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

by Lenore Look

  How I ever made it off the bus, I’ll never know.

  How I ever made it up the front walk is a mystery too, but I think we had to use the buddy system and hold hands with someone so that no one would get lost between the bus and the bushes.

  So I can’t tell you how I finally ended up at the house …

  Where an owl was hoo-hoo-hooting …

  And the giant arms of gigantic trees swayed closer and closer …

  Where the door creaked open …

  And a voice came out.

  “Welcome, boys and girls.” It was a lady dressed in old-fashioned clothes—very old-fashioned clothes, like the kind Ralph Waldo Emerson wore. “I’m Louisa May Alcott, and I’ll be taking you through my home today.”

  Louisa May Alcott???!!! She died three hundred years ago, as everyone knows! I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. My skin felt like paper. My tongue rolled up like a carpet.

  But mysteriously, my feet started moving forward, like everyone else’s, and we followed the dead author right through her gift shop and straight into her spooky kitchen.

  “When we first moved to Concord, we lived in the house next door,” said the dead Louisa May. “I was a young teenager then, and I remember my parents hiding runaway slaves. My father was a good friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and we moved from Boston to be close to him.”

  Louisa May looked around at everyone. Then she looked me smack in the eye. Gasp!

  After that, the audio portion of the program went dead.

  I didn’t hear anything she said in her dining room.

  I didn’t hear anything she said in her parlor.

  I didn’t hear anything she said in her dad’s study.

  In fact, I don’t remember those rooms at all, except for a couple of creepy paintings that had eyes that followed you.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” said Sam.

  “Me too,” said Nhia.

  I said nothing. I’d been to Orchard House once before with my family, and the only thing I remember from that visit was that I had to be carried out like a corpse.

  But the girls weren’t scared at all.

  “It must have been fun doing plays in the dining room and having your audience in the parlor!” Flea said to Sara Jane.

  “Yeah, and to change costumes too!” said Ophelia.

  They hurried behind Louisa May up the stairs, but Miss P had to shoo the boys to get us to go up.

  Swish, swish, swish, went the dead author’s three-hundred-year-old dress.

  Creak, creak, creak, went the stairs.

  “This is the room where I wrote in my journal and wrote my stories,” said Louisa May when we got upstairs. “And this is the desk that I wrote at. My father made it for me.”

  On her desk was an old-fashioned pen, the kind you dip into ink. It was sitting next to a glass ball for holding ink, but it was empty. There was no ink.

  But there sure was a lot of writing on a piece of paper right in front of it. How did she write all that without any ink? It was very creepy.

  My stomach lurched.

  My hands slipped on my still-empty PDK.

  “And now this is my favorite part of the tour,” said the pale Louisa May. “You may sit in my room awhile and write something in your journals.”

  Miss P beamed. “We’ve been practicing writing in our journals,” she said. “And everyone has been looking forward to doing that here.”

  We have?

  Louisa May pointed to a big, spooky photograph of her dad on the wall. Then she pointed at an owl that her sister had painted on the fireplace. A small owl statue peered from the mantel.

  I looked around.

  I wondered if Louisa May had died on that bed.

  I shuddered.

  Before I knew it, everyone was sitting on the faded flowery carpet and had pulled out their notebooks and was scratching away at them with their pencils. Everyone, that is, except me. I was standing in the middle of the room, my mouth wide open, my eyes glued to her. And I was stuck.

  “Alvin?” I heard Miss P say. “Did you remember your journal?”

  Journal?

  “He needs the bathroom,” Flea tried to whisper to Miss P. Flea is always trying to be helpful, but whispering isn’t one of her talents.

  “Oh dear!” said Miss P. “I forgot!”

  Laughter rocked the room of the dead.

  I didn’t need the bathroom. But I couldn’t say so. I was all freaked out. And when I’m all freaked out, like whenever I’m in school, I can’t talk, I can’t grunt, I can’t even squeak.

  “I’ll show him where it is,” said the very creepy Louisa May.

