3 Ch3-Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too

Chapter 3 Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too A few days before Valentine's Day, we had to bring in valentines for the whole class. When I crossed Walnut Street with the guys, Mr. Louie held up his stop-sign guitar. He told us he was excited about the big Valentine's Day festival he was organizing.

"It's gonna be groovy," Mr. Louie said. "I'm lining up some big musical acts!" "Like who?" Ryan asked. "Dig this," Mr. Louie said. "So far I've got Miss Holly, Mr. Docker, Mr. Loring, Ms. Hannah, Miss Small..." "Those aren't musical acts," Michael said. "They're teachers!" "We're gonna have a special surprise guest too," Mr. Louie said. But he wouldn't tell us who it was. When we got to school, Miss Daisy and Mr. Macky were walking up the steps together. Miss Daisy was carrying a heart- shaped cake with bonbons on top. That's her favorite kind of candy.

"Do you have a special valentine, A.J.?" Mr. Macky asked me. "No," I told him. "Valentines are dumb." Actually, I did have a special valentine. My valentine is Mrs. Cooney, our school nurse. She is beautiful. Her eyes are like cotton candy. I would marry her when I grow up, but she's already married to some guy named Mr. Cooney. Bummer in the summer! When we got to class, everybody wanted to eat cake. But Miss Daisy said we had to do writing first. I hate writing. She told us to take out our valentine cards and a pencil. We had to write one thing we liked about every person in

the class. I wrote Ryan's card first. It was easy: I liked if when you ate the seat cushion on the school bus. Then I wrote Michael's card: I liked it when we watched the Super Bowl on your big-screen TV. Then I wrote a card for Neil, who we call Neil the nude kid even though he wears clothes: I liked it when you brought your ferret to school and it pooped on Emily's head.

It was harder to think of something I liked about the girls. This is what I wrote on Emily's card: I liked it when that children's book author visited our school and her pet raptor attacked you. I picked up Andrea's card. It was the hardest of all. I couldn't think of anything I liked about Andrea. My mom always tells me that if you don't have anything nice to say about somebody, don't say anything at all. But I had to write something on Andrea's card. So I wrote this: I liked it when you were absent on Take Our Daughters to Work Day.

Miss Daisy collected all the cards and sorted them while we did a math work sheet. Then she passed out all the valentines. Emily looked at me. She was holding my card. Then she started crying and went running out of the room. Sheesh, get a grip! What a crybaby! It wasn't my fault she got attacked by a raptor. Andrea was reading my card too. "That's horrible, Arlo!" she said. "So is your face," I told her. "You know, Arlo," Andrea said, "my mother says that when a boy acts mean to a girl, it means he's secretly in love