Thursday flew by uneventfully. Dolly performed a few more tricks for her new friends, D.W. and Vicita continued to feud with Nadine and Emily, and all the kids in Mr. Wald's class worked furiously on their science reports. When Friday morning arrived, Alan, Prunella, and their classmates were in for a huge and not-so-pleasant surprise.

She was a six-foot-tall, youngish, slender moose woman with curly blond hair that hung around her antlers like pasta. She wore a stylish green dress with a matching belt around the middle, and a pair of black high-heeled shoes. She was definitely not Mr. Baker. Although she looked like a person who had every reason to be happy, she was scowling slightly, as if she would rather be anywhere than in front of a room full of fifth-graders. On the blackboard next to her was written the name, MRS. KRANTZ.

"I'll start with the roll call," she said in a voice that seemed affected and bored at the same time. "Maxwell Thomas Alwyn."

"Here," said Max, a dog boy who wore a bicycle helmet.

"Okaaay. Bonnie Josephine Chandler."

"Here," said Bonnie, a blond elephant girl.

Mrs. Krantz said "okaaay" after calling each name, as if it were a necessary incantation to prevent the pupils from suddenly vanishing. After she had finished calling the roll and led the kids in a snail-paced recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, she picked up a piece of chalk and set about to teach. "Today's lesson is on adverbs, okaaay?" She spoke slowly, as if fearing that the students might not be quick enough to catch all her words. "Can anybody give me an example of an adverb?"

Alan immediately raised his hand. "Certainly," he replied.

The moose woman stared at him, apparently expecting to hear more.

"Certainly is an adverb," Alan added, lowering his hand.

After spending a moment or two lost in thought, Mrs. Krantz frowned at Alan disapprovingly. "Oh, a smart aleck. What's your name, young man?"

"Alan Powers, ma'am," was Alan's polite reply. "Where's Mr. Baker?"

The new teacher took a step towards Alan. "Ralph Baker no longer teaches at this school," she answered in a piercing falsetto voice. "Shame on the man, teaching children to believe in unicorns and space aliens and other such nonsense, when he should be teaching them the basics--reading, writing, and...and that other thing that starts with R. Okaaay."

As first period lumbered on, Alan increasingly saw, and felt, the indignant stares of the other kids. He could tell that he had become the second least popular person in the room.

----

In Mr. Wald's room, his fourth-graders were presenting summaries of their science reports. Mavis stood beaming at the front of the classroom, Binky at her side, telling the fascinating story of a new energy storage technology.

"The scientists at Los Cactos say the new crystal battery should hold fifty times as much power as any previous type of battery," she related. "They say everybody will soon be driving electric cars powered by crystals."

Arthur raised his hand. "Did they ever find out who stole the crystal from the lab?"

"No, they didn't," Mavis replied. "It's really weird. They say somebody got past the motion sensors and turned off the security cameras."

"Whoa," marveled George. "To do that, you'd have to be, like, invisible."

"Hey, Dolly," said Francine to the rat girl seated next to her, "can you turn invisible?"

"I didn't do it," Dolly answered without turning her face.

"Thank you very much, Mavis and Binky," said Mr. Wald, and the two kids returned to their desks. "Fern, Adil, you're up."

Adil and Fern rose to their feet, walked to the front of the room, and turned to face the other pupils.

"Our report is about..." they said in unison, then stared at each other in surprise.

They remained stunned and speechless for a number of seconds, and then Mr. Wald spoke up. "The cameras are rolling, kids. Say something."

Fern could only stammer. "Y-you wrote a report too?" she asked Adil.

"Yes," answered the perplexed Adil. "Now we have two reports."

Mr. Wald grew suspicious. "I thought I made it clear that you were supposed to work on the report as a team," he said with firmness.

Alarmed, Fern tried to defend herself. "I...I'm sorry, Mr. Wald, but...well, Adil's new to the country, and his English isn't very good, so...so I decided to write the report myself."

"I see," said Mr. Wald, drumming his fingers. "Did you even bother to ask for Adil's help?"

Fern lowered her face in shame. "No, sir."

"Fern would not talk to me," Adil chimed in. "She was angry with me. I did not know that she would write a report, so I wrote one."

"Is that true, Fern?" asked the teacher.

"Yes, sir," Fern mumbled.

Mr. Wald reached for the red pen lying on his desk. "Lack of teamwork, failure to communicate," he said analytically, as if diagnosing a disease. "Twenty- five percent off your final score."

"WHAT?" Fern became so outraged that her ears stood on end. "But I worked on my report day and night! I worked on it during recess and lunch hour! I even worked on it at the TV studio!"

Her hand shot over her mouth when she realized what she had just revealed. A breathless silence fell over the entire class.

