Other Jeffrey and the Third-Grade Ghost Books
#1 Mysterious Max
#2 Haunted Halloween
#4 Pet Day Surprise
#5 Max Onstage
#6 Max Saves the Day
A Fawcett Columbine Book
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright © 1988 by Cloverdale Press, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 88-91535
eISBN: 978-0-307-78388-2
Illustrations by Keith Birdsong
v3.1
To my sister, Michael,
with love and thanks
for making my grade-school years
so much fun. M.S.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
About the Authors
Chapter One
“Oh, wow!” Jeffrey Becker shouted to his friends as he stepped outside. It was two weeks before Christmas. But this wasn’t just another gray, go-to-school December Monday. Overnight, the whole world had turned sparkling white. The trees, the houses, the cars, the streets—everything was covered with deep snow. And, best of all, there was so much snow that school was closed!
“Oh, wow,” he said again. Steam came out of his mouth. The snow was still falling fast. Fat flakes stuck to his brown hair.
“Give up, Jeffrey!” called Benjamin Hyde. “You’re about to become a snowman!”
Jeffrey laughed as he saw his friends scoop up handfuls of snow. There was no getting out of it. He was about to be zapped with snowballs from every direction.
“You guys couldn’t hit an elephant with a watermelon,” Jeffrey teased.
“We don’t want to hit an elephant. We want to hit you,” Kenny Thompsen said with a laugh. He threw a snowball that hit Jeffrey right in the chest.
“Missed me!” Jeffrey shouted.
“No way!” Kenny said in disbelief.
Melissa McKane used her very best pitcher’s windup. Her snowball tagged Jeffrey on the arm.
“Missed!” Jeffrey shouted.
“I did not!” Melissa shouted back.
Jeffrey stepped off his front steps. All at once, Ben and Melissa and Kenny and Ricky Reyes threw snowballs. Every one of them hit Jeffrey.
“Sorry. You lose, guys,” Jeffrey said. He unzipped his jacket. Underneath he was wearing a down vest. “This is a special ‘snowball-proof’ vest.”
They all groaned and blasted more snowballs at Jeffrey. Finally, he was laughing so hard he had to give up. He backed away fast and almost crashed into a snow wall.
“Hey, who made this?” Jeffrey asked.
“I did,” Melissa said proudly. She was Jeffrey’s next-door neighbor. “I got up early and started a fort in your yard.”
“Yeah. Because it’s been scientifically proven that you have the best yard,” Ben added. Ben was Jeffrey’s best friend. Almost everything he said was scientific. He wanted to be a scientist when he grew up.
“But the fort’s not done yet,” Ricky Reyes said.
For a moment, Jeffrey looked at the wall of hard-packed snow. It was in the perfect position. It stretched between two huge, snow-covered bushes. But it was only two feet high.
“It’s got to be higher. It’s got to be higher than anything we’ve built before,” Jeffrey said. Melissa agreed, and she snapped into action.
“Ricky,” she said, “you and I will make the snow blocks. Kenny and Ben can put them into place.”
The wall grew. After a while, it stopped being a wall and became a high-jump hurdle. They took turns leaping over the top headfirst. Jeffrey rolled in the soft, cold snow on the other side.
Finally, the wall was four feet high. Melissa declared that it was now done.
“Hey, slimeballs!” a kid shouted from down the street. Jeffrey recognized the mean voice and the nasty laugh. And that ugly yellow and green knit cap. It could only be one person: Melissa’s older brother, Gary.
Gary and a bunch of his fifth-grade buddies came into Jeffrey’s yard. They had ice skates hanging over their shoulders.
“Neat fort,” Gary said. “How long did it take to make it?” As he spoke, he chipped away at the wall with the toe of his boot.
“Get away from our fort, Gary!” Melissa shouted. “You’re wrecking it!”
“Ooops,” Gary said. He kicked at the top of the wall. A big chunk of snow broke off.
“Why don’t you just crawl back into your hole,” Jeffrey said to Gary. “Because it’s a long time until Groundhog Day.”
“How’d you like a mouth full of snow, slime-ball?” Gary answered.
Thwappp! Gary pushed a wet snowball right into Jeffrey’s face.
“Perfecto,” said one of Gary’s friends. They gave each other high-fives.
But then something excellent happened. Splat! A snowball suddenly hit Gary on the back of his head so hard it knocked his cap off. Gary turned around. “Who threw that?” Gary asked. But there was no one there—no one he could see.
Only Jeffrey could see the boy standing behind Gary. The boy was wearing an old-fashioned red-plaid wool coat and a brown leather hat with ear flaps that were pulled down. The boy’s name was Max. Max was a ghost.
“Great shot!” Jeffrey said. He gave Max the thumbs-up sign.
“Hey, Daddy-o, like, there’s a fungus among us,” Max said to Jeffrey. He was holding his nose and pointing at Gary. “Why don’t you tell this cat to make like the snow and flake off?”
Jeffrey just smiled at his ghost friend. No one else could see or hear Max, so Jeffrey didn’t say anything else. He knew his friends would think he was talking to himself. But it was great to know that Max was there. Max always made funny things happen.
