The Disastrous Magical Wishes of Classroom 13

CHAPTER 1

Wishless Ms. Linda

When wishless schoolteacher Ms. Linda LaCrosse woke up Thursday morning, she decided it would be another unfortunate day. And she was right.

First, she washed her hair with toothpaste, then brushed her teeth with shampoo and conditioner. It did not taste good—but her hair was minty fresh. When she got in her car, she realized it was out of gas. So she had to walk to work. On her way, the wind grew rather strong. It blew her down, and she scraped her knee. She wished that she had a wish (that would come true). But she didn’t have any wishes.

I did mention she was wishless.

Ms. Linda was almost to work, when she noticed a giant hole in the sidewalk. It appeared that someone had been digging. Probably mole people, she thought.

As she was walking around the hole, a large gust of wind came along. It blew her so hard, she fell backward into the hole.

Bonk! She fell right on her bottom. Halfway buried in the rubble beside her, she saw a golden lamp.

This was not the kind of lamp you plug in to light a room. It was an ancient oil lamp that could light up a room if you filled it with oil and lit it. (An oil lamp was one of the ways people saw at night a long time ago. Of course, then some wise guy went and invented electricity and put all the oil lamps out of business.)

“What an odd place to put a lamp,” Ms. Linda noted. She pulled the golden lamp out of the dirt and examined it. “It’s quite beautiful, though. I’ll take it to school and show my classroom. We can talk about other things one can find in the ground—rocks, worms, dinosaur bones.… Yes, what a great lesson!”

As she crawled out of the hole, Ms. Linda thought her day was starting to look up. Then, several bees started to chase her. She was only partially allergic and would not die. But bee stings still hurt. Ms. Linda knew, because bees loved to sting her. She had been stung one hundred and seventy-three times. And that was just this year.

The bees chased her all the way to the school.

When she got inside, she slammed the door shut and watched all the bees bop against the glass. “Ha! You didn’t get me!” Ms. Linda said. But one bee had flown ahead to wait for her inside the school. It stung her right on the lip.

“Ow! Ow! Ow!” Ms. Linda cried.

“You’re late again, Ms. Linda,” said the principal, pointing to his watch.

“Sawwy, Mistew Pwincipaw,” Ms. Linda said. She could no longer pronounce her r’s or her l’s because her lip was swollen.

She rushed down the hall in her heels—click clack, click clack, click clack—all the way to her classroom. Her classroom was number 13, which, if you don’t know, is a very unlucky number.

“Oh, students, I apowogize tewwibwy fow being tewwibwy wate,” Ms. Linda said. “I’ve had quite the awfuw mowning!”

Of her twenty-seven students (including Earl the Hamster), twenty-five of them were present. Santiago “Sniffles” Santos was not at school. He had a terrible flu. He begged his mom to let him go to school so he didn’t miss anything fun, but she insisted he stay home.

William was also not in class. He had told his grandma he had a stomachache so he could stay home. But he did not have a stomachache. He just wanted to stay home all day and watch cartoons.

Of the twenty-five students who were in class, only twenty-two of them were awake. Of those twenty-two, seven were on their phones. Of the fifteen left, two were arguing (over something dumb) and three were drawing Jedi lightsabers (which are not dumb at all).

Of the ten students left, four were playing a card game, three were flying drones, two were studying for today’s quiz, and one was running in circles. (You might think I’m talking about Earl, but I am not.)

Out of all twenty-five students present, none of them were happy to see Ms. Linda. They all liked Ms. Linda (especially after she gave them each a check for over a billion dollars), but they did not want to see Ms. Linda. Not today. Her lips were swollen to the size of two bananas, and she’d broken out into a terrible rash.

She looked quite monstrous.

“Ms. Linda!” Ava said, covering her eyes. “What happened to your face?”

“Are you turning into a zombie?” Teo asked.

“I am not tuwning into a zombie,” Ms. Linda explained. “I am pawtiawwy awwewgic to bee stings, and I was stung this mowning.”

“Ew,” said Mya.

“Gross,” said Madison.

“Votre visage est horrible!” shouted Hugo, who was from France and spoke only in French.

“That’s enough, chiwdwen,” Ms. Linda said. “Wet’s not waste anymowe time. You’we hewe to weawn, and I am hewe to teach. Today I found a gowden wamp.”

“You mean a golden lamp,” corrected Olivia.

“That’s what I said, a gowden wamp,” repeated Ms. Linda.

Ms. Linda pulled the golden lamp out of her purse. When the students saw it, they were already bored. “That lamp doesn’t even have a plug,” said Mark. “How’s it supposed to work?”

“Weww, wet me expwain,” Ms. Linda started. Noticing how dirty the lamp was, she gave it a hard rub with the palm of her hand. There was a loud crack of lightning and a poof of purple smoke—then a ghostly blue man appeared, floating in the middle of the classroom.