Niagara Falls, Or Does It? #1

by Winkler, Henry

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  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

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  About the Authors

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  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. S.A.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2003005962

  eISBN : 978-1-101-15376-5

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  I dedicate this book to my wife Stacey and my three children, Jed, Zoe and Max, because it’s their love that gave me the strength to do this in the first place—H. W.

  This book is for my four fabulous men—Alan, Theo, Oliver and Cole. With love and potato leek soup—L.O.

  CHAPTER 1

  IT STARTED TO BUZZ. I looked up. The loud speaker above the door crackled and buzzed again. Then it started to shake. It was coming alive!

  “Hank Zipzer!” the loudspeaker said. “Report to Principal Love’s office at once.”

  I put my hands over my ears and slid down in my chair.

  How did it know my name? It was only the first hour of the first day of school, and already my name was coming out of that box on the wall.

  Everyone in class stared at me. Some kids giggled. A few of them whispered. But not Nick McKelty. Nope—he cupped his hands over his big mouth and shouted, “Way to go, Zipper Boy.”

  My teacher, Ms. Adolf, shot me a really nasty look.

  Show no fear, I thought. Walk the walk.

  I stood up and strutted to the door like Shaquille O’Neal taking center court. Okay, so I wear a size-four shoe and he wears a twenty-three—it’s the attitude that counts. I’m long on attitude. Short on shoe but long on attitude.

  When I reached the door, I turned to my best friend, Frankie Townsend. “If I don’t come back,” I told him, “you can have my protractor.”

  “Don’t forget to breathe in there,” Frankie whispered. “Remember, Zip, oxygen is power.”

  Frankie is very big on oxygen. Whenever I’m nervous, he always tells me to take some deep breaths. He learned that from his mom, who is a yoga teacher. She’s really good at yoga. In fact, she’s not good, she’s great. She is so flexible, she can lift up her leg and put her foot in her pocket!

  Even though I was going to the principal’s office, I was determined to leave with style, my head held high. I flashed the class my best smile, the one where I show both my top and bottom teeth. Then, in the middle of maybe the greatest exit ever, the loudspeaker buzzed again.

  “And don’t you dare stop in the bathroom, young man,” it said.

  Now how did it know I was going to do that?

  Everyone laughed as I left.

  “No laughing in class!” Ms. Adolf shouted, banging on her desk with this pointer stick she has.

  That’s one of her rules. Ms. Adolf doesn’t believe in laughing. She thinks fourth-graders laugh way too much.

  There are two fourth-grade teachers in my school. One is named Mr. Sicilian, and he’s really nice. He plays soccer with everyone at recess and never gives homework on the weekends. The other is Ms. Adolf. She doesn’t play any games and gives two tons of homework even on weekends. My luck, I got Ms. Adolf.

  I could practically hear my heart pounding as I walked down the hall. Principal Love has a way of making you nervous, especially when you don’t know what you’ve done wrong.

  I was trying not to think about him, so I looked at all the “Welcome Back” decorations in the hall instead. The halls in my school are painted yuck green. You know, the color of melted pistachio ice cream. But the decorations really helped cheer things up. I liked Miss Hart’s door, which had an underwater theme. All the fifth-graders in her class had pasted pictures of their faces onto octopus heads. Mr. Sicilian’s was my favorite. All the kids’ heads were soccer balls. I told you he was cool.

  When I reached the stairs, I thought about sliding down the banister, but I was already in enough trouble, so I took the steps—two at a time. My mouth was dry when I got to the bottom, so I stopped at the water fountain to get a drink.

  Just as I took the first swallow, the loudspeaker buzzed again.

  “I’m waiting, Mr. Zipzer,” it said. Principal Love has the kind of voice that sounds like it belongs to a really tall man with a lot of bushy, black hair. But actually, Principal Love is short and bald except for a little fringe of red hair.

  I ran down the hall. I couldn’t get in trouble for running in the halls if the place I was running to was the principal’s office, right?

  When I got to the office, I took a deep breath. I looked up at the sign above the door. LELAND LOVE, PRINCIPAL, it said. I had been here before. Many times. Too many times. Way, way, way too many times.

  Slowly, I pushed open the door. I walked inside and came face to face with the five of them. No, not people—there was only one person there. I’m talking about things. The things on Principal Love’s face: two eyes, two ears, and one mole on his cheek that looked like the Statue of Liberty without the torch. I don’t know if it’s possible for a mole to frown, but trust me, this one did not look happy.

  “Approach me, young man,” Principal Love said.

  I wanted to, I really did, but my feet were stuck on his carpet. It was as if I had big wads of gum stuck to the soles of my shoes.

  “Were you or were you not tardy today?” Principal Love asked.

  I didn’t answer because I’ve found that when Leland Love asks a question, he likes to answer it himself.

