Bruno for Real Read online

  BRUNO for REAL

  BRUNO for REAL

  CAROLINE ADDERSON

  illustrated by HELEN FLOOK

  Text copyright © 2009 Caroline Adderson

  Illustrations copyright © 2009 Helen Flook

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Adderson, Caroline, 1963-

  Bruno for real / Caroline Adderson ; illustrated by Helen Flook.

  (Orca echoes)

  ISBN 978-1-55469-023-7

  I. Flook, Helen II. Title. III. Series: Orca echoes

  PS8551.D3267B78 2009 jC813’.54 C2008-908028-9

  First published in the United States, 2009

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2008943123

  Summary: This is the second collection of stories about Bruno, an imaginative boy with a humorous personality.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Typesetting by Teresa Bubela

  Cover artwork and interior illustrations by Helen Flook

  Author photo by Caroline Adderson (self-taken)

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, STN. B PO BOX 468

  VICTORIA, BC CANADA CUSTER, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  12 11 10 09 • 4 3 2 1

  For the very real John Fernando

  Contents

  Good Night, Hic Hic

  Bruno the Bad

  The Long Birthday

  Bruno Makes a Deal

  Bruno, Level 5

  School of Boys

  Good Night, Hic Hic

  Bruno tried all the tricks, but he still couldn’t get to sleep. He tried counting sheep. One, two, three, four, five...Five little sheep came over the green hill. They looked like clouds with legs. One, two, three, four, five...Five little sheep rolled down the other side. Wheee! What fun! They rolled faster and faster. At the bottom, they all landed in a wooly heap. But not for long. They jumped right up and ran to the top of the hill again for another roll. Wheee!

  Now Bruno was even less sleepy. He tried a different trick. He closed his eyes and pretended his bed was a boat. It was a rowboat floating in the water. The boat rocked from side to side. Bruno yawned. He was getting sleepy—very, very sleepy. Then he opened one eye. The boat was speeding down a river! It was heading for a waterfall!

  Wheee!

  “Mom!” Bruno called. “Mom! Mom! Mo-o-o-m!”

  Mom peeked in the bedroom door. She looked really sleepy. “What is it, Bruno?”

  “I can’t get to sleep.”

  “That’s because you’re yelling. Good night,” she said.

  “I wasn’t yelling!” Bruno said. “Mom? Mom!”

  Mom came back. “What is it, Bruno?”

  “I wasn’t yelling,” Bruno said. “I was calling.”

  “All right, all right,” Mom said. “Try counting sheep.”

  “I did!” Bruno said. “It was too much fun!”

  “Okay. Try singing a little song,” she said.

  “Then I’ll be singing,” Bruno said. “How can I get to sleep if I’m singing?”

  “Never mind,” Mom said. “Good night.”

  Mom went back to bed. Bruno lay in the dark for a while. Then he got up to use the bathroom. When he got back to his room, he tucked in all his stuffed animals. He hopped into bed. Then he got up again to check the lid on his box of pencil shavings. Yesterday the box had spilled all over the floor. Dad got mad. He’d wanted to vacuum up Bruno’s collection of pencil shavings!

  Bruno lay in the dark. “Sleep?” he whispered. “Sleep? Where are you?”

  Sleep said, “Hic.”

  Bruno sat up. “Sleep?”

  “Hic.”

  But it wasn’t Sleep talking. It was Bruno. Bruno had the hiccups.

  “Mom!” Bruno called. “Mo-hic! “

  This time Dad came. “Bruno! Pipe down!”

  “I can’t sleep. I’ve got the hic.”

  Dad brought Bruno a glass of water. “Drink this,” he said. “It should do the trick.”

  Bruno drank all the water. He gave Dad the glass and said, “Thank hic.”

  Dad sat on the bed. “Okay. Here’s another trick. Hold your breath for as long as you can.”

  Bruno took a deep breath. He counted in his head. One, two, three, four, five...He counted all the way to forty-seven. Then he gasped for air.

