Horrible Harry in Room 2B Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Horrible Harry and Me

  Horrible Harry, the Stub People, and Halloween

  Harry’s Triple Revenge

  Horrible Harry and the Thanksgiving Play

  Horrible Harry and the Field Trip

  About the Author

  HORRIBLE HARRY IN ROOM 2B

  Miss Mackle asked (Harry) to read his story to the class.

  Harry said he met a mermaid, ate a sea turtle, and dug up a treasure.

  Miss Mackle put Harry’s story up on the bulletin board. She said Harry has lots of ideas.

  Harry has never eaten a sea turtle.

  Harry has never seen a mermaid.

  Harry has never been to sea!

  And I know Harry can’t even spell “sea.” He’s horrible at spelling too.

  Harry is not like any other second grader in our room. I know all about him.

  Harry’s my best friend.

  “Harry is one of those characters who is made up of parts of children whom readers all know. He is the devilish second grader who plays pranks and gets into mischief but can still be a good friend. Told by his best friend Doug, this story should prove to be popular with those just starting chapter books or looking for a new male character, along with Kline’s ‘Herbie Jones.’ ”

  —School Library Journal

  “True to Life” -Kirkus Review

  Other Books by Suzy Kline

  Horrible Harry in Room 2B

  Horrible Harry and the Green Slime

  Horrible Harry and the Ant Invasion

  Horrible Harry’s Secret

  Horrible Harry and the Christmas Surprise

  Horrible Harry and the Kickball Wedding

  Horrible Harry and the Dungeon

  Horrible Harry and the Purple People

  Horrible Harry and the Drop of Doom

  Horrible Harry Moves Up to Third Grade

  Horrible Harry Goes to the Moon

  Horrible Harry at Halloween

  Horrible Harry Goes to Sea

  Horrible Harry and the Dragon War

  Horrible Harry and the Mud Gremlins

  Horrible Harry and the Holidaze

  Horrible Harry and the Locked Closet

  Horrible Harry and The Goog

  Horrible Harry Takes the Cake

  Horrible Harry and the Triple Revenge

  Horrible Harry Cracks the Code

  Horrible Harry Bugs the Three Bears

  Song Lee in Room 2B

  Song Lee and the Hamster Hunt

  Song Lee and the Leech Man

  Song Lee and the “I Hate You” Notes

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,

  a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1988

  Published in Puffin Books, 1990

  Reissued 1997

  Text copyright © Suzy Kline, 1988

  Illustrations copyright © Frank Remkiewicz, 1988

  All rights reserved

  eISBN : 978-1-101-07689-7

  [1. Friendship-Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction] 1. Remkiewicz, Frank, ill.

  II. Title [PZ7.K679Ho 19901 [Fic]—dc20 89-36021

  RL: 2.3

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Dedicated to my favorite

  Harry with love:

  Harry C. Weaver 1909-1982

  My Dad

  Horrible Harry and Me

  Harry sits next to me in Room 2B. He looks like any other second grader except for one thing.

  Harry loves to do horrible things.

  On the first day of school, Harry was out on the playground holding a shoebox. I asked him, “What’s in there?”

  “Something. Want to see a girl scream, Doug?”

  Before I could say anything, Harry took off after Song Lee. When he trapped her by the tree, he opened up his box and dangled a garter snake in her face.

  Song Lee screamed!

  That’s when I first saw Harry do something horrible this year.

  When it rains, we have recess indoors. Sometimes we play a game called “Seven Up.” When it’s Harry’s turn to be up, everyone wonders, Will Harry tap me on the head?

  Harry presses his knuckles down hard on your skull.

  He calls them knuckle noogies.

  Nobody should give anybody a knuckle noogie. But Harry does.

  Harry loves to do horrible things.

  The second week of school, Sidney called Harry a name. It was during science when we were reading about birds.

  “Harry’s a canary!” Sidney whispered.

  And a lot of kids laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” the teacher asked.

  “Nothing, Miss Mackle,” Sidney replied.

  Harry didn’t think it was nothing. Harry planned to get revenge after school. And he did.

  At 3:05, Harry jumped Sidney, pinned him to the ground, and said, “Say I Love Girls twice.”

  “Never!” Sidney said, trying to get away.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  And that’s when Harry started to tickle Sidney under the armpits until Sidney couldn’t stand it any longer. “I LOVE GIRLS! I LOVE GIRLS!” Sidney shouted.

  Song Lee, Ida, and Mary heard Sidney.

  So did a lot of the boys.

  Harry got his revenge all right. And it was horrible.

  Sidney ran down the street screaming, “I’ll get you back someday!”

  When Miss Mackle wants the floor cleaned, she asks Harry to sweep. No one sweeps the floor like Harry. He picks up every piece of paper, every pencil stub, and every bit of clay. Once Harry even crawled under my desk to get a broken crayon!

  Nobody knows that Harry keeps some of that stuff.

