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like building this house?”
    “Yeah. I like building things.”
    “And you’re good at it. Look, I know you can do better than this. If I let you retake the test tomorrow, will you study for it tonight? Otherwise, I’ll have to let your parents know about this F.”
    Art perked right up. “I’ll study tonight. I promise!”
    Mrs. Brisbane pushed back her chair and stood up. “Don’t disappoint me, Art. Tonight, what are you going to do?”
    “Study!” He sounded convincing to me.
    “Good,” the teacher said with a smile. “Now, why don’t you get your coat and go on out to recess?”
    Art didn’t waste any time grabbing his coat and dashing out of the room. After he left, Mrs. Brisbane stopped smiling. “I hope you do study, Art,” she said softly.

    After school, I stared at the job list I’d written down. Good thing I had, too, since Gail was such an excellent Chalkboard Eraser, Mrs. Brisbane had to stop her before she erased the list of jobs. On the other hand, Art had notexactly been a great Energy Monitor. He left the lights on at the end of the day. I wished he’d pay more attention.
    Usually, I would have been glad the lights were on so I could study my notebook. But I had something else on my mind. I turned to my neighbor.
    “Og? Can you hear me?”
    I heard the faintest splashing of water. At least I knew he was listening.
    “I’ve been thinking about this job thing,” I squeaked.
    The splashing got louder. My small hamster voice couldn’t be heard over the noise, so I opened my cage’s lock-that-doesn’t-lock. It looks like it’s locked when a human closes my door, but I can easily open it from the inside. No one knows about it except Og, thank goodness! I couldn’t have helped my friends and had so many adventures without that good old lock.
    I scampered over to Og’s house. “Our friends have helping kinds of jobs, like taking care of us. Even if we can’t erase the chalkboard or turn off the lights, there must be something useful we can do.”
    “BOING!” Og jumped up alarmingly high.
    “Mrs. Brisbane didn’t even think of us. So we’re going to have to find jobs of our own. Real jobs, like turning off the lights.”
    “BOING-BOING!” Og jumped up even higher.
    “Good! You want a job, too. Is that what you’re saying?”
    “BOING-BOING-BOING!” My froggy friend was quite frantic, which was certainly unusual for him.
    I didn’t realize that he was actually trying to warn me until Aldo hurried into the room, pulling his cart. “What are the lights doing on? A waste of energy,” he grumbled.
    My heart was thumping so loudly, Aldo could probably hear it. I couldn’t let anyone discover the secret about my lock! I madly dashed back to my cage and almost made it, too, but it’s hard to stay ahead of Aldo.
    “Hey, buddy, hold on, there!”
    His big hand reached down and picked me up. “What are you doing out of your cage? This classroom could be a dangerous place for a small fellow like you. Somebody could have squashed you or something.”
    He gently placed me back in my cage and closed the door, checking to see that the lock was firmly locked. “It seems okay,” he said. “But just to be safe, I’ll give you some extra protection.” He searched around until he found a large paper clip, which he straightened out. Then he bent it around the door of my cage.
    “EEK!” I squeaked. I was
really
locked in now.
    Aldo stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “Somebody must have left your door open. I wonder who took care of you today?”
    He thought for a minute, then took out a piece of paper and sat down to write a note to Mrs. Brisbane. “I’d better tell her that whoever’s supposed to take care of you didn’t do a very good job.”
    I swallowed hard. Golden-Miranda had the job ofAnimal Keeper and no one took better care of pets than she did. (Even if she personally owned a scary dog named Clem.)
    “NO-NO-NO!” I squeaked, trying to make Aldo understand that he was