School of Meanies Read Online Free PDF Page A

bullies.”
    “Next time you’re bullied, you’ll know what to do,” I said, and I floated off, leaving Amelia smiling proudly.

12
    The Still-Alive Headmaster
    “I’m glad we decided to be friends,” Amelia said that afternoon. “School recess can be fun now.”
    We sat together on a bench at the edge of the playground. Well, Amelia sat, and I floated.
    “I can eat my ordinary chips,” Amelia said as she crunched, “and you can eat your ghost chips, and—”
    “But, Amelia, you’re crying.”
    “School is horrid,” Amelia said, and she blew her nose on her left braid.
    “It needn’t be, now that we’re friends.”
    Amelia shook her head. “There will always be bullying in this world, Humphrey, no matter who you’re friends with.”
    “Bump them, like how I taught you.”
    “There are some bullies who just can’t be bumped.”
    “I’m not afraid of any bully,” I said, and I munched another creepy chip.
    Amelia frowned, then looked at me and said, “You’d be afraid of this bully.”
    “Why? Who is he?”
    “The headmaster.”
    I laughed, spilling chips down my blazer. “I bumped the Ghost Headmaster at Ghost School. No one bullies Humphrey Bump.”
    “Didn’t you get into trouble?”
    “He’d already expelled me,” I explained. “That’s why I’m here, at Still-Alive School.”
    “Humphrey, I can’t get expelled. I’m top of the class in science. I plan to go to college.”
    “Then you’d better stay out of his way,” I said, opening another bag of chips.
    “I can’t,” Amelia said, and she began to cry again. “I have to see the headmaster today after school.”
    “But why?”
    Amelia sniffed into her chip bag, and said, “For bumping bullies.”
    At last bell, I floated in through the window of the Still-Alive Headmaster’s office and wisped behind the potted plant.
    As I peered out between the dusty green leaves, I heard a faint phantom blub.
    “Wither,” I whispered, “is that you?”
    “I’m hiding in the hem of the curtain,” Wither blubbed. “I wisped in, and now I can’t wisp out.”
    “What do you mean, you can’t wisp out?”
    “The Still-Alive Headmaster is mean,” Wither blubbed.
    “You don’t get to be a headmaster without being mean, Wither.”
    “This headmaster is so mean he makes other headmasters seem hardly mean at all.”
    “But, Wither, why did you float into the Still-Alive Headmaster’s office in the first place?”
    “I wanted to see how mean he was,” Wither said, and he blubbed.
    The office door opened, and a girl walked in. “Humphrey,” Wither sniffed, “that girl looks familiar.”
    “She’s my still-alive friend, Amelia,” I whispered. “Amelia has been sent to the headmaster for bumping bullies into the hedge.”
    “That’s triple mean,” Wither blubbed. “The bullies were mean to Amelia, then Amelia wasmean to the bullies, and now the Still-Alive Headmaster—”
    “Keep quiet,” I whispered. “I want to hear what he says.”
    From my hiding place behind the leaves of the potted plant, I could just make out the Still-Alive Headmaster sitting at his desk, and Amelia nervously biting her fingernails.
    “Well?” the Still-Alive Headmaster yelled. “What do you have to say for yourself, child?”
    “I’m sorry, sir,” Amelia said. “Um, it won’t happen again, and—”
    “Not good enough, child!” the headmaster yelled, his face the color of a beet.
    Amelia backed away as the Still-Alive Headmaster stood from his chair and leaned toward her across the desk, jabbing the air with a spiny finger.
    “Lines!” the Still-Alive Headmaster yelled. “Ten thousand, in your neatest handwriting.Fifty hours litter duty. And two hours of detention each day for a month.”

    “Oh, the meanness!” Wither blubbed, and he wisped up from the hem of the curtain and floated out through the office window.
    For a moment the Still-Alive Headmaster looked almost afraid. “What in heaven’s name was that?”
    “A friend