Ramona's World Read Free

night and the heat makes her cross.” She laid her book aside. “What happened in school today?”
    Ramona was in no mood to be hushed. “Oh—nothing much. Same old stuff. Spelling and multiplication facts and stuff.” Then, because her mother often told her to look on the bright side, she added, “Daisy gave me half of her chocolate-chip cookie.”
    â€œThat’s good.” Mrs. Quimby spoke as if she was thinking of something else. “Ramona,” she said in that quiet voice that meant Ramona was about to get a little talking-to, “you’ve been using the word stuff entirely too much. Surely you can find a better word to say what you mean.”
    Ramona felt picked on, first by her teacher and now by her mother. Stuff was a perfectly good, handy, multipurpose word and easy to spell, too. She flopped into a chair and scowled. If she had written, “My sister is cute and stuff,” or “I like to hold her and stuff,” she wouldn’t have misspelled so many words, and Mrs. Meacham wouldn’t have had a chance to be so mean.
    Before the discussion could continue, Beezus came home from school, dumped an armload of books on the dining room table, and gave her mother and sister a cheerful “Hi.”
    Ramona returned it with a grumpy “Hi.”
    Beezus, smiling and full of enthusiasm, perched on the arm of the couch. “I love high school. I didn’t get lost in the halls even once today. I think I made a new friend. My French teacher makes French seem easy, and I have the nicest man teacher for English, and—”
    Ramona interrupted. “And I suppose you spelled every single word right.”
    â€œWell, aren’t you Miss Grouchypuss?” Beezus said. “Yes, I did, and in French, too.”
    â€œSmartypuss,” countered Ramona, feeling that everyone picked on her.
    â€œGirls!” Mrs. Quimby’s voice was weary. The afternoon was too warm for this sort of disagreement. From the bedroom came the sound of fussing, crying, and finally screaming.
    S-c-r-e-a-m , thought Ramona, mentally spelling the word in spite of herself.
    â€œI’ll get her,” Beezus offered.
    Good old Beezus, thought Ramona, sliding farther down in the chair.
    â€œRamona, please ,” said Mrs. Quimby. “Try to be agreeable.”
    â€œI am agreeable,” said Ramona with an even darker scowl.
    Beezus returned with sobbing Roberta in her arms. Because of the heat the baby was wearing only a diaper. “What’s the matter with Roberta?” Beezus crooned, and kissed the baby’s hair.
    Mrs. Quimby held out her arms for Roberta, who snuggled against her mother’s shoulder. “Sh-h-h,” whispered her mother. Roberta stopped crying with one last hiccuping sob. “That’s my good girl,” whispered Mrs. Quimby, and she too kissed the baby’s hair.
    All this made Ramona feel worse than ever—unloved, left out, and a rotten speller with the whole horrible fourth grade ahead of her. Nobody kissed her hair, at least today, and it was clean, too. She pulled herself out of the chair, found the remote control, and turned on the television to a rerun of her favorite after-school program, Big Hospital . She wanted to forget her troubles and lose herself in the corridors of the hospital where people in green pajamas fell in love if they weren’t too busy saving lives or comforting the lost and lonely.
    â€œRamona, please turn that off.” Mrs. Quimby looked over Roberta’s head at her middle daughter. “I wish you’d tell me what’s bothering you.”
    â€œNothing’s bothering me,” grumped Ramona as she pushed the button on the remote control without finding out what Handsome Doctor and Blond Nurse would say next. She waited for her mother to coax her problems out of her, to soothe her, to tell her things would be better tomorrow, and maybe even kiss her hair. She picked