Bruno for Real (2 page)

Bruno lay in the dark. “Sleep?” he whispered. “Sleep? Where are you?”

Sleep said, “
Hic
.”

Bruno sat up. “Sleep?”

“
Hic
.”

But it wasn't Sleep talking. It was Bruno. Bruno had the hiccups.

“Mom!” Bruno called. “Mo-
hic!
“

This time Dad came. “Bruno! Pipe down!”

“I can't sleep. I've got the
hic
.”

Dad brought Bruno a glass of water. “Drink this,” he said. “It should do the trick.”

Bruno drank all the water. He gave Dad the glass and said, “Thank
hic
.”

Dad sat on the bed. “Okay. Here's another trick. Hold your breath for as long as you can.”

Bruno took a deep breath. He counted in his head. One, two, three, four, five...He counted all the way to forty-seven. Then he gasped for air.

“Very good,” Dad said.

“
Hic
,” Bruno said.

“Do you know it's eleven o'clock?” Dad said. “Mom's already asleep.”

“I can't
hic
it,” Bruno said.

“I know. But I'm tired and want to go to bed myself. Here's one more trick. Stand on your head.”

Dad turned on the bedroom light. Bruno got down on the floor and put his head on the carpet. Dad lifted Bruno's ankles in the air. Bruno was standing on his head! He looked around the room. It seemed funny that the books on his bottom shelf were on the top shelf now. The floor was the ceiling,

and the ceiling was the floor. Bruno felt like an astronaut! His head grew heavy, and his feet grew light. His head was filling up with blood. It was getting bigger. And BIGGER! Soon he wouldn't be able to get his shirts on! Soon his head would be too BIG for the neck hole!

“Stop!” Bruno cried.

Dad let go of his ankles. Bruno tumbled to the floor. “
Hic!
“

“Okay,” Dad said. “Okay. I know one last trick. It's the very last one.”

“What?”

“BOO!” Dad said.

Bruno looked at Dad. “Why did you say that?”

“I was trying to scare your hiccups away.”

“That wasn't scary at all,” Bruno said. “
Hic
.”

“What would scare you?” Dad asked.

“Nothing. I'm not scared of anything.”

“Monsters?” Dad asked.

“No. But the hiccups would probably get scared if something jumped out at them in the dark.”

So Dad went to hide while Bruno,
hic
, counted to ten. Then Bruno tiptoed out of his room. He crept down the dark, dark hall and into the dark, dark living room so they could scare the hiccups away.

Dad jumped out from behind a chair. “BOO!”

Bruno wasn't scared. Neither were his—

“
Hic!
“

“I give up,” Dad said. “Let's both go back to bed. The hiccups will get bored and go away.”

Bruno went to bed.
Hic
.
Hic
.
Hic
. It seemed that his hiccups wanted to talk. “It's time to go to sleep,” Bruno told his hiccups. “Pipe down.”

“
Hic
.”

Now Bruno got mad. He was so mad he got out of bed and went to his parents' room to complain. He opened the door and looked in. Mom was sleeping. Dad was snoring. Bruno tiptoed over to the bed. He leaned over Dad.

“
Hic
.”

Dad screamed!

Mom screamed!

Bruno screamed!

That
did the trick.

One morning Bruno woke up bad. “I'm bad,” he told Mom at breakfast.

“You mean you're in a bad mood,” she said.

“No. I'm just bad. Listen.”

He cackled. “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

He growled. “Grrrr.”

And he wrinkled his nose. This made a little horn of skin grow between his eyebrows.

“Stop,” Mom said. “You're scaring me. I can see your horn.”

“You should be scared,” Bruno said. “Because I'm bad! I'm Bruno the Bad!”

Mom poured Bruno a glass of orange juice. “I don't want orange juice,” Bruno the Bad said. “I want a glass of blood.”

She really looked scared then. Bruno guessed she was glad when it was time for him to go to school.

He wasn't very bad at school because he didn't want to get in trouble. But at recess, on his way out to play, he stopped at the principal's office. Bruno's principal, Mrs. Foss, always left her door open. She looked up from her desk. “Can I help you, Bruno?”

Being sent to the principal's office was the very worst thing that could happen at school. Bruno put one foot in the door. Then he ran off. Mrs. Foss laughed.

At lunch, Bruno found a gingerbread man in his lunch box. He thought of another bad thing. He could eat his cookie
before
he ate his sandwich.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!” he cackled.

“No!” the gingerbread man cried. “Don't eat me! Don't! Please!”

Bruno said, “Ginger, this is the end of you!”

Isabel was eating her lunch across the table from Bruno. She looked scared. “I'm telling!” she said. And she put up her hand and called out to the teacher, “Ms. Allen! Bruno's talking to his cookie!”

Everyone laughed!

That night, Bruno told Mom how he had been to the principal's office. He didn't say that Mrs. Foss had laughed or that his class had laughed.

“Did you do something wrong?” Mom asked.

“I was bad,” Bruno told her.

“I think Mrs. Foss would have phoned me,” Mom said.

“I was bad all day,” he said. “I did something really, really bad. I did the worst thing I've ever done.”

“What did you do?” she asked. Bruno could tell by her voice that she was afraid of finding out.

“I ate the arms and legs off my gingerbread man
before
I ate his head.”

“You
are
terrible,” Mom said. She leaned over to kiss him good night.

“No kisses!” Bruno yelled. “I'm bad!”

Mom sat down on the bed. “No good-night kiss, Bruno?”

“No!”

“How about when I drop you off at school?”

“No!”

“No kisses when you hurt yourself?”

“No kisses ever!”

She pretended to cry. Bruno knew she wasn't really crying, but he still felt bad. He felt bad, and he
was
bad! He was Bruno the Bad!

He went to his dresser and got a mitten. “Here,” he said. “Kiss this.”

Mom kissed the mitten. Bruno took it back and rubbed it all over his face.

“What about me?” she asked.

Bruno kissed the mitten. Mom left with it pressed to her heart.

The next day, Bruno found the mitten in Mom and Dad's room. He packed it in his backpack. “Why are you taking the mitten to school?” Mom asked.

“I don't want you kissing it when I'm not here,” Bruno told her.

After school, Bruno watched the other kids get picked up. Some kids let their moms and dads kiss them. But they were
good
kids. Bruno was
bad
. He'd done a few more bad things that day, like writing his name backward on his work.

“Who's Onurb?” Ms. Allen, his teacher, asked.

“Grrrr!” Bruno said.

She looked scared. “Who let a bear in the classroom?”

Bruno loved being bad. Dad enjoyed it too. One night Mom went out and left Bruno and Dad at home alone. “Okay,” Dad said, rubbing his hands together. “This is our chance. Let's be as bad as we want.”

“Grrrr!” Bruno said.

For dinner, Bruno and Dad had macaroni, but they didn't use a fork or spoon. They ate it with their hands! After dinner, they took out all of Bruno's puzzles and mixed the pieces up. They put them all together as one giant mess. It looked terrible! It looked awful! “This is the baddest puzzle ever,” Bruno said.

Dad agreed. “It's the worst.”

Then, at bedtime, instead of a good-night kiss, Bruno gave Dad a good-night bite.

Being bad with Dad was the best!

The last day Bruno was bad, he hid in the closet. When Dad came home and hung up his coat, Bruno jumped out of the closet growling and showing his horn. He jumped right on Dad's back. Dad ran with him to the living room. They wrestled on the couch. “Grrrr! Grrrr!”