School Days According to Humphrey Page 6

  “It’s called independent,” he said, chuckling.

  Bert began running a piece of sandpaper over a piece of wood. “Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, there’s this girl in my new class. Rosie. She’s in a wheelchair,” Mrs. Brisbane said. “She’s very independent, too.”

  “That’s good,” Bert said.

  “Yes, but she’s not the problem. It’s another girl.” Mrs. Brisbane sighed. “Something else, Bert,” she said. “You know how when you were a boy, you were really short?”

  Mr. Brisbane smiled and nodded. “Yep, until one year when I went from being the shortest boy in the class to the tallest boy in the class. It happened over the summer. Quite a change.”

  “Which did you like better? Being short or being tall?”

  Mr. Brisbane stopped sanding the wood. “I guess there were problems either way.”

  “That’s what I was thinking, too,” his wife said.

  “Me too!” I squeaked, rolling my ball closer to her chair.

  “Oh, Humphrey, I almost forgot about you.” Mrs. Brisbane laughed.

  “No one could ever forget Humphrey,” Bert said.

  “Humphrey won’t be here next weekend,” Mrs. Brisbane said. “He’ll be going home with a student from the new class.”

  “Which one?” Mr. Brisbane asked.

  “Yes, which one?” I squeaked.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Mrs. Brisbane said.

  We stayed out in the garage for a while, but the Brisbanes talked about other things, things I didn’t understand. As I rolled around the garage, I tried to imagine Mr. Brisbane as a little boy.

  It was HARD-HARD-HARD. And when I tried to imagine Mrs. Brisbane as a little girl, that didn’t work either.

  Maybe hamsters just don’t have good imaginations.

  Humphrey’s Rules of School: Everybody has problems—not just you.

  8

  The Worst Class in the World

  I was on edge Monday morning before the first bell rang. Hurry-Up-Harry had promised to be on time every day. If he did, I’d be going home with him for the weekend. But I wasn’t sure if his mom dropping him off late would count, since that wasn’t really his fault.

  Joey always came to class early and visited me before the bell rang so he could hear me “giggle.”

  On Monday, he was watching me spin on my wheel when Phoebe came and stood next to him.

  “He’s just like the hamster I used to have,” Joey said.

  “I wish I had a hamster,” Phoebe said. “My grandma says a pet would be too much work for her right now. But I asked her if I could bring Humphrey home one weekend. I thought she’d say no, but she said yes!” Phoebe looked so thrilled, I was thrilled, too.

  “Slow-Down-Simon!” Mrs. Brisbane called out as Simon dashed into the room, followed by Rolling-Rosie and Helpful-Holly. One by one, the students made their way to their tables until every place was filled . . . except one.

  The hands of the clock inched toward the time of the final bell.

  “Og, do you think Harry will make it?” I squeaked.

  “BOING-BOING,” Og replied in a way that made me think he wasn’t sure.

  But just as the bell rang, Harry rushed into the room and headed straight to his chair.

  “I made it, didn’t I?” he asked breathlessly.

  “Yes, and I’m glad,” Mrs. Brisbane answered with a smile. “But maybe tomorrow you could get here a few seconds earlier.”

  Harry nodded and looked over at my cage. I’m no mind reader, but I was pretty sure I knew what he was thinking. Maybe, just maybe, he’d get to take me home on Friday.

  Last week, I’d noticed that Mrs. Brisbane spent most of the time learning about these strange students: hearing about their lives, listening to them read, sharing ideas. But this week, she went back to the routine I remembered from last year in Room 26: teaching reading, social studies, math, and science.

  While the strange students seemed quite bright, I was surprised to find out that I knew a lot more than they did about these subjects. At first, this was confusing to me, until I realized that I’d studied the exact same information last year. I felt unsqueakably smart! I was sure to get better scores on my vocabulary tests this year, which made me HAPPY-HAPPY-HAPPY!

  Maybe—just maybe—this school year wouldn’t be as bad as I’d first thought!

  But I changed my mind when two things happened right after morning recess.

  First, Mrs. Wright came in with the students and marched up to Mrs. Brisbane.

  “There are several problems with your class,” she announced.

