Horrible Harry and the Wedding Spies Read online

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  BY SUZY KLINE

  PICTURES BY AMY WUMMER

  VIKING

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA)

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

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  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2015

  Text copyright © 2015 by Suzy Kline

  Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Penguin Group (USA)

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Kline, Suzy.

  Horrible Harry and the wedding spies / by Suzy Kline ; illustrated by Amy Wummer.

  pages cm—(Horrible Harry ; 32)

  Summary: “When Harry and his pals in Room 3B aren't invited to their teacher's wedding, they invite themselves, and wind up saving the day”—Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-101-62693-1

  [1. Weddings—Fiction. 2. Teachers—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Behavior—Fiction.] I. Wummer, Amy, illustrator. II. Title.

  PZ7.K6797Hnst 2015 [Fic]—dc23 2014024551

  Version_1

  For Rufus, the love of my life

  Contents

  Also by Suzy Kline

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  A Ride with Harry

  Mary's Bad News

  Something Hard to Do

  Harry's Horrible Plan

  The Church Cemetery

  Flower Baskets

  Disaster in the Balcony

  Trapped in the Belfry

  The Wedding Surprise

  Special appreciation to . . .

  my sharp editor, Leila Sales, whose good questions and thoughtful comments greatly helped me write this book; my copy editor, Janet Pascal, for her critical eye and important contributions; Kitty Penton for going up in our church belfry and taking pictures for me; her husband, Elmer, for spotting the wooden owl up there; Midge and Rod for their valuable help; Bob Bittner, who shared his wonderful pictures of our church bell and belfry with me; Emily and Victor, and Jennifer and Matt for their beautiful weddings; and my husband, Rufus, who read many of my drafts.

  A Ride with Harry

  Usually my friend Harry gets a ride to school with his grandma in her red truck. Monday was different.

  “Thanks for the lift, Doug,” he said, getting into my mom’s car. “My grandma is busy baking a carrot cake this morning.”

  “No problem,” I replied. “What happened to your thumb?”

  Harry looked down at his Band-Aid. “I was grating carrots for her, and I cut myself. Want to see how bloody it is?”

  “No, thanks.” I cringed.

  Harry lowered his voice. “I wonder if I got any skin in Grandma’s cake batter.”

  “Eweyee!” I replied.

  Harry cackled. He loves horrible things!

  As Mom turned the corner, I could see the tall steeple on my church. Harry was looking at it too.

  “Have you ever been up in your church bell tower?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “Just last summer. Mom and I put a wooden owl up there to scare away the pigeons.”

  “Cool!” Harry exclaimed. “Hey look, Dougo! Your church has a cemetery in the back. We should check out those gravestones on Saturday.”

  “Saturday? How perfect!” Mom interrupted. “Then you two could join me in our Fellowship Hall and arrange flower bouquets. I need some good helpers. I’ll be there all day, so you could stop by whenever you liked.”

  Harry and I exchanged a look.

  Arrange flower bouquets? That was deadly!

  “Nooo thank you,” we said.

  As soon as Mom pulled up at South School, I grabbed my book bag and jumped out of the car. “See you later, Mom!” I called. We ran down the ramp onto the playground. Mary madly waved us over right away. She was standing with Song Lee, Ida, ZuZu, Dexter, and Sidney by the Dumpster.

  Mary looked like her cat had died.

  “I’ve been waiting to say this until we were all together. I have some bad news to share . . .”

  Mary's Bad News

  “What’s the bad news?” ZuZu asked.

  Mary lowered her voice. “Miss Mackle is getting married on Saturday.”

  Ida and Song Lee immediately started jumping up and down. They were cheering and clapping.

  “That’s not bad news,” Harry said.

  Mary held up a hand. “Wait, there’s a part B.”

  Everyone huddled up again and listened.

  “We’re not invited!”

  All of us were stunned.

  “What a bummer!” Harry groaned. “Miss Mackle’s my favorite teacher.”

  “Mine too,” Song Lee and Ida chimed in.

  “Listen to this,” Mary said. “I even got a special pink taffeta dress with red roses on it to wear to Miss Mackle’s wedding. I knew it was sometime this spring. I thought for sure she’d invite her class.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?” ZuZu asked.

  “Miss Mackle and my mom go to the same beauty salon—Lucy’s Locks. Mom got the scoop last Saturday from Lucy.”

  Sidney started to whine. “Why didn’t she invite us? I thought she liked us.”

&
nbsp; “Because it’s a family only wedding,” Mary explained.

  “That’s not fair,” Ida replied. “We’re her Room 3B family.”

