Allergic to Birthday Parties, Science Projects, and Other Man-made Catastrophes

by Lenore Look

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2010 by Lenore Look

  Illustrations copyright © 2010 by LeUyen Pham

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Schwartz & Wade Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Schwartz & Wade Books and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Look, Lenore.

  Alvin Ho : allergic to birthday parties, science projects, and other man-made catastrophes / Lenore Look ; [illustrations by LeUyen Pham]. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When second-grader Alvin Ho is invited to a birthday party given by a girl, his fear of everything causes him to dread going.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89498-5

  [1. Fear—Fiction. 2. Self-confidence—Fiction. 3. Parties—Fiction. 4. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. Chinese Americans—Fiction. 7. Concord (Mass.)—Fiction.] I. Pham, LeUyen, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.L8682Aq 2010

  [Fic]—dc22

  2009050622

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  This book belongs to Charity Chen,

  who had no fear of science projects or birthday parties ever.

  —L.L.

  To the great Uncle Rob, who always buys the BEST gifts!

  —L.P.

  AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “Be true to your word and your work and your friend.”

  —John Boyle O’Reilly, “Rules of the Road,”

  Life of John Boyle O’Reilly, 1891

  With heartfelt thanks to:

  Anibelly Kelley, for taking Alvin and the whole gang to Vermont with her.

  LeUyen Pham, for drawing all the Phamtastatic pictures!

  Sophie Fisher, for her research and photos of the you-know-what at Orchard House, and

  Vivian Low Fisher, for driving her there.

  All the fabulous kids in my life who are always giving me lots of story ideas for Alvin, whether or not they know it, including Sophie, Sam, Bell, Buddy, Shepherd, Kevin and Andrew.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Acknowledgments

  Chapter One - One Foot in the Grave

  Chapter Two - Part Two—The Sequel

  Chapter Three - A Two-Pound Hairball

  Chapter Four - Lucky to Be Invited

  Chapter Five - Name Tags Are for Neanderthals

  Chapter Six - Miracle in a Jar

  Chapter Seven - R.S.V.P.

  Chapter Eight - Death by Deep Knee Bends

  Chapter Nine - Busted

  Chapter Ten - How to Talk to a Girl

  Chapter Eleven - What’s the Matter with Alvin?

  Chapter Twelve - Anything Can Happen at the Mall

  Chapter Thirteen - My Life Was Going to the Girls

  Chapter Fourteen - Make It Do

  Chapter Fifteen - Do Certain Foods Produce More Gas than Others?

  Chapter Sixteen - Half-Naked

  Alvin Ho’s Creepy Glossary

  my name is Alvin Ho. I was born scared, and I am still scared. I never thought I’d live to see myself in another book, on account I could’ve very well died camping in that last one. The good news is that I had the secret powers of my Batman ring and my rolls of toilet paper with me. They saved my life.

  The bad news is, there’s still a lot of other things that could kill me, just like that:

  Giant octopus.

  Giant trees.

  Giant anything.

  Monsters.

  Recess.

  Field trips.

  Karate chops.

  Pork chops (if they’re not well-done).

  Chopsticks (if you fall on them).

  The kiss of death.

  The safest place for me to be is home, if you don’t count the fact that my home is in Concord, Massachusetts, which is hard to spell. It’s where the American Revolutionary War began, with lots of explosions and bad language and dead bodies all over the place. There aren’t any dead bodies out there anymore, but there sure are a lot of creepy dead authors who still live inside their homes, giving tours, instead of lying around at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery where they belong. Normally, this isn’t a big problem, like setting fire to the woods, it’s just an average problem, like having the match.

  But today was not normal.

  When I got to school this morning—surprise, surprise—we hopped right back on the bus after A&A (attendance and announcements).

  “Hey, it’s time for handwriting class!” I screamed as the bus rolled down the street, away from school. I love handwriting class.

  “Hooray, no handwriting today!” yelled Pinky, whose handwriting looks like hair floating in the ocean. “Yippie!”

  “Did you forget?” asked Flea, who was sitting next to me. “It’s our field trip day.” Flea’s a girl. Otherwise, she’s okay. She wears a patch over a genuine pirate eye, and one of her legs is longer than the other, like a real peg leg. But she’s still a girl.

  Field trip? What field trip?

  “I’ve been looking forward to this all week!” shrieked Esha.

  “Me too!” said Sara Jane.

  I love field trips. I’m just not good at remembering them.

  The wheels on the bus went round and round.

  Scooter and Jules’s thumbs went up and down in a thumb-wrestling match.

  Then their fists went left-hook, right-hook in a boxing match.

  Then Nhia, who is a ninja from Cambodia, slipped a head-hold on Pinky, who has the biggest head in the class on account of he’s the biggest boy, and Pinky screamed into Nhia’s armpit, which made Hobson whack Eli on the head, which made Sam karate-chop Scooter with a loud “Aiyah!”, which made our teacher, Miss P, who was sitting at the front of the bus, turn around and yell, “SIMMER DOWN, BOYS, OR YOU’LL GET A NOTE SENT HOME!” How she knew who was doing what, all the way from the front of the bus and facing the other way, I’ll never know. But she’s very smart and smells like fresh laundry every day. Maybe she has eyes in the back of her head, just like my mom.

