Heidi Heckelbeck Gets Glasses

by Wanda Coven

  Chapter 1: A BRAND-NEW LOOK

  Chapter 2: FUZZY WUZZY

  Chapter 3: CUCKOO!

  Chapter 4: EYE CANDY!

  Chapter 5: SCOOPS

  Chapter 6: WHAT A KLUTZ!

  Chapter 7: BIRD BREW

  Chapter 8: BIRDBRAIN

  Chapter 9: DUMB AND DUMBER

  Chapter 10: BONKERS!

  Heidi Heckelbeck sat at her desk and fiddled with her kitten–shaped eraser. Where’s Lucy? she wondered. Lucy had told her that she had a surprise, and Heidi wanted to be the first to know. She pulled out a berry-scented pencil and sharpened it. Heidi looked away for only a moment, and that’s exactly when Lucy walked in.

  “Ooh!” Heidi heard somebody say.

  “Aah!” said somebody else.

  A bunch of kids had already gathered around Lucy. It must be something important, thought Heidi. She rushed to the door and wiggled her way into the middle of the crowd.

  “Surprise!” said Lucy when she saw Heidi.

  “Wow!” Heidi said.

  “Wow, what?” asked Charlie Chen, who had just walked into the class­room.

  “Lucy got glasses!” shouted Heidi.

  Lucy’s glasses had brown frames with pink sparkly flowers at the temples.

  “Wait—let me see!” said Melanie Maplethorpe, pushing her way to the front. Melanie must have liked Lucy’s glasses, because she didn’t say “Ew” or anything else like that.

  “They make you look smart,” said Stanley Stonewrecker.

  “They make you look hip!” said Natalie Newman.

  “They make us look like twins!” said Bruce Bickerson, who also wore glasses.

  Lucy and Bruce slapped each other five.

  Lucky Lucy, thought Heidi. She’s getting so much attention for her new glasses. Heidi had to admit, Lucy’s glasses were really, really cool.

  Mrs. Welli clapped her hands as she walked into the classroom. “Please take your seats, boys and girls!”

  Everyone scrambled to their desks.

  Mrs. Welli noticed Lucy’s glasses right away.

  “So stylish, Lucy,” Mrs. Welli said. “And now you’ll be able to see the chalkboard.”

  “Thanks,” Lucy said with a smile.

  All day everyone made a big deal about Lucy’s glasses.

  During English, Mrs. Welli read from a book of poems. Then she asked everyone to write their own. At the end of class Mrs. Welli asked Lucy to read hers out loud. Heidi knew why Lucy got picked. It was because of her new glasses.

  Lucy stood in front of the class and pushed her glasses to the top of her nose.

  “‘Glasses,’” said Lucy. “By Lucy Lancaster.”

  “With my brand-new glasses,

  I can see so far away.

  I see my friends and teachers

  on the playground clear as day.

  The board’s no longer blurry —

  even if I’m in the last row!

  And what’s best about my glasses is —

  I’ve got a brand-new look to show!”

  Everyone clapped and whistled.

  Lucy curtsied and returned to her seat.

  In art, Lucy got the same kind of attention. Mr. Doodlebee even drew a picture of Lucy with her glasses and hung it on the bulletin board.

  I wish Mr. Doodlebee would draw a picture of me, thought Heidi. The problem is, I don’t stand out. I need a new look. . . .

  Heidi smiled to herself. Aha! I know just how to get one.

  Heidi stood on top of a chair in the kitchen.

  “News alert! News alert!” she said.

  “What’s the story?” Henry asked.

  “I want to get glasses!” said Heidi.

  “And I want you to get off that chair before you get hurt,” said Mom.

  Heidi stepped down from the chair.

  “But I really want glasses,” Heidi said.

  “How about you have a snack first?” suggested Mom. She placed a plate of maple granola bars and two glasses of milk on the table.

  Heidi and Henry dipped their granola bars in the milk.

  “So, why on earth do you want glasses?” Mom asked.

  “’Cause they’re COOL!” said Heidi.

