Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
To all the children who work so hard to shake hands with their learning difficulties, I salute you. And as always, to Stacey – H.W.
For Lynne and Alex, with happy memories of all those Halloweens – L.O.
“You’re going as a what?” Frankie Townsend, my best friend, practically screamed at me.
“I’m telling you, Frankie,” I shot back, “no one has ever had this idea for a Halloween costume before.”
“That’s because no one is as insane as you are, Zip.”
I had called Frankie and Ashley and told them they had to hurry to our clubhouse for a special meeting to discuss my brilliant idea for a Halloween costume. Ashley hadn’t arrived yet, but I’d been so pumped up I couldn’t wait, so I’d just blurted my idea out to Frankie. It was not hard to notice that he didn’t seem to think my idea was as brilliant as I did. As a matter of fact, I noticed that he thought it was totally stupid. And insane. And dangerous too.
Usually, Frankie and I agree on almost everything. Like the fact that our teacher Ms Adolf is the worst teacher in the world. Like the fact that The Moth That Ate Toledo is as excellent an example of moviemaking as you could ever hope to find. Like the fact that boxers are better than briefs, and that your feet should never be tucked in tight when you’re in bed. We think it sucks having the sheets so tight that they squish your toes under your feet like you’re some kind of three-toed sloth.
So you can probably see why I was shocked that Frankie didn’t like my idea for a Halloween costume.
“Frankie, the trouble with you is that you don’t have an imagination with personality,” I told him.
“Hank, the trouble with you is that you have an imagination that is totally freaky.”
“What is wrong with going as a table in an Italian restaurant?” I demanded to know. “Tell me in twenty-five words or less.”
“I can tell you in one word, Zip. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.”
“Are you seriously telling me that my idea isn’t clever and original?”
“I’m telling you that you’re going to be laughed out of the playground, if not pushed.”
I flopped down on the old purple-flowered sofa and sighed. Then I coughed, because when you flop down on that sofa, a huge cloud of dust erupts from the cushions like a volcano. Our clubhouse is in the basement of our block of flats, just down the corridor from the laundry room. The clubhouse is really supposed to be a storage room where people keep things they don’t use every day, like Christmas decorations or a bicycle with a flat tyre. Mrs Park, who lives on the seventh floor, put the flowered sofa there last year when she got a new brown velvet one. A lot of dust has collected in its cushions since then, but we don’t care. I mean, how many kids do you know who have a clubhouse that comes complete with its own purple-flowered sofa?
I put my feet up on the big iron birdcage that Mr Grasso kept his pet parrot in before it flew away. Mr Grasso told us that he had named his parrot Gershwin because the bird liked to sing old Broadway tunes written by this guy named George Gershwin and his brother, Ira. That’s a funny name, Ira. It sounds like it should be the name of a government office building, like: “The Ira Building will be closed on Saturdays and public holidays.”
I hope Gershwin is living in Central Park now, with some bird friends who like to sing too.
“Zip,” Frankie said, snapping his fingers in front of me. “Where are you, man?”
“I was in Central Park, but I’m back now,” I said.
My mind wanders a lot, but Frankie is used to that. You get used to everything about each other when you’ve been best friends your whole lives.
“Hey, guys. I came as soon as dinner was over.”
It was Ashley Wong, our other best friend, who lives on the fourth floor. She was breathing hard as she rounded the corner into the clubhouse, so she must have run down the stairs instead of taking the lift.
“What’s the urgent meeting about?” she asked me. “Another Hank Zipzer brainstorm?”
“Hank wants to discuss the Halloween costume he’s going to wear in the school parade tomorrow,” Frankie said. “Hank, my man, go ahead. Tell Ashweena what you’ve decided to go as.”
“I can’t believe it,” I said to Ashley. “Frankie’s got a problem with the fact that I’m going as a table in an Italian restaurant.”
“That’s amazing,” Ashley said, “because I’m going as a bowl of pasta in white clam sauce.”
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“Yes, I am,” she snapped back. “And I hope you are too. Tell me you’re not serious, Hank.”
“What is wrong with you two?” I asked. “Does everyone have to go as some kind of bloodsucking vampire? That’s so third grade.”
Frankie came over and flopped down next to me.
“Hank, let me tell you how it is,” he said, coughing from the dust his butt had kicked up. He put his hand on my shoulder and got that look on his face that he gets when he’s explaining complicated things to me, like the plot of The Moth That Ate Toledo (Part Two) or how you work out the earned run average of a baseball pitcher. He looked me right in the eye.
“Hear me, dude. Blood is Halloween. Fangs are Halloween. Oozing scars and a rubber nail stuck in your cheek are Halloween. A table in an Italian restaurant is so not Halloween. It’s not even Easter.”
“Hank,” Ashley chimed in, “it’s our duty as your friends to warn you that if you go in the costume you’re thinking of, everybody in the entire fifth grade will be talking about you. And you won’t like what they’re saying.”
