I Got a D in Salami #2

Table of Contents

 

 

 

GROSSET & DUNLAP
Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

M4P 2Y3
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

Your support of the authors' rights is appreciated.

 

 

Library of Congress Control Number: 2003004905

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-09856-1

“HANK, WILL YOU please stop bouncing around like a jumping bean and concentrate?” my mom asked.

“This is what I do when I concentrate,” I answered.

I was hopping over to a sock that was lying on the floor of my room. When I reached the sock, I picked it up with my toes. That's a trick I learned from one of my best friends, Ashley Wong. Ashley can pick up almost anything with her toes, including marbles. She can also tie a cherry stem into a knot using only her tongue. Those are qualities you want in a best friend.

I curled my toes around the sock until I had it in my grasp. Then I swung my leg around to the side so it was sticking straight out from my body. That's a trick I learned from my other best friend, Frankie Townsend. His mom is a yoga teacher, and she taught him how to twist his legs around like a pretzel. Frankie has gotten so good at it that he can bring his big toe all the way up to his nose, which is also an excellent way to see if your feet smell. I never thought about this before, but my friends and I all have very talented toes. Maybe that's why we're friends.

When my leg was in the right position, I released the sock from my toe grasp and flicked it into the air toward my dirty laundry hamper. It was an excellent flick, if I do say so myself. The sock sailed into the hamper and landed dead center on my boxers.

“He shoots, he scores!” I yelled, doing my wiggly victory dance.

My mom shook her head. “I came in here to help you study your spelling words,” she said with a sigh. “But frankly, Hank, I have better things to do with my time than watch you play toe basketball.”

We had been studying for a while, and my Mom sounded like she was getting a little crabby. I sat down at my desk chair and got serious.

“Hit me with the next word,” I said to her. “I'm ready for it.”

“Receive,” said my mom. “Think before you answer, Hank. It's a tricky one.”

I looked across the room, trying to see the word in my head. But instead, all I saw was my other sock, lying on the floor next to the hamper. I tried not to go for it, but I couldn't resist. I scooted across the room on my chair, doing a three-sixty spin at the halfway point. I don't know who invented chairs with wheels, but whoever the guy was, he was a genius.

“I thought you were going to focus, Hank,” my mom said, grabbing onto the back of my chair and bringing me to a screeching stop.

“Believe it or not, I'm trying to.”

She didn't like that answer. She shot me one of those Mom looks that says
Don't try to fool me, young man; I see what you're up to
. I'll bet you've probably gotten that look before.

“I'm serious,” I tried to explain to her. “I have this theory that if I keep moving, then my brain won't stop and I won't forget my spelling words. I'll bet it works.
Receive
is the word, right?”

She nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “Receive. R, right?”

She started to answer, but I put my hand up to stop her. “Don't tell me. Don't tell me. Okay. Receive. R-E-C-I-E-V-E. See? Didn't I tell you it works?”

“Hank, I hate to tell you this, but you reversed two letters.”

“Okay, okay. Don't tell me what they are,” I said. “Receive. Okay.” I took my time and thought really hard as I spelled out the letters. “R-E-C-E-I-V-E.”

“That's great,” my mom said. “You got it!”

I gave her a high five. It felt good to be right.

“You have just seen my new Hank Zipzer guaranteed method for getting one hundred percent,” I said. “I'm going to win the spelling contest tomorrow, Mom. I am Spelling Man, Ruler of the Alphabet.”

“Not so fast, Spelling Man,” my mom laughed. “There's one more word left on your list.”

One word? Piece of cake. I had already learned fourteen. Fourteen words neatly packed away in my brain for tomorrow's contest. It had taken most of the night, but it would be worth it just to see the look on Ms. Adolf's face when I won.

Ms. Adolf, my fourth grade-teacher, was going to be amazed. Hey, I was amazed. Never before in my whole life had I ever known how to spell all—I mean
all—
my words correctly. Spelling is one of the hardest things on the face of the earth for me. I study. I go over and over and over my spelling words. At the time, they seem to stick to my memory. They seem to be happy in my brain. But then later, like the next morning when I really need them, they seem to have orbited off into space somewhere. Or if not space, then wherever lost spelling words go. It's like they slip off the edge of my brain.

