I Want My Mummy! Read online

  For my mummy and my daddy, Gladys and Steve Krulik

  —N. K.

  WELCOME TO CLASS 4A.

  We have a warning for you:

  BEWARE OF THE MAP.

  Our classroom probably looks a lot like yours. We have chairs, desks, a whiteboard, and artwork on the walls. And of course we have our teacher, Ms. Frogbottom.

  Actually, our teacher is the reason why things sometimes get strange around here. Because Ms. Frogbottom is kind of different.

  For starters, she carries around a backpack. It looks like any other pack, but somehow strange things always seem to be popping out of it. You don’t have to worry about most of the stuff our teacher carries. But if she reaches into her pack and pulls out her giant map, beware. That map is magic. It has the power to lift us right out of our classroom and drop us in some faraway place. And somehow it’s always the same exact time as when we left. No matter where we go, we wind up meeting frightening creatures none of us ever believed were real—and getting into all sorts of trouble.

  You don’t have to be too scared, though. Things always seem to turn out okay for us in the end. Or at least they have so far.…

  Your new pals,

  Aiden, Emma, Oliver, Olivia, Sofia, and Tony

  MS. FROGBOTTOM’S FIELD TRIP DO’S AND DON’TS

  Do stay together.

  Don’t take photos. You can’t experience the big world through a tiny camera hole.

  Don’t bring home souvenirs. We want to leave the places we visit exactly as we found them.

  Don’t use the word “weird.” The people, places, and food we experience are just different from what you are used to.

  Do have fun!

  1

  YOU KNOW THAT SKIN THAT sticks out from the sides of your fingernails? The kind that looks like pieces of shredded strings?

  I hate that skin. Which is why I’m always picking at it.

  It makes my mother crazy when I pick. But stringy skin is really annoying. So I keep picking.

  And picking.

  And picking.

  Luckily, my mom’s not here to yell at me. I’m in school, waiting for the bell to ring and for my teacher, Ms. Frogbottom, to show up.

  Ms. Frogbottom doesn’t scold me for picking at the skin around my fingernails. Or at least she hasn’t yet.

  “Hey, Tony!” my best friend, Oliver, says as he and his twin sister, Olivia, walk into the classroom.

  Oliver hangs his jacket and his backpack on a hook and walks over to my desk. “How was your weekend? Did your cousin take you to see that movie about summer camp?”

  “Yeah,” I reply. “It was okay.”

  “Just okay?” Olivia asks, butting into our conversation. “We loved it.”

  “I liked most of it,” I explain. “Just not the part where the bear shows up while they’re making s’mores. That scared me.”

  Did I mention that I hate being scared?

  “Oliver and I had our fencing competition on Saturday,” Olivia says. “Guess who came in first place?”

  Olivia is wearing a huge gold-colored plastic medal around her neck. Which, of course, means she came in first.

  I have a feeling Olivia is just wearing the medal to annoy Oliver. I don’t know how he puts up with her.

  “Check out Sofia,” Oliver says, changing the subject. “She’s already got her math book open.”

  I don’t know why Oliver sounds surprised. Sofia is the class brain. She’s always got her nose in a book. Or in her tablet, looking something up.

  Okay, you can’t really have your nose in a tablet. But you know what I mean.

  Sofia is so busy solving a math problem—just for fun—that she doesn’t even look up at the sound of her name.

  “Do you know why the math book was always upset?” Olivia asks Oliver.

  “Because it had so many problems!” Oliver answers her. The twins start laughing hysterically.

  “Ms. Frogbottom’s coming!” Suddenly my classmate Aiden, who has been standing near the door, shouts out a warning. He races over to his desk and sits in his seat.

  The twins sit down too. Now we’re all in our places, with bright shiny faces, except…

  “Emma!” Aiden exclaims. “Sit down. You know how mad Ms. Frogbottom gets if we’re not all seated when she gets here.”

  I look over at the window. Emma is staring at her reflection in the glass. She’s moving her head around and making funny expressions. Smiles. Frowns. And something that looks like duck lips.

