Friendship According to Humphrey Page 6

  When the wheel screeched, both girls screamed, “EEEEEE!” By the little pink light, I could see them leap from their beds and wrap their arms around each other.

  The door abruptly swung open and the big light came on.

  “EEEEEE!” the girls screamed again.

  “It’s just me,” said Mr. Golden, rushing in. “What’s going on?”

  He must have been as surprised as I was to see Miranda and Abby hugging one another for dear life.

  “There was this terrible noise!” said Abby.

  “Horrible,” said Miranda.

  That was my cue to hop back on the wheel. SCREEEECH!

  All eyes were on me.

  “You mean that noise?” said Miranda’s dad, pointing at my cage.

  “That’s the one,” I squeaked.

  Both girls started giggling.

  “It was Humphrey,” said Miranda.

  “I thought it was a ghost,” said Abby.

  Mr. Golden laughed, too. “I think that ghost is pretty harmless,” he said. “Now, do you think you two—or you three—can get some sleep?”

  They agreed and he tucked the girls into their beds.

  “It’s good to hear you two laughing, but no more screaming, okay?” he said as he turned out the light.

  The girls were quiet for a while longer and I stayed away from the wheel. I heard Abby whisper, “Miranda, could you sleep over here with me, just for tonight?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” said Miranda.

  Miranda crawled into bed with Abby.

  “Did you ever hear the story about the ghost in the attic?” Abby whispered.

  “Tell it,” said Miranda.

  And she did. I couldn’t have slept that night, even if I wasn’t nocturnal.

  On Sunday morning, neither girl mentioned how the ring and the bracelet, the pen and the hair scrunchie all got moved. Neither girl mentioned an imaginary line, either. They did their homework at the desk, braided each other’s hair and made a maze for me to run.

  And when they said good-bye on Monday morning, Miranda said, “See you in two weeks.”

  Abby said, “Great!”

  “All things are in common among friends.”

  Diogenes, Greek philosopher

  8

  Ill Will

  I returned to school with a great sense of accomplishment.

  But once I remembered where Og had spent the last two days, it was hard to concentrate on geography or math. I couldn’t help imagining all the fun Og must have had with the Brisbanes. I glanced over at my neighbor in his glass tank. With that horrible grin on his face, he looked like a jack-o-lantern. (Scary.)

  It was VERY-VERY-VERY cold outside, which meant that the heat inside was turned way, way up. Whew! That must be fine for a cold-blooded amphibian, but I was wishing I could take off my fur coat. Then the warm air woke up the crickets, who started singing. And there was a SQUEAK-SQUEAK-SQUEAK that was not coming from me, but from Seth as he wiggled in his chair. It sounded like “Jingle Bells”: Squeak-squeak-squeak . . . squeak-squeak-squeak . . . squeak-SQUEAK-squeak-squeak-squeak! The squeaking made Gail giggle noisily, which made Mrs. Brisbane loudly shush her. I was looking forward to some peace and quiet during recess (knowing Og wouldn’t want to chat). But when the time came, Mrs. Brisbane announced that the class would stay inside. She brought out all kinds of interesting things to play with. I must admit, I wished I could get out of my cage and play along with the rest of the class.

  Art and Richie built a tall tower out of tiny bricks while Kirk and Seth worked on a jigsaw puzzle. A.J. and Garth played a game where you slapped down cards. Heidi and Gail played another kind of game, moving little plastic men around a board. Mandy, Sayeh and Miranda came over to ask Tabitha to play with them. She didn’t even look up. She just shook her head.

  “I don’t know why we even try to be friends with her,” Mandy whispered to the other girls.

  Sayeh just sighed sadly. I knew how she felt.

  “Og, can you hear me?” I squeaked. “I have something to ask you.” I figured even though I couldn’t understand him, maybe he could understand me.

  “See how much fun it is to play with your friends?” I asked. It probably sounded like “Squeak-squeak-squeak,” but he could have at least responded with a “Boing!”

  I decided to squeak up louder this time. I couldn’t even hear myself because of all the yelling.

  Yelling?

