Dear Dumb Diary: My Pants are Haunted

by Jim Benton

  Friday 20

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Isabella came over tonight. She had some movie she had rented. (It was called Terror at Your Throat.) We started watching it, and it was about a haunted necklace and how bad things happened to this family after they got it. During the movie, Isabella jumped up and screamed that the necklace was exactly like my pants, which made Stinker commit Urine. It was probably because he is not used to people screaming while he is fast asleep. Still, I had to spank him a little for it.

  Anyway, Isabella said it wasn’t the makeover that boosted Margaret’s Popularity and forced us down. It was the pants. She said it wasn’t my loud “yahoo” in science that got me switched again so that I’m science partners with Known Goon, Mike Pinsetti. It was the pants. And she said it wasn’t me who had done you-know-what all over Hudson Rivers. IT WAS THE PANTS.

  I pointed out that I hadn’t exactly gassed all over him. A debate followed, but she was firm on this point: the pants were to blame. THE PANTS ARE HAUNTED.

  Right now, Isabella is calling her mom to get permission to sleep over. I don’t think I want to be in my room alone with the pants all night, and we plan to drive the spirits away tomorrow.

  Saturday 21

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Isabella’s first idea was to tear the pants to shreds. But I wanted to see if we could just drive the wicked spirits out of them without the rippage. I mean, c’mon. They were pretty cool pants after all.

  Isabella’s next idea was to use a Ouija board to contact the tormented ghosts in my pants, but I don’t have a Ouija board, so we tried to do it with a Monopoly game. Sadly, we didn’t really make much progress, except we decided to try to make charm bracelets with the dog and race-car pieces.

  I thought we should light candles and speak some sort of mystic chant. We’re not really well informed on chants, so we said the Pledge of Allegiance, which, though technically speaking is not a mystic chant, still sounds pretty creepy when you say it low and zombie-like in a dark room with flashlights. (Dad doesn’t allow lit candles in my room, so we had to make do.)

  Finally, we decided to just pound the evil out of the pants, and this took the form of laying the pants out in the backyard and stomping all over them in various evil-destroying karate-like moves. It occurred to us both at the exact same time just how dumb we looked, so we took them inside and stuffed them into the washing machine. They were torn up pretty good. Maybe all it will take now is a little sudsing.

  Sunday 22

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  We walked to Isabella’s house this morning, and when we passed the park we saw Angeline again. It looked like her dad had Plastic-Surgeoned those little kids back to their original appearances. Why would somebody do that? You can’t just scribble out a plastic surgery and start over.

  Or can you?

  Late-breaking Thoughts

  Could there be another, simpler explanation? I asked Isabella, and she said no. She said that the most obvious answer was that Angeline’s plastic-surgeon father was doing and undoing operations on her younger sisters in order to make them look like different kids on alternating weekends. Also, it appeared that he had some sort of way to change their heights.

  You have to hand it to Isabella. When she’s right, she’s right.

  When I got home, I peeked in the washing machine and the pants were gone. Hmm … Demon Pants mysteriously vanished. The only reasonable thing to do was to run screaming upstairs to my room.

  Monday 23

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  THE PANTS ARE BACK. This morning when I woke up, there they were, hanging on a hanger, looking brand-new and totally haunted. They had mysteriously healed themselves. Also, I think they were staring at me.

  I moved slowly and carefully around the jeans and reached into my drawer for another pair, only to discover that Stinker had chewed one of his big round holes in my last pair of non-evil jeans.

  No jeans left! I was so angry that I dropped everything and made a big sign. It says, “Have You Been Mean to Your Beagle Today?” in glitter. GLITTER, Stinker. That means I really, really mean it. People use glitter on signs only when they are dead serious. And I put it up on my wall where he could see it all the time.

  Before I left for school, I cut up four hot dogs (possibly Stinker’s favourite food) and put them in Stinker’s dish. Then after he got a good look at them, I threw them out in the yard so that Stinker could sit by the window all day and watch the neighbour’s cats sit out there and eat his hot dogs.

  Tuesday 24

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Margaret continues to travel in the Mega-Popular circle in spite of her undeniable Gerdness (or would it be Gerditude?). The Evil of the Pants is strong. Indeed, they are twisting the very fibre of our Universe. Up is down, left is right, over there is over there now (I’m pointing).

  Isabella says our only hope is plastic surgery. She says that if we can get Angeline’s dad to do some work on us we might be able to claw our way back out of the Unpopularity pit.

  I suppose it only makes good sense that you can feel better about yourself by letting somebody cut up your face, but I’m not sure exactly how that works. Isabella assured me that if we don’t like what Angeline’s dad does, he can always change us back like he does on Angeline’s ever-changing little sisters. I guess I should consider it.

  I told Isabella to ask Sally Winthorpe what she thinks, since she had offered to help Isabella and Margaret with their science homework after school.

  I just noticed my “Be Mean to Your Beagle” sign again.

  I took Stinker into the bathroom and weighed him on the scale and told him that he was twenty pounds overweight.

