by Nancy Krulik
“I’m thinking about my costume,” Max assured Louie. “It’s the only thing on my mind.”
“Me too,” Mike said. “I’ve got lots of ideas. I just can’t remember any of them right now.”
Louie grinned. “Well, you guys are just lucky I can’t win the costume contest,” he told everyone. “Because my space-alien-creature costume is going to be the coolest. It’s coming all the way from Hollywood. One of my dad’s clients knew a guy whose uncle was the assistant costume designer on a scary movie. He’s sending me a costume from his latest film—Slimy Space Salamanders from Saturn. I know none of you can beat that, but I’m sure you can come up with something that’s pretty good—if you start thinking about it now!”
“We’ll get right on it,” George told Louie. “As soon as we stop these people from buying Julianna’s house on Friday.”
Louie shook his head. “Your stupid idea will never work. Nobody believes in haunted houses anymore. And nobody believes in ghosts, either.”
“Sure they do,” Julianna shot back. “My house is filled with masks that people from all around the world have made to scare away evil spirits, including ghosts.”
“None of those were made in Beaver Brook,” Louie told her. “Because no one in Beaver Brook believes in evil spirits.”
George opened his mouth to argue with Louie. But then he stopped. Unfortunately, Louie had a point. And to make things worse, there was a point that even Louie hadn’t brought up. What if the masks thought the made-up ghosts were real? Would they do something to scare the fake ghosts away?
Oh no. No way. George was not going to start thinking about that. Not now. This wasn’t the time to think bad thoughts.
Unless of course you were Louie. He didn’t seem to have any trouble thinking bad thoughts. “Face it, Julianna,” Louie continued. “You’re moving. But there’s a bright side.”
Julianna scowled angrily and glared at him. “What bright side?” she demanded.
“Your last memory of Beaver Brook will be my party,” Louie told her. “The best party ever. Of course it can’t be your going-away party, because it’s my Halloween party. But still, you will always remember it because of its awesomeness.”
“Wrong, Louie,” George told him.
“Are you saying my party won’t be awesome?” Louie demanded angrily.
“No. I’m saying it won’t be Julianna’s last party in Beaver Brook,” George told him. “Because Julianna isn’t going anywhere. Her parents aren’t going to sell her house. Our plan is going to work.”
“I sure hope so,” Julianna told him. “My whole life depends on it.”
“Okay, we have everything we need,” George told Julianna as they walked onto her front porch. Chris, Sage, and Alex followed close behind. “You’re sure your grandma won’t be here while we’re setting up?”
“Positive,” Julianna assured him. “She plays cards at the Community Center every Friday. Sasha is here, though. She’ll help us.”
“Your sister wants to help?” George was surprised. Sasha was in eighth grade. She usually didn’t want to have anything to do with fourth-graders. In fact, George had actually only met her twice the whole time he’d been living in Beaver Brook.
“She’s not sure our plan will work,” Julianna said. “But she’s willing to try anything to keep us from moving.”
“There you are,” Sasha said, opening the door. “What took you so long?”
“We get out of school after you do,” Julianna reminded her.
“Well, you’d better get working,” Sasha said. “The real estate agent is going to be here really soon.”
“Where do you want these squishy eyeballs?” Sage asked Sasha. She pulled a plastic bag out of her backpack.
“How about in that clay bowl from Guatemala?” Sasha suggested, pointing to a bowl that looked like it had brown, blue, and white eyes already painted all over it.
Sage emptied her bag of slimy, wet eyeballs into the bowl.
“Yuck!” Julianna gasped. “They look real.”
“Don’t they?” Sage agreed. “They’re just peeled grapes. But I used paint to draw colored irises in the middle of them. Do you like my eyeballs, Georgie?”
George looked down at the bowl of grape eyeballs. “Pretty cool,” he had to admit.
“I’m dropping these plastic spiders into the glasses of apple cider,” Chris told Julianna. “One sip and they’ll freak!”
“Spider cider,” George said with a laugh.
“I’m going to hide in the closet with my remote-controlled black cat,” Alex said. “I’ll let him out just in time for him to cross their paths.”
“And I’ll let the remote-controlled rats out when they come into the kitchen,” George said. He grabbed a handful of dust bunnies and hung them off the side of a shelf.
“That looks really haunted house–like,” Sasha complimented him.
“Thanks,” George said proudly.
“Where do you want my painting?” Chris asked. He unfurled a painting of a scary-looking man with creepy eyes.
George moved to the left. The glow-in-the-dark eyes followed him.
George moved to the right. The glow-in-the-dark eyes followed him again.
“Wow!” George exclaimed. “That’s super creepy.”
“It gives me goose bumps,” Sage said. She held out her arm to show George the little hairy bumps that had popped up all over her skin.
“Put the painting up in our room,” Sasha told Chris. “We want them to think the upstairs is haunted, too.”
Alex walked over and attached something to the light switch in the living room. Then he looked over at Julianna and George. “That should do it,” he told them. “Give it a try.”
Julianna clapped her hands. The lights in the living room flickered on and off. “Perfect,” she told Alex.
