Nobody said anything for a million hundred seconds.

“Gee, I hope Jackie Macky is going to be okay,” said Emily, who’s always wondering if people are going to be okay.

“She has the sniffles!” said Alexia. “Everybody gets the sniffles. Mr. Macky and Miss Daisy are totally overreacting. My parents did the same thing when my little sister was born.”

“What are we going to do now?” asked Andrea. “We don’t have a teacher.”

Andrea was right for once in her life. There were no grown-ups in the room at all. Me and Michael and Ryan looked at each other. Then we snapped into action. The three of us got up and shook our butts at the class.

“Boys!” Andrea said, rolling her eyes.

“I guess Mr. Klutz will have to get another sub for our class,” said Emily.

“We’re getting sandwiches?” I yelled. “Yay!”

“No, dumbhead!” Andrea said. “Mr. Klutz will have to get another substitute teacher.”

Oh. I knew that. I was going to say something mean to Andrea, but I never got the chance. You’ll never believe who ran into the doorway at that moment.

I’m not going to tell you.

Okay, okay! I’ll tell you. And you don’t even have to read the next chapter.

It was Mr. Cooper!

10. Feet Are Disgusting

“Have no fear, CooperMan is here!”

Mr. Cooper came running into the room like he was trying to catch a bus. As usual, he tripped over the garbage can, banged into a desk, and went flying into the whiteboard before falling on the floor.

“Oww!” he yelled. “My toe!”

We all ran over to him.

“Are you okay?” everybody was asking.

“Of course!” Mr. Cooper said as we helped him up. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor foot problems can prevent me from educating the youth of America!”

“We heard about your ingrown toenail,” said Andrea.

“Yes, it was pretty serious,” Mr. Cooper told us. “I was afraid it was going to grow inside my body until it came out the top of my head. But I used my superhealing powers to recover quickly.”

“Can we see your toe?” I asked.

“Sure!” Mr. Cooper replied.

He rolled up his pants.

Then he took off his shoe.

Then he took off his sock.

Ugh! It was disgusting. Feet are gross even when you have normal toes. Everybody was gagging. I thought I was gonna throw up.

“So, what did you learn while I was out today?” Mr. Cooper asked as he put his sock back on.

We didn’t learn anything, of course, because Miss Daisy doesn’t know anything. I looked at Ryan. Ryan looked at Michael. Michael looked at Neil. Neil looked at Alexia. Alexia looked at Emily.

Everybody was looking at each other. Nobody wanted to tell Mr. Cooper that we spent the whole day sitting around eating bonbons.

“We learned all about clouds,” Alexia finally said.