by Dan Gutman
WHAT!? A magical Halloween surprise treat that we couldn’t get anywhere else in the world?
I looked at Michael. Michael looked at Ryan. Ryan looked at Alexia. Alexia looked at Neil. Neil looked at Billy. Billy looked at me.
In case you were wondering, we were all looking at each other.
“Let’s go!” we shouted.
6
The Halloween Monster
We all followed Andrea so we could go to Mrs. Yonkers’s house and get the magical Halloween surprise treat. She made a left at Avondale Avenue. Then she made a right at Redman Road. Then she made a left at West End Street.
Those streets weren’t on Michael’s map. I didn’t know where we were anymore. Andrea looked a little confused. It seemed like she didn’t know where she was either.
“Where does Mrs. Yonkers live anyway?” I asked her.
“I know her house is around here somewhere,” Andrea said. “Maybe it’s down this street.”
But it wasn’t down that street. And it wasn’t down the next street either. We passed by a big field. The houses were getting farther apart.
We must have walked a million hundred miles. We didn’t find Mrs. Yonkers’s house, and we weren’t even getting candy anymore. This wasn’t fun at all. The sun was going down. Soon it would be dark out.
Suddenly, Andrea stopped.
“I’m lost,” she admitted.
“Lost?” asked Emily. She looked like she was going to cry.
“I don’t know which way to go,” said Andrea. “I’m scared.”
To be honest with you, I was a little scared myself.
But part of me was happy that we were lost. In school, Little Miss Know-It-All never makes any mistakes. She’s always in control of everything. Now we were lost, and it was all Andrea’s fault. Ha! It was kind of fun to watch her freak out for a change.
“Y’know,” I said, “this is just the kind of neighborhood where the Halloween Monster would be hiding.”
“Halloween Monster?” asked Emily, her eyes wide open.
“You never heard of the Halloween Monster?” I asked her. “He lives in a cave, and he only comes out on Halloween. Every year on this night, he sneaks up from behind, chops kids into little pieces, steals their candy, and keeps it for himself. Stuff like that happens all the time, you know.”
I was totally yanking Emily’s chain. There was no such thing as a Halloween Monster. I just made it up.
“Arlo, stop trying to scare Emily,” Andrea said.
“I’m scared!” said Emily.
“Dudes, we need to get out of here,” Billy said. “We could be stranded in the middle of nowhere for the rest of our lives.”
“At least we have something to eat so we can survive,” Ryan said. “I think we should eat some candy so we don’t starve to death.”
“Didn’t we just eat some candy five minutes ago?” asked Neil.
“I think Ryan has a good idea,” I said, grabbing a Milky Way out of my pillowcase.
Any idea that involves eating candy is a good idea, if you ask me. That’s the first rule of being a kid.
“I’m not hungry,” said Alexia.
“Me neither,” said Michael.
“Well, I am,” said Billy.
“I’m saving my candy for later,” said Neil.
We went back and forth like that for a while. But as we were arguing over when to eat our candy, something had sneaked up behind us.
I heard a noise.
I turned around.
And standing before us was a giant, six-foot creature that was covered with brown fur from head to toe.
“Your candy or your life!” the horrible thing said with a growl.
It was the Halloween Monster!
7
Sugar Shock
The Halloween Monster was real!
I thought I was gonna die. The disgusting, horrifying creature was standing a foot away from me, staring at me with his beady monster eyes. He was holding open a big black garbage bag.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. I had to think fast. But I was frozen.*
“Did you hear me?” the Halloween Monster barked at me. “Your candy or your life!”
“I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” I said.
It was a hard decision. If I gave the Halloween Monster all my candy, I wouldn’t have any candy left, but I would still have my life. I had to ask myself, is life really worth living without candy?
And if I gave him my life, I would still have my candy; but I wouldn’t be able to eat it, because I would be dead.
I was faced with the toughest decision in the history of the world. I was thinking so hard that my brain hurt. Why is making decisions so complicated?
In the end it didn’t matter what I decided, because everybody else rushed forward to dump their candy into the bag that the Halloween Monster was holding. Then he grabbed my pillowcase from my hand and dumped all my candy into his bag.
“Hey! That’s my candy!” I yelled at him.
But he didn’t care. The Halloween Monster ran down the street with all our candy.
This was the worst thing to happen since TV Turnoff Week! It was the worst thing to happen since National Poetry Month!
It took a few minutes for us to calm down after the Halloween Monster ran away.
“That was mean!” Alexia yelled. “Why would somebody steal candy from kids?”
“Just be thankful that he didn’t chop us up into little pieces,” said Ryan.
“Wow,” I said, “I didn’t know the Halloween Monster was real. I just thought he was a pigment of my imagination.”
“That’s ‘figment,’ dumbhead,” Andrea said. “Pigment is what they use to make paint.”
“They should put paint on your face,” I told Andrea.
What is her problem? Why can’t a truck full of paint fall on Andrea’s head?
“It wasn’t a monster,” said Michael. “It was just some grown-up disguised as a monster.”
“He’s traveling in a cognito,” Ryan said.