  “Where’s she getting married?” ZuZu asked.

  “Maplewood Church,” Mary answered.

  “No kidding!” I said. “That’s my church!”

  “Miss Mackle is getting married this Saturday at Doug’s church?” Harry asked. “What time?”

  “Noon,” Mary answered. “Why?”

  Harry paused for a moment and then smiled. “You guys want to arrange flower bouquets on Saturday?”

  “Huh?” everyone replied.

  “I’ll tell you all the details at lunch.” Then Harry winked at me.

  Oh man! I thought. Harry was hatching a horrible plan!

  Something Hard to Do

  When we got to Room 3B, Mary brightened up. “Oh, Miss Mackle!” she exclaimed. “I love your new hairdo!” The topic of hairstyling seemed to lift Mary’s mood. “Your curls are so pretty,” she said.

  Miss Mackle looked embarrassed. She put both hands on her face and shook her head. “Thank you, Mary, but I think it’s too curly.”

  “Perms are like that at first,” Mary replied.

  At ten o’clock, we had writers’ workshop. As usual, Miss Mackle wrote a prompt on the board and we had fifteen minutes to write about it. I liked today’s topic: Write about something that was hard for you to do.

  Everyone got busy writing, even the teacher. I knew what was hard for me—getting along with my annoying brother, Baxter.

  When we were done, Miss Mackle got out our portable microphone and passed it to Song Lee, who was sitting in the front row. Everyone looked up and listened while Song Lee read.

  “When I came to America, at the end of kindergarten, I spoke just a little English. It was hard for me to learn a new language. I had to go to an ELL class. That means you are an English language learner. I made a lot of mistakes in first and second grade. I kept forgetting to use a, an, and the, and add -s and -ed on my words. It bothered me and kept me from speaking in front of the class. Now, I speak English fine, because I had a wonderful ELL teacher, but I still don’t like speaking in front of the class.”

  Miss Mackle put her hand over her heart. “It is very hard to learn a new language. But you have learned it beautifully! I’m so proud of you.”

  Song Lee smiled, then passed the microphone to Harry.

  “Go ahead,” the teacher said.

  “High places give me the heebie-jeebies. If you don’t know what those are, maybe you know about the screaming meemies, willies, butterflies in your stomach, or jitters. Same thing. When I have to ride an elevator, I freak out. I start sweating, get goose pimples, and my stomach is like a washing machine on the spin cycle. But I am working on it. I actually made it to the top of the climbing rope in gym. I rode the Drop of Doom at Mountainside Park too, but I had to be really psyched to do it.” When Harry glanced over at Song Lee, I knew what he was thinking. She was his inspiration. “Mostly, I just avoid high places.”

  “You tell it the way it is, Harry, and use lots of detail,” said Miss Mackle. “That’s good writing!”

  Harry beamed.

  Sidney took a turn next. “I don’t like being left out. That’s very hard. Every time someone passes out birthday invitations, I wait to get mine. Sometimes I don’t get a birthday invitation. Then I want to cry and shout, ‘Give me a birthday invitation!’”

  It was very quiet when Sid finished. I knew where he got the idea to write about that.

  Miss Mackle’s wedding!

  “I feel the same way you do, Sidney,” the teacher said. “That’s why I don’t allow anyone to pass out invitations in class. That should be private. Thank you for sharing, Sidney. I love the feeling you put into your writing.”

  After we passed the microphone around the room, it finally ended up on the teacher’s lap. “My turn,” she said, taking a deep breath.

  “This Saturday I am getting married.”

  As soon as the class heard her news, everyone clapped.

  Sidney whispered to Mary, “We knew it already!”

  “Shhhh!” Mary scolded.

  Sidney covered his mouth.

  The teacher continued reading from her notebook.

  “I’m very happy about that. It’s going to be a special day. But there is something that will be very hard for me. My father will not be able to walk me down the aisle. He is a major in the army overseas. He trains soldiers there. He won’t be back for another year. I know my wedding will be fine, but I don’t think I will be. I’ll probably cry, and I want this to be a happy occasion. I’m trying to control my emotions, but it’s hard for me to do.”

  When our teacher finished, it was very quiet.

  Harry leaned forward and lowered his eyebrows. He looked worried. “If your dad isn’t walking you down the aisle, who is?” he asked.

  “No one. Mark and I don’t have any brothers.”

  “Why can’t you walk down with your mother?” Ida asked.

  “Mom needs to stay with my grandmother in the front row. She’s very old.”

  Harry slowly sat up and crooked his arm. Then he started nodding.

