Posey, the Class Pest

by Holly Anna

  We stop and stare helplessly at Mrs. Page and then back at our projects. What a mess! Jasmine’s shirt is flecked with yellow highlighter marks. My poster board has scribbles all over it. And Lily has pens sticking out of her hair like chopsticks.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to leave the library,” Mrs. Page says firmly.

  So we collect our stuff and go into the hall, where we stare at one another in disbelief. We have zero, zilch, zip to show for our report.

  Then the bell rings.

  “We are in so much trouble,” I say.

  Lily and Jasmine both nod glumly.

  Then Posey taps my arm and asks, “Are you mad at me?”

  And I laugh right out loud because I’m not mad. I’m furious.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Lecture

  Mr. Roberts claps his hands to get the class’s attention.

  “Presentation time!” he announces. We split back into our groups and Mr. Roberts calls one team at a time. Gabby’s team gets called first. They walk to the front of the room.

  “Our game is called Bug In!” Gabby says. Then she looks at Carol, who holds up a poster with super-cool magazine cutouts and drawings.

  “You play the game as a bug, and your job is to bug people!” Carol explains.

  This makes me laugh, and I tap Jasmine and Lily with my finger.

  “Posey should’ve been on that team,” I whisper. “He’s an expert at bugging people, so he’d win every time!”

  My friends giggle, and I know Posey overheard, but I’m kind of glad because it’s kind of true.

  “I never meant to bug you,” Posey whines. “I only wanted an adventure.”

  His poor attempt at an apology doesn’t make me want to forgive him. Instead, it unleashes my anger.

  “It’s not an adventure if it ruins everything!” I whisper sharply. Luckily, the next team is now talking, so I can continue my rant without getting caught.

  “Just look what you’ve done, Posey! First you perform magic in class. Then you put glitter-litter in my classmate’s bag, which ends up all over me. And then you invite the entire World of Make-Believe to lunch without asking me and they take over the entire playground!”

  Posey hangs his head sadly.

  But I don’t care because I’m so much madder than mad. “And on top of everything, you ruined our presentations in the library! Posey, I never want you to come back to school again!”

  I fold my arms to see what Posey has to say about that. And I watch as tears roll down his cheeks. Jasmine and Lily pat Posey on the shoulder.

  “Easy, Daisy,” says Lily. “I don’t think he meant to get us into trouble.”

  “Well, he didn’t try not to get us in trouble, either,” I say with a huff. “Now we have no report to present the nothing project that we couldn’t do, and we’re all going to fail!”

  Posey looks at me through watery eyes. “Is there anything I can do to fix this, Daisy?”

  I take a deep breath. “Not unless you can stop time and fix this whole mess!”

  Posey’s face suddenly brightens. “Hey, maybe there is something I can do to help!” he says.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Posey Pause

  Mr. Roberts begins to call on our team, and right in the middle of what he’s saying, Posey waves his hands.

  SHWOOM!

  Mr. Roberts freezes midsentence.

  I look around and notice that the whole class is frozen! Gabby froze blowing a bubble with her gum. Wren froze halfway through a yawn. John froze picking his nose. Jasmine, Lily, Posey, and I are the only ones not frozen.

  “What’s going on, Posey?” I ask, pointing at all the statues that were once my classmates.

  “I call this trick the Posey Pause!” he says triumphantly. “We now have five minutes to fix whatever needs fixing!”

  “Only five minutes?” Lily says, setting the timer on her watch. “We better get moving!”

  I jump right in because I know exactly when our assignment went wrong. “It all started when that fairy appeared out of thin air!”

  Lily shakes her head. “No, no, no! It really started when we were arguing about what our video game should be about. That’s why Posey made the fairy appear in the first place. He was trying to help us agree on a topic!”

  Okay, I’ll give Posey that one because it is actually true, I think.

  “And Posey only planted the glitter-litter in Gabby’s bag because Gabby and Carol were spying on us,” Jasmine points out.

  A twinge of guilt bubbles up inside me. Jasmine’s right about that, too, I think.

  “And they were only spying on us because they were suspicious,” Lily adds.

