6 How to Get a Million Dollars

Chapter 6 How to Get a Million Dollars After lunch we went outside for recess. Me and the guys went to the playground where the monkey bars used to be. Andrea, Emily, and some of their girly friends came out there too. Everybody was complaining about what was happening to our school. "Stop whining," I told them. "All we need to do is get a million dollars." "How are you going to get a million dollars, Arlo?" asked Andrea. "Are you going to rob a bank?" "Of course not!" I said. "I'll just go to the bank and get the money from the cash machine. That's what my mom does." Andrea rolled her eyes. "You have to put money into a bank if you want to take it out, dumbhead!" Andrea

said. "You're the dumbhead!" I told her. "What's the point of putting money in the bank if you're just gonna take it out?" "Let's see how much money we have right now," Michael suggested. We emptied our pockets. I had a nickel and three pennies. Ryan had a quarter. We put all the coins in a pile, and Andrea counted it. "It comes to $1.04," she said. "And a Life-Saver." "That's not even close to a million dollars," said Neil. "Sure it is," I told him. "If we just did that a million more times, we'd have a million dollars."

"That's ridiculous, Arlo," Andrea said. "So is your face," I told her. "We could bake cookies," Emily suggested. "If we sold a million cookies for a dollar each, we'd make a million dollars." "You're not gonna sell a million cookies," said Ryan. "What if we sold just one really big cookie and charged a million dollars for it?" I suggested. "Maybe we could borrow a million

dollars from our parents," said Michael. "We would have to pay it back," Andrea said. "So we would still have to get a million dollars." "I know!" I said, snapping my fingers. "We could clean couches." Everybody looked at me like I was crazy. But it made perfect sense. My mom is always picking loose change out of the back of our couch. She calls it her secret couch money. We could go around town asking people if we could clean their couches and keep all the secret couch money. "I don't think so, dude," Michael said. "We could sell my little brother," suggested Neil the nude kid. "That's against the law," said Andrea. "It is not," I said. "Is too," said Andrea. We went back and forth like that for a

while. Suddenly, Mr. Tony came over. He's a big guy with a mustache who runs the after-school program. "Hi, Mr. Tony!" we all said. "What are you doing here?" asked Michael. "School doesn't let out until three o'clock." "Because of the budget cuts," he said, "they told me I have to be on duty for recess." We all giggled, because Mr. Tony said "on duty," which sounds exactly the same as "on doody." The weird thing is, it's okay to say "duty," but you're not supposed to say "doody." Nobody knows why. So, any time anybody says "duty," you have to giggle because it sounds like they said "doody." That's the first rule of being a kid. Mr. Tony asked us what we were talking about, and we told him some of our ideas to

get a million dollars. He gathered us around him, like we were having a football huddle. "I have a better idea," Mr. Tony whispered. "Here's the plan. We tell the government we have a thousand kids at our school. Yeah, that's it. And we tell 'em our school is ten stories high. We tell 'em our school is the biggest school in the whole country." "Why would that get us a million dollars?" asked Andrea.