by Jon Scieszka
“Wow, you really like it up here, huh?” he asked.
“I do, Dad, a lot.”
“Well, I’m glad. Now come down here and get some dinner—I’m barbecuing hamburgers!”
“Be right down.”
Kyle’s dad looked more closely at the room, taking in the decorations and the thing Kyle held in his hand.
“Cool glasses,” his dad said.
“Um—yeah, they are. I found them up here. Can I keep them?”
“Sure you can keep them. Whatever was in the cabin when we got here is ours now, including the giant spider under the kitchen sink.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish. Now come on, we’ve got some burgers to eat.”
Kyle could tell his dad was in one of his moods where it was time to go and stalling wasn’t going to be a good idea, so he set the Ghost Vision Glasses carefully on the beanbag and followed his dad down the narrow stairs. He took a quick look back, longing to wear them again, and then he was downstairs in the tiny kitchen, where his mom was yammering on her cell phone with someone.
“Well, the thing is, we hadn’t really planned on it,” she said.
Kyle looked at his dad but he just shrugged. He didn’t know who she was talking to.
“Of course I understand. Kyle has been a reading fool here lately, and I’m sure they miss seeing each other. He just loves books.”
Kyle’s mom beamed with pride about the reading of the books and looked out toward the lake.
“Oh, there you are! I see you now. How did you get lights on a rowboat? Impressive!”
She hung up the phone and looked at Kyle’s dad.
“You didn’t,” he said.
“Well, sure I did. They’re not that bad.”
“They keep a horse tied to a rope in their backyard and they’re loud and obnoxious,” my dad said.
“Better keep it down, they’re almost here.”
Kyle’s mom took him by the shoulders and basically forced him out the door and onto the front lawn, where a cruddy old rowboat was coming to a stop at the cabin’s dock.
“Oh no,” said Kyle.
Scotty Vincent and his parents were all getting out of the boat. Kyle wondered how they’d all gotten in the boat without sinking it. They were a chunky bunch, and the boat wasn’t that big. His second thought was that he absolutely, positively had to sit as far away from Scotty as humanly possible.
“Hi, Kyle!” said Scotty in the most sugary-sweet, disgusting voice Kyle had ever heard. “How the heck are you?”
“Yeah, same here,” said Kyle, which made no sense whatsoever, but that was par for the course when he was within ten feet of a bully.
“You’re like the funniest guy ever!” said Scotty Vincent, but the second the parents turned to talk to one another, his expression said, Har har har, you know what’s funny? Me kicking you really hard under the table while we sit with your dumb parents.
Dinner was going about as expected for Kyle, with the Vincents being super loud and annoying while they talked about their mail-order business and the gigantic cabin they owned on the other side of the lake and a bunch of other humongously boring stuff that made Kyle’s dad look longingly at the sun setting behind the trees. Scotty kicked Kyle under the table hard enough that Kyle snorted Pepsi down the wrong pipe and had to walk off into the trees in order to spit, cough, and blow his nose. When he came back, Scotty Vincent was gone.
“Where’d Scotty go?” asked Kyle, staring off toward the rowboat with its ring of Christmas lights around the edge. He had to admit the boat looked pretty boss with the lights and all. But Scotty wasn’t there.
“He went inside to get more ketchup,” said Mr. Vincent. “The boy does love ketchup!” he howled, laughing noisily for no particular reason.
“Ketchup?” was all Kyle could say, his voice soft under the bellowing voice of Mrs. Vincent repeating her husband like a parrot and every bit as loudly, “The boy does love ketchup!”
Kyle sat down at the table nervously, waiting for Scotty to appear at the door of the blue cabin, wondering what was taking so long. But then Scotty popped out of the sliding door with a fresh bottle of ketchup in his hand, holding it up like a trophy, all smiles.
“Found it!” he yelled, and his parents laughed and pointed. They were odd that way, always laughing annoyingly at unfunny things.
The rest of the dinner party crawled by as Kyle thought about the ghost and the glasses and wished a thousand times that the Vincents would get in their boat and row away and never come back. All Kyle really wanted to do was return to the attic, put on the Ghost Vision Glasses, and talk about weird stuff.
