The World According to Humphrey Read online

  “Class, as you know, this will be a short week, due to Thanksgiving,” she said. “And that means Humphrey will need a home for four days instead of two. Now, who wants to volunteer?”

  You won’t believe what I’m going to say. NOT ONE HAND WENT UP. I actually fell off my wheel.

  Mrs. Brisbane was surprised, too. “No one?” she asked. “Heidi, didn’t you want to take Humphrey home?”

  “Oh, yes. But we’re going to my grandma’s house for Thanksgiving,” she explained.

  “Art, didn’t you ask for Humphrey last week?” Mrs. Brisbane asked.

  “Yes, but we’re having all my relatives for Thanksgiving and Mom says it wouldn’t be a good time,” Art explained.

  And so it went. Every single classmate had big plans for Thanksgiving. Plans that didn’t include having an extra hamster around.

  I was WORRIED-WORRIED-WORRIED. I didn’t want to spend four days alone in Room 26.

  I worried all day Monday. I worried all day Tuesday. I worried even more all day Wednesday.

  At the end of the day, Principal Morales stopped by to give Mrs. Brisbane an envelope. I think it was her pay-check, because she was especially glad to see him.

  “I have a huge favor to ask,” she said.

  “Sure, Sue. What is it?” asked Principal Morales. He wore a tie with little turkeys all over it.

  “Could you possibly take Humphrey for the weekend?”

  I had my paws crossed that he’d say yes. But Principal Morales didn’t even smile.

  “Oh, Sue, I’d love to, but we’re going out of town for the holiday,” he told her. “Another time, I’d love to.”

  Another time wouldn’t matter. I needed a place to go now.

  After the principal left, Mrs. Brisbane sighed and began gathering up her papers.

  Then she turned to me.

  “Well, Humphrey, it looks like you’re going home with me for Thanksgiving,” she said grimly.

  My fate was sealed. I was going to the home of the woman who had once vowed to get rid of me—for four whole days! And frankly, I was worried I’d never come back!

  TIP TWELVE: If you must leave your hamster with a caretaker, make sure that it is someone you know and trust.

  Guide to the Care and Feeding of Hamsters, Dr. Harvey H. Hammer

  13

  Thanks but No Thanks

  Since Mrs. Brisbane didn’t say a word to me on the drive home, I had time to reflect on the last few months. I had not had a bad experience with any of the families I had visited. In fact, they had all been gracious and welcoming (except Miranda’s dog, Clem, but I knew how to handle him). In return, I’d lent them a helping paw here and there. After all, you can learn a lot about yourself by getting to know another species.

  I was overdue for trouble. And I was likely to get it at Brisbane’s House of Horrors. That’s how I pictured her home: decorated with skeletons and bats and eerie jack-o’-lanterns all year long. I was shivering at the picture I had in mind when Mrs. Brisbane actually spoke.

  “Humphrey, I need you like I need a hole in the head,” she complained.

  “THE SAME TO YOU!” I squeaked back rudely, knowing she wouldn’t understand.

  “I don’t know what Bert’s going to say about you. But whatever it is, it won’t be pleasant. Nothing he says is, lately,” she continued.

  Bert? Who’s Bert? Then I realized it must be her husband. The one who’s sick. Well, I was certainly not looking forward to meeting him based on what I’d just heard.

  “It won’t be much of a Thanksgiving,” she said. “We don’t have much to be thankful for this year. But I’ll try.”

  “Good for you,” I squeaked.

  She almost smiled. “Thanks for the support.”

  The Brisbane house was yellow with white shutters and lots of big trees. Colored leaves covered the front yard.

  “And on top of everything else, I have to rake!” Mrs. Brisbane said through gritted teeth.

  Inside, the house was surprisingly cozy. Not a skeleton or bat in sight. Lots of pretty pictures on the walls and some big yellow flowers in a vase on the table.

  “Bert? I’m home,” Mrs. Brisbane called out.

  A few seconds later, an old man rolled into the room in a wheelchair. His gray hair was uncombed and stuck out in places it shouldn’t. His chin was covered with gray stubble and he wore very wrinkled tan pajamas.

