The Secret Life of a Ping-Pong Wizard

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GROSSET & DUNLAP
Published by the Penguin Group

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Text copyright © 2005 by Fair Dinkum and Lin Oliver Productions, Inc. Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Grosset & Dunlap. All rights reserved.

Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. S.A.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2005015144

eISBN : 978-1-101-10003-5

“THIS IS IT, ZIP,” my best friend Frankie Townsend said as we slid into our seats in Room 31, our new classroom on the third floor. “The first day of fifth grade. Let's kick it off with a bang.”

No sooner were those words out of his mouth than we heard a huge
BANG
in our classroom!

Correction. It wasn't exactly a bang. It was a screeching buzz followed by a loud crackle topped off with a high-pitched squeak that sent goose bumps down to the backs of my knees.

I looked around the classroom to see where the knee-bumping noise was coming from. It took me a second to realize that it was the loudspeaker above the door, screeching like it had just gotten a humongous booster shot at the doctor. I had to do something about that sound.

Quickly, I tore off the corner of a sheet of paper from my new spiral notebook, popped the paper into my mouth, and rolled it into a ball with my tongue. Then I blew with all my might and shot that spitball right at the center of the loudspeaker.

“Nice shot, dude,” Luke Whitman cheered, putting up his hand to slap me a high five. As my hand made contact with his, I noticed that his palm was crusted with a lot of brown gooky stuff, but I high-fived him anyway.

“Check out your hang time,” Frankie said, pointing to my spitball, which was still clinging to the center of the loudspeaker.

I don't mean to brag about my saliva, but that spitball hung on for a good ten seconds before it dropped to the floor. When it did, Luke Whitman held up his hand to slap me another high five. This time, I hesitated because of the already mentioned crusty palm situation.

“Don't worry, it's just oatmeal,” Luke said. “The snail slime makes it hard to get off.”

If you knew Luke, you'd understand. He likes bugs and snails. And he doesn't like to wash his hands. Enough said.

“Both of you boys are completely and totally disgusting,” said Joelle Adwin, who had just sat down in the desk across the aisle from me.

Joelle is the expert in completely and totally disgusting boys, since her boyfriend is the king of them all. She has the honor of being the girlfriend of the completely and totally disgusting Nick “The Tick” McKelty, who wears his already-been-chewed breakfast in between his two front teeth and snorts like a hippo when he laughs.

Just then, McKelty walked into class.

Nick took his seat across from Joelle and turned to me to see what trouble he could cause. This morning he was wearing raisin toast and I think raspberry jam in between his teeth.

“You suck, Zipzer,” he said. That's McKelty's special way of saying hello to me.

I turned my back on him, which is my special way of saying hello to him. My other best friend, Ashley Wong, had just taken the seat next to Frankie. At least my two best friends were in my class again this year.

“I hate to say this, Hank, but Joelle does have a point,” Ashley whispered. She pointed to the spitball lying on the floor under the loudspeaker. “You should pick it up.”

I slipped out of my desk, crouched over to where the spitball was still lying on the floor, and scooped it up. Suddenly, the loudspeaker started to crackle again, only this time, the crackling turned into a voice.

“This is your principal, Leland Love, speaking,” blared the loudspeaker. “Welcome to a new school year at PS 87.”

Still in my crouch, I tossed the spitball over to the wastebasket next to the teacher's desk. Oops, it missed and landed on the floor.

“Students in Room 31 should take their seats—and that goes especially for you, Hank Zipzer,” Principal Love said.

“Any of you who are acting up or shooting spitballs will have to report directly to my office. Did you hear me, Hank Zipzer?”

I hadn't heard Principal Love's voice in almost a month, since summer school ended. I'd like to say I missed hearing it. But it wouldn't be true. Not even a little teeny bit.

“Students in Room 31, I have received a message from your teacher,” Principal Love went on. “She has telephoned to say she will be a few minutes late due to a detained bus on Broadway. You are to stay in your seats until she arrives. And that goes especially for you—”

The whole class joined in with the loudspeaker to finish the sentence. “Hank Zipzer,” they chanted in unison.

The leader of this chant was Ramon Perez. I'd never even been in a class with him before. How did he know that I always get in trouble? Well, to be fair to Ramon, I guess I do have a reputation for getting in trouble with the principal. I try very hard not to break the rules, but sometimes I just can't stop myself from bending them really hard.

There was another blast of that screeching sound, then the loudspeaker clicked off. Everybody started to talk at once. We were dying to know who our new teacher was going to be.

“I heard she's beautiful,” Ryan Shimozato said.

“Like a beauty queen or something?” Matthew “I'm not too swift” Barbarosa asked
. Hey, where is his best friend, Salvatore Mendez? He must have been put in the other fifth-grade room. Man, I'd hate to be separated from Frankie and Ashley.

“I'll bet she was Miss Alabama,” Nick McKelty said in his big, loud voice.

“Why Alabama?” Frankie asked him.

“It's the only state I could think of,” McKelty said, and shrugged. Everyone burst out laughing, and his face turned bright red.

“What's so funny?” he shouted. “I know all the other forty states. I just don't feel like saying them now.”

Joelle reached over and patted McKelty's arm.

“There are fifty states, Nicky,” I could hear her whisper.

“I knew that,” he snapped back at her. “I wanted to see if you did.”

McKelty can never admit when he's wrong, which, by the way, he is most of the time. I don't know why anyone, even Joelle Adwin who loves her cell phone so much that she wants to marry it, would want to be his girlfriend.

“I just hope the new teacher is nice,” Ashley said, adjusting her baseball hat, which she had decorated with red rhinestones that said 5th GRADE ROCKS! on the bill.

“You said it, Ashweena,” Frankie nodded. “Not like a certain Ms. Adolf.”

Ms. Adolf was our fourth-grade teacher and she specialized in the No-Fun, No-Laughing, Sit-Still, Give-Lots-of-Homework kind of teaching. She wore all-grey clothes every single day, to match her grey hair and grey glasses and grey face.

Just that morning, Frankie and Ashley and I had just been talking on the way to school about how glad we were to be in the fifth grade and leave Ms. Adolf to the fourth-graders. My sister, Emily the Perfect, and her boyfriend, Robert Upchurch the Know-It-All, were in the fourth grade this year. I wondered if they were sitting in Ms. Adolf's class right that very minute
.

“Footsteps!” a new kid named Marcus called out.

“Here she comes,” everyone whispered.

We all sat up straight in our desks and looked toward the door. The footsteps got louder and louder as they got closer and closer. I could feel my heart beating a little faster. That may sound silly, but I couldn't wait to see who my teacher was. It was a big moment. When you think about it, you spend more time with your teacher than you do with your mom and dad. I mean, six hours a day, five days a week, that makes . . . let me see now . . . oh forget it, I'm terrible at math.

I looked toward the door and could see the new teacher through the frosty glass window. I couldn't see a face, just an outline.

No one said a word as the doorknob turned. Slowly, slowly, the door opened. There she was.

“Hello, pupils,” she said. “I'm your fifth-grade teacher!”

IT WAS MS. ADOLF!
No, I'm not kidding. I wish I were.
But I'm not.

1. I'm dead.

2. I'm dead meat.

3. I'm dead rat meat.

4. I'm double-dead rat meat.