Heidi Heckelbeck Has a Secret Read online

  By Wanda Coven

  Illustrated by Priscilla Burris

  Meet Heidi Heckelbeck. Heidi is just like any other eight-year-old. Or is she?

  In this book Heidi Heckelbeck goes to school for the very first time. When Melanie Maplethorpe turns her day into a nightmare, Heidi tells her parents that she wantstostay home and be her “real” self. What does she mean by that? Well, Heidi Heckelbeck has a secret—a big one—which is revealed after she looks through her special book and discovers a way to get back at meanie melanie!

  With easy-to-read language and illustrations on almost every page, the Heidi Heckelbeck chapter books are perfect for beginning readers.

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  LITTLE SIMON

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  Cover design by Aviva Shur

  Ages 5–7

  HeidiHeckelbeckBooks.com

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

  LITTLE SIMON

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 2012 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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

  LITTLE SIMON is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and associated colophon is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Coven, Wanda.

  Heidi Heckelbeck has a secret / by Wanda Coven ; illustrated by Priscilla Burris. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: After being homeschooled her whole life, Heidi Heckelbeck enters a real school in second grade, where she encounters a mean girl named Melanie who makes her feel like an alien.

  ISBN 978-1-4424-3565-0 (pbk.)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-4087-6 (hardcover)

  [1. First day of school—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Family life—Fiction.

  4. Witches—Fiction.] I. Burris, Priscilla, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.C83392He 2012

  [Fic]—dc23

  2011014304

  ISBN 978-1-4424-3566-7 (eBook)

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1: Grouchy

  Chapter 2: Double Grouchy

  Chapter 3: Hello, Meanie

  Chapter 4: Meep! Meep!

  Chapter 5: A New Friend

  Chapter 6: Big Trouble

  Chapter 7: Drama Queens

  Chapter 8: Four Answers

  Chapter 9: Zing!

  Chapter 10: Smell-a-nie

  Chapter 11: The Secret!

  GROUCHY

  Heidi Heckelbeck woke up in the Kingdom of Gloom.

  Grouchy Land.

  Grumpsville, USA.

  Heidi felt like the princess of Crankypants. Because not only was it the first day of school—it was her first day of school EVER.

  Heidi had never been to school before. She had always had school at home with her five-year-old brother, Henry. Mom had been their teacher. But starting today Heidi Heckelbeck would be a brand-new second grader at Brewster Elementary.

  Mom popped her head into Heidi’s room. “Time to get up!” she sang.

  “Merg!” growled Heidi.

  She flumped her pillow on top of her face. A million questions swirled in her head. What if the teacher was mean? What if she couldn’t find her way to the bathroom? What if she sat next to a boy who picked his nose?

  Heidi dragged herself out of bed and got dressed. She put on her black jean skirt with her kitty cat top. Then she wiggled into her black-and-white- striped tights and black sneakers. Not even her favorite outfit made her feel cheery. She plodded downstairs.

  Mom placed a happy-face pancake in front of Heidi. It had blueberry eyes, a mouth of raspberries, and sausage eyebrows.

  Heidi stuck out her tongue at her pancake.

  “It’s still smiling,” said Henry.

  Heidi used her fork to move the food around.

  “Not anymore,” said Heidi.

  “Mom!” yelled Henry. “Heidi made a mad-face pancake!”

  Heidi rolled her eyes.

  “You know what?” said Henry as he dipped a sausage in syrup. “You should wear pink. Pink looks friendly.”

  “Pretty in pink!” added Mom with a wink.

  “Wait, what’s wrong with the way I look?” said Heidi.

  “Uh . . . nothing, really,” said Henry. “It’s just that your outfit kind of looks like a Halloween costume. What if you spook the other kids on your first day of school?”

  “Har-dee-har-har,” said Heidi. But Henry’s comment kind of bugged her.

  Heidi’s dad walked into the kitchen as he fixed his tie.

  “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay!” he sang. He stopped when he saw Heidi’s unhappy face. She was not in a Disneyland mood.

  “What’s the matter, pumpkin?” asked Dad.

  “Nothing,” said Heidi. “I just don’t want to go to school—EVER. That’s all.”

  Henry dropped his fork.

  “Never, ever?” asked Henry. “That means you won’t get to have a class pet! Or your own personal desk! Or fire drills.”

  “Who cares?” said Heidi.

  Dad sat down next to Heidi.

  “All is well,” said Dad. “And all will be well at school too.”

  “But I want to have school at home with Mom,” said Heidi.

  “We had a lot of fun,” said Mom, “but now it’s time to learn from teachers and books at school.”

  “I can teach myself,” said Heidi. “Besides, I like my book better.”

  Mom raised her eyebrows.

  “School needs you, Heidi,” said Dad. “You’re clever and kind.”

  “And kind of cuckoo,” added Henry.

  “Trust me,” said Dad. “I know you’re going to love school. And when you get home, you can be the first to test my brand-new fruit cola formula. I’m thinking of calling it Cherry Zing.”