  I could have peed in my pants! But I didn’t. Like I said, I didn’t need the bathroom.

  “C’mon,” she said. “This way.” If this were a scary movie of my life, this would be the part where the spooky music gets louder and louder and everything in the room begins to spin, and you would know that I was about to die.

  But this wasn’t a movie, it was the real thing! And mysteriously, my feet were slipping and sliding right out of the room.

  Swish, swish, swish, went the three-hundred-year-old dress down the stairs. Squeak, squeak, squeak, went my sneakers after her. We walked back through the same creepy rooms until we got to the gift shop, where—gasp!—we bumped into another Louisa May!

  “Hey,” said the other Louisa May, who was also wearing a three-hundred-year-old dress.

  “Hey yourself,” said the first Louisa May.

  “How’s your group going?” asked the second Louisa May.

  “Fine,” said Louisa May, “except for this kid who needs the bathroom.”

  “There’s one in every group,” said the other.

  “It’s there in the corner, kid,” said the original Louisa May, pointing past the books. “Don’t take too long, or your group will leave without you.”

  The Louisa Mays giggled.

  Normally, I love gift shops. But I had no time to love this one. I shot into the bathroom as fast as I could and locked the door. My heart was jumping around like a kangaroo on fire!

  I pumped the soap.

  I washed my hands.

  I checked myself in the mirror.

  I flushed the toilet, just in case.

  Then I sat on the toilet. I pulled out my pencil and notebook and wrote in my best shaky handwriting:

  I added my new emergency plan to my PDK. But the problem with my PDK was that it was empty. I’d lost everything on the Thoreau-Alcott lawn.

  And the problem with being in the bathroom was that it was suffocating. It was a small, enclosed space with a slanted ceiling, like—a coffin!

  I didn’t feel so good.

  I have claustrophobia.

  Quickly I pushed back the curtains and looked out the window.

  I gasped.

  Beneath the trees, there were not two Louisa Mays, but three Louisa Mays, and they were all standing around, laughing! One was even smoking! Yikes! Clones!

  I knew all about clones. A clone is a copycat, but no one can tell it apart from the real thing until the clones take over the world and it’s too late. And as everyone knows, humans and clones cannot peacefully coexist.

  I don’t remember what happened next. If I were a girl, I might have fainted. But I’m not a girl. I’m a boy. So I just passed out. Then I had a dream.… In my dream police sirens were wailing and a fire truck too. It was super-duper! Then a bunch of cop cars screeched to a halt and surrounded Orchard House. “Will the real Louisa May Alcott please come out with your hands up!” a policeman’s voice boomed through a megaphone. “You are under arrest to go to the cemetery.”

  Everything was going just great until … boom, boom, boom!

  “Is someone in there?” a voice yelled. “Open this door, or we’re comin’ in.”

  I blinked my eyes open.

  I was sprawled in an X on a cold, hard floor.

  Where was I?

  It didn’t feel like home.… />
  It didn’t feel like school.…

  Then through the door I heard swish, swish, swish—the sound of three-hundred-year-old skirts.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!” My mouth opened to scream, but nothing came out.

  Then a HUGE Louisa May, the size of Godzilla, cracked the door off its hinges like a graham cracker from a gingerbread house.

  The hairs on my head stuck out like one of GungGung’s Chinese calligraphy brushes struck by lightning.

  Clones are super-duper strong. They can rip a door from the wall and suck all the air out of the room, just like that.

  The good news is that I didn’t miss our bus, and Miss P forgot all about busting me.

  Whoever said field trips are educational was right. I learned quite a lot today.

  Like don’t mess with Louisa Mayzilla.

  TGIS. thank god it was Saturday.

  On Saturdays, I’m—FIRECRACKER MAN!!!

  “Bakbakbakbakbakbak!” I screamed, popping like a string of firecrackers on Chinese New Year. I was zooming around my yard in my Firecracker Man outfit, saving the world and keeping an eye on Lucy and another eye on Anibelly, who was digging holes in the yard with one of my carved sticks.

