My Weird School Daze #8 Miss Laney Is Zany! Dan Gutman Pictures by Jim Paillot 2 To Emma Contents 1 Bad News 2 The Mystery of the Girls’ Bathroom 3 Miss Laney Is Weird 4 You Can’t Say It! 5 Problem Solved 6 How to Get a Million Dollars 7 Spooch 8 What’s in the Stall? 9 Plays Are Boring 10 A Surprise Assembly 11 Ugh, Disgusting! Acknowledgments About the Author and the Illustrator Credits Copyright About the Publisher 3 4 5 1 Bad News My name is A.J. and I hate school. But I have to go anyway. My friend Billy who lives around the corner told me that if you don’t go to school, they throw you in jail. Then you have to wear one of those striped uniforms and drag around a ball and chain. I go to Ella Mentry School, and my teacher is Mr. Granite, who is from another planet. It was Monday morning, and the girls were talking about silly girl stuff, like how many stuffed animals they have on their beds. Me and the guys were talking about important guy stuff, like my favorite TV show—Win Money or Eat Bugs. It’s a cool show. You have to answer a bunch of questions. If you get them right, you win money. If you get them wrong, you have to eat bugs. So Win Money or Eat Bugs has the perfect name. Some people win money. But most people have to eat bugs. That show is hilarious. After we put our backpacks into our cubbies, the school secretary, Mrs. Patty, made an announcement over the loudspeaker. We had to go to the all-purpose room for a surprise assembly. “Why are we having an assembly?” asked Andrea Young, this annoying girl in my class with curly brown hair. “Beats me,” said her crybaby friend Emily. Everybody was in the all-purpose room. Miss Lazar, the custodian. Ms. LaGrange, the lunch lady. Even Mr. Tony, who runs the after-school program, was there. I could tell it wasn’t a normal assembly. We were all buzzing about what was up.* We had to sit crisscross applesauce. Finally our principal, Mr. Klutz, got up on the stage. He has no hair at all. I mean none. They shou