  “Very good,” Dad said.

  “Hic,” Bruno said.

  “Do you know it’s eleven o’clock?” Dad said. “Mom’s already asleep.”

  “I can’t hic it,” Bruno said.

  “I know. But I’m tired and want to go to bed myself. Here’s one more trick. Stand on your head.”

  Dad turned on the bedroom light. Bruno got down on the floor and put his head on the carpet. Dad lifted Bruno’s ankles in the air. Bruno was standing on his head! He looked around the room. It seemed funny that the books on his bottom shelf were on the top shelf now. The floor was the ceiling,

  and the ceiling was the floor. Bruno felt like an astronaut! His head grew heavy, and his feet grew light. His head was filling up with blood. It was getting bigger. And BIGGER! Soon he wouldn’t be able to get his shirts on! Soon his head would be too BIG for the neck hole!

  “Stop!” Bruno cried.

  Dad let go of his ankles. Bruno tumbled to the floor. “Hic!“

  “Okay,” Dad said. “Okay. I know one last trick. It’s the very last one.”

  “What?”

  “BOO!” Dad said.

  Bruno looked at Dad. “Why did you say that?”

  “I was trying to scare your hiccups away.”

  “That wasn’t scary at all,” Bruno said. “Hic.”

  “What would scare you?” Dad asked.

  “Nothing. I’m not scared of anything.”

  “Monsters?” Dad asked.

  “No. But the hiccups would probably get scared if something jumped out at them in the dark.”

  So Dad went to hide while Bruno, hic, counted to ten. Then Bruno tiptoed out of his room. He crept down the dark, dark hall and into the dark, dark living room so they could scare the hiccups away.

  Dad jumped out from behind a chair. “BOO!”

  Bruno wasn’t scared. Neither were his—

  “Hic! “

  “I give up,” Dad said. “Let’s both go back to bed. The hiccups will get bored and go away.”

  Bruno went to bed. Hic. Hic. Hic. It seemed that his hiccups wanted to talk. “It’s time to go to sleep,” Bruno told his hiccups. “Pipe down.”

  “Hic.”

  Now Bruno got mad. He was so mad he got out of bed and went to his parents’ room to complain. He opened the door and looked in. Mom was sleeping. Dad was snoring. Bruno tiptoed over to the bed. He leaned over Dad.

  “Hic.”

  Dad screamed!

  Mom screamed!

  Bruno screamed!

  That did the trick.

  Bruno the Bad

  One morning Bruno woke up bad. “I’m bad,” he told Mom at breakfast.

  “You mean you’re in a bad mood,” she said.

  “No.
I’m just bad. Listen.”

  He cackled. “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  He growled. “Grrrr.”

  And he wrinkled his nose. This made a little horn of skin grow between his eyebrows.

  “Stop,” Mom said. “You’re scaring me. I can see your horn.”

  “You should be scared,” Bruno said. “Because I’m bad! I’m Bruno the Bad!”

  Mom poured Bruno a glass of orange juice. “I don’t want orange juice,” Bruno the Bad said. “I want a glass of blood.”

  She really looked scared then. Bruno guessed she was glad when it was time for him to go to school.

  He wasn’t very bad at school because he didn’t want to get in trouble. But at recess, on his way out to play, he stopped at the principal’s office. Bruno’s principal, Mrs. Foss, always left her door open. She looked up from her desk. “Can I help you, Bruno?”

  Being sent to the principal’s office was the very worst thing that could happen at school. Bruno put one foot in the door. Then he ran off. Mrs. Foss laughed.

  At lunch, Bruno found a gingerbread man in his lunch box. He thought of another bad thing. He could eat his cookie before he ate his sandwich.

  “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!” he cackled.

  “No!” the gingerbread man cried. “Don’t eat me! Don’t! Please!”

  Bruno said, “Ginger, this is the end of you!”

