too miserable even to raise her hand. If she did not move, not even her little finger or 103

an eyelash, she might feel better.

Go away, blue oatmeal, thought Ramona,

and then she knew that the most terrible, horrible, dreadful, awful thing that could happen was going to happen. Please, God, don’t let me. . . . Ramona prayed too late.

The terrible, horrible, dreadful, awful thing happened. Ramona threw up. She threw up

right there on the floor in front of everyone.

One second her breakfast was where it

belonged. Then everything in her middle

seemed to go into reverse, and there was her breakfast on the floor.

Ramona had never felt worse in her whole

life.Tears of shame welled in her eyes as she was aware of the shock and horror of everyone around her. She heard Mrs.Whaley say,

“Oh, dear—Marsha, take Ramona to the

office. Danny, run and tell Mr. Watts that someone threw up. Children, you may hold

your noses and file into the hall until Mr.

Watts comes and cleans up.”

104

Her instructions made Ramona feel even

worse.Tears streamed down her face, and she longed for Beezus, now far away in junior

high school, to come and help her. She let Marsha guide her down the steps and through the hall as the rest of her class, noses pinched between thumbs and forefingers, hurried

out of the classroom.

“It’s all right, Ramona,” Marsha said gently, while keeping her distance as if she expected Ramona to explode.

Ramona was crying too hard to answer.

Nobody, nobody in the whole world, was a

bigger nuisance than someone who threw

up in school. Until now she thought Mrs.

Whaley had been unfair when she called her a nuisance, but now—there was no escaping

the truth—she really was a nuisance, a horrible runny-nosed nuisance with nothing to blow her nose on.

When Ramona and Marsha entered the

office, Marsha was eager to break the news.

“Oh, Mrs. Larson,” she said,“Ramona threw

up.” Even the principal, sitting at his desk in the inner office, heard the news. Ramona

knew he would not come out and start being her pal, because nobody wanted to be a pal to someone who threw up.

Mrs. Larson, seizing a Kleenex from a box

on her desk, sprang from her typewriter.“Too 106

bad,” she said calmly, as if throwers-up came into the office every day.“Blow,” she directed, as she held the Kleenex to Ramona’s nose.

Ramona blew. The principal, of course, stayed in his office where he was safe.

Mrs. Larson then took Ramona into the

little room off the office, the same room in which she had washed egg out of Ramona’s

hair. She handed Ramona a paper cup of

water.“You want to rinse your mouth, don’t 107

you?” Ramona nodded, rinsed, and felt better.

Mrs. Larson did not behave as if she were a nuisance.