  “Why don’t we discuss them later?” Mrs. Brisbane suggested. “Alone.”

  “I think immediate action is necessary,” Mrs. Wright said firmly. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

  Whoa. I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded serious.

  “Very well. What’s the problem?” our teacher asked.

  “Problems,” Mrs. Wright said. “First, I had to break up a fight between two of your students.”

  “Eek!” I squeaked. “Did you hear that, Og?”

  Og splashed so hard, I was afraid he’d pop the top off his tank.

  “Really?” asked Mrs. Brisbane. “Who?”

  She looked around the classroom, and I scrambled up to the tippy top of my tree branch so I could look, too. I didn’t see anyone bruised or bleeding, which was a good thing.

  “Thomas,” she said, pointing directly at Thomas T. True. “And that new boy. The tall one.”

  Mrs. Brisbane looked surprised. “Paul Green?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Wright replied, folding her arms across her waist. “The tall boy, Paul. He had Thomas in a headlock.”

  Mrs. Brisbane walked closer to Thomas’s desk. “Is this true, Thomas?”

  “No, ma’am,” Thomas answered, glancing over at Tall-Paul. “We didn’t fight.”

  “Paul?” Mrs. Brisbane turned toward him. “Did you have a fight?”

  Paul hung his head and looked completely miserable. “Not really,” he mumbled.

  At this point Mrs. Wright suddenly dropped her voice and whispered in Mrs. Brisbane’s ear. “I saw . . .”

  I couldn’t hear a word she said! How can a classroom hamster help if that hamster doesn’t know what’s going on?

  I must say, Mrs. Brisbane looked surprised at whatever Mrs. Wright said.

  “I’ll take care of this, Mrs. Wright. Thank you.” Mrs. Brisbane was always polite.

  Mrs. Wright’s voice was suddenly loud again. “And then, another one of your students did something extremely dangerous.” The way she said those words, “extremely dangerous,” made my nose twitch.

  Mrs. Brisbane frowned. “Which student?”

  “Her!” Mrs. Wright poked a long finger in the direction of Rosie Rodriguez. “She was not using her chair properly.”

  Suddenly, Holly leaped up from her chair. “I tried to stop her! I told her it was dangerous,” she said.

  Rosie glared at Holly. “It wasn’t dangerous. I do it all the time,” she said firmly.

  “I think we can work this all out during the lunch break,” Mrs. Brisbane said. She started walking toward the door. I’m pretty sure she was hoping Mrs. Wright would also walk toward the door . . . and right through it. “Thank you, Mrs. Wright.”

  “I think I should be in that meeting,” the P.E. teacher said. She backed toward the door. “And Principal Morales.”

  “I’ll let you know,” Mrs. Brisbane said.

  Mrs. Wright was gone. I almost cheered at the way Mrs. Brisbane took control. But I didn’t feel like cheering when I looked around at the classroom and the unhappy faces of Tall-Paul, Thomas T. True, Rolling-Rosie and Helpful-Holly. The other students all looked bewildered.

  I probably looked bewildered, too.

  On the worst first day of school, I’d been pretty sure this wasn’t going to be the best class ever.

  Now, I was beginning to think it was the worst class ever. And
I was stuck with it!

  It seemed like a LONG-LONG-LONG time until lunch, and I think the other students had as much trouble concentrating on their spelling quiz as I did. Even though I’d learned the words last year, I got three answers wrong! When the bell rang for lunch, Mrs. Brisbane asked Rosie, Paul G. and Thomas to stay for a moment.

  “Shouldn’t I stay with Rosie?” Helpful-Holly asked.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Mrs. Brisbane told her.

  Holly looked very disappointed again.

  As soon as the classroom was clear, Mrs. Brisbane asked Rosie just what dangerous thing she’d done.

  “I popped a wheelie,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “I learned to do it at camp. You need to learn to do it to go up and down curbs.”

  Mrs. Brisbane nodded. I’d never seen her husband pop a wheelie in his wheelchair, but maybe he had.

  “You just move the back wheels so the front wheels go up in the air, like this.” Rosie started to demonstrate.

