Scary School

by Derek the Ghost

  Rachael is the tallest girl in Ms. Fang’s class. She has long black hair and loves stickers. All her folders and textbooks are covered in stickers, her clothes are covered in stickers, and most of her stickers are covered in stickers.

  Raychel is Rachael’s best friend. She’s the shortest girl in Ms. Fang’s class. She has short blond hair and hates stickers. In fact, she hates anything that’s sticky—glue, gum, honey, you name it. Three years ago she got gum caught in her hair and hasn’t been able to get it out yet.

  Rachael and Raychel don’t have anything in common except for the pronunciation of their names, but that’s enough for them to be best friends.

  Frank, which is pronounced “Rachel,” is the exact middle in height in Ms. Fang’s class. Since Benny died, she is the fifteenth tallest one, or the fifteenth shortest one depending on your perspective. There are fourteen kids shorter than her and fourteen kids taller than her in the class. She has frizzy brown hair and loves jumping rope. She used to jump rope all day every day. She would jump rope on her way to class, jump rope eating lunch, and would even fall asleep jumping rope at night. One morning she woke up and the automatic counter on her jump rope was at two million jumps!

  At the end of last year, Frank lost control of her jump rope and it flew through the air and poked Mr. Spider-Eyes in twenty of his eyes. Using Monster Math, that’s almost eighteen thousand eyes. He got angry and took Frank’s jump rope away. Now Frank hops down the halls jumping an imaginary rope.

  Frank’s only friend is Petunia, but everyone thinks that her friends are Rachael and Raychel since she’s one of the three Rachels. The truth is, Rachael and Raychel won’t let Frank be their friend because they don’t like the way Frank spells her name. People thought Frank’s parents must not have been able to read, but that isn’t true, either.

  Frank’s parents come from Gnomania. In Gnomania, Fs are pronounced like Rs, Rs are silent, As are the same, and NK is pronounced “chel.” Thus, “Frank” is how they spell “Rachel.”

  I sure used a lot of quotation marks in that last paragraph. I wonder what a paragraph would look like if it were nothing but quotation marks. Let’s try it.

  ““““ “““““““ ““““““““““ “““““““““““““““““. ““““““““““““““““““ “““ ““““““““““““““““ “““““ “““““““““““““““““““““ “““““““““““““ ““““““““““““““““““? “““““““““““““““ ““““““““““““““““““““““““““ ““““““““““! ““““ “““ “““““““““““““““ “““““““““.

  Okay, that was stupid. But hey, I’m a ghost. I get bored very easily.

  It was getting close to winter vacation, and Rachael and Raychel were practicing extra hard for the Ghoul Games. They decided to join together as a team for their chosen game.

  They saw Frank at the end of the yard skipping imaginary rope all by herself. They called out to her, “Hey, Frank, come over and play with us!”

  “Okay!” said Frank, very excited someone wanted to play with her. She dropped her imaginary rope and ran over to Rachael and Raychel. “What game are we playing?”

  “What are you doing here, Frank?” said Rachael with a sneer.

  “Yeah, we don’t want to play with you,” said Raychel, even sneerier.

  “Oh . . . I thought you . . . never mind,” said Frank, and she hung her head and walked back to her imaginary jump rope.

  The two Rachels called out to her again. “Hey, Frank, we were just kidding! Come over here and play with us!”

  Frank dropped her rope again and ran over to the Rachels.

  “I totally knew you were kidding,” said Frank. “What are we playing?”

  “Eww! As if we’d ever play a game with someone who spells their name like you do,” said Rachael.

  “Yeah, why don’t you go play with Petunia or one of the other freaks and leave us alone?” said Raychel.

  “Are you kidding again?” asked Frank.

  “No,” said Rachael.

  “Yes,” said Raychel.

  “Yes,” said Rachael.

  “No,” said Raychel.

  Frank just stared at them for a few moments while they sneered at her, then smiled, then sneered, then smiled, then sneered. Eventually she just ran off crying.

  “Wow,” said Rachael, “we are getting really good at these mind games.”

