bonkers!
12
One Way to Handle a Sub
âEveryone stay calm!â yelled the beautiful Mrs. Cooney. âMrs. Yonkers is on her way over. Sheâll know what to do.â
Mrs. Cooney put a bag of ice on Emilyâs head, while Mrs. Robo-Yonkers chased Dr. Carbles around the computer lab. Finally Mrs. Yonkers arrived with her cheese head.
âWhatâs the big emergency?â she asked.
âYour robot clone is crazy!â yelled Mr. Klutz.
âHelp!â yelled Dr. Carbles. âSheâs trying to kill me!â
âOh dear,â said Mrs. Yonkers. âI guess I still have to work out some of the bugs.â
âHow do we stop her?â cried Mrs. Cooney.
âThereâs only one thing to do,â Mrs. Yonkers said as she pulled a remote control out of her pocket. âI must destroy Mrs. Robo-Yonkers. Everybody stand back.â
Mrs. Robo-Yonkers had Dr. Carbles pinned against the whiteboard. We all hid our eyes. I waited for the sound of the explosion.
But nothing happened. The only sound I heard was Mrs. Yonkers crying.
âI canât do it,â Mrs. Yonkers sobbed as she handed the remote control to Mrs. Cooney. âHere, you do it. Push the button marked SELF-DESTRUCT.â
Dr. Carbles crawled between Mrs. Robo-Yonkersâs legs and ran away. Mrs. Cooney pushed the button.
One secondâ¦
Two secondsâ¦
Three secondsâ¦
âDUCK!â I shouted.
BAM! There was a big explosion. Pieces of Mrs. Robo-Yonkers went flying everywhere. Her head landed on top of the flagpole in the corner of the computer lab.
âIâll be back,â the head said. And then it fell into the garbage can.
It was a real Kodak moment. You should have been there! And we got to see it live and in person.
When it was all over, Mrs. Yonkers was sitting on the floor, crying.
âBoo hoo,â she cried. âI created Mrs. Robo-Yonkers with my bare hands. Iâm sorry. I didnât mean for all this to happen.â
We told Mrs. Yonkers it wasnât her fault that her clone went crazy and attackedthe president of the Board of Education. And thatâs when Little Miss Big Mouth had to open her trap.
âItâs all Arloâs fault,â said Andrea. âIf he hadnât said all those weird sentences to Mrs. Robo-Yonkers, none of this would have happened. You killed her, Arlo!â
âNo, I didnât kill her,â I said as I pointed at Mrs. Cooney. âTwas beauty that killed the beast.â
13
The Moral of the Story
We were all pretty bummed that Mrs. Robo-Yonkers exploded. Especially Mrs. Yonkers. All of us kids gathered around to hug her. And thatâs when the most amazing thing in the history of the world happened. Somebody walked into the computer lab, and youâll never believe ina million hundred years who it was.
Iâm not going to tell you.
Okay, okay. Iâll tell you.
It was Speedy the turtle!
âSpeedy!â yelled Mrs. Yonkers. âYou came back!â
She picked up Speedy and hugged him and kissed his shell. We were all so happy to see him, no one seemed to care anymore that Mrs. Robo-Yonkers exploded. If you ask me, Mrs. Yonkers loved Speedymore than she loved Mrs. Robo-Yonkers anyway.
Well, the moral of the story isâ¦that there is no moral of the story. Who decided that stories have to have morals anyway? Sometimes weird stuff just happens for no good reason. Especially at my weird school.
Maybe Mrs. Yonkers will be able to build a new robot clone. Maybe sheâll make a million dollars from the Junk Food Transformer. Or maybe sheâll make a computer that you plug into your head so we donât have to go to school anymore. Maybe sheâll stop writing e-mails to herself. Maybe Emily will stop fallingdown and Andrea will stop being so annoying. Maybe Iâll find a way to live in a world without junk food. Maybe weâll travel through time to the 21st century.
But it wonât