7 Ch7-Circle of Friends

Chapter 7 Circle of Friends "I love math!" Ms. Todd said after recess, smiling her smiley face and clapping her hands and running around the class for no reason. Where does she get all the energy? "I love math too!" said Andrea.

"If you had ten chocolate ice cream cones," said Ms. Todd, "and you gave me five of them, how many chocolate ice-cream cones would you have left? A.J.?" "None," I said. "Because I would throw them all in the garbage. I like mint chip ice cream."

Ms. Todd wrote something on her piece of paper. Then she made us do addition and subtraction for about a million hundred hours. The worst part was, she made me be study buddies with Andrea. It was horrible. "Isn't math fun, A.J.?" asked Andrea. "Oh yes," I said, "and so is being attacked by an angry gorilla." Ms. Todd is just like Andrea. She loves school. She loves reading. She loves math. She loves everything. Ms. Todd and Andrea are like two peas in an iPod. "Let's draw pictures!" Ms. Todd said after math was over. "I love drawing pictures!"

"Do you hate anything?" I asked Ms. Todd. She thought about it for a minute. "I hate people who hate," Ms. Todd finally said. "I hate people who hate people who hate," said Ryan. "I hate people who hate people who hate people who hate," said Michael. "I hate people who—" I never got the chance to finish my sentence because Ms. Todd told us to be quiet and start drawing. Andrea drew a picture of her face with a butterfly on her nose. Emily drew a picture of flowers from all different countries

holding hands with each other. (What a dumbhead! Flowers don't even have hands.) I drew a picture of some alien spaceships attacking a school with laser beams. Then I drew this cool action figure named Striker Smith flying in on a jet plane and shooting the aliens until they were all dead. It was awesome. "That's quite violent, A.J.," Ms. Todd said when she walked around the class, looking at our pictures. Then she wrote something down on that dumb piece of paper of hers. What was her problem? Every time I said anything, she wrote something down on that dumb piece of paper. I

couldn't take it anymore. "What are you writing on that piece of paper?" I asked. "Oh, you'll find out," Ms. Todd said. After we finished our pictures, Ms. Todd said the rain had stopped so we could go out to the playground to burn off some energy. "Can we play tag?" I asked. "Please please please please please?" "Tag can be a very violent game," Ms. Todd said. "Let's play circle of friends instead!" "What's that?" "It's a lot like tag," Ms. Todd explained, "except that when you tag people, they