Yes, ma'am, the creative juices were really flowing today. Here's the long-awaited and long-delayed, Chapter 3 of Mrs Ma'am's School for Boys.
After about a week at Mrs Ma'am's, the boys were finally getting used to their rather unusual curriculum at the Rather Small Castle. Alistair had finished his book (the one about the family stranded on the island), Lucas’ attention span had grown quite a bit (at least compared to what it had been when he had arrived), Oliver had started raising his hand in class (although not as frequently as his peers), and Everett had managed to bake a simple but delicious cupcake recipe (on the second try). On the Monday of their second week at the school, Lewis flapped and squawked his way up the staircase to the boys’ bedroom and shrieked in his loud chicken voice that they were to be in the library in half an hour and that breakfast would be served there. “Squ-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” In exiting the room, he had somehow managed to trip over his own feet, or should I say, claws, and fall down the stairs. Everett, who had been taking a bath in one of the oddly shaped bathtubs, laughed to himself. That chicken was always getting himself into trouble. Only last week he had attempted to fly from the second story window and ended up smashing an ornate Ming vase in the library. He was the exact opposite of a chicken. Alistair, however, had a different opinion of the silly bird. Even after a week at Mrs Ma’am’s, he still could not bring himself to believe that it was actually talking of its own accord. However, he could not find any other explanation for this, having scoured every book about ventriloquism he could find, and discovering that it was actually quite impossible to perform ventriloquism from another room. This made him very disgruntled, and gave him a rather low opinion of Lewis. Oliver, meanwhile, had been brushing his hair, something Mrs Ma’am had informed them was very important. He wondered if this strange breakfast setting (usually they had their breakfast in the dining room - Mrs Ma’am was very adamant about that) meant that today was going to be the start of their Adventure class. They had not yet had one of these and he for one had been very curious to find out what it would entail. Once they were all ready, they headed down to the library, with Alistair insisting on being in front (he still thought very highly of himself). They found Mrs Ma’am, Lewis and Rosie waiting for them in the library, all of them eating fluffy omelettes from the heaping silver platter of omelettes, avocado toasts, and bran muffins. Rosie, who today was wearing a hand-knitted sweater under a pair of corduroy overalls, hiking boots, and her flaming red hair in a long ponytail down her back, accented with a bright red poppy, instructed them to each take something from the pile of breakfast options and sit in one of the armchairs that had been arranged into a half circle, then once they did so, checked something off her clipboard. Lewis squawked for attention, and Mrs Ma’am thanked him and began to speak. She informed them that as they might have suspected, this was going to be the beginning of their Adventure class, at which point Lucas’ mutts panted excitedly, as if they could understand what she was saying and were very eager to begin. Lucas quickly silenced them. He was a bit intimidated by the formidable Mrs Ma’am, who happened to be wearing a maroon sweater covered in pins with slogans Lucas didn’t understand, such as, “Member of the Wonderland Society: Insane Adventures Since 1865!” and “Typewriters Will Never Be Outdated! The Traditional Typing Advocates”. She went on to say that hidden somewhere in this library was an important map that led to their adventure and that it had to be found immediately. Their clue to finding it was, “If adventure you want, find the book as boring as the Arial font. But if you don’t work together, you’ll only find a book about weather.” Lucas bit his lip. This seemed like a sort of scavenger hunt. He wasn’t very good at these. They were one of those things that required a certain amount of focus to get right. Mrs Ma’am declared that they should begin. Everett and Oliver quickly began deciphering the clue, thinking of possible places that the map could be and writing them down in a spiral notebook. Lucas decided it would be best to join them (after all, the clue did say they would fail if they didn’t work together) and began eagerly suggesting books that he thought were boring or were written in Arial font. Alistair, although he was just beginning to maybe perhaps possibly be coming around to his comrades, had scoffed at the idea of teamwork and began looking on his own. When he saw Rosie was rolling her eyes, however, at his lack of trust in the other boys, glared at her and went to join their search. Fifteen minutes later, however, they were no farther along and the suspenseful action movie music that Rosie had obviously thought would be funny to play from their old scratchy gramophone was not helping Alistair think. Suddenly, he had an idea. What if the book and the Arial font were the same thing? In other words, was there a book about fonts somewhere in the library? He voiced this idea for the other, but they either didn’t hear, or they ignored him, which was what Alistair thought. He said it again loudly. Oliver and Lucas thought this was a brilliant idea, but Everett wasn’t so sure. After a lot of wheedling and convincing, he agreed, then remembered that in the section titled, “Boring Books That Will Make You Fall Asleep In A Heartbeat” there were 4 “font encyclopedias”. Immediately, the boys rushed over and found the extremely thick and boring books. After 15 minutes of searching, Oliver cried out that he had found an envelope in the middle of one of the encyclopedias. The boys rushed over while Oliver carefully opened the envelope. Inside was a piece of paper. It was a map of the world with a red line tracing a course that appeared to start from Mrs Ma’am’s school and end somewhere in the middle of the ocean. Mrs Ma'am applauded them and said that they had done a good job, that the map lead to a trophy that all of the boarding schools across the world competed for it every year, and that the competition would start this Friday. END OF CHAPTER. Sorry it was so late!!! P.S. I just read book 1 of the Hunger Games (finally-my mom wouldn't let me read it for the longest time) and it's so good!
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