“Fine – you’ve warned me,” I said. “But when you see me tomorrow in a red-and-white checked tablecloth, with breadsticks in one hand and garlic-scented olive oil in the other, your minds will be changed for ever.”
“Did he just say garlic-scented olive oil?” Frankie asked Ashley.
“Yes, I’m pretty sure he did.” She nodded.
“Ashweena, that tells me that this is way more than we can deal with. Way more.”
“I can pull this off, guys,” I said. “I don’t want to be just another mummy. I want to express myself. Be creative.”
“Will you consider a bribe?” Ashley said. “I’ll buy you two slices of pepperoni pizza if you change your mind.”
I shook my head.
“Not even for a whole pizza with sausage, Canadian bacon, pineapple and extra cheese,” I said.
Frankie got up and headed for the door, stepping over Gershwin’s cage and a box of Mrs Fink’s old baking trays. Mrs Fink lives next door to us, and she makes the best cherry strudel in the world. If you ever run into her, you have got to ask her for a piece. Put some vanilla ice cream on top, eat that puppy up and you’ll be smiling for a week. I’m not kidding.
“Hankster, we’ve tried to warn you, but we’ve failed,” Frankie said. “So good luck. And when you come home tomorrow after the parade and crawl under your bed for the next six months, don’t forget to send me a postcard.”
“You’ll see,” I said to Frankie and Ashley. “I’m going to win first prize for originality. And by the way, I’
ll be accepting all apologies tomorrow in the clubhouse between the hours of four and six thirty.”
Boy, I hoped I was right. I was sure my costume was going to be brilliant.
I had to be right.
I’m absolutely right.
Right???
As I rode up in the lift to the tenth floor, I could hardly stand still. Now, that’s not so unusual for me, because I have learning difficulties. Dr Berger, who is my educational therapist at school, says that lots of kids with learning difficulties are in constant motion. Sometimes I’m just sitting at school and I look down and notice that my leg is bouncing up and down a mile a minute.
But that night, I knew that my bouncing around in the lift wasn’t because of my learning difficulties. It was because I was both very excited and very nervous about turning myself into a walking Italian table.
Ashley and Frankie had given me some pretty strong warnings, which, I have to confess, were making my stomach do a few double backflips. But I have the kind of personality that when someone tells me not to do something, I want to do it even more. My mum calls it a stubborn streak. Talking to Ashley and Frankie had got my stubborn streak all fired up and made me determined to become a table in an Italian restaurant.
As I got closer to our floor, I noticed that thoughts were flashing through my mind faster than the numbers flashing above the lift door. It’s cool when I have an idea that I think nobody’s ever had before. It makes my brain all busy and full of thoughts, like how the very first caveguy who discovered fire must have felt.
Wait! What if the caveman was a cavewoman? Who said it had to be a caveguy? Well, whoever it was, I’ll bet he or she felt really great about it.
I couldn’t wait to start making my costume. As I got out of the lift, I made a mental list of what I would need. I’d start with my mum’s old red-and-white checked tablecloth and cut a hole in the middle for my head to slip through. I’d need cardboard to make a square tabletop. I’d cut a hole in the cardboard and slip that over my shoulders before I put the tablecloth on.
Mental note to self. Don’t use a cardboard box that our dog, Cheerio, has pooped in.
Then I’d need to put some things on the table. Things you’d find in an Italian restaurant. Like a glass filled with breadsticks. And maybe a candle stuck in an old bottle.
Mental note to self. Don’t light candle. It would be a drag to set off a fire alarm in the middle of the Halloween parade.
Then I had what I considered to be my most brilliant idea yet. I could make a chair out of cardboard and tape it to my butt.
Mental note to self. Use lots of tape to cover butt region so chair stays connected to butt during parade.
As I walked to my apartment, I was worried that I was going to forget all my mental notes before I could put them into action. You know me. I have a thought and it’s with me for five or ten minutes. Then, all of a sudden, it packs its bags and takes off for a journey into the unknown. Sometimes it returns and sometimes it just shoots off into the universe and never comes back even for a visit. I’m not like Frankie, who remembers every thought he’s ever had.
I opened our front door with my key – which took about five minutes to find. During the time I was downstairs in the clubhouse, my key must have moved from pocket to pocket, just to throw me off. I could have sworn I’d put it in my shirt pocket, but I found it in the back pocket of my jeans, buried in between some old gummy bears. I had to peel those sticky suckers off the key before I could fit it into the lock.
By the time I finally got into our flat, I was so ready to start my costume I felt like I was going to pop. I must have been really distracted because I almost tripped over our dachshund, Cheerio. He was waiting for me in the front hall, doing what he likes to do best – spinning round in circles.
“Slow down, boy,” I said, trying to scratch him behind the ears, which was hard to do because he was spinning so fast. “If you keep going like that, you’re going to lift off like a helicopter.”
Cheerio collapsed in a dizzy heap like he always does, and I took off down the hall. Unfortunately, as I hit the living room, I ran smack into my dad.
“Hey, Dad. I’ve had the greatest idea for a costume in the entire history of Halloween!” I said to him.
