Free Miss Laney Is Zany! by Dan Gutman Page B

stars.
    Girls’ bathrooms are weird.
    “Why is your office in the bathroom?” asked Emily.
    “Because of budget cuts, they couldn’t afford to give me a regular office,” Miss Laney told us. “But a bathroom is perfectfor speech class. This room has really good acoustics.”
    “I don’t see any good cue sticks,” I said. “My uncle has a pool table in his basement, and he’s got some really good cue sticks.”
    “Not ‘cue sticks,’ dumbhead!” Andrea said, rolling her eyes. “‘Acoustics’!”
    It sounded a lot like “a cue stick” to me.
    “Do you know what the word ‘acoustics’ means?” Miss Laney asked.
    “Yes!” Andrea said, “acoustics is the science of sound.”
    “Very good, Andrea!” Miss Laney said, all smiley.
    Little Miss Brownnoser knows about dumb stuff like acoustics because she reads the encyclopedia for the fun of it. What is her problem?
    “Wait a minute,” Emily said. “If this is the speech room now, where should we go to the bathroom?”
    “In your pants!” I said. Ryan cracked up.
    “Starting today,” Miss Laney told us, “the girls go to the bathroom in the boys’ bathroom.”
    What?!
    “If the girls go to the bathroom in the boys’ bathroom, where will the boys go to the bathroom?” Ryan asked.
    “Out there,” Miss Laney said.
    I looked out the window. There was a tree outside.
    “We have to use a tree?” I asked.
    “There’s a porta-potty near the tree,” Miss Laney said.
    I stood on my tiptoes at the window and saw the porta-potty.

    “I’d rather use the tree,” I said.
    “Yeah, can we use the tree?” asked Ryan.
    “That could kill the tree, Arlo,” Andrea said.
    “Your face could kill a tree,” I told Andrea.
    “There must be some mistake, Miss Laney,” Emily said. “We don’t need speech class.”
    “Yeah,” I agreed, “we already know how to talk.”
    “Of course you know how to talk,” Miss Laney said. “But Mr. Granite told me you’re having a little trouble understanding idioms, A.J.”
    “Oh, snap!” said Ryan. “She called you an idiot!”
    “And Ryan, sometimes you have difficulty with R sounds,” Miss Laney said. “And Emily, you have trouble pronouncing the letters T and D . And Andrea, you occasionally have trouble with grammar.”
    Little Miss Perfect looked all mad. I guess nobody ever told her she had anything wrong with her before.
    “Speech is boring,” I said.
    “Yeah, we don’t want to be here,” said Ryan.
    “I speak perfectly,” Andrea insisted.
    “Is that so?” asked Miss Laney. “Well, let’s find out!”
    That’s when the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened. Miss Laney took a top hat out of the desk drawer and put it on her head. * Then she took a little boom box out of the desk and pushed a button on it. Thumping music came out of the boom box. Miss Laney started to dance around. The lights in the bathroom started flashing on and off.
    Next, a banner dropped down from the top of the stalls. It said: I BET YOU CAN’T SAY THIS !
    Then a deep voice came out of the boom box.

    “Welcome to everyone’s favorite TV game show, I Bet You Can’t Say This! And here’s your host, Misssssssssssssss …Laney!”
    Wild applause came out of the boom box.
    “Thank you, thank you!” said Miss Laney. “Are you kids ready to play I Bet You Can’t Say This! ?”
    “Yes!” said Andrea and Emily.
    “No!” said me and Ryan.
    “I love game shows!” said Emily, clapping her hands excitedly.
    “All righty then!” Miss Laney said. “We’ll start the game in a minute. But first, this important message…”
     
    Hey kids! Do you have trouble saying the letter S? When you say the word “lion,” does it come out like“wion”? Do you stutter or lisp? Don’t feel bad. You’re not alone. Millions of kids just like you have the same problem. But you’re in luck! With the help of Miss Laney’s Amazing Zany Brainy No Painy Speech Fixer Upper, you’ll be able to say hard words like