The Best School Year Ever by Barbara Robinson Read Free Book Online Page A

scatter kids all over the street.
    Eugene Preston brought in a copy of Amazing Comics , about a robot bus that suddenly began to go backward and sideways and turn itself over and lock all its doors, so the people were trapped inside, yelling and screaming. In the comic book the Mighty Marvo showed up and rescued everybody, but Eugene said he wouldn’t want to count on the Mighty Marvo if he was up against the Herdmans.
    “I just know something’s going to happen,” Maxine said. “I keep hearing this strange noise on the bus.”
    I don’t know how she would hear anything except kids hollering, but Eloise Albright said she heard a strange noise too. Some kids said they smelled something on the bus, but who doesn’t?—egg sandwiches, poison ivy medicine, Alice Wendleken’s Little Princess perfume.
    Lester finally asked his mother if there was anything wrong with their bus, but she just said, “Yes, it’s full of kids.”
    Then Bus 6 was assigned to take the third grade to a dairy farm to study cows, and Ollie Herdman refused to go. “Not me,” Ollie said. “Not on that bus!”
    Of course this was good news for the cows, and the teacher was pretty happy, but the rest of the third grade was scared to death. Boomer Malone’s little sister Gwenda said the suspense was awful—waiting for the bus to blow up or turn over—and between that and having to milk a cow, the whole third grade was wiped out for the rest of the day.
    By this time Maxine was a nervous wreck, along with Donald and Lester and everybody else on Bus 6. More and more kids were feeling sick to their stomachs and then feeling fine as soon as the bus left, and they all said the same thing—that they were scared to ride the bus because the Herdmans wouldn’t get on it.
    “What kind of reason is that?” my mother wanted to know. “Of course they won’t get on the bus. Thelma Yeagle won’t let them on the bus. Nobody wants them on the bus!”
    “Something bad is going to happen,” Charlie told her, “and the Herdmans know what it is. That’s why they won’t get on. They know Bus Six is doomed.”
    “Doomed!” Mother stared at him. “You watch too much television. Is that what everybody thinks?”
    We said yes.
    “Then why doesn’t somebody just put the Herdmans on the bus and make them ride it?” Mother said.
    Since it wasn’t my bus, I thought that was a good idea and so did Charlie and so did Mr. Crabtree, I guess, because that’s what he did.
    “We have to ride your bus, Lester,” Gladys said. She grinned this big grin so Lester could see her teeth all shiny with paper clips. “The principal said.”
    “I thought you were scared to ride this bus,” Maxine told Imogene. “You said it was doomed.”
    “I didn’t say that,” Imogene told her. “ You said that.” She climbed on the bus and walked up and down the aisle, picking out a seat next to some victim. “It looks all right to me.”
    Mrs. Yeagle was pretty mad at first, but she told my mother it wasn’t all bad to have the Herdmans on the bus. “They told everybody to shut up,” she said, “and everybody did.”
    Not for long, though. Claude and Leroy stole a bunch of baby turtles from the pet store and took them on the bus and put them down some kids’ shirts. Leroy said later that he was amazed at what happened. He thought the turtles were dead and he was going to take them back to the pet store and complain.
    The turtles weren’t dead. They probably saw who had them and decided to stay in their shells till they were big enough to bite back. But it was nice and warm inside the shirts, so they began to stick their heads out and crawl around.
    Of course nobody knew they had turtles down their backs. Nobody knew what they had down their backs, but Donald Cooper thought it was the big bugs, hungry and tired of peanut butter sandwiches. “I’ve got the big bugs on me!” he yelled, and right away all the other kids began to yell and scream and jump up and down and