  Jasmine nods. “And they were only suspicious because we were fighting. If we hadn’t wasted so much time arguing, maybe we wouldn’t have even needed to go to the library, and then Posey wouldn’t have ruined our work!”

  All this reasoning makes me slump in my chair. It also makes me feel like a slimy, horrible, lowly Daisy Dreamer. Hmm, maybe even more like a Daisy Nightmare. I think I might owe Posey a big fat apology—like right now.

  “I am so, so sorry I blamed you for everything, Posey,” I cry out. “Can you ever forgive me?”

  Posey looks at the table for a second and then back at me. “It’s okay, Daisy,” he says gently. “We all make mistakes . . . even imaginary friends. Lucky for you, though, I’m just as good at forgiving people as I am at going on adventures!”

  This makes me feel better—that is, until Lily holds up her watch.

  “Guys, our five minutes is almost up and we still don’t have anything to present for our video game!”

  We all stare at Mr. Roberts, who is still frozen in midsentence. I run through our options in my head. Magic is definitely out because I think we can all agree that there should be no more magic at school today. And that leaves us with only one other option.

  Lily’s watch starts to beep.

  “It’s time to come clean!” I say.

  CHAPTER NINE

  HICCUP!

  In a flash, Mr. Roberts finishes his sentence and it’s our team’s turn. We drag our feet to the front of the room and get ready to present a whole lot of nothing.

  “Umm . . . ,” Lily begins, and then looks at Jasmine.

  “Uh—uhh . . . ,” Jasmine stammers, and turns to me.

  “Well . . . ,” I say, stalling, not wanting to say anything either.

  Then somehow Jasmine finds words. “The truth is,” she begins, “working as a team is hard. Our team had so many good ideas that we found it tough to pick just one.”

  Jasmine’s right. We did have a lot of good ideas, I think. And that gives me a giant fairy–skateboard–stuffed animal idea! I nudge Jasmine and interrupt her.

  “Which is why . . . ,” I continue, “we realized that having a bunch of different ideas could make the best video game of all!”

  I turn to my friends and whisper, “Follow my lead!” Then I turn back to the class.

  “When something unplanned happens in a video game, we call it a glitch or a hiccup. So we decided to call our game Hiccup! It’s a video game that jumps around to tell the story from different points of view. Here’s how to play. Lily, will you start by telling the class your game idea?”

  Lily walks to the front, and I let her take over. “Our game starts with a fairy who wants to save her stuffed animals from an evil giant, but she needs some help.”

  Then I snap my fingers and yell, “HICCUP!”

  Lily jumps back and I take over the video game! “Now there’s a magical skateboard that wants to help the fairy find her lost stuffed animals. Together, they use the skateboard’s magical powers to sneak around the giant.”

  Jasmine shouts, “HICCUP!”

  The class all starts to giggle whenever we yell “hiccup” . . . because “hiccup” is a very funny word.

  Jasmine continues, “But when the fairy and the skateboard find the stuffed animals, the giant captures them, t
oo. So the stuffed animals have to work together to free all of them! And that’s our game!”

  The whole class claps, and I can hear Posey whistling in the back of the room. Hiccup! was here to stay.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Pretend Friends on the Loose

  Believe it or not, everyone in class is playing Hiccup! now. Lily, Jasmine, and I wrap our arms around Posey and give him a great big thank-you squeeze.

  “Posey, you can come to school with us anytime!” I say.

  Then Jasmine and Lily give me a major look.

  “Okay, okay—maybe not anytime too soon . . . ,” I add. And we all burst out laughing. That’s when Mr. Roberts whistles through his fingers. The class gets quiet and sits back in their seats.

  “We still have one presentation to go!” he says.

  The final team of Jordan, Marcus, and Rico walks to the front of the room.

  “Our game is called Pretend Friends on the Loose,” Rico begins. Then Jordan turns over the group’s poster board so everyone can see it.

  Lily, Jasmine, and I gasp as Rico continues. “Our main character is called Rosy.”

  He points to a character that looks just like Posey! Which is why we’re in total shock.

  “In order to win the game, Rosy has to go around the playground, catching all the Pretend Friends in a big bag. It looks like this.” Then Rico pretends to grab imaginary people and put them back into his pretend big bag.