  Mr. Heckelbeck worked at a soda pop company called The FIZZ. Heidi loved to try his secret formulas. Sometimes Heidi came up with her own formulas and shared them with her dad. Tasting a new fruit cola did sound a tiny bit fun.

  Mom jingled her car keys. “Time to go,” she said cheerfully.

  Heidi groaned and slid off of her chair. She put on her black jean jacket and backpack. Then she said her good-byes: “Good-bye, tree fort classroom! Good-bye, backyard cafeteria!”

  “You forgot something,” said Henry.

  “What?” asked Heidi.

  “HELLO, SCHOOL!”

  And off they went.

  DOUBLE GROUCHY

  Heidi wrote her favorite growly word on the foggy car window. Merg! She wished the drive to school would never end. She didn’t want to learn double-digit addition. She did not feel like making new friends. Heidi squished an old Goldfish cracker into the crumb-filled floor mat. Crunch.

  Mom parked in the Visitors Only parking spot.

  “We’re here!” she sang.

  Heidi stared at the large brick building. Brewster Elementary looked like a dungeon. Why did it look so creepy? And why did it feel like she had eaten cotton balls for breakf
ast? And how come the car door felt so heavy?

  “Hurry up!” said Henry.

  He bounded up the steps and dashed through the door.

  Heidi felt like she was wearing Frankenstein shoes. She clumped up the stairs. Mom followed.

  The principal, Mr. Pennypacker, greeted them in the main office. He had a tuft of brown hair on either side of his head and no hair in the middle. Heidi thought his hairdo looked like earmuffs.

  “I’ll take Heidi to second grade,” he said. “And my assistant, Mrs. Crosby, will take Henry to kindergarten.”

  Henry was so lucky. He only had to stay a half day. Heidi thought a half day sounded easy.

  “Can I take the bus home, Mom?” begged Henry. “Can I? Can I?”

  “Sure,” said Mom. “And what about you, Heidi?”

  “I want to be picked up.”

  Mom nodded. Then she gave Heidi and Henry a squeeze and slipped out the door.

  HELLO MEANIE

  Heidi followed Principal Pennypacker down the hall. It smelled like pencils and floor wax.

  “You’re going to love Brewster Elementary,” said the principal.

  I doubt it, thought Heidi.

  They passed a winter wonderland mural. It showed penguins sledding, snowboarding, and throwing snowballs. Heidi thought it looked dumb.

  “Do you like sports?” asked Principal Pennypacker.

  “Nope,” said Heidi.

  “How about art?”

  “Not really.”

  “Reading?”

  “Kind of.”

  “What do you like to read?” he asked.

  “My special book,” said Heidi. “But I forget the name.”

  “Oh,” said the principal.

  When Heidi arrived at her classroom, her teacher came to the door.

  “Oh, you must be Heidi,” she said. “Welcome!”

  Heidi studied the room. She saw a fish tank, a bulletin board about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and a reading corner with beanbag chairs.

  “I’m Mrs. Wellington,” she said. “But everyone calls me Mrs. Welli for short.”

  Mrs. Welli showed Heidi her cubby and her desk. The cubby had chipped red paint and a sticker with her name on it. Heidi pulled out her pencil case and notebook and stuffed her backpack into the cubby. She hung her jean jacket on a hook.

  Then Heidi sat down at her desk. The lid squeaked when she opened it. The legs rocked when she leaned on it. It had a number line that went from one through twenty and an alphabet chart on top. The only good thing about it was the shiny name tag. Heidi scooched in her chair.

  Mrs. Welli introduced Heidi to the class.

  “Wel-come, Hei-di,” they all said together.

  Someone tapped a pencil.

  Heidi looked.

  It was a blond-haired girl in a purple ruffly skirt and a polka-dot top.

  The girl scrunched her face at Heidi. Then she raised her hand.

  “Yes, Melanie?” asked Mrs. Welli.

  “Something’s smelly, Mrs. Welli,” she said with a pinched nose.

  The class giggled.

  Mrs. Welli clapped her hands. “That’s enough, Melanie,” she said.

  Melanie smiled sweetly. Then she turned and made another mean face at Heidi.

  Heidi looked the other way. Why is this girl being so mean to me? she wondered. Heidi sniffed her sleeve. Do I really smell?

  Suddenly another girl, who was two rows up, turned around and looked at Heidi. Heidi braced herself for another prickly glare.

  But this time she got a warm, fuzzy smile.

  MEEP! MEEP!

  One fuzzy smile did not fix a whole bunch of merg. Heidi sat at her desk and wondered, Can an eight-year-old drop out of school? While Heidi thought, she doodled an alien in her new enchanted forest notebook. She drew a thought bubble over her alien’s head. Meep! Meep! Get me off this creepy planet! thought Heidi.

  As she doodled, the teacher wrote homophones on the board. Heidi already knew about homophones. They were words that sounded the same but were spelled differently or had different meanings.

  “Okay,” said Mrs. Welli to the class. “Pick two sets of homophones and write a sentence for each one. Those of you who would like to share may raise your hand when you’re ready.”