  “No need to show me,” Mrs. Brisbane quickly said as she put her hand on Rosie’s armrest. “I understand what it is. But it does seem a little dangerous.”

  “Sure, if you don’t know what you’re doing,” Rosie explained. “I practiced and practiced this summer. The camp counselors were always there to catch us if we tipped over.”

  “That’s good,” Mrs. Brisbane said. “But there might not be anyone to catch you on the playground. Do me a favor, Rosie. Don’t pop wheelies on the playground. You can do it at home if your parents say it’s okay.”

  Rosie looked disappointed.

  “Is that a deal?” Mrs. Brisbane asked.

  Rosie nodded. “Deal.”

  “Now off to lunch,” the teacher said.

  When Rolling-Rosie was gone, Mrs. Brisbane turned to the boys.

  “So, tell me what happened,” she said.

  “We were just fooling around,” Thomas said. “That Mrs. Wright, she’s a busybody.”

  I wasn’t exactly sure what a busybody was. Perhaps it was a person with a whistle.

  “Mrs. Wright was just doing her job,” Mrs. Brisbane said. “She said Paul lifted you up off the ground and you were yelling.”

  “Thomas told me to!” Paul burst out. His cheeks were flaming red.

  “He told you to grab him and pick him up off the ground?” Mrs. Brisbane asked.

  “Yes,” Paul answered.

  Mrs. Brisbane pursed her lips and tapped her foot on the ground. “Why did you do that, Thomas?”

  Thomas shrugged. “Just for fun, I guess.”

  “Fun?” Mrs. Brisbane looked surprised.

  “Because he’s always after me about being tall.” Paul looked completely miserable. “He always wants me to do things. So he said, ‘I bet you can’t pick me up.’ I didn’t say anything, so he dared me. So I picked him up. That’s it.”

  “Is that true, Thomas?” Mrs. Brisbane asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s all it was,” he said.

  Mrs. Brisbane turned to Paul. “Do you think it’s a good idea to pick people up?” she asked.

  “I guess not,” Paul answered.

  Next, it was Thomas’s turn. “Do you think it’s a good idea to dare people?” she asked.

  “Maybe not,” Thomas said. “We were just fooling around.”

  “Don’t fool around like that anymore,” she said. “If there’s any more trouble like this, I’ll have to call your parents. Do you understand?”

  The boys nodded. Then she made them shake hands. But she didn’t send them to the principal’s office—whew!

  She sent Tall-Paul off to lunch but had Thomas T. True stay for a minute.

  “I don’t think Paul likes you to talk about how tall he is all the time,” she said.

  “It’s pretty cool. He’s practically a giant!” Thomas said.

  “Please don’t exaggerate, Thomas. Paul’s just tall for his age. Remember the rule about treating people the way we’d like to be treated?” Mrs. Brisbane asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Try to be friends with Paul without talking about his height. Is that a deal?” she said.

  “Deal,” he said.

  He and Mrs. Brisbane shook hands and she sent him off to lunch.

  After he left, Mrs. Brisbane turned to Og and me. “And now, maybe I can have lunch, too.”

  But as she grabbed her lunch bag from her desk drawer, Mrs. Wright came into the room.

  “Where are the boys?” she asked.

  “The matter’s been taken care of,” Mrs. Brisbane told her.

  Mrs. Wright didn’t like that answer. “Have they been punished?” she asked.

  “It’s all taken care of,” Mrs. Brisbane said. “I’ve got to eat now.”

  She took her bag and walked past Mrs. Wright and out the door.

  Mrs. Wright stood alone in the room shaking her head. I was afraid she might blow her whistle, but instead she just left.

  “Og, do you think Mrs. Wright is a busybody?” I asked when my neighbor and I were alone again.

  “BOING!” Og replied.

  Then I hopped on my wheel to keep my body busy while I thought about wheelies and dares and the strange students in the class.

  Maybe this was the worst class in the world after all.

  Later, I worked on my poem for a while.

  Autumn, oh, autumn,

  When everybody’s busy,

  There are so many problems,

  I’m feeling kind of dizzy!

  HUMPHREY’S RULES OF SCHOOL: Keep your body busy, but don’t be a busybody.