  Isabel was eating her lunch across the table from Bruno. She looked scared. “I’m telling!” she said. And she put up her hand and called out to the teacher, “Ms. Allen! Bruno’s talking to his cookie!”

  Everyone laughed!

  That night, Bruno told Mom how he had been to the principal’s office. He didn’t say that Mrs. Foss had laughed or that his class had laughed.

  “Did you do something wrong?” Mom asked.

  “I was bad,” Bruno told her.

  “I think Mrs. Foss would have phoned me,” Mom said.

  “I was bad all day,” he said. “I did something really, really bad. I did the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

  “What did you do?” she asked. Bruno could tell by her voice that she was afraid of finding out.

  “I ate the arms and legs off my gingerbread man before I ate his head.”

  “You are terrible,” Mom said. She leaned over to kiss him good night.

  “No kisses!” Bruno yelled. “I’m bad!”

  Mom sat down on the bed. “No good-night kiss, Bruno?”

  “No!”

  “How about when I drop you off at school?”

  “No!”

  “No kisses when you hurt yourself?”

  “No kisses ever!”

  She pretended to cry. Bruno knew she wasn’t really crying, but he still felt bad. He felt bad, and he was bad! He was Bruno the Bad!

  He went to his dresser and got a mitten. “Here,” he said. “Kiss this.”

  Mom kissed the mitten. Bruno took it back and rubbed it all over his face.

  “What about me?” she asked.

  Bruno kissed the mitten. Mom left with it pressed to her heart.

  The next day, Bruno found the mitten in Mom and Dad’s room. He packed it in his backpack. “Why are you taking the mitten to school?” Mom asked.

  “I don’t want you kissing it when I’m not here,” Bruno told her.

  After school, Bruno watched the other kids get picked up. Some kids let their moms and dads kiss them. But they were good kids. Bruno was bad. He’d done a few more bad things that day, like writing his name backward on his work.

  “Who’s Onurb?” Ms. Allen, his teacher, asked.

  “Grrrr!” Bruno said.

  She looked scared. “Who let a bear in the classroom?”

  Bruno loved being bad. Dad enjoyed it too. One night Mom went out and left Bruno and Dad at home alone. “Okay,” Dad said, rubbing his hands together. “This is our chance. Let’s be as bad as we want.”

  “Grrrr!” Bruno said.

  For dinner, Bruno and Dad had macaroni, but they didn’t use a fork or spoon. They ate it with their hands! After dinner, they took out all of Bruno’s puzzles and mixed the pieces up. They put them all together as one giant mess. It looked terrible! It looked awful! “This is the baddest puzzle ever,” Bruno said.

  Dad agreed. “It’s the worst.”

  Then, at bedtime, instead of a good-night kiss, Bruno gave Dad a good-night bite.

  Being bad with Dad was the best!

  The last day Bruno was bad, he hid in the closet. When Dad came home and hung up his coat, Bruno jumped out of the closet growling and showing his horn. He jumped right on Dad’s back. Dad ran with him to the living room. They wrestled on the couch. “Grrrr! Grrrr!”

  Whoops! Bruno tumbled off the couch and hit his head. “Ow!”

  Now he really felt bad.

  “Mom!” he yelled.

  She came running. “What happened? My poor baby! Let me get the mitten!”

  “No!” Bruno wailed, holding his head. “I think I need a kiss!”

  The Long Birthday

  When Bruno turned seven, he invited twelve pirates to his party. He wore a pirate scarf and an eye patch. He drew sword slashes on his arms and face. Instead of real blood, he bled jam. Dad made a birthday cake in the shape of a treasure island.

  As soon as the other pirates arrived, they had a sword fight. “Be careful! Please be careful!” Mom said. But only one pirate got hurt, and he didn’t even bleed.

  “We need more jam!” Bruno called.

  Next they had a treasure hunt. Dad gave them a map made from a paper bag. He wrinkled it so it looked old. It was a map of the backyard.

  They found the treasure and ate it. It was chocolate coins. Then Bruno blew out the candles on the treasure island, and they ate that too.

