by David Lubar
Edwina stuck the thank-you notes behind her dresser with all the others. It was getting crowded back there. The ingratitude caused a rumbling in the cosmos. Edwina’s aunt, Tish, living just across the street, was the first to arrive. She rang the front bell, said hello to her sister (Edwina’s mother), who let her in, then walked up to Edwina’s room, scooped up everything she had given her niece, turned away, and left the room without a word.
Edwina’s uncle Alvin, who lived across town, showed up next. Edwina’s parents’ friends, who had been nice enough to give her presents, came after that. Eventually, Edwina’s room was nearly stripped bare.
All that remained was a scattering of presents from her grandparents. She hadn’t gotten anything from them for the last three years. They were dead.
Edwina wasn’t smart enough to figure out why the doorbell rang again. She did start to get an idea what was happening when she heard her mother scream. She got an even better idea when her dad joined the screaming. Her dad never screamed.
The idea became totally solid and inescapable when she heard the slow footsteps in the hallway outside her bedroom.
It was not a pleasant reunion.
Edwina tried to stop screaming after her grandparents left, but she didn’t seem to be able to control her lungs or her throat for quite a while.
When she finally stopped screaming, and was able to actually think in words again, her first thought was, I’m sending cards from now on.
That would be easy enough for her to do. She had quite a supply of thank-you cards behind her dresser, and she probably wouldn’t be receiving many presents in the near future.
COFFIN FITS
There’s this kid I know, Felix Bartholemieux. He’s sort of my friend, but he played the meanest trick ever on me last week. I need to get him back. And I know just how I’ll do it.
I guess I should explain the trick. Felix’s parents own a funeral home. Felix invited me over last week. His house is next door to the funeral parlor.
“I’ll show you something really cool,” he said right after I got there.
I followed him out of the house, toward the funeral parlor. “It’s not a body, is it?” I definitely didn’t want to see a dead person.
“Relax. It’s nothing like that.”
He went through a side door, leading me into a room with a bunch of coffins in it. But I wasn’t scared, because they were all open and empty. I guess it was sort of a showroom for display models. Felix didn’t stop there. He led me into a second room. This one was dark, and the coffins were closed.
“Are there people in them?” I asked, getting ready to make a dash for the door. I’m not a coward, but that sort of stuff just creeped me out.
Felix laughed. “Don’t be silly. This is where my parents keeps the extra ones.” He walked over to the closest coffin and lifted the lid. “Most people never get to find out what it feels like inside. But I climb in them all the time. Try it. It’s like sitting in a luxury car.”
I didn’t want to get in trouble with his parents. “You sure it’s okay?”
“Totally. Just take your shoes off.”
So I kicked off my shoes, climbed in, lay down, and crossed my arms on my chest, like I see them do with dead people in the movies. I looked over toward Felix, but he wasn’t there.
“Good night!” Felix said from the other side. He slammed the lid down. It got really dark. I heard some sort of latch slide in place.
“Hey!” I banged on the lid. Then I pushed on it. It didn’t move. I wasn’t afraid of small spaces. And I wasn’t afraid of the dark. But I guess I was pretty much terrified by small, dark spaces.
Stay calm, I told myself.
That didn’t work. I started to scream, and I kept banging and kicking. It was hard to make much noise—the inside was all padded. It was like punching a thin mattress. Finally, Felix slid back the latches and lifted the lid. I climbed out, ready to punch him in the face.
But he grabbed my arms and said, “What’s wrong? Can’t you take a joke?”
“That wasn’t funny,” I said as I tried to decide whether to hit him in the nose or the jaw. If I broke his nose, I’d get in big trouble, but it would be worth it.
“Sure it was. It was hilarious,” he said. “And you’re the first person I’ve done it to, because I think you’re the coolest kid in our class. I knew you could take a joke. But here’s the best part—now we can do it to everyone else. One at a time. It will be awesome. And you’ll be in on it from the start. You’ll be my prank partner. Isn’t that great?”
