Free Wayside School Is Falling Down by Louis Sachar Page B

over a hundred years,” she said.
    “So?” asked Virginia. “What’s your hurry?”
    Allison started to work. It was bad enough having to write down all the numbers from zero to a million, but she couldn’t imagine how she’d ever put them in alphabetical order.
    One came before two.
    Three came after one, but before two.
    Four came before one.
    Five came before four.
    Six came after one, but before three.
    “Don’t worry,” said Virginia. “Even if you miss a few, Miss Zarves will give you an A when you finish.”
    Seven came after one and before six.
    Eight came first. Allison couldn’t think of any number that would come before eight, so she wrote it down. She also knew zero would come last, if she ever got that far. By then she’d be older than Virginia.
    I’ll talk to Louis at recess, she thought. He’ll save me.
    “When’s recess?” she asked.
    “There is no recess,” said Ray. “We’re not allowed out of the classroom.”
    “What about if you have to go to the bathroom?”
    “What’s a bathroom?” asked Virginia.
    “We don’t eat, either,” said Nick. “We just work all the time.”
    “But we never have homework,” Virginia said cheerfully.
    “That’s because we never go home,” said Nick. “We get a two-minute break every eleven hours.”
    “But don’t worry,” said Virginia. “Miss Zarves always gives us good grades.”
    Miss Zarves walked around the room checking everybody’s work. “Excellent, Ray!” she said. “Very good, Virginia. You’re doing wonderfully, Allison. You get an A for the day.”
    Big deal! thought Allison. She had to figure out some way out of there. It was clear that Virginia, Nick, and Ray were all too far gone to help her.
    “Are there any other new kids in the class?” she asked.
    “Ben’s new,” said Nick. He pointed Ben out to her.
    Ben appeared to be about Allison’s age. She was glad about that. When the two-minute break came, she went over and talked to him.
    “Are you Ben?” she asked.
    “No,” he said.
    “Oh,” said Allison. “I was looking for Ben.”
    “That’s me,” said the boy.
    “But you just said—”
    “My name’s Mark Miller,” said the boy. “But for some reason everybody calls me Benjamin Nushmutt.”
    “There’s a Mark Miller in my class!” exclaimed Allison.
    “I know, that’s me,” said Mark. “I’m Mark Miller.”
    “No, I mean my other class,” said Allison.
    “What other class?”
    Allison thought a moment. “I don’t remember …” she said.
    After putting numbers in alphabetical order for eleven hours, her brain had turned into spaghetti.
    “Time’s up,” said Miss Zarves. “Everyone back to work.”

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    Chapter 19 (third)
    Forever is Never
    Allison was still stuck on the nineteenth story.
    Fourteen two-minute breaks had passed.
    “It’s dictionary time,” said Miss Zarves.
    Everybody got out a dictionary. Allison found a dictionary in her desk, too.
    “What are we supposed to do with it?” she asked.
    “Memorize it,” said Nick.
    “But that’s impossible!” said Allison.
    “No, it’s easy,” Virginia assured her. “You memorize one word at a time, until you get a whole page. Then you go on to the next page.”
    “How many words have you memorized?” asked Allison.
    “I’m almost finished with the B’s,” Virginia said proudly. “And I’ve only been doing it for thirty-two years!”
    Allison opened her dictionary. Mrs. Jewls’s class! she suddenly remembered. She sighed with relief. For the last six days she’d been trying to remember where she came from.
    In her mind she went through everybody in her former class. She didn’t want to forget again. As she thought about each person, tears filled her eyes. She missed them very much. Even Jason. They were all so wonderful in their own special ways.
    When the two-minute break came, she talked to Mark again. He was the only person in the class who still seemed to have a brain.
    “How did we get here?” she