Milk mustaches . . . Got Homework? That was a great idea for the faculty picture!
“I don’t think I’m going to be very good at working on the yearbook,” Dandy added.
“Don’t worry, Dandy. You can be my assistant and help me take pictures.”
“That’s no good. I usually end up with pictures of my fingers,” Dandy said.
That was true. Malcolm remembered several years ago when he had found a footprint so large it could only have belonged to Bigfoot. It was starting to rain, so right then was his only chance to show proof. He’d lain down next to the huge track to give it scale. Then he had Dandy snap the photo.
When they uploaded the photos, Dandy’s big orangey thumb covered the entire footprint. Malcolm had looked like he was being slammed by a giant meteor.
“How about I do the picture taking,” Malcolm suggested. “You can pose the subjects.”
Dandy sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I guess I could do that.”
“Of course you can. You’ll be great at it,” Malcolm encouraged his friend.
The bus bounced and jolted its way around a few more blocks, stopping every couple of minutes to cram in more kids. Then the Waxberry marquee came into view.
Welcome back to Waxberry for another great year! Go Hornets!
Some of the kids cheered. Some groaned. Dandy yawned. The first thing Malcolm did after he got off the bus was snap a picture of the marquee. He had big plans for the yearbook photos. Nothing was going to mess that up.
CHAPTER FOUR
GRUELING GOOLSBY
Malcolm snapped a few more pictures of the morning bustle. He caught kids rushing to class and teachers smiling through clenched teeth on film.
He also caught Coss Fitzfox, last year’s Kickball King, hobbling in on crutches. He snapped a picture of “Booger” McCready, chess champion, walking the halls with a pair of soccer cleats slung over his shoulder. And he captured Waxberry’s rough-and-ready tomboy, Candace Dillion, wearing mascara.
“You can’t make this stuff up,” Malcolm told Dandy. They headed for the bulletin board in the cafeteria to check which rooms they were assigned.
“I hope we’re in the same class again,” Dandy said, heaving his enormous backpack. With every step he appeared to be trudging through syrup.
It didn’t take long to find their names. “Look!” Dandy said. “We are in the same room.”
Malcolm smiled. “Yep.” Then he checked the room number. Yikes! Room 503! Mrs. Goolsby! Grueling Goolsby, the toughest teacher in the entire school.
“Oh no! We’re doomed.” Dandy dropped his backpack with a thud.
Malcolm couldn’t agree more.
Dandy dragged his backpack behind him as they headed for that fateful room.
Mrs. Goolsby stood by the classroom door. She tapped a ruler on her palm as students ducked in. Malcolm figured she couldn’t wait to shut the door and begin the torture.
Malcolm debated whether or not to take her picture. Not a good idea, he concluded.
When they took their seats, Dandy whispered, “I guess we won’t get to ghost hunt now, huh?”
True. There probably wouldn’t be another free weekend until next summer. Malcolm had heard that Mrs. Goolsby even assigned homework during the winter holidays! “Maybe it won’t be so bad,” he said. But secretly, he knew better.
The sweat beads had returned to Dandy’s nose. His eyes were filled with panic. “Maybe we could transfer out.”
Malcolm shrugged. “Doubtful.”
“Maybe our parents would agree to homeschool us.”
“Even more doubtful,” Malcolm said as the bell rang.
“Quiet!” Mrs. Goolsby called, the door sweeping shut. “Pull out your math books and turn to Chapter One.”
Among the groans Dandy said, “But we haven’t even heard the announcements.”
“Who said that?” Mrs. Goolsby asked, her eyes piercing each person.
Dandy slowly raised a shaky hand.
“What is your name?” she demanded.
Dandy gulped. “Daniel. Daniel Dee.”
“Well, Mr. Dee,” Mrs. Goolsby sneered. “I bet you can do at least one problem before the announcements. Let’s see, shall we?”
Dandy gulped again, much louder. “What about attendance?”
Mrs. Goolsby slapped the ruler hard across the edge of her desk, causing an explosive noise that could’ve set off a panic bell. “It’s my job to worry about attendance, Mr. Dee. It’s your job to get those problems done. Stop wasting time!”