  “Glasses help people see,” said Mom. “They’re not used to make people look cool.”

  “Movie stars wear sunglasses, and THEY look cool,” Henry said.

  “Movie stars wear sunglasses so people won’t know who they really are,” said Mom.

  “AND to make them look COOL!” said Heidi.

  Mom sighed.

  “Okay, glasses can also make you look cool,” said Mom.

  “So can I get some?” Heidi asked.

  “No,” said Mom. “If you want to look cool, wear your beach glasses.”

  “But my beach glasses are shaped like hearts,” said Heidi. “They’ll make me look like a five-year-old.”

  “Hey!” Henry said. “I’m five and I wouldn’t wear those beach glasses if you paid me!”

  “See?” said Heidi. “Even Henry knows what’s cool.”

  “Heidi, you’re not get–ting glasses,” Mom said.

  “I have an idea,” said Henry. “You can have MY glasses!”

  Heidi rolled her eyes—as if her kid brother would have anything she’d actually want.

  Henry ran upstairs and came back with a pair of glasses and a hand mirror.

  “Try these,” said Henry. “I got them at that 3-D dinosaur movie.”

  “Where are the lenses?” asked Heidi.

  “I took them out,” Henry said. “You can’t see anything with them in—unless you’re at the movies.”

  Heidi put on the glasses.

  “Wow,” said Henry. “They make you look super-smart!”

  “They look kind of clunky,” Heidi said, looking in the mirror.

  “Well, you’re not going to get glasses unless you really need them,” said Mom.

  “But I DO need them!” Heidi said. “I have six GREAT reasons why I need glasses.”

  Heidi held up a finger for each reason. “Number one: Glasses will make me look smarter! Number two: Glasses will help me get more friends! Number three: Glasses will help me read poetry better!”

  Mom began to empty the dish-washer. She didn’t seem interested in Heidi’s Six Great Reasons.

  “Number four: I’ll get my picture on the art room bulletin board! Number five: Glasses will make me look cool! And number six: Glasses will help me see better, because the thing is, I’m having a little trouble seeing.”

  Mom frowned. “Maybe what you need is an eye test,” she said.

  “I’ll do it,” said Henry. He held up two fingers. “How many fingers do I have?”

  Heidi squinted. “Nine . . . uh, wait—ten.”

  “RIGHT!” said Henry, holding up both his hands. “I DO have ten fingers! But the answer is TWO. I’m afraid you failed the eye test.”

  That gave Heidi an idea. Maybe if I pretend to have bad eyesight, then I can score a pair of super-cool glasses!

  Click!

  Mrs. Welli snapped a picture of Lucy in her new glasses.

  Mrs. Welli always took pictures when something big happened. She hung them on a special bulletin board called “The Wall of Fame.” All the photos were of kids with missing teeth, except the one of Stanley with a cast on his arm. Heidi had never made the Wall of Fame. But she planned to—very soon.

  “All eyes on the chalkboard!” said Mrs. Welli. “This morning we’re going to make compound words. We’ll put two words together to form one new word. She wrote the first example on the board.

  “The words ‘class’ and ‘room’ become ‘classroom,’” said Mrs. Welli.

  Heidi raised her hand. />
  “Yes, Heidi,” Mrs. Welli said.

  “Would you please write the words a little bigger?” asked Heidi. “I can’t see them from here.”

  Mrs. Welli wrote the word “cat” in bigger letters on the board. “Can you read this?” she asked.

  Heidi squinted and tried to read the word.

  “‘Car’?” she said, pretending she couldn’t see very well.

  Everyone giggled.

  Then Mrs. Welli wrote the word “nip” in slightly bigger letters on the board. “Try this one.”

  “‘Nap’?” Heidi asked.

  The class laughed harder.

  “Come see me after school,” said Mrs. Welli.

  At the end of the day Heidi went to see her teacher. Mrs. Welli had written a note for Heidi’s parents.

  “Heidi, this is very important,” Mrs. Welli said. “I want you to give this letter to your mother and father when you get home.”