  “You were seventeen minutes late,” he said.

  See what I mean?

  “Did we not have this talk thirty times in third grade, fiftee
n times in second grade, and I won’t even refer to first grade?” Principal Love’s face twitched. It looked like the Statue of Liberty was doing a hula dance.

  I tried not to laugh. That would have gotten me into even bigger trouble.

  “We’ve had this talk many times,” he answered himself. See, he did it again.

  I looked down at my feet, mostly to keep from staring at the Statue of Liberty mole. Once you focus on that thing, it’s really hard to take your eyes off it. I noticed that I had put on two different socks again. One had a Nike swoosh, and the other was just your basic Wal-Mart sock.

  “If there’s one thing I want you to learn from your experience at PS 87, it is this.” Principal Love was using his bushy-hair-tall-man voice. “Are you listening, young man?”

  “I’ve got both ears working, sir.”

  Actually, I was listening. I really was curious to hear the single most important thing I was supposed to learn in my whole entire elementary school career.

  Principal Love cleared his throat. “Always be on time, when time is involved,” he said.

  Wow. There it was. Now, if I could just figure out what it meant.

  “Explain to me how it is possible that you were late on the very first day of school,” he said.

  Okay, I’ll be honest with you. I am late a lot, but I don’t mean to be. In fact, I try really hard to have everything ready on time—my pencils all sharpened; my three ballpoint pens ready to roll; a protractor, a ruler and a compass in my pencil case. But this morning I had a problem. I’m pretty sure I remember putting my backpack on my desk chair before I went to bed. But somehow, and I don’t have an exact reason for this, my backpack played hide-and-seek during the night and this morning it took me twenty minutes to find it. It was in the coat closet by the front door. But try telling that to Leland Love.

  “I’m waiting for an answer,” said Principal Love.

  And all that squeaked out of me was, “Can’t explain it, sir.”

  “Well then, absorb this,” he said, “because I’m only going to say it once. Punctuality and the fourth grade go hand in hand.” He paused, then said it again, just like I knew he would. “Punctuality and the fourth grade go hand in hand.”

  I’m not sure but I think the Statue of Liberty on his face nodded in agreement.

  CHAPTER 2

  I CAN’T BELIEVE I’m saying this, but it was actually a relief to get back to Ms. Adolf’s class ... for about twenty seconds, anyway.

  As soon as I slid into my chair, the words “Five full paragraphs are required” came flying out of Ms. Adolf’s mouth like heat-seeking missiles.

  I looked around. All the other kids were writing in their assignment books. I reached for my assignment book, too, but it was missing in action. I thought maybe I had left it in the middle drawer of my desk at home, underneath my broken watch collection. Or maybe on the kitchen table.

  “The topic for your essay is: What I did on my summer vacation,” Ms. Adolf went on. As she wrote the words on the blackboard, I noticed that her skirt had a bunch of chalk marks in the butt region. That happens to teachers when they lean against the blackboard, but I had never seen chalk marks like this before. They looked like donkey ears. When I thought of Ms. Adolf with a donkey on her butt, I couldn’t help myself. I laughed out loud.

  “Henry, I see nothing funny,” Ms. Adolf said. Of course she didn’t. That’s because she couldn’t see her rear end.

  I bit my lip and tried to concentrate.

  “I expect you to write an opening paragraph, a concluding paragraph, and three supporting paragraphs,” Ms. Adolf was saying.

  I raised my hand.

  “Exactly how long does a paragraph have to be?” I asked.

  Everyone laughed, which was strange, because I wasn’t trying to be funny. Ms. Adolf didn’t laugh. She got little red splotches on her neck, like the kind my sister, Emily, gets when she’s really mad.

  “Well, Henry,” she said, saying my name as if it smelled bad. “We will all learn that from you, since you’ll be the first one to read your composition out loud to the class.”

  Ms. Adolf walked to her desk. She wore a lanyard around her neck with a small key on it. The key was silver and so shiny that she must have polished it every night. She slipped the lanyard off and unlocked the top drawer of her desk with the key. I wondered what could be in there that had to be locked up. I looked at Frankie, who knew what I was thinking.

  “Maybe she’s got a big wad of cash in there,” he whispered.

  “Or jewels,” said our friend Ashley Wong, who loves jewelry.

  But when Ms. Adolf opened the drawer, the only thing she took out was her roll book. She picked it up and started to write.

  “Henry Zipzer, Monday at nine-fifteen. We will all look forward to hearing your essay then. Is that clear, Henry?”

  “Ms. Adolf,” I said, “do you think you could call me Hank?”

  “Why would I call you Hank when Henry is a perfectly fine name?” she said. She locked up her roll book and slipped the key back over her head.

  “It’s what my friends call me.”

