Of all the lakes to choose for a summer vacation, Mrs. Blanderson really wished she’d gone with a blander choice than Lake Loch Ness.

As she waddled across the sinking cruise ship as fast as she could manage, sickening crunches thundered from above. The latest poor, unfortunate soul screamed all the way down the beast’s long water slide of a neck.

This teacher retreat was no treat at all — for US, at least, Blanderson thought grimly.

Suddenly, she gasped as something cold and slimy wrapped around her leg. She tried to leap backwards — but it was simply too late. The cantankerous teacher was promptly yanked upside down and up, up, up, into the howling winds.

She screamed like a banshee as the fabled monster lowered her into its rancid, gaping, fang-lined —

“MONTERAY!”

Mrs. Anderson’s sharp voice cut through Monteray’s morning pages like a cleaver.

He shrieked as his knees slammed against the bottom of his desk and fumed as laughter broke out around him. But it died as soon as the malevolent teacher froze all voices — and blood — with one menacing look.

“I have an announcement.” She paused, scanning around. Testing the waters. “We have new students joining us today.”

Excited chatter erupted around Monteray as he rubbed his aching knees and glowered at her electric eel-like face. Her grey-brown hair was pulled back in a bun so ridiculously tight that Monteray was quite sure it would pull her face off one of these days. Not that he was looking forward to a jump-scare of that magnitude, for his knees would certainly pay the ultimate price.

“Shush!” Mrs. Anderson swept her gaze around the room. “Finished?”

Silence resumed.

“Good. So — we’re having a surprise foreign exchange program this year!”

Monteray shifted uncomfortably. While he had no idea what she was talking about, what he did know was that he hated surprises — he was more of a scares kind of guy. Despite striving to be the bravest kid at school, he did have to admit that he was easily surprised. It was like some kind of reflex. Like a curse! This made his classmates think he was a scaredy cat . . . a frickin’ chicken, as it were. Oh no, there was absolutely no way he was sticking around for any more surprises.

He sneakily slid his hand into the bottom of his black-orange-and-yellow striped t-shirt and under his warm, dank armpit. Too far. He felt a tickle. A giggle nearly escaped.

In a whoosh of panic, he covered his mouth with his free hand just in time.

“I expect each of you,” Mrs. Anderson’s voice rose slightly as she stared holes into Barry, “to treat our new arrivals with the same respect—”

Monteray clenched his fist in preparation; he could tell the perfect moment was nigh.

“—you would expect another country’s citizens to show—”

It was now or never. He swiftly yanked his arm against his torso in an unrelenting bombardment of the sweet sounds of cutting the cheese.

FRRRRTFRRTFRRTFRRTFRRTFRRTFRRTFRRRT!

Laughter instantly exploded around him. But not even the fiftieth pit fart was the charm, for the teacher did not so much as blink. Even Barry’s bursts of wheezing convulsions (which had engulfed everyone else’s titters) eventually subsided, until the only sounds left were Monteray’s gradually weakening perceived poots. His arm was so fatigued by this point, that he awkwardly stopped.

Mrs. Anderson continued to stare blankly as a painful silence enveloped them. You could cut the tension with a butter knife.

She slowly twisted around as if to challenge his air pockets with some of her own. But no. Instead, she headed toward her desk.

A trickle of worry crawled up Monteray’s spine. Why on earth wasn’t she screaming ‘GO TO THE OFFICE!’ yet? Had she had some sort of med mix-up?

“You’ll never guess what I found in here this morning,” she said slowly as if in a daze.

She opened her desk drawer.

Monteray gulped.

She reached in. The object she raised was sharp.

He gasped, eyes darting toward the door and back. He tensed up, ready to run.

But his grip on the sides of his desk untensed as he breathed a sigh of relief. Why, it was just a stupid-looking faded white hat shaped like a cone. Like a party hat. Were they about to party?

Grinning coldly, she dramatically twisted it around to reveal the word DUNCE engraved from left to right in big, black, daunting letters.

Monteray felt a shriek coming on, caught himself, and held his mouth shut.

The teacher almost cradled the mysterious pointed cap, her grin broadening as she scanned it up and down. As if she had some sort of special plans for it. The electric eel in her returned as she tore her eyes from it and scanned the room dangerously. “Does anyone know what this is?”

