“I didn’t say that,” Andrea went on. “All I’m saying is that maybe he didn’t want to climb up the flagpole. Maybe he doesn’t want to put on a turkey costume. Maybe he just wants people to like him, and the only way he knows to show that is to do nutty things. Maybe he’s a sad, unhappy man. Maybe all he wants is a hug or something.”

“That’s the saddest story I ever heard!” Emily said. Then she started sobbing.

Me, Ryan, and Michael looked at one another. We all rolled our eyes up in our heads.

“Mr. Klutz is cool,” Ryan said. “You’re the one who has some kind of a personal problem, Andrea.”

“Maybe Mr. Klutz is nuts,” I said. “In fact, maybe he’s not a principal at all. Did you ever think of that? Maybe Mr. Klutz escaped from a home for the criminally insane and he’s just pretending to be a principal. Maybe our real principal is tied up to a chair in the dungeon down in the basement. My friend Billy told me—”

“There is no dungeon down in the basement,” Emily insisted. “That’s just one of those urban legends.”

“Sure, that’s just what he wants us to believe!” I told Emily. “He doesn’t want us to know our real principal is tied up to a chair down there. He probably tortures him during summer vacation.”

“I think you guys are nuts,” Emily said.

“I’m worried about Mr. Klutz,” Andrea said, biting her fingernails.

11

The Last Straw

I don’t know if all that mumbo jumbo Andrea said was true or not. But I had to admit, Mr. Klutz was acting weirder and weirder.

After we finished the list of a hundred thousand spelling words and he pogo sticked down Main Street in a turkey costume, he offered to paint his bald head orange if our school got the highest reading score in the county. We did, and he came into school the next day with an orange head.

Then he offered to let every kid in the school shoot a Ping-Pong ball at him if we collected enough box tops to buy new computers for the school media center. We did that, too.

It was fun shooting Ping-Pong balls at Mr. Klutz, but even I was beginning to worry that there was something troubling him.

And then came the day when it was obvious to everybody that Mr. Klutz had gone off the deep end. It was at the end of morning announcements. Miss Daisy had stepped out of the room for a minute.

“Boys and girls,” Mr. Klutz said over the loudspeaker, “winter vacation is coming up. If the students at our school read with their parents for one million minutes before school lets out, I will bungee-jump off the roof of the school dressed as Santa Claus!”