  “Well, I am not your friend,” Ms. Adolf said. As if I hadn’t already figured that out.

  She reached down and picked a tiny piece of lint off her skirt. I mean, it was so tiny you needed a microscope to see it. She held the shred of lint in her hand and walked it carefully over to the wastebasket. When she dropped it in, I’m telling you, I saw nothing leave her fingers.

  I wondered why Ms. Adolf would care so much about a piece of lint. It’s not like she looks that good anyway. All she ever wears is a gray skirt and a gray blouse, which match her gray hair and gray glasses, not to mention her gray face.

  “Remember, class, that’s five paragraphs,” she said. “And neatness counts. I’ll be expecting your very best work. That includes you, Henry.”

  Smile, Hank, I thought. Nod your head, up and down. You can do this. Five paragraphs. What’s the big deal? You’ve got six days.

  Oh come on, who am I kidding? I can’t even write one good sentence. So how am I ever going to write an entire five-paragraph essay? Ms. Adolf might as well have asked me to ski down Mount Everest ... backwards ... blindfolded ... and butt naked.

  CHAPTER 3

  AT LUNCH, I SAT at the table and stared at my vegetarian bologna sandwich. Most of the other kids were waiting in the hot food line. It was either macaroni-and-cheese day or tuna-melt day. Or maybe it was both. I couldn’t tell without looking at the menu, because all the cafeteria food smells the same.

  I looked around the lunchroom and spotted Frankie. He had just bought a milk and was laughing and talking with Katie Sperling and Kim Paulson, only the two most beautiful girls in the entire school. When Frankie smiles, he gets this huge dimple in his cheek. As he walked, he kept flashing the girls The Big Dimple. And, man, was it working! They were following him to our table. I couldn’t believe it—Katie Sperling and Kim Paulson were going to sit down with us! That is, until Robert Upchurch cut in front of them and took the seat across from me.

  “Hey, Hank, mind if I sit here?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I answered, but it was too late.

  When Katie and Kim saw Robert, they swerved left—at least I think it was left. Maybe it was right. It’s hard for me to keep track of directions. Anyway, they went down a totally different aisle and sat down with Ryan Shimozato and his friends. Robert isn’t exactly a girl magnet. He has a neck the size of a pencil and always wears a starchy white shirt with a tie. (That’s right, I said a tie.) Add to that the fact that he’s the most boring person on the planet, and you can’t blame the girls for picking another table.

  Frankie flopped down next to me. “Thanks, Robert,” he said. “Nice work.”

  “What’d I do?” Robert asked. Poor kid, he really didn’t have a clue.

  Robert just started third grade. Since the third-graders and fourth-graders at my school eat lunch together, this was the first day he’d gotten a chance
to sit with us. We don’t really want him hanging around with us, but he lives in the same apartment building as Frankie, Ashley, and me, so he thinks he has the right to tag along everywhere.

  Frankie glanced at my sandwich and made a face. He’s been making faces at my lunches ever since we were in preschool.

  “I see your mom’s at it again,” he said. “What’s she calling this, soy surprise?”

  “It’s bologna,” I told him.

  “Bologna and I go way back,” said Frankie. “And this is no bologna!”

  I don’t know if you’ve had vegetarian bologna before, but I don’t think you’ve ever had my mom’s vegetarian bologna. She thinks she invented it, which proves she should keep her thoughts to herself. My mom’s vegetarian bologna tastes like nothing you’ve ever put in your mouth. Let’s just say it’s round, ground, pinkish leaves of grass. Let’s just say it’s nonfood.

  Ever since my mother took over Papa Pete’s deli, she has been experimenting like crazy with food. Unfortunately for me, my lunch is her laboratory. Vegetarian bologna is only one of her experiments. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried her soy salami. Papa Pete says it’s a crime what she does to salami.

  By the way, Papa Pete is my grandpa. He’s the best. Sometimes I get the feeling that he’s the only person who understands me. He never ever thinks I’m stupid or lazy.

  “Actually, bologna is a very interesting word,” Robert said through a mouthful of macaroni and cheese.

  Frankie and I looked at each other. You know how when you have a best friend, you and the other person often think the same thing at the same time? We were both thinking, Somebody get me out of this conversation!

  “What’s especially interesting is that bologna contains a silent g, just like the silent k in knock or knight,” Robert went on.

  Robert knows everything. That’s why he skipped second grade. I think it’s great to know a lot of things. I just don’t think you have to say them all the time. Like Robert will name all the James Bond movies in order, including the year they came out, even when no one asks him. And don’t even start him on world capitals. He’ll tell you the capital of Indonesia right in the middle of a dodgeball game. The other day he just looked at me and said, “The human body has enough iron to make one nail.” He said it like it was a totally normal thing to say!