  His expression was so sour, he looked as if he’d just drunk a glass of vinegar.

  Mrs. Brisbane set my cage on the low coffee table.

  “We have a guest for the weekend.”

  I could tell she was trying hard to sound cheery.

  “His name is Humphrey.”

  Mr. Brisbane sneered. “This is unacceptable! For the little pay you get, that school can’t force you to spend your weekend baby-sitting a rat!”

  I bit my tongue to keep from saying something unsqueakably bad.

  “They’re not forcing me,” argued Mrs. Brisbane. “It’s just that no one else could do it. Let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill.”

  Pardon me, but I resented being called a molehill almost as much as being called a rat.

  Mrs. Brisbane quickly changed the subject. “I thought you were going to get dressed today.”

  “Why should I? I’m not going to see anybody,” Bert Brisbane growled. “Except you and the rat.”

  Mrs. Brisbane got up and walked out of the room without saying another word.

  Boy, nobody in Room 26 could get away with talking to Mrs. Brisbane like that. I wished I could send her husband to Principal Morales’s office right now.

  Everything was real quiet around the house for a while. Mrs. Brisbane changed her clothes (to jeans!) and moved my cage onto a card table in the corner of the living room. Then she sat down and read the Guide to the Care and Feeding of Hamsters and the chart my classmates kept on me.

  “Looks like your friends have been taking good care of you,” she said.

  “VERY-VERY-VERY GOOD,” I squeaked.

  She fed me and gave me clean water and then she and Mr. Brisbane ate dinner in some other room while they watched TV. They went to bed early.

  I’ll bet they didn’t say two words to each other. Even Ms. Mac talked more at home than they did, and she lived alone.

  The next morning, Mrs. Brisbane was up very early and soon the house smelled yum-yummy. I thought maybe I would like this Thanksgiving thing after all. At least the good-smelling and eating part.

  What I didn’t like about Thanksgiving was Mr. Brisbane. While Mrs. Brisbane was clattering pots and clinking pans and making things smell good, he sat in his wheelchair in the living room and frowned. No, I know a better vocabulary word: scowled.

  After a while, he called into the kitchen. “Sue, why don’t you stop all the cooking and just sit down for a minute?”

  Mrs. Brisbane popped her head out the door and said it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without turkey and all the trimmings. Then Mr. Brisbane said he didn’t have anything to be thankful for. Mrs. Brisbane went back in the kitchen and banged around some pots and pans again.

  That sour expression on the old man’s face was starting to get to me, so I decided to take a little spin on my wheel. I really got that thing going at high speed. I was going so fast, I couldn’t even see whether Mr. Brisbane was smiling or frowning.

  Finally, Mrs. Brisbane came into the room to sit down.

  “Would you look at that, Sue?” her husband asked.

  “He does that all the time,” she said.

  “Just spinning his wheels like me. Stuck in a cage and going nowhere.” Mr. Brisbane’s voice was so grim, I stopped spinning.

  Whew. I was a little dizzy.

  “You’re wrong, Bert,” said Mrs. Brisbane. “Humphrey’s not stuck; he goes everywhere. Every weekend, he goes to another house. He eats different foods. He gets out of the cage and runs through mazes. He runs and jumps and climbs. You’re the one spinning your wheels and going nowhere. You�
��re stuck in a cage, but it’s a cage you made!”

  Well. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard Mrs. Brisbane talk that way.

  Mr. Brisbane was surprised, too.

  “Do you think I wanted that car to hit me? Do you think that was my choice?” he asked.

  “Of course not, Bert. I’m so grateful you lived through it. That’s the point. You’re alive, but you sure don’t act like it.”

  With that, Mrs. Brisbane got up and went back into the kitchen. Meanwhile, Mr. Brisbane scowled and frowned and glared . . . at me!

  Finally, Mrs. Brisbane put the food on the dining-room table. I watched them eating their dinner from my vantage point on the table in the living room. They ate, but they didn’t say much.

  “The food is delicious,” Mr. Brisbane finally said.

  That’s the nicest thing I’d heard him say so far.

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Brisbane replied.

