This Journal Belongs to Ratchet Read Online Free PDF Page A

the way out in the hall.
    I turned and went into the room Dad had been assigned. Food wrappers and empty soda cans all over the floor. Desks pushed every which way. The air was a mixture of peanut butter and sweat with a faint smell of lemon floor cleaner. (Hard to believe you could still smell the floor cleaner because it looked like the floor in our garage, which has never been washed.) In the middle of the room were eight boys. All talking too loud.
    Dad wasn’t there yet. He was finishing up a brake job at home. He sent me over on my bike to keep order until he got there. I wondered if he realized I was the same age as the kids in the class. What made him think I could keep order?
    No one noticed me when I walked in. I picked up a few candy wrappers from the floor. Straightened out a few desks. (It did about as much good as throwing a cup of water on an overheating engine.)
    Then Evan said, “Hey, look, everyone. It’s Professor Ratchet!”
    The kids laughed in a way that proved Evan was the “cool” kid everyone looked up to.
    I ignored him. Maybe my invisible routine would work. I pushed a few more desks to make another row. That’s when I smelled something like burned toast. Evan yelled, “FIRE!” And at the same time, the fire alarm went off. We all ran out of the room and down the hall with the screaming cover girls following us.
    Out in the parking lot, an old lady waved her arms. “It’s all right. False alarm. Little mishap in creative cooking. No big deal.”
    That’s when Dad came squealing around the corner in his 1981 diesel Rabbit. (Real rabbits are quiet, cute, and cuddly; but there’s nothing quiet, cute, or cuddly about Dad’s piece of junk car.) The squealing noise came from the loose fan belt he never bothered to fix. He was always too busy fixing other people’s cars to fix his own.
    If it weren’t for the smell of the fire, we would’ve smelled Dad coming before we heard him. To keep the environment cleaner, Dad had converted his car to run on vegetable oil. Recycled vegetable oil, of course. Which meant the oil came from fast-food restaurants. They threw out barrels of the stuff every day. Dad always picked up oil from King of Wings so he spread the tasty aroma of fried chicken wings wherever he went.
    Dad waved at me through his open window as he pulled into the parking lot. Then the rec center director, who looked a little like Cruella de Vil, realized Dad hadn’t been in his classroom when the fire alarm went off. She went CRAZY. As crazy as Dad did at the city council meetings.
    â€œMr. Vance! Where have you been?! You mean to tell me that you were not supervising your students when the fire alarm went off?”
    Dad’s car door groaned as he got out. The door barely opened and closed anymore. The car really belonged at the junkyard instead of on the road.
    â€œSorry. I was running a little late,” Dad said as he got out. “Won’t happen again.”
    Dad slammed the door. I cringed, hoping the whole car wouldn’t fall apart. Dad’s hair looked like it had been fried in vegetable oil. He had a huge oil stain on his shirt. Black wheel-bearing grease smeared into his knees. And his hands looked like they hadn’t been clean in years.
    The boys in the class looked at Dad and took Evan’s lead — they all burst out laughing. The cover girls joined in. I could tell from the way they giggled that they thought Dad was a huge joke, and I could tell by the way they fluttered their eyelashes and looked over their shoulders as they huddled closer together that they wanted the boys to stop noticing Dad and start noticing them.
    â€œMr. Vance,” Cruella went on, waving her finger in Dad’s face (she even had long Cruella de Vil fingernails), “this whole arrangement of you teaching goes against my better judgment. You’ll need to work a lot harder to prove me