Mrs lilly is silly, p.3
Mrs. Lilly Is Silly!,
p.3
Andrea typed this into the computer:
MR. KLUTZ DOESN’T
WEAR UNDERPANTS!
Finally, The Ella Mentry Sentry was finished, and we were ready to print it. Mrs. Lilly told us we had all done a great job.
“Can I print out some extra copies so we can take the newspaper home and show it to our parents?” asked Andrea.
“Of course!” said Mrs. Lilly. “We’ll print a copy for everyone in the class.”
Andrea hit the PRINT button again, and the printer started printing a bunch of copies of The Ella Mentry Sentry. But you’ll never believe in a million hundred years who came walking into the door at that moment.
Nobody. It would hurt if you walked into a door. I thought you would know that by now. But you’ll never believe who poked his head in the door.
Nobody! Why would anyone in their right mind want to poke their head in a door? That would hurt too.
But you’ll never believe who came walking into our classroom.
It was Mr. Klutz!
“I just wanted to see how you kids were making out,” he said.
“Ewwwwwwww, disgusting!” we all shouted. “We’re not making out.”
“No, I mean, how is your newspaper going?” asked Mr. Klutz.
“See for yourself,” Mrs. Lilly said as she took a copy out of the printer and handed it to Mr. Klutz.
As he read the front page of our paper, his eyes bugged out and his jaw dropped open. He was white as a ghost!
“Are you okay, Mr. Klutz?” I asked him.
“STOP THE PRESSES!” he yelled. “Officer Spence was in jail? Mrs. Yonkers sets buildings on fire? Mr. Docker beats his wife? Mrs. Patty kills dogs? You can’t print this stuff!”
“Why not?” asked Mrs. Lilly. “Those are great human interest stories.”
“They’re a bunch of lies!” Mr. Klutz said. He was really mad.
“Are you calling us liars?” asked Mrs. Lilly.
“If the shoe fits, wear it!” said Mr. Klutz.
“What do shoes have to do with anything?” I asked, but everybody ignored me.
“Where did you get this information?” demanded Mr. Klutz.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Lilly told him, “but we cannot reveal our sources.”
Mr. Klutz turned to page two of our paper and let out a scream. I guess he must have read the story about himself. He was freaking out.
“I don’t wear underpants?” Mr. Klutz yelled.
Everybody started giggling because Mr. Klutz just admitted out loud that he didn’t wear underpants.
“How could you possibly know what I wear or don’t wear under my clothes?” Mr. Klutz demanded.
“We only print the facts,” said Mrs. Lilly. “We had no proof that you wear underpants, so we had no choice but to assume you don’t.”
“That’s ridiculous!” shouted Mr. Klutz. “I most certainly do wear underpants, and I can prove it.”
With that, Mr. Klutz pulled down his pants.
“EEEEEK!” Mrs. Lilly screamed. “Children! Don’t look!”
But we all looked anyway. Under his pants, Mr. Klutz was wearing pink boxer shorts with red hearts on them. It was hilarious. You should have been there.
“Your underpants are adorable, Mr. Klutz,” said Alexia.
It was a real Kodak moment. So Andrea quickly picked up Mrs. Lilly’s camera and snapped a picture of Mr. Klutz with his pants down.
“We can use this in the next edition of The Ella Mentry Sentry!” Andrea said.
“There will be no next edition of The Ella Mentry Sentry!” Mr. Klutz shouted. “This newspaper is—”
But he didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence, because you’ll never believe in a million hundred years who came running into the classroom at that moment.
I’m not going to tell you.
Okay, okay, I’ll tell you.
But you have to read the next chapter first. So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on you.
The person who came running into the classroom at that moment was Dr. Carbles, the president of the Board of Education! He was the one who came up with the idea of Career Day in the first place.
“Klutz!” he shouted. “Why are you standing there with your pants down?”
“I… I… I was just proving to the children that I wear underpants,” Mr. Klutz explained.
“The children are here to learn about reading, writing, and arithmetic,” yelled Dr. Carbles. “They’re not here to learn about your underwear.”
“But … but … but…”
We all started giggling because Mr. Klutz kept saying “but,” which sounds just like “butt”; but you can’t say “butt” in school. Nobody knows why.
