2 Ch2-Miss Lazar to the Rescue

Chapter 2 Miss Lazar to the Rescue Now the water was sliding under the boys' room door and into the hallway! The whole school was going to be flooded! For a second or two, I thought, This is great! If the school flooded, we would get to go home. Maybe the erupting toilet

volcano wasn't such a bad thing after all. "Did you put something down the toilet, A.J.?" Mr. Klutz asked me. "No!" I said. "I just flushed it, and—" I never got the chance to finish my sen- tence, because at that very moment there was an ear-piercing shriek of a whistle, and it sounded like a lawn mower was coming down the hallway. It was Miss Lazar, our school custodian! She was riding her motorized scooter. Miss Lazar was wearing her big blue overalls with the letters "sc" on the front. She carried one of those toilet plunger thingies with a suction cup on the end. My parents have one at home just like it.

Miss Lazar and the scooter screeched to a stop right in front of us. "Have no fear, students! It is I, Super Custodian!" said Miss Lazar as she hopped off the scooter. "What happened?" "A.J. had a bathroom emergency," said Andrea Young, this really annoying girl in my class with curly brown hair who I hate. "I did not!" I said. "You got here just in time, Miss Lazar!" said Mr. Klutz. "The toilet must have

backed up." Mr. Klutz totally didn't know what he was talking about. The toilet didn't back up. It didn't move an inch. "This looks like a job for Super Custodian!" said Miss Lazar. "What a mess," Andrea said. "A.J. made a big mess." "The messier the better," said Miss Lazar. "I love messes!" "You do?" I asked "Why?" "If kids didn't make any messes, I wouldn't have a job," said Miss Lazar. "So make all the messes you want. In fact, I wish you kids would throw more garbage on the floor. I don't have enough to clean up."

So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on Andrea. "Stand aside, students," said Miss Lazar. "Super Custodian is here to save the day! Anytime fingerpaint is spilled, or some- body loses a retainer in the garbage can, or a child throws up, I am at your service to—" "Can you just clean up the mess, please?" asked Mr. Klutz. "You can count on me!" Miss Lazar said. She put on these gigantic yellow plastic gloves and pushed open the boys' room door. It looked like a lake in there. Miss Daisy told us we should go back to our classroom. But before we could make a move, we heard Miss Lazar's voice. "Aha!" she shouted. "Here's the

problem!" Miss Lazar came back out of the bath- room with something in her hand. "Crayons!" she said. "Somebody stuffed a bunch of crayons down the toilet." Mr. Klutz and Miss Daisy looked at me like I was the one who stuffed the crayons down the toilet. I didn't. I really didn't. Why would I do a dumb thing like that? From the hall- way we could see the water was starting to go down the