At school, during a game of tag, Harriet loses her notebook. Her classmates find it and are appalled at her brutally honest documentation of her opinions of them. For example, in the notebook she compares Sport to a "little old woman" for his continual worrying about his father, and says that Marion Hawthorne is destined to grow up to be a "lady Hitler." The students form a "Spy Catcher Club" in which they think up ways to make Harriet's life miserable, such as stealing her lunch and passing nasty notes about her in class. When the kids orchestrate a prank to spill ink on Harriet and make it look like an accident, it backfires when she slaps Marion in revenge, leaving a blue hand print on Marion's face.