  I really don’t want to be mean to Stinker any more, but he has to learn his lesson.

  Wednesday 25

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  The pants are stronger than we thought. Even wadded up in the bottom of my closet, they still exert a destructive force at school, and here’s how:

  Margaret and Isabella’s science homework was WRONG. Sally is never wrong. The only explanation is evil, jinxed jeans. Mrs Palmer, like always, did a partner switch, and this time she put Sally and Hudson together, which seemed to make Sally sort of happy. (If I didn’t know better, I would swear she was crushing on him a little. Do smart girls do that? I have no idea.)

  After school, Isabella made me help her corner Angeline. You are not going to believe how WEIRD this turned out to be, Dumb Diary.

  Isabella is pretty blunt, so she just comes out and asks Angeline if her rich doctor dad will do plastic surgery on us.

  Angeline looked pretty puzzled. She said that her dad worked in an office. He’s an accountant.

  I asked what about the little sisters we see her with in the park. Her dad keeps doing plastic surgery on them.

  Those aren’t her sisters. Those are kids she babysits. And they don’t keep changing. They’re different kids.

  I know what you’re thinking, Dumb Diary: why does a rich girl need to babysit?

  It turns out that Angeline is NOT RICH. She babysits because she needs to. She’s saving up to buy — get this — a pair of Bellazure Jeans.

  But none of that is the weird part. Here’s the weird part: Angeline and I wear the exact same size jeans. How can that be? She looks like a Greek statue, and I look like the place where somebody started to carve a girl and then gave up halfway through the project.

  Isabella offered to sell Angeline my jeans at half price and Angeline said okay. (Not a big surprise, really, that Isabella would make that move. Once, Isabella tried to sell somebody my shoes, and I was wearing them at the time.)

  I started to tell Angeline that they were possessed by some sort of horrible otherworldly force, and Isabella gave me an elbow in the ribs. I just had to tell Angeline after finding out she was my size-sister.

  She didn’t care. She said she didn’t believe in oth
erworldly forces. It’s your funeral, Angeline.

  Thursday 26

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  What a day. What a day.

  Mom came in and woke me up for school and noticed my anti-beagle sign. I explained to her what Stinker had been doing to my jeans, but that I was getting tired of being mean to him, anyway, and would probably take it down soon. I was thinking of replacing it with a gentler sign saying, “Be Mean to Your Beagle When He Deserves It.” Also, I was planning to diminish the imposing threat of the message through the use of less glitter.

  Then Mom dropped her bomb. Stinker had NOT made those holes.

  After our little discussion about clothing a few weeks ago, Mom had decided to try to “get with it”. She found out that the lighter-blue denim was the cool jean of the moment, and she looked through my magazines for tips on bleaching jeans. She couldn’t find any, so she decided to just give it a whirl on her own.

  She had spilled some bleach on my jeans the first time, and it turns out that bleach can eat a big round hole right through a pair of pants. She tried a couple more times, but those were not any better, you’ll remember. She felt so bad she bought me the Bellazure Jeans.

  Ah, GUILT. And some people say it’s a bad thing.

  Later, my mom found the Bellazure Jeans that Isabella and I had destroyed in the washing machine on Sunday. Not knowing that Isabella and I had attempted to stomp the Evil out of them, Mom assumed that SHE was responsible for wrecking them in the wash. She rushed to the mall and bought a brand-new pair, which she hung on a hanger in my room. (So they didn’t mysteriously heal themselves.)

  I looked over at Stinker, who was listening to all of this with what could only be described as a scowl, even though I’m not sure a dog can scowl with lips that are pretty much just flaps.

  I wonder if dogs can hold a grudge.

  Isabella’s sinus problem cleared up. Why is that worth mentioning? The day got weirder. You’ll see, Dumb Diary.

  In science class today, I noticed that Margaret seemed a little more, I don’t know, Gerd-like.

  I also noticed that Hudson and Sally Winthorpe, the brand-new lab partners, were really chatting it up. I mean, BIG-TIME. They were laughing and smiling, and it was like they were the only two people in the room.

  Then Sally flashed a quick glance my way, and I saw something in her eyes: GUILT. I recognized it as exactly the same precise expression that Stinker had not had about the pants, but Mom had.

  When Isabella passed by Sally, she stopped for a second, and I could tell she was confused by something. And it was more than Isabella’s normal confused look.

  Science class was the same as ever: chemicals this and chemicals that. When the bell rang, I went out into the hall, and Angeline strolled up to me. She wanted the pants, and I pulled them out of my backpack and handed them to her. She dashed to the bathroom to try them on.

  From inside the science room, I heard Isabella and Sally Winthorpe squawking about something. Then I heard a jar break, and the fire alarm went off.

  Everybody in the whole school filed outside, and Isabella dragged Sally over to talk to me.

  Isabella said, “I was right. Tell her, Sally.”

