Bummer in the Summer!

by Dan Gutman

  Dedication

  To Emma

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1.Three Months of Recess!

  2.The Underwearwolf

  3.The Ghost of Summer Past

  4.The L Word

  5.Two Words That Should Never Be in the Same Sentence

  6.Bad News and Worse News

  7.The Ghost of Now

  8.More Bad News

  9.Bingle Boo!

  10.How Does It Feel?

  11.The Ghost of Summers Yet to Come

  12.The Next Day at School

  Bonus: Weird Extras!

  Professor A.J.’s Weird Summer Facts

  Fun Games and Weird Word Puzzles

  My Weird School Trivia Questions

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  My name is A.J. and I hate ghosts.

  Ghosts are creepy! They’re always following you around, pestering you, and haunting your house. They like to make scary noises in the middle of the night to freak people out. I guess they have nothing better to do with their time.

  When I drop dead someday, I’m not going to bother people or scare them by making noises in the middle of the night. I’m just going to sit around playing video games. That would be a great life. I mean, death.

  When I was a little kid, I was sure there was a ghost living in my bedroom closet. I couldn’t sleep at night. So my parents took out the vacuum cleaner and sucked up the ghost. It was like Ghostbusters! But I never go into my closet anymore. And I’m never going to use the vacuum cleaner, because there’s a ghost inside it.

  Just kidding! I’m a big guy now, and I don’t believe in ghosts anymore. I don’t know why I started talking about ghosts in the first place. There won’t be anything else in this book about ghosts. I promise.

  What I really want to talk about is the summer. Summer is going to be here soon, and it’s my favorite time of the year. Why? Because we don’t have to go to school in the summer, of course.

  Think about it—three whole months with no school! That’s about ninety days. I worked it out on a calculator. Ninety days is 2,160 hours; 2,160 hours is 129,600 minutes; 129,600 minutes is 7,776,000 seconds—more than seven million seconds! That’s a lot of time! And I’m not going to waste any of those seconds.

  Summer is still a few months away, but I believe in advance planning. So here’s my plan for this coming summer. I wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget. . . .

  Go swimming.

  Eat ice cream.*

  Play ball.

  Lie in the grass.

  Go to the beach.

  Catch fireflies.

  Watch TV.

  Play video games.

  Throw Frisbees.

  Have water balloon fights.

  Play Ping-Pong.

  Peel off my sunburned skin.

  Eat more ice cream.

  Hang out with my friends Ryan, Michael, Neil, and Alexia.

  Eat candy.

  Sleep late and stay up late.

  Eat even more ice cream.

  That’s what makes a great summer.

  I also made a list of stuff I won’t be doing this summer. . . .

  No teachers.

  No books or book reports.

  No homework.

  No reading.

  No writing.

  No math.

  No social studies.

  No assemblies.

  No lining up in single file.

  No Word of the Day.

  No cafeteria food.

  No report cards.

  No rules.

  No learning stuff.

  No Andrea and no Emily.

  No weird grown-ups.

  Summer is like three months of recess! Just thinking about the summer coming makes me feel happy. This is sure to be the greatest summer of my life. And I’ll only have to wait a few months for it to start.

  I put on my Superman pajamas and climbed into bed thinking about the great summer ahead. I lay on my back and clasped my hands behind my head, which is what you do when you’re feeling happy. Nobody knows why. Life was good. As I dozed off to sleep, I was thinking about the fantastic summer I was going to have.

  That’s when the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened.

  I’m not going to tell you what it was.

  Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. But you have to read the next chapter. So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on you.

  I was fast asleep, which makes no sense at all because you can’t be slow asleep, can you? You don’t sleep slow or fast. You just sleep at one speed.

  There was an empty silence. I opened my eyes. It was dark and spooky outside my bedroom window. I heard the sound of rattling chains. And then, suddenly, there was a light shining through the fog outside. It was a flashlight, I think. That’s when the window opened, all by itself.

  And then . . . somebody climbed into my bedroom!

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” I screamed.

  It was a boy. He was wearing white underwear and no pants. That was weird. But everything about him was weird. He was weighted down by heavy chains. I saw it with my own eyes!* You should have been there!

  My eyes had to adjust to the light. It was hard to see. Finally, I figured out who the boy was. It was my friend Billy, who lives around the corner!

  “I am the Underwearwolf!” Billy announced. And then he let out an eerie cackling laugh that totally freaked me out. I was trembling with fear. I thought I was gonna die!

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”

  I remembered that Billy dressed up for Halloween last year as the Underwearwolf. He’s basically a werewolf who wears underwear, so he has the perfect name. Billy is weird.

  I was sure my mom and dad were going to come running into my room to find out what was going on. But they didn’t. I guess they didn’t hear anything.

  “Billy, you scared me!” I told him. “What are you doing here? It’s the middle of the night. Shouldn’t you be home, asleep?”

  “I come with a warning, A.J.,” Billy said in a spooky voice. “You have been a bad boy. A very bad boy.”

  “Wait,” I said. “You just broke into my house in the middle of the night dressed up like a monster, and I’ve been a bad boy?”