  “Yeah, I’m really glad we chose mind games for our Ghoul Games event.”

  “I’m not. Yes I am. No I’m not. . . .”

  Recess ended, and the two Rachels started walking back to class, but they tripped and fell to the ground, and everyone laughed at them.

  “Why do our legs feel tied together?” the two Rachels asked each other.

  From across the yard, Frank thought to herself, wow, I’m getting really good at tying these imaginary ropes.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mr. Snakeskin

  The last day of school before winter break is a very special day.

  All the hard tests are over, and the whole day is more like a big party than a day at school. Ms. Fang’s class was especially excited and had been waiting all year for this day. Today was the day that Mr. Snakeskin would be visiting their class to give them a lesson in human biology.

  How could a class be excited about a biology lesson? I’ll tell you. Mr. Snakeskin was a sixth-grade teacher; however, the sixth graders were old enough to have a holiday party all by themselves, so Mr. Snakeskin left them with their party and walked into Ms. Fang’s fifth-grade classroom, where the kids were anxiously waiting for him.

  He was a tall man with short brown hair. He coached all the sports teams and looked pretty much like you would expect a guy who coached all the sports teams to look.

  The thing with Mr. Snakeskin is that he’s half human, half zombie, so that means he’s half alive, half dead. When you’re half dead, you can do all sorts of things you can’t do when you’re fully alive. One of those things is to give biology lessons in his unique way.

  When he walked in, Mr. Snakeskin was wearing his Scary School Basketball sweatshirt.

  “Good afternoon,” said Mr. Snakeskin in his strong, authoritative voice. “I’m here to give you all a lesson in biology that you will never forget. Indeed, I can promise that after this lesson, you will all be experts in the subject of human anatomy.”

  At that, Mr. Snakeskin reached down and pulled his sweatshirt over his head. When he did that, he not only pulled off his sweatshirt, but all of his skin, too!

  The class yelled, “Whooooa!” as they saw what the inside of a body looks like for the first time. It was a mass of muscles and organs that looked totally gross and weird.

  “I can tell you think I look totally gross and weird,” said Mr. Snakeskin, “but you would do well to remember that each of you looks exactly the same under your skin, too!”

  “How can you do that?” asked Ramon. “I’m a zombie and I can’t do that.”

  “Because I’m only half zombie. To put it simply, I’m still human on the inside, but zombie on the outside. If I were one hundred percent alive, I would be shrieking in pain. If I were one hundred percent dead, all my insides would rot away and disintegrate in an instant.”

  “That would be cool,” said Johnny.

  “Let’s begin our lesson then,” Mr. Snakeskin continued. “There are many hundreds of muscles that make movement possible. Starting at the arms, there are the biceps, triceps, deltoids, and your finger flexors. Moving across, we have the pectoral muscles, the latissimus dorsi muscles, the obliques, and the abdominal muscles. Playing sports and exercising keeps all of these muscles strong and healthy, but sitting in front of the TV and playing video games makes them wither away and shrink, so get out there and exercise as much as you can!”


  “Does sitting down and doing homework make your muscles shrink, too?” asked Fritz, a skinny boy who always wore swimming goggles. More about him in the next book.

  “Yes,” replied Mr. Snakeskin. “That’s why you should always do fifty jumping jacks after every math problem you finish.”

  Ms. Fang interjected, “He’s just kidding, class. That would be silly.”

  “Of course I was just kidding,” said Mr. Snakeskin. “Doing fifty jumping jacks would be very silly. Hardly a workout. You should do fifty push-ups. Moving right along to the organs . . .”

  Mr. Snakeskin proceeded to pull off all of his muscles, so now the class could see his inner organs and guts. Some kids retched, some kids fainted, some kids barfed, but most of them cheered.

  Mr. Snakeskin continued, “First will be a demonstration of the digestive system.”

  Ms. Fang tossed Mr. Snakeskin a small holiday cupcake, and he caught it in his mouth.

