going to buy his lunch in the cafeteria.

A grown-up would not call him a purple

cootie. Ramona faced front without speak-

ing.This boy was not going to spoil her first day in the third grade.

Thump, thump, thump against the back of Ramona’s seat. The bus stopped for other

16

children, some excited and some anxious.

Still the kicking continued. Ramona ignored it as the bus passed her former school. Good old Glenwood, thought Ramona, as if she

had gone there a long, long time ago.

“All right, Danny,” said the bus aide to

the kicking boy.“As long as I’m riding shotgun on this bus, we won’t have anyone kicking the seats. Understand?”

Ramona smiled to herself as she heard

Danny mutter an answer. How funny—the

bus aide saying she was riding shotgun as if she were guarding a shipment of gold on a

stagecoach instead of making children behave on a little yellow school bus.

Ramona pretended she was riding a

stagecoach pursued by robbers until she

discovered her eraser, her beautiful pink

eraser, was missing.“Did you see my eraser?”

she asked a second-grade girl, who had

taken the seat beside her. The two searched 17

the seat and the floor. No eraser.

Ramona felt a tap on her shoulder and

turned.“Was it a pink eraser?” asked the boy in the baseball cap.

“Yes.” Ramona was ready to forgive him

for kicking her seat. “Have you seen it?”

“Nope.” The boy grinned as he jerked

down the visor of his baseball cap.

That grin was too much for Ramona.

“Liar!” she said with her most ferocious glare, and faced front once more, angry at the loss of her new eraser, angry with herself for

dropping it so the boy could find it. Purple cootie, she thought, and hoped the cafeteria would serve him fish portions and those

canned green beans with the strings left on.

And apple wedges, the soft mushy kind with tough skins, for dessert.

The bus stopped at Cedarhurst, Ramona’s

new school, a two-story red-brick building very much like her old school. As the chil-18

dren hopped out of the bus, Ramona felt a little thrill of triumph. She had not been carsick. She now discovered she felt as if she had grown even more than her feet. Third

graders were the biggest people—except

teachers, of course—at this school. All the little first and second graders running

around the playground, looking so young,

made Ramona feel tall, grown up, and sort

of . . . well, wise in the ways of the world.

Danny shoved ahead of her. “Catch!” he

yelled to another boy. Something small and pink flew through the air and into the

second boy’s cupped hands.The boy wound

up as if he were pitching a baseball, and the eraser flew back to Danny.

“You gimme back my eraser!” Encum-

bered by her lunch box, Ramona chased

Danny, who ran, ducking and dodging,

among the first and second graders. When

she was about to catch him, he tossed her