Miss Switch Online Read online

  Mr. Dorking was a man of very few words, probably because he didn’t know very many, or how to use what he had, but he hardly needed any. All he had to do was cast his eyes around the room. When he finally did speak, out came golden tones that sent the girls into even further swoons.

  His purpose in visiting the sixth-grade classroom, it turned out, was to announce that the first PTA meeting was to be held the following week, and the sixth grade was being invited to put on a scene from a play. He said he had always liked the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, personally More swoons from the girls at this, of course. However, he seemed to have difficulty in even getting this small announcement out, and had to refer to Miss Tuna both for the day and the time when the scene was to be performed. I couldn’t help wondering how he would manage if the school hadn’t had the foresight to get Miss Tuna as his assistant. Anyway, he flashed his big smile at us and left, with Miss Tuna scurrying after him. This was all so fascinating that it wasn’t until they had left that I thought of something.

  Wham!

  Bang!

  The words materialized in my head:

  The play’s the thing

  Revenge to bring!

  I quickly looked at Miss Blossom. Though it was hard to tell what was going on behind those eyelashes, I was pretty positive that her eyes were narrowed almost to slits as she looked at the disappearing back of Mr. Dorking. That told me she had definitely been in touch with my computowitch.com report, and zeroed in on the same words I had. Saturna had something unpleasant in mind by way of revenge for the sixth grade! The question was what? Miss Blossom and I had to talk!

  “Well, class,” said Miss Blossom, beaming at us, “isn’t this going to be fun? Tomorrow we shall begin at once to plan our scene. But our lessons do come first, you know, and I must speak to a few of you about your math homework. Wayne Partlow, Harvey Fanna, and Rupert Brown, will you please stay in the classroom after the closing bell rings? I would like to talk to each of you for just a few minutes.”

  Now I knew that neither Peatmouse nor Banana exactly sparkled when it came to math, but although my bird, Fred, may have had another opinion, I never really thought I was bad enough to need a conference with my teacher about it. So naturally I knew what this was all about. Miss Switch and I were finally going to talk!

  I admit I was getting to be a pretty good actor myself. I just sat at my desk looking cool and exchanging faces with Peatmouse while Banana had his conference up at Miss Blossom’s desk. Then, even though my heart was thumping away I sat and stared out the window with a blank face until they were both done.

  “See ya at the monkey bars!” Peatmouse called.

  “See ya!” I called back, and sauntered up to Miss Blossom’s desk. As soon as I arrived there, she pulled a sheet of paper from the drawer and laid it down on the desk.

  “Amazing!” she said peering closely at it. From past experience, I recalled that Miss Switch had often gotten carried away with actually being a teacher instead of a real, honest-to-goodness practicing witch. So could I have actually been called up to her desk to discuss my math homework? I inched closer to her desk to see what she was studying so closely I was relieved to discover that it was my copy of Saturna’s report.

  “What’s amazing about it, Miss Switch?” I asked, tingling with anticipation.

  “Miss Blossom! Miss Blossom, Rupert!” she said impatiently. “When I’m in this costume, it’s ‘Miss Blossom.’ We have to keep our focus here. But what’s amazing is that a message like this can be plucked out of thin air.”

  “Not exactly thin air, Miss Blossom,” I said. “More like a thin wire.”

  “Thin air, thin wire, who cares? It’s still astonishing,” said Miss Blossom. “You don’t think science is going to overtake witchcraft, do you, Rupert?”

  “Not a chance, Miss Blossom,” I replied. “I mean, take getting a broomstick airborne on its own steam, or going back in time, or a person being turned into a lizard or a woolly caterpillar. Never happen.”

  “In all fairness, Rupert,” said Miss Blossom, “we do get help from certain little bewitching aids. You know, eye of newt, wing of bat, tongue of toad, and items of that sort.”

  “I don’t think any of those things would do much to move science forward, Miss Blossom,” I said.

  “You may be right,” said Miss Blossom. “At any rate, what did you conclude from Saturna’s message?”

  “Nothing much, at first,” I replied. “Now it looks as if the class is going to be putting on the play mentioned. But I have to tell you, Miss Blossom, ‘revenge’ and ‘disaster’ don’t sound too good.”