  “Lalalalalalalala,” sang Anibelly, who sings whenever she’s happy.

  If there’s anything I love about Anibelly, it’s this—she’s happy. When you hang out with her, you feel happy too. For a little sister, she’s okay. But if there’s anything I don’t love about Anibelly, it’s that she’s a girl. And girls are annoying, as everyone knows. She’s practically attached to me like a flower to a stem. And it’s hard to get away from her when you’re the stem. But today I had an idea.

  “B-R-B!” I screamed, which is faster to say than Be Right Back! Then I zoomed off, across our neighbor’s yard, through the gate and down the street toward the noise coming from Jules’s house, which is on the way to everything.

  Through the bushes I could see that the gang was there, and everyone was galloping wildly about, hollering war cries that sounded like they were coming right out of King Philip’s War. In fact, it was King Philip’s War! And King Philip’s War, as everyone knows, is the war between settlers and natives that nearly wiped out all of Massachusetts a hundred years before the American Revolution wiped out everyone else. So when the gang isn’t playing the American Revolution, they’re playing King Philip’s War.

  “Wooofwooooff,” said Lucy, who had followed me. She slipped through a crack in the bushes and into Jules’s yard. Lucy always says hello. She’s very friendly. And when she’s with me, people are friendly to me too. So I slipped through the bushes after her.

  “Hey, Alvin!” said Jules.

  I tipped my head to one side. That’s “hey” in body language.

  It’s hard to tell if Jules is a boy or a girl, but it didn’t matter on account of the fantastic war paint on his or her face! Nhia was wearing a tri-corn hat, and Scooter and Sam had on pilgrim hats from last year’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Eli was dressed as Abraham Lincoln, who had come to dinner once in Concord, Massachusetts, which is hard to spell. And Abe Lincoln, as everyone knows, can play settlers and Indians without dressing like one if he wants. Pinky, who is very bossy, was wearing a big feather on his head and a blanket around his shoulders. He was the Indian leader, King Philip.

  “It’s settlers against Indians,” called Sam. “We’re practicing for Hobson’s party.”

  “You’re going, aren’t you?” asked Eli.

  I shrugged.

  “Didn’t you get an invitation?” asked Jules.

  What invitation?

  “Maybe you weren’t invited,” said Pinky, who speaks for everyone on account of he’s the leader of the gang. Besides, Hobson wasn’t there.

  I shrugged. I don’t like birthday parties anyway. They’re unpredictable; anything can happen. And you have to be on your best behavior the whole time. But I did want to play King Philip’s War. And I did want to be invited to something with the rest of the gang.

  “Do you have settler gear?” Pinky asked.

  I shook my head no.

  “How ’bout Indian gear?”

  I shook my head again.

  “No wonder you haven’t been invited,” said Pinky. “No war paint, no moccasins, no fun. As for today … you can be a watcher.

  “Al-vin’s a wat-cher,” he sang. “Al-vin’s a wat-cher.”

  I didn’t want to be a watcher. I wanted to play. But the trouble with Pinky is that he makes all the rules. And usually Rule Number 1 is that I’m not allowed to join in.

  “Well, there’s only one way to find out if you’re going to Hobson’s party,” said Sam, taking something out of his pocket. It looked like a hairball the size of a fist. Everyone stopped dead in their tracks.

  “Sure is ugly,” whistled Scooter.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “The eyeball of a woolly mammoth,” said Sam. “It weighs two pounds.”

  Everyone gasped.

  Sam collects things. Things you’d never laid your eyes on before. Things you never knew existed. And you never know what’s going to be in Sam’s pockets, especially on Saturdays.

  “Where’d you get it?” asked Nhia.

  “On vacation,” said Sam. He paused. He stroked the eyeball. Then in a hushed voice, he added, “It knows everything. It can see the future.”

  Everyone leaned in for a closer look.