George threw another pile of dust bunnies onto the totem pole. “Aaachooo!” he sneezed. “That one was especially dusty.”
“I sure hope this works,” Julianna said.
Just then, the doorbell rang.
“Is that them?” George asked nervously. He started heading toward his hiding place in the cupboard.
“It can’t be. They’re not supposed to come for another half hour. That’s when grandma said she would be back with the ‘company,’” Sasha said, making imaginary quotation marks in the air. “I can’t believe she’s calling them that.”
“She doesn’t know we know about Mom and Dad selling the house,” Julianna reminded her sister. She walked to the door and looked through the peephole. “It’s Louie,” she told the other kids.
“What’s he doing here?” George wondered.
“Probably reminding us to start making our costumes,” Alex said. “Like we have time for that.”
Julianna opened the door. “Hi, Louie,” she said.
“Hi, Julianna. How’s your house haunting coming?”
“Really, really great,” George answered. “Why? Are you here to help?”
Louie shook his head. “Nope. I’m here to watch you mess up,” he said with a smirk.
Julianna’s mouth dropped open. She looked like she might cry. Or scream.
“Why would you say that?” George demanded. “Don’t you know that if we fail, she moves?”
Louie shrugged. “She’s gonna move anyway. Which is a bummer. But this plan of yours is going to be a disaster. And my film crew is going to record it all for my next Life with Louie webcast.”
Film crew? George looked out the door. Sure enough, there were Max and Mike. They were fighting over which of them got to hold the camera.
“Louie said I could be the cameraman,” Max said.
“He told me the same thing,” Mike said. “And I’m holding the camera.”
Louie smiled. “You guys can take turns,” h
e suggested. “I’m sure George will do lots of stupid stuff. Enough for both of you to film for my webcast.”
George rolled his eyes. This was not about Louie and his webcast. And it wasn’t about George, either. It was about making sure no one bought Julianna’s house. Besides, he was too busy making sure the house looked really scary to pay much attention to Louie. The grape eyeballs, the dust bunnies, and the remote-controlled rats were definitely spooking up the place.
Unfortunately, there was something even more spooky going on inside George. Bubbles in the belly. Lots of them.
Bing-bong. Ping-pong. The bubbles were already hip-hopping on George’s heart and leaping onto his lungs.
George couldn’t risk having the burp mess up things now. Quickly, he ran toward the back door and out into the yard.
Alex saw George whiz by. He ran after him. “Dude, not again!” Alex exclaimed.
Yes again. The bubbles were partying on his arteries, and veering from his veins. And then . . .
George let out a giant burp. A burp so strong and so loud, it made the dust bunnies hide under the table.
“Oh no!” Alex cried out.
Oh yes! The burp was out. And it wasn’t afraid of any haunted house.
“I gotta get you out of here before you mess everything up!” Alex said. He grabbed George and began to drag him to the front yard.
But the magical super burp didn’t want to get out of there. It wanted to play.
George wrestled himself free of Alex’s grip. He ran straight back toward the house. But along the way, he got all tangled up in some white sheets hanging on the line.
Now George couldn’t see anything. Even magical super burps can’t see through thick sheets.
But George’s legs didn’t care if his eyes couldn’t see. They just kept running, right toward the house.
Bam! Slam! George banged into the back of the house.
Ouch! That hurt. But George’s feet kept running. He raced through the open kitchen door and into Julianna’s hallway.
“Whoa! What is that?!” Louie shouted. “It’s a ghost!”
George wanted to laugh in Louie’s face. Mr. I-Don’t-Believe-in-Haunted-Houses sure sounded scared.
But the burp didn’t feel like laughing. The burp felt like running. So George ran. And as he did, the white sheet brushed against some shelves. Dust bunnies flew up in the air.
Cough! Cough! Cough! “I’m allergic to dust,” Louie said. Cough! Cough!
“Here, have some apple cider,” Sasha told him.
Louie took the apple cider. He started to drink.
George was still wrapped in the sheet. He wanted to pull it off so he could see. But the burp wouldn’t let him.
Slam! George bumped into Louie.
Splash! Cider flew out of the glass. So did the plastic spider in the cider.
“Aaaahhhh!” Louie shouted. “I hate spiders.”
George’s legs kept running. Whee! He slid across the wet floor.
Bam! Slam! He knocked the bowl of cold, wet spooky eyeballs off the shelf.
“Aaaaahhhhh! Eyeballs with no face around them!” Louie shouted. “I’m getting out of here!”
Whoosh! Suddenly George felt something go pop in the bottom of his belly. The air just rushed right out of him. The super burp was gone. But George was still there. With a sheet on his head, surrounded by painted grapes and spider cider.
George lifted the sheet off his head and opened his mouth to say, “Sorry about that, Louie.” And that’s exactly what came out.
But Louie wasn’t around to hear George’s apology. He had already run out the door, with Max and Mike right behind him, filming everything.
George and his friends raced to the door. They got there just in time to see a woman with a clipboard getting out of the front seat of a car. Then a man and a woman climbed out of the backseat.
