Horrible Harry Cracks the Code

by Suzy Kline

  “Cool!” ZuZu replied.

  “I bet the dust and dirt makes good boogers,” Harry said.

  Mary cringed as Song Lee giggled.

  “Actually, Harry,” Miss Mackle answered, “you’re right. Our nose mucus is like glue. It captures all that dust and dirt. So when we blow our nose, we get rid of . . .”

  Suddenly Sidney sneezed into his hands.

  “Sidney,” the teacher said, “you just got rid of germs at about one hundred miles per hour!”

  “Whoa!” I said.

  “Can I go wash my hands?” Sid asked.

  “Good idea,” Miss Mackle replied.

  When Sidney returned, the teacher explained our next activity. “You can do this by yourself or with a partner. Find something in our room that smells. Put it in a cup, tape paper over it, and punch a few holes on top. Later, we’ll see if we can use our sense of smell to detect what the hidden object is.”

  Harry raised his hand.

  “Yes?” the teacher said.

  “May Doug and I go to the cafeteria? I want to ask Mrs. Funderburke if she could donate something that smells for our cup.”

  “How resourceful, Harry!” Miss Mackle replied. “Since it was your idea, you and Doug may go. But I’m not sending anyone else. Mrs. Funderburke is a very busy lady. Remember to ask her nicely, and thank her for her time.”

  “We will!” Harry said. “Come on, Doug!”

  Mary blew up her bangs. She wanted to go too! On our way out, Harry grabbed his two baseball caps off the hook.

  Now I knew what Harry was really up to! His schnozzola smelled a possible clue for his big detective case!

  The First Clue

  When Harry and I got to the cafeteria, Mrs. Funderburke was holding a vegetable steamer. It looked like a giant chrome castle to me.

  “Just about done!” she said.

  When a whiff drifted our way, I made a face. I didn’t like the smell of broccoli.

  Harry flashed a toothy smile. “Are you cooking my favorite vegetable?” he asked.

  “I sure am!” Mrs. Funderburke replied. “Nice hat, Harry! What brings you boys to my kitchen?”

  “A favor,” Harry said. “We’re studying the nose in Room 3B, and we need something that smells.”

  Mrs. Funderburke laughed. “You came to the right place. How about your favorite green vegetable, Harry? I can cut off one small floret for you.”

  “No, thank you,” Harry replied.

  “You want something with more aroma?” she asked with a smile.

  “Yeah! Something that stinks!” Harry replied.

  Mrs. Funderburke pointed to the menu on the wall. “Remember what we had last Friday?”

  Harry patted his stomach. “I sure do! Mmm!”

  “I do too,” I groaned. “That’s why I brought a cold lunch.”

  Mrs. Funderburke chuckled. “I’ve got a few portions left. You can take one.”

  “All right!” Harry exclaimed.

  As soon as she walked over to the cafeteria refrigerator, Harry and I quickly sniffed around for clues.

  The familiar blue plastic trays with six compartments were piled in stacks. The spork and napkin packets were packed in a bin.

  I could see chicken nuggets and fries in the oven through the glass doors. They were on huge silver trays. I liked the smell of the chicken and potatoes cooking.

  Harry waved me over to a small yellow bulletin board with pictures of a sunflower, black-eyed Susans, broccoli, and cauliflower. Block letters spelled out two words, followed by numbers:

  FIBONACCI SEQUENCE

  1, 1, 2, 3, __, __, __,

  Suddenly Mrs. Funderburke was standing next to us. “Here, Harry,” she said, handing him a paper cup with tinfoil over it.

  “Thanks a lot!” Harry said. Then he abruptly changed the subject. “What do the numbers on this bulletin board mean?”

  Mrs. Funderburke smiled and said, “Oh, that! Mr. Fib-ba-notch-chee is going to help me place the orange stars on the lucky lunch trays. Run along now, boys!”

  On our way back to class, Harry whipped out his small notebook and wrote down the numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3. “It’s a code! Her special set of numbers!”

  “Yeah!” I replied. “I wonder if today’s winner will be number four—the fourth person in line. What do you think, Harry?”