  Heidi nodded. Then she skipped all the way to the bus. YES! Heidi said to herself. I fooled my teacher! Now all I have to do is fool Mom and Dad—and maybe an eye doctor. Then I can get a cool pair of glasses!

  When she got home from school, Heidi gave the note to her mom. By dinner her parents had made Heidi an eye appointment for the next day after school.

  “Uh-oh,” said Henry. “Doctors give much harder eye tests than I do.”

  “Dr. Chen is nice,” Mom said. “Heidi, isn’t his son, Charlie, in your class?”

  Heidi hadn’t heard a word of the conversation. She was daydreaming about how she would look in her new glasses.

  “Heidi?” said Mom.

  “Anybody home?” Dad asked.

  “Have you gone deaf, too?” asked Henry.

  “Sure,” Heidi said dreamily. “I’d love some more potatoes.”

  Henry shook his head. “She’s not blind OR deaf,” he said. “She’s just plain CUCKOO!”

  “Have a seat,” said Dr. Chen.

  Dr. Chen had large ears and spiky black hair. Heidi recognized him from school. Today he looked more like a doctor than a dad. He had on glasses with black frames and wore a white lab coat.

  Heidi and her mom sat down.

  “Heidi, how long have your eyes been bothering you?” Dr. Chen asked.

  Heidi tried not to make her story sound too fishy. “I’ve been seeing fuzzy for a while,” she said. “But it really began to bother me a few days ago.”

  Dr. Chen nodded. “Well, let’s take a look,” he said.

  First, Heidi had to read an eye chart. Dr. Chen gave her something that looked like a black plastic lollipop and asked her to cover one eye with it.

  “Now please read line four,” said Dr. Chen.

  Heidi saw four letters and a number—F Z B D 4—but she didn’t read them that way.

  “Uh . . . E, S, R, O, seven,” Heidi said. Dr. Chen looked puzzled. He asked Heidi to read two more lines. She covered the other eye and did the same thing. I better not read them ALL wrong, thought Heidi, or Dr. Chen will think I’ve gone completely blind.

  Then Dr. Chen shined a light in Heidi’s eyes. He told her to look up and down and from side to side.

  Next he asked her to peek into what looked like a viewfinder.

  Heidi liked viewfinders. She had tried one on a family camping trip. Her family had hiked up a mountain, and Heidi had spotted a viewfinder at the top. Dad had given her quarters to put inside. She had spied villages, lakes, and churches from up high.

  But inside Dr. Chen’s viewfinder, Heidi only saw a bunch of letters. Dr. Chen fiddled with the viewfinder and asked Heidi if the letters looked better or worse. Heidi would answer “worse” when the letters looked better and “better” when the letters looked worse. Soon the tests were over.

  “Well, Heidi,” said Dr. Chen, “it looks like you’re going to need glasses.”

  “That’s great news!” Heidi said.

  “I’m glad you feel that way,” said Dr. Chen.

  Dr. Chen took Heidi to the next room. There were racks and racks of brightly colored glasses. It’s like a candy store! thought Heidi. Only better! She chose a pair of black glasses with glitter inside the plastic—like sparkly gems inside a rock. She tried them on.

  “Super-funky,” said Heidi, looking in the mirror. Then she turned to her mom. “What do you think?”

  “They’re very you,” said Mom, who still couldn’t get used to the idea that Heidi needed glasses.

  The lady behind the counter told Heidi she was going to get her new glasses ready. While she waited, Heidi did a connect-the-dots puzzle, four hidden pictures, and two word searches. It felt like she had been waiting forever, when suddenly . . .

  “Heidi Heckelbeck?” called the lady from behind the counter.

  Heidi jumped up from her seat. Finally! she thought. I can’t wait to wear my new glasses. They’re going to make me look SO cool. But when Heidi put them on, she discovered that there was a teeny-weeny problem.

  She couldn’t see a thing.

  Heidi took off her glasses on the way to the car. These glasses are hurting my eyes, she thought. Maybe I shouldn’t have lied so much about the lines on the eye chart.