  And Sally Winthorpe, smartest girl in my grade (maybe the school) explained:

  Sally had taken an interest in Isabella’s Top-Secret SuperFragrance project. She was the one who had taken Isabella’s jarful of concentrated perfume samples. And she had done it for …

  Sally had a crush on him. She had been convinced by discussions with Isabella that Isabella’s theory of Unseen Levels of Popularity was right. Based on that hypothesis, Sally believed that she had to make room in the middle if she was ever going to be on the same level as Hudson.

  So Sally used Isabella’s powerful perfume concoction on Margaret by sneaking some into Margaret’s backpack when she had gone over to her house to study. The SuperFragrance was so totally incredibly complex and enticing that it actually increased Margaret’s Popularity, even after she abandoned the other makeover stuff and became the shower-drain creature again.

  That increase in Margaret’s Popularity subsequently lowered Isabella’s and mine.

  Then all Sally, evil homely genius, had to do was make sure that Isabella and Margaret did their homework wrong and hope that Hudson would wind up with her after one of Mrs Palmer’s predictable partner switches. And he did!

  At that point, Sally started using the SuperFragrance on herself, thereby hypnotizing Hudson with the fragrance, which I had found so soothing that I let Margaret eat my pencil.

  And she would have got away with it, too, if Isabella’s sinuses hadn’t cleared up. Isabella smelled the distinctive SuperFragrance as she passed Sally’s desk. Right after class, Isabella jumped (Isabella said “leaped like a cat”, but I’ve seen her play volleyball. Trust me: I was being charitable when I said “jumped”) and snatched the jar out of Sally’s backpack.

  They fought over it, it fell and broke open, and Mrs Palmer, overcome by the fumes, tripped the alarm, thinking it was some sort of chemical accident. (This would have been worth seeing. Like all girls from big families, Isabella is good at fighting. One time, when one of her big brothers was picking on her, Isabella slapped him so hard that he couldn’t taste anything for three weeks. Sally never had a chance.)

  It was a total Scooby-Doo moment. Except for the fact that my dog is sort of a reject, and we can’t put Sally in jail. But we are meddling kids. You have to give us that.

  Yup, it all felt pretty good until Hudson walked up and swept Sally away. She shot a glance back at us as if to say, “So what? I still got my way, and you’re still on the bottom.” And she was right. The entire Universe was still just plain wrong.

  And then IT happened. I looked up and I saw Angeline coming out of the school. She had been changing in the bathroom when the fire alarm went off. Everybody in the school was outside. And when she opened the door, they all looked. It was the grandest entrance ever made, even though technically it was an exit.

  Angeline was wearing the Bellazure Jeans. But she was walking (I don’t know how she does this) in slow motion. Even her hair was blowing in slow motion. Every eye in the school was glued on Angeline and the jeans and the knees of the jeans, which had holes in them.

  Stinker! These weren’t Mom’s perfect round bleach holes; these were the irregular holes gnawed by a mean little dog: rough, scraggly, thready holes. WHY, STINKER? WHY?

  Suddenly, I understood why. It was clear to me that it was because I told Stinker he was twenty pounds overweight. In dog weight, that’s 140 POUNDS. No wonder he was angry. Nobody wants to be told that they are 140 pounds overweight. The jeans were ruined.

  But then I saw — we all saw — Angeline’s kneecaps peeking out through the openings. It turns out that her knees look more like little tiny perfect bald angel heads than knees.

  Angeline had just set a trend. Or maybe Stinker had. Either way, fragrance suddenly meant nothing to anyone. We all knew that how people smelled didn’t matter, as long as they had jeans like Angeline’s.

  Angeline had regained her rightful position among the Mega-Populars. And Isabella said that it was like the spell of Margaret’s makeover, the Super Fragrance and the haunted pants had been broken.

  Angeline walked over and handed me the money for the jeans. “I’ll take ’em,” she said.

  And then Chip, King of Guys, and Hudson (who had abandoned Sally somewhere) walked up next to Angeline.

  “Cool pants,” Chip said.

  Angeline looked right at me. A lot of things could have happened at that moment. She could have said almost anything.

  What she did say was, “Thanks,” pointing at Isabella and me. “These two designed ’em.”

  Friday 27

  Dear Dumb Diary,

  Science class was, well, quiet today. Half the kids had on torn jeans, except for Mike Pinsetti, who had torn the elbows
out of his sweatshirt. (Not a bad try, for him.)

  Isabella was more at peace than I’ve seen her in weeks. The pants had not been haunted, and the Universe seemed to be in balance again. The true Popularity Order had been restored. Also, Isabella took some delight in pointing out that now it was absolutely clear that the pants themselves had not Cut One in front of Hudson.

  It was me. (I blame Mom’s cooking.)

  Margaret was just happily enjoying pencil after pencil.

  Sally didn’t look quite so smart any more, but Isabella and I decided to keep this to ourselves. Isabella says that we had a massive Popularity boost that brought us back up to normal, and maybe even slightly higher, thanks to Angeline. Besides, Sally was just after what we’re all after.

  Except for Angeline, who already has it.

  Anyway, thanks for listening, Dumb Diary. I gotta go. I just remembered there’s somebody I owe four hot dogs.