  “I’m thinking about that name, Fibonacci. I’ve heard it somewhere before.”

  Harry pulled the visor down on his detective hat. “I’m also thinking about those two ones in the beginning of the sequence. What do they mean?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t know.

  “I have to see who the first winner is today, Doug. Then I might be able to figure out who will be the orange-star winner tomorrow!”

  I was impressed.

  Harry wasn’t jumping to conclusions.

  He was taking things slow.

  He knew his reputation as a detective was at stake.

  Payback Time!

  The next half hour was fun. We got in small groups and tried to guess each other’s mystery smells. Harry made sure he was in Mary’s group. I knew why.

  It was payback time for her tattling yesterday!

  “Remember, boys and girls,” the teacher said. “Smell the mystery item first, write down your answer in your science notebooks, and don’t tell anyone. After each person has had a turn using their sense of smell, then read your answers out loud.”

  “How come you haven’t poked any holes in the top?” I whispered to Harry.

  “I will when the time comes. I want the smell to be really ripe,” he explained.

  “Okay,” I whispered back. Harry was a pro when it came to gross smells.

  “Someone else can go first,” Harry said politely. “Doug and I want to be last.”

  Mary had her own paper cup. Four neat holes were punched on top. It was obvious she had used her hole puncher. “See if you can tell what it is, Doug,” she said, passing it to me.

  I took a whiff. It was sweet. I wrote a word down.

  Song Lee took a whiff. “I like it!” she said, then she wrote down her answer.

  Harry took one whiff and said, “Piece of cake!”

  “Harry!” Mary said. “You’re not supposed to say your answer out loud. I’m telling!” Then she called out, “Miss Mackle!”

  Uh-oh! Mary was tattling on Harry again.

  The teacher came right over. When she found out what Harry said, she wasn’t angry.

  “‘Piece of cake’ is an expression, Mary. He thinks your smell is easy.”

  As soon as Miss Mackle left our group, Mary made fish lips and pouted.

  The rest of us shared our answers. We all said “cake” except for Harry.

  “It’s frosting,” he said.

  Mary tilted her cup so we could see. It was pink frosting.

  Harry threw his shoulders back and stood tall. “I got it!” he sang out. “I’m not just a private eye. I’m a private schnozz!”

  Sidney and Song Lee laughed.

  “Where did you get that frosting, Mary?” ZuZu asked. “I thought you were having hot lunch today.”

  Now Mary could brag. “I am,” she said. “I’m just resourceful. I asked the teacher if I could take some frosting from that birthday cupcake she had on her desk. Remember, a second-grader brought it in for her?”

  We all nodded.

  We did a lot of smelling that morning. Harry and I guessed Song Lee and Ida’s soap, ZuZu’s cedar chips from our guinea pig JuJu’s cage, and Dexter’s chalk dust. We didn’t get Sidney’s eraser.

  Finally, it was our turn.

  “How come your paper cup doesn’t have holes in it?” Mary snapped.

  Harry reached for a pair of scissors, jabbed a hole in the foil, and then cut out a circle. “It does now!” He grinned.

  “You’re about to smell one of my favorite aromas. But”—he paused, holding up a finger—“you need to take a deep whiff. It’s hard to pick up its scent. You may go first, Mary,” Ha
rry said.

  Mary flared her nostrils a couple of times. Then she leaned over the cup and inhaled deeply.

  “Aaaaaauuuuuuuugh! Fish! Yuck!”

  Harry shook a finger. “Actually, it’s pollack. We had it for lunch on Friday. And you’re not supposed to shout out your answer,” he scolded. “You’re supposed to write it down. So . . . I’m telling on you, Mare!”

  Mary covered her mouth quickly. Her eyes bulged. She hid behind Song Lee.

  “I told you your tattling would backfire on you sometime!” Harry snapped. “Well, it just did!”

  Mary’s body was shaking.

  “How does it feel when someone’s going to tattle on you?” Harry asked. “Huh?”

  “N-n-not s-s-s-so g-g-g-good,” Mary stuttered.

