29
After the Storm
The boops and booms had stopped, and the lights were back on.
Myron and the others had to step over all sorts of objects as they made their way back up toward their classroom. The stairs were strewn with books, papers, cafeteria trays, musical instruments, an air pump, a giant stuffed walrus, and even a bust of Sigmund Freud.
Between the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh floors, the stairs were completely blocked off by Mr. Kidswatter’s enormous desk. They all had fun climbing over it, including Mrs. Jewls.
Once back in class, Myron dropped Miss Zarves’s fingernail into the bucket, which, unfortunately, was empty. Sadly, the other nine hundred thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-nine clippings were gone.
Myron would have written 1,000,000 on the blackboard anyway, but there was no blackboard.
The chalk was there, however.
It was as if everything inside Wayside School had been shuffled like a deck of cards and dealt out randomly to every floor.
(Mrs. Jewls’s blackboard was eventually discovered in the library. Fingernails and toenails would continue to be found for years to come, sometimes in very strange places.)
The sun shined. The sky was as blue as Allison’s eyes. Birds chirped as they flew about.
There had been no birds during the dark days of doom.
Louis, the yard teacher, shoveled snow off the roof. Among other things, the cloud had dumped huge amounts of snow. The playground sparkled white.
Louis had to be careful. The snow was packed high above the guardrails and was very slippery. “Look out, below!” he shouted as he tossed a shovelful of snow over the edge.
Down below the kids were playing a kind of reverse dodgeball. It was the boys against the girls. Every time Louis shouted, “Look out below!” they did the opposite.
Eric Ovens charged past Jenny and dived face-first, sliding across the snow-covered ground. Louis’s clump smacked him right on the head.
“One point!” he exclaimed.
Recess was three hours today. The kids had been sent out to play, while the teachers were stuck with cleaning up the mess made by the storm.
Just as Mrs. Jewls had predicted, now that the Cloud of Doom was gone, the world had become a happier place. The only thing missing was a rainbow.
“Look out below!” Louis called from the other side of the school.
They raced around the building. Leslie dived toward the falling clump. “One point,” she declared.
“No way, Miss Piggy-tails,” said Terrence. “It missed you!”
“Did not!” Leslie insisted. “See, look at all the snow in my hair.”
“That’s ground snow,” argued Terrence.
Dana came to Leslie’s defense. “Some of it came from the ground,” she agreed. “But four flakes came from the air. I saw them.”
“How can you see four snowflakes?” asked Paul.
“Super glasses!” said Dana, pointing to her spectacles. She picked four snowflakes out of Leslie’s hair. “One, two, three, and four. Just like I told you.”
“That proves it!” declared Bebe. “One point!”
Paul scowled. He remained skeptical of her spectacles.
Up on the roof, Louis spotted something sticking out of the snow. It was purple and green, with some yellow dots.
He tried to pull it free, but it was stuck. He pulled hard.
It still wouldn’t budge.
He gave it one hard yank!
The umbrella jerked free, but Louis’s feet slipped out from under him. He fell on his bottom and slid backward across the roof.
“Look out below!” he shouted as he went over the edge.
The children ran to the call. They were quite surprised when they looked up and saw the yard teacher coming toward them.
Louis looked down. He didn’t want to hurt the children.
He considered trying a Mary Poppins, but he was holding the wrong end of the umbrella, and there wasn’t time to change his grip and try to open it.
His best chance was to grab the top of the flagpole.
Wayside School had an extra-tall flagpole so it wouldn’t look puny next to the building.
Louis reached out for it but missed.
The next thing he knew, he was spinning wildly in circles.
The curved handle of the umbrella had hooked the pole.
Louis whirled dizzily around it as he slowly moved down the pole. By the time he reached the ground, he must have circled the flagpole more than a thousand times.
Sharie ran to him.
To Louis, it looked like there were six Sharies, all spinning like tops.
“Thanks, Louis—you’re the best!” said Sharie, taking her umbrella. “But really, there was no big rush. You could have just used the stairs.”
30
Rainbow
There was no stove in the cafeteria kitchen. An enormous pot hung from a thick chain above a blazing fire.
“Lower the pot,” ordered Miss Mush.
Mr. Pepperadder turned the squeaky crank, and the pot came down.
“What will it be today?” he asked.
“Shh!” said Miss Mush.
Mr. Pepperadder knew better. You must never interrupt a great artist during her moment of inspiration.
Miss Mush’s eyes were closed. She rubbed her chin. She wanted to make something truly special after the Storm of Doom. “Rainbow stew!” she declared as she raised her wooden spoon high above her head.
“Brilliant!” agreed Mr. Pepperadder.
“What do we have that’s red?” asked Miss Mush.
Mr. Pepperadder looked over his inventory list. “Red cabbage,” he said. “Beets, strawberries, red peppers.”
Miss Mush waved the wooden spoon and said, “Toss them in the pot!”
Flames shot up as Mr. Pepperadder threw in the ingredients. He had to shield his eyes from the smoke.
“What about yellow?” asked Miss Mush.
“Yellow squash, bananas, yellow peppers, yellow onions . . .”
“Start with the bananas,” said Miss Mush, “and then we’ll see about the onions.”
Mr. Pepperadder started to peel a banana, but Miss Mush stopped him.
“The peel is the part that’s yellow,” she reminded him. “If I wanted white, I would have asked for peeled bananas.”
“Sorry,” said Mr. Pepperadder. He tossed fifty-seven bushels of bananas, peels and all, into the pot.
There was a loud hissing noise, as steam filled the room.
Some cooks considered things like taste, or perhaps nutrition, when preparing a meal. For rainbow stew, color was all that mattered.
Miss Mush stirred the pot with a large stick. “Perhaps a little black now, for definition,” she said.
Mr. Pepperadder read from his list. “Poppy seeds, burnt toast, my shoes . . .”
High above them, in Mrs. Jewls’s class, several children held their noses.
“What’s that smell?” asked Calvin.
“Miss Mush must be cooking something,” said Bebe.
“It smells like shoes,” said Myron.
D.J. sniffed. “Black shoes,” he said. “With hard soles, and no laces.”
“You can smell the laces?” asked Kathy.
“No,” said D.J. “I just told you there weren’t any laces.”