Trouble According to Humphrey (12 page)

“Whew! I’m going to have to hustle to get all my work done. I do feel better, though.”

Aldo pushed his broom around the room like an artist painting a masterpiece. (We saw a great film showing a famous artist at work. I like seeing movies in class.) He missed the spitball on the floor but at least he didn’t notice it. (Whew!) He finished cleaning the room in half his usual time.

“Gotta run, guys. Catch you tomorrow night!” he said as he raced out the door with his cart.

Og and I sat in silence for a while, listening to the clock TICK-TICK-TICK-ing away.

“I’m sure glad that worked,” I finally squeaked.

Og jumped so high, he hit the cover of his glass house and almost popped the top.

“BOING-BOING!” he twanged.

For once, I knew exactly what he meant. Even though I’d kept Aldo out of trouble, I still had a lot more work to do.

LONGFELLOW CUSTODIAN
ATTENDS LOCAL COLLEGE!

Aldo Amato says the extra hours of studying will be
well worth it once he becomes a teacher.

The Humphreyville Herald

W
hile I’d been worrying about everybody’s troubles, my classmates kept working on Humphreyville. One day, they all left to go on a field trip to City Hall. How Og and I would have loved to go along! When they came back, Tabitha, Seth and Richie made a model park with swings and a slide, a baseball field and lots of trees. Tabitha must have made dozens of paper leaves for those trees!

At the same time, Richie, Gail and A.J. built a courthouse with pillars made out of the cardboard rolls that come in the middle of paper towels. (Mrs. Brisbane always keeps plenty of paper towels near my cage.)

Garth, Art and Heidi made a school out of plastic blocks. It had a playground, too! Humphreyville would certainly be a fun place to live, with two playgrounds in it.

I wasn’t sure what Miranda and Sayeh were working on, but they kept looking over at me and giggling. In fact, their giggling made me uncomfortable. The more
they giggled, the more I wiggled, and that made them laugh even more. I was glad to see that Miranda was feeling better.

I wished
I
felt better.

I felt especially bad when on Tuesday, Mrs. Brisbane suggested that Paul spend some time helping Mandy study for the math test she was going to retake.

“Know-It-All-Paul?” she blurted out. “He’s just a baby!”

“Is not!” a voice called out.

Art had actually jumped out of his seat and his fists were clenched, though I don’t think he was the type to hit anybody.

Paul looked as if someone had already punched him in the stomach.

Mrs. Brisbane wasn’t happy. “Sit down, Art. Now, Mandy, that was cruel and uncalled-for. I demand that you apologize right now.”

Mandy hung her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Paul’s so smart, he makes me feel dumb.”

“You are not dumb, Mandy. No one in this class is dumb! Now, I want you and Paul to sit in the back of the room and go over your test together while the rest of us work on some other problems.”

This time, Mandy didn’t complain. She and Paul sat in the back of the room. He went over her paper and quietly talked to her about it. Sometimes she seemed puzzled. Sometimes she nodded her head. By the time math class was over, she and Paul both looked happier.

On Thursday, during morning recess, Mandy took her math test again. She worked HARD-HARD-HARD, sometimes tugging at her hair and sometimes sticking the tip of her tongue out a little. (I do that, too, when I’m concentrating.) She worked through the whole recess period and then, with a loud sigh, handed her paper to Mrs. Brisbane.

“I’ll grade it right now if you like, Mandy.”

“Okay, but I probably didn’t do any better.”

“You studied, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to stay while I grade it?” Mrs. Brisbane asked.

“Yes, please,” said Mandy.

Mrs. Brisbane took the test to her desk. Og didn’t move a muscle, but I nervously gnawed on my paws. The teacher’s pencil made some marks on the first page and a few on the second page. On the third page, her pencil didn’t even move.

Mandy sat with her head down on the table. She couldn’t stand to watch Mrs. Brisbane grade her test.

Finally, Mrs. Brisbane stood up. “You got an 85%, Mandy. That’s a good solid B. Maybe even a B plus. Congratulations!”

Mandy had a smile on her face that I’d never seen before. “An 85!”

“Yes. You must have studied. And maybe Paul helped a little?”

“He did,” said Mandy. “I’ll thank him. And I have
something else.” She reached in her pocket and pulled out a somewhat crumpled piece of paper. “The permission slip to bring Humphrey home. My dad finally signed it.”

Mrs. Brisbane walked over, took the paper and examined it carefully. “Well, this is a good day for you, Mandy. Your math grade went up and you’ll be taking Humphrey home this weekend. Now, you have to promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?” asked Mandy.

“That you’ll never say you’re dumb again. And that you won’t ever call people names.”

“I promise,” said Mandy.

I felt so happy, I jumped on my wheel and spun like crazy. I heard a giant splash and knew that Og was taking a swim because he was GLAD-GLAD-GLAD, too.

For a while, I’d forgotten the Trouble. I even chowed down on some Nutri-Nibbles and yogurt drops I’d been saving. Yum!

That afternoon, Mrs. Brisbane called Miranda and Sayeh up to the front of the room. “Why don’t you two tell the class about the surprise you’ve been working on?”

Sayeh and Miranda smiled at each other. Miranda had something wrapped in a cloth, which she set on Mrs. Brisbane’s desk.

“Most communities honor the person the town is named for by putting up a statue,” said Sayeh in her clear, soft voice.