  “Ask it if Alvin will get an invitation,” said Eli.

  “It can’t do anything on an empty stomach,” said Sam. “You gotta feed it candy first.”

  I didn’t have any candy, but I had a piece of gum in my pocket. “Here,” I said.

  Sam popped the gum right into his mouth, chewed, then spat some of the juice into the woolly eye. “Will Alviiiiin get an iiiiiinvitation to the paarty?” Sam asked the eye.

  I held my breath.

  There was no answer.

  “It’s crying for candy,” said Sam.

  Everyone could see that the eye was not crying. There were no tears. But everyone knew where there was a LOT of candy. Eli. Eli’s pockets are practically a candy store. And his teeth are ugly to prove it.

  So the gang jumped on Eli and cleaned out his pockets. And when it was all laid out on the grass, anyone could tell that there was enough candy to see one hundred years into the future!

  After a couple of practice pieces, everyone stuffed their cheeks and got ready. Sam rubbed his giant eye, then we leaned in and spat all at once.

  “Mammoth eye,” said Sam, drooling heavily, “will Alviiiiin get an iiiiiiiinviiiiiiiitation?”

  Suddenly, the eye started rolling in Sam’s hands, slowly at first, then faster and faster! It was terrific! Then Sam dropped it. Pllluuup!

  “Oops,” slurped Sam.

  Lucy raced up and put the eye on top of her paws and touched her nose to it in the downward-dog position. Lucy’s an expert yoga baller. She can hold her pose until the mammoths thaw.

  “What did it say?” I asked.

  “It said YYYYYES!” said Sam.

  Yes? I didn’t hear anything.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “No,” said Sam. “But it’ll take some more candy to make sure.”

  But there was no more candy. We’d eaten the whole store.

  And the thing about candy is this. There’s LOTS of sugar in it. And when you have that much sugar for breakfast, it makes you go fast-forward like a maniac for no reason at all and you can’t stop or rewind.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, running full speed ahead, clanging on my Firecracker Man helmet.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!” screamed the gang, ricocheting around the yard like loose pinballs. No one was playing settlers and Indians anymore, but it was okay. You can wear anything when it’s not a war.

  That night, after everyone had gone to bed and my brother Calvin was fast asleep, I was still wide awake thinking about what the mammoth eye had said.
>
  YYYYYES!

  Yes meant I was going to get an invitation.

  My eyes opened wide.

  I popped out of bed and rushed over to the window. It was a clear and twinkly night. Up in the sky were so many stars, it looked like someone had spilled them, like Anibelly spilling all her jacks.

  “I wish I may, I wish I might,” I whispered against the cold glass, “have the first wish I wish upon a star tonight.”

  “Grrrrrrrrrrr,” said Calvin. “Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.”

  Calvin’s a sleep talker. There’s no cure for it; it runs in my family. On days when he’s done something bad, his entire criminal history will slip out like a greased bicycle chain, just like that.

  I listened.

  Nothing.

  His blankets went up and down.

  So I turned back to face the stars.

  “I wish …,” I began, “I wish …”

  There were LOTS of stars out, glittering like a million pieces of glass in the street. I could see the Big Dipper and, right above it, the North Star.

  “I wish for the Deluxe Indian Chief outfit with fringe,” I said, my breath dripping on the glass. “Complete with bow and arrow and the huge feather headdress that makes you look like a giant bird.”

  I crossed my fingers. It was a big wish. I’d wished for the Deluxe Indian Chief outfit every Christmas and never gotten it. How was I going to get my hands on it now, just so Hobson would invite me to his party?

  I didn’t know.

  “I love you, stars,” I added, just in case.

  Then I ran and jumped into bed before the flesh-eating critters under it could grab me.

  there was nothing in the mail for me for days.

  Then there was something. I could hardly believe it! It was addressed to “Mr. Alvin Ho.”

  But it was pink.

  Invitations to duke it out at a birthday party that was more like a war than a party would not be pink.

  TV static filled my brain.