The kids scurried for their books and pencils. Malcolm saw Dandy staring at the blunt nub of his, and knew he was too frightened to get up and use the pencil sharpener.
They worked the math problems, only stopping to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Mrs. Goolsby strolled by each desk. She paused at Malcolm’s desk. “What’s this?” She held up the camera.
“I’m taking pictures for the yearbook,” he answered.
“Are you taking pictures at this very moment?” she grilled.
“No,” Malcolm said. Now he was doing the gulping.
“Then . . . put . . . it . . . away,” she rolled out each word like she was speaking a foreign language.
Malcolm did as he was told.
As the day progressed, it didn’t get much better. There were no introductory games in Mrs. Goolsby’s class. No working in teams like in fourth grade. Just hour after hour of Math, English, Science, and History.
Malcolm did manage to take more pictures. But that was during lunch, recess, and Mrs. Flutterfly’s art class. When the three o’clock bell rang, Malcolm was the first in line for the school bus. He couldn’t wait to get home.
After a couple of cookies and lemonade, he relayed the dreadful events of the day to his mom. “Mrs. Goolsby’s a velociraptor in loafers!” he said.
“Oh, Malcolm,” Mom sighed. “You have such an imagination.”
Malcolm knew he wasn’t going to get any sympathy. So, he headed to the computer to upload the yearbook photos before he started his pile of homework.
He checked them one by one. Then, he checked them again. He looked at his camera, then back to the pictures on his computer. He zoomed in closer and checked again. Then Malcolm dashed to the phone.
“Dandy, get over here quick! Our ghost hunting days are not over!”
CHAPTER FIVE
TELL NO ONE!
“I don’t get it,” Dandy said, looking from the computer screen to the photo printouts. He twitched his nose like he was about to sneeze.
“I don’t either,” Malcolm said. “It’s the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Dandy gave him a look.
“Okay, maybe not the weirdest, but it comes pretty close.”
“Who is that guy?” Dandy asked.
Malcolm had no idea. He looked at the photos again. The picture of the school marquee came out just fine. But instead of Go Hornets! it said TELL NO ONE! And next to the marquee stood an odd-looking man. Odd, for a couple reasons.
1.He wore a green khaki fishing cap and vest, both covered in various fishing hooks and lures.
2.The man was transparent. No doubt, a ghost!
Malcolm checked out the close-up he’d taken of Candace Dillion. He caught her mid-blink. But instead of eye makeup, there was writing on both her eyelids.
Left eyelid: TELL
Right eyelid: NO ONE!
And standing directly behind her was the ghostly fisherman.
Malcolm studied the photo of Booger McCready. Booger’s T-shirt now sported the words, TELL NO ONE! The fisherman lurked nearby.
And the picture of Coss Fitzfox clearly showed TELL NO ONE! written across the cast on his leg. The phantom fisherman peeked over his shoulder.
Malcolm scrolled through the same photos on the computer. “The school is definitely haunted,” he told Dandy.
“It could be a glitch in the camera,” Dandy suggested.
“You mean like a mechanic
al failure?”
Daddy nodded. “Yeah. A glitch.”
“I double-checked it, Dandy. Besides, a glitch would probably cause lots of blobs or something. Not this.”
“Maybe it’s a double-exposure.”
“Of what?” Malcolm argued. “I’ve never taken any pictures with those words on them . . . or that guy. I’ve never seen him before. And digital cameras don’t make double-exposures.”
“Did you have your specter detector with you?” Dandy wondered.
Malcolm shook his head no. He picked up the detector and flipped it to On. He liked the sound it made warming up. Then he switched it to Detect.
Yip! Yip! Spooky appeared, as if he’d been patiently waiting to be noticed by the specter detector and Malcolm.
“Hey, Spooky! I missed you today.”
The dog bounced and wagged his tail.
Dandy leaned down and pretended to pet the dog. His hand brushed completely through the pooch, but Spooky’s face showed he appreciated the gesture.
Malcolm went back to studying the photo. “I just wish I knew what this meant,” he said.