Barry’s hand shot up. “A stupid cone.”

“Close.”

“Triangle,” Nat emitted in his low voice.

“No.”

“A triangular prism . . . cylinder?” Queesha ventured.

“I’m not asking what SHAPE it is. . . .”

Stephanie sat up straight as a board and said something twice as dumb. “A cap?”

“What — kind??”

Constantine raised his hand.

Mrs. Anderson breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes, Constantine?”

He cleared his throat and moved a shock of unruly green hair out of his eyes. To this day, Monteray had no idea what its natural colour was.

“A dunce cap, also variously known as a dunce hat, dunce’s cap, or dunce’s hat, is a pointed hat formerly used as an article of discipline in educational institutions. Citation needed,” he blushed and quickly added, “never mind that last part.”

“Is that dunce cap for Constantine because he needs citation?” Monteray ventured a guess.

Mrs. Anderson shook her head, staring straight at Monteray, and he knew. “I believe it’s high time for this classic disciplinary tool’s triumphant return.”

“What — but you can’t do that! Monteray’s grip tightened on the sides of his desk in outrage. “Const said they were formerly used. Formerly!”

“Using corporal punishment in this day and age,” the old teacher gazed longingly at the faded brown ruler that was framed on the wall, “I cannot do, but do you really think your mother will raise a fuss about this when your constant office visits haven’t changed your behaviour in the slightest? Would she prefer it if you were suspended? Or, perhaps. . . . expelled?”

Monteray opened his mouth but for once could not muster up a word. Not even a stutter.

The teacher grinned, gazing down at Monteray through her cat-eyeglasses as she made her way towards him.

His stomach turned.

“Your prescription is in, Monteray,” she plopped the dunce cap on his blonde hair, then strode back to the front of the class to take it all in.

Monteray’s jaw dropped. His blue eyes darted to the left to see his classmates grinning and chuckling at him. Then to the right — oh, the humanity; it was the same there too. His stomach sank into his red converse sneakers. Now, the class scary clown was a title he would be able to tolerate — even be proud of — but this . . . this was not that.

He realized his mouth was hanging open and closed it at once to hide the gap between his front teeth, as slight as it may be. He quickly replaced the dumbfounded look with a menacing snarl at Gertrude as she faintly grinned at him over her frickin’ Harry Potter book — a series that had the audacity to compete with the great Goosebumps. But this brewed up an idea that he sorely needed.

The time for subtlety was officially over. If Mrs. Anderson was going all in, placing her ace on the table, then so would he.

And so, in the ultimate act of misbehaviour that put even his latest effort to shame, Monteray hoisted himself onto the top of his desk, tingling with exhilaration. He gloriously rose to his feet like a phoenix from the ashes, looking down at all his classmates below him, the absolute peasants.

He pointed up at the dunce cap on his head and put on the gruffest Hagrid voice his 12-year-old self could muster. “Lookit me! I’M A WIZARD TOO, ‘ARRY!”

To his delight, Stephanie and Queesha giggled. And Nat let out a full-blown cheer, God bless him!

He observed Mrs. Anderson, expecting her to look at least as annoyed as Gertrude did.

But no. She just stared right back at him.

“Er . . . can I go to the office now?” he asked rather politely.

“Not this time. Now get down.”

“Why not?” he asked in a British accent as he stamped his foot.

“The office is supposed to be a punishment. One that clearly has not been working.”

“Well,” he started stubbornly, “I’m not gettin’ down ‘till you send me to my punishment!” He began spanking himself silly, though harder than he had meant to, and winced, cursing angrily.

Barry nearly fell off his seat in his amusement.

Mrs. Anderson took a deep breath. She leaned back against her desk, eerily unruffled as ever. “Tell me, Monteray. How is the view from up there?”

Monteray instantaneously looked down and equally as instantly remembered just how he felt about heights.

He gulped. It was like his view was slowly warping. As if the floor appeared to be further and further below him than it had only just been.

It wasn’t that he was afraid of heights, screw that noise, he just . . . he simply didn’t like them, that’s all.

Very carefully, to prepare for a safe climb down, he began to lower into a squatting position, as if preparing to take a dangerous dump in some haunted woods. But his foot caught on something, but what, and how?

Before he could make heads or tails of things, a whoosh of panic engulfed him as he tripped.