  Harry got his payback, all right. And the weird thing was, he never did tattle to the teacher. He just let Mary suffer and think about being tattled on! And that was good enough for Harry.

  The First Orange-Star Winner!

  At lunchtime we all lined up to go to the cafeteria. Dexter was first, then ZuZu, Sidney, Ida, Song Lee, Mary, Harry, and me.

  “Will the fourth person in line get the lucky lunch tray, Harry?” I whispered.

  “I’m not so sure,” Harry whispered back. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Mary had her fingers crossed as we snaked our line into the kitchen. Song Lee was wearing a special charm necklace. “Pigs mean good luck in Korea,” she said. “I hope they bring me good luck today.”

  Mrs. Funderburke had our stack of trays hidden behind a poster. Each time she reached for a tray, she plopped a milk carton or juice box on top before she moved it out to the counter where we were. No one could see if there was a sticker underneath.

  As we scooted through the line, we could see the two cafeteria ladies with their plastic gloves helping Mrs. Funderburke. One aide dropped chicken nuggets in the middle compartment and a handful of French fries in another. She passed the lunch tray down to the next aide, who filled the remaining compartments with a serving of broccoli, a packet of carrots, and a packet with a spork and a napkin.

  When Harry came through the line, the aide dishing out the broccoli said, “The usual, Harry?”

  “Yes, please,” he answered.

  And she gave him two heaping servings.

  As soon as we got to our table, we lifted our milk cartons to see who had an orange star.

  “Boo!” Mary said. “I didn’t get one!”

  “I’m glad I didn’t get one,” Sidney said. “My name was on the board yesterday. It would have been wasted.”

  I checked underneath my milk. Nope.

  Suddenly Song Lee sang out, “I have the lucky lunch tray! My pig necklace was good luck. I’m so happy I wore it today! See my orange star?” Harry and I looked at the star, then at each other.

  Song Lee was not the third or fourth person in line. She was the fifth person in line. Song Lee peeled the orange sticker off her tray, jumped out of her seat, and hurried to the kitchen.

  Harry and I went into deep thought.

  The pattern of numbers Mrs. Funderburke was using was one, one, two, three, and now five!

  While we all sat there feeling like losers, Mrs. Doshi stopped by our table with a big red bottle. “Who wants ketchup?” she asked. We watched her squirt some ketchup on Ida’s plate. She didn’t squirt it in one place—she made a ketchup happy face.

  “Oh, that’s so cute. Can I have one too?” Mary asked.

  “Sure,” Mrs. Doshi said. “You know how to use ketchup packets properly.”

  Mary beamed.

  When Sidney asked for ketchup, Mrs. Doshi just gave him one glob. “Where’s my happy face?” Sid complained.

  Suddenly Mr. Skooghammer, our computer teacher, walked into the cafeteria. As he cut to the front of the line, Harry tapped Mrs. Doshi’s arm.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Doshi,” he said. “I need permission to talk to Mr. Skooghammer. It’s about math. May I, please? It’s really important.”

  Mrs. Doshi squeezed one glob of ketchup onto Harry’s plate. “I’m glad you have better lunchtime manners today. Yes, you may, Harry. But be brief !”

  “You’re the best!” Harry replied. “I promise it will just be a one-minute conversation!” Then he dashed over to Mr. Skooghammer. He had a chef-salad plate in his hand and was nibbling on some celery. I watched him talk with Harry and nod and smile and laugh.

  It was the longest one-minute conversation I’ve ever watched.

  When Harry returned, I got the scoop.

  “What did he say?” I whispered.

  “Well,” Harry said, dipping a sprig of broccoli in his ketchup, “I asked him if he remembered last June when he was the teacher in the Suspension Room. And he said yes. That was where he first met me.”

  I chuckled. That was funny. “Yeah?”

  Harry continued, “I asked him if he remembered the cool lesson he taught me in math because I was a little fuzzy on it. And he said, ‘You mean the Fibonacci sequence?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And then he lit up like a Christmas tree and said, ‘You remembered?’ And then I said, ‘Kind of.’ I knew the sequence went one, one, two, three, five, but I didn’t know the next number. And then Mr. Skooghammer gave me a super clue. He said just look at the last two numbers. When I did, I figured it out! I cracked the code!”

