Summary
Harriet purposefully lingers while returning home after school the next afternoon, because she knows the house will be strange and empty without Ole Golly in it. She thinks about how even when Ole Golly did not say anything, you were still aware of her presence. She forces herself not to cry, remembering what Ole Golly said about crying not bringing her back. Harriet greets her father warmly when he arrives home, and they joke around a bit, but it is clear that he had a difficult day at work and wants some quiet.
Harriet begins working on her homework and struggles over math, her least favorite subject. Her mother comes in to check on her and, exclaiming that math was always her favorite subject in school, tries to help her, but Harriet remembers Ole Golly saying "Math is for them that only want to count everything. It's them that wants to know what they're counting that matter." She sleeps that night and dreams of Ole Golly, then muses in her notebook the next morning, wondering if dreaming about someone means that they are also dreaming about you.
The next day at school they are choosing parts for the Christmas pageant, and Harriet refuses to be late because if she is she will get a rotten part like last year. Miss Elson leads the class in choosing a subject for the sixth grade's dance in the pageant. Lots of ideas go out, like being pirates or soldiers or scientists, but Beth Ellen Hansen, under direction from Marion Hawthorne, suggests they all be things that you eat at Christmas dinner. Harriet and Sport try to resist, as the rest of the class is roped into voting for Beth Ellen's idea, but eventually it is decided that they will be Christmas dinner. Miss Berry, who is in charge of assigning parts, tells Harriet that she will be an onion. Miss Doge measures them for costumes, and Janie swears that one day, she will "blow this place sky high."
On her spy route the next day Harriet visits the Robinsons first, since they have just gotten a large, mysterious crate delivered. It turns out to be an enormous, six-foot wooden sculpture of a fat baby. The Robinsons are thrilled with their art purchase, and Harriet, forgetting, for a moment, that she is gone, remarks in her notebook that she cannot wait to tell Ole Golly about this. At the Dei Santis, Mrs. Dei Santi is panicking because her son Fabio has gotten in an accident with the truck, and even though her husband tells her it was just a small fender bender she is convinced that the truck is smashed and he is dead. Fabio shows up, fine except for a tiny patch of plaster on his head, and gets yelled at for ruining the truck. Fabio reveals at last what he was doing: he does not want a job in the grocery business, so he took a different job as a salesman and needed a truck for it. His parents are so pleased that he is working that they forgive him.
The last stop on Harriet's spy route is Harrison Withers, who sits alone in his house. It seems that they finally caught him and took away his cats. Harriet wonders if everyone looks as sad as Harrison when they have lost something special to them. Grumpy, she returns home and spends the night practicing being an onion by falling down and rolling around on the floor. Her parents observe this in amusement, and eventually her father joins in to try to be an onion, too. Harriet has a thought and jumps up to write in her notebook, so absorbed in her work that she forgets her parents are watching her. They ask what her notebook is, and are hurt when she does not show them. She hears them whispering about how they feel they no longer know their own child.
On the next day's spy route Harriet goes to Mrs. Plumber's, who has just received some devastating news: she will be confined to her bed for the rest of her life. She wanted to remain there in the first place, but now that she is forced to be there, she is unhappy. Mrs. Plumber and the maid turn to the dumbwaiter where Harriet is hiding when they hear a noise, and open the door to see her there. They throw her out of the house, and Harriet angrily writes down the most important rule of spying: spies should not get caught.
Harriet goes to Janie's house to practice the pageant dance. She is in a terrible mood, and she insults everyone else there until she finally runs home in tears. She has a nightmare that night about Ole Golly, and wakes up to write in her notebook that she believes something terrible will happen because whenever she has a bad dream something does.
The next day, the weather is nice, so Harriet and her classmates go to the park to play tag. In this game, whoever is "it" has to run around and knock everyone's books out of their arms. When Sport is it, he knocks Harriet's books down, and she mistakenly forgets to pick up her notebook. When she realizes, she runs back to the group and sees them all clustered around her notebook, reading it in horror. Harriet has written rude, mean things about nearly every one of her classmates in there, including Sport and Janie. They read it aloud, and Harriet is mortified and angry.