I paused a second, to make it look like I was thinking this over. But I’d already thought about it, and I’d made a decision. I’d pretend to go along with Felix until I had a chance to get even. Finally, I nodded and said, “Wow. That’s pretty cool.” I was going to add, Thanks for picking me first. But I didn’t want to risk sounding too enthusiastic right away.
Anyhow, all of that happened last week. This morning, Felix told me he’d picked his next victim. It was Lawrence Mott. It really didn’t matter who he picked, because it was Felix who was going to be the victim. I was ready to get him back, big-time.
“We’ll head to my house right after school,” he said.
“Can it wait until tomorrow?” I asked.
“Nope,” Felix said. “I already invited him over. It has to be today.”
Great. I figured he’d say that. He was falling right into my trap. I’d given all of this a ton of thought. I’d actually thought about nothing else all week. I’d had plenty of time to work out the perfect plan. “Oh, man. I can’t come today. I have a dentist’s appointment after school.”
Felix shrugged. “There’ll be plenty more chances.” He didn’t seem to care that I was missing the prank.
After school, I hurried over to the funeral parlor. I sneaked in through the side door and found the coffin Felix had trapped me in. I figured he’d use the same one this time that he’d used to scare me. But when he opened the lid, he’d be in for a surprise. I’d leap up and scream. That would scare him so bad, I’d bet he’d need to change his pants.
I wasn’t scared at all this time, since I knew I could get out whenever I wanted. Of course, I wanted to get out right in Felix’s face. And I would. I climbed into the coffin, lowered the lid, and waited.
It’s hard to tell how much time has passed when you’re in the dark. But after a while—maybe five minutes—I heard footsteps and voices. It was pretty muffled inside the coffin. I decided it would be even more awesome if I didn’t jump out right away. I’d cross my hands on my chest and close my eyes, so I’d look dead. That would startle Felix. And then he’d be even more scared when I let out a terrifying scream and leaped to life. He’d get scared twice. This was so perfect. Felix was going to regret that he’d ever played a trick on me.
Muffled voices moved closer to the coffin. I allowed myself a quick grin before I forced my face to look dead. A smile would give away the joke.
Light hit my eyelids as Felix raised the coffin lid. I opened my eyes the tiniest slit, so I could see Felix’s expression when he noticed me.
But I didn’t see Felix.
I saw something huge, right over me. It was somebody’s back. But it was enormous. There were hands on his shoulders, and other hands on his feet. He was so big, whoever was carrying him couldn’t even see around him.
Before I could sit up, they dropped him on me. It was like getting hit with a dolphin. The body smashed me flat and knocked the wind out of my lungs. I couldn’t even turn my head sideways to catch my breath.
“Phew, that was rough,” someone said.
“He’s bigger than I realized,” a second voice said. “Help me push him down a bit.”
The body got pressed down even harder. I was afraid I’d burst. I heard the lid slam. My hands were trapped at my sides. I was getting dizzy. I struggled with all my strength and managed to turn my head sideways enough so I could breathe.
“Help!” I yelled. The sound was swall
owed by the enormous body on top of me. I tried to kick at the sides of the coffin. It was no use. I was pinned flat. I couldn’t move my legs at all.
I had to get out. If I didn’t, they’d never find me. I’d be one of those missing kids you see on the news. Wild ideas flashed through my mind. I wondered if I could chew my way through the body. The thought almost made me throw up. I choked back my nausea. If I puked, I’d be dead for sure. There had to be another way out.
Think!
Nothing. There was no other choice. There was a movie about a guy who cut his own arm off when he was trapped climbing a mountain. At least this wouldn’t be my own arm.
I turned my head, opened my mouth, fought back against my churning stomach with every ounce of willpower I had, and chomped down.
“Owwwwwwcch!”
The scream came from right over my head. It was followed by a shift in pressure as the body flung open the coffin lid and sat up. It tumbled out, leaving me stunned, numb, and trembling.
I blinked against the bright lights overhead. The scream had shifted to smaller cries of pain, which were drowned out by laughter.
