8. This Means War!

8 This Means War! Smoke was pouring out of my ears. Well, not really. But if smoke could pour out of somebody's ears, it definitely would have been pouring out of mine. I walked a million hundred miles to the vomitorium for lunch. It used to be called the cafetorium, but then some first grader threw up in there. I saw all my friends

sitting at our usual table. Our lunch lady, Ms. Hall, was behind the counter. "We have a special lunch today," she told me. "You have the choice of frog legs, fish eyeballs, roasted grasshoppers, or braunschweiger." "What's braunschweiger?" I asked. "It's a sausage that tastes like what a wet dog smells like," said Ms. Hall. Ugh. I thought I was gonna throw up. "I'm not hungry," I said. "Just kidding!" said Ms. Hall. "Do you want a hot dog, a grilled cheese sandwich, or chicken strips?" Now the other grown-ups were pulling pranks on me! It was contagious! I took a hot dog and went over to the table where everybody was sitting. I told the gang what Miss Banks did to me with the glasses of water and the voice-activated paper towel dispenser. "She's out to get me," I complained as I took a bite out of my hot dog.

"She's out to get all of us," Michael said. "Miss Banks pulls lots of pranks," said Neil. "She's like a prank machine." "We've got to get back at her," I said, lowering my voice so they couldn't hear me at the other tables. "Yeah," everybody agreed, even Andrea and Emily. "We're not gonna take it," whispered Neil. "If Miss Banks is going to prank us all the time, we should prank her right back!" "Yeah," whispered Ryan. "We'll show

her!" "Nobody pranks us and gets away with it," whispered Alexia. "That's right!" I whispered. "So what can we do to get back at her?" asked Andrea. Hmmm. For once in her life, Andrea had a good question. None of us had ever pranked a teacher before. This was new territory. "We could get some fake vomit and put it on her chair," Michael suggested.

"Nah," I said. "That's the oldest trick in the book." "Where would we get fake vomit anyway?" asked Ryan. "From Rent-Fake-Vomit," I said. "You can rent anything." "We could put yellow sticky notes all over her car," suggested Neil. "That would be funny." "I don't know if Miss Banks has a car,"

I said. "What if we TP'd her house?" suggested Michael. "We don't know where she lives," said Ryan. "We could put soy sauce in her coffee," suggested Alexia. "That would be nasty." "We could empty out her desk drawer and fill it with Cheerios," suggested Emily. "We don't have any soy sauce or Cheerios," I reminded them. "Then what are we gonna do?" asked Neil. I thought about it. Then I thought about it some more. I thought so hard that I thought my head was going to explode. I looked at the clock. Soon it would be time for dismissal. We had to come up with something fast. Emily got up to scrape her tray into the garbage can. As she did, one of her books fell off the table. That's when I came up with the most brilliant idea for a prank in the history of