wall and waited for Howard to come out I’d recently learned that a small family of mice lived in the wall of the Pitchfork schoolhouse At first I thought that it was just one mouse which I named Howard But there are actually five different mice in there which I’ve also named Howard The Howards like to poke their heads out and stare at me while I’m sitting in the corner thinking about what I’ve done to upset Miss Danielle and the class I waved to the mousy face that poked out of the hole Howard stared at me and shook its head Howard can’t believe that I’m in trouble yet again I can’t believe it either Believe it or not I’m not actually a bad kid I just have a lot of strange adventures with my parents Sharon and McLaron Baron I call them M and P and they’re quite
possibly the cleverest inventors in the country as well as their assistant Rose Blackwood whose brother Benedict Blackwood is quite possibly the worst criminal in the country and my Aunt Dorcas who is quite possibly the eggiest and weepiest aunt in the country And sometimes when I try to tell people about these strange adventures they think I’m lying It’s really not my fault Miss Danielle is the one who always asks us to give reports on what we do during our holiday breaks and what our parents do for a living I just tell her the truth and then she puts the dunce cap on my head and makes me sit in the corner I suppose I could lie and tell her I do all the boring things that the other kids do with their families like shear sheep sew bonnets and plant potatoes but I don’t like to lie I’m not particularly good at lying Are you confused Alright let me give you an example Here is the report I just gave to my class about how I spent my summer vacation
There was a knock at the door Oh dear P said I wonder how we’re supposed to answer that A knock on the door isn’t usually a problem for us But P had just shown us his newest invention a nifty little device that he named the Gravity-Switcher-Ma-Thinger He wasn’t the greatest at naming his inventions The Gravity-Switcher-Ma-Thinger looked a bit like a glow-in-the-dark accordion and when you pressed a button at the end of it it caused the gravity in the room to flip The force that normally pulled you to the floor would suddenly start pulling you up to the ceiling which was why my parents and Rose Blackwood and I were all currently on the ceiling In fact everything in the living room was on the ceiling including our sofa chairs table lamps the area rug and our bookshelves
This is the sort of thing that happens quite regularly here at the Baron Estate W B M said angrily I told you to sweep the floors this morning All of the dust and dirt from the floor is now up here The ceiling is filthy Sorry My stomach was flipped upside down as well and I was finding it very difficult to keep down the bacon cheese pickle tomato fried onion and jalapeno sandwich that I had eaten for my third breakfast It was rather dizzying to be experiencing the living room upside down and I can’t say that I enjoyed it I missed our normal gravity which kept us all safely on the ground where we belonged
