The Best School Year Ever

Periodically, Beth tries to make progress on the assignment to think of compliments for her classmates. She has thought of six so far, including one for Alice: “Important” (49). She explains that Alice has been considered important since first grade, because that year she went inside the teachers’ lounge, where no other student had ever been. Because Alice already knew where the lounge was from her first visit, teachers automatically asked her to deliver messages and run errands there afterward. Students are very curious about what is inside this room, but Alice will not tell. Beth’s mother assures Beth and Charlie that it is just an ordinary room, but Charlie replies that Imogene Herdman has told him otherwise. Mrs. Bradley tells him not to believe anything Imogene says about anything.

Imogene has convinced Charlie that the teacher’s lounge is full of delicious treats and that people can only get in with a password that changes daily. Imogene claims that the password is sometimes covertly given out during the morning announcements. “Once, it was macaroni and cheese,” she says (51). Beth considers making her compliment for Imogene that she is imaginative, but then she decides that a lie is not an example of imagination. Imogene also tells Charlie that she herself is not going to use a password to get into the lounge, because the teachers hold hostage any student who gets in. As an example, she cites Kenneth Weaver, who has not been in school for some time. Charlie counters that Kenneth is simply home with the mumps, but everyone begins to wonder when Kenneth never shows up again. All of the students begin carefully avoiding getting anywhere near the teacher’s lounge.

One day, two teachers, Mrs. Wendleken, and a district supervisor accidentally get locked inside the lounge. Because no one but Imogene will go near the lounge anymore, Imogene is the one who lets them out, and the district supervisor, who does not know the Herdmans’ reputation, treats her like a hero. The newspaper article about the incident mentions everyone who was trapped inside the lounge, and the students notice that Kenneth is not mentioned. Mrs. Bradley tells Beth and Charlie that Kenneth’s family moved to Toledo. When Alice and Beth question Imogene about this, she claims that the reason she opened the lounge door was to let Kenneth out so that he could join his family in Toledo. Although the district supervisor says that Imogene is “thoughtful,” Beth does not think this is accurate and refuses to use it as her compliment for Imogene (59).

During the school’s annual eye test, Gladys Herdman tells Lester Yeagle, the son of one of the school’s bus drivers, that if he does not do well on the eye test, the doctor will remove his eyes and turn them the other way around. He is so upset that he fails the eye test, and his mother has to collect him from school. He cannot explain why he is so frightened, but he is able to let his mother know that it has something to do with Gladys. The school nurse tries to find out what happened, and the eye doctor mentions Lester’s strange braces as potentially being the problem. Mrs. Yeagle is confused, as Lester does not have braces. When she looks in his mouth, she discovers that Gladys Herdman has fashioned braces for Lester from paper clips—for which service Gladys has charged Lester 35 cents. Mrs. Yeagle is outraged and proclaims that the Herdmans are definitely not welcome on her school bus.

Beth explains that the Herdmans are already banned from most of the buses, anyway. They occasionally wait at their stop in the morning, just to torment the other children with stories about the bus being dangerous and filled with bugs. Gladys even tricks Donald Cooper into giving up his lunch, because she tells him the bugs on the bus will “chomp through anything to get food” (64). One day, Alice deliberately taunts Imogene Herdman about not being allowed on the bus. The Herdmans begin showing up every morning at their bus stop, silently glowering at the other children. Donald becomes so frightened that he refuses to come out of his house in the morning. Maxine, Donald’s older sister, yells at the Herdmans to leave, but they insist that they are only trying to get to school. They tell her, however, that they do not want to get on her bus, Bus 6. They make a big show of being frightened of this particular bus—and they repeat this performance morning after morning until the other children are also scared of Bus 6. The students who ride this bus begin imagining that they hear strange noises and smell strange smells. Kids begin faking sick to avoid having to ride to school on the bus.

After Beth explains to her mother that everyone at school is convinced that Bus 6 is cursed because of the Herdmans’ fear of it, Mrs. Bradley suggests to the principal that he force the Herdman children to ride the bus to demonstrate to the other children that it is safe. The Herdmans show up at Lester, Maxine, and Donald’s bus stop, triumphantly announcing that they will be riding Bus 6, Mrs. Yeagle’s bus. Gladys wears paper-clip braces for the occasion. When the other students ask why they are not afraid, they point out that they never actually said the bus was cursed—this is just what everyone assumed from their behavior. The Herdmans ride the bus for several days, but eventually Leroy and Claude cause a disturbance by releasing baby turtles on the bus, and the Herdmans declare that they are done riding the bus.