“Parading around in your underpants is not part of your job description, Klutz!” said Dr. Carbles. “You’re fired!”
Everybody gasped. That’s when a bunch of the teachers came running into the room.
“We heard that the students are writing mean stories about us in the school paper,” shouted Mr. Macky. “Is this true?”
“Yes, it’s true!” Mr. Klutz said, waving around a copy of The Ella Mentry Sentry. “Look at this! ‘Mrs. Patty—Dog Killer!’ ‘Vice Principal Poisoned Defenseless Animals!’ ”
“You can’t print that garbage!” shouted Ms. Coco.
“Sure we can,” said Mrs. Lilly. “Didn’t you ever hear of freedom of the press? It’s in the First Amendment.”
“Well, I’m the president of the Board of Education,” said Dr. Carbles as he grabbed all the papers out of the printer, “and what I say goes. I’m shutting down The Ella Mentry Sentry right now!”
Everybody gasped.
“That’s not fair!” Ryan shouted. “It’s our paper. You can’t shut it down!”
“Oh yes, I can!” Dr. Carbles said. “And there’s nothing you can do about it. Nobody will ever read this trash!”
Everybody was really upset. But Mrs. Lilly had a little smile on her face.
“I’m sorry to tell you this,” she said quietly, “but people are already reading The Ella Mentry Sentry.”
“What?!” shouted Dr. Carbles as he waved the papers in the air. “How can anybody read it if I have all the pages?”
“Because they’re reading the online edition,” Mrs. Lilly told him. “The Ella Mentry Sentry is on the internet. I sent it to WikiLeaks. Thousands of people are probably reading it right now.”
“Oh no!” shouted Mr. Klutz. “Everybody is going to think I have two wives, and that I don’t wear underpants!”
“People are going to say I beat my wife!” shouted Mr. Docker.
“They’ll say I’m a drunk!” shouted Miss Laney.
“And that I kill defenseless animals,” shouted Mrs. Jafee.
Suddenly, there was a siren outside. I looked out the window. A police car pulled up to the school, and two cops got out. A minute later they were in our classroom.
“Which one of you is the principal of this school?” one of the policemen asked.
“I am,” said Mr. Klutz.
“Well, you’re under arrest,” said the policeman. “It’s against the law to have more than one wife.”
“But … but … but … this is all a big mistake, Officer,” Mr. Klutz tried to explain. “I don’t have—”
“You have the right to remain silent,” interrupted the policeman as he got out a pair of handcuffs. “So be quiet. And pull up your pants.”
The policeman handcuffed Mr. Klutz and led him away. The other policeman took a pad out of his pocket.
“Okay, we also need to arrest the guy who beats his wife, the lady who burns down houses, the car thief, and, uh, who’s the dog killer?” he asked.
“That would be me,” said Mrs. Patty, raising her hand.
“The guy who kisses married women can stay,” said the policeman, “and so can the illegal alien and the lady who thinks she sees Elvis in soup bowls. But we’re keeping an eye on you three.”
He put handcuffs on Mr. Docker, Mrs. Yonkers, Ms. Coco, and Mrs. Patty. Then he led them out the doorway. It was cool! We got to see it live and in person.
Nobody said anything for a while after the police car drove away. Then Mrs. Lilly stood up and put her trench coat on.
“Well, my work is done here,” she said. “You can thank me later. For now, I have to go.”
“Do you have to go,” I asked, “or do you have to go?”
“I mean, leave,” said Mrs. Lilly.
“You don’t need to use leaves,” I told her. “There’s toilet paper in the bathroom.”
Dr. Carbles and just about all the other grown-ups left the classroom after that. The only one who was still there was Mr. Granite.
“Okay,” said Mr. Granite, “maybe we can finally do our math lesson now. Turn to page twenty-three in your—”
He never got the chance to finish his sentence, because at that moment a loud bell rang.
Brrrrrrriiiiiinnnnnnnngggggg!
It was three o’clock! Time to go home! Yay! No math!
When I got home, my mom asked me what happened at school during the day.
“Nothing,” I said.*
I didn’t know if school would be open on Monday, because Mr. Klutz and half the teachers were in jail. But when I got to school, the front door was open, and there were a bunch of substitute teachers in the halls.
