An Excerpt from The Night I Flunked My Field Trip - Page 2

"I know," I interrupted, "to bring it in. The field trip is tonight. Why would I forget my permission slip?"

"Because you're Hank Zipzer, King of the Morons," answered a voice from the row behind me. It was Nick McKelty, the true king of the morons, who never misses a chance to hurl an insult my way. He laughed really loud and blasted some of his nasty dragon breath my way.

I know I forget a lot. I mean a lot, a lot. But I really wanted to go on this trip. And I didn't need McKelty on my case about it.

"Listen up, McKelty," I began. "I'm tired of you . . ."

The bell rang before I could continue. Ms. Adolf walked over to her desk and put her sack lunch into her bottom drawer. I sit close enough to her desk to smell that she was having something involving tuna fish. And a day-old banana. I can sniff out a day-old soft, turning-black banana a block away.

"That will be quite enough, Henry," Ms. Adolf said to me, tapping on her desk with this pointer stick she has.

Enough? I hadn't even started. If she only knew.

"But, Ms. Adolf, I didn't start this."

"Henry, if you keep talking, I'm going to send you to Principal Love's office."

Why was I getting into trouble? McKelty called me a moron. And why was she still calling me Henry when I've been telling her since September my name is Hank? Come on, this was April already. That's eight months of Henry and zero months of Hank. Even my orthodontist Dr. Gibbons started calling me Hank four months after I had asked him to, and he's deaf in one ear.

Ms. Adolf took the silver key she wears on a lanyard around her neck and unlocked the top drawer of her desk. She took out her roll book and carried it over to my desk. Opening the book, she ran her finger down the list of names, stopping at the very last one. I had a bad feeling about that, since my name is Zipzer, and it starts with the last letter of the alphabet.

Sure enough, Ms. Adolf looked at me over the top of her glasses and frowned. And I don't mean just a regular frown, either. She looked at me like there were worms crawling all over my face. Brown, hairy worms.

"Congratulations, Henry," she said in a voice that matched her face. "You are the only pupil who has not turned in his permission slip."

"I'm sure it's in here, Ms. Adolf," I said, practically diving headfirst into my backpack.

Ms. Adolf folded her arms across her grey shirt. She tapped her foot impatiently. She was wearing grey shoes with a grey buckle on them. Grey is her favorite color. That's because it goes so nicely with her grey face.

"I'm waiting," Ms. Adolf said. As if the whole class hadn't noticed.

Wow, this was a lot of pressure. Everyone in the class stared at me, except Luke Whitman, that is, who was scratching a rash on his arm with one of his vocabulary flash cards.

I pulled out a crumpled paper from the bottom of my backpack. At first, I thought it was the permission slip. But when I uncrumpled it, I saw that it was last week's math quiz, the one with the big red C-minus on top.

Tap, tap, tap. Ms. Adolf's feet were going faster. She was getting pretty mad.

The zipper pouch! That's it. I bet I stuffed the permission slip in my zipper pouch.

I pulled my head out of the bag and said, "I think I know where it is!" Then I dove back in.

I dug around in the zipper pouch and finally pulled out a half-eaten granola bar. It had a clump of greenish lint from the bottom of my backpack hanging off of it. You're probably thinking it's gross to have a linty, old granola bar crammed in your backpack, but if you saw the kind of granola bar my mom gives me for a snack, trust me, you'd stuff it in your zipper pouch too. My mom doesn't believe in granola bars that have chocolate chips and marshmallows and fun stuff in them. That would be the kind that taste good. She gives me what she calls health-nola bars. That would be the kind that taste like brown construction paper.

Tap, tap, tap. Ms. Adolf's feet were certainly getting a workout. Now she was getting those red splotches on her neck too. They start appearing when I'm late or if anybody laughs in class.

"Mr. Zipzer, all permission slips were due no later than this morning," she said.

Uh-oh. It's bad enough that Ms. Adolf calls me Henry. Now it was Mr. Zipzer!

This called for extreme action. I turned my entire backpack upside down and dumped everything out on my desk. A whole bunch of crumbs and broken pencil stubs and Snapple tops and a pink high bounce came tumbling out. It wasn't a pretty sight. Worst of all, there was no permission slip anywhere.

Ms. Adolf shook her head.