  “That’s right,” Billy replied.

  “What did I do?” I asked.

  “I’m not going to tell you,” Billy replied. “But you will be haunted by spirits who will come to visit you. You must listen to them, or else.”

  “Or else what?” I asked.

  “You’ll find out,” he replied mysteriously.

  “Oh, come on,” I told Billy. “That’s just crazy.”

  It was. And to prove it, Billy let out another eerie cackling laugh that sent shivers down my spine. You know somebody’s crazy when they let out an eerie cackling laugh for no reason.

  “You must believe me, A.J.,” Billy said. “The spirits are coming.”

  “When?” I asked. “When will they be here?”

  “Very soon,” he replied. “The first one will come . . . in the next chapter!”

  “That will be on the next page!” I shouted.

  Suddenly the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened. Billy jumped out the window! He made another eerie cackling laugh on his way down.

  That was it. He was gone.

  I guess it was just a bad dream.

  I went back to sleep, thinking that was the end of it. Everybody has a bad dream now and then, right? No big deal. It happens every day.

  I was sleeping soundly. I’m not sure if that means I was making a lot of sound or if I wasn’t making any sound at all. Anyway, after an hour or two,
I heard the clock strike ten. That was weird, because I don’t have a clock in my bedroom.

  I opened my eyes. The window was closed, but I felt the presence of somebody . . . or something . . . in my room. And then there was this spooky voice. . . .

  “A.J. . . . A.J. . . . A.J. . . .”

  My name echoed off the walls. Maybe it was my imagination. It could have been a hallucination. Or a dramatization. I’m not sure, because there was very little illumination. My name is an abbreviation. There should have been some elaboration. Or amplification. It was very poor communication. That was my evaluation. For me, it was a humiliation. I just hoped it wasn’t an assassination. I should conduct an investigation.

  Sorry, I got carried away.*

  And then, suddenly, I noticed a fuzzy-looking figure hovering over my bed.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”

  It was a ghost!

  Okay, okay. I know I said there would be nothing else about ghosts in this book. But what was I supposed to do? It was out of my control! The ghost just showed up in my bedroom. You’ve gotta believe me!

  I could see right through the ghost floating in the air. It started forming into the shape of a person. He was a man. A bald man. His head was glowing like a lightbulb. Actually, he looked a lot like my principal at school, Mr. Klutz. But why would Mr. Klutz be floating over my bed in the middle of the night?

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. I had to think fast.

  “Who are y-you?” I asked in a trembling voice.

  “I am the ghost of summers past,” he replied, “Your past, A.J.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I said. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “Well, we believe in you,” the ghost replied.

  “You look a lot like the principal at my school, Mr. Klutz,” I told the ghost.

  “I bet you say that about all the handsome bald-headed ghosts who hover over your bed in the middle of the night,” said the ghost of Mr. Klutz.

  “Are you one of those spirits that my friend Billy said was going to visit me?” I asked.

  “You got that right,” replied the ghost of Mr. Klutz.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked him. “What do you want with me? I’m trying to sleep. This is a school night, you know.”

  The ghost of Mr. Klutz held up his hand and made a victory peace sign with his fingers, which means “shut up.”

  “Come,” he said, holding out his floating hand. “Follow me, A.J.”

  “HUH?” I said, which is also “HUH” backward. I got out of bed. “Follow you where? Where are we going?”

  “Out the window,” the ghost of Mr. Klutz replied. As he said that, the window opened all by itself.

  “B-but . . .”

  The ghost of Mr. Klutz giggled.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “You said ‘but,’ which sounds just like ‘butt’ even though it only has one t in it.”

  Well, that was true. They really should have two separate words for “but” and “butt.” But it seemed like a pretty immature thing for a man to say.

  The ghost of Mr. Klutz floated over to the window.

  “Come with me, A.J.,” he said. “We’re going on a journey.”

  “Out the window?” I asked. “I don’t think so. You can go out the window. I’m staying right here.”

  “Don’t be afraid, A.J.,” the ghost of Mr. Klutz said, floating halfway out the window. “You can fly, just like me.”

  The ghost of Mr. Klutz was nuts!

  “No way,” I told him. “I’ll fall.”

  “Hold my hand and you won’t fall,” he said. “Just take one step. Trust me.”

  He was all the way out the window now, floating there. I went over to the window.

  “I’m scared,” I admitted.

  “You, scared?” the ghost of Mr. Klutz said. “Isn’t that what you’re always saying about the girl in your class named Emily?”

  “How do you know about that?” I asked.

  “Oh, I know about everything you say and do, A.J.,” the ghost of Mr. Klutz replied. “Come. Don’t be a crybaby. Take a step out the window and come flying with me.”

  Nobody calls me a crybaby. I put my foot up on the windowsill. Flying sounded cool, even though it was scary.

  I leaned out the window.

  I put my other foot on the windowsill.

  I closed my eyes.

  I took a step.

  I was floating! I was flying!

  “WOW!” I said, which is “MOM” upside down. “Am I a ghost too? Am I dead?”

  “Temporarily, yes,” said the ghost of Mr. Klutz. “Okay, follow me, A.J.”