  Bruno got lots of presents, even a real treasure chest filled with colored stones. Everyone walked the plank. Afterward, the parents of the tired pirates came to pick them up.

  That night Bruno told Dad, “Today was the best day of my life.”

  “I’m glad you had fun. You only turn seven once in your life.”

  “I wish every day was my birthday,” Bruno told Dad.

  At breakfast the next morning, Bruno told Mom, “Today is a very special day.”

  “Is it?” Mom said.

  “Yes. Today I am seven-and-one-day old. Did you know you are only seven-and-one-day old once in your life?”

  “I’ve never looked at it that way,” Mom said. “What should we do about it?”

  “I think we should bake a cake,” Bruno said.

  Mom said she was too tired after yesterday’s party. “Why don’t I put a candle on your pancake?”

  Mom lit the candle on Bruno’s pancake. Bruno made a wish and blew the candle out. He wished that it could be his birthday every day. But he didn’t tell Mom his wish. He wanted it to come true.

  The next day was Monday. “Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me,” Bruno sang.

  “What?” Dad said. “Is time moving backward?”

  “No,” Bruno said. “I’m seven-and-two-days today!”

  “How wonderful!” Dad said.

  “Can I stay home from school?”

  “No,” Dad said.

  When he got to school, Bruno told his teacher that he was seven-and-two-days. Ms. Allen pointed to the calendar. “Class, today Bruno is seven-and two-days old. How old will he be on Friday?”

  “Seven-and-six-days,” someone said.

  “Very good! And how old will he be next Wednesday?” Ms. Allen asked.

  They talked about Bruno’s birthday for a long time. Bruno was happy until he realized they were doing math. He put up his hand and said, “If we talk about this any more, Bruno will be dead.”

  Every night Bruno gave himself a birthday present. He put one of the stones from his treasure chest under his pillow. In the morning, he looked under the pillow to see what he had got for turning seven-and-three-days, seven-and-four-days, and seven-and-five-days. At dinner, Mom and Dad sang
“Happy Birthday” to Bruno. Mom put a candle in his bun. She put a candle in his peach. She put a candle in his soup.

  “What’s floating in my soup?” Bruno asked.

  When Bruno turned seven-and-eleven-days, Mom and Dad sat him down for a talk. “There are 365 days in a year, Bruno,” Dad told him. “You can’t have 365 birthdays.”

  Bruno said, “Why not?”

  Mom said, “Because there aren’t any candles left.”

  So they stopped singing “Happy Birthday.” For a while, Bruno remembered to put a stone under his pillow. Soon he lost count of his age. Was he seven-and-twenty-two-days or seven-and-twenty-four-days?

  When Bruno was about seven-and-twenty-six-days old, he noticed Mom looked sniffly. “Are you crying?” he asked.

  “Yes, I am,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m forty today!”

  Bruno knew it was her birthday because he and Dad had gone out to buy her a special present. “What’s the matter with forty?” Bruno asked.

  “It’s old,” she said.

  “You’re right,” Bruno said. “But two hundred is older.”

  Mom laughed and blew her nose.

  “Don’t you want your birthday?” Bruno asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “Can I have it?” Bruno asked.

  Mom thought this was a great idea. She baked a cake for Bruno. That night, Dad made a special dinner. Mom and Dad sang “Happy Birthday” to Bruno. Before he blew out the candles, Bruno asked, “What about the present?”

  “It’s yours,” Mom said. “No birthday is my present.”

  Bruno closed his eyes and made a birthday wish. He wished that when he opened the present, it wouldn’t be a frilly nightie. The wish came true, of course. Birthday wishes usually do.

  “A pirate scarf!” Bruno cheered.

  He tied it around his head.

  Bruno Makes a Deal

  Bruno got home from school hungry. He was so hungry he fell down on the kitchen floor. Dad emptied Bruno’s lunch box. “No wonder you’re hungry,” Dad said. “You didn’t eat your sandwich.”