Horrible Harry and the Ant Invasion (2 page)

BOOK: Horrible Harry and the Ant Invasion
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Miss Mackle crawled after it. She put a pencil in front of the runaway ant. It crawled up the eraser. Miss Mackle popped the ant into the opening of the ant house, then put the roof back on.
“Two ants are missing,” she said. Her hair was in her eyes and one of her high heels was off.
“THEY'RE GOING TO GET US!”
Sidney shouted.
“Sidney,” Miss Mackle said with her teeth clenched, “we
must
remain calm.”
Harry stood in front of the teacher. “As your ant monitor, I will find the missing ants.” And then he gave her a salute.
“Just
don't
touch the ants!” Miss Mackle insisted.
Harry took out his lunch box. He unwrapped his sandwich and scraped some peanut butter onto his finger.
Then he put his finger under the science table and waited.
Miss Mackle put her shoe back on, and pushed her hair out of her face. “I think everyone should return to their desks now.”
“I found them!” Harry shouted from under the table.
Everyone bent down and looked.
Including Miss Mackle.
There were the two runaway ants on Harry's finger.
Miss Mackle grabbed her pencil and quickly scraped them off and then dropped them into the opening of the ant city.
Harry flashed a big smile. “I told you I'd find them.”
Miss Mackle frowned. “I told you not to touch the ants. Look at your finger.”
Everyone did. There were two red marks.
“He got bit!” Mary exclaimed.
“I think you should go to the nurse,” Miss Mackle said. “And when you come back you'll see another name on the Monitor Chart next to Ant Monitor.”
Harry put his head down as he walked to the nurse's office.
 
The next morning, Harry was really quiet. He didn't join our conversation about ants at the science table.
“They bury their own dead,” I said.
“They bury their own food,” Mary said.
“Eeyew,” Sidney replied. “Look, those ants are kissing!”
Miss Mackle walked over to our table. “Ants pass food by kissing. Sometimes they send messages that way.”
Sidney fell off his chair and rolled over on the floor laughing.
“You may return to your seat, Sidney. Ida is about to feed the ants, and I want only serious scientists to watch.”
Sidney frowned as he walked back to his chair.
Harry frowned as he watched Ida doing
his
job.
Ida filled an eye dropper from a bowl of sugar water. Then, when the teacher removed the roof, Ida squeezed the eye dropper three times into the ant house.
“I'll get it back,” Harry whispered to me.
“Get what back?”
“My
ant monitor job.”
I looked at Harry. I could tell he was making plans.
“How?”
“All I have to do is get on the teacher's good side. Then I can ask her for another chance.”
Just then Harry tipped back on his chair and his baseball cards came tumbling out of his pocket.
Miss Mackle put her hands on her hips. “Harry, put those things away. Baseball is a distraction in the classroom.”
Harry got down on his knees and picked up his baseball cards.
“I don't want any more antics from you today, Harry,” Miss Mackle said.
“Antics?”
Harry repeated. “That's an
ant
word.”
Miss Mackle smiled. “Yes, it is. We have lots
of ant
words in our language. Maybe we should think of some.”
Harry clapped his hands.
Mmmmmm, I thought. Harry might just pull it off.
“I'll start,” Miss Mackle said.
“Ant
ifreeze; I had to put some in my car this morning.”
“Antarctica
and Atlantic,” Mary said, looking at the globe.
“Good, any others?” the teacher asked.
“Ant
ipasto,” Mr. Cardini, the principal, said as he showed up at the door.
Everyone laughed.
“My mother makes the best antipasto in the world—salami, cheese, black olives, mmm.... Just stopped in to visit the ants,” he said, sitting down at the science table.
Miss Mackle continued the lesson.
“Eleph
ant
and panther,” I said, thinking about animals in the zoo.
Harry held up
Jack and the Bean-stalk. “Giant
!

Miss Mackle wrote the new words on the board.
“Fancy,” Ida said.
“Nice try, but that doesn't have a
t
in it,” Miss Mackle said.
“Ranch?” Sidney asked.
“That is a
c-h
word.”
Our class seemed to be stuck.
Then Mr. Cardini saw two ants kissing and he stood up. “I've got one—rom
antic
!

Everyone groaned as he waltzed out of the room.
“I've
got the best ant word,” Harry said. Then he pointed to the December calendar. “S
ant
a!”
Everyone cheered and clapped.
Then Harry stood up like he had the biggest idea in the world. “Why don't we draw pictures of ants carrying these words? We could make them go up the stairway and invade the second floor!”
Invasions, I thought. Harry loved them.
Miss Mackle looked at the long list of
ant
words on the board.
“Let's do it!” she said.
Everyone took out their crayons and scissors as the teacher passed out brown paper.
“I'm making a black ant to carry my word, p
ant
her,” I said.
“I'm making a HUGE ant to carry my word, gi
ant
,” Harry said.
“I'm making a big red heart next to my ant,” Mary replied.
Everyone knew what ant word Mary was doing. Rom
ant
ic.
When all the ants were drawn and cut, and the words were neatly printed above, the class lined up in the hall.
Miss Mackle walked us to the stair-well. “Let's hope we have enough to make it to the top!”
“We will!” Harry called out. Then he whispered to me. “We have to. She'll be in such a good mood, she'll give me another chance to be Ant Monitor.
We started taping the ants at the bottom of the wall near the stairs and made a trail going up and down and around the stairway.
When we got to the top, we were one word short.
Everyone sat down on the stairs.
“I knew we couldn't do it,” Sidney complained.
“Well,” Miss Mackle replied, “maybe tomorrow.”
Harry made a face. Then he reached in his back pocket and pulled out three baseball cards. “The Yankees! They won the
pennant
this year.”
“AN
ANT
WORD!” everyone shouted.
Miss Mackle clapped her hands. “Bravo, Harry! You can make the word today and put it up. We reached the second floor thanks to ...”—and she looked at Harry's baseball cards—“some distractions!”
Harry beamed at his teacher. “If I promise to follow your directions in science, will you give me another chance to be Ant Monitor?”
Miss Mackle put her hand on Harry's shoulder and smiled. “All right, Harry. I don't see why you c
an't
.”
Harry was horribly happy.
Horrible Harry and the Square Dance
Miss Mackle stood in front of the room. “This Friday we are going to have a square dance.”
All the boys groaned.
Except Harry.
I knew what Harry was thinking. He wanted to dance with Song Lee.
Harry has had a crush on Song Lee since the day that she brought in a potato beetle for show-and-tell.
She didn't say anything but she passed a box around with a small striped bug in it.
Harry looked at the bug, then at Song Lee.
It was true love.
Friday afternoon, Miss Mackle led our class down to the gym. She had a record under her arm. It was called “Let's Square Dance.”
“Now,” she said. “I want the boys to line up behind Sidney, and the girls to line up behind Mary.”
“I don't want to dance with her,” Sidney said, looking at Mary across from him.
Miss Mackle put the record down and then she looked at Sidney. She had her hands on her hips.
BOOK: Horrible Harry and the Ant Invasion
6.47Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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