Big Mouth Read Online Free PDF

over their door was the stuff of nightmares. Life was hard enough without being a Big Burpee.
    With just five minutes left to get to Mad Max’s class way up on the third floor, I beelined for the double doors. Even with my shortcut through the waist-high hedge, the other bus-riding Plums left me in the dust fast. They and the few stragglers rushing from the bike racks looked like muted aliens in a low-budget sci-fi flick. The morning sun was painting their faces a mucky Dijon-mustard color, and the dry wind had their hair poking out from their heads like porcupine quills. It was like the opening scene of
Galactic Warriors’
most popular episode, “Captain Quixote’s Glory.” In that episode, the aliens really did have quills.
    I raced through the doors and past the broken elevator, skidding to a stop just steps beyond. I did an about-face. The elevator doors had GO, MUSTARD! scribbled on them in big, loopy letters with thickly squeezed mustard. I couldn’t help it, I busted up.
The Mustard Taggers strike again!
That made five times in two weeks. Principal Culwicki was probably having a seizure that very second, the big Del Heiny butt kisser.
    That happy thought launched me up the stairs at full gallop.
Go, Mustard!
    By the time I rushed through door 306 to Science Concepts in Action three floors up, I was the one having a seizure. My white Scoops T-shirt was stuck to my back and I was wheezing and coughing and huffing like Ruffers Thuff, Grampy’s fifteen-year-old dog. Then the tardy bell blared from the speaker over my head, vibrating my entire skull. I had to grab the doorjamb to steady myself.
    “Sherman, are you all right?”
    I nearly screamed like a girl when Mad Max spoke.
    Teachers should
never
stand behind their classroom doors. Ever!
    Max leaned in closer and said more quietly, “In this weather, Sherman, you’ve got to be careful not to overdo it. That goes for everyone, not just you. Now go sit down and catch your breath.”
    The humiliation.
    I did my best not to stumble across the room. Still, I practically fell into my seat next to Tater.
    “Hey there, Thuff. Whoa, buddy, are you okay?” He thumped me on the back like I was choking or something. It just knocked more air out of me.
    “I’m…fine…Tater.” He kept thumping me. “Tater…Stop!”
    “Okay, okay.”
    When I could muster enough power to rip my stare away from his gigantic nostrils, I saw that he’d shaved his head since yesterday.
    Now, I was the first to admit that on some people, bald was a cool look. But we were talking Tater here. The guy already had two strikes against him in the looks department—one for each rhino nostril. But that maze of blue veins crisscrossing his albino scalp…
yikes.
I’d say this for him, though, at least he didn’t have to worry about his hair anymore.
    “Hello, Earth to Sherman.” Tater waved a hand in front of my eyes, his jangling office aide keys adding to my cranial pain. “Did you hear me? I said did you do the homework last night?”
    “Of course I heard you.” I hadn’t.
Stupid wheezing.
“I hear everything. Homework. Did I do it. I heard you.”
    “What’s wrong with you today?”
    “Nothing’s wrong. Just leave me alone, okay?” I tried holding my breath to stop the wheeze. But that just made me cough.
    Mad Max banged the wall with a tibia bone from the dusty skeleton that hung by the whiteboard. “All right, people, listen up. We’re short a science teacher for a while, so we’re reassigning students to other classrooms, including this one. It might be a little crowded, but let’s make the best of it. Don’t make me dole out push-ups.” That got our attention more than the banging bone. Last week she’d made a kid do twenty push-ups for missing the trash can with a balled-up Twinkie wrapper.
    Satisfied that her threat had sunk in, she whisked open a door that separated our lab from the next one. Ten Plums filed in to fill ten empty single-seater desks lining our