Most of the kids were already in class when I got there. I put my stuff in my cubby and sat down.* And you’ll never believe who walked into the door at that moment.
It was Mayor Hubble, who is like the king of the whole town! He walked right into the door!
“Ouch!” Mayor Hubble said. “That hurts!”
“Will you be our teacher today, Mayor?” asked Andrea, who never misses the chance to brownnose a grown-up.
“Yes,” Mayor Hubble said, “we ran out of substitute teachers, so I’m filling in today.”
“Is it true that you were going to the bathroom when a tree fell on your house?” Alexia asked the mayor.
“Yes, I was trapped in there for many hours.”
“Well, at least you had a bathroom handy,” I said.
The mayor opened up his briefcase and pulled out some papers. He passed one to each of us.
“The teachers were inspired by you kids,” Mayor Hubble said. “Over the weekend, they made a little newspaper just like yours. I thought you might want to look at it. There are some great human interest stories in here.”
I looked at the newspaper. This is what the top headline said:
“Ewwwwwwwww, disgusting!” Neil the nude kid shouted.
“Hey, A.J.,” said Michael. “Did you really eat your nose?”
“No!” I shouted.
I wanted to go run away to Antarctica and live with the penguins. Then I looked at the other headlines on the page:
Everybody was yelling and screaming and freaking out. And nobody was more upset than Andrea.
“That’s a lie!” she shouted. “I never got less than an A plus on any test in my life!”
“The teachers can’t print these lies about us!” shouted Neil the nude kid.
“Sure they can,” said Mayor Hubble. “Did you ever hear of freedom of the press?”
“That’s not fair!” we all shouted.
At that moment an announcement came over the loudspeaker. We had to report to the all-purpose room for an assembly.
“It’s time to go,” said Mayor Hubble.
“Is it time to go,” I asked, “or is it time to go?”
“It’s time to go,” said Mayor Hubble.
“What if we don’t have to go?” asked Ryan.
“We all have to go,” said Mayor Hubble.
“At the same time?” asked Michael.
“I don’t have to go,” I said.
“Me neither,” said Alexia.
“I just went a few minutes ago,” said Emily.
“I’ll go later,” said Neil the nude kid.
Well, that’s pretty much what happened. Maybe the teachers will get out of jail soon. Maybe we’ll publish another edition of The Ella Mentry Sentry. Maybe Mrs. Lilly will stop grabbing people’s eyeballs. Maybe Tony Eagle will stop running into doors. Maybe they’ll get that tree out of Mayor Hubble’s bathroom. Maybe Andrea will explode. Maybe Mr. Klutz will stop pulling his pants down in school. Maybe we’ll all get invited to one of Mrs. Yonkers’s barbecues. Maybe Mr. Macky will stop kissing his wife in public. Maybe everybody will stop having to go all the time. Maybe we’ll finally get through page twenty-three in our math books.
But it won’t be easy!
About the Author and Illustrator
Dan Gutman
has written many weird books for kids. He lives in New Jersey (a very weird place) with his weird wife and two weird children. You can visit him on his weird website at www.dangutman.com.
Jim Paillot
lives in Arizona (another weird place) with his weird wife and two weird children. Isn’t that weird? You can visit him on his weird website at www.jimpaillot.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors and artists.
Other Works
Credits
Cover art © 2011 by Jim Paillot
Copyright
Mrs. Lilly Is Silly!
Text copyright © 2011 by Dan Gutman
Illustrations copyright © 2011 by Jim Paillot
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-0-06-196921-8 (lib. bdg.)—ISBN 978-0-06-196920-1 (pbk.)
* * *
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780062093394
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FIRST EDITION
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*I guess a trench coat is a coat that you wear in a trench.
*Not one of those curly lightbulbs. That would be weird.
*Grown-ups always say “Hmmmm” when they’re thinking. Nobody knows why.
*They didn’t actually come into class holding files. My dad has a file in his workshop down the basement. It would be weird to file in class.
*That’s a prize they give out to people who don’t have bells.
*Any time your parents ask what happened at school during the day, you should always say “Nothing.” That’s the first rule of being a kid.
*But not in my cubby. That would be weird.
Dan Gutman, Mrs. Lilly Is Silly!