  But I do. I sit right next to him and watch. Harry is making stub people!

  Harry says his stub people are the scariest creatures in the world. He keeps them in a cigar box in his desk. Someday, when he has made twenty-four, Harry says, his stub people will invade our room.

  “It won’t be long, Doug,” he whispered. “Soon, the stub people will bring doom to Room 2B.”

  When it was Song Lee’s birthday, her mother brought in two trays of treats for the class. After we sang “Happy Birthday,” Song Lee passed out the treats. Miss Mackle noticed there were three fortune cookies and one cupcake left.

  Miss Mackle put them on a plate with a card that said WE LOVE MRS. MICHAELSEN.

  Then she said, “Who would like to take these treats to our librarian?”

  Everyone raised their hand except Song Lee. She’s too shy.

  We kept raising our hands. Sidney made noises like, “Oooooo ... Me! Me! Me!”

  Miss Mackle picked Harry and me. She knows we’re not afraid to go upstairs where the big kids are.

  When we were walking up the stairs to the library, Harry asked me if I wanted to split the cupcake.

  “That’s for the librarian,” I said.

  “Mrs. Michaelsen just likes yogurt and carrots,” Harry replied. “We’ll be doing her a favor.”

  And so we both promised, “Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a need
le in my eye,” that we would never tell on each another.

  Then we ate the librarian’s cupcake.

  Sometimes Harry gets me to do horrible things.

  The day before Columbus Day, Harry came to school with a tattoo on his arm. It was a skull and crossbones. Harry said the sea pirate Long John Silver made his tattoo.

  I know Harry did it with a Magic Marker. I think he just wanted to show off in front of Song Lee.

  When Harry went to his seat, he took out his writing folder. He wrote two pages about his adventures at sea.

  Miss Mackle asked him to read his story to the class.

  Harry said he met a mermaid, ate a sea turtle, and dug up a treasure.

  Miss Mackle put Harry’s story up on the bulletin board. She said Harry has lots of ideas.

  Harry has never eaten a sea turtle.

  Harry has never seen a mermaid.

  Harry has never been to sea!

  And I know Harry can’t even spell “sea.” He’s horrible at spelling too.

  Harry is not like any other second grader in our room. I know all about him.

  Harry’s my best friend.

  Horrible Harry, the Stub People, and Halloween

  The day before Halloween, Harry planned his invasion.

  “It’s time to bring doom to our room, Doug,” he said.

  I knew what he was talking about. It was time for the invasion of his stub people.

  “Do you need help?” I asked.

  “You can be my assistant.”

  We put the first pair of stub people in Song Lee’s desk while she was up at the pencil sharpener. When she returned, she reached in her desk for a piece of paper.

  Harry plugged his ears. “I love it when girls scream,” he said. “Look out for doom!”

  I plugged my ears.

  Song Lee didn’t scream.

  She didn’t even jump out of her seat.

  Harry and I watched Song Lee play with the stub people. She made them dance on the top of her desk!

  Harry scowled. “This is an invasion,” he complained. “My stub people aren’t dancers. They are invaders! They bring doom to our room!”

  I nodded.

  Harry leaned over and whispered.

  “Next time, we have to catch the enemy by real surprise.”

  When Harry and I got permission to go to the bathroom, we stopped in the hallway. We slipped some stub people in Sidney’s sweater sleeves.

  Perfect, we thought.

  When it came time to line up for lunch, Harry and I waited.

  Slowly, Sidney put on his sweater.

  And we watched.

  Sidney would jump up and scream any minute now!

  But when Sidney put his arm in the sleeve, the stub people fell through and landed on the floor.

  Sidney never saw them.

  Neither did Ida or Mary. They stepped on them!

  Harry kneeled down and scraped the stub people off the floor. Gently, he wrapped them in his handkerchief.

  We buried them in the garbage during lunch recess. And we gave them a farewell salute.

  “This means war!” Harry exclaimed. “We’ve lost too many men. We have to invade the mainland now.”

  “What’s the mainland?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” Harry said.

  Just before the bell rang, Harry put two pairs of stub people on the teacher’s desk.

  “The teacher’s desk?” I said.

  “The teacher’s desk,” Harry repeated. “Prepare for doom in our room!”

  Then he sat up straight and folded his hands on his desk.

  When the bell rang, Miss Mackle walked in. “I can see Harry is ready for class,” she said.

  “Plug your ears,” Harry whispered as Miss Mackle walked to her desk. “She’s going to scream and jump right out the window.”

  “What’s this?” Miss Mackle said when she saw the stub people.

  Harry took his fingers out of his ears.

  I did too.

  “How cute!” Miss Mackle exclaimed as she held one up.

  “Cute?” Harry said.

  “Cute?” I said. Harry and I gave each other a look. How could that be? The stub people are the scariest creatures on earth.

  Harry put his head down on his desk, and buried his face in his arms.

  Sometimes it’s real hard for Harry to be horrible.

