Free I'm Going to Be Famous by Tom Birdseye Page B

does that. I act interested in the picture of Lincoln Elementary hanging on the wall, or the photocopy machine, or the garbage can in the corner. Then she looks back at her work and begins typing, and I can watch her again.
    I think I might learn to type like that. It looks like fun. I could sit down and bang out letters, and books, and … maybe even a world record. Yeah, I’d be the fastest typist alive. I’d type 800 words in one minute. I’d write my life story, and how I became famous. I’d be admired around the globe for my skill. My fingers would dance across the typewriter keys. Laura McNeil would realize what a wonderful person I am. She’d fall in …
    â€œArlo Moore.”
    Aiyee, it’s Mrs. Caldwell.
    â€œPlease come in and have a seat,” she says, her voice sounding like a truck in low gear.
    I knew it. I can tell. It’s Christmas backward. My time has come. Goodbye, cruel world. Slowly I enter her office. Step by step, inch by inch.
    â€œWe seem to have a problem, Arlo,” she says, sitting down at her desk. I keep standing up. I’m too nervous to sit down.
    Mrs. Caldwell still looks like a Japanese sumo wrestler with a dress on. She’s been the principal here for eighteen years. I wonder if she’s always looked that way.
    She stares hard at me with eyes that make me sweat. “I have information that you and a few other students are planning to break world records,” she says.
    â€œWell …, yes, Mrs. Caldwell. Is that a problem?” I ask, glancing nervously around her office. The walls are covered with pictures of students and teachers. A rose sits on her desk in a glass vase.
    â€œNo,” she answers. “Not in and of itself, it’s not. Arlo, please sit down. You don’t have to stand. Relax.”
    Why do adults always seem to ask kids to do the impossible? I sit down anyway and try to relax.
    â€œThe problem is this, Arlo,” she continues. “Benjamin Hamilton is sick.”
    â€œBen? Sick?” I ask. I didn’t know that. I thought he had gone to Portland with his mom for something.
    â€œYes. He’s not at school today because of stomach problems,” Mrs. Caldwell informs me. “His mother called. It seems that Ben has been eating large quantities of lemons, including the seeds and skin, in an attempt to train for this world-record-breaking event you have scheduled. All of these lemons have made him sick. Too much acid, I think. It’s very unhealthy.”
    â€œPoor Ben,” I say, more to myself than to Mrs. Caldwell.
    â€œYes, poor Ben,” she agrees. “Also, there is a problem in that Mike Snead is absent from school today.”
    â€œMike, too?” I ask.
    â€œYes, Mike has a headache. It seems he tried to eat a quart of ice cream in the bathroom this morning before breakfast. His mother reports that he ate so fast that he fainted from lack of oxygen and the cold ice cream. He hit his head on the bathtub and had to have three stitches in his forehead.”
    â€œPoor Mike,” I mumble.
    â€œYes, poor Mike,” Mrs. Caldwell agrees again. “This, too, I believe, is a result of an attempt to break a world record.”
    I can feel the winds of doom blowing my way. I’d better try to talk my way out of this. “Mrs. Caldwell, I think—”
    â€œAlso,” she interrupts like a cannon, “there is a problem in that there is gambling in Lincoln Elementary School.”
    â€œGambling?” I ask. What is she talking about?
    â€œYes, gambling,” she answers. “I have information that there are bets on whether or not you, or Ben, or Mike, or even your sister, Kerry, can succeed at breaking these records.”
    I look directly at her for the first time. “Really? People are betting on us?”
    â€œ And I have information that the betting is spreading.”
    â€œSpreading?” I ask with a shiver. Where is she getting