  Heidi looked at the words on the board. She picked two and wrote:

  Heidi looked up when she was done. The girl who had smiled at her had her hand up. Mrs. Welli called on her.

  “You may come to the front of the classroom, Lucy.”

  Lucy walked up to the board.

  “My words are ‘holy’ and ‘holey,’” said Lucy. “And ‘bare’ and ‘bear.’”

  The chalk squeaked as she wrote. Lucy walked back to her desk when she was done. Then Mrs. Welli read Lucy’s sentences out loud and underlined each homophone:

  Holy Toledo!

  I have holey socks!

  A bear ate our picnic.

  My brother ran down the street bare naked.

  The class cracked up the whole time.

  “Good work, Lucy!” said Mrs. Welli.

  Heidi thought Lucy’s sentences were pretty good too, but that did not change Heidi’s funky mood. She covered her own sentences with her arm so no one would see.

  After language arts, Heidi sat through social studies and math. In math, they worked on fact families. Bo-ring, thought Heidi. Mom had already taught that at home. Heidi made up her own fact family, only instead of numbers she used words:

  Her fact family kind of worked, she thought. At least it had helped her get all the way to lunch. Just a few more hours and I can go home, thought Heidi.

  A NEW FRIEND

  Lunch.

  Ugh.

  Heidi had never had lunch in a cafeteria before. She didn’t know anybody. She would have to sit all by herself. Double ugh. She grabbed her lunch from her cubby and followed the kids down the hall. Someone shouted her name.

  “Heidi! Heidi!”

  It was Henry. He waved like crazy from the school bus line.

  Heidi gave Henry a shhhh face.

  Henry ignored her.

  “Isn’t school FUN?” he said excitedly. “We got to do musical movement and paint decorations for the school play!”

  Heidi gave Henry a halfhearted high five and kept walking. He was so happy, it was weird.

  The lunchroom smelled like stinky soup. Heidi found an empty table and sat down on a cold plastic seat. She pulled out her peanut-butter-and-grape-jelly sandwich and chocolate chip cookie. A note was taped to her sandwich. It read:

  The note from Mom made Heidi miss home even more. Not even her favorite sandwich tasted right.

  “May I sit here?” a girl asked.

  It was Lucy. The girl who smiled and wrote funny sentences. Heidi nodded her head up and down.

  “My name is Lucy Lancaster,” she said.

  Heidi nodded again.

  “How do you like school so far?” Lucy asked.

  Heidi looked at the table.

  “That’s okay,” said Lucy. “It’ll get better. So guess what?”

  “What?” asked Heidi.

  “We have play practice today. Our grade is doing The Wizard of Oz.”

  Gulp. Heidi did not like the sound of a play. The last thing she wanted was to be in the spotlight.

  “I’m going to be Auntie Em plus a Munchkin,” Lucy went on. “Pretty cool, right?”

  “I guess,” said Heidi.

  Lucy told Heidi who got the best parts.

  Soon the bell rang.

  “Want to play at recess?” asked Lucy.

  Heidi thought that sounded kind of okay. “Sure,” she said.

  Wow, now Heidi the Alien had a friend.

  Meep! Meep!

  BIG TROUBLE

  “This is the art room,” said Lucy. “Isn’t it great?”

  Heidi looked around. The art room looked like a children’s museum. The walls had paintings of owls and ladybugs and rocket ships and monsters. Mobiles dangled from th
e ceiling. Clay creatures lined the shelves.

  “See that bird’s nest mobile?” said Lucy. She pointed at the ceiling. “That’s mine. It has real birds’ eggs inside of it.”

  Melanie overheard Lucy talking.

  “That’s right,” said Melanie. “Real stinky eggs.” She gave Lucy and Heidi a scrunchy face and turned away.

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “As I was saying,” she said, “you’re going to love art.”

  Heidi stunk at art. She could barely draw a stick figure. She had never worked with clay or made a mobile. And most of all she did not want to do art anywhere near Melanie. Heidi sat down at a table in the corner. Lucy sat next to her. At each place was a piece of white construction paper and a foam plate with dabs of colored paint. A coffee can full of paintbrushes sat at the middle of the table with two cups of water to dip brushes.

  “Smocks on, everyone! Chop-chop!” said the art teacher as he clapped.

  “That’s Mr. Doodlebee,” whispered Lucy. “He’s really nice.”

  Mr. Doodlebee had a long brown ponytail. He wore a T-shirt with a swirly design on it, paint-speckled jeans, and red high-tops. Heidi thought he looked like a skateboarder.

  “Today we’re going to paint self-portraits,” said the teacher. “Let’s get started. I’ll come around to help.”

  Heidi stared at her paper. Should I draw my alien self or my regular self? she wondered. Is there really any difference? She dabbed a brush in pale pink paint and drew an oval face. She painted blue eyes with light brown eyelashes. She drew a pointy little nose and a purple line for a mouth. Then she painted strands of red hair.