Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom (Wayside School 4)

By the time she reached the outer edges of the school, the eight-minute warning bell was already clanging.

She counted the clangs and was disappointed when they stopped at eight. She was hoping for a porcupine.

Glancing down, she noticed the sidewalk around the school was dry. She stuck out one hand. The rain seemed to have stopped.

She tilted the umbrella a little to the side and looked up.

The Cloud of Doom had kept all the other clouds away, including the rain clouds. Sharie glared at the horrible cloud. It almost seemed alive as it turned and churned inside itself.

Suddenly a gust of wind tore the umbrella from her hand.

Horrified, she watched it bounce across the blacktop toward the school. She chased after it.

The umbrella hit the bike rack and stuck there for a moment. But just as Sharie got there, it swooped upward.

She jumped and managed to grab the curved handle.

The umbrella continued to rise.

She thought about letting go, but she didn’t want to lose her umbrella. She held on with both hands.

When she passed the second-floor window, she realized she probably should have let go sooner.

When she rose past the third floor, she wished she had let go at the second floor.

When she reached the fourth floor, she wished she had let go when she was back at the third floor.

By the time she reached the sixth floor, it was definitely too late.

Her left rain boot slipped off when she passed the ninth floor. She watched it fall the long way down.

Higher and higher, scarier and scarier. She passed the seventeenth floor, the eighteenth, the twentieth.

(There was no

nineteenth floor.)

She could see inside the classroom windows as she went past them. Some of the kids waved at her.

She couldn’t wave back. She couldn’t risk falling.

Although the alternative wasn’t much better. If she continued to hang on, she realized, she’d be sucked into the Cloud of Doom.

She passed the twenty-fifth floor, then the twenty-sixth, and the twenty-seventh. She knew the floor numbers by the teachers she saw through the windows.

At the thirtieth floor, she could see her own desk, next to the window.

The window was open.

She closed her eyes, then jumped.

A horn blared.

When Sharie opened her eyes, she lay sprawled across the top of her desk.

“Oh, you are here, Sharie,” said Mrs. Jewls. “Funny, I didn’t see you. I was just about to mark you absent. Were you sleeping?”

Maybe it was a dream. She hoped so. If not, her favorite umbrella was lost forever!