“Can you meet me in the lobby in five minutes? And pick up Ashley. We have important stuff to do.”
“Talk to me, Zip. What important stuff?”
“You’re not going to believe the plan I have just come up with. Trust me.”
Before Frankie could answer, I hung up the phone and ran back into the living room, where Papa Pete was still sitting at the green desk, writing. It looked like he was working on some kind of list.
“Papa Pete, you can’t write now. We have haunted house stuff to do.”
“First of all, Hankie, I have left a note for your father, telling him about the haunted house. He’ll read it when he brings Emily home from her Girl Scout meeting.”
“Great thinking yet again, Papa Pete,” I said. It hadn’t occurred to me that it was a good idea to let your parents know when you’re planning on turning their living room into the scariest place on earth.
“And second of all, I’ve made you a list of instructions for the haunted house. Right here is everything you need to know.” He held up a piece of paper covered with writing. Wow, that was a lot of words.
“Why are you making a list?” I asked him. “Aren’t you going to be here to help us?”
“I can’t,” Papa Pete said. “I have a date with the rear end of an elephant costume.”
I just stood there for a minute, letting the words sink into my head. I think they went in for maybe a second or two, but then my brain just spat them back out again.
“Papa Pete, that is the weirdest sentence I’ve ever heard you say,” was all I could answer.
“That’s because it’s the weirdest date I’ve ever had,” Papa Pete said with a smile. “Mrs Fink and I are going to the Halloween costume party at McKelty’s Roll ’N Bowl.”
Our next-door neighbour Mrs Fink has had a crush on Papa Pete for a long time. At least, I think it’s a crush. I’m not sure what you call it when older people like each other in a romantic way. But let me be clear about this. The crush is definitely one-way. Mrs Fink’s crush on Papa Pete is way bigger than his crush on her. At least, that’s what I had always thought.
“You asked Mrs Fink out on a date?” I couldn’t believe my ears!
“She was the only person I know large enough to fill out the hind end of the elephant costume I rented,” Papa Pete explained.
He had a point. There was a whole lot of Mrs Fink. She must have been enjoying her own cherry strudel for many years, which I can understand because, as I’ve mentioned, her strudel could be the best in the world.
“But, Papa Pete, we need you,” I said.
“The Chopped Livers need me too,” he answered. “Our team has challenged the Lucky Strikers for first place in the costume competition. My team-mates are counting on me.”
“But I don’t know if I can do this without you,” I said.
The haunted house was a lot to take on by ourselves with no grown-ups to help. My mum wasn’t coming back from the deli until almost seven. And even though my dad would be back from Emily’s Girl Scout party pretty soon, he wouldn’t be much help. Scary fun isn’t exactly his specialty, unless it’s a clue in a crossword puzzle.
“You’ll do fine,” Papa Pete said. “I’ve written out all the instructions for you.”
Papa Pete handed me a piece of lined notepaper covered in writing. I looked at it quickly, and the letters started to dance all over the page. That happens to me all the time, especially with anything written on narrow-lined paper. Words never stay where they’re supposed to be. They jump from line to line and zoom all over the page. Some of them even dive right off the edge and I miss them completely. My eyes get really tired trying to follow them.
I didn’t have time for dancing letters right then, so I took Papa Pete’s list, folded it up and put it in the back pocket of my jeans.
“Don’t you want to read through the list?” he asked. “I’ll go over it with you.”
I don’t like reading in front of other people, even Papa Pete. It’s hard for me to read, and I’m really slow at it. And my reading problems get even worse when someone is watching me. So I try to do my reading in private. It keeps the embarrassment down that way.
“No time right now,” I said to Papa Pete. “Frankie and Ashley are going to meet me downstairs to get the supplies.”
“The Roll ’N Bowl party starts at six,” Papa Pete said. “I’ll try to be back here by seven thirty. We’ll just stay for the judging.”
“Isn’t Mrs Fink going to want to stay for the whole thing?”
