Bummer in the Summer!

by Dan Gutman

  The ghost of Mr. Klutz turned to me.

  “That wasn’t very nice, A.J. The things you said that day weren’t nice to Emily, and it wasn’t nice what you said about my daughter either.”

  “I was just trying to be funny,” I told him.

  “Sometimes what’s funny to you isn’t funny to other people,” the ghost of Mr. Klutz told me. “Sometimes what’s funny to you hurts other people’s feelings.”

  “What if I say I’m sorry?” I asked.

  “It’s too late now,” said the ghost of Mr. Klutz. “That happened a long time ago. Let’s go.”

  I followed the ghost of Mr. Klutz as he flew through the wall again and out of the school.

  “You seem to have a lot of anger in you, A.J.,” the ghost of Mr. Klutz said as we flew over the rooftops. “It’s not nice to be a hater.”

  “I’m not a hater,” I told the ghost of Mr. Klutz. “I hate haters.”

  “Is that so?” he replied, taking a piece of paper out of his pocket as he flew. “I made a little list of things you’ve said you hate. Let me see. You said you hate school. You said you hate spiders. You hate reading out loud. Tests. Snot. Ferrets. Germs. Being smart. Putting on plays. Board games. Taking a bath. Flowers. Rain—”

  “Yeah, I guess I did say I hate those things,” I admitted.

  “—Getting hit by water balloons,” the ghost of Mr. Klutz continued. “Coffee. Dead fish. When a helicopter falls on your head. Zombies. When the school gets attacked by monsters. Toilet seats. When an alien spaceship lands in the middle of the playground. When an asteroid crashes into the earth and wipes out all life on our planet—”

  “Yeah, I said I hate that stuff too, come to think of it,” I admitted.

  “Okay, so I know lots of things that you hate,” the ghost of Mr. Klutz said. “Now tell me some of the things that you love.”

  He said the L word again!

  “I don’t L anything.”

  “Are you telling the truth, A.J.?” the ghost of Mr. Klutz asked me.

  “Of course I’m telling the truth!”

  “If you’re not telling the truth,” the ghost of Mr. Klutz said, “that would make you a hater and a liar.”

  “I never told a lie in my life,” I insisted.

  “Oh no?” said the ghost of Mr. Klutz. “You said there would be no ghosts in this book, and here I am. So that was a lie.”

  “Hey, I didn’t know you were going to show up!” I shouted at him. I was really mad now. “I’m innocent!”

  “I think you might have an anger management problem, A.J.,” the ghost of Mr. Klutz told me. “It would be good if you could appreciate some of the nice things in life. All the things that you love.”

  Ugh. He said that word again.

  “I bet there are lots of things that you love, A.J.” said the ghost of Mr. Klutz.

  “The L word is for girls,” I told him.

  “Love is for everybody, A.J.,” he replied. “Admit it!”

  “No!”

  We were getting close to my house.

  “It’s time for you to go back home now,” the ghost of Mr. Klutz told me as we hovered outside my window. “As you mentioned, it’s a school night.”

  “Can’t we fly around some more?” I asked. “Flying is awesome.”

  “Will you admit that you love flying, A.J.?”

  I didn’t want to say the L word out loud. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. I had to think fast. This was the worst thing to happen since TV Turnoff Week.

  But I couldn’t say it. I wasn’t going to say the L word. So I didn’t say anything.

  “Good night, A.J.,” said the ghost of Mr. Klutz with a sigh.

  I climbed back through the window and got into bed. I turned around to say good-bye, but the ghost of Mr. Klutz was already gone.

  I touched my skin. I wasn’t a ghost anymore. I pulled the covers up over my head and went back to sleep.

  This was turning out to be a very weird night. And it was about to get weirder.

  I thought that was the end of it. Seeing the ghost of Mr. Klutz had to be just a once-in-a-lifetime bad dream. Nothing like that could ever happen again.

  But then something else weird happened. The clock struck eleven, and I thought I should really get myself a clock. Just as I was falling back asleep, I heard another spooky voice.

  “A.J. . . . A.J. . . . A.J. . . .”