But this time I felt different. Tonight I was the master. I was the king of the country of Spelling.

I flung myself onto the bottom bunk of my bed and bounced around. “What's the last word?” I asked my Mom.

“Rhythm,” she said.

That was a tough one. I knew it had a lot of letters you couldn't hear, but exactly what they were was a total mystery to me. I flipped myself over and hung off the edge of the bed. All the blood flowed into my head, and I wondered if a person's face could explode from doing that.

“Hank?” I could hear my Mom asking. She sounded like she was far away. It was really loud inside my head, with all that blood beating like a drum. I poked around under my bed. There was a lot of interesting stuff there: a stuffed Tasmanian Devil I had won at my school fair, a plastic golf club, a pencil sharpener in the shape of the Empire State Building, and a dust ball the size of a fist.

Suddenly the dust ball moved, and from behind it, two beady eyes stared out at me. The eyes moved! Then a long, snakelike tongue shot out at me with the speed of a bullet. I flew off the bed like a rocket.

“Emily!” I screamed. “Get your creepy reptile out of here!”

My sister Emily is so weird that she has an iguana for a pet. How many eight-year-old girls do you know who sleep with a large, scaly lizard in their bed at night? Why can't she have a teddy bear like everyone else's little sister?

Emily came racing in. She was wearing my Mets sweatshirt, which she can do because we're about the same size. Even though she's fifteen months younger than I am, she's a little tall for her age and I'm a little short for mine.

“Emily, that's my sweatshirt,” I said. “Give it back.”

“Why should I?”

“You don't even like baseball,” I said. “You're just trying to make me mad.”

“Will you stop yelling, Hank,” she said. “You're scaring Katherine.”

“You got it backwards, backwad,” I said. “Katherine scared me.”

Emily bent down and coaxed Katherine out from under the bed. “Come on, girl,” she said, in her iguana-talking voice. “Come to your mommy lizard.” Could she be any weirder?

The dust ball had attached itself to Katherine's face and was hanging off where her lips would be if iguanas had lips. She looked like a scaly Santa Claus with a mutant beard.

“How is a guy supposed to study his spelling words with that lizard hanging out under his bed?” I asked.

“Since when are you studying spelling?” Emily answered, putting Katherine on her shoulder.

“Since tonight,” I said. “We're having a spelling contest tomorrow, and Ms. Adolf has promised that the winner gets an
A
in spelling on his report card. That's going to be me.”

“I only see one problem,” said Emily. “You can't spell. Remember?”

“Watch and learn,” I said with my most confident voice. I turned to my mom. “Rhythm. That's the word, right?”

“That's the one,” my mom said.

I opened my mouth to spell the word. I noticed that nothing was coming out. Suddenly, I felt a little nauseous. I knew that the word was there in my mind, but I was worried that if I tried to get it, it would loosen up and float away.

Six eyes stared at me, waiting. My mom's blue ones, encouraging me to give it a try. Emily's green ones, expecting me to get it wrong. Katherine's beady ones, giving up no clue as to what goes on inside an iguana's head
. Here goes nothing
, I thought.

“R-H-Y-T-” I stopped.
Come on, Hank
. I started again.

“R-H-Y-T-H-U-M,” I said.

“Wrong,” said Emily, as happy as a clam. “It's r-h-y-t-h-m. There's no U—as in U can't spell.”

“Maybe I can't spell, ” I said, “but at least I don't have iguana poop on my shoulder.”

Emily looked on her shoulder, and sure enough, Katherine had left a little pool of poop there for Emily to enjoy. I laughed.

“I wouldn't laugh if I were you,” she said. “Remember whose sweatshirt this is.”

“I'm warning you! You better wash it at least a hundred times.” I started for her, lizard and all, but Mom stopped me.

“That's enough, you two,” she said. “Emily, take your iguana back to your room. Hank, why don't you and Dad go over the words one more time. I'm taking my bath.”

Trust me, if there's one person you don't want to study your spelling words with, it's my Dad. He's a crossword-puzzle nut, and he knows how to spell every word in every language and their abbreviations. And on top of that, he can't even begin to understand why spelling is hard for me.