“Emily is coming too,” Papa Pete said. “I’ll use her as an excuse for coming home early.”
At least Emily comes in handy for something, I thought. But I didn’t say that out loud because I knew Papa Pete wouldn’t like that.
“You go on and build the haunted house without me,” Papa Pete said. “You’re a creative boy, Hankie. You can pull this off.”
I threw my arms round Papa Pete and gave him a huge hug.
“Remember this, Hankie, if you only remember one thing I’ve ever taught you: a good brain is two things. Mushy and slimy.”
“Got it, Papa Pete.”
I ran out the door to meet Frankie and Ashley and search for the mushiest, slimiest brains I could find.
Just you wait, McKelty. I’ll show you who’s the gross-out king.
When I told Frankie and Ashley the idea for the haunted house, they couldn’t get over what a great idea it was. That was, until they realized that if they were going to help me with it, they were going to have to give up trick-or-treating.
“I don’t know, Zip,” Frankie said. “You’re asking me to turn my back on a huge bag full of sweets. Those sweets last me two months.”
“Sweets are very bad for your teeth,” I said to him. “You don’t want to develop cavities, do you?”
That wasn’t the best argument, I know. But understand that time was short and we had a lot to do. I didn’t have time for quality debate.
“Could I at least wear my dolphin costume in the haunted house?” Ashley asked.
I wanted to say yes, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that dolphins do not live in haunted houses.
“I’m afraid not, Ash,” I said. She looked disappointed.
“Look, guys,” I said, “I know this is asking a lot. And I promise that next year we’ll go trick-or-treating together and get the most sweets any three kids have ever got. But this year, I need your help. Just think about how rude and mean McKelty is. The guy needs to be put in his place.”
“That’s definitely true.” Frankie nodded. “The big jerk shouldn’t get away with that lousy attitude of his.”
“Picking on little Mason like that,” I added. “And making fun of Emily and Robert. They can’t help it if they’re geeks.”
Frankie can’t stand bullies. I knew my arguments were getting to him. I turned to Ashley.
“What about you, Ash?”
“Well, I suppose building the haunted house could be very creative,” Ashley said.
“A great opportunity to explore your artistic side, which we all know is very strong,” I agreed.
It was quiet for a long minute.
“OK, I’m in, Zip,” Frankie said.
“Me too.” Ashley nodded.
Do I have great friends or what?
“If I’m giving up on trick-or-treating, I at least want to be in charge of the haunted house decorations,” Ashley said straight away.
“And I want to be in charge of all slimy things,” Frankie said.
“Unless they’re slimy decorations,” Ashley told him. “Then I’m in charge.”
“What about a slimy eyeball that’s hanging from the wall?” Frankie asked her. “Tell me, Ash, is that a decoration or is that a slimy thing?”
“Guys,” I said. “Tick-tock. We don’t have time for this now. We have to get to the shop and get going.”
“Race you to Gristediano’s,” Frankie said. And he shot out of the lobby door like a bolt of light
ning.
Gristediano’s supermarket is just around the corner on Broadway, right next door to Ricardo’s shoe-repair place. Since we don’t have to cross any roads to get there, we are allowed to go there by ourselves. We were there before you could say “Nick McKelty is a scaredy-cat”.
We grabbed a shopping basket and raced up and down the aisles. I felt like one of those contestants on a TV game show who runs up and down the aisles throwing things into a trolley as fast as possible. Frankie and Ashley and I were all talking at once, because the ideas were shooting from our heads like a volcano that had just blown its top.
“We’ll need grapes for eyeballs,” I said.
“As the chief of all slimy things,” Frankie said, “I’m not sure grapes are slimy enough for eyeballs.”
“I have an idea,” Ashley said. “Let’s get lychee nuts. They’re slimier and squishier, like a real eyeball.”
Ashley’s family is from China, and they eat a lot of things that I’d never heard of before. Sometimes when I eat dinner at her house, we have lychee nuts for dessert. I know they sound like they’d have a shell and be crunchy like other nuts, but actually they’re soft and sweet and syrupy.
