggled through the difficult words like “journalism” and “judicious.”

“Speak up,” Miss Nogard had to keep reminding her. “And everyone needs to pay close attention because there will be a test on it when Maurecia is finished.”

“Hey, that’s not fair!” complained Jason. “We didn’t rip the dictionary. Why should we be punished?”

“It’s not punishment,” said Miss Nogard. “It is for your own good. Since you can no longer use that page, you need to memorize it.”

“Thanks a lot, Maurecia!” griped Jenny.

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When Maurecia finished reading it, Miss Nogard made her turn the page over and read the back side of it too.

“But I only ripped the front,” said Maurecia. “Not the back.”

She finished, then returned to her seat, angry and upset. She wasn’t angry at Miss Nogard. Miss Nogard was just being fair, she thought.

But there was only one way Miss Nogard could have known about the torn page, she realized. Somebody in the class must have seen her tear it and then tattled on her.

She looked around the room, from Deedee to Todd to Terrence to Joy. She didn’t trust any of them.

One of her friends was a no-good-dirty-double-crossing-snake-in-the-grass!

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Chapter 26

Never Laugh at a Shoelace

“This is a shoelace,” said Mac.

Everybody laughed.

Mac was standing at the front of the room, holding his shoelace in his hand. He felt like a fool.

“What a fool!” said Allison.

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It all started a minute earlier, when Miss Nogard asked, “Who has something to share for show-and-tell?”

But first you should know something about Mac.

Mac’s favorite subject in the whole world was show-and-tell. He loved it. Especially when he was the one doing the showing and telling.

He often looked through garbage cans on his way to school, in search of stuff to show and tell about. Once he found a real gushy love letter. It was covered with something that looked like peach slime. But that wasn’t what made it gushy. The gushy part was what was written in the letter. Mac read it to the class with lots of feeling.

So when Miss Nogard said, “Who has something to share for show-and-tell?” Mac reacted without thinking. His arm shot up like a rocket as he almost jumped out of his seat. “Ooooh! Ooooh!” he groaned.

Then he remembered something.
I didn’t bring anything for show-and-tell!

Miss Nogard heard him. Before he could lower his hand, she called on him.

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And that was how he ended up with his shoelace dangling from his hand like a dead worm.

“It came from my sneaker,” he said. He took off his sneaker and held it up too, next to his shoelace. “See, you stick the laces through the little holes, here. Then tie it in a bow. That keeps it from falling off your foot.”

“Duh!” said Dana.

“We know what a shoelace is,” said Paul.

“I’ve been tying my shoes since I was two years old,” said Joe.

Calvin and Bebe booed.

“Sit down,” said Jason. “You’re boring.”

The kids in Mrs. Jewls’s class never used to be so mean, but they’d been getting grumpier and grumpier ever since Miss Nogard took over.

“Put your shoe back on!” said Maurecia. “Your foot stinks.”

Mac felt terrible.

Miss Nogard smiled. “Go on, Mac,” she said. “We’re all very interested to hear what you have to say.”

He tried to think of some way to make a shoelace interesting. “Uh, shoelaces are real important,” he said. “There was once this guy. He was a real fast runner. His name was Howard. Howard Speed! He was the fastest runner in the world! But this was back before shoelaces were invented. And so, every time Howard raced, he ran right out of his shoes!”

Nobody seemed very impressed. But then Rondi asked, “Did it hurt his feet?”

Mac shrugged. “I guess,” he said.

“I once stubbed my toe on a rock,” said Stephen. “It hurt.”

“Yeah, and you didn’t run as fast as Howard Speed!” said Mac. “He ran so fast that if he kicked a rock, he would break his toe!”

“Did he have blisters?” asked Todd.

Mac smiled. “Man, he had the biggest blisters you ever saw in your whole life! Bleeding blisters!”

“Ooooh,” Joe and John said together.

“With pus oozing out!” said Mac.

“Oh, gross!” said Dana, wide-eyed.

Everyone was paying close attention to Mac now.

“Wherever Howard went,” said Mac, “he left a trail of bloody footprints.”

“Cool!” said Terrence.

“And so they had to invent something to keep Howard’s sneakers on his feet,” said Mac. “First they just tried nailing his shoes to his feet.”

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“Yowza!” Bebe exclaimed.

“Why didn’t he just use Velcro?” asked Jason.

“Howard lived in Africa,” explained Mac. “Velcro trees only grow in Australia. So then they tried gluing his shoes to his feet. And that seemed to work. But then, whenever he took off his shoes, like to take a bath or something, he’d peel off a layer of skin.”

“Yuck-ola!” shrieked Allison.

“But finally Thomas Edison invented the shoelace, and Howard never ran out of his shoes again.”

“Did he win all his races after that?” asked John.

“Well,” said Mac, “the next race was for the championship of the whole world. Howard got off to a real fast start. It looked like he would win for sure. But shoelaces were still a new invention, and Howard wasn’t quite used to them yet. Right before he reached the finish line, his shoelace came untied. He tripped over it and fell flat on his face. He broke his nose, lost all his teeth, and had two black eyes!”

“Wow,” said all three Erics together.

“So remember,” said Mac, as he held his shoelace high in the air. “Never laugh at a shoelace!”

Everyone applauded.