  I couldn’t. But if Harry could, that was a good thing. “All right!” I said, slapping him five.

  Harry immediately tapped his tray with his spork. It didn’t make a very loud noise, but he got the attention of kids close by. “I know who is going to get the lucky lunch tray tomorrow!” he announced.

  “That’s impossible!” Mary groaned.

  “Not for the world’s second-best detective,” Harry replied.

  “Who’s the best detective?” Sid asked. “I forgot.”

  “Sherlock Holmes!” we replied.

  “So,” Mary said, “who does the world’s second-best detective say the lucky lunch tray winner is tomorrow? Hmmm?”

  Harry flashed a toothy smile. He liked his title.

  “I don’t have my detective hat on right now, Mare, so I can’t tell you. But tomorrow when I come to school, I can.”

  Mary rolled her eyes.

  I secretly crossed my fingers under the table.

  The World’s Second-Best Detective?

  The next morning while we waited for Harry to come to school, we gathered around Song Lee. She was showing us what she got at the Student Store with her gold coin.

  “Oooh!” Ida said. “A pen with a peacock feather at the end!”

  “Show us how it works!” Mary said. “Please!”

  Song Lee wrote seven words in her notebook: I got a pretty rainbow pen today.

  Each time she wrote a new word, she flicked the side of her pen and a new color of ink appeared.

  “Look!” ZuZu said. “The words are in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. All seven colors of the rainbow!”

  “Oooooh!” Mary and Ida said.

  “I hope my horseshoe charm bracelet brings me luck today,” Mary said, making it rattle. “I want the next gold coin! I want to get a rainbow pen too!”

  When I looked up at the clock, there was one minute to the bell. “Where’s Harry?” I asked.

  “I’ll bet he doesn’t show up!” Mary moaned. “He doesn’t know who is going to get the lucky lunch tray today.”

  “You’re right, Mare!” a voice sang out from the hall.

  “It’s Harry!” everyone said. He was wearing his detective hat.

  Mary beamed. She loved being right.

  “Well, actually, Mare,” Harry continued, “you’re half right. I don’t know who will get the lucky lunch tray. But,” he said, tapping his pocket, “I do know where a person has to stand in line to get it!”

  We watched Harry reach into his pocket. “After a lot of investigating, I found out Mrs. Funderburke is using the Fibonacci sequence. That’s her special set of nu
mbers.”

  “Fib-bone-not-shee?” Sidney repeated.

  “Yup!” Harry replied. “He’s the guy who discovered the code!”

  “You know the lucky place where someone has to stand today?” ZuZu asked.

  “I sure do!” Harry said, holding up a folded piece of paper. “Got it written down!”

  “Then tell us now!” Mary demanded.

  “Can’t,” Harry said, tucking his paper back into his pocket. “It would spoil the surprise.”

  “When will you tell us?” ZuZu asked.

  “When everyone’s in the lunch line,” Harry said. “Just before we step into the kitchen.”

  “Awww,” we groaned.

  “Hey, I just solved a tough case with only two clues. You have to be patient for my solution,” Harry said, hanging up his detective hat.

  Mary folded her arms. “I bet I know which place it will be in line!” she said with a grin.

  “We’ll see!” Harry said, walking to his seat.

  I was sure glad we did something fun in class that morning, because the minutes were ticking away like hours! We couldn’t wait to find out the second winner!

  Miss Mackle set up a science demonstration. “Boys and girls,” she said, “I hope this experiment shows how important our sense of smell is when we taste something.”

  We watched the teacher as she stood behind a table with newspaper on it. “What do I have in this hand?”

  “An apple,” we said.

  “And in this hand?”

  “A potato,” we replied.

  “I will now peel each one,” she said, reaching for a potato peeler.

  We watched the red skin from the apple and the brown spotted skin from the potato fall to the table. When she finished, she asked a question. “Can you tell them apart?”

  “No,” we answered.

  Miss Mackle set the apple on a paper plate and chopped it into small chunks. On another paper plate she did the same thing to the potato.