Mimi Read Online Free PDF Page B

opposite of Ms. Addle. By the way, Ms. Addle had a baby boy, Roger, and she sent us all her love. Archibald (that’s what everyone calls Mr. Masters now, behind his back) came in and told us. He was trying to be all strict and businesslike, but he couldn’t help smiling when he told us that Ms. Addle had had a boy. “And she sends you all her —
cough, cough
— love. Ms. Hardy will be your teacher for the next three months and you are to be very good for her. Is that clear?”
    “Yes, Mr. Masters,” we all answered together.
    Fifth Bad Thing: Ms. Hardy does not like pupils to be late, and I was very late.
    “And your name is?” was the first thing she said to me when I burst into the room at five past ten.
    “Mimi.”
    “Well, Mimi, you are over an hour late. I take it you have a good excuse,” she said in her cold, hard voice.
    So I told her about waking up late and losing my shoes and Dad running out of gas, and she just looked at me and said nothing. When I was finished she just wrote something in her notebook and told me to sit down.
    Sixth Bad Thing: Sarah was her usual disgusting horrible self during recess. “So Crybaby overslept and lost her shoes and Daddy let the car run out of gas, did he? So what excuse is it going to be tomorrow, Crybaby? The bed exploded? An elephant sat on the car? Your thumb fell off from all the sucking? I don’t think Ms. Hardy likes you very much, Crybaby,” and she punched my arm and ran off cackling with her gang.
    “Losers,” said Orla, but I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s me and Orla who are the losers.
    Seventh Bad Thing: Mrs. Lemon gave me no free sweets again. Why is everyone being so horrible?
    Eighth Bad Thing: There was a power outage when I was at Granny’s house. It happened one minute after Granny had put the buns in the oven. So no cakes. Can you believe it? And that’s not the worst part . . . no telly either. How will I find out now if Ginger will be found in time before the tide comes in and drowns her?
    Actually it wasn’t all bad, because Grandad sent me up to the attic to find a lampshade he had thrown up there about ten years ago. He gave me a flashlight and I had to climb the stepladder and pull myself up through the hole in the ceiling and then he shouted up to me to be careful and to step only on the wooden beams or else I’d fall through the roof.
    Granny was chatting with Sally in the kitchen, so she didn’t know what we were up to or she would have had a fit. Anyway, I found the lampshade — but much better I also found a box of toys that my aunts and my mammy used to play with when they were little girls.
    It was mostly dolls.
    “The ones with missing heads or arms or legs belonged to your mother,” explained Grandad when I spilled them all out on the living-room floor. “She loved to play doctor, and that always involved amputating some poor doll’s head or leg or whatever.”
    Another good thing in a day full of bad things was that Grandad forgot to give me my chess lesson.
    Ninth Bad Thing: Grandad crashed the jalopy into the pillar when he was reversing out of the gate. I was sitting in the back with Granny and Sally; Conor was in the front.
    “Oops,” said Grandad.
    “OOPS!” screamed Granny. “Is that all you can say? Oops! You could have killed us all!”
    Grandad didn’t answer that, and we three children stayed very quiet. Grandad and Granny got out to inspect the damage. “Not too bad,” said Grandad. “Just a broken taillight.”
    But Granny was speechless with rage. All the way home Grandad drove even slower than usual. He stopped at all the red lights. The atmosphere in the car was awful — nobody said a word. How many bad things can happen in a day?

Actually a lot of bad things can happen in one day — too many for one chapter!
    Tenth Bad Thing: Dinner. I usually don’t care whether the pizza is burnt or not because I don’t usually eat it, but today I was so hungry because I’d had no sweets or cakes that I