Chapter 1

BEEP, BEEP,BEEP,BEEEEEEEEP! That was my annoying alarm clock, waking me up for the first day of school after winter break. I didn’t want to get up because I had been sleeping until at least nine o’clock for the last two weeks, so seven o’clock felt like practically the middle of the night!     

What was most annoying was that Mom had put it on the other side of the room instead of on my nightstand so I’d HAVE to get out of bed to turn off the beeps. Of course, I didn’t want to, so I threw my pillow at it. The pillow was too heavy and fat or something, so it didn’t get very far. I rummaged in my nightstand drawer for something else to throw and found a squishy ball I had kept because it smelled like delicious bubble gum.

I squinted at the clock and lifted the ball up . . . READY, AIM, THROW!

Yikes. Just then, my sister, Maryam, was walking into the room, saying, “Turn that thing off, you lazy egg!” Then she gasped.

Yep, you guessed it. She got hit right in the nose. Lucky it was squishy, or I would have gotten in TONS of trouble. 

Needless to say, the rest of the morning did not go smoothly. Mom and Dad weren’t very impressed, and Maryam was super melodramatic about it, saying she wasn’t ever going to talk to me again. Then my little brother, Esa, refused to put his coat on, which made us late, and everyone got even angrier. I was the only one in a good mood, because I couldn’t wait to see my best friends, Charlie and Daniel. 

They ran up to me on the playground and both gave me a slap on the back. A slap on the back is basically code for: “Hey! I’m so happy to see you. I kind of missed you.”  The slap is less cheesy than actually saying it, super obviously.

“Guess what,” said Daniel. “My mom and dad finally got me a new bike! It’s so cool. I can’t wait to show it to you!”

“Ah. Lucky!” said Charlie.

“Yeah, the chain still keeps falling off when I ride mine,” I said.

“Isn’t your dad really good at fixing stuff?” asked Daniel.

“Yeah, he is—I should ask him. The only thing he can’t fix is Maryam,” I said. And we all laughed and agreed about that.

We couldn’t stop talking as we lined up on the playground for Mrs. Hutchinson to come get us. I had brought her a chocolate cupcake from the stash my neighbor Mrs. Rogers had brought over for us the day before. Mrs. Hutchinson is probably the nicest teacher ever. I mean, duh, nobody on the entire planet would give one of their Mrs. Rogers’ cupcakes to somebody they didn’t like. I thought Mrs. Hutchinson deserved one, for the winks she gave us at the right moments, for always being fair when two kids got into a fight and for the fun way she taught us. Before winter break, we’d been doing a project about the universe, and she told us about how some scientists believe there is life on other planets. Basically, that means aliens, so Mrs. Hutchinson got us to imagine what they might look like—it wasn’t really like a lesson at all!

“Be careful, though,” she had said. “They might be watching us. We don’t want them to know we are onto them.”

But that morning, when a teacher came to bring us in, it wasn’t Mrs. Hutchinson.

It was someone taller and thinner and with way less fun hair.

She had the kind of creases in her face that told me she had spent most of her life frowning and furrowing her eyebrows. Her clothes were gray and her shoes were POINTY. The way less fun hair was pulled so tightly and so neatly into a bun that I imagined she’d needed the help of a high-tech laser that detected any out-of-place hairs and zapped them down. 

Daniel and Charlie looked at me with their question-mark eyebrows. Have you ever noticed that the eyebrows say the most about someone’s feelings?

For example, Charlie’s eyebrows can say:

-         Eh? What’s going on? (Most often when he is doing one of his math problems.)

-        Wow, this is so fun! (Most often seen when we have discovered a new game to play.)

-        OMG, I’m going to die. (Most often seen when a spider crawls up the wall.)

Anyway, back to the strange teacher.

Eerily, the only thing she said to us was “Follow me.” And she spun around on the sharpest heel I have ever seen and walked toward the school building.

Chapter 2

We piled into the classroom and went to our desks.

“Who IS this?” whispered Daniel.

“Don’t worry, it’s probably nobody. Mrs. Hutchinson’s probably just sick or something and she’ll be back tomorrow,” I said.

But just then, the new teacher said, “I’m Mrs. Crankshaw. I will be your teacher for the rest of the school year.”

She said those words from her mouth. But it felt like each word was a heavy metal object hitting me over the head. 

I looked at Charlie. He had scared eyebrows. I wanted to put my arm around him.

Daniel was pinching my leg under the desk.

“Daniel! Stop it. Ouch! What are you doing?”

“I’m pinching you to make sure I’m not dreaming.”

“You’re supposed to pinch yourself, silly!”

“You two at the back. Stop your nonsense,” said Mrs. Crankshaw. “That brings me to my first task—assigning you all to your new seats. From now on, you will not sit next to your chatty little friends, you will sit where I say.”

GULP.

“She’s not a nobody,” said Daniel.

“No,” I said. I looked down at the cupcake. It looked sad, too. 

We had to hold in all of our questions and emotions until break time. None of us dared to put our hand up and ask what had happened to Mrs. Hutchinson. Especially after my new seat neighbor, Ellie, asked if she could do something as innocent as get up and throw her pencil shavings in the garbage, and she got a look that could have made Superman poop his pants.

When we were released for recess, Charlie, Daniel and I did some super-fast speed walking toward the exit, because we aren’t allowed to run. 

All of us buttoned up our lips until the fresh, cold outside air hit our faces, and then Daniel practically exploded.

“Where’s Mrs. Hutchinson?” he wailed.

Charlie just stood there looking at us, not saying anything. He seemed to be in shock.

“So it’s not just for a day. She said she was our teacher for the rest of the year!” I said. 

“But what happened to Mrs. Hutchinson? Why would she just leave us?!” asked Daniel.

“I don’t know. But we have to find out.” I put my arm around Charlie, who still hadn’t said anything. We couldn’t lose Mrs. Hutchinson and Charlie both in the same day!

Finally, Charlie spoke. “Should we ask one of the other teachers?”

“Good idea,” I said, already running toward the teacher on duty in the playground. Charlie and Daniel followed close behind.

Mr. Henry already had several children around him. He was scolding one of them while another stood there crying and others watched. 

We waited for him to finish shouting, and then I said, “Mr. Henry, where is Mrs. Hutchinson?”

The teacher looked in all four directions to figure out where the question was coming from. He didn’t realize it was from me, because about six other kids were still staring at him. 

“I don’t know! In the bathroom probably! Really, how should I know?” he said, rubbing his forehead as if it would make everyone go away. 

Charlie tugged at my sleeve. “Come on, this isn’t working.”

We walked around the playground, not really saying much, which was fine by me, because my mind was busy imagining all the things that could have happened.

Maybe Mrs. Hutchinson had too many of those very light cheese puffs she eats every lunchtime, and they made her weightless, so she floated off into the clouds. Then I imagined that she somehow became invisible and was trying to get everyone’s attention to help her come back down, but we just couldn’t see her anymore.

“Mrs. Hutchinson! If you’re there, throw a ball at us!” I said out loud.

“What?” said Charlie.

“Have you gone nuts?” said Daniel.

I giggled. “It was worth a try . . . “