The Fantastic and Terrible Fame of Classroom 13

CHAPTER 1

Unfamous Ms. Linda

When not-famous schoolteacher Ms. Linda LaCrosse woke up Monday morning, she decided it would be another boring day. Little did she know how wrong she was.

First, she had been up late grading papers and forgotten to set her alarm. Ms. Linda didn’t realize it until her cat bit her nose and woke her up. “I’m going to be late! Again!”

Second, she put her right shoe on her left foot, and her left shoe on her right foot. Then she brushed her hair, put on her clothes, and hopped in the shower. As she rushed to school, she wondered why she was soaking wet.

You might think Ms. Linda was quite silly and should be famous, but she was not. (Not anymore…) Ms. Linda is not a pop star or a TV actress or a soccer player or a famous writer. (Like me, Honest Lee. What’s that? Yes, I am too famous!)

But Ms. Linda is related to someone who knows lots of famous people—her cousin Lucy LaRoux, who is a very famous agent who works at the Ace Agent Agency in Hollywood.

What’s an agent? Well, agents are the people who represent pop stars and TV actresses and soccer players and famous writers. They help them get work and help them stay famous. They also charge a great deal of money for their services. (Make a mental note, as this will be important later.)

“Ms. Linda! You are late again!” said the principal. His arms were crossed, and he was tapping his shoe against the floor tiles.

“I know, I know!” Ms. Linda said. She ran past him and straight to her class. As you might know, the students of the 13th Classroom can be quite a handful. And so Ms. Linda expected them to be causing trouble. Instead, she found them all sitting quietly, listening to a story told by someone sitting on her desk.

“…and so I said, ‘Don’t you dare!’ And do you know what Ten Bears did? He ate the entire tarantula.”

The whole class laughed.

“Though bears prefer honey, I suppose one would eat a spider,” Ms. Linda said. “How is that funny?”

“No, Ms. Linda,” said Teo. “Ten Bears isn’t an actual bear. He’s a human boy and he’s famous! I want to be just like him.”

“What’s he famous for?” Ms. Linda asked.

“For being on the Internet,” Teo said.

“But what is he famous for?” Ms. Linda asked. “What does he do?”

“He makes videos. On the Internet,” Teo said.

“I don’t understand this generation,” Ms. Linda said.

“And that’s why you’re not a famous agent like me,” said Lucy LaRoux, famous agent of Ace Agent Agency.

“Lucy?! What are you doing here?” Ms. Linda said, surprised to see her cousin outside of Hollywood.

“Well, my boss said we needed more kid stars, and I thought to myself, Where do I find a bunch of brats—ur, I mean, children? Naturally I thought of you. You work with children, so here I am. I plan to make all these kids famous!”

The students in Ms. Linda’s class screamed with glee. (Except for Yuna. She had no interest in being famous.)

Of Ms. Linda’s twenty-seven students, twenty-six of them were present. Not so surprisingly, Santiago was out again. (He wasn’t exactly “sick,” but his mom insisted he go to the hospital—just because one of his fingers fell off his hand. He didn’t think it was that big of a deal, but his mother quite disagreed.)

Of the twenty-six students who were in class, twenty-five of them were paying attention to the famous agent who worked at Ace Agent Agency. They never paid this much attention to Ms. Linda. She crossed her arms.

“Lucy, this is a classroom,” Ms. Linda said. “You can’t just walk in here and distract my students. They are here to learn. Not become famous.”

“Can’t we do both?” Ava asked.

“I don’t know.…” Ms. Linda answered.

“You don’t want to hold them back, do you?” Lucy asked. “Just because your fifteen minutes of fame didn’t work out—”

“Ms. Linda was famous?!” Jayden Jason asked, shocked.

“For what?!” asked Chloe.

“She hasn’t told you?” Lucy asked. “Well, let me fill you in.…”