I sat up.
Five kids were in the room. Felix and three other kids from my class were looking at me and howling with laughter. The fifth kid, Augie Durback, the biggest kid in our class, was holding his shoulder and glaring at me.
“You bit me,” Augie said. He rubbed his shoulder.
“I…” There were no words. I slumped back in the coffin. My perfect prank had been turned around, and I’d been turned into a fool. They might as well bury me now. Once this story spread around the school, my life would be over.
Felix peered at me from the side of the coffin. “Hey, man. Cheer up. You can help us get the next one. It will be awesome.”
Yeah. Right. Sure. Awesome. It would be great to pull off a joke on someone else. But I had a funny feeling it just wouldn’t work out as planned.
WALNUTS
“We’re getting a new student,” Mrs. Persham said. “He’ll be here soon. But we need to talk first.”
“I wonder what’s wrong with him?” I whispered to Matty, who was sitting next to me.
“Nothing that’s not wrong with you, Jasper,” Matty said.
I punched him. He punched me back. Mrs. Persham glared at us until we sat up in our seats and pretended to pay attention.
“Little Dwight has a walnut allergy,” she said.
“No nuts?” Cindy Washinski asked.
“That stinks,” I said. There were three classrooms where you couldn’t have any kind of food, just in case there were nuts in it.
“Just walnuts,” Mrs. Persham said. “Don’t be so selfish, Jasper. It won’t be a big deal.”
And it wouldn’t have been, if Dwight had been a normal kid. But he was totally freaked out about the possibility of ever coming close to a walnut. Before he came into our classroom for the first time, he peeked his head in the door, sniffed, stared all around like he had some sort of X-ray vision, then looked over at Mrs. Persham and asked, “Has the room been checked?”
“It’s totally safe,” she said. She smiled. But even her good nature faded by the second week. Dwight didn’t relax for a moment. If someone opened a window in the classroom, he scurried over to make sure there was nothing dangerous outside. That was totally ridiculous, since we were on the second floor. If someone brought a package into the room, he’d leap from his desk, flee to the back of the room, and shout, “Check it!”
So, yeah, we were all getting a bit tired of the routine. Which is why I finally decided I’d had enough and brought a bag of walnuts to school in my backpack.
I got there early and slipped the bag into my desk. When Dwight came in, I watched him, to see if he started to turn red or swell up. But he looked fine.
He sat two rows over from me. After he took his seat, I opened my desk and took out a walnut. Then I waited for the bell to ring. Under cover of the noise, I rolled the walnut toward him, aiming it so it would stop under his chair.
Perfect.
It stopped exactly where I wanted, right under him.
He seemed fine.
That did it. I decided I’d expose him, and get our class back to normal.
“Faker!” I said. I grabbed the bag, stood up, and pointed under his seat.
He looked down, then screamed and stood on his chair.
“You aren’t allergic.” I opened the bag and walked toward him. “Admit it.”
“I’m not allergic to walnuts!” he shouted.
“I knew it.” I flung the open bag at him.
“They’re allergic to me!”
What?
As I tried to make sense of that, something even more puzzling happened. The walnuts I’d flung stuck to his body. They started to swell. The hard shells shattered. Creatures like swollen hermit crabs burst out.
Dwight got the worst of it. They ripped into him. But as soon as he fell, they swarmed all over the room. I ran for the door, but someone bumped into me and I fell.
I felt something stinging my ankles, and then my legs. I tried to push myself to my feet, but I felt weak and dizzy. I couldn’t breathe. Whatever was in their bites, I was badly allergic to it. Very badly.
A LITTER BIT OF TROUBLE
“Did you change the cat litter yet, Samantha?” Mom asked when I came in from shooting baskets in the driveway.
“I was just about to,” I said. I didn’t mind most of my chores. Setting the table wasn’t a problem. Dragging the garbage cans out to the curb wasn’t too bad. Taking care of the recycling was sort of fun—I liked crushing the aluminum cans. And I liked helping with the ironing. But cat litter—yuck. I always put it off as long as I could.