Dandy continued fake-petting Spooky. “We’ll have to figure it out later. Can you believe all the homework Mrs. Goolsby gave us? I’m going to be up way past my bedtime.”
Malcolm groaned. “No kidding. And on the first day! What teacher assigns a 1,000-word essay on the lessons we learned over summer vacation and how they relate to the writings of Roald Dahl?”
“Mrs. Goolsby!” Dandy complained. Even Spooky let out a Yip! Yip!
Malcolm turned off his specter detector, sending Spooky back to invisible realms. Then he and Dandy trudged up the steps of the basement lab.
“Even though we can’t do it tonight, we have to find out who that guy is,” Malcolm said. “We need to know why he’s haunting the school.”
“Well, whoever he is,” Dandy said, “his instructions are clear. We can’t tell anyone! And I’m not going to go against any ghost’s wishes.”
CHAPTER SIX
A MUDDY EXCUSE
Malcolm took his camera to school early the next day. He took pictures of the marquee, the cafeteria, and the library before heading to class.
“I’ve got to test it,” he told Dandy. “I’ve got to find out why he’s haunting the school. I’m going to take as many pictures as I can.”
Dandy’s backpack looked even heavier than yesterday. His stroll down the hall looked more like a trek up a steep mountain. “Maybe he used to be a school teacher or P.E. coach here.”
“But why the fishing getup?” Malcolm reasoned. “Shouldn’t he be haunting a lake house, or a fishing boat, or Angler Bob’s Bait Shop instead?”
Dandy adjusted his backpack. As he did, his knees buckled a little. “Maybe there used to be a lake here, and the school was built over it.”
“Don’t be silly, Dandy. Where would they’ve put all the water?”
“Well, our toilets have been overflowing a lot.”
As they were about to step into the classroom, Mrs. Goolsby cried, “Oh, no you don’t!”
Malcolm and Dandy froze.
“Look at your shoes!” she yelled at them. Her face had flushed a heated pink, and her eyes zapped them like lasers. “Caked in mud! I will not have you soiling my classroom!”
The boys just looked at each other. Neither one was sure what to do. After all, they’d never seen a teacher so upset about a little dirt.
“Remove your shoes this instant,” she instructed, “and set them by the door. You will spend your recess in the boys’ room cleaning them. Understood?”
They both nodded, afraid to speak.
“Now take your seats!”
They scrambled to get their sneakers off. Once they were seated, Mrs. Goolsby drilled them through a morning of nonstop lectures, lessons, and practice sheets. Malcolm wondered if it was possible for a person’s brain to overload and short-circuit.
•••
“Getting mud on our shoes turned out to be lucky,” Malcolm told Dandy as the other kids lined up for recess.
Dandy scrunched his eyebrows. “Why was that lucky? She’s scarier than the ghost fisherman!”
Malcolm grinned. “It was lucky because the computer lab is empty this time of day.”
“We can’t clean our shoes in the computer lab!” Dandy argued. “We’ll get detention.”
“We’re not going to clean our shoes, silly,” Malcolm said impatiently.
Panic flashed across Dandy’s face. “If we don’t clean our shoes, we’ll get detention for sure!”
“We’ll clean our shoes later. Follow me, we’ve got ghost hunting to do.”
Dandy followed, trudging like he still had his backpack on. He held his dirty sneakers by the laces, letting them sway with each step. Dried dirt flew with every swing.
Malcolm carefully closed the door to the computer lab, then dug his camera out of his pants pocket.
“Oh, I get it,” Dandy said.
Malcolm typed his school password into one of the computers, then connected the camera. It was no surprise when he checked the uploaded pictures.
In the first photo, the fisherman sat on top of the marquee. Today it had said: Volleyball tryouts tonight! Go Hornets! But Tell No One! had replaced Go Hornets! once again.
In the next photo, the fisherman was giving a droopy-eyed janitor bunny ears. The fisherman was grinning goofily, but the janitor had no idea. Tell No One! was now on the janitor’s mop bucket.
In the library photo, he stood next to the 700 section. It seemed pretty fitting that he was in section where the “fishing for kids” books were shelved. He was holding up the book Tell No One for Dummies.