  I looked around to see who was making all that noise. It wasn’t Lower-Your-Voice-A.J. or Repeat-It-Please-Richie. It was Gail. She had stopped giggling and started shouting. The person she was shouting at was her best friend, Heidi.

  “You cheated! I saw you!” she yelled.

  “I didn’t,” Heidi said. “I wouldn’t cheat.”

  “You must have. You always win. I’m never playing with you again, cheater,” Gail shouted.

  Mrs. Brisbane quickly moved toward them. “Girls, please!”

  “I didn’t cheat,” insisted Heidi. “I’m not a cheater.”

  Gail put her fingers in her ears. “Did too, cheater, cheater, cheater!”

  Everyone else in the class stopped playing and stared at the two girls. Mrs. Brisbane was right between them now. “Girls, please calm down and be quiet.”

  Heidi and Gail were quiet, but they glared at each other angrily.

  “Tell me what happened, Gail. Calmly.”

  Gail wiped away some tears. “She was supposed to move her man five spaces and she moved it six spaces. That gave her a bonus jump and she won. She cheated!”

  “Did not!” Heidi shouted. “I only went five!”

  The teacher held up both hands. “Stop. I want you two to cool off before we talk about it. You’re such good friends, let’s work this out.”

  “She’s not my friend anymore!” said Gail. She was crying harder.

  “Thank goodness!” Heidi shot back. “Because I can’t stand you! Crybaby!”

  “Cheater!”

  Mrs. Brisbane shook her head. “Heidi, you go over there by Humphrey and Og,” she said firmly. “Gail, you go sit at my desk. Try and settle down.”

  The girls did as they were told. I think they were glad to get away from each other. Soon, Heidi was leaning up against the table where Og and I have our homes.

  “Crybaby,” she whispered so softly, only we could hear her.

  It was hard for me to believe that Heidi would cheat her best friend. It was hard for me to believe that Gail would lie about Heidi. I thought friends always got along, no matter what.

  “First, all she does is giggle. Now all she does is cry,” Heidi muttered.

  At Mrs. Brisbane’s desk, Gail glared over at Heidi and wiped away a few more tears.

  When recess was almost over, Mrs. Brisbane took the two girls out into the hall to discuss the argument. They came back in and quietly returned to their seats. But as soon as Mrs. Brisbane turned her back, I saw them stick their tongues out at each other. Maybe friendship wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  It was snowing by afternoon recess, so Mrs. Brisbane divided the class into four teams. Each team had questions to answer. They had to decide as a group what the answer should be. Mrs. Brisbane kept score.

  She wisely put Heidi and Gail on different teams so they wouldn’t argue or make faces. Both their teams lost.

  The winning team had Miranda, Kirk, Seth and Tabitha on it. And, to my surprise, the reason they won was Tabitha!

  Mrs. Brisbane asked each team questions about all kinds of things: flowers, books, poetry, sports, animals (but not hamsters, I’m sorry to say) and countries. Nobody knew much about flowers. Everybody knew a lot about animals. Sayeh was the best at answering questions about countries. (Would you believe there’s a country with a capital called Tegucigalpa? I had to write that one down.)

  But Tabitha was the best at answering questions about sports. She knew soccer teams, volleyball rules and golf champions. The boys all seemed amazed. As the quiz
went on, there seemed to be more and more questions about sports. Maybe that was an accident, but when Mrs. Brisbane is involved, things don’t usually happen by chance.

  By the end of the recess period, Tabitha’s team had scored forty points. They would have scored even higher if Kirk hadn’t said that the Gettysburg Address was the number on the Gettysburg family home. (Even I know it was a speech written by a very famous president.) He got a laugh and lost two points, but it didn’t matter. The next closest team only had twenty-eight points.

  “We won!” yelled Seth, the team captain. “Way to go!” He high-fived Tabitha, Miranda and Kirk.

  “Three cheers for Tabitha!” said Miranda.

  “Hip-hip-hooray! Hip-hip-hooray! Hip-hip-hooray!” I squeaked, jumping up and down for joy.

  Nobody called her a baby. Even Tabitha looked happy.