“I like the way you’re thinking, Ashweena,” I said. “Lychee nuts will give our haunted house an international flavour.”
Unfortunately, Gristediano’s didn’t have lychee nuts, so we had to give up on international flavour and settle for just plain American grapes.
“Purple or green ones?” Frankie asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, “because we’re going to peel them anyway. Underneath their skin, they’re all the same color.”
“Wait a minute, Zip,” Frankie said. “You expect me to peel grapes?”
“Yup.”
“That’ll happen when I change my name to Bernice.”
“Frankie, you said you wanted to be in charge of all slimy things,” I told him. “And a grape feels like a grape. But a peeled grape feels slimy, like an eyeball.”
Frankie saluted, like I was the captain of a spaceship.
“Aye, aye, captain,” Frankie said.
Ashley giggled and saluted too. “You lead, we follow,” she said.
“Good, that’s the way I like it,” I answered in my best Captain Kirk voice. This was really fun. “Now, I figure we’ll need two boxes of spaghetti.”
“Smart thinking, captain,” Frankie said. “We have to have dinner.”
“Frankie, we’re not eating the spaghetti. We’re boiling it until it’s mushy so we can make it into brains.”
“Brains are good,” Frankie said.
Papa Pete’s words echoed in my head. Two things a brain has to be – slimy and mushy.
We raced down Aisle 9 and found the pasta section. As I was putting the spaghetti in the trolley, Ashley started twirling her ponytail like she does when she’s thinking.
“Captain, I have a suggestion,” she said, wrapping her ponytail round her index finger. “How about we get some hot dogs and tell people they’re intestines?”
“Yeah, we’ll drown them in ketchup and make them into oozing intestines,” Frankie added.
Their imaginations were both in full gear now, I could tell.
We got four bottles of ketchup, because we knew we’d need extra to make mummy blood. Then we got batteries for the tape recorder. We were going to record Cheerio making scary sounds, and I certainly didn’t want to risk the tape recorder stopping right in the middle of a howl.
On the way out, we were lucky enough to find the last bag of rubber spiders. Ashley thought they were too ugly, but I insisted on getting them.
“Ash, we’ll tie some of my mum’s thread round them,” I said, “and we’ll use a fishing rod to lower them into McKelty’s hair. Wait. I don’t have a fishing rod.”
“My dad does,” Ashley said. “We’ll borrow it.”
“McKelty will think he’s being attacked by man-eating tarantulas,” Frankie said with a laugh.
“I can’t wait to see his face,” I said. “We have to remember to blindfold him before he enters the chamber. Everything is twenty times scarier when you can’t see.”
“Boo!” somebody said from behind us.
All three of us flew three feet in the air. We had been concentrating so hard on getting our supplies that we hadn’t heard anyone behind us. When we turned round, we saw that it was Mrs Fink, filling her trolley with bags of fun-sized chocolate bars. She was wearing her false teeth, which she doesn’t do all the time. But I guess when you have a big date, you want all your teeth in place and reporting for duty.
“Hi, darlings,” Mrs Fink said. “Listen, I won’t be at home tonight when you go trick-or-treating, because I have a date with a very special someone.”
My stomach flipped. I wasn’t sure Papa Pete knew what he was letting himself in for.
“I’ve baked your grandfather a cherry strudel and an apple crumble,” she whispered to me. “With an extra poppy-seed Danish thrown in because it’s Halloween.”
Obviously, when older people get crushes, there is a lot of baking involved.
“So, Hank, darling,” Mrs Fink went on. “I’ll leave a big bowl of chocolate bars outside my door. Just help yourself, and make sure the other children do too.”
“Thanks, Mrs Fink,” I said, thinking that now Frankie could get some of his Halloween sweets. “And good luck in the costume contest. I bet you guys win first prize.”
I wondered if she knew she was going to be the hind end of an elephant.
“I’m just looking forward to spending the evening being close to your grandfather.”
