Free The Secret Life of a Ping-Pong Wizard by Henry Winkler

to him as I handed over the Ding Dong.
    â€œWhy? Didn’t you have fun?”
    â€œThat’s not the point.”
    â€œThen what is?”
    â€œYou don’t like it when people make fun of you, right? And neither do I. Some kids are going to tease me if they find out I play Ping-Pong.”
    â€œThat’s silly.”
    â€œWell, that’s the way life is in the fifth grade.”
    â€œThen I think I’ll stay in kindergarten. Want to stay in kindergarten with me and Mason?”
    â€œSometimes I wish I could, little guy. I really do.”

CHAPTER 19
    ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES LATER, I was sitting in class copying my vocabulary words from the board to my notebook when it hit me like a bolt of lightning.
    â€œOh, no!” came flying out loud and clear before I got control of my brain and my mouth.
    Ms. Adolf looked at me and headed down my aisle. “What’s the problem, Henry?”
    The problem was that I had just realized that Nick McKelty was going to be sitting in the dentist’s chair that afternoon. And what was going to flash in front of his eyes, in red letters, over and over again?
    â€œCongratulations to Hank Zipzer for exploring the excitement of Ping-Pong.”
    He would read that, and then my life as I knew it would be over.
    I had to erase those red letters before he saw them. But how?
    The answer was Joelle Adwin.
    â€œPsst, Joelle,” I whispered to her after Ms. Adolf had gone back to the board. Joelle didn’t look up. I tore off the bottom of the paper that had my vocab words on it and scratched out a note.
    â€œNeed to borrow your sell fone. Ugent,” I wrote.
    I folded the paper into a tiny wad and passed it to Luke Whitman, who had to pull two of his fingers out of his mouth before he could take the note. I’m sure the note was soggy from his spit when he passed it to Heather Payne. She looked at me and shook her head no, like she wasn’t going to pass it to Joelle. I shot her my best desperate look, the one where my mouth droops down and my eyes get half closed. That worked, because she passed the soggy wad to Joelle.
    Joelle was just starting to open it up when Ms. Adolf turned from the board and made a beeline for her desk.
    â€œJoelle, perhaps you’d like to share this note with the entire class,” Ms. Adolf said.
    â€œI don’t even know what it says,” Joelle said. “It’s kind of stuck together.”
    â€œAllow me to assist you,” Ms. Adolf said, and very carefully peeled the note open with her grey fingernails. “And who is the author of this damp communication?” she asked.
    Three fingers all pointed in my direction: Joelle’s, Heather’s, and Luke’s. Luke’s finger had a small wad of already-been-chewed Milky Way that he had finally managed to pry out of his back tooth.
    â€œHenry, the same rule applies in the fifth grade as it did in the fourth grade,” Ms. Adolf snapped. “And that rule would be what?”
    â€œI know that, Ms. Adolf. That rule would be to always use lined notebook paper, and not the kind with the skinny little lines.”
    A few people in the class started to laugh. I wasn’t trying to be funny, though, because one time I accidentally bought a whole pack of the skinny-lined paper and I almost went blind trying to write letters small enough to fit into them.
    â€œThe rule that was in my mind, Henry, was that we do not pass notes in class.”
    â€œOh, I was going to say that one next.”
    She looked down at the note and read it over, then gave me what you’d have to call a pretty harsh look that shot right through her glasses. I’m surprised the lenses didn’t crack. If this was a cartoon, they would have. But my life is all too real, because the next sentence out of her mouth was—
    â€œAnd for your information, young man, urgent has an r , cell as in cell phone is spelled with a c , and phone starts with a ph