  “They don’t, indeed! You are dead right about that, Rupert,” said Miss Blossom. “But did you conclude anything else?”

  “Afraid not,” I replied. “I mean, I couldn’t detect any instructions you said Saturna was going to be spoon-feeding to Mr. Dorking, so how are we supposed to know what she has in mind for him to do?”

  “Bingo!” shouted Miss Blossom. “I knew you’d get it! You’re absolutely right, Rupert. There are no instructions. Which means, I am sorry to say, that we are in very deep trouble!”

  I didn’t like the sound of this. “What … what kind of trouble?” I asked.

  “Rupert,” said Miss Blossom, “if Saturna is not issuing instructions to Grodork, it can mean only one thing. It means that for the very first time since I’ve known him, that brother of Saturna’s, from somewhere in the vacant space he has between his ears, has actually come up with an idea of his own!”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Of course I’m sure!” replied Miss Blossom grimly “Analyze it, Rupert. What does ‘I approve’ suggest to you?”

  “I guess that Saturna approves something someone else has done,” I replied.

  “Exactly!” said Miss Blossom. “Grodork! He has some surprise spell, and Saturna’s buying the idea. Blast and botheration! Here I thought we had a direct link to Saturna’s brain. Devious it might be, but at least we’d know what we were dealing with. The question is how does Grodork communicate with her? Do you suppose she’s set him up with his own Web site that she can pick up—dodo.com, password grodork, or something like that?” Miss Blossom smiled thinly at her little joke.

  “More likely he just sends her an E-mail,” I said.

  “Well, if he can do that,” said Miss Blossom, “why can’t she just communicate with him the same way without all the computowitch Web site nonsense?”

  “It’s the privacy issue, Miss Blossom,” I replied. “I just discovered computowitch.com and the password by dumb luck. But sending an E-mail with the kind of stuff she’s sending via a computer to Pepperdine Elementary School would be the height of craziness. All the teachers have E-mail addresses here and anybody can pick them up. [email protected] would probably be yours, if you were interested. I think that the school secretary distributes the teacher E-mail a couple of times a day. What would she think if she happened to light on [email protected] and read Saturna’s poetry?”

  “I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole,” said Miss Blossom.

  “Exactly! But … but …” I said excitedly, “the messages Mr. Dorking is sending to Saturna could still be in the computer, if he was, well, too stupid to know how to delete them. I could find out right now.”

  “I can’t go with you. Too risky,” said Miss Blossom. “But go on! I’ll be right here waiting for you.”

  It was a wasted trip. When I raced back to Miss Blossom in Room Twelve, I had to report that there was nothing.

  “No messages from Mr. Dorking to Saturna. Nothing!” I announced. “He’s erased everything.”

  “Blast and botheration!” said Miss Blossom. “Now we’re back to square one with nothing but guesswork.”

  “A play doesn’t sound too dangerous, Miss Blossom,” I said.

  “Don’t you be too sure about that, Rupert,” she replied.

  “Can’t you come up with any play-bewitching aids alon
g the lines of eye of newt and that sort of thing?” I asked.

  “Oh, there’s probably a whole medicine chest full of aids of some sort,” said Miss Blossom. “But how would I know which one to use if I don’t know what I’m using it for?”

  I shrugged. She had a point. “Well, how about toadstools like the kind we used before? Maybe we could locate a toadstoolius dramaticus correcticum. Or how about a toadstoolius shakespearius disastrius preventum?”

  Miss Blossom sighed. “Now you’re reaching. Well, maybe not. But there’s only one chance in that gazillion you’re always mentioning that we’d find them, especially that second one. And I don’t know if I’d recognize them if we did. There are no two ways about it, Rupert, we are in very big trouble.”

  For a few minutes, the classroom was sunk in gloomy silence.

  “I guess,” I said at last, “what we could use is a fairy godmother. ”

  “WHAT?!!!!!!!!!”

  Oops! Bad idea. I had to duck to avoid being pelted by a tornado of sparks whipping about the room.