  The noise on the bus simmered down.

  When mouths close, something else is supposed to open, it’s one of the rules of school.

  In this case, it was Scooter’s lunch box. Scooter’s dad is a cook in a restaurant and Scooter gets restaurant leftovers for lunch. And when Scooter opens his lunch box, people sniff.

  It smelled like cold fried chicken. It was cold fried chicken!

  Heads turned.

  Mouths watered.

  Scooter’s teeth sank into the chicken.

  Juice dribbled down his chin.

  This made Hobson, who’s a little roly-poly, yelp that he was hungry too, and rip open his lunch bag—just as the bus went around Monument Square, which isn’t a square at all, it’s a circle—and something went flying. I think it was raisins. Yes, it was raining raisins!

  Then it rained
seaweed crackers! Then potato chips! Then my favorite—Goldfish crackers! Oh, I love field trips!

  The noise on the bus got louder and louder.

  Miss P was not pleased. She yelled, “IT’S NOT LUNCHTIME YET!” But her voice got swallowed by the noise and you had to read her lips.

  And I yelled, “WILL SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHERE WE’RE GOING?” I like field trips, but I don’t like surprises.

  It was too late anyway, our bus was slowing to a stop—at the mouth of the Old Hill Burying Ground!

  And before I knew it, Miss P was marching us up a steep hill of dead people lying in the ground, looking up at the sky.

  It was SO CREEEEEPY, I could’ve died right there!

  But I didn’t.

  I clutched my PDK (Personal Disaster Kit), which contains all the things that are useful in a disaster, such as escape routes, garlic, lucky charms, a scary mask (for keeping girls away) and a wishbone for when nothing else works. And I tried to look as alive as possible, and to step lively, but not step on any graves, just in case.

  I hopped from stone to stone on the path, following Miss P and the rest of the class, until we were going down the hill in the back of the graveyard to where the path disappeared … and some of the oldest and spookiest tombstones were poking out of the grass like black, crooked teeth.

  When Miss P finally stopped, she was hardly out of breath, but the rest of us were panting like we had had too much recess. In front of us was the most crooked tooth of all, a black slab that looked like it was about to fall over on its back. On it was a poem:

  It was the most writing I’d ever seen on a tombstone. It looked like an entire book!

  “Good morning, boys and girls,” said a voice.

  I jumped out of my skin! The only voices in a cemetery are dead ones … but this one belonged to a man who was hurrying toward us, dressed in old-fashioned clothes, very old-fashioned clothes.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “It’s a little hard getting up when you’re as old as I am.”

  Old? He looked like he should have been dead three hundred years ago!

  “My name is Ralph Waldo Emerson,” he said, stopping to catch his breath at the crooked tombstone.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson? What was he doing at the cemetery? He’s one of Concord’s famous dead authors who’s still living in his house giving tours.

  “Normally I just give tours of my house,” the dead author continued. “But you’re on the Abolition Tour today and because of my family’s history in the slave trade, I will be your first guide.”

  A hair-raising wind blew through my shirt.

  “You’re standing at the grave of one of Concord’s earliest slaves,” said the pale Mr. Emerson. “His name was John Jack, and he belonged to a shoemaker.”

  Concord had slaves? I could hardly believe my ears.

  “Yes, Concord had plenty of slaves,” said the pale author.

  Yikes! Can dead people hear our thoughts?

  A big black crow floated above our heads and cawed, “Aw, aw, aw.”

  “Isn’t this cool?” Flea whispered.

  Cool? A chill went up my spine.

  I shuddered and closed my eyes and went to my happy place. It’s summertime and I’m at the Old North Bridge with my family. My mom thinks we’re picnicking and my dad’s pointing out the spot on the hillside where the Minutemen were hiding from the Redcoats, but little do they know that fighting is actually breaking out on the bridge between the Redcoats (my big brother, Calvin, and my little sister, Anibelly) and the Minutemen (me and my dog, Lucy). Bang! Bang! Bang! It’s the beginning of the American Revolution! Redcoats are dropping dead! Minutemen are dropping dead! There are no slaves anywhere. Only a few tourists, and they run away.

  But then my happy place was interrupted. “Slaves were not allowed to fight at North Bridge,” said Mr. Emerson.

  My eyes fluttered open.

  “It was against the law for blacks to join the militia then,” said the creepy author. “But they were later allowed to serve in the war.”

  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! He could read my thoughts! I wanted to scream. But nothing came out. Goose pimples turned me into a cactus.

  I eyed Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson carefully. He had deep wrinkles and silver hair, just as you would expect a three-hundred-year-old dead body to have.

  Then he eyed me.

  I gasped.

