Teasing Trouble
Two-Tooth To-Do
After lunch, Spencer suggests the children go outside to play hopscotch. But nobody is paying attention to Spencer, only to Hallie. Everybody keeps asking Hallie if they can see her tooth. So, Hallie shouts for everyone to look at him. He pretends like he’s Hallie pulling out her tooth with two hands. Everyone laughs, and Spencer feels better again.
Just then, Hallie feels something else in her mouth. It’s her other tooth! Where her teeth used to be, Hallie just has a big space in her mouth. Spencer shouts “Hey, everybody! Hallie has a hole in her head!” Some of the children laugh. But Hallie frowns—she doesn’t like Spencer’s joke.
Gwen tells Spencer that his jokes are hurting Hallie’s feelings. He retorts that Hallie doesn’t mind. And Gwen has a hole in her head, too… her nose! Gwen doesn’t laugh, and instead rolls her eyes and walks away. Then, Spencer starts to sing all about Hallie and Gwen with holes in their heads. When only a few children laugh, he thinks maybe they didn’t hear him. So he sings louder. Gwen and Hallie wish Spencer would stop singing, but he continues to sing louder, and louder, and louder.
When the class goes inside, Hallie shows Miss Sparks the two teeth that fell out. She carefully puts them in her pillow, and Miss Sparks puts Hallie’s picture on the Tooth Club board. Miss Sparks puts two stars next to it because she lost two front teeth on the same day! Everyone claps and cheers for Hallie, but Spencer thinks they’re making a big fuss and two-tooth to-do over Hallie’s teeth.
Hallie goes to the art table and draws a picture of a fairy. She glues it on her tooth pillow. She says it’s so the tooth fairy knows where to find her teeth. Everybody smiles—they know Hallie loves fairies. Spencer jokes that the tooth fairy will be mad at her because carrying two teeth at once will be too heavy.
Hallie’s face changes from smiles to frowns. The whole art table frowns. They don’t think Spencer is very funny anymore. Skylar says Spencer shouldn’t tease Hallie about the tooth fairy. Spencer replies that there’s no such thing as the tooth fairy anyway, and only babies believe in the tooth fairy. All the children gasp.
Hallie turns her back to him to ignore him. She goes to talk to Skylar, but with no front teeth, it comes out as “Th-ee, Th-kylar?” Spencer laughs. Now, he’s making fun of how Hallie is talking.
Hallie gets angry. Her face turns red. She tried walking away from Spencer, and he didn’t notice. He followed her and imitated the way she talked. He continues to laugh, so much that he doesn’t notice that nobody else is laughing.