Finally Mr. Vincent lifted his giant butt off the picnic bench and stretched out his arms, which, apparently, was some sort of signal.
When I get up and stretch, everyone start getting ready to go. Got it?
It must have been true because Mrs. Vincent got up and started thanking my mom profusely and asking her to come over with the whole family the next night, while Scotty Vincent headed for the boat without saying a word to anyone. He was not, generally speaking, a thankful kid. And his parents didn’t seem to care because they didn’t tell him to come back and thank my parents for the dinner, while Mr. Vincent slapped my dad on the back and said, “A little overcooked on those burgers, but the ketchup helped!” and laughed and laughed with Mrs. Vincent.
Kyle watched them get into the boat, a process that required a fair amount of time-consuming coordination between the three of them, and then he turned to go inside the blue cabin.
“See ya later,” said Scotty Vincent, sensing Kyle’s imminent departure before his own. “And hey—I like the beanbag. That thing is pretty comfortable.”
Kyle’s parents took no notice of the comment, but it hit Kyle like a punch in the gut. He started backpedaling toward the cabin, staring at Scotty, who was just taking hold of the oars as his parents got situated.
Through the tiny front room and the tinier kitchen, around the corner and up the narrow stairs, and right up next to the beanbag, Kyle hoped against all hope that the Ghost Vision Glasses would still be there. He saw the box first, forgetting that he’d left the glasses sitting loose on the beanbag, and for a flash of a second he felt relieved. But then he opened the box and remembered he hadn’t put them inside and, searching all around, found no sign of the Ghost Vision Glasses.
Kyle’s first thought was, surprisingly, less about how mad he was that Scotty Vincent had taken such a treasured item, and more about what a catastrophe it was that the glasses were outside the room.
What had the ghost said?
Don’t ever take the glasses out of this room. Here you’re safe, but out there—well, they might not be able to hurt you, but they sure will scare you. We can’t have the Ghost Vision Glasses out there.
Kyle ran to the small, square window and peered out. The rowboat had only just started wobbling away. The sun had set and the string of lights cast a glow on Scotty Vincent’s face as he looked up at Kyle and smiled.
Scotty stopped rowing and put his hand in the pocket of his pants. He held up the Ghost Vision Glasses so Kyle could see them, smiling wickedly at what he’d done. He held them over the water, as if to drop them overboard.
“Yeah, do that!” Kyle yelled, but the window was closed and Scotty couldn’t hear him. “Just don’t put them on!”
But it was no use. Scotty Vincent held the glasses between his teeth and began rowing again as Kyle ran down the stairs, through the cabin, and out onto the grass. By the time he reached the dock in front of his lawn, the rowboat was twenty feet away and Scotty Vincent was laughing as he put the Ghost Vision Glasses on.
“This is bad,” Kyle said quietly. His dad came up alongside him.
“They’re kind of an annoying family, aren’t they?” he said, and right when he did, Scotty Vincent started to freak out.
He turned as pale as a sheet, looking above and around himself as if something awful was coming near.
>
“There’s one on your shoulder!” cried Scotty Vincent, and his arm windmilled wide and fast, slapping his mother on the shoulder and sending her flying out of the boat and into the water.
“Scotty! What on earth!” said Scotty’s dad, but that was no use, as Scotty apparently saw another ghost attacking Mr. Vincent. Scotty screamed, picked up both of his feet, and kicked his dad right in the middle of his huge gut. Mr. Vincent did a pretty nice backward somersault off the bow and came up gasping for air.
“This is getting weird,” said Kyle’s dad. Kyle’s mom had joined them as well, and she seemed more perplexed than concerned.
“Should we go in after them?”
“I don’t think so,” said Kyle’s dad. “Maybe it’s a family game or something. What else could it be?”
Scotty Vincent was standing up in the boat, waving his arms like a maniac, punching at the air, and spinning in circles. He came to a sudden stop as his mother yelled from the water.
“Scotty Vincent! What has gotten into you?”
Scotty looked at his mother in the water and must have seen a ghostly trout or, more likely, a ghost zombie trying to pull his mom under.