Even after Harriet leaves, the children remain in the park, reading what Harriet wrote about them. After reading about The Boy with the Purple Socks, they ask his real name—it is Peter, and the reason he wears purple socks is because his mother once lost him at the circus, so she has him wear purple socks so she can always find him.
No one speaks to Harriet when she arrives at school the next morning. They completely ignore her, and she knows they have some kind of plan to get back at her. On the way to school that morning, she had purchased another notebook at the stationary store and begun writing in it again, even though she knows it is a terrible idea. The other students begin passing notes that say mean things about Harriet, and they all giggle and laugh at her. At lunch, she realizes that someone has taken her tomato sandwich. Furious, Harriet returns home for lunch so the cook can make her another one, pretending to be sick so that she does not have to return to school.
Harriet's mother takes her to the doctor, who says there is absolutely nothing wrong with her. When Harriet is sent out of the office, however, she hears the doctor—Carrie Andrews' father—tell Mrs. Welsch about the notebook, believing that is what's wrong. Back at home, Mrs. Welsch sits her down and has her explain her notebooks and what she writes in them. Harriet insists that they should not have taken it and looked in it in the first place, as it was private, but Mrs. Welsch asks Harriet how she felt when she saw all those mean notes her classmates were passing about her. When Harriet says she felt awful, Mrs. Welsch makes sure she knows her classmates felt that way she they read what she wrote about them, too.
Harriet writes even more in her notebook on her way to school the next morning, and Rachel Hennessey, seeing her, cryptically warns her that she will get what is coming to her. Harriet lashes back, but secretly is worried about what they are planning.
Analysis
Though they love her, Harriet's parents are very different from her. They are stereotypical wealthy New York businesspeople and socialites. Because they are quite busy, they don't get to spend a lot of time with their daughter, and therefore have trouble understanding her. The differences between them are illustrated in two scenes in these chapters: first, when Harriet's mother talks about how much she loves math, unaware that Harriet hates it, and next, when Harriet's parents are confused to see her writing in her notebook. Ole Golly was the only adult who truly understood Harriet and her antics, and because she was there, Harriet's parents did not need to try; now, in her absence, they must figure out how to better connect with their daughter.
Harriet is still getting used to Ole Golly's absence. In every funny, shocking, or difficult situation she encounters, she thinks about what Ole Golly would say if she were there; what kind of advice she would give, or what witty remark she would make. Though Harriet does not outwardly display her sorrow at losing Ole Golly, it is clear from the things she writes in her notebook that she deeply misses her. Her remarks after seeing Harrison Withers' face when he loses his cats, wondering whether everyone looks so sad when they have lost something, also applies to her losing Ole Golly.
The scene that Harriet observes at the Dei Santi's grocery while on her spy route is important, because it contrasts the loud, large, emotional Dei Santi family with Harriet's own small, quiet, and typically serious family. This furthers the novel's overarching theme of different ways of living; two households, though close in proximity to each other, can look very different. At their core, though, the two families have things in common. Mama Dei Santi panicking over Fabio's absence and potential car accident mirrors Harriet's mother panicking when she returned home from the party to find Harriet missing. Though there are as many different ways to live as there are people on the earth, some things, like mother's worries, are similar from family to family.
Harriet's nightmare about Ole Golly foreshadows the terrible event that ultimately comes: her classmates reading her notebook. This incident is a double-edged sword, and readers are meant to feel confused about who to sympathize with. On one hand, Harriet's notebook was private, and the other children should not have been nosy and read it. On the other hand, though, Harriet also should not have been so judgmental and written those things about her peers in the first place, because they are unkind and could seriously hurt someone's feelings. Through this, Harriet is meant to learn that all actions have consequences.
By Chapter 10, Harriet is living any sixth-grader's worst nightmare: being friendless and shunned by the people around her. One of the core desires of childhood is to fit in and be loved and appreciated, and Harriet now has to face the reality of isolation. This is particularly difficult for her because she has recently lost Ole Golly, a person who would have stood by her and helped her through this difficult situation. Now, she must figure out how to repair her peers' trust on her own.
What hurts Harriet most, though, is being in the dark. As a budding spy, Harriet constantly wants to know everything that is going on, at all times. Now she knows that the other students are conspiring against her, but she does not know what they are planning, and this drives her crazy. Her nosy, spying nature will certainly come into play as she considers how best to approach this situation.