  Unfortunately, Heidi and Gail didn’t seem cheered up at all. In fact, while all the attention was focused on Tabitha, I saw Gail mouth “cheater” to Heidi.

  Heidi stuck her tongue out at Gail.

  It was enough to make a grown hamster cry. A less sensible hamster than me, of course.

  “Og, you may not understand me, but if you could, you’d want Heidi and Gail to be friends again. Right?” I asked my neighbor once everyone had gone home for the day. I didn’t expect him to understand me. I was just thinking out loud.

  I was amazed to get an answer: “BOING!”

  Og jumped straight up and down, up and down, over and over again. I didn’t know if he had sat on a tack or eaten something that didn’t agree with him.

  “Og! Are you all right?”

  “BOING-BOING!” he said. “BOING!”

  I jumped up and looked over at him. I was pretty sure he was agreeing with me!

  “So what are we going to do?” I asked him. “How can we help them?”

  As abruptly as he began, Og stopped bouncing and boinging and sat as still as a rock, as usual. I was discouraged and puzzled, too. Either he didn’t have any ideas or he’d given up on trying to get me to understand him. I felt we both had failed.

  Finally, I spoke again. “They sure were good friends.”

  Og stayed silent the rest of the night.

  Hours later, when Aldo arrived, I was still trying to figure out what google-eyes had been trying to tell me. This was a most peculiar frog.

  “Good evening, gentlemen. Mind if I join the party?” said Aldo as he flicked on the lights and rolled his cleaning cart into Room 26.

  “Without you, there is no party,” I told him.

  “Speaking of parties, Richie is having a big party for his birthday soon.” Repeat-It-Please-Richie Rinaldi happened to be Aldo’s nephew. “It’s going to be a very big deal.”

  Since I had never been to one, any birthday party sounded special to me.

  “They’re having entertainment, like a show or something. Hey, you guys want to see my latest trick?” asked Aldo, grabbing his broom.

  The custodian had already proved his talents to me by balancing his broom on the tip of one finger for a LONG-LONG-LONG time. Once, he balanced it on top of his head.

  This time, he threw his head back and balanced the tip end of the broom on his chin for an equally long period of time. When the broom finally wobbled too far, Aldo caught it and took a deep bow.

  “Bravo, Aldo!” I squeaked as loudly as I could.

  “Thank you, Humph.” He glanced at Og. “What’s the matter, Froggy? You don’t like tricks?”

  “It’s not you,” I said softly. “It’s him.”

  Aldo grabbed his lunch and pulled a chair close to my cage. “Aw, it’s just a silly trick. I’m not good at anything useful.”

  “Not true!” I argued.

  Aldo took a sandwich out of his bag and began chewing on it.

  “No, Humph, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Because of this.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket.

  “This is the application for City College. If I want to go there, I have to fill it out. So I wrote my name, address, all that. When I got to the part that asked what I want to study, I got stuck,” he explained. “I’m practically middle-aged and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.” Aldo put down his sandwich and stared at the application.

  “I’m not sure what I’m good at. I thought of being a teacher, but I don’t know. Would the kids like me? Am I smart enough to be a really good teacher?”

  “Yes! Be a teacher! Please!” I insisted. For once, Aldo didn’t seem to hear me.

  “Besides, they want a letter of recommendation from somebody important. Somebody who believes I can succeed,” said Aldo.

  “I’ll do it!” I assured him, but he wasn’t paying attention.

  “I’m just not sure.” He tossed his lunch bag back onto the cart. “Don’t think I forgot you, pal,” he told me as he dropped a small piece of carrot in my cage.

  “Thanks a heap!” I squeaked.

  “You’re welcome,” Aldo replied.

  At least he understood most of what I said. One thing I understood: It was time for me to take action!

  “Never injure a friend, even in jest.”

  Cicero, Roman writer and orator

  9

  Mrs. Brisbane Explains

  After the custodian left, I noticed something odd beside my cage. Aldo was usually good at picking up things that didn’t belong in the classroom. However, this night, he had left something behind: his City College application. I opened the good old lock-that-doesn’t-lock and slipped out of my cage.