  Uh-oh! What was Harry thinking now?

  Harry's Horrible Plan

  At lunch, we talked about Miss Mackle’s wedding in the cafeteria while Harry and ZuZu were in the hot lunch line getting tacos.

  “I was hoping Miss Mackle might use an Elvis song in her wedding,” Dexter said, waving his cheese stick in the air. “‘Love Me Tender’ would be perfect. Now I’ll never know.”

  “Well, I’m crushed,” Mary replied, chomping into her tuna sandwich. “I wish I had written about how it feels not to get an invitation to your favorite teacher’s wedding. Maybe Miss Mackle would have changed her mind and invited us.”

  “Hey, guys! Why the gloom and doom?” Harry said, joining our table. “I know how we can go to the wedding.”

  Song Lee stopped eating her strawberry yogurt. “How?” she asked.

  Harry explained, “Doug’s mom needs help making flower bouquets on Saturday at their church. We can do that, then just before noon, we leave. As we exit the church . . . we make a little sneaky stopover and spy on the wedding!”

  “We can’t do that, Harry!” Mary objected. “We’ll get in big trouble. I know! My uncle is a policeman. He had to take some teenagers down to the station for disturbing a wedding. We’d be wedding crashers just like them!”

  “Not crashers. Spies! Wedding spies,” Harry explained.

  “It’s the same thing!” Mary replied.

  “No it isn’t,” Harry insisted. “Spying is sneaky and quiet. No one knows you’re there.”

  “But what if someone sees you spying?” Ida asked.

  “The only way it would work is if we had a good hiding place to spy from,” ZuZu suggested.

  “Yeah, a secret stakeout,” Dexter added. “That would be way cool!”

  “Doesn’t your church have a balcony, Doug?” Harry asked with his mouth full of beef.

  “Yeah, on the second floor.”

  “Great! We hide up there and look over the ledge. No one will see us. It’s a perfect spy plan!”

  “Doesn’t sound bad, Harry,” Dexter said.

  “I like hiding,” Sidney chimed in.

  Mary dabbed her lips with a pink napkin. “I can’t believe you guys are considering this! It’s a dumb plan!”

  Harry wouldn’t give up. “Those flower bouquets are probably for some kind of charity. It’s good to do something for others.”

  “We could just go and help Doug’s mom,” Song Lee said. “That would be nice. And maybe we’d even hear the music from Miss Mackle’s wedding.”

  “We couldn’t get in trouble for that,” Ida agreed.

&n
bsp; “Of course not!” Harry answered. “And when it’s time, whoever wants to be a wedding spy can sneak up into the balcony with me. I’ll stay up there with you guys . . . until twelve o’clock.”

  Everyone put down what they were eating and stared at Harry.

  “What do you mean ‘until twelve o’clock’?” I repeated. “Where are you going then?”

  Harry popped the rest of his taco into his mouth. When he talked, there was red sauce dripping down the sides of his chin. “I’m walking our teacher down the aisle.”

  Mary’s eyes bulged!

  Song Lee and Ida gasped.

  The rest of us froze.

  “Harry!” Mary exclaimed. “You’re not even invited! You can’t just show up and escort the bride down the aisle! Besides, Miss Mackle plans to do it herself. You’d be disrupting her wedding!”

  “Don’t try to talk me out of it!” Harry said firmly. “I’ve made up my mind, and it’s final. Miss Mackle needs a strong arm!” Then he crooked his right elbow, picked up his lunch tray, and marched over to the hot lunch line for seconds.

  Mary rolled her eyes. “He’s even practicing the part! Now we have to be wedding spies with Harry,” she said. “It’s an emergency! We must stop Harry from messing up Miss Mackle’s wedding!”

  “How do we stop him?” ZuZu asked.

  “We’ll think of something,” Mary said. “In the meantime, we just have to stick with him!”

  “Like glue,” Sidney replied. When he tapped his fingers together, Mary did the same thing.

  “This finger tapping,” she said, “will be our secret reminder to keep a close eye on Harry at all times!” When she tapped her fingers again, we did, too.

  As soon as Harry returned with another taco, he took a quick vote. “Okay guys, who’s with me on Saturday?”

  All of us raised our hands.

  “Neato! Here’s the plan.” Harry lowered his voice. “We meet in the cemetery behind the Maplewood Church at exactly eleven o’clock on Saturday. We go in together, arrange some flower bouquets, then make our way up the stairway to the balcony. It’s just a small family wedding. Everyone will be in the front pews facing the other way. We’ll have ringside seats in that balcony, and a bird’s-eye view.”