Boy, they were going to be close, all right. If she only knew how close.
“Come on, Zip,” Frankie said, pulling on my sleeve. “We don’t have much time.”
“Right. Bye, Mrs Fink.”
She waved and continued to load her trolley with sweets. What a nice lady, that Mrs Fink.
At the till, the bill came to seventeen dollars and ninety-two cents. I pulled out a crisp twenty-dollar bill from my pocket. It was the one Papa Pete had given me the last time we’d gone to a Mets game. I had been planning to use it to buy a new Mets cap. But if that twenty-dollar bill could help me get even with McKelty for being such a mean, big-mouthed jerk, I’d sacrifice a Mets cap any day. Sure, my old one had some pretty major sweat stains on it. But I ask you, who cares about a few sweat stains when crushing McKelty is so close at hand?
Time wasn’t exactly on our side. By the time we got back to my flat, it was seventeen minutes past five, according to Frankie’s digital watch, which he’d got for his birthday in August. We were going to have to work fast. That was OK with me, though, because my mind was bursting with scary ideas for the haunted house.
“The first thing we have to do,” I said, when we had plopped all our supplies down in the hall, “is to work out where to build it.”
“I think it should go right in the middle of the living room,” Ashley said.
“No good, Ashweena,” I answered. “It needs to be in the corner. That way, we already have two walls built.”
“Good thinking, dude,” Frankie said. “I always knew you could use your head for other things than to hold up your Mets cap, which as I’ve said many times, I don’t approve of anyway.”
In case I haven’t told you before, Frankie is a major Yankees fan and I’m a Mets guy, but in spite of that, we’ve stayed best friends. That should tell you something about how much we get along in every other area, because I love the Mets and he loves the Yankees. I mean love love, as in how we feel about pizza and monster movies and silver Lamborghinis.
“I say we put it in the corner by the fireplace,” I suggested. “We can use blankets to cover up the two windows there and sheets to make the walls. It’s got to be pitch-black inside.”
“So now we put up a haunted house?” Frankie asked. “Just like that?”
“Why not?” I said, rolling up my sleeves to get to work.
“Uh, Zip,
there’s a little word called parents.”
“And another little word called grounded,” Ashley added.
Oh, that again. Can someone please tell me why parents get in the way of so many fun things?
I looked over at the green desk. The note Papa Pete had left for my dad was gone. To me, that meant that my dad had seen it. And he hadn’t left a note saying no. These were both very good signs.
“You guys wait here,” I told Frankie and Ashley. “I’ll get permission.”
I tiptoed into my parents’ bedroom, where my dad was taking a nap in his green chair. He loves afternoon naps. He calls them power naps. They power him right into Jeopardy!, so he can answer every question on history, geography, sport, science and anything else involving a number or a fact. He is really smart. One thing is for sure, I certainly didn’t get my brain from him.
I stood there for a minute, wondering if I should wake him up to ask permission to build the haunted house. What if he said no? That would be totally unacceptable. Besides, I told myself, he looked so peaceful, asleep in his chair. And it would really be a shame to wake him up. Never wake a sleeping parent unless there’s blood or fire or a broken television involved. That’s what I say.
I went back into the living room.
“Let’s build!” I said.
“Did your dad say OK?” Ashley asked.
“Let me put it this way: he didn’t say not OK. And that’s good enough for me.”
First, I grabbed the coat rack that we keep in the hall by the front door and dragged it into the living room. Then I unplugged the lamp that’s next to the sofa and pulled it into the middle of the floor.
“These will make great tent poles for the walls,” I announced. “We’ll drape sheets over them and attach the other end of the sheets to the walls with drawing pins.”
“Problem Number One,” Ashley said. “Something tells me that your parents won’t be thrilled about us leaving holes in the wall.”
“Problem solved. I’ll patch up the holes afterwards.”
“Right. You’ll do that when I change my name to Bernice,” Frankie said with a laugh. “Face it, Zip. No way are you ever going to patch up these walls and not leave a complete mess.”
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