  “Put your glasses back on,” said Mom. “You need to wear them in order to get used to them.”

  Heidi listened to her mom and put them back on. She slid them a little way down her nose. That’s better. Now I can see over the top.

  “No cheating,” said Mom.

  “Okay,” said Heidi as she slid the glasses back in place.

  Mom pulled into a shopping plaza and parked in front of Scoops—Heidi’s favorite ice-cream shop.

  “Surprise!” said Mom. “I thought we would celebrate your new glasses with ice cream.”

  Heidi saw Dad and Henry waving from inside the shop.

  “Thanks, Mom!” said Heidi.

  She hopped out of the car and lifted her glasses so she wouldn’t trip on the curb. Then she put them back in place when she got inside.

  Dad patted Heidi on the back.

  “You look so grown-up,” Dad said.

  “You look more like you’re playing dress-up,” said Henry.

  “Very funny,” Heidi said. “But these are the REAL thing.”

  Heidi handed her glasses to Henry, and he put them on.

  “Whoa!” said Henry. “I can’t see a thing!”

  “I told you I needed glasses,” said Heidi as she put them back on.

  Then they went to order ice cream.

  “What can I get for you?” asked a girl in a Scoops T-shirt.

  Heidi looked at the menu on the back wall. She couldn’t read any of the flavors, and she couldn’t sneak a peek from under her glasses because her whole family was watching.

  “I’ll try a scoop of that one,” Heidi said, pointing to the special of the day.

  “I’ll have Moose Tracks,” said Henry.

  After they got their cones, Dad grabbed napkins and they headed outside.

  Heidi took a lick of her cone. “Ew!” she said. “It tastes like pineapple.”

  “Duh,” Henry said. “Because that’s what you ordered.”

  Merg, thought Heidi. But she didn’t make a big deal about ordering the wrong ice cream. She didn’t want her family to wonder what was wrong with her glasses. Heidi looked for a wastebasket to pitch her cone into, and then . . . bonk! She bumped into Henry and—squash!—his cone smushed right into his nose.

  Henry began to whine.

  “I’m sorry, little buddy. I didn’t mean to,” said Heidi. “Here, you can have mine.”

  Heidi offered her cone to Henry, but he pushed it away. She shrugged and tossed her cone in the trash.

  “What a fiasco!” said Mom as she wiped ice cream off Henry’s face.

  “What’s that mean?” asked Henry.

  “It means that this ice-cream trip almost turned into a disaster,” said Dad.

  Heidi began to wonder if her new glasses might be a fiasco too, but she pushed that thought right out of her head.<
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  The next morning Heidi made a grand entrance at school.

  “One! Two! Three!” she counted.

  Then she burst into the classroom.

  Nobody looked.

  “AHEM,” said Heidi as she made her way toward her desk.

  Still nobody looked—until . . .

  Whump! Heidi bumped smack into Melanie. Melanie’s armful of books tumbled to the floor.

  “Hey! Watch where you’re going, weirdo!” Melanie said.

  “Uh, sorry,” said Heidi. “I’m still getting used to my new glasses.”

  Heidi helped Melanie pick up her books.

  “Since when do YOU wear glasses?” Melanie asked.

  “Since yesterday,” said Heidi. “So, what do you think?”

  Melanie took a close look at Heidi.

  “Black is not a good color for you,” said Melanie. “But I like the sparkles.”

  Coming from Melanie, that was a compliment.

  “Thanks,” said Heidi, before she continued on to her desk.

  Then—bonk!—Heidi crashed into her chair and knocked it over. It clanked on the floor. This time everyone looked. Finally! thought Heidi as she picked up her chair. Lucy and Bruce ran to Heidi’s desk.

  “You got glasses!” Lucy said.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” asked Bruce.

  “I didn’t find out until yesterday that I was getting them,” explained Heidi. “Do you like them?”

  “I love them!” said Lucy.

  “They’re super-cool,” Bruce said.

  “Thanks,” said Heidi. “Now we can be triplets!”