  “Emma, hurry.” Aiden sounds worried. I don’t blame him. I don’t want Ms. Frogbottom to be in a bad mood right at the start of the day.

  Emma stops staring at herself long enough to glare at Aiden. “Are you talking to me? Because if you are, my name’s not ‘Emma.’ It’s ‘Rainbow.’ ”

  I’m not surprised by that. Last Friday, Emma told everyone she’d changed her name to “Starshine.” And a few days before that, it was “Moonglow.”

  I’m just sticking with “Emma.”

  “ ‘Rainbow’ is a much better name for a painter,” she explains.

  “I thought you were going to be an actress when you grew up,” Olivia says.

  “I can be both,” Emma replies.

  “Fine,” Aiden huffs. “You gotta sit down, Rainbow.”

  Emma—or Rainbow—takes her seat just as Ms. Frogbottom walks into the room.

  “Good morning, Class 4A,” our teacher greets us as she puts her backpack down on the floor beside her desk.

  “Good morning, Ms. Frogbottom,” we answer.

  Ms. Frogbottom isn’t the kind of teacher to waste time asking us how our weekends were. She’s the kind of teacher who gets right to work. Which is why she is already writing the WOTD—that stands for “Word of the Day”—on the board.

  “Ms. Frogbottom, the bell hasn’t rung yet,” Olivia reminds our teacher.

  Bad move.

  Ms. Frogbottom shoots her a look. Olivia sinks down in her seat and starts copying the Word of the Day into her notebook.

  Arachnophobia (noun): Fear of spiders.

  That will be an easy one for me to remember. I’m scared of spiders.

  “Speaking of spiders,” Ms. Frogbottom says, “I hope you all did your homework and read chapter three in Charlotte’s Web, because…”

  Gulp. We had reading homework over the weekend?

  Maybe Ms. Frogbottom assigned it while I was watching that freaky cockroach walk along the windowsill? Because I wasn’t really listening to her then.

  “… pop quiz.”

  I’m listening now. “Pop quiz” are two words I really dread. Especially because I didn’t read chapter three.

  I start picking nervously at the skin around my fingernails again. Why did I have to get the new fourth-grade teacher this year? Ms. Frogbottom isn’t like any of the other teachers here at Left Turn Alleyway Elementary. I bet those teachers don’t give weekend homework or surprise quizzes. And don’t even get me started on how Ms. Frogbottom is always talking about the “magic of field trips.”

  Now I’m biting at the skin around my fingernails. I pull hard at one really annoying skin-string with my teeth.

  Ow!

  Uh-oh. I’m bleeding.

  “Hey!” I exclaim. “Anybody got a Band-Aid?”

  Ms. Frogbottom stops talking and stares at me.

  Oops. I just called out without raising my hand.

  I brace myself for a warning. Or worse.

  Surprisingly, Ms. Frogbottom smiles. “I don’t have one, Tony,” she tells me. “Although, I do know a place where you can find lots of bandages.”

  Ms. Frogbottom reaches into her backpack and pulls out a giant map. A map so huge that there’s no way it could possibly fit into that pack. But
it does.

  I wish I’d never asked for that Band-Aid. I should have just let myself bleed all over the place. Because I know that map. It’s not a regular map. It’s a magic map. A map that can take us any place in the world.

  I’m just glad Ms. Frogbottom doesn’t pull out that map every day. If she did, I’d never come to school. Because every time she points to a place on that thing, something scary happens.

  Like that time Sofia almost got captured by a muldjewangk monster in Australia. If the monster had gotten her, it would have been awful. Muldjewangk monsters cover their victims with ooey-gooey, pus-filled blisters that pop up all over!

  Then there was the day in Greenland when Emma twisted her ankle running from a tupilaq statue that had come to life and was trying to make her his prisoner.

  I sure hope we don’t go somewhere cold this time. I only have a T-shirt on.

  Ms. Frogbottom is pointing to someplace on the Magic Map. I can’t tell where. My hands are over my eyes.

  Even through my fingers I can see a giant flash of light glowing in the classroom. My body feels weightless, and I think my feet have just left the ground.

  It’s like I’m flying in space. And then…

  2

  “WHOA!” OLIVER EXCLAIMS.