  As he chewed the cupcake, Mr. Snakeskin explained, “This cupcake is already being predigested by the saliva in my mouth. As I swallow, it passes down this tube called the esophagus and makes its way into my stomach, where the digestion continues. After the stomach is done breaking the cupcake down, it goes into this series of tubes called the small intestine, where it will be broken down into nutrients for my body to use. After that, only the unusable stuff is left, and it travels into this long tube called the large intestine, where it waits patiently until you ask Ms. Fang for a restroom pass.”

  The class cheered again.

  “There are many more systems of the body that do some amazing things. These two large pink sacs are my lungs, which are controlling my respiratory system. When we breathe in the air around us, our bodies extract the oxygen we need, and then we exhale the carbon dioxide we don’t need. This big slab is my liver, which is filtering out all the bad stuff that my body doesn’t want. These bones in my chest make up my rib cage, which protects my heart and lungs.”

  Then Mr. Snakeskin pulled apart his ribs so that the class could see his heart!

  “Who wants to come up and feel my heart beating?”

  The class jumped out of their seats and lined up. Each student reached out tentatively and felt Mr. Snakeskin’s heart as it pumped in and out at a constant rate.

  “The heart is controlling my circulatory system, pumping blood all over the body, delivering nutrients where they need to go, fighting diseases, and maintaining a steady body temperature. Remember, don’t any of you try anything close to this, or you would die instantly.”

  “Well, duh,” said Rachael and Raychel.

  When everyone had felt his heart, he closed his ribs back up, reattached all his muscles like putting on a suit, then put on his sweatshirt and was back to normal.

  The class clapped for him. As he bowed, he took off the top of his head and exposed his brains to everyone.

  “Oops!” he said. “That’s for your next lesson.”

  “Class,” said Ms. Fang, “before you all leave, I want to wish you a wonderful and fun winter vacation, but I would advise you to think about what you’ve learned so far at Scary School and what it means to you. Also, I encourage all of you to spend your free time practicing for your Ghoul Games event if you want to have the least hope of survival. Class dismissed. Have a very happy holiday break!”

  The kids cheered with the sheer exhilaration and freedom of the moment and rushed out to the parking lot, where their parents were waiting for them.

  “You know what I learned?” Petunia said to Frank as they ran down the hall.

  “What?”

  “People are a lot like presents. It’s what’s on the inside that counts.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Johnny, Ramon, and Peter’s Disgusting Idea

  For the Ghoul Games, Johnny, Ramon, and Peter decided to play together as a three-man basketball team. Johnny, Ramon, and Peter are best friends and each one of them also happens to be a Scary kid.

  Johnny is a Sasquatch, but when his feet grow enough, he’ll be a Bigfoot. You may remember from before that Johnny has messy brown hair. That is true, except the messy brown hair is everywhere. The only part of him that doesn’t have hair on it is his nose, which is big and round like a clown’s nose, and has a small red freckle on the end of it. Johnny is very protective of his one freckle, but the truth is that his face is covered in freckles. He just can’t see them because of all the hair.

  Ramon is a kid zombie. That means he is a living mind inside of a dead, decaying body. Parts of his body are always falling off, usually his fingers, toes, and ears. Whenever a kid sees a random body part lying in the hallway or on the playground, they always bring it back to Ramon, and he puts it back on with glue. In order to keep his zombie brain alive, he needs to eat brains. Any kind of brains will do; even a whole handful of bug brains or fish brains will get the job done. People brains are a very special treat.

  Peter, as you may remember, is a werewolf. When Peter is a regular kid, he is called Peter and is the nicest kid in school. When Peter is a wolf, he is called Peter the Wolf and turns into the meanest kid in school. At the age of ten, he has no control yet over when he turns into a wolf. Kids try to be extra nice to him, but if the slightest thing doesn’t go his way, he becomes Peter the Wolf and everyone better watch out.