“Not so fast, mister,” he said. “Halloween comes after…”
“Tonight,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me that Halloween is tomorrow, Dad. I’m counting down the hours until the school parade.”
“If you’d let me finish my sentence, Hank, I was about to say that Halloween comes after homework.”
“You’re kidding me, right, Dad?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
I looked at his face. His glasses were sitting on top of his forehead where he usually wears them when he’s solving a crossword puzzle. His teeth weren’t showing, like they do when he smiles. His eyes weren’t squinty, like they are when something amuses him. His mouth wasn’t turned up at the edges, like it does when he’s laughing. Nope, I saw not one bit of kidding in his face. Not even a teensy, tiny bit.
“Dad, you’re not going to make me do homework on the night before Halloween, are you?” I pleaded. “I’ve got to make my costume.”
“Halloween comes second. First come maths, reading, social studies.”
“Actually, that would make Halloween come fourth,” my sister, Emily, piped up from the dining room, “after maths, reading, and…”
“We can all remember what Dad said, Emily,” I snapped. The last thing I needed now was Miss Perfect ticking off all the subjects I had homework in.
I walked into the dining room, hoping my dad wouldn’t follow me. No such luck. He did.
“Do you have homework in every subject?” he asked. Boy, his curiosity about my homework was out of control.
I looked around the dining room, trying to come up with a decent argument for why tonight was not the night to get serious about homework. I was desperate. Emily and her nerd boyfriend, Robert Upchurch, were sitting at the dining-room table, making their Halloween costumes. They had decided to go as twin flu germs, which will give you an idea of how much fun they are.
Emily was using Play-Doh to make pus pockets, and Robert was using yellow and green felt pens to colour in infected areas. And get this, they had worked out that their costumes could double as a science project. That way, if they didn’t win top prize in the Halloween parade, at least they’d get extra marks for educating the students at PS 87 about runny noses. And, by the way, they don’t need extra marks because they’re both getting an A-plus for science. Or even higher.
What’s higher than an A-plus? Maybe an A-plus-plus. I wouldn’t know because I’ve never got one. I’ve only travelled to C-ville and parts south.
“Emily’s making her costume,” I said to my dad. “I don’t see her doing homework.”
“That’s because it’s already done, doofus,” Emily answered. “As a matter of fact, I did it the minute I walked in the house. Didn’t I, Robert?”
“Indeedy do, you did,” Robert said.
Then he laughed his snorty little hippo laugh, like he had said something funny. Robert is so skinny that when he laughs, you can see his ribs moving around in his chest. I saw him laugh once during a swimming lesson at the 98th Street YMCA when he didn’t have a T-shirt on, and you could have mistaken him for a skeleton in the Museum of Natural History. Fortunately, he keeps his chest covered most of the time with the white shirt and tie that he wears every day to school. You heard me. I said a tie!
“Some of us know the importance of time management,” Emily said. “That’s why I like to complete my homework as early in the day as possible.”
My sister. She can have a real attitude when she wants to.
“For your information, time management and I happen to be very good friends,” I shot back at her. “I can manage my time any time I want to.”
“Oh really? Is that why just today we got another note from Ms Adolf saying that some of y
our homework is still missing?”
Emily, Emily, Emily! Why do you have a mouth if all you’re going to use it for is to rat me out to Mum and Dad?
I was hoping no one had noticed that note. I had left it on the table in the hall but had slid most of it under the vase my mum keeps there.
Thanks, Emily, for pointing it out to everyone. Miss Rat Mouth strikes again!
“At least I don’t choose to spend my time making pus pockets,” I answered. I had to get tough with her if she was going to bring up Ms Adolf in front of my dad. “And speaking of pus pockets – Robert, it’s always good to see you.”
I turned, stomped off into my room – and slammed the door.
About one-third of a second later, the door to my room blasted open. I think you can probably guess who was standing there.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, without looking up.
“We’re not finished, Hank,” he said.
“I know. I know. Homework first. Costume later.”
“You’ll thank me for this one day,” my dad said.
I’ve learned something in my almost eleven years as Hank Zipzer. When a grown-up tells you that you’ll thank them one day for this, it means you are about to have to do something you really, really hate. I pulled my maths textbook out of my rucksack and wondered when the day would actually come that I’d be thanking my dad for making me do long division. When I was ninety-two? Or sixty-six?
One thing I knew for sure: it wasn’t going to be tonight.
I did my homework in record time. I’m not going to say much more about it, because we all know that doing homework was invented by King Boring of Boringville, which is found just on the outskirts of I-Can’t-Find-the-Answers-in-My-Brainville. I bet you’ve been there yourself.
But since I know you’re probably curious, I’ll give you a few of my tips on how I manage to finish homework in record time.
HANK ZIPZER’S TOP TEN TIPS FOR GETTING YOUR HOMEWORK DONE REALLY, REALLY FAST
1. If it’s maths homework, skip the odd-numbered problems and only do the even ones. Tell your teacher that you’re allergic to odd-numbered problems and when you do them your scalp itches like crazy.
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