The Best School Year Ever Read Online Free PDF Page B

didn’t agree. She said the evidence was Eugene. “It’s obvious that Gladys Herdman got that poor little boy to knock himself silly and cause a big commotion, and then she went to the cafeteria and walked off with every last cookie!”
    Maybe so, but Eugene didn’t knock himself silly and you couldn’t feel very sorry for him because he was a big celebrity with his name in the newspaper—“ UNUSUAL PERFORMANCE BY PLUCKY EUGENE PRESTON EARNS STANDING OVATION AT WOODROW WILSON TALENT SHOW .” The article also mentioned the kindergarten rhythm band, but not by name (“Too many of them,” the reporter said) and not by musical number (“Could have been almost anything”).
    Besides, Eugene wasn’t even Eugene anymore except to his mother and the teachers. And sometimes even the teachers forgot and called him Hammerhead, just like everyone else.

Chapter 5
    E very now and then I would remember about the assignment for the year—Compliments for Classmates—and turn to that page in my notebook. So far I had thought up compliments for six people, including Alice. For Alice, I put down “Important.”
    “I’m not sure I’d call that a compliment,” my mother said.
    “Alice would,” I told her. Actually, Alice would probably consider it just a natural fact, like “The earth is round,” “The sky is blue,” “Alice Wendleken is important.”
    Alice began being important right away in the first grade because she was the only first-grade kid who had ever been inside the teachers’ room. So whenever something had to be delivered there, Alice got to deliver it.
    “I have a note to go to the teachers’ room,” our teacher would say, “way up on the third floor, so Alice, I’ll ask you to be my messenger since you know exactly where it is.”
    Then Alice would stand up and straighten her dress and pat her hair and carry the note in both hands out in front of her as if it was news from God. Most of all, she would never tell what was in the room.
    Whenever the teachers didn’t have anything else to do, they went and hid in the teachers’ room, but nobody else ever got in there. You couldn’t see in, either, because the door was wood and frosted glass almost to the top.
    Boomer Malone once got Charlie to climb on his shoulders and look in, but all Charlie could see was a sign that said “Thank God It’s Friday,” and another sign that said “Thank God It’s June.”
    This got spread around school, and kids went home and told about the swear words in the teachers’ room, so after that they put up a curtain and nobody could see anything.
    “There isn’t anything to see,” my mother said.
    “Just some chairs and tables and a sofa and a big coffeepot and a little refrigerator.”
    “No TV?” Charlie said.
    “No TV.”
    “What do they do in there?”
    Mother sighed. “I suppose they relax,” she said, “and talk to each other, and have lunch.”
    “That’s not what Imogene Herdman says,” Charlie muttered.
    “Well,” Mother said, “if you believe what Imogene Herdman says, you”ll believe anything.”
    “They go in there to smoke cigarettes and drink Cokes” was what Imogene had said. “And if somebody has a cake, they put it in a Sears, Roebuck sack and pretend it’s something they bought, and then they go in there and eat it where nobody can see them. And they don’t let anybody in who doesn’t know the password.”
    Charlie brightened right up. “What’s the password?”
    “They pick a new one every day,” Imogene said, “and then they put it in the morning announcements, like in what’s for lunch. Once it was macaroni and cheese. ”
    I figured Imogene was making this up as she went along, so you had to be impressed with her imagination. I even got out my notebook and started to write that down: Imogene Herdman—“Has imagination.” But then I realized it wasn’t imagination, it was just a big lie. I also realized that finding a compliment for Imogene Herdman was probably