  “FAIRY GODMOTHER! Don’t even mention them to me. We witches get more bad press from just swooping around at Halloween, and generally doing more or less what’s expected of us. All up front, all very straightforward. But those devious creatures—why, most of them are worse than we are. They’ve caused more trouble with those three wishes they offer than you can shake a broomstick at. Why, I could tell you some tales that … oh, never mind. They’re beneath discussing.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Blossom,” I said meekly.

  “Not your fault, Rupert, just don’t believe everything you read about them,” she said. “And I must be honest, there are some very decent fairy godmothers. And there are also some very nasty witches, which happens to be what we’re involved with now. But I’m afraid we’ll have to do the best we can. We’ll just have to keep our noses to the ground, our eyes peeled, and our ears pricked, or whatever.”

  Well, I couldn’t think of any “whatever” that would do much good. It was scary. And there was good old Peatmouse waiting for me out on the monkey bars, with no idea at all of the danger that he and I, and the whole sixth grade, might be headed straight for.

  10

  A Bunch of Eyewash

  “I can’t figure it out,” Peatmouse said as we were sitting out on the Pepperdine monkey bars the following morning. “I think I’m actually learning something. I mean, considering who’s our teacher.”

  “Me too,” said Banana. “Anybody here thinks she’s maybe as good as … well, as good as Miss Switch?”

  We all looked at each other and shrugged. “Nobody’s that good,” I said, which I just happened to know was exactly the truth.

  “I don’t know how she does it when she’s such a mess doing everything else,” said Creampuff.

  “Romeo and Juliet! Lo-o-o-ove! Sheesh!” Peatmouse said.

  “Yeah!” we all agreed.

  “But that was dorky Mr. Dorking’s idea, not Miss Blossom’s,” Creampuff said. “I guess she had to go along with it.”

  “Yeah,” said Banana. “There’re only two people in the balcony scene, though. I wonder what the rest of us will be doing?”

  “What do you mean, ‘rest of us’?” Creampuff said. “What makes you so sure you won’t be the lucky one who gets to be Romeo?”

  “Not me,” Banana said. “I can’t do heights. I’ll just tell Miss Blossom if I have to climb a ladder to any balcony, I’ll throw up all over Juliet.”

  We all knew this was not exactly a true statement, considering that at that very moment Banana was dangling from the top rung of the monkey bars. But we didn’t say anything. After all, we knew we’d all back up any of our excuses no matter what they were.

  Of course, of everyone there, of everyone in the whole class, actually, I was the one person who could be sure of not having to be a Shakespearean actor. Miss Blossom would be counting on me to do some very serious detective work, especially at the performance, where she would be busy with the PTA and trying to keep the sixth grade under control. She’d be counting on me to go snooping around, not standing up on a ladder waving my arms. That is, of course, if we ever got to that point without discovering what Grodork had in mind for the sixth grade, and having Miss Switch put a stop to it. Yes, indeed, I was quite safe from having to play Romeo, but I would stand by my friends and do all I could to keep it from happening to them!

  Miss Blossom announced as soon as the bell rang that morning that we would be having tryouts for the scene just before lunch.

  “I’m so sorry there are only the two roles,” said Miss Blossom, flapping her eyelashes at us and giving us this big sympathetic smile. “I’m sure you all want a part. But the rest of you will be onstage as an audience just as they were in Shakespeare’s day. Now, won’t that be fun?”

  Well, it would be more fun than the alternative, at any rate, I thought to myself. But Miss Blossom was half right when she said we would all want to win a part. All the girls wanted to be Juliet. After all, Mr. Dorking would be out there with the rest of the PTA watching them. But none of the boys cared to be Romeo. And there were all sorts of escape routes tried. As for me, what I did was read the part in such a dead voice, nobody in their right mind would have even cast me as a doorpost. Miss Blossom smiled sweetly through it all.

  Jessica Poole got chosen to be Juliet. And guess who got chosen to be her Romeo? I could have dyed my face blue. I could have suddenly grown a tail or ears the size of flapjacks. It wouldn’t have made any difference. Miss Blossom had me in mind all along, and the tryouts for the Romeo part were just a bunch of eyewash. I sidled up to her desk as soon as the classroom had cleared for lunch.