  “My great-grandfather owned a ship which brought in thousands of slaves to Boston,” said the dead author. “He helped turn the city into a major slave-trading center. But I believed that slavery is a great evil, so I wrote and spoke out against it.

  “Many Concord families hid runaway slaves in their homes,” he continued. “They were part of the Underground Railroad, which was not about trains, but about giving runaway slaves places to hide as they made their way to Canada. I will show you a couple of those homes now.”

  Then he marched us right out of the cemetery. For a dead guy, his legs moved pretty fast! And boy, was I glad to leave! But then we followed him right up the street and stood on the sidewalk in front of a creepy old house.

  “This was the home of Henry Thoreau’s jail keeper, Sam Staples,” said the dead Mr. Emerson. “This house had a secret closet, a secret tunnel and a secret cave in the back. After Henry spent a night in jail for refusing to pay his poll tax as a protest against slavery, his jail keeper turned his own house into a station on the Underground Railroad.”

  “Can we go in?” asked Eli.

  “I want to see the secret cave,” said Sara Jane.

  “Please take us in!” everyone cried, jumping up and down—everyone, that is, except me.

  My heart was thumping like crazy. I don’t like creepy old houses, especially ones with a history.

  “I’m afraid we can’t go in there,” said the dead author. “It’s closed for renovations.”

  He must have heard my thoughts again!

  It’s a good thing Miss P told us to get back on the bus just then. I was beginning to feel very allergic. If I’d had to stand there one second more, I would’ve broken out the survival gear in my PDK, and who knows what might have happened next!

  Instead, I was safe on the bus again.…

  Our bus pulled away from the mouth of the cemetery.…

  Away from the creepy dead author …

  And rumbled around Monument Square …

  Then down the street past the shops. It was a very close call.

  As I began to swing my feet a little, we stopped.

  I looked out the window.

  I blinked.

  Then my eyes popped out like Ping-Pong balls.

  We had stopped in front of a yellow house, where—gasp!—Mr. Emerson stood waving at us! If there’s anything I hate about Concord, Massachusetts, which is hard to spell, it’s that the dead are everywhere!

  Miss P waved back. Then she herded us off the bus.

  “Many of you know the Thoreau-Alcott House,” said the eerie Emerson. “Henry’s mother rented out rooms, but they also hid runaway slaves here.”

  “And that’s the room where Henry died!” shrieked Jules, pointing at one of the front windows. “My mom told me!”

  Everyone turned to look—everyone, that is, but me.

  I didn’t have to turn.

  I was standing right in front of the window.

  “Yes, this is the house where Henry Thoreau died,” said our dead tour guide. “He was a good friend of mine.…”

  I didn’t hear anything else he said.

  I kept my eye on the window.

  I clutched my PDK.

  I held my breath.

  Suddenly, something behind the curtain—moved!

  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaack! I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. My mouth opened, but nothing came out. My hands went up in the air … my PDK swung open … and out spilled garlic, dental floss, my whistle, extra lunch money, Band-Aids, a bunch of lucky charms, a scary mask and all my escape routes! It was a genuine personal disaster!
<
br />   I ran and hopped right back on the bus.

  Then everyone else screamed and hopped back on the bus too.

  And that was the end of that.

  Miss P was not pleased. “ALVIN HO,” she yelled from the front of the bus, “PLEASE COME SEE ME WHEN OUR FIELD TRIP IS OVER.”

  Gulp.

  “AND NOW, BOYS AND GIRLS,” shouted Miss P, “YOU’RE IN FOR A REAL TREAT—PART TWO.”

  Part Two?

  my brother, calvin, is nine and knows a lot of things. For example, he knows that when they make a scary movie, they always make a sequel. And the sequel, he says, is always scarier than the original.

  So when they make a field trip, and it’s scary, and there’s a Part Two, the best thing to do is to not go. But if you’re already on your way, then the best you can do is to stay out of sight.

  So I flattened.

  I folded into Alvin the paper airplane.

  Then I drifted up and out the school bus window, where I could ride above the bus, but not in the bus, where I would be stuck going to Part Two. Being a paper airplane is super-duper!

  Soon our big yellow bus pulled up right in front of—Orchard House, Home of the Alcotts.

  Lucky for me, I was a paper airplane … and not a boy.…

  “Alvin? Earth to Alvin,” said Flea, who was sitting next to me. “We’re here, Alvin.”

  Oooh. Girls are so annoying.

  Just like that, I was a boy again.

  My throat tightened.

  My knees locked.

  I clutched my empty PDK and what was left of my lunch to my chest and froze.

  I could hardly believe it. If I had known I was going to the Alcott house, I would have gotten malaria.

  “Miss P,” Flea shouted, “I think Alvin needs the bathroom.”

  “Alvin?” yelled Miss P from the front of the bus. “Can you hold it? We’ll be inside in just a minute.”

  Laughter rocked the bus.

  But it wasn’t funny. I couldn’t move. And Flea, who likes to be helpful and likes to speak for me at school, was wrong. I didn’t need the bathroom. I needed to go home.