“So we made a statue of our founder … Humphrey!” Miranda lifted the cloth and unveiled a statue of ME-ME-ME! It looked exactly like me except that they had painted it shiny gold.

All the students applauded and Og let out a loud BOING!

Miranda and Sayeh placed the statue right in the middle of the park.

“I hope you like it, Humphrey,” said Miranda.

I liked it, all right. Okay, I loved it. But I didn’t like the feeling I was feeling inside. I think it’s called “guilt.” It’s an awful feeling, like when someone does something nice to you but you do something rotten to her. I crawled into my sleeping hut. The guilt feeling came right along with me.

When Mandy’s father arrived in Room 26 to pick us up after school on Friday, he also had a small boy by the hand. The boy had big brown eyes, like Mandy, and a brown coat that was too big for him. Mrs. Brisbane shook hands with Mr. Payne and bent down to greet the boy.

“What’s your name?”

“Bwian,” he said.

“Brian? How old are you?”

Bwian—or Brian—held up three fingers.

“Three! Well, in a few years, I hope I’ll have you as a student in Room Twenty-six.”

“There’ll be two more coming before him,” Mr. Payne said in a gruff voice I didn’t like.

Mrs. Brisbane led Mr. Payne over to my cage. “And this is Humphrey.”

“I hope it doesn’t eat a lot,” he said, eyeing me suspiciously.

Mrs. Brisbane handed him a couple of plastic bags of food. “This will take care of him. Humphrey likes vegetable treats, too. Mandy knows what to do—right?”

Mandy nodded and tugged at her father’s jacket. “Come on, Dad. Let’s go now!”

“Stop rushing me.”

“You left the twins in the car?” asked Mandy.

“Had to.”

“Well, they’ll murder each other. Come on!”

Mandy took Brian’s hand and Mr. Payne took my cage. He wasn’t too gentle, so I flipped and flopped around.

“Bye, Og. Wish me luck!” I squeaked to my friend. I usually feel sorry for Og. He doesn’t go home with students unless it’s a long weekend, because he doesn’t have to eat every day.

Today, I envied him. Murder? In the car? In the car I was going to ride in?

“BOING!” Og twanged. I appreciated his concern.

It was a LONG-LONG-LONG ride to the Paynes’ house, or maybe it just seemed that way because of the Payne family. In addition to Mandy and Brian, there were the twins, Pammy and Tammy. I guess they were around five years old. They may have been twins, but they didn’t look alike. Pammy had light brown hair and red skin. Everything about her was round: round face,
round eyes, round cheeks and a round body. Tammy was as thin as a candy cane. Her hair, eyes and skin were very pale.

There was one thing they had in common: They both liked to complain as much as Mandy did.

“I get to sit next to Humphrey,” said Pammy.

“No,
I
get to sit next to Humphrey,” argued Tammy.

“You’re too rough,” said Pammy.

“You’re too loud,” said Tammy.

“Pipe down!” Mandy shouted.

“You hurt my ears!” Brian complained.

“You kids all drive me crazy!” yelled Mr. Payne, glancing at the backseat.

“You’re driving too fast!” said Mandy.

“He’s driving too
slow
!” Tammy whined.

“You hurt my ears!” said Brian again, covering his ears with his hands.

I wanted to squeak, “PLEASE-PLEASE-PLEASE be quiet!” but no one would have heard me anyway.

Finally, we got to the Paynes’ house. I figured they wouldn’t argue as much outside of the car. I was wrong.

When Mr. Payne plunked my cage down on a table in the living room, it felt like an earthquake. He helped Brian take off his coat and gloves, muttering, “Hold still!”

Pammy, Tammy and Mandy threw their coats on a chair and rushed over to my cage.

“I want to hold him!” Pammy announced.

“Me first!” said Tammy.

“Later,” said Mandy. She peered in at me. “Sorry about the commotion, Humphrey. I’ll let you rest awhile, okay?”

“Thank you, Mandy,” I squeaked loudly.

“Hear that? He said, ‘You’re welcome,’” Mandy told her sisters.

“I heard him say, ‘You’re ugly,’” said Pammy, giggling.

“I heard him say, ‘I like Tammy better than Pammy,’” said Tammy, poking her twin in the ribs.

Mr. Payne slumped down in a beat-up old chair and rubbed his eyes. “Let’s get this show on the road,” he said. “Mandy, why don’t you fix us some mac and cheese for dinner?”

“Again?” asked Mandy.

“You’re the oldest.”

“I hate mac and cheese,” said Pammy.

“I love mac and cheese,” said Tammy.

Mandy stomped into the kitchen. Brian followed her, shouting, “Bwian help! Bwian help!”

About that time, Mr. Payne turned on the television. The twins immediately raced over to watch it.

“I want Channel Five!” said Pammy.

“Channel Eleven!” said Tammy.

“Kids! Quit your bellyaching. We’re watching Channel Seven and that’s that,” said Mr. Payne in a very firm voice.

For a while the twins were silent. The TV was loud as people screeched—or maybe they were singing. The
Paynes remained quiet until Mandy said, “Get out of the way, Brian. This is hot!”

Soon I heard Brian go “Ow!” and Mandy say, “I told you it was hot. Now sit down!”

Brian rushed back in the living room, rubbing his hand. Then he noticed me and started poking his fingers in my cage. Meanwhile, I could hear dishes banging around in the kitchen.