  “Excuse me, Miss Blossom,” I said, “but what’s the big idea of making me Romeo? How am I going to keep my nose to the ground, my eyes peeled, and my ears pricked if I can’t spend my time lurking around instead of standing on a ladder in front of everyone making an idiot of myself.”

  “And just exactly where you should be!” said Miss Blossom.

  “Excuse me again, Miss Blossom,” I said. “But are you referring to the idiot part, by any chance?”

  “I don’t care to dignify that question with a reply, Rupert,” snapped Miss Blossom. “I was, of course, referring to your being in the play, which means being at every rehearsal without having to ‘lurk around’ to be there. What, pray tell, do you think Mr. Dorking, aka Grodork, even with his limited brain power, will think if he shows up at rehearsals and finds you ‘lurking around’?”

  “But won’t Mr. Dorking get suspicious, anyway, when he gets a load of my acting talents, which don’t exist?” I asked. “I mean, considering my connection to—er—Miss Switch?”

  “When I think of your performance at Witch’s Mountain putting that computowitch out of commission,” said Miss Blossom, “I have every confidence you’ll do just fine. Get Guinevere to work with you on this. I have a feeling she’s a guinea pig with talent as well as brains.”

  Acting lessons from a guinea pig! This could have been funny under any other circumstances. But the consequences of my blowing this could be serious. It could wreck Miss Switch’s Miss Blossom cover if it didn’t appear as though I was chosen for the part for my great acting talents. I was going to have to put on a good performance no matter what. I just hoped Guinevere was up to the coaching job. I knew I was going to need all the help I could get!

  11

  No Clues to Anything

  Actually, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. At first the boys were all calling me “Romeo” just as I figured they would. But when Peatmouse, Banana, and Creampuff reminded them that if anything happened to me one of them might get picked in my place, they quit. All except for Melvin Bothwick, who went on and on about it. Romeo-o-o. Romeo-do-do. Romeo, lay-ee-hoo. He wouldn’t let it alone. If you want to know my personal opinion, I think he wanted the part himself. But eventually, when he’d been told enough times by several boys to dry up, or cut it out, or g
o lay an egg, he finally gave up.

  Then, once the flurry of tryouts was over with, even though the scene we were going to do couldn’t last more than a few minutes, Miss Blossom somehow managed to keep everyone busy It was amazing to me how such a small production required so many stage managers, costume consultants, set designers, and people in charge of props, not to mention doing double duty as “the audience” up onstage. Every sixth grader was made to feel that without his or her presence, the performance would be a flop. Of course, I could see the fine hand of Miss Switch behind the whole thing!

  She even came up with the idea of having a musical introduction, so three sixth graders were kept occupied taking care of that. We had Harry Clipper on drums, Joanie Marks on the piano, and Billy Swanson on the harmonica. Music aside, it was my belief that this was a setup for Billy to have his mouth occupied so he couldn’t take time out to manufacture spitballs.

  As for being Romeo, that turned out to be not too bad, either. Jessica Poole, who got the role of Juliet, wasn’t Spook, but rehearsals with her were actually kind of fun. On the home front, Guinevere was a good coach, just as Miss Blossom had said she would be. Of course, Caruso’s nose got put out of joint at not being asked to do the job, as he fancies himself quite the performer. But it got straightened right out again when Guinevere appointed him to play the role of Juliet. I’m not sure that Shakespeare ever envisioned a turtle in the part, but who am I to say? At any rate, all in all, things were going very smoothly. Except for two problems.

  Mr. Dorking’s absence was problem number one. “I thought he’d be hovering around every chance he could get,” Miss Blossom said. “I haven’t seen him around once.”

  “Heck, Miss Blossom,” I said. “If he hasn’t been hovering, I could have been lurking instead of being Romeo!”

  “I haven’t noticed any suffering on your part, Rupert,” said Miss Blossom sharply. “You actually seem to be enjoying yourself. Furthermore, Guinevere’s efforts appear to be paying off. Your guinea pig should be proud of you, Rupert.”