“Don’t move, Mom! I’ll save you!”
And with that, Scotty Vincent dove off the rowboat and landed a ten-point belly flop about a foot away from his mom’s head.
“I’m not sure we should take them up on dinner at their place,” said Kyle’s mom. “They’re starting to freak me out a little bit.”
“A wise idea,” said Kyle’s dad.
When Scotty Vincent popped up out of the water, his dad was already making the monstrous effort to get back into the boat, with modest success. It took four or five tries to throw himself over the edge, his chest heaving as though he’d run a marathon by the time he’d gotten on board. He hoisted Mrs. Vincent into the boat with one great pull of his arms, and chose to leave his son in the water.
“Grab the rope, but you’re not coming back in here!” yelled Mr. Vincent. He was just as loud as ever, but he sure wasn’t laughing anymore as he started rowing away, muttering with his wife about what in the world had gotten into their boy. Kyle was pretty sure he heard Mrs. Vincent say something about the food they’d eaten as she glared back at Kyle and his family, who stood gaping at the lake, unable to speak.
Kyle’s parents were dumbstruck by the weirdness of it all, but Kyle was unable to speak for an entirely different reason.
The Ghost Vision Glasses were gone. They’d fallen off Scotty’s face in the wake of a monster belly flop. And they were heavy. And the lake was deep, like fifty feet.
It was all Kyle could do not to cry or scream or dive in after the Ghost Vision Glasses. But he just stood there, unable to move, as the coolest weird thing he’d ever owned came to rest at the bottom of Lake Lenore.
There were many bummers about that first summer in which Kyle stayed at the blue cabin his parents had purchased. He’d spent all his money on candy and a Captain America action figure that Scotty Vincent took from him. He didn’t get a single new weird item for his collection. And by far the worse thing of all, the Ghost Vision Glasses—which he’d only had for a grand total of about two hours—had sunk to the bottom of a fifty-foot-deep lake.
On the upside, Kyle learned some valuable lessons about how money works, found some awesome old comic books, and got to spend weekends at a nifty new cabin where he made a lot of new friends. And best of all by a country mile? Scotty Vincent stopped acting like a jerk, not just to Kyle, but to every kid in the neighborhood and every kid up at the lake. Whatever he’d seen in the Ghost Vision Glasses had set him straight for good, so much so that he even returned the Captain America action figure and let Kyle feed the horse whenever he wanted to.
In the end, Kyle was sad that he’d never have the chance to talk to the ghost at the blue cabin again, and a little bummed that he couldn’t say thank you. He did the best he could on the last Sunday of the summer at the cabin. Sitting in the attic, he said thanks.
“Thanks for the amazing conversation about weird stuff,” said Kyle. He had brought his Chia Head, which was in full green bloom. He held it up, hoping the ghost could see it. “And thank you, thank you, thank you for making Scotty Vincent a better kid. It means a lot.”
“Come on, Kyle! We gotta go,” yelled Kyle’s dad from downstairs. Kyle set the Chia Head on the floor in the middle of the small room so the ghost would have some company while he was gone. A few minutes later they were driving away, waving to the lake and looking forward to seeing it again soon.
When they got home there was a letter in the mailbox, just like the one Kyle had gotten with the attic address. Inside, a card with a message on it:
YOU’RE WELCOME. AND THANK YOU FOR THE WEIRD COMPANY!
Kyle went into his room and set the card inside the bin with all of his other weird stuff. He closed the bin and pulled the blinds to his room, letting the sunshine in.
“Hey, little man.”
Kyle swung around and found his dad standing in the doorway with a cardboard box. “You’ll never guess what I found in the attic.”
Kyle’s dad set the box on the floor.
“After you found those old Archies up at the cabin, I remembered.”
Kyle’s dad reached in and took an inch-thick pile out of the box. “My old superhero comic books!” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “I used to love these things. Too bad I didn’t take better care of them. Probably not worth much, but they sure are fun to look at.”
Kyle practically dove from the window to the door, landing on his knees, where he dug into the box and found piles of 1970s Hulk, Captain America, and Fantastic Four issues.
