Doug is
Horrible Harry’s best friend, and Doug knows a secret: Horrible Harry really isn’t horrible at all. They first meet
on the playground at recess. Harry has a snake in a shoebox, and he uses the snake to scare Song Lee. When Sidney starts calling Harry a canary, Harry holds Sidney down and makes him say I love girls before he lets Sidney up. Sidney puts canary stickers on Harry’s chair, lunchbox, and dinosaur book, so Harry squishes up an old banana and shakes Sidney’s hand with it. He tells Sidney that the goo is a dead slug. While all these seem like
horrible things, Harry usually fails miserably at being a truly bad person.
Harry likes to collect the random things he finds on the classroom floor. He slowly amasses an army of stub people, destined to wreak havoc on the classroom when they are unleashed from the box in Harry’s desk. The day before Halloween, Harry tells Doug that it’s time to let the stub people out. He puts the first two on Song Lee’s desk to scare her, but she plays with them
instead. The other stub people get squished or dropped on the floor. Finally, Harry puts four stub people on Miss Mackle’s desk. She thinks the slug people are adorable, and not the least bit scary.
For Halloween, Harry tells everyone his costume will be truly frightening. He slithers to school in a snake costume with no arm or leg holes.
For the Thanksgiving play, Harry is not content to be an Indian or a Pilgrim. Instead, he wants to be a dead fish used to fertilize corn. When Song Lee panics at having to say one line as a Pilgrim, Harry calls Song Lee and suggests she be a dead fish, too. Her mother makes fish costumes for the both of them to wear in the play.
The whole class goes on a field trip. At the last minute, Harry tells Doug he wants to be Song Lee’s partner instead. On the bus, Harry joins Sidney in calling Harry a canary. He shares his chocolate chip cookies with Miss Mackle instead of Harry. Meanwhile, Song Lee ignores Harry to talk to her girl friends, and Harry is very lonely. They have a picnic in the park, and Harry saves Doug from a bee on his sandwich. Harry ends up getting stung on the cheek. On the way home, they apologize to each other, and Doug gives Harry his last cookie.