8 This Is Not a Drill

8 This Is Not a Drill I don't know what happened to Mrs. Jafee after that. She wasn't in school the next morning. I don't know if she's ever coming back. Other than that, it was a perfectly normal day at Ella Mentry School. And by that I mean the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened.

We were in Mr. Cooper's class. Well, that's not the weird part. We're in Mr. Cooper's class every day. We pledged the allegiance and did Word of the Day. "Okay, everybody," said Mr. Cooper. "Turn to page twenty-three in your math books." Ugh. Not again! Why do we have to learn math if we have calculators? That's when the weird stuff started happening. An announcement came over the loudspeaker. It was Mrs. Stoker. "Good morning, students and teachers," she said. "Hey, did you hear they're going to start putting babies in the army? Yeah, they'll be in the infantry. Get it? Infantry? Babies?" I didn't get it. "But seriously," continued Mrs.

Stoker, "our security guard, Officer Spence, has an announcement to make." That was weird. Officer Spence hardly ever makes announcements. "Starting right now," said Officer Spence, "we are in a lockdown situation. You all know what to do." A lockdown drill? You know what that means. No math! Yay! Mr. Cooper slammed his math book closed. He looked really mad. Every time he tries to teach page twenty-three in our math books, there's some kind of interruption.* "We had a lockdown drill last week," Mr. Cooper said. "Why do we have to do another one so soon?"

Do they have lockdown drills in your school? That's when you have to lock the whole school down. So it has the perfect name. At our school, we have a lockdown drill every few months. Mr. Klutz always said we had to be prepared for any kind of emergency situation. We knew what to do. Everybody got out of their seats and moved to the wall

in the corner of the classroom, away from the doors and windows. "I bet some aliens from another planet have landed," whispered Neil. "It could be zombies," whispered Michael. "It's probably alien zombies," whispered. "I'm scared," whispered Emily, who's scared of everything. "Shhhhhhh!" said Mr. Cooper. "Quiet, everyone." "Speaking of drills," said Mrs. Stoker over the loudspeaker, "the other day I drilled some holes in two pieces of metal and bolted them together. At first it was boring, but then it was riveting. Get it? Drills? Boring? Riveting?" I didn't get it.

"Mrs. Stoker shouldn't be making jokes during a lockdown drill," whispered Andrea. "It's not appropriate." For once in her life, Little Miss Perfect was right. Lockdowns are serious stuff. We're supposed to stay completely quiet and wait until somebody announces "all clear." "Did you hear about the guy who got caught drilling a hole in a fence?" Mrs. Stoker continued over the loudspeaker. "The police are looking