by Nancy Krulik
GROSSET & DUNLAP
Published by the Penguin Group
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Text copyright © 2012 by Nancy Krulik. Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Aaron Blecha. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011018036
ISBN 978-1-101-56023-5
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
About the Author and Illustrator
For Danny B.—NK
For Grandma LaVerne—AB
“Okay, Louie,” Mrs. Kelly said. “Spell crabby.”
It was the last round of Edith B. Sugarman Elementary School’s fourth-grade spelling bee. There were only two spellers left: Louie Farley and George Brown. They were standing on the stage of the school auditorium.
George frowned as Louie got ready to spell. Crabby was an easy word. Louie was bound to get it right.
Louie sure looked confident. He smiled and nodded. “Crabby,” he repeated. “C-r-a-b-y. Crabby.”
Louie got the word wrong! All George had to do was spell it right, and he would be the winner.
“I’m sorry, Louie,” Mrs. Kelly said. “That is incorrect. George, can you spell crabby?”
George walked to the mic. “Crabby,” he said. “C-r-a-b-b-y. Crabby.”
“Th-that’s what I meant,” Louie stammered. “Two b’s.” He looked over to his friends, Mike and Max, for help. But they didn’t know what to say.
Mrs. Kelly gave George one of her big, gummy grins. It looked like Mrs. Kelly had eaten oatmeal for breakfast. Yuck.
“Congratulations, George,” Mrs. Kelly said. “You’re the winner! That means you will be the fourth-grade contestant at next week’s county-wide spelling bee.”
“Wahoo!” George’s best friend Alex shouted. “George is the champ!”
“Go, champ! Go, champ!” George’s other good friend Chris cheered.
Soon all the kids were cheering. Well, all the kids except Louie’s pals, Mike and Max.
Louie looked like someone had punched him in the gut—or like he wanted to punch someone else in the gut. Either way, he seemed upset.
“But that’s not fair,” Louie insisted. “I meant to put that other b in there. I just forgot.”
“I’m sorry, Louie,” Mrs. Kelly said. “But there’s always next year.”
George walked offstage and joined his classmates.
“Congratulations, dude,” Alex said. “That was awesome.”
“I didn’t even get past the first round,” Chris added. “Who knew flight wasn’t spelled with an e on the end?”
George knew that. He knew a lot about spelling.
“You have to train hard from now on,” Julianna told George. “The words in the county-wide spelling bee are going to be really tough.”
George gulped.
“Don’t worry,” Julianna assured him. “We’ll all help.”
“Thanks,” George said.
Sage gave George a goofy smile and blinked her eyelashes up and down. “Oh, Georgie,” she said. “You were amazing. It was like you had a dictionary in your head.”
George frowned. He hated when Sage called him Georgie. Still, it was cool having all his friends act like he was some sort of genius.
“You were robbed,” George could hear Max telling Louie as they all returned to their classroom. “You knew how to spell crabby. You’re an expert on crabby.”
“Yeah,” Mike agreed. “You’re like the crabbiest person I know.”
Louie shot Mike a look.
“I mean in a good way,” Mike added quickly.
Louie shrugged. “George just got lucky. He’ll never win the county-wide. Two years ago, my brother, Sam, came in third place. And he is way smarter than George.”
“Maybe George will come in second place,” Chris told Louie.
“Or even first,” Sage added. “George is smart enough to come in first.”
“No way,” Louie insisted. “And besides, he’ll probably do something goofy and mess up.”
George frowned. He knew what Louie meant. George was always doing goofy things that got him into trouble. But it wasn’t his fault. It was all because of that rotten super burp!
It all started when George and his family first moved to Beaver Brook. George’s dad was in the army, so the family moved around a lot. George had lots of experience being the new kid in school. He’d expected the first day in his new school to stink. First days always did.
But this first day was the stinkiest.
In his old school, George had been the class clown. He was always pulling pranks and making jokes. But George had promised himself that things were going to be different at Edith B. Sugarman Elementary School. He was turning over a new leaf. No more pranks. No more whoopee cushions or paper airplanes. He wasn’t going to get into any trouble anymore. He wasn’t going to make funny faces or goof on his teachers behind their backs.