  I floated out the window and put my hands in front of me, like Superman. The ghost of Mr. Klutz led the way. We flew over my house and started gliding over rooftops. I was swooping up, down, left, and right. Flying is probably the coolest thing in the history of the world. If I could choose one superpower over all the others, it would be the power to fly.

  We flew a long way, maybe a million hundred miles. Suddenly it wasn’t nighttime anymore. It was the middle of the day, and it was hot out. I could see water in the distance. It looked like the ocean.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “We’re in the past now,” the ghost of Mr. Klutz told me. “It’s last summer. Do you remember last summer, A.J.?”

  “Sure,” I told him. “My family rented a beach house, and all my friends came over.”

  “That’s right,” said the ghost of Mr. Klutz.

  Suddenly I could see the beach in front of me. It was filled with blankets, coolers, umbrellas, and lots of people playing in the sand and swimming in the ocean.

  “Look!” I shouted. “There are my friends Ryan, Michael, Neil, and Alexia playing football on the beach. Hey guys! Look at me, I’m flying!”

  “They can’t see or hear you, A.J.,” the ghost of Mr. Klutz told me. “Remember, this isn’t today you’re seeing. This is last summer.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Oooh, look! There’s me! And there’s Mr. Sunny, the lifeguard. And there’s Andrea Young, that annoying girl in my class with curly brown hair!”

  We swooped down low. Mr. Sunny was building a giant sand castle. I remembered that he loved everything to do with sand. Andrea was staring at him and making goo-goo eyes. She had a crush on Mr. Sunny. The ghost of Mr. Klutz and I were flying so low that I could hear Andrea talking to A.J. in the past.

  “I have it all planned out,” Andrea said. “When I grow up, Mr. Sunny and I will be married right here on the beach. We’ll have a solar-powered bungalow, and I’ll help him build sand castles all day. It will be sooooooo romantic.”

  “You can’t marry Mr. Sunny, dumbhead,” A.J. in the past told Andrea. “He’s too old for you.”

  “You’re mean, Arlo!” Andrea shouted at A.J. in the past. “I can marry anybody I want!”

  “Dumbhead!” A.J. in the past shouted at Andrea.

  The ghost of Mr. Klutz swooped up in the air and I followed him.

  “That wasn’t very nice, A.J.,” he told me. “Why do you say mean things like ‘dumbhead’ to Andrea all the time?”

  “She says mean things to me,” I replied.

  “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” said the ghost of Mr. Klutz. “Come, A.J. Let’s go to another place.”

  I followed the ghost of Mr. Klutz as we swooped higher into the sky. Then we zoomed really fast away from the ocean.

  “Where are you taking me now?” I asked.

  “You’ll find out,” the ghost of Mr. Klutz replied.

  Flying is so cool. I wish I could fly everywhere. We swooped down lower, and I could see the rooftop of Ella Mentry School in the distance. That’s my school.

  “Wait, you’re taking me to school?” I asked.

  “Yes,” the ghost of Mr. Klutz replied, “in more ways than one.”

  We were getting closer to the school.

  The ghost of Mr. Klutz wasn’t slowing down.

 
; It looked like we were going to crash right into the wall of the school!

  “Watch out!” I shouted, putting my hands over my eyes.

  But we didn’t crash. We flew right through the wall! It was the coolest thing ever. Being a temporary ghost was fun!

  The ghost of Mr. Klutz and I flew through the wall into the vomitorium. It used to be called the cafetorium, but then some first grader threw up in there and everybody started calling it the vomitorium. It was all decorated for Halloween, with pictures of witches and pumpkins and bats and stuff.*

  The whole gang was sitting below us eating lunch, including me, A.J. in the past.

  “Can they see or hear us?” I asked the ghost of Mr. Klutz.

  “No,” he replied as we hovered over the table. “Do you remember this day, A.J.?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I replied. “Halloween is my favorite holiday.”

  “Do you love it?” the ghost of Mr. Klutz asked me.

  Ugh, he said the L word. I didn’t answer. I try to never say the L word out loud. That’s the first rule of being a kid.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought you were the ghost of SUMMERS past.”

  “Halloween isn’t in the summer?” asked the ghost of Mr. Klutz. “Oops. I really need to get a calendar.”

  Below us, my friends were talking about Miss Mary, who was a student teacher and also happens to be Mr. Klutz’s daughter.

  “Miss Mary is scary,” A.J. in the past said.

  “She looks like a vampire,” said Neil.

  “Maybe she really is a vampire,” said A.J. in the past. “Did you ever think of that? She dresses in all black. She wears black makeup. She’s got a pet bat.”

  “Stop trying to scare Emily,” Andrea told A.J. in the past.

  “I’m scared,” said Emily.

  “Miss Mary probably lives in a cave and sleeps hanging upside down from the ceiling,” said A.J. in the past. “Then she goes out at night and bites people in the neck and drinks their blood.”

  “We’ve got to do something!” Emily yelled, and then she went running out of the vomitorium. Everybody laughed except Andrea, who made a mean face at A.J. in the past.