“These are awesome!” said Kyle. “Can I keep them?”
“Sure you can,” said his dad. “Maybe we can take them up to the cabin next time we go and add them to the others.”
As Kyle’s dad turned to leave, Kyle sat down on his bed and started flipping the pages of a Fantastic Four issue with tattered corners and yellowed pages.
The sun warmed the room and a soft breeze ruffled the pages of the comic.
He was thinking weird thoughts.
If Archie and Jughead can lead me to a pair of Ghost Vision Glasses, imagine what the Hulk and Captain America can do. I’ll have my very own superpower before the week is out!
And he was right.
About Guys Read and Biographical Information
Guys Read mysterious stuff. And you just proved it. (Unless you just opened the book to this page and started reading. In which case, we feel bad for you because you missed some pretty thrilling stuff.)
Now what?
Now we keep going—Guys Read keeps working to find good stuff for you to read, you read it and pass it along to other guys. Here’s how we can do it.
For ten years, Guys Read has been at www.guysread.com, collecting recommendations of what guys really want to read. We have gathered recommendations of thousands of great funny books, scary books, action books, illustrated books, information books, wordless books, sci-fi books, mystery books, and you-name-it books.
So what’s your part of the job? Simple: Try out some of the suggestions at guysread.com, try some of the other stuff written by the authors in this book, then let us know what you think. Tell us what you like to read. Tell us what you don’t like to read. The more you tell us, the more great book recommendations we can collect. It might even help us choose the writers for the next installment of Guys Read.
Thanks for reading
And thanks for helping Guys Read.
JON SCIESZKA (editor) is the author of numerous picture books, middle grade series, and even a memoir. From 2007–2010 he served as the first National Ambassador for Children’s Literature, appointed by the Library of Congress. Jon is actively promoting his interest in getting boys to read through his Guys Read initiative and website. He lives in Brooklyn with his family. Visit him online at www.jsworldwide.com and at www.guysread.com.
SELECTED T
ITLES
THE TRUE STORY OF THE THREE LITTLE PIGS
(Illustrated by Lane Smith)
THE STINKY CHEESE MAN AND OTHER FAIRLY STUPID FAIRY TALES
(Illustrated by Lane Smith)
The Time Warp Trio series
(Illustrated by Lane Smith)
M. T. ANDERSON (“The Old, Dead Nuisance”) has written picture books for children, adventure novels for young readers, and several books for older readers. The first volume of his Octavian Nothing saga won the National Book Award and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award. He lives in Boston. Find him online at www.mt-anderson.com.
SELECTED TITLES
FEED
BURGER WUSS
THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING,
TRAITOR TO THE NATION, VOLUME I: THE POX PARTY
PATRICK CARMAN (“Ghost Vision Glasses”) is the author of the bestselling Skeleton Creek, The Land of Elyon, and Atherton series. He pioneered the concept of vbooks—books that have online video components—and has visited hundreds of classrooms via Skype and webcam. He lives in Walla Walla, Washington. Find out more at www.patrickcarman.com.
SELECTED TITLES
The Skeleton Creek series, including
GHOST IN THE MACHINE
THE BLACK CIRCLE—The 39 Clues, Book 5
DARK EDEN
GENNIFER CHOLDENKO (“The Snake Mafia”) was the youngest of four kids in her family. As a result, her childhood nicknames were Snot-Nose, Short Stuff, and Shrimp. Gennifer’s book AL CAPONE DOES MY SHIRTS received a Newbery Honor. Gennifer lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can visit her online at www.choldenko.com.
SELECTED TITLES
AL CAPONE DOES MY SHIRTS
IF A TREE FALLS AT LUNCH PERIOD
NO PASSENGERS BEYOND THIS POINT
MATT DE LA PEÑA (“Believing in Brooklyn”), also known as Matt “No D” la Peña, grew up in a surf town on the coast of California, where the main thing on his mind was basketball. He won a scholarship to the University of the Pacific, where he helped his team reach the Division I Tournament. Now Matt lives in New York, where he writes and teaches creative writing at New York University. You can find out more at www.mattdelapena.com.