  When I opened my eyes, I saw that there were two ghosts floating over my bed.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” I screamed.

  The ghosts put their fingers up to their lips.

  “Shhhhhhh,” they whispered.

  “Help!” I shouted. “Security! There’s somebody in my room!”

  “Shhhhhhh.”

  “What are you doing in my bedroom?” I asked. “How did you get in here? Isn’t this breaking and entering?”

  The words READ LIKE CRAZY were on the ghosts’ shirts, and the ghosts were each carrying a big cardboard box. I looked at the ghosts more closely. They looked a lot like Mr. Macky, our reading specialist, and Mrs. Roopy, our librarian.

  “Mrs. Roopy?” I called out. “Mr. Macky?”

  “Never heard of those people,” said the ghost that looked like Mrs. Roopy. “We are . . . the ghosts of summer reading.”

  WHAT?! “Summer” and “reading” are two words that should never be in the same sentence. That’s the first rule of being a kid.

  “I never heard of the ghosts of summer reading,” I said.

  “It’s a thing,” said Mr. Macky.

  “You two look just like Mr. Macky and Mrs. Roopy from my school.”

  “We get that all the time,” said the ghost of Mr. Macky.

  “We brought you some presents, A.J.,” said the ghost of Mrs. Roopy.

  Presents? I like getting presents! Maybe these weren’t bad ghosts. I wondered what was in the boxes they were carrying. The ghosts floated down and put them on the edge of my bed.

  “Is there a new video game system in there?” I asked excitedly. “Is it a new skateboard?”

  “No,” said Mr. Macky. “We brought you some . . . books.”*

  WHAT!? Books?! I hate books! I don’t even know why you’re reading this one. Books are boring. Reading is boring.

  “I don’t like to read,” I told the two ghosts.

  They let out eerie cackling laughs as they opened the boxes.

  “That’s too bad,” said Mr. Macky, pulling out a thick book and handing it to me. “Because this summer your assignment will be to read The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.”

  “Noooooooo!” I shouted, covering my ears. “Not Shakespeare! He’s the most boring of all!”

  Mrs. Roopy pulled a fat book out of her box. “This is the first book of a twenty-book encyclopedia,” she told me. “You’ll have to read all twenty books.”

  “Noooooooo!” I screamed at her. “Not an encyclopedia!”

  There was nothing I could do. They were already pulling more books out of their boxes. Fiction. Nonfiction. Chapter books. Nonchapter books. Picture books. Nonpicture books. It was horrible! I wanted to run away to Antarctica and live with the penguins.

  “And after that, just for fun,” said Mr. Macky, “we’re going to have you read a complete collection of all the books that have won the Newbery Medal.”

  “No, not the Newbery books!” I screamed. “Anything but them! I’ll be bored to death!”

  “Oh, and by the way,” said Mr. Macky, “there will be a test on all these books on the first day of school in September.”

  “No! No! Noooooooo!” I shouted. “I hate reading, and I hate tests! Get out of my bedroom!”

  “Have a good summer . . . reading!” said Mrs. Roopy. The two of them broke into another eerie cackling laugh as they flew through the window. I could hear them chanting, “I before E except after C . . . or when sounding like A as in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh.’ I before E except after C . . .”

  I lay my head back on the pil
low. It was another terrible dream. No, not a dream. It was a nightmare. This was the worst thing to happen since National Poetry Month. When would I wake up from this awful night? I couldn’t wait for morning to come.

  Somehow I managed to fall back asleep. But I was tossing and turning the whole time.

  “A.J. . . . A.J. . . . A.J. . . .”

  Oh no, not again! I had been sleeping peacefully when I heard more voices above my bed. I opened my eyes. This time, there were three ghosts floating over me!

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”

  It was Miss Daisy, Mr. Granite, and Mr. Cooper—all three teachers I’ve had at Ella Mentry School! I had never seen them together.

  “Hello, A.J.,” said the ghost of Mr. Granite. “Long time no see.”

  “Mr. Granite!” I said. “I thought you went back to your home planet.”