  There was silence for a while. Then Mr. Brisbane said, “Just think, last year after Thanksgiving dinner, Jason and I threw the football around the backyard. Now I’m stuck here and Jason is in Tokyo.”

  “Let’s call him, Bert,” his wife suggested.

  “It’s too early there,” he said. “We’ll have to call later.”

  Football. Jason. Tokyo. You can learn a lot if you stop spinning and start listening.

  I listened late that night when they called Jason, who turned out to be their grown-up son who was working in Tokyo, which is FAR-FAR-FAR away, even farther than Brazil, according to the maps in Room 26.

  Boy, there were more Mrs. Brisbanes than I’d ever dreamed. One was mean to me. One was nice to students. One was a wife. Another one was a mother. One was a cook. One wore dark pantsuits. The other wore jeans.

  But which one was the real Mrs. Brisbane?

  That night, as they headed out of the living room and toward the bedroom, I heard Mrs. Brisbane, the wife, say, “I know you think I was being hard on you, Bert. But it really is time for you to think about what you’re going to do with the rest of your life.”

  Mr. Brisbane didn’t answer.

  TIP THIRTEEN: Remember, hamsters are very, very curious.

  Guide to the Care and Feeding of Hamsters, Dr. Harvey H. Hammer

  14

  Hide-and-Go-Squeak

  Apparently, the day after Thanksgiving, humans do two things: eat leftovers from the day before and go shopping.

  Mr. Brisbane didn’t go shopping, of course. But Mrs. Brisbane left early in the morning, after telling Mr. Brisbane that there were plenty of leftovers for him in the refrigerator.

  So there I was: stuck with old sourpuss. And all he did was sit in his wheelchair, looking unhappy.

  I’d much rather have been hanging out with Principal Morales or chatting with Sayeh’s family. I could have been tricking Miranda’s dog, playing cards with A.J.’s family or watching Aldo balance a broom on his finger. But no, I was watching a sad and grouchy old man act sad and grouchy.

  I could have just settled in for my nap, but I remembered what Mrs. Brisbane had said. This man had to get out of his cage. “Out of your cage!” I squeaked out loud without realizing it.

  “Quiet, you little rat,” Mr. Brisbane growled at me.

  Then he wheeled over to the front window and stared out.

  Okay. If he wasn’t going to get out of his cage, then I’d get out of mine. Because I had a New Plan.

  Mr. Brisbane didn’t notice me open the lock-that-doesn’t-lock. He didn’t see me scamper out of the cage, across the table and onto the couch. He wasn’t aware that I leaped down to the floor. He didn’t even think about me until I stood in the middle of the living room and said, “CATCH ME IF YOU CAN!”

  I know he only heard me squeaking, but I sure got his attention. He was as surprised as could be to see me there.

  “How did you get out? And how am I ever going to get you back in?” He rolled toward me. “Come on, whatever-your-name-is. Let’s get back in the cage.”

  I let him get just close enough to reach me. He bent forward, cupping his hands. But just as he reached out to grab me, I dashed over to the opposite side of the room.

  “You little rat,” he said. “You can’t outsmart me.”

  He rolled over to the closet and took a baseball cap off a hook. Again, he approached and I let him get almost within arm’s reach. This time, he raised the baseball cap and said, “Okay, fella. Let’s play ball.”

  “We’ll see about that,” I squeaked as I bustled off to the living room.

  We quickly established the rules of the contest. 1) I would stay out in the open, in places he could reach in his wheelchair. 2) He would use his cap to capture me.

  If he could.

  Once he reached the dining room, I rushed into the den.

  “Oh. Think you’re clever. We’ll see who’s clever,” he challenged.

  From the den, I scuttled over to the hallway. By now, Mr. Brisbane’s cheeks were pink and he was almost smiling.

  “You’re smart, but you won’t win this one!”

  This time, I let him get that cap within a whisker of capturing me, just to keep the game interesting. Then I scurried back to the living room. But before he followed me, Mr. Brisbane slammed the bathroom, bedroom and guest-room doors. Aha! He was limiting my range of possibilities. Pretty cunning.

  In the living room, I decided to make a bold move. I hid under the couch. Then I let Mr. Brisbane stew for five minutes.