George didn’t have to be a math whiz like Alex to figure out how many friends you make being the unfunny, well-behaved new kid in school. The answer was easy. Zero. Nada. Zilch. And that’s exactly how many friends George had made by the end of his first day at Edith B. Sugarman Elementary School. None.
That night, George’s parents
took him out to Ernie’s Ice Cream Emporium. While they were sitting outside and George was finishing his root beer float, a shooting star flashed across the sky. So George made a wish.
I want to make kids laugh—but not get into trouble.
Unfortunately, the star was gone before George could finish the wish. So only half came true—the first half.
A minute later, George had a funny feeling in his belly. It was like there were hundreds of tiny bubbles bouncing around in there. The bubbles hopped up and down and all around. They ping-ponged their way into his chest and bing-bonged their way up into his throat. And then . . .
George let out a big burp. A huge burp. A SUPER burp!
The super burp was loud, and it was magic.
Suddenly George lost control of his arms and legs. It was like they had minds of their own. His hands grabbed straws and stuck them up his nose like a walrus. His feet jumped up on the table and started dancing the hokey-pokey. Everyone at Ernie’s Ice Cream Emporium started laughing—except George’s parents, who were covered in ice cream from the sundaes he had knocked over.
The magical super burps came back lots of times after that. And every time a burp arrived, it brought trouble with it. Like the time it made him act like a dog and start barking during the fourth-grade field day. He’d even licked Principal McKeon’s hand! Blech!
And then there was the time the burp exploded during Louie’s water park birthday party. George went crazy on a tubing ride. He dived underwater and started pinching people’s butts! Boy, were the lifeguards mad at him! Louie’s mom was plenty angry, too.
But Mrs. Farley wasn’t nearly as mad as George’s mom had been the time the magical super burp showed up at her craft store, the Knit Wit. George wound up wrapping himself in cloth and crashing his way through the rows of craft supplies like a crazed, polka-dotted mummy. By the time the burp disappeared, the store was a mess.
The super burp had gotten George into lots and lots of trouble. None of it had been his fault. But George couldn’t tell anyone that. They wouldn’t believe him even if he did. George wouldn’t have believed it, either—if he weren’t the one it was happening to.
The only person who knew about the magical super burp was Alex. George was really lucky that his best friend could keep a secret—and that he was willing to try and help George find a way to squelch that belch once and for all.
Unfortunately, Alex hadn’t come up with a solution yet. George sure hoped he would find one soon. The county-wide spelling bee was less than a week away. A burp at the bee would be a disaster—D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R!
“Dude, you hungry?” Alex asked George when the boys arrived at Alex’s house after school.
“Oh yeah!” George knew that Alex’s kitchen was always stocked with great stuff—stacks of peanut butter crackers, cartons of cookies, and gallons of ice cream.
“How about a vanilla ice-cream and onion shake?” Alex asked him.
George made a face. That was not the kind of snack he had in mind. “Vanilla ice cream and onion?”
Alex nodded. “Yeah. I read on this website that eating onions can help people stop feeling gassy all the time. And milk or cream will line your stomach so you don’t . . . well . . . you know . . .”
George did know. “So I don’t burp,” he said, finishing Alex’s sentence.
“Exactly.”
“Isn’t there some other way?” George asked. He didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but onions and ice cream sounded disgusting.
Alex shrugged. “Not that I know of.” He reached into a drawer in the refrigerator and pulled out a big onion. “Besides, how bad can it taste?”
Alex got out a blender, and soon it was making whirring sounds, mixing up milk, ice cream, and onions.
Awful. That’s how bad that shake tasted when George took a sip. Holding his nose didn’t help. It was really, really disgusting. George didn’t think anything could make vanilla ice cream taste rotten. But an onion did the trick.
“Aren’t you going to drink any?” George asked Alex. The blender was still half full.
Alex shook his head. “That’s all for you, buddy. I’m having a banana and peanut butter sandwich. You better drink up if you want to get rid of those giant burps.”
The super burps were definitely king-size. So George pinched his nose again. “Here goes,” he said as he took another huge gulp and tried not to gag.
“You think it’s working? Any burplike symptoms?” Alex asked George an hour later while the boys were busy playing video games in Alex’s living room.