  At this point we almost fall off our chairs because the Pretend Friends look like all of Posey’s WOM buddies from the playground! The boys even made a map of the playground with trails for Rosy to catch the Pretend Friends.

  Then Jasmine, Lily, and I turn all six of our eyes on Posey.

  He scratches his head thoughtfully. “That’s weird. . . . I thought I made everyone look like real-world kids!” Then he gulps and says, “Are you mad at me again, Daisy?”

  And of course I’m mad. “I’m mad that we didn’t think of Pretend Friends on the Loose for our game!”

  Then I pull Posey close and tell him I’m only joking.

  “Really?” he says, and I nod like crazy. Sure, Posey might be the best class pest, but he’s also the best pretend friend in the whole world.

  Check out Daisy Dream’s next adventure

  SPLAT!

  I turn around just in time to see an orange tumble off the tippy-top of the orange pile and sploosh all over the floor.

  That’s the third one in two minutes!

  Mom and I are at the grocery store—one of the best places in the world. Obviously. Who doesn’t love food?

  But something keeps knocking the fruit over. And it’s not me! I pinkie swear!

  Just in case, I steer extra clear of the bananas.

  KER-SPLAT! KER-SPLUNK!

  Across the aisle, two peaches splatter to the floor like juicy yellow fruit bombs. And that’s when I see him, sitting on top of the peaches like a little purple monkey with antlers.

  “Posey!” I whisper loudly. “What are you doing up there?”

  “Shopping!” he shouts with a big sticky grin. He hops down from the pile in one giant leap, knocking over more fruit. Peach juice drips from his chin.

  “These samples are amazing!” he says, grabbing an apple and taking a huge bite.

  “Those aren’t samples!” I tell him, taking the apple out of his hand. “They are for sale. You have to pay for them first!” Obviously.

  “Oh,” he says, looking a little disappointed. “But I’m hungry!”

  I roll my eyes. “You should never go to the grocery store hungry. It makes you want to eat everything!”

  Then I swivel the cart around and catch up with Mom. She’s moved to the cereal aisle.

  “Ooh, Imagination Crunch!” Posey shouts, spying a rainbow-colored cereal box. He throws it into the cart. I quickly take it out and shove it back on the shelf.

  “Daisy,” Mom questions when I turn back around, “why are there Gooey Roll-Ups in our cart?”

  I grab the Gooey Roll-Ups and put those back too. “Sorry, Mom!” I turn and wag my finger at my imaginary friend.

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Holly Anna has always had a wild imagination. When she was little, she used to doodle drawings that would transport herself and her friends to a wonderful world of make-believe. Now she visits other worlds through writing. Holly lives in San Jose, California, with her family. They have four cats: Rocket J. Squirrel, Le Mew, The Honest John Wookenchops (a.k.a. “Wookie”), and Noel.

  Genevieve Santos is an illustrator born, raised, and living in San Jose, California, and sole proprietor of a small stationery company, Le Petit Elefant. Her love for animation started at a young age, and is what drives her to draw the slightest observations. She also has an insatiable weakness for ice cream.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  LITTLE SIMON

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  First Little Simon hardcover edition July 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Also available in a Little Simon paperback edition.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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  Designed by Laura Roode

  Jacket design by Laura Roode

  Jacket illustrations by Genevieve Santos

  © 2018 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  IntheMiddleBooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Anna, Holly, author. | Santos, Genevieve, illustrator.

  Title: Posey, the class pest / by Holly Anna ; illustrated by Genevieve Santos.

  Description: First Little Simon paperback edition. | New York : Little Simon, 2018. | Series: Daisy Dreamer ; #7 | Summary: When Daisy Dreamer’s imaginary friend Posey joins her at school, he nearly ruins the group project she and her friends are working on although he is trying to be helpful.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017047479 | ISBN 9781534412705 (eBook) | ISBN 9781534412682 (pbk)

  ISBN 9781534412699 (hc)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Imaginary playmates—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Video games—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Imagination & Play. | JUVENILE FICTION / Humorous Stories. | JUVENILE FICTION / Readers / Chapter Books.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.A568 Pos 2018 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017047479

 

 

 
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