  “Come here, Humphrey. You’ll have to come out sooner or later,” he called. And I thought he didn’t know my name.

  He shook the curtains and pushed the chairs to see if he could rouse me.

  Too bad he didn’t think of using sunflower seeds like Mr. Morales did. Yum!

  I finally got kind of bored, so I made a dash for the dining room. Mr. Brisbane followed and this time I let him scoop me up in the cap.

  “I win!” he shouted triumphantly. He was beaming with pride as he stared down at me. “But you were a worthy opponent.”

  He put me back in my cage and I scrambled into my sleeping house. I have to admit, the game had made me a little drowsy.

  I don’t think it was very long before Mrs. Brisbane returned, carrying several shopping bags full of packages.

  “What happened, Bert?” she asked when she saw her husband.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “But your face is all rosy. You look different. And you’re wearing a baseball cap,” she said.

  “Sit down, Sue,” he answered. “I’ll tell you all about it.”

  He told her every detail of our match, chuckling and swinging his cap back and forth.

  “I guess there are some things I can still do,” he said. “Now, how about a game of gin rummy?”

  Mrs. Brisbane was almost speechless. “Okay,” she said, starting to get up.

  Mr. Brisbane waved her away with his cap. “I’ll get the cards. You just sit.”

  As he wheeled into the den, Mrs. Brisbane turned to me and quietly said, “Thank you, Humphrey.”

  Mr. Brisbane didn’t frown the rest of the day and evening, except when Mrs. Brisbane beat him at cards.

  The next morning, which was Saturday, she couldn’t even find her husband.

  “Where could he be?” she asked me. “He hasn’t left the house in months!”

  A minute later, he came into the house from the garage, his lap full of boards and bricks and things.

  “I’ve got an idea for our friend Humphrey,” he said.

  Mr. and Mrs. Brisbane spent most of the rest of the day building an obstacle course on the coffee table in the den. They lined up boards along the side (so I couldn’t stray too far) and then they set up things for me to climb over and climb under, like bricks with holes to hide in and big cardboard tubes, and Mr. Brisbane constructed a series of ramps for me to climb. Oh, we had a wonderful day. Mr. Brisbane got out a stopwatch to time me on my runs and they made bets on how long it would take me to get from s
tart to finish. Mrs. Brisbane even added a few treats to the maze: bits of apple and biscuit. I had FUN-FUN-FUN. The Brisbanes did, too. I could tell.

  On Sunday afternoon, the Brisbanes invited their neighbors over to watch me run my maze. Mr. and Mrs. Robinson brought their five-year-old twins along.

  “Glad to see you looking so chipper,” Mr. Robinson told Mr. Brisbane.

  “I think he’s finally feeling better,” Mrs. Brisbane whispered to Mrs. Robinson.

  Mr. Brisbane looked a little vinegary again on Monday morning, though. “Why can’t we keep him here, Sue?” he asked.

  “The children would never forgive me,” she told him. “He’s really their hamster. But . . .” She grinned. “There’s a two-week Christmas vacation coming up soon. I think Humphrey better spend it here.”

  Could I believe my cute, furry ears? She liked me so much, she actually wanted me to come back! This was a whole new Mrs. Brisbane. One who liked me.

  By the time Mrs. Brisbane and I returned to Room 26, I was pretty tired. But it was a good tired and I knew I could rest up from my weekend during recess.

  TIP FOURTEEN: Hamsters should be let out of their cages to run in a closed environment for an hour or two at a time.

  Guide to the Care and Feeding of Hamsters, Dr. Harvey H. Hammer

  15

  Happy Hamsterday

  In December, things in Room 26 really began to change. For one thing, it got cold outside and a little chilly by my window. In the early morning, frost pictures would appear on the glass. One picture looked like a big snowflake. Another looked like a lion. Scary.

  Still, it was nice and cozy in my sleeping house.

  More snowflakes appeared. Not real ones, but cutout paper snowflakes, bordering all the chalkboards. And there were snowmen made of fluffy cotton and pictures of candles and packages and sleighs.

  The holidays were almost here: Christmas and Chanukah and Kwanzaa! There were songs to be sung and presents to be wrapped and a big two-week vacation to come!