A moment later, Julianna’s grandmother pulled up right behind them.
“I’m sure you’re going to love this house,” George heard the real estate agent say. “It’s . . .”
“Don’t go in!” Louie interrupted, shouting at the real estate agent and the buyers. “You don’t want to live there. That place is haunted!”
“Julianna! Sasha!” the girls’ grandmother shouted as she stormed into the house. “What is going on here?”
“Um . . . well . . . ,” Julianna stammered.
“We . . . I mean Julianna’s friends . . . ,” Sasha began.
George frowned. Leave it to Sasha to blame it all on the fourth-graders.
Julianna’s grandmother looked at Alex, George, and Sage. Then she looked up to see Chris coming down the stairs. “This was not the best day for a playdate,” she told Julianna. “I told you we were having company.”
“It wasn’t a playdate exactly . . . ,” Julianna began. “We were . . .”
“And what is with all this dust?” her grandmother interrupted. “I asked you to clean up. Why would you make this place messier?”
“Because we don’t want to move,” Julianna told her. “I know that’s why these people are here. I heard you talking to Mom and Dad about it!”
“But why wouldn’t you want to move to a bigger house?” her grandmother asked her.
George couldn’t believe it. Julianna’s grandmother sounded so confused. But why would she be? No kid would want to move away from his friends and his school.
“Because our whole lives are in Beaver Brook,” Sasha told her grandmother. “I don’t want to start over.”
“But you wouldn’t have to start over,” Sasha’s grandmother said. “You’re only moving a few blocks away. You’ll still be in Beaver Brook. You’ll just have more room. Which you definitely need with all the junk your parents collect.”
“Oh,” Sasha said. “We didn’t hear you say anything about that part. And Mom and Dad didn’t tell us anything.”
“Your parents weren’t sure that they would be able to afford the bigger house, and they didn’t want to get you excited,” her grandmother explained. “But they found one. And the good news is, in the new house you each get your own room!”
Julianna smiled at the real estate agent and the people who were looking to buy her house. “This is a really great house,” she told them. “It looks a lot nicer without the dust and green grape eyeballs lying around. We just wanted to make the place look haunted so you wouldn’t buy it, and we could stay.”
“Beaver Brook is a great town,” George added.
“Yeah,” Chris agreed. “You can’t judge us by that kid you met running away. Louie’s not . . . he’s not . . .”
“He’s not like anyone else you’ll ever meet anywhere,” George said, finishing Chris’s thought.
“I have a feeling Beaver Brook is a wonderful place,” said the woman who was thinking about buying the house. “Otherwise why would you kids go to so much trouble to make sure your friend stayed here?”
George smiled. “Exactly.”
“Nice wig,” Louie joked as he spotted Alex at his party on Halloween night.
“It’s supposed to be messy,” Alex told him. “I’m dressed as Albert Einstein. He was the smartest scientist ever. He was too busy thinking to brush his hair.”
Louie didn’t answer. He just turned to Chris. “You’re dressed like Toiletman again?” he asked. “You wore that same costume in the school Halloween parade. You could have at least come up with something new for tonight.”
“This time I have an orange-and-black Halloween plunger,” Chris said. “And I’m carrying four-ply toilet paper.”
Louie looked at Julianna. “Where’d you get that thing?” he asked, staring at the big blue-and-green feathered eye mask she was wearing.
“My parents brought it back from Brazil,” Julianna said. “My mother wore it during a Carnival festival the
y went to down there.”
George thought that was pretty cool. But he guessed Louie didn’t, because he yawned and turned his attention to George.
“You’re a mummy,” Louie said, noting the white bandages that were wrapped all around George’s head and body. “Not real original.”
“It’s a classic costume,” George insisted. Then he looked at Louie’s bright green jumpsuit and his antenna headband. “What are you supposed to be? A giant glow-in-the-dark cockroach?”
Louie’s eyes got small and mean—which made him look even more like a cockroach. “I’m a space salamander,” he told George. “You know that.”
George grinned as Louie stormed off. He loved making Louie angry.
“You want to go check out the piñata?” Alex said, pointing to the giant papier-mâché pumpkin that was hanging from a tree in the middle of the yard.
George nodded and followed Alex and the other kids walking over to take a look at the piñata. As he walked, he scratched at his arm. The bandages his mom had wrapped him in were way too tight. But George was dressed as a mummy. And mummies never slipped out of their bandages. So it was probably a good thing that the bandages were so tight.
“Oh, Georgie,” Sage shouted as she came running over. “Look at us. We’re the perfect couple.”
George looked at Sage. She was wearing a crown with a snake on it, and lots of dark black pencil around her eyes. “What are you supposed to be?” he asked her.
“Cleopatra,” Sage said. She blinked her eyelashes up and down. “Queen of Egypt. You know, where mummies come from. You and I are both from ancient Egypt. We should probably stick together all night.” George shook his head. No way. Not happening.
“George Brown, there you are,” Mrs. Farley said as she came running over. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“H-h-hello, Mrs. Farley,” George said.