Remarkable by Elizabeth Foley

did it. We finally taught him how to ride,” Melissa said. “And then he said that learning how to be a pirate was hard, and that it was too much work to train landlubbers like us—especially since he’d fallen in love and was going to be busy for a while.”
    “And that if we were interested in career development, we should go get a paper route or something. Then he rode away on his bicycle.”
    “That is ridiculous,” Ms. Schnabel said, putting her hands on her hips. “That might just be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
    “Wanting to learn to be a pirate is not ridiculous,” Melissa told her. “Just because you never wanted to do anything exciting doesn’t mean that the rest of us are happy being locked up in a boring old classroom.”
    “Some of us actually enjoy doing interesting things more than we enjoy doing long division,” Eddie added.
    Ms. Schnabel gave the Grimlet twins a flinty stare, and it was flinty enough to startle them into sitting still, if only for a moment.
    “It’s ridiculous that anyone would think that you two could be entrusted with a newspaper route,” Ms. Schnabel said. “And what Captain Rojo said about learning to be a pirate is just dead wrong. It’s not hard at all.”
    “What would you know about it?” Eddie asked rudely.
    “Plenty,” she said. “I could teach you myself if I wanted to. And I’m quite a good teacher, too, which is something you’d know if you were actually willing to sit still long enough to learn something.”
    The Grimlet twins looked at each other. Melissa raised her left eyebrow, and Eddie raised his right. They conferred for a few moments, and then nodded in agreement.
    “We accept,” Eddie said.
    “Excuse me?”
    “We accept. We will start behaving in class, as long as you start teaching us about being pirates.”
    Ms. Schnabel glared at Eddie for a long moment. Jane held her breath, expecting her to start yellingabout how she was a teacher and this was her classroom and the Grimlet twins would have to behave whether they liked it or not. But Ms. Schnabel didn’t do that. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes, almost as if she were picturing herself somewhere else.
    “Har!” she said quietly, and then she opened her eyes again. It never paid to keep them closed for too long in front of the Grimlet twins.
    “Do we have a deal?” Melissa demanded.
    “Well that all depends,” Ms. Schnabel said. “Are you willing to pledge your loyalty to me as your sworn captain? It’ll have to be a blood oath.”
    “Well, I don’t know why you should get to be captain…” Eddie Grimlet began, but Ms. Schnabel didn’t let him finish his sentence.
    “Arrrghh!” she yelled, and she pounded her fist on the desk. “Either I be the captain or we goes back to doing long division.”
    She sounded a lot like Captain Rojo Herring, only much, much meaner.
    “Um, okay. You can be captain, I guess,” Melissa said.
    “All right then, me hearties. I’ll start by teaching you the most important rule of pirating life.”
    “Rules? Pirates don’t have rules, do they?” Eddie asked.
    “Aye, that they do. And the most important rule be this: always do what yer captain tells you, or suffer the consequences.”
    And then Ms. Schnabel began to laugh—a wild, savage laugh. The sound of it made Jane very worried.

More about the Jelly and the Dentist
    G randmama Julietta Augustina walked into city hall after spending a satisfying morning at the construction site for the post office addition.
    Taftly Wocheywhoski and his hardworking crew had just finished hanging all fifty-seven bells. A campanologist would arrive next Wednesday to make sure the bells were properly tuned, and on the Thursday after that, a chronometric engineer would come from the Naval Observatory in Greenwich, England, to make certain the bell tower clock kept perfect time.
    “And on Friday morning, we can have the opening ceremony for the bell tower. We’ll have all those