Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat by Lynne Jonell Page A

you’ll stay in my backpack all day.”
    â€œScout’s honor,” the Rat said, holding up a paw.
    Emmy looked at him. “You’re not a Scout.”
    â€œAs good as,” the Rat said. “They held Scout meetings in that classroom every week after school for as long as I can remember. I can tie all the knots—”
    â€œAll right,” said Emmy, cutting him short. “Get in.”
    â€œWhere’s my peanut-butter cup?”
    Emmy handed one in. “Don’t make any noise,” she warned, but the Rat was too busy chewing to answer.
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    Emmy pushed back hot bangs from her sweaty forehead. A smell of cut grass drifted in as a lawn mower droned outside, and Mr. Herbifore looked warm and bored as he lectured on the exports of Asia. The class listened with glazed eyes, half asleep.
    Emmy, however, was wide awake. She had to be, to cover up the noise the Rat was making.
    There he went, rustling again! Emmy faked a cough, wondering for the seventeenth time why the Rat couldn’t just lie still. Weren’t rodents supposed to be nocturnal? Why couldn’t this one sleep all day?
    Emmy tried not to look at the Rat’s empty cage. No one had seemed to notice that he was missing, but it was only a matter of time, and the knowledge gave her a horrible sense of impending doom.
    A noise of slamming books and banging desktops gave Emmy the cover she needed. She bent over her backpack as if to take out the assignment that Mr. Herbifore had just called for.
    â€œWill you please be quiet?” she hissed.
    The Rat turned a despairing face upward. “But I’m so hot,” he quavered. “I’m baking in here, and no one cares. ”
    â€œWe’re all hot,” said Emmy impatiently, “but you’re the only one I hear moaning. And what was that ripping sound?”
    The Rat waved a pleated bit of white paper. “I only made a fan.”
    Emmy felt exasperated. “Out of my homework?”
    Two large brown shoes came into view and stopped beside Emmy’s desk. “Your poetry assignment?”
    â€œUm …” Emmy didn’t look up at Mr. Herbifore as she pulled a sheet of lined paper from her backpack. At the top, neatly written, was her name. A jagged edge was all that was left of the lower right corner.
    Mr. Herbifore looked critically at the paper as a shadow passed by the window. Emmy glanced out, half seeing a small, stooped figure duck behind the lilac bushes. Had the school hired a new gardener?
    â€œThis is hardly acceptable,” said the teacher. “What’s your excuse? The cat chewed it?”
    Emmy felt like strangling the Rat.
    â€œStay after school and copy it over. Five points off for messiness.”
    â€œThanks a lot,” Emmy whispered bitterly into her backpack when it was safe.
    â€œWould you rather I died of heatstroke?” The Rat sniffed. “At least in my cage I had a water dish and the breeze from the window.”
    â€œFine,” said Emmy. “I’ll put you back in. You’ve been nothing but trouble ever since I set you free.”
    Ignoring the Rat’s sudden look of dismay, she set the pack on the floor but relented enough to open the top flap a crack. She glanced up—and caught Joe staring at the backpack with unusual interest.
    â€œâ€¦ And so poetry is an expression of one’s deeper emotions,” the teacher intoned, still shuffling through the papers he had collected. “I’ll read a few aloud, and let’s see if we can discover what the author was really saying. Here’s an interesting one. ‘I always have to practice hard, even out in my back yard—’”
    Out in the hall, there was a sound of footsteps, and a shadowy figure paused in the doorway. Emmy looked up.
    A small man stepped forward, passed a bony hand over thinning brown hair, and peered into the classroom.
    Emmy’s heart gave a bump.
    It was Professor