“What’s a cognito?” asked Billy.
“It’s what secret agents travel in,” Ryan told him.
We were all depressed, because we had worked so hard to get that candy and now it was gone. We would have to start all over again. Bummer in the summer!
We turned the corner and went to the first house on that street and got some candy there. Then we hit another house. Soon we were back in the groove, scooping up candy left and right and filling up our pillowcases with it as we made our way down the street.
“Y’know, we should start eating some of this candy now,” Ryan suggested. “That way the Halloween Monster won’t be able to get it.”
“Good point, dude,” said Billy. “Nobody can steal our candy if we eat it.”
“I’m not eating mine,” said Alexia. “I’d rather save some for a rainy day.”
“What does the weather have to do with eating candy?” I asked her. “I’m hungry now.”
“My mother told me that if you eat too much candy, you’ll get sick,” Andrea said. “You could go into sugar shock.”
Nobody tells me how much candy I can eat. And I’m sure not going to listen to a smarty-pants know-it-all like Andrea. I stuffed a 3 Musketeers bar into my mouth and swallowed it in one gulp.
“Oh, yeah?” said Ryan. “Watch this!”
Ryan unwrapped two Twix bars and shoved them into his face. It didn’t even look like he chewed them.
“WOW,” everybody said, which is “MOM” upside down.
Then Michael took three Hershey’s bars out of his pillowcase. He ripped the wrappings off them, stacked them like pancakes, and ate all three of them at the same time. It was amazing!
Nobody can eat more candy than me. I took a giant Butterfinger and swallowed it. We all started furiously unwrapping candy bars and stuffing them into our faces as fast as we could. All of us except for Andrea and Emily, of course.
It was like one of t
hose eating contests on Coney Island where guys eat fifty hot dogs one after the other. We were eating our candy like it was the last day on Earth before a meteorite destroyed the planet.
You should have been there! It was the greatest day of my life.
Andrea and Emily just watched us, rolling their eyes and saying how disgusting we were.
After a few million hundred candy bars, my stomach was starting to feel a little funny. For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to eat any more candy. All I wanted to do was lie down.
That’s when everything went black.
8
Nightmare of the Living Teachers
Spooky music was playing, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. The whole world around me was dark and gloomy. I didn’t know if I was awake or asleep. It was creepy.
“Where am I?” I asked. “Is this a dream . . . or a nightmare?”
But nobody answered.
And then I heard the sound of footsteps. Lots of footsteps. They were getting closer. Coming toward me.
“Help!” I tried to shout. “Help!”
But no words came out of my mouth.
Soon I was able to make out some faces. I was surrounded by people coming at me from all sides.
They were the teachers at my school!
Mrs. Daisy! Mrs. Roopy! Mr. Granite! Ms. Hannah! Mr. Macky! Miss Small! They were all there! And they were wearing weird costumes. They had their hands out in front of them and glassy looks in their eyes. It was like I was being attacked by zombie teachers!
“We’re coming to get you, A.J.” they droned. “We’re coming to get you. . . .”
“Noooooooooooo!”
I tried to back away from them, but there was a wall behind me. The teachers were all over me.
“Candy rots your teeth,” said Mrs. Cooney, our school nurse. “We must take it away from you.”
“Candy spoils your appetite,” said Ms. LaGrange, our lunch lady. “We must take it away from you.”
“Candy is bad for you,” said Miss Holly, our Spanish teacher. “We must take it away from you.”
“No! No!” I shouted. “Don’t take my candy away! Please! I’m begging you!”
“Okay,” said Ms. Hannah, our art teacher. “Then we’re going to pour green paint all over you.”
“What? Wait! Why?”
“It’s my favorite color,” Ms. Hannah said as she dumped a big bucket filled with green paint all over my head.
“No! Stop! Don’t!”
“Aha-ha-ha!” yelled Ms. Hannah. “It’s Halloween! He’s turning green!”
All the teachers started chanting.
“He’s turning green! It’s Halloween! He’s turning green!”
“HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPP!”
But they wouldn’t stop. My whole body was covered with green paint. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. It was the worst dream I ever had. I hoped it was a dream anyway.
Suddenly, the teachers stopped pouring green paint on me. They turned around. They looked frightened.
“Run!” shouted Mr. Klutz, our principal. “Quickly! Run away!”
The teachers ran away, and you’ll never believe in a million hundred years who showed up a few seconds later. It was a group of penguins! There must have been hundreds of them! Or was it a bunch of little kids dressed up like penguins? I wasn’t sure.
“Come with us, A.J.,” one of the penguins said. “Come with us to Antarctica.”
They looked like they were friendly penguins.
“Penguins can talk?” I asked.
“Of course,” said one of the other penguins.
“In Antarctica there are no mean teachers who steal your candy or pour green paint over you,” a penguin said. “Just lots of nice, clean snow and ice.”
“Yes, and candy,” said another penguin.
“We can play in the snow and eat candy all day long,” said the first penguin. “All the candy you can eat. And you’ll never get sick.”
“Really?” I asked. “Antarctica sounds wonderful.”
