Klutzhood by Chris McMahen

Author:Chris McMahen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV000000
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Published: 2007-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Don’t you worry, boys. I can assure you there’s nothing up in that ceiling to worry about.”

I crawled as fast as my hands and knees could carry me.

The farther I could get away from the washroom, the better. I turned left, then right, then left again until I lost track of how many turns I’d taken. After about six or seven more turns, I was completely lost.

Then I heard a familiar voice. It was Mrs. Armstrong again.

“Cedric? Any sign of Arlo?” she asked.

“No sign at all, Mrs. Armstrong. However, there were two small children coming down the hall at a rather high speed, using very loud voices to describe a monster in the ceiling.”

“Such wild imaginations,” Mrs. Armstrong chuckled.

“Quite the contrary, Mrs. Armstrong. I feel their minds are polluted with the drivel of excessive pop culture consumption through movies, television and video games, leading to such delusions,” Cedric said.

“Whatever you say, Cedric,” Mrs. Armstrong said.

The good news was that Cedric had taken Mrs. Armstrong’s mind off my disappearance. The bad news was that after all my crawling around, I was back at my own classroom. I was going in circles. Maybe I would spend the rest of my life up in the ceiling of the school after all!

I continued on my way, trying to crawl as quickly as possible, thumping along on my hands and knees. As I passed over one classroom, the teacher said, “That’s funny. Thunder in February. How unusual.” After that I tried to slide my knees and hands a little more quietly along the metal duct.

More air vents, more classrooms, but no storage room. I hadn’t crawled this much since I was a one-year-old, and my knees were killing me. Not only that, I was dripping with sweat from the blasts of warm air that swept through the ducts whenever the furnace came on. Stopping for a rest, I peered down through a vent to see a desk stacked high with papers. Against the wall beside the desk were shelves filled with books like The Principal’s Cookbook and Bedtime Stories for Principals. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I was above the principal’s office.

“I’m really concerned about him, Mr. Butterworth.” Mrs. Armstrong’s voice came from just outside the office door. “He disappeared a while back, and I haven’t seen a sign of him since. I hope he’s not lost.”

“That’s strange,” Mr. Butterworth said. “I was out in the hall and didn’t see hide nor hair of him. There were just two kids going on about some monster in the ceiling. Let’s do one more thorough search of the school, and if we can’t find him, we’ll call his mother. Maybe he was upset about something and ran home. Starting at a new school can be pretty stressful.” I heard the door to the office close as they left.

I knew I had to find the storage room and get back to class before Mrs. Armstrong and Mr. Butterworth finished their search of the school.

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