  “Double whoa!” Olivia adds.

  I feel sunlight beating down on the back of my neck. Wherever the Magic Map has taken us is hot. Very hot. It must be a hundred degrees out here.

  I move my hands from my eyes and look around. There’s nothing but sand. It’s like we’re at the beach—except there’s no water anywhere.

  “I don’t see any Band-Aids,” Emma says.

  I was just thinking the same thing.

  Ms. Frogbottom looks at me. “Do you still need a bandage, Tony?”

  I look down at my finger. It’s not bleeding anymore. “I’m okay,” I tell her.

  That’s not exactly true. My finger’s okay. But I’m not. It’s so hot out. A big glob of sticky, salty sweat just leaked down from my nose and into my mouth. Yuck.

  Ms. Frogbottom reaches into her backpack and pulls out a pile of hats and some sunscreen. “You need to protect yourselves from the sun here,” she tells us.

  “Where’s here?” Aiden asks.

  Sofia starts typing something into her tablet.

  Yep. That’s right. Sofia brought her tablet. Which doesn’t surprise me, since I’ve never seen Sofia without her tablet. I bet she sleeps with it.

  “Judging by all the sand, heat, and lack of clouds, I’d say we’re in a desert,” Sofia tells us.

  “Hey, what’s that thing?” Aiden asks.

  Aiden is pointing to a huge stone statue behind us. Its body looks as long as a football field! And I think it must be as tall as the White House—which I saw one time when my family went to Washington, DC.

  I’m talking massive.

  I think the statue’s body is supposed to be a lion. But its head is human, with the nose broken off.

  I wonder how that happened.

  “That’s the Sphinx,” Sofia says. She types something else into her tablet. “Which means we’re in Giza, Egypt. The Sphinx is made of limestone. It…”

  Sofia is still reading, but all I can think about is the fact that we’re in Egypt. That’s really far from school.

  I want to ask Ms. Frogbottom why she’s taken us to Egypt, but my teacher is busy talking to a man standing beside a group of camels that are resting in the sand.

  I know better than to interrupt Ms. Frogbottom when she’s talking to another grown-up. Besides, those camels look kind of gross. One of them keeps spitting out some really nasty gunk.

  So I ask Oliver instead. “Why do you think Ms. Frogbottom brought us here?”

  “Who knows?” Oliver answers with a shrug. “Maybe she wanted us to find out what it feels like to be in a desert. She’s always saying she wants us to experience the world outside Left Turn Alleyway Elementary. And this is waaaaayyyy outside.”

  “What’s to experience? It’s just a whole lot of sand.” I wave a giant mosquito away from my face. “And bugs.”

  “We just got here. We haven’t really looked around yet.” Oliver smiles. “Think of it this way: as long as we stay in Egypt, we don’t have to take that pop quiz.”

  “Sooner or later we’re gonna have to take it,” I say. “I’m pretty sure we’re going to go back to school at some point, right?”

  “We always do,” Oliver assures me.

  Oliver turns to Sofia, who’s still reading from her tablet. “The statue was built about four thousand five hundred years ago. It’s supposed to guard the tombs nearby.”

  “T-t-tombs?” Now she’s got my attention.

  “Those three huge pyramids over there,” Sofia tells me, pointing behind the Sphinx’s giant body. “The mummies of some pharaohs were buried in there.”

  “Fair whats?” Emma asks.

  “Pharaohs,” Sofia corrects her. “Ancient Egyptian kings. The pyramids were built to be their tombs.”

  The pyramids look like they have sprung right up from the sand. The bricks are so huge, I can’t imagine how ancient people without construction trucks could ever have lifted and stacked them. Especially in this heat.

  If I thought they were just massive funny-shaped buildings, I’d probably want to stick around and learn about the pyramids. But now that I know they were made to hold dead kings who were turned into mummies… not so much.

  At least I understand why Ms. Frogbottom brought us to Egypt, of all places. When I asked about a Band-Aid, I meant a little one, for my finger. But I think that started my teacher thinking about a whole different kind of bandages. The kind of bandages mummies are wrapped in.