  “I did,” he replied. “But I came back here because we have some important news for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “There’s bad news and worse news,” said the ghost of Miss Daisy. “Which do you want to hear first?”

  “This has been a horrible night so far,” I told them. “Give me the bad news first.”

  “You’re going to have to repeat third grade,” said the ghost of Mr. Cooper.

  “What?! I have to do third grade all over again?”

  “That’s right,” the ghost of Mr. Cooper told me.

  “Why? What did I do?”

  “Let me see,” said the ghost of Mr. Cooper. “You talk in class. You shout things out without raising your hand. You don’t turn in your homework. You come to school late. . . .”

  Hmmm. I couldn’t argue with that.

  “You’re absent too many days,” continued the ghost of Mr. Granite. “You go to the bathroom just to get out of class. You put a worm in Emily’s sneaker during recess. You wrote KICK ME on a piece of paper and taped it to Andrea’s back.* You told Emily she had six toes on each foot. You started a war by shooting rubber bands at the girls’ Barbie dolls. You hypnotized Andrea and told her that her feet smell like rotten cabbage. . . .”

  “Should we continue?” said the ghosts of Mr. Cooper and Mr. Granite.

  “But I don’t want to go through third grade all over again!”

  “Are you ready for the worse news?” asked the ghost of Miss Daisy.

  “No,” I groaned.

  “Before you go through third grade all over again,” she said, “you have to go through second grade all over again. And first grade too. You’re going to have to start school all over again from the beginning.”

  “WHAT?!” I shouted. “No! That’s not fair!”

  “Sorry,” said the ghost of Mr. Granite. “And oh, by the way, from now on, school is going to be all year round. No more summer vacation.”

  “WHAT?!”

  “Yes, the Board of Education changed the schedule,” said the ghost of Mr. Cooper. “They found that during summer vacation kids forget much of what they learned during the school year. So the Board of Ed decided to get rid of summer vacation entirely.”

  Ahhhhhhhhhh!

  This was turning out to be the worst night in the history of nights. When would it end? The clock that I didn’t have struck one.

  “A.J. . . . A.J. . . . A.J. . . .”

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”

  There was another weird-looking ghost floating over my bed! It took me a few seconds to realize it was the ghost of Dr. Brad, our school counselor. He has crazy hair and looks like one of those mad scientists in the movies who straps people to a chair, removes their brain, and puts a monkey brain in its place.

  “I am zee ghost of vut’s happening right now,” said Dr. Brad.*

  He talks funny, and his eyebrows jump up and down as he speaks.

  “Wait,” I said. “Right now has a ghost? That’s weird.”

  “I vud like you to come vis me, A.J.,” said the ghost of Dr. Brad. “Vee are going on a leetle journey.”

  Another journey? The journey with Mr. Klutz wasn’t much fun.

  Oh, well, I figured. At least I would get to fly again. Flying is cool.

  “When are we going?” I asked.

  “Right now, of course,” the ghost of Dr. Brad replied. “I am zee ghost of vut’s happening right now.”

  He floated out the window, and I followed him. I wasn’t afraid this time.

  “Come,” said the ghost of Dr. Brad. “Zare is much to see.”

  We flew about a mile or so, and then we swooped down over a playground. But it wasn’t the playground of my school. It was the playground of Dirk School, another school in our town. The guys and me call it Dork School. It’s for really smart kids.

  There were lots of kids running around the playground. It must have been their recess time. There were some big posters on the walls with slogans like RESPECT OTHERS and BE CONSIDERATE. The ghost of Dr. Brad and I floated low over the playground.

  “Do you notice anyzing different about zis school, A.J.?” he asked me.

  “Uh . . . the kids are dorks?” I guessed.

  “No,” said the ghost of Dr. Brad. “Zuh children are being nice to each uhzer.”

  He was right. Nobody was pushing and fighting or saying mean things to anybody else.

  “Zee vut I mean?” said the ghost of Dr. Brad. “Zuh children are sharing. Zay are cooperating. Zay are helping each other. And zay are having fun, A.J.”

  Hmmmm, interesting. Everybody at Dirk School seemed so happy.

