138 19 Down in My Underwear 144 20 Surrounded 21 The Weirdest Thing Happened 153 22 Sometimes Exploding Fingers Aren’t Loud Enough 160 172 23 The Kiss of Death 179 24 Saying Good-Bye 25 And It Was Just Us 184
1 Fourth Grade Forever Before I knew it the school year was almost over It was May and there were only a couple more weeks left Everyone in my fourth-grade class was talking about what they were going to do that summer and who their teachers might be next year I must be crazy I was going to miss fourth grade Don’t get me wrong I Charlie Bumpers am ALWAYS happy to get out of school But looking ahead I realized I was happy where I was I would never admit it to my parents or my brother Matt or even to my teacher Mrs Burke but I was going to miss my class At the beginning of the year
I didn’t like Mrs Burke but now I really did And I liked our class Except for Samantha Grunsky who has driven me crazy all year long I especially liked Hector His family moved here last fall from Santiago Chile and he ended up in my class sitting right beside me Since he was new and English wasn’t his best language he was kind of shy and didn’t have many friends But I found out right away that he was a really nice guy and also very good at soccer Pretty soon we became friends As the year went on he got to know a lot of the kids in the school and everyone seemed to like him Mostly he hung out with me and my other best friend Tommy Kasten We were even all on the same soccer team and we would be next year too But the reason I hated to see fourth grade end was I didn't know what would happen in fifth grade Things could change What if I got Mrs Blumgarden the teacher I 2
knocked over by accident in the hallway And what if Hector wasn’t in my class Or Tommy Just Samantha Grunsky Disastrophe That’s a disaster and a catastrophe together And Matt told me that fifth grade is a lot harder than fourth grade He said there’s more homework and the teachers are tougher because they’re getting you ready for middle school They’ll eat you alive in middle school Matt told me Stop terrorizing your younger brother Dad said That’s what Dad always says But maybe Matt was right Maybe fifth grade would be hard I liked things the way they were Except for maybe getting to have Tommy in my class I didn’t want anything to change As far as I was concerned I could stay in fourth grade forever 3