I went down the hall to the laundry room to see if the litter really needed to be changed. That’s where we kept the box. I wished Muffins and Boots could go outside. But our last two cats had both been hit by cars—so Muffins and Boots got to be indoor cats. Don’t blame me for the names, by the way. Mom came up with them.
I was right by the doorway to the laundry room, looking at the assorted lumps lurking beneath the surface of the litter, when the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” I called.
It was my friend Treena, holding her soccer ball. “Want to kick the ball around?” she asked.
“Sure.” Saved from the litter—at least for the moment. “I’m going outside with Treena for fresh air and exercise,” I said as I raced out the door. That was the sort of phrase Mom would use, and the sort of thing she would urge me to do if she thought I was watching too much TV. So she could hardly argue, or tell me to stay inside.
Treena and I played until it started to grow dark. When I got home, I expected Mom to immediately ask me about the litter. Instead, she smiled, went to the fridge, grabbed the pitcher, and poured a big glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade—the kind she makes with a special homemade sugar syrup.
“Here you go, Samantha.”
“Thanks,” I said as she handed me the glass.
Wow—she seemed happy. I sipped the lemonade and wandered down the hall. When I reached the laundry room, I saw a perfectly smooth, flat layer of litter in the box. I guess whatever she was happy about, it had made her want to give me a break and empty the litter box herself.
That deserved a hug. I went back to the kitchen, put my glass down, and gave Mom a real hug—not the kind I get from my cousins at family reunions, but the kind I give my friends when they share really wonderful news.
“Well, you’re in a good mood,” Mom said.
“So are you.”
We stared at each other for a moment; then we both laughed. Two days later, Mom started to ask me about emptying the litter again. I guess that was fair, since I couldn’t expect her to do one of my chores for me all the time.
But I got distracted that afternoon when my friend Alicia called to ask me if I wanted to help her find a nice dress to wear to her uncle’s wedding. And the next day, my aunt had tickets to take me to a concert. The day
after that, the litter box was looking pretty full, and Muffin and Boots were giving me impatient stares. But I needed to go to the corner store to look at magazines. I promised myself I’d take care of the litter as soon as I got back from town.
Once again, the box was clean when I got home. And once again, Mom was especially nice to me afterwards. Whatever was making her happy, I hoped it never stopped.
I was starting to like this new arrangement. It seemed that all I had to do was hold off for an extra day or two, and Mom would decide to do me a favor. But it worked out for her, too. She got lots of hugs. And I was so happy about not having to clean the litter that I did all my other chores cheerfully.
Everything was perfect until this afternoon. The box had been really full when I went out to the mall. When I got home, I thought all the clumps were gone, but a motion caught my eye. One tiny clump of litter was in the corner. As I thought about whether I should get rid of it, the clump rolled up the side of the litter box.
I watched, unable to make sense of what I was seeing. It fell over the side and hit the floor, breaking into three smaller clumps. All the clumps rolled slowly toward the wall. They also rolled closer together, and formed back into a single clump.
The clump rolled over to the hole where the dryer vent goes. I saw it slip behind the wall. Then I heard it slowly rolling up the inside of the wall. When it got to the top, it rolled onto the ceiling.
“What in the world—?” I whispered as I looked up. I thought about all that litter, gathering above the ceiling. Weeks and weeks’ worth of clumps might be up there, over my head.
That’s got to be heavy.
The thought came several seconds too late to save me. I heard a creak and a crack. Something broke through the plasterboard ceiling and fell down. It crashed into my shoulder, knocking me to the floor.
A terrible weight pressed down on me for an instant, pounds and pounds of litter, nearly knocking me out with an overpowering smell of ammonia and other things too horrible to mention. And then, it rose. The clumped litter, looking like a crudely formed and nauseating three-foot-tall gingerbread man, stood up, stepped away from me, and headed down the hall, leaving behind a crunchy trail of small bits and foul clumps.