  “Don’t worry, Oggy old boy. I won’t bother you if you won’t bother me,” I assured him. Maybe I was reassuring myself he wouldn’t leap at me again.

  The application was a big piece of paper that folded up. Half of it was stuck under my cage, and it was hard to read what Aldo had written. If you’re a small hamster, human handwriting looks HUGE-HUGE-HUGE. The only light I had to read by was from the streetlamp outside the window. I squinted my eyes and I could read: AREA OF STUDY. On the line next to it, Aldo had written “Teaching” and scratched it out.

  On the line marked RECOMMENDATION, he hadn’t written anything.

  I was tempted to get out my little pencil and write a nice recommendation myself. But a big college probably wouldn’t care about the opinion of a small hamster, even a classroom hamster who could read and write. No, Aldo needed help from someone a lot bigger and more important than me.

  I knew who that person was. I just hoped she would help.

  I pulled the application out farther and neatly left it right between my cage and Og’s.

  “No splashing over here, Og,” I warned my neighbor. “We want to keep this application in good shape.”

  He didn’t splash all night long. Who knows—maybe Og understood me after all, even without ears.

  I could hardly wait for Mrs. Brisbane to arrive the following morning. When she finally showed up, it took her a long time to take off her coat and gloves and arrange her desk. At last, she strolled—slowly—over to my cage.

  “Morning, Humphrey,” she said with a smile. “You’re lucky you don’t have to go out in this freezing-cold weather. You can stay right here in your cozy cage.”

  Stay in my cage? If she only knew!

  She turned to Og. “Morning, Og. As you’ve heard in class, amphibians are cold-blooded, which means we’ve got to keep you warm.”

  She smiled at Og and turned away.

  “Wait! Stop!” I shouted, jumping up and down. “Look at the paper!”

  She turned back and laughed. “What’s the matter, Humphrey? Are you jealous of Og?” She leaned closer. “You know you’re my favorite hamster. And you mustn’t let jealousy, that old green-eyed monster, get the best of you.”

  Eeek—a monster? I was about to dive into my sleeping house for protection, but then I remembered that jealousy is when you envy somebody else. Jealousy wasn’t a real monster, just a giant bad feeling. Was that why I felt bad when everybody else paid attent
ion to Og? I wasn’t sure. After all, my eyes are brown, not green. I was trying to sort it all out when Mrs. Brisbane turned to walk away.

  I’d forgotten something REALLY-REALLY-REALLY important!

  “The application!” I shouted. I knew all she’d hear was squeaking, but I had to try.

  Mrs. Brisbane came back to the cage. “For goodness’ sake, calm down, Humphrey.”

  I didn’t calm down. I started squeaking and jumping, jumping and squeaking, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do . . . except open the cage door and hand her the application.

  I couldn’t do that because she’d find out about the lock-that-doesn’t-lock.

  “What’s this?” Mrs. Brisbane picked up the application—whew! —and started to read! “Aldo must have left this here by mistake. I’ll put it in his mailbox.”

  She folded it up without finishing it.

  “Tell her, Og! Help me . . . help Aldo!” I was shrieking more than squeaking now, and to my amazement, Og let out a rather large “BOING!” which I really appreciated.

  “What’s the matter with you two? It’s an application. It’s private.”

  “BOING! BOING!”

  “SQUEAK-SQUEAK-SQUEAK!”

  Working together, we kept up the noisemaking and Mrs. Brisbane looked confused. She opened the application and started reading, thank goodness, because I was getting quite hoarse.

  “Well, well. Aldo is applying to go back to college. That’s a good idea. And he wants to study . . .” She stopped and stared a bit longer. “He wrote in ‘Teaching,’ but he crossed it out again. I wonder why?”

  “Ask him!” I shouted with the last bit of my voice.

  “I’d better give Aldo a call,” said Mrs. Brisbane.

  “Hi, Mrs. Brisbane!” a loud voice yelled. It was Lower-Your-Voice-A.J.

  Mrs. Brisbane greeted him and folded up the application. She took it to her desk and didn’t look at it again all day.