Andrew North Blows Up the World Read Online Free PDF

almost forgot about the music program coming up until we went to music class. We had music on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and gym the other days, so this would be our last class before the program the next night.
    Mr. Cunyan, the music teacher, had been teaching music at the school ever since it opened. He was probably pretty young then, but now he was really, really old. He had a face that looked like a crescent moon when you saw it from the side—his chin and nose stuck out more than most people’s. He also had so many wrinkles that I was afraid one day he’d just turn inside out.
    The first song we were singing as a class was called “Hello Central, Give Me No Man’s Land.” It’s what they call a “parlor song”: an old song about a dumb kid who tries to call his dad on the phone, even though his dad had died fighting in World War I. Mr. Cunyan says he used to sing it when he was a kid. If any kid went around singing asong that depressing nowadays without a teacher making them sing it, they’d get sent to the guidance counselor for sure.
    “Okay, everybody,” said Mr. Cunyan. “Now, I know that ‘Hello Central’ is a sad song, but I want you smiling really big. In the song, you’re just little children, not big children, like you are right now. Your father is off fighting in the war. Maybe he’s dead. You don’t know. But suddenly you’ve had this idea—you can call the operator, and they’ll let you talk to him on the phone! Soon, when the operator hangs up on you, you will be very sad, but during the song, you are happy!”
    I smiled, but I felt kind of weird about it. The song was really depressing!
    And anyway, I couldn’t stop thinking about Mr. Gormulka having the calculator. What if Ryan was right about him hunting for a spy in the school? How are you supposed to smile knowing that you could get blown up at any second? I tried to just focus on the music. All spies have to be able to separate their normal lives from their lives as spies, you know. But it wasn’t easy.
    After “Hello Central,” we started working on the next song: a rap that Mr. Cunyan had written himself.
    “Now, for this one, you don’t need to smile,” said Mr. Cunyan as we got started on it. “Because rappers don’t smile. You should look either really cool or really tough when you rap. So frown if you want to!”
    I didn’t know much about rap music, really, but I was pretty sure I knew more about it than Mr. Cunyan. I mean,the guy was about a hundred and fifty! He was probably the least funky person I had ever known in my life. The rap started out like this:
    Where are the students who people say
Are the coolest kids in the USA?
Tell everyone that we’ve passed the test—
Cornersville West is the very best!
Hold on tight to the edge of your seats.
Open your eyes to a whole new beat.
Upon this stage, we’re going to groove—
Third graders know how to bust a move!
    See? Even
I
know a lame rap when I hear one. Plus, I knew that Mr. Cunyan was probably having the kids at Cornersville North, where he taught on Wednesdays and Fridays, say that
they
were the coolest kids in the USA at
their
program. So the rap wasn’t even honest. It was just big talk.
    “Now, don’t forget to count silently to yourself to stay on tempo!” Mr. Cunyan said. He clapped his hands in rhythm to the song and said, “One, two, three, four …”
    “Hey, Mr. Cunyan,” asked Ryan, “did they have that many numbers when you were a kid?”
    Mr. Cunyan smiled. Out of all our teachers, he seemed to be the least bothered by Ryan’s insults. In fact, he sort of got a kick out of them.
    “One through four? Well, sure we did!” said Mr. Cunyan. “We had about twelve numbers back then. The rest of the numbers were discovered when I was in college.”
    “Wow,” Ryan said. “Math must have been easy back then!”
    “Nothing was easy back then,” said Mr. Cunyan. “I lived on the nineteenth floor in a one-room apartment that we