CHAPTER 13

13

13 looked at the top of this page and noticed that it was the 13th chapter. Which meant it was 13’s turn to be king, um, I mean, queen, ur, how about, ruler.

“Yup, that’s me,” 13 said. Its cube head glowed. 13 snapped its fingers, and a crown appeared.

“Hey, wait a minute! I thought Ms. Linda said we were going in alpha-flex-tubble order,” Liam said. (He had a hard time pronouncing “alphabetical.”) “Since Jacob just went, that means it’s Jayden’s turn!”

“It’s cool. You can go first, 13,” Triple J said.

“What?!” Liam squealed. “If you’re passing on your turn, then it should be my turn. I come next in roll call! It goes J, then K, then L. In fact, 13 is a number, not a letter, so I don’t even know when he goes!”

“Liam brings up a good point,” Ms. Linda said. “We agreed to go in alphabetical order, but I didn’t account for 13, which is technically a number. I suppose we could go in numerical order, which would make 13’s turn after Liam, who is the twelfth student to make a law.…”

“Ms. Linda, you’re being really confusing,” Mason said. He showed her the beginning of this chapter. “See? It says 13. It’s even listed in the table of contents! So it should be 13’s chapter.”

“I guess you’re right,” Ms. Linda said. “I can’t argue with the table of contents. Even if it really isn’t a table.”

13 was still adjusting to life as a human child. Sure, 13 had arms and legs like a Homo sapiens (that’s the scientific name for “human”) and wore clothes like its classmates, but 13 still thought of itself as a classroom.

“I’m not sure what kind of law I should make,” 13 said to Lily and Ava.

“Well, what do you want?” Lily asked.

“Yeah, make a law that you would like!” Ava added.

13 thought about this for a minute. Then it remembered its favorite thing in the world.…

13 took the royal podium and announced its new law. “From this day forth, every citizen of our fair country shall be mopped once a day!”

People were confused. 13 added, “I know you will love the mopping law. It’s going to be the best thing you’ve ever experienced. You won’t soon forget it!”

The crowd cheered. They didn’t know what “mopping” was or what it meant, but they couldn’t wait to have the best thing they’d ever experience.

Within the hour, people around the nation were chatting online, trying to guess what “mopping” meant. Some people thought it was a funny new word. Others thought it was an old word with a new meaning. But teachers pointed out that “mopped” was just an active past tense verb of “mop,” which means to clean something by wiping. Now everyone was just confused. “What does our king queen ruler 13 mean when it says we’ll all be mopped once a day?”

Well, when a former-classroom-turned-human-child said “mopped,” 13 literally meant mopped.

You see, back when 13 was still Classroom 13, its favorite part of each day was the end of the day—when Mr. Bernard (the school janitor) would come and mop the floors. After a day of being stomped on by dirty shoes and filthy feet, getting mopped was like a warm shower for a classroom floor. It was like being made brand-new again. A fresh start. After getting mopped, Classroom 13 smelled like lemon-pine and sparkled like a diamond. This made 13 feel like the prettiest room in school.

13—who was now a human (sort of), who was also now the king queen ruler—wanted to share this wonderful, clean, refreshing, pretty feeling with the whole world. Who wouldn’t want to have their whole body wiped with a mop and smell like lemon and pine? Who didn’t want to get mopped?

By royal decree, an army of janitors entered people’s homes and rubbed dirty mops all over people’s faces and bodies. One by one, house by house, the janitorial army marched across the nation, with old mops and buckets of brown-gray mop water.

It turns out that human people are not like classrooms. They do not like being mopped. And what works to make a floor shine does not work to make a person shine.

Instead, it made people look like wet dogs. Hair would become matted and clothes would get sticky with floor gunk and old gum. Some would find loose coins in their ears; others would get wet dust bunnies in their noses. Skin was left feeling slimy.

Everyone, everywhere, started to look like… well, dirty floors.

If you listen closely, you can still hear people screaming things like: “WHYYYYY????” Or, “EW!! MAKE IT STOP!!!” Or, “This is definitely NOT the best thing I’ve ever experienced!”

These yelling fits could be heard all the way to the castle, where 13 thought people were screaming with joy. This made 13 smile.

Yes, 13 had a lot to learn about being human.