  “Cheer up,” I said, “tomorrow’s Halloween. That’s your favorite holiday. You’ll be real scary then.”

  Harry looked up. “Halloween ... ” He grinned.

  Nobody knew what Harry was going to be for Halloween, but everybody knew it would be something horrible.

  Just before the 3 o‘clock bell rang, we talked about it.

  “Are you going to be Frankenstein?” Ida asked Harry.

  Harry flashed his white teeth. “Scarier than that.”

  “Are you going to be a skeleton?” Mary said.

  Harry shook his head. “Much, much scarier than that.”

  “Are you going to be a vampire?” Song Lee asked.

  Harry shook his head again, “You’ll never guess.”

  Sidney said, “Oh yes, I will. I bet you’re going to be a canary!” And he laughed and laughed.

  “Just beware, Sidney. Halloween is tomorrow.” Then Harry leaned forward and shouted, “BOO!”

  Sidney jumped a foot in the air.

  The next morning in school, everyone watched the door and waited for Harry.

  When a huge witch came in, everyone shivered. “It’s Harry!” they shouted.

  And then the witch took off her green mask. “Good morning, boys and girls,” a voice said.

  It was Miss Mackle!

  After we said the pledge, I looked over at Harry’s seat. It was empty. Where was Harry?

  And then, at 9:05, a very big Count Dracula showed up at the door.

  Everyone really shivered!

  “It’s Harry!” they shouted.

  And then a voice said, “Happy Halloween, boys and girls.”

  It was the principal, Mr. Cardini.

  Then, at 9:10, something slithered into the room. It was long and striped. It had a thin red tongue.

  “Aaaauuugh!” screamed Sidney.

  Miss Mackle walked over to look. “And who are you?” she asked.

  The snake slithered across the classroom floor, and everyone screamed!

  The snake went “Sssssss ...”

  Miss Mackle started to tap her foot. “If it’s who I think it is, you’re ten minutes late for school.”

  Everyone leaned forward to see.

  A head popped out of the snake skin, and flashed his white teeth.

  “Harry!” everyone shouted.

  “You’re late,” Miss Mackle said.

  “Snakes don’t move that quickly,” Harry replied. “It took me a long time to slither across the playground.”

  “Well, you’ll have to make up the extra time after school,” Miss Mackle said. “Ten minutes.”

  Harry made a face.

  Sidney beamed. “My watch says nine-twelve.”

  Harry glared at Sidney.

  Sometimes Harry is so horrible he has to stay after school.

  Harry’s Triple Revenge

  Sidney brought a book of bird stickers to Room 2B. He said he had a page of blue jays, a page of robins, and a page of something else.

  “What’s the something else?” Ida asked.

  “It’s a secret,” Sidney said, looking at Harry.

  Harry lowered his eyebrows. “I know what the other stickers are. Don’t you, Doug?”

  I did when I looked at Harry’s chair.

  There was a yellow canary sticker stuck to it.

  Sidney laughed. “Harry’s a canary.”

  Ida and Song Lee tried not to laugh.

  Harry held up his fist. I knew what he was thinking. Revenge!

  At noon, we lined up to go to the cafeteria. Harry got his lunch box down from the shelf. Then he noticed something.
<
br />   A yellow canary sticker was stuck to his lunch box.

  This time Harry held up two fists.

  I knew what that meant.

  Double revenge!

  When we got to the cafeteria table, Harry didn’t say anything. He just bit into a banana and stared at Sidney.

  After lunch our class walked upstairs to the library. Harry went right to the section with books about snakes, slugs, and sea turtles.

  Mrs. Michaelsen tapped Harry on the shoulder. “I have a new book for you, Harry.”

  Harry turned. “You do?”

  “Just came in today.” And then she whispered, “It’s horrible.”

  Harry flashed his white teeth as he looked at the title of the book: Terrible Tyrannosaurus Rex.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Michaelsen. You’re the best librarian in the world.”

  Mrs. Michaelsen patted Harry on the head, and then she helped me find a good book on Indians.

  Harry and I sat down at the reading table and read our books. We didn’t think of a canary once.

  When we went back to Room 2B, Harry put his dinosaur book under his lunch box because he wanted to take it home.

  At 3 P.M., when the bell rang, we got our jackets, lunch boxes, and books.

  That was when Harry saw it ...

  A yellow canary sticker stuck to Terrible Tyrannosaurus Rex!

  Harry was so mad his eyebrows came together.

  Harry gritted his teeth and carefully pulled the canary sticker off the plastic book cover. “This means triple revenge!” he growled.

  At 3:05, Harry spotted Sidney by the big bush. “Wait up!” he called. “I want to tell you something.”

  Sidney waited.

  “I just wanted to shake your hand,” Harry said.

  Sidney scratched his head. “You do?”

  “Sure, that was a real neat trick you did today. You put a yellow canary sticker on my chair, my lunch box, and then on my new library book. You’re one funny guy.”