“Nope. So far, so good,” George said. He clicked a button and destroyed a spaceship on the screen. “I’m a gas-free guy!”
“Um . . . dude?” Alex asked. “You mind looking the other way when you talk? Your breath stinks. It must be the onions.”
George wrinkled his nose. His breath was so bad, even he could tell it stunk. And it was pretty hard to smell your own breath. Still, having bad breath was worth it—if it was burp-free breath.
“You got any gum?” George asked Alex.
“Just my already been chewed gum ball,” Alex said.
Alex was going for the world’s record for making the biggest ABC gum ball. One day he hoped to get in the Schminess Book of World Records. George couldn’t ask him to sacrifice a piece of ABC gum. Especially since George knew where some of that gum came from—sidewalks, under desks, and behind toilet seats.
“That’s okay,” George told Alex. “I’ll just move over so you don’t smell me as much.”
“An onion and vanilla ice-cream shake?” George’s mom asked him later that afternoon when she picked him up to drive him to the mall. “What made you want to drink something like that?”
Uh-oh. How was George going to explain this one? It wasn’t like he could tell his mom about the super burps.
“It just sounded cool,” George told her.
“I wish I had a mint or something,” his mom said.
“Do we really have to go shopping?” George asked, changing the subject.
George’s mom smiled. “Of course we do. The minute you told me about the county-wide spelling bee, shopping was all I could think of.”
How weird. George hadn’t thought about going shopping once.
“You have to dress for success. Look good and you will be good,” his mom continued. “And there will probably be a photographer from the newspaper.”
“I guess,” George said.
George’s mom made a face. “Honey, do you mind sticking your face out the window?” she asked. “Your breath is really stinking up the car.”
George rolled down the window. The wind hit his face. He opened his mouth and stuck his tongue out, just like a dog. The wind blew into his mouth. But nothing burst back out. He’d been burp-free all afternoon. Maybe an onion shake a day could keep the burp away.
“Let me see how you look,” George’s mother called to him.
George was inside a dressing room in the boys’ section of Mabel’s Department Store. He stared at himself in the mirror. He did not want to come out. His mother had made him try on plaid pants and a white shirt with a bow tie.
“Come on, George,” his mother called again. “I don’t have all day.”
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. The plaid pants made noises as he walked.
“Oh my!” George’s mother shouted. “My little man looks so handsome.”
“Mom,” George whispered. “Do you have to talk so loud?”
“Don’t you think he looks handsome?” George’s mom asked the salesman. “Did I mention that he’s going to be in a county-wide spelling bee?”
“Yeah, I think you did,” the salesman said. He didn’t look impressed.
“Can you spell plaid?” George’s mom asked him as she straightened his bow tie.
&n
bsp; “P-l-a-i-d,” George said.
“Exactly right,” his mother said.
“I hate these pants,” George said. “They squeak.”
His mother frowned. “Okay, then try on the beige slacks.”
“Can’t I get the black jeans and the leather jacket instead?” George asked her hopefully.
His mom shook her head. “This is a spelling bee, not a skateboarding contest.”
George went back into the dressing room. The beige slacks were even worse than the plaid pants.
“And don’t forget the red suspenders,” his mom called to him.
George groaned. But he did as he was told. Then he looked in the mirror. He looked like his mother’s uncle Milton who was eighty-three.
“Grrr,” George grumbled under his breath as he walked out of the dressing room.
Right away, George heard a terrible sound. Somebody was laughing. George knew that laugh anywhere. The laugh was mean. It was Louie’s laugh.
“Nice suspenders,” Louie said as he walked over to George. “I think my grandfather has a pair just like them.”
George couldn’t believe it. This was a nightmare. N-I-G-H-T-M-A-R-E.
“George, aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” his mother asked.
None of George’s friends were in the store. But he figured his mother meant Louie.
“This is Louie,” George muttered under his breath.
“Man, your breath smells like vomit,” Louie whispered.
“At least I can spell vomit,” George whispered back. It wasn’t a great comeback.
“Hi, Louie,” George’s mom said. “We’re getting George some clothes for the county-wide spelling bee.”
Just then, Louie’s mom joined them. She was holding a hanger with a black leather skateboarding jacket.