  “Wait,” I said. “Are you telling me that kids can actually have a good time without saying mean things to each other?”

  “Yes! Zat is exactly vut I am saying.”

  I had no idea this was possible. I always thought the only way to have fun was to say dumb stuff about other kids and make everybody else laugh. This was blowing my mind!

  “Can I go to Dirk School?” I asked.

  “No,” said the ghost of Dr. Brad. “Only zuh nice boys and girls can come here. But zis is how you are supposed to behave, A.J. People need to be polite and respectful of one annozer so zay can live in peace and harmony. You vud never get into zis school. Sorry, A.J.”

  We flew to my house without saying anything. I went back to bed. The ghost of Dr. Brad had given me somezing to zink about. I mean, something to think about.

  The clock struck two.

  “A.J. . . . A.J. . . . A.J. . . . A.J. . . . A.J. . . . A.J. . . .”

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”

  I opened my eyes to see that my bedroom was filled with ghosts. There must have been seven or eight of them floating around in there!

  I recognized Mrs. Yonkers, our computer teacher, and Ms. Leakey, our health teacher. Miss Small, our Fizz Ed teacher, was there. So was Miss Tracy, who came to school to teach us about astronomy. And Miss Newman, the local TV weather lady. There was Mr. Will, the guy who drives the Ding-Dong ice cream truck. And Mr. Burke, the guy who mows the lawn at school. And Mrs. Lilly, a reporter for the local newspaper.

  “We are ghosts,” they all said at the same time.

  “I kinda figured that,” I told them. “What are you all doing here?”

  “I have some bad news, A.J.,” said the ghost of Mr. Will.

  “Oh great,” I groaned. “Who doesn’t? What’s your bad news?”

  “I ran out of ice cream today,” said the ghost of Mr. Will.

  “That’s not so bad,” I told him. “You can get more ice cream tomorrow.”

  “No,” the ghost of Mr. Will replied. “I’m afraid there’s no more ice cream left. There’s a worldwide ice cream shortage.”

  WHAT?!

  “How long is the ice cream shortage supposed to last?” I asked.

  “Forever,” replied the ghost of Mr. Will.

  “There’s no more candy either,” said the ghost of Ms. Leakey. “It’s all gone.”

  “Nooooooo!” I shouted. “No more ice cream or candy? Those are the two most important food groups! How am I going to survive?”

  “Sports have been canc
eled this summer too,” said Miss Small sadly.

  “And all the swimming pools have to be drained,” said Mr. Burke.

  “WHAT?!” I shouted. “No more sports? No swimming either? What happened?”

  “We believe it has something to do with the earth’s rotation,” said Mrs. Yonkers. “I’ve been tracking it on the computer.”

  “Perhaps I can explain,” said Miss Tracy. “For reasons we don’t quite understand, the speed that the earth turns around its axis has sped up in the last few days. What happened was, radiation blah blah gravitation blah blah constellation blah blah calculation blah blah calibration blah blah combination blah blah dehydration blah blah navigation blah blah situation blah blah transformation blah blah. . . .”

  I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “You see,” said Mrs. Newman, “there was a high-pressure blah blah, which caused a thermal inversion vector blah blah, which led to global blah blah and wind chill factor blah blah blah blah.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about either. But I knew one thing for sure. It was the most horrible thing to happen in the history of the world!

  “This is big news!” said Mrs. Lilly, sticking a microphone in my face. “I’m writing a story about it for the newspaper. Do you care to comment, A.J.?”

  “Get out of here!” I shouted at all of them. “Get out of my room!”

  The ghosts let out eerie cackling laughs before they lined up in single file and flew out the window.*

  This was the worst night in the history of my life. I simply could not fall back asleep after everything they said. My life was ruined.

  “A.J. . . . A.J. . . . A.J. . . .”

  You’ll never believe in a million hundred years whose ghost was hovering over my bed this time.

  It was Mrs. Kormel, the lady who drives our school bus!*

  “Bingle boo!” the ghost of Mrs. Kormel said.

  Oh, yeah. She invented her own secret language. Bingle boo means “hello.” Mrs. Kormel is not normal.