  9

  The Worst Class Doesn’t Get Better

  Tardy.

  It’s not a word I’d heard very often. But I’ve figured out what it means: late.

  If you’re tardy, you have to go to the office and get a piece of paper that lets you back into class.

  This year, I’ve heard the word tardy more often than I did all of last year. A few of my old friends were tardy from time to time, usually when the buses got in late.

  But Hurry-Up-Harry was tardy a lot.

  He got to school on time (barely) the first two days of the week, but on Wednesday, he was so late, Mrs. Brisbane had counted him as absent. When he finally arrived, he gave his slip of paper to Mrs. Brisbane.

  “Very well, Harry. Hurry up and get to your seat,” she said.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” he said. “Here’s a note from my mom. She tells you there that the alarm didn’t go off.”

  He pulled a letter out of his backpack and handed it to her. She read it quickly, thanked him and sent him to his seat.

  He didn’t go right away. “We used to live almost next door to the school,” he said. “Then I could walk. But now she has to drive me here and it takes longer.”

  Mrs. Brisbane looked at Harry as if she didn’t know what to say. Which is pretty unusual for Mrs. Brisbane.

  “Does this mean I can’t have Humphrey this weekend?” Harry asked.

  “We’ll talk about it later, Harry,” Mrs. Brisbane said.

  “It wasn’t really his fault, was it, Og?” I asked my neighbor while my friends worked on math problems. I should have been working on them, too, but I was thinking more about Harry’s problem than about number problems.

  Og didn’t answer. He just splashed lazily in the water. I wasn’t sure what he thought about Hurry-Up-Harry.

  That night, when Aldo came, he went right to work, sweeping the room with long, graceful strokes of the broom.

  “We’re still learning more about you guys in biology,” he said. “Amphibians and mammals.”

  “What did you learn, Aldo?” I squeaked.

  “Mammals are born from their mamas and amphibians hatch out of eggs,” he said.

  I almost fell off my tree branch. “Eek!” I squeaked.

  Og came out of an egg? Like a chicken?

  “Of course, after they hatch out of eggs, frogs are cute little tadpoles,” Aldo continued.

  I wasn’t
sure what a tadpole was, but it was hard to picture Og being cute.

  Aldo chuckled. “Birds come out of eggs, and so do some reptiles,” he said. “But of course, birds have feathers. And fish have scales and gills.”

  Suddenly, my tummy felt a little funny. Gills and feathers, scales and eggs. I thought we were all just animals.

  “In the end, we’re all a lot alike,” Aldo said. He was finished sweeping and started straightening out the tables and chairs.

  “Are we?” I asked.

  My head was spinning. Og came out of an egg. He was cold-blooded and he didn’t have any ears (that I could see). It seemed as if we had nothing in common.

  “That’s the great thing about biology,” Aldo said as he pulled a chair close to our table and took out his supper. “We’re all living things.”

  He took a great, big, deep breath. “And it’s great to be alive, isn’t it, Humphrey?”

  “Squeak!” I answered. I couldn’t argue with that.

  Aldo pushed a little piece of lettuce through the bars of my cage, but I wasn’t particularly hungry.

  “And great to have friends of all species,” Aldo added.

  Suddenly, I remembered what Ms. Mac had said when she first brought me to Room 26: “You can learn a lot about yourself by taking care of another species.”

  I guess that meant amphibians, too.

  “It’s great!” I squeaked in agreement.

  Tardy. Again.

  That’s what Harry was on Thursday. He got to school on time in the morning, but he came back from lunch after the bell had rung. He wasn’t alone, though. Principal Morales brought him back.

  “I found Harry staring at the trophy case,” he said. “He said he didn’t notice all the other kids going back to class.”

  “I told him he’d be late,” Holly said. (She forgot to raise her hand first, which made me miss my old friend Raise-Your-Hand-Heidi Hopper.)

  “Quiet, Holly,” Mrs. Brisbane said. “Harry, can you explain why you didn’t come back on time?”

  “Did you know Longfellow School won the All-District Basketball Championship five times?” he said. “But they haven’t won for six whole years.”