  I really gotta watch what I say around my teacher.

  “Check out Ms. Frogbottom!” Emma shouts suddenly.

  I turn around. The camels are walking toward us in a line. Our teacher is riding on the first one.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Frogbottom?” I say.

  “Yes?” Ms. Frogbottom looks down at me.

  “I’m sorry I called out without raising my hand. I’m sorry I asked for a Band-Aid.”

  “That’s okay, Tony,” she answers.

  “So we can go home now,” I continue hopefully.

  “Nonsense. We just got here. There’s so much to see.”

  I had a feeling she was going to say that.

  FROGBOTTOM FACTS

  Camels with one hump are called dromedary camels. Camels with two humps are called Bactrian camels.

  Camels have a third eyelid that keeps the sand out—it moves back and forth like a windshield wiper.

  Camels can run up to forty miles per hour. That’s almost as fast as a car on the highway.

  “Anybody know a camel’s favorite nursery rhyme?” Oliver asks.

  “ ‘Humpty Dumpty’!” Olivia answers. She and Oliver start to laugh. But the rest of us just groan.

  “Your riddles are so bad,” Emma tells the twins.

  “Speaking of riddles,” Ms. Frogbottom says, “I remember a movie I once saw with a group of explorers who had to solve a riddle or risk being devoured by an Egyptian Sphinx.”

  Gulp. “Devour” was one of our Words of the Day. It means “to eat hungrily.”

  “What was the riddle?” Olivia asks her.

  “We’re great at riddles,” Oliver brags.

  “This is a tough one,” Ms. Frogbottom warns them.

  “Bring it on,” Olivia says.

  “Are you nuts?” I ask Olivia. “Do you want to be devoured?”

  “Relax,” Oliver tells me. “Ms. Frogbottom only saw it in a movie. That thing couldn’t really devour anything. It’s made of stone. It can’t even move its mouth.”

  Ms. Frogbottom smiles. I don’t know why. Maybe she likes thinking about kids being devoured.

  “Okay, here it is,” Ms. Frogbottom says. “If you have me, you may desire to share me. But if you share me, you shall no longer have me.”

  Oh boy. What
kind of a riddle is that?

  A hard one. That’s what kind. So hard that no one could ever answer it.

  I can tell Oliver and Olivia are totally stumped. Which means…

  We’re about to be devoured.

  My stomach starts to feel queasy—like there are a million butterflies flying around in there. I wrap my arms around my belly and squeeze hard, but those butterfly wings won’t stop flapping.

  “I know!” Sofia shouts excitedly. “It’s a secret! Because if you have a secret but you share it with someone else, then it’s not a secret anymore.”

  “Very good, Sofia!” Ms. Frogbottom compliments her.

  “Hooray!” I punch my fist triumphantly into the air. “We’re not getting devoured!”

  “Speaking of devouring,” Aiden says, “I’m hungry.”

  Aiden is the smallest kid in our class—with the biggest stomach.

  “I know a great place for lunch,” Ms. Frogbottom tells him. “It’s just a short ride away. And our transportation is already here.”

  “We’re going on those?” I ask, nervously pointing to the line of camels.

  “Of course,” Ms. Frogbottom says. “How else?”

  One of the camels lowers himself to the ground. The man who brought him over helps me climb onto the camel’s back.

  I try not to think about how badly this camel stinks. Or how scratchy his fur is. Or about how many flies are flying around. Or—

  WHOA! Suddenly the camel stands up. I hold on tight to the front of the saddle and try not to look down.

  Did I mention that I’m afraid of heights?

  “Sofia,” Emma calls from atop her camel. “Use the camera on your tablet to take my photo.”

  “Emma,” Ms. Frogbottom warns. “You know the rule.”

  “We cannot take any photos during our field trips,” we all reply dutifully.

  “Exactly,” Ms. Frogbottom says with a smile. “If you use your senses to experience Egypt, you won’t need pictures to remember this day.”

  My senses? Well, so far I feel hot. I smell camel stink. I see sand. And I hear bugs buzzing near my ear. That just leaves—

  “Now off to lunch!” Ms. Frogbottom exclaims.