Malcolm wasn’t surprised that every picture had the words TELL NO ONE! He just wished he knew what that meant.
“Malcolm, recess is almost over,” Dandy whispered. “I’m way more scared of Mrs. Goolsby than of a ghost giving bunny ears. Can we go clean our shoes before the bell rings?”
Malcolm sighed. “Yeah, just give me another second.” He printed out all three of the pictures and tucked them under his shirt. Then he and Dandy headed for the restroom to clean off their sneakers.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FISHING FOR ANSWERS
Malcolm dropped his load of school books on the kitchen table, then looked over his homework assignments. Maybe I should transfer to military school, he thought. It’d be a lot easier. He plopped himself down in a chair.
The house was particularly quiet. Dad was still at work. Mom and Cocoa were out shopping for more new school clothes—even though they’d bought Cocoa a closetful last weekend! Girls!
Grandma Eunice came walking in, pushing her wheelchair in front of her. Everyone else in the family thought she was weak and had lost her mind. Grandma played along so she could get out of doing household chores, but Malcolm knew the truth. It was their secret.
“Grandma, why do you even own that stupid wheelchair? I know you don’t need it.”
Grandma turned the chair toward the table. “ Your mom thinks I’m too weak to walk on my own. But, I keep it so I’ll always have a chair handy.” She demonstrated by sitting down. Then she took a banana from the bowl and began peeling.
“Look at all this homework,” Malcolm said. “My new teacher is tough.”
Grandma Eunice clacked her false teeth around, getting ready for a bite. “That’s nothing,” she stated. “Back in my day . . .”
Here we go again! Malcolm thought.
“. . . I had wake up at four A.M. to milk the cows before walking seven miles to school barefoot. The teacher would beat us with a rattlesnake if we were just five minutes tardy!”
“A rattlesnake?” Malcolm said, not believing it one bit.
“And we didn’t have all those fancy computers and calculators. It was all done up here.” She tapped the side of her head. A piece of yucky banana string stuck to her hair.
She went on, “You all whine and worry when your computers won’t boot up. We
whined and worried when our pencils wore down. And we didn’t have those gliding gel pens like your sister writes her love poems with.”
Malcolm knew then that Grandma Eunice had been sneaking through Cocoa’s things. It was about time, too. After all, she’d been borrowing his specter detector to find Grandpa Bertram all summer.
“We had fountain pens,” she rumbled. “Fountain pens with inkwells. It was a mess! Splotchy papers . . . stained fingers and ink spots on your favorite clothes—”
“Yeah,” Malcolm interrupted. “Those were the good old days.”
“You’re darn tooting!” Grandma said. She crammed the banana into her mouth and mushed down with her choppers.
Malcolm opened his science book. Science was his favorite subject— especially the current lesson on mapping the constellations.
He tried to concentrate, but his mind kept straying back to the mysterious fisherman. Plus, Grandma Eunice was making outrageously loud smacking noises with her teeth.
Malcolm looked up as she flung the banana peel over her shoulder, scoring a two-pointer as it hit the trash. He shook his head as she celebrated.
“Grandma,” he started, “you’re good at keeping secrets, right?”
Grandma Eunice shrugged. “Even if I told, who’d believe me?”
A good point, but still Malcolm hesitated. He wanted to show her the photos. He could use another opinion, but the messages clearly said TELL NO ONE! And if there was one thing Malcolm had learned in his lifetime, it was never take an exclamation point lightly. But then again . . .
“Does this have to do with your ghost hunting?” Grandma asked.
“Yeah,” Malcolm said, sheepishly. He showed her the photos and updated her on what had happened so far. “Do you know him?”
Grandma shook her head. “No, I’ve never seen him before.”
“Why do you think he keeps appearing if he doesn’t want me to tell anyone?”
“You can’t trust a fisherman, Malcolm. They’ll make up a whopper of a fish tale without blinking. I remember once when Grandpa Bertram went fishing with some of his pals. Tried to convince me that he’d reeled up a barracuda, hopped on its back, and rode it like he was in the rodeo.”
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