16. The Strangest School

THE STRANGEST SCHOOL 16 The school doors flew open. "Sam! Lucy! Antonio! Where have you been?" Ms. Grinker yelled from the top of the stairs. Mr. Nekobi stood beside her. He had a slight grin on his face. "Recess ended thirty minutes ago!" Ms. Grinker continued. Thirty minutes ago? Sam thought. It feels like we were gone a lot longer than that!

"I'm sorry, Ms. Grinker," Sam said. "We got lost in the fog." Ms. Grinker frowned. "What fog?" she asked, looking around. "Anyway, a little fog shouldn't keep you from getting to class. Especially not if you all want to continue being hall monitors!" Ms. Grinker stopped as she turned to go back inside. She eyed the jungle gym. "Hey..." she said. "Didn't the jungle gym used to be over there?" "Oh no, Ms. Grinker," Mr. Nekobi said. "It was being moved today. Didn't you get my note?"

Ms. Grinker glared. "No. I didn't." Sam and Lucy and Antonio giggled. "Enough laughing!" she barked. "You three, come inside! And wipe your feet— somehow you got covered in mud!" Ms. Grinker shook her head. Then the two adults stepped back inside. Lucy looked down at her clothes. "She's right. We are a mess, aren't we?" Antonio chuckled. "Well, we did just hike through a wild jungle!" "And we braved a hedge maze full of monstrous playground stuff!" Sam added.

Sam looked around. He looked at the playground. He looked at the woods beyond the playground. Sam swallowed. "Lucy, Antonio," he said. "Orson Eerie is much stronger than we ever imagined. His powers go past the regular school grounds." Lucy nodded. "I'll look closely at Orson Eerie's journal to find anything I might have missed before. Who knows where else his powers reach..."

Antonio threw his arms around his friends' shoulders. "Let's worry about that tomorrow," he said. "For the rest of the day, I just want to relax. No monster jungle gyms, no hedge mazes, and hopefully no homework! Please tell me tomorrow is Saturday!" "Um, Antonio," Lucy said, chuckling. "Tomorrow is Tuesday." Antonio groaned. "Of course this mess happened on a Monday!" The three friends laughed, and then began walking toward the stairs.

WHOOSH! Sam turned in time to see the soccer ball bouncing down the jungle gym slide. It rolled to a stop at Sam's feet. Sam slowly and carefully bent down and picked it up. He smiled with relief— it was just a regular old ball now. Sam tucked it under his arm, and together he and his friends walked back into the strangest school anyone had ever known: Eerie Elementary.