  Johnny, Ramon, and Peter are a very good basketball team because each has a different skill. Johnny the Sasquatch is the tallest kid in class, so he gets all the rebounds and makes good passes. Ramon the zombie is a “dead-on” shot, so he drains three-pointers like they’re layups. When Peter is just Peter, he’s awful. When Peter is Peter the Wolf, he can jump ten feet in the air, so he likes to jump over people and dunk.

  The only problem is Peter’s claws sometimes pop the ball, so he has to keep them filed or else the game is over as soon as he touches the ball.

  After winter break, the three of them practiced basketball every day during recess and even after school. Since there were three of them, they always had to play two against one. Whoever was the “one” would always get creamed. The first week of practice, Johnny and Ramon beat Peter 98 to 4. Peter and Ramon beat Johnny 77 to 12. Johnny and Peter beat Ramon 145 to 3.

  Using Monster Math, Ramon lost 243 billion to negative 6 trillion.

  They kept practicing, playing two against one every day, and then an amazing thing started to happen. The “one” player had to work so hard just to stay in the game that all three improved much faster than normal. After just three weeks, the two-on-ones became almost dead-even matches. Johnny and Ramon beat Peter 56 to 53. Peter and Ramon beat Johnny 65 to 64 (Ramon hit a lucky three-pointer at the buzzer to pull it out). Ramon actually beat Johnny and Peter 82 to 74. That game Ramon got a very hot hand, which was technically always cold.

  All three were at the top of their games and felt unstoppable. They couldn’t wait for the Ghoul Games to start. Until, that is, they got a greeting card from their opponents.

  Scream Academy was sending their star basketball players to play against them. The greeting card showed each player standing next to a basketball hoop.

  “Oh nuts,” said Johnny, Ramon, and Peter as they looked at the card.

  Their opponents were giants. Literally.

  Each one was in fifth grade like they were, but they were at least eight feet tall. They looked like they could dunk without even jumping. Johnny was the tallest kid in Ms. Fang’s class, but he was only five feet tall.

  “What are we going to do, guys?” asked Johnny, quivering.

  “I don’t know,” said Ramon. “If I eat some big brains, maybe I can figure something out.”

  “I could stop filing my claws down,” said Peter. “If I get the ball early, I can pop the ball and then maybe we’ll have a zero-zero tie.”

  “Come on, there has to be a way,” said Johnny. “It’s just like math . . . there’s always a right answer.”

  “We could play on sti—,” Ramon tried to say, but his tongue fell out of his mout
h and landed on the ground. He brushed it off and put it back in his mouth. “Sorry. We could play on stilts.”

  “I have a feeling that’s a bad idea,” said Peter.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that would be cheating,” said Johnny.

  “Wait, I got it,” said Johnny. “Let’s eat really gross, disgusting bugs every day until the Ghoul Games. That way, when the giants eat us, we’ll taste as gross as the bugs, and maybe they’ll spit us out.”

  “I think that’s the best plan we’re gonna get,” said Johnny.

  “I agree,” said Peter.

  So they started running around the school yard looking for insects to eat.

  “There’s one!” said Johnny, pointing to a flying beetle.

  Ramon saw it flying in the air, and he heaved the basketball at it from twenty feet away. Of course it was a perfect shot. The ball hit the beetle in the air and knocked it out. The beetle fell toward the ground, and Johnny ran underneath it and caught it on the rebound. Johnny passed the beetle to Peter, who dunked it in some ketchup, and together they enjoyed a disgusting beetle snack.

  “This tastes terrible!” said Ramon.

  “I know, it’s perfect,” said Johnny. “If we taste half this bad, we’re home free.”

  “I think it’s pretty good,” said Peter the Wolf. “If you guys taste half this good, I might eat you before the giants do.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jason’s Mask

  Jason loves two things in life. One is hockey. The second we’ll get to in a moment.

  Jason is the goalie for the Scary School hockey team. He is very good at it and almost never allows a goal. Last year, Scary School won the league hockey championship, barely defeating Adventure School, 2–1. Jason was the MVP of the team and got a huge trophy. He was sure Scary School would win the hockey tournament during the Ghoul Games in the spring and he practiced every day for it.