“It will be like Halloween every day of the year,” said another penguin. “Come with us, A.J. Come with us to Antarctica. It’s right around the corner.”
“Right around the corner . . . ,” I mumbled. “Halloween every day . . .”
9
A Bunch of Squirrels
“Wake up! Dude, are you okay?”
I opened my eyes. Billy was kneeling over me.
“Huh? What? Where am I?” I asked.
The whole gang was standing there in a circle around me: Ryan, Michael, Alexia, Neil, Andrea, Emily. I checked my arms and legs. They were clean. I didn’t have any green paint on me.
“You must have had some kind of a nightmare, dude,” Billy said. “You were out. We thought we might have to call an ambulance.”
“You kept mumbling something about going around the corner,” said Ryan.
“The teachers at school were trying to steal my candy,” I told them. “They were walking around like zombies. All of them! When I refused to give them the candy, they dumped green paint all over me.”
“Paint?” asked Neil.
“I guess it wasn’t real paint,” I said. “It was just a pigment of my imagination.”
“That was scary!” said Emily, who’s scared by just about anything.
“Why would the teachers want to dump green paint on you?” Alexia asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It was a dream!” I told her. “Dreams don’t always make sense. It was horrible! But then I was rescued by some nice penguins. They wanted me to run away with them to Antarctica.”
“You should have listened to me, Arlo,” Andrea told me. “I told you that eating so much candy would make you sick.”
“Your face makes me sick,” I told Andrea.
“Oh, snap!” said Ryan.
I got up off the ground and brushed the dirt off my costume.
“That was one weird dream you had, dude,” Billy said. “Maybe you should stop eating so much candy.”
As it turned out, I had to stop eating so much candy, because my pillowcase had nothing in it except for candy wrappers. I had eaten all my candy! Ryan and Michael said they only had a few candy bars left. The only ones who had a lot of candy were Andrea and Emily.
It was dark out, and it was getting late. Soon trick-or-treating would be over, and we would have to go home. Bummer in the summer!
“Hey,” Ryan suddenly said, “if I go home without any candy, I won’t have any candy to eat tomorrow.”
“That’s right,” agreed Michael. “The only candy we have in our house is Halloween candy.”
“Same here,” said Neil the nude kid. “I might have to wait a whole year until next Halloween before I can get more candy.”
This was a horrible situation!
“What are we going to do?” asked Alexia.
There was only one thing we could do.
“Get more candy!” we all shouted.
We took off down the street, knocking on every door we could find. When we finished the street, we turned down the next street and went trick-or-treating there. I didn’t even know which direction we were heading in anymore. I didn’t care. I just wanted to fill my pillowcase with candy. We were like a bunch of squirrels, gathering nuts so we would be able to make it through the winter.
Finally, after a million hundred minutes, we had lots of candy again. There was one more house on the street that we hadn’t visited. We all ran up the front steps.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Andrea said, checking the number on the front porch. “I know who lives in this house! You’ll never believe who it is.”
“Who?” we all shouted.
“Mrs. Yonkers!”
10
The Expanding Universe
Andrea rang the doorbell, and sure enough Mrs. Yonkers popped her head out of the screen door.
Well, she didn’t really pop her head out of the screen door. If you popped your head o
ut of a screen door, it would hurt. Also, you wouldn’t have a head anymore.
“Oob!” we all shouted. “Treat or trick!”
“Well, howdy, y’all!” Mrs. Yonkers said. “Yee-ha! I’ve been waiting for you varmints to show up.”
She’s from Texas. People from Texas say “y’all,” “yee-ha,” and “varmints” all the time on TV. Nobody knows why.
Mrs. Yonkers is the computer teacher at our school. She’s a genius, and she’s always inventing stuff. Like one time she invented a giant hamster wheel that generated electricity. Another time she invented a boat that traveled through time. She even started her own computer company called NERD: New Electronic Research Development.
Mrs. Yonkers was wearing one of those big yellow fake-cheese hats. It wasn’t her Halloween costume. She wears that thing all the time. Nobody knows why. She let each of us take two candy bars from her bowl.
“Andrea said you have a magical Halloween surprise treat that we can’t get anywhere else,” I said.
“I do!” Mrs. Yonkers told us. “Do y’all want to see it?”
“Yee-ha!” we all shouted.
Everybody was excited as Mrs. Yonkers led us into her kitchen. She told us she had created a top secret invention that nobody knew about yet. Then she waved her hand dramatically and pointed to the microwave oven.
“Ta-da!” she said. “Here it is!”
We all looked at it.
“Uh, that’s just a microwave oven,” Ryan said.
“Oh, it looks just like a microwave oven,” Mrs. Yonkers told us. “But actually, it’s the revolutionary new MicroMole 4000 Expandinator.”
We all looked at it some more. It sure looked like a microwave oven to me.
“What does it do?” asked Neil the nude kid.
“Let me see if I can explain,” Mrs. Yonkers told us. “For thousands of years, scientists have wondered where the universe ends. Does it have an edge somewhere, or does it just go on forever and ever?”