Beat spoke up. "What were you doing at the TV studio?"

"Yeah," Muffy added. "Were you in a TV show, or something?"

Grinding his teeth nervously, Binky glanced around at the other kids. They knew that he and Fern had been disappearing immediately after school for some time now. In a matter of seconds they would guess Fern's secret...and his own would be exposed as a natural consequence...

His only chance was to distract attention from himself. "Hey, I know," he said with a huge grin, and then started to sing, "Mary Moo Cow, Mary Moo Cow..."

"Shut up, Binky!" Fern snapped. "I'm only the voice! I don't dance around in a cow costume, like you do!"

Binky suddenly felt as if he had just gone seventeen rounds with Slam Wilson while being forced to wear a dress. All eyes turned to him in amazement, and it seemed to him as though they were boring through his skull with laser beams. He didn't know what to do. And when Binky Barnes didn't know what to do, he threatened people.

Shaking a fist, he growled, "The first person to breathe a word of this to anyone gets a free clobbering, compliments of me." All the seated kids fell silent and looked toward the front of the room...

...just in time to witness the final embarrassment. The contrite Adil placed his hands on Fern's trembling shoulders and said to her, "Fern, I do not want you to be angry. Fern, you are beautiful."

Paroxysms of laughter erupted throughout the room. Fern, blushing with shame and anger, marched back to her desk, sat down, and placed her head in her hands.

Once the laughter subsided, Adil turned to the class and announced calmly, "My report is about the discovery of water on the planet Mars."

----

The welcome tolling of the end-of-period bell finally arrived. "I'll see you in history class, okaaay?" Mrs. Krantz droned as the relieved fifth-graders hurried from the room to enjoy a few minutes of respite.

"Man, she is, like, the dorkiest teacher ever," Max complained to Lucy de los Santos, the Latina monkey girl.

"You are, like, so right," replied Lucy in her helium voice. "Like, what did I do in a past life to deserve her?"

Alan followed the pair out of the classroom, while Floyd Walton, a cat boy, and Patty Duff, an aardvark girl with glasses, took up his rear. "Nice going, Brain," said Patty with a bitter tone. "You got Mr. Baker fired. Now look what we're stuck with."

Surprised, Alan turned to face her. "What do you mean, I got him fired?"

"Everybody knows it was you who complained about him to Mr. Ratburn," Floyd interjected. "At least he was interesting. Mrs. Krantz is the All-Powerful Queen of Boring."

"Okaaay?" Patty squealed sarcastically.

"Argh!" Prunella rushed by them, clutching her ears. "Make her stop! I do believe in unicorns! I do! I do!"

As Alan stepped aside to evade the accusing glares of Patty and Floyd, he bumped into Marina, knocking her cane from her hand. Apologizing profusely, he crouched down to pick up the cane and return it, only to find that Marina had also bent over. They laid their hands on the cane at about the same instant.

"Oh," said Alan meekly. "I guess you didn't need my help after all."

"That's okay," said Marina. When she was standing again, she shook her head in wonderment. "This new teacher is awful, Alan. It's like listening to an out-of-tune orchestra. For once in my life I wish I was deaf as well as blind."

"I'd better ask Mr. Ratburn what happened," said Alan, walking alongside the rabbit girl. "I can't believe he'd fire Mr. Baker because of something I said. There he is now."

Upon seeing Mr. Ratburn next to the principal's office, Alan took his leave of Marina and walked hurriedly along the hallway. Bonnie, who had caught up with Prunella, watched him as he began to talk with the interim principal. "I'll bet he's thanking him for getting rid of Mr. Baker," she remarked. "He was The Rat's star pupil last year. He has iiiinfluence."

"He looks more like he's begging for Mr. Baker to come back," was Prunella's reply.

In front of his office, Principal Ratburn was explaining his actions to Alan. "You're not the only student who complained about Mr. Baker's theories," he informed the boy. "The school board was already considering taking action against him. All they needed was a little nudge."

"But I'd rather have him than Mrs. Krantz," Alan pleaded. "Her voice is like fingernails scratching a blackboard."

"It always takes a day or two to get used to a new teacher," said Ratburn. "Now run along. I have some cheaters to deal with."

Exasperated, Alan slowly shuffled away. Fern and Binky walked past him, muttering and scowling at each other.

Van buzzed up alongside Fern in his motorized wheelchair. "Fern, it's so cool that you're in the Mary Moo Cow show," he commended the girl. "But why did you keep it a secret?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Fern glibly. "I guess I was afraid of being laughed at."

"I would never laugh at you, Fern," Van reassured her. He then accelerated his chair until he was rolling along next to Binky. "Hey, Binky," he started to say, but lost his composure and began to laugh riotously and involuntarily.

Binky lowered his head and groaned.

TBC