Horrible Harry Moves up to the Third Grade (5 page)

Sidney closed his eyes and groped around with his hands.

“Ooooooouch!” Harry said. “You hit my head.”

“I am Starkey's ghost walking through the mine ....”

“Cut it out, Sid,” Harry growled. He knew I was in bad shape.

When Sidney kept it up, Harry unbuckled his backpack and took something out. It was too dark to see what.

Then Harry stood up and tapped Sidney on the shoulder with his finger.

“What?” Sidney said.

Harry didn't answer. He just kept tapping Sidney's shoulder.

“Stop tapping me!”

When Harry didn't stop, Sidney grabbed Harry's finger and pulled on it.

“Auugh!” Sidney screamed. “I pulled Harry's finger off!”

“AUUGH!” the class yelled. We could tell Sidney was holding on to something and flopping it in the air.

When the guide shone his flashlight on Sidney's hand, we all groaned.
“The burnt wiener!”

“So you were the one who stole it!”
Sid said, glaring at Harry.

“I borrowed it,” he said. “And now I'm returning it to you.”

Everybody started cracking up, including me. It felt good to laugh in the middle of that dark, wet mine. It also felt good when we started walking back, and when I first spotted light at the top of the mine entrance.

As soon as I got outside, I lay down on the ground and kissed the grass. “Ahhhhh,” I said. “Sweet earth, beautiful sky, delicious dirt.”

Harry punched me in the arm.

“You did it, Spido.”

I punched Harry back in the arm. “Yeah, I did, didn't I?”

Miss Mackle tapped my head as she made a quick count of our class.

Suddenly, she exclaimed,
“We're missing one student!”

The chaperones counted heads again.

“There's twenty, not twenty-one,” Miss Mackle said. “Who's missing?”

Harry and I knew right away. “Sidney,” we said.

“Sidney! Sidney!”
everyone called.

The guide and two of the chaperones went back into the mine.

Miss Mackle looked really scared as she paced back and forth. I had never seen her look like that before. “Keep calling his name,” she ordered.

The guide came back with the chaperones. “He's not in the mine. The pathway isn't that wide. We would have seen him.”

“Maybe he fell down a hole,” Mary said.

Mary.

She was always the voice of doom.

Harry started to feel a little guilty. “Maybe I shouldn't have done that finger trick with the wiener.”

Song Lee and Mary ran with a chaperone to check the museum.

When they came back, they were shaking their heads.

“He wasn't there.”

Miss Mackle looked like she was going to cry.
“Where is he?”

“He's... not on ... the bus,” another chaperone reported. She was out of breath.

“Oh no.” When Miss Mackle bowed her head, everyone knew she was praying.

Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, Sidney appeared! He strolled across the courtyard, crunching the fall leaves.

When he got closer, I noticed there was chocolate smeared in the corners of his mouth.

Everyone was cheering, even Harry. Miss Mackle put two hands over her heart.

“Sidney!”
she gasped.

“What's everyone so upset about? I just had to go to the can. When everyone started laughing about that finger story, I did, too. Then nature called and I ran out of the mine. Pronto!”

I made a face. I didn't think that was the full story, but I didn't say anything.

Harry was the first to give Sidney a hug. “I'm sure glad you're not dead like that Starkey guy.”

“Thanks, Harry,” Sidney replied. “That's the first compliment I ever got from you.”

And he hugged him back.

Miss Mackle hugged Sidney too, but then she looked him in the eye and firmly said, “Don't you ever leave the group again without permission.”

The beginning of third grade was sure full of surprises and changes, but the ones on our field trip were the biggest and the best.

Harry and Sidney made up.

And I made it out of that mine.