“You’ll be sorry you threw that snowball, slime-ball,” Gary said to Jeffrey. He raised his arm to throw another snowball.
“Big mistake, Gar,” Jeffrey said, shaking his head. “Haven’t you heard? This is a rare ‘echo’ snowfall. It only happens once every twenty-two years.”
“So what?” Gary said. He threw another snowball at Jeffrey, but Jeffrey ducked. Meanwhile, Max had sneaked up right behind Gary. He zapped Gary with a snowball that knocked his cap off again.
“See what I mean about the echo?” Jeffrey said. “You throw one at me—the echo throws it back!”
Instantly, Gary and his friends started to throw snowballs as fast as they could. So did Jeffrey, Ben, Kenny, Melissa, and Ricky. Jeffrey’s friends ducked behind the wall of their fort where Gary’s snowballs couldn’t hit them.
The battle raged on for several minutes. But Gary and his friends finally had to give up. They couldn’t figure out who was dumping snow down their necks and putting icicles in their boots. Of course it was Max—Jeffrey’s invisible friend. Finally, Gary and his friends took off.
“Run, chickens, run!” Ricky Reyes yelled.
“We won!” Kenny shouted. “This is excellent! We really won!”
Thanks to Max, Jeffrey thought happily to himself. But he didn’t say it out loud. He had practically given up trying to convince his friends that he knew a ghost. An
d Max was no help, either. Every time Jeffrey wanted to introduce them, Max would completely disappear—just like now.
Still, it didn’t matter if no one knew about Max. Max was a great friend. And this was a great snowstorm. With Max around, it was going to be the best Christmas ever.
Melissa found Gary’s ugly yellow and green striped cap on the ground. She put it on a stick, and they planted the stick like a victory flag in the wall of the fort. Then they all went into Jeffrey’s house to thaw out and celebrate. Inside, it smelled of hot chocolate and warm cookies.
“Who’s interested in an art project?” Mrs. Becker asked when everyone was out of their wet snow clothes.
“Uh-oh,” Jeffrey told his friends. “The last ‘art’ project Mom thought of was painting the basement steps.”
“This is different,” Jeffrey’s mother said with a smile. “I made some cutout gingerbread cookies. I wondered if your friends wanted to decorate them?”
“Great idea, Mrs. Becker,” said Ben.
In the kitchen, Jeffrey’s mother put one cookie for each kid on a piece of waxed paper. There were three kinds to choose from: gingerbread men, gingerbread women, and, for some reason, gingerbread crocodiles. Next, Mrs. Becker brought out a large bowl of icing. Then she handed out little bottles of food coloring and jars of sprinkles. Finally, she put aprons on each of the kids and then got out of the way.
“I’m going to turn this guy into one cool robot,” Ricky Reyes said. He put gold candy eyes on his cookie.
“You already have about two hundred toy robots, don’t you?” asked Jeffrey.
“Yeah, but I haven’t eaten one since I was a baby,” Ricky said with a laugh.
When they were done with all of the icing and the sprinkles, they put the cookies aside until after lunch. But when they came back, all of the cookie decorations had been changed.
“What’s going on?” Melissa said. She had put a pink-icing ballet tutu on her gingerbread cookie. But now it had lots of chocolate sprinkles on it. Her ballerina looked like it had hairy arms and legs like a gorilla.
“And look at my doctor!” Ben said. Ben had given his cookie a white-icing doctor’s gown and mask. But now it was covered with red food coloring. It looked like blood.
“Jeffrey,” asked Mrs. Becker, “how could this happen?”
Jeffrey immediately knew that the answer was one word: Max! But Jeffrey couldn’t tell the truth because no one would believe him.
“I don’t know, Mom,” Jeffrey said. “It must be a weird time warp caused by the snowstorm. Somehow I think we made Halloween cookies by mistake!”
Chapter Two
The next morning the snowy roads were cleared and everyone went back to school. Everyone except Jeffrey. He had a bad cold and lay on the living-room couch sneezing and coughing. He was wrapped in a cocoon of blankets to keep warm.
At first, Jeffrey was miserable. Was there anything worse than being sick and not being able to play in the snow? On top of that, there was no one to keep him company. His friends were all in school. And his mom was busy with her work. She was writing an article for the newspaper. That meant Jeffrey couldn’t watch television because it was too noisy.
But at about ten A.M. Max appeared in the doorway. As usual, he was wearing an old-fashioned flannel plaid shirt. Max was from the 1950s. Everything about him was from another time.
Jeffrey smiled at his ghost friend.
“Max!” Jeffrey said. “Are you going to keep me company?”
“Sure, but not here,” Max said. “Let’s split this scene, Sleeping Beauty.”
“I’m not sleeping. I’m sick,” Jeffrey mumbled to Max.
Max came over and picked up the thermometer. He put it in his own mouth. “Daddy-o, like, once I had a temperature that was so high, they baked a pie right on my forehead.”
Jeffrey laughed and rolled his eyes. According to Max’s stories, everything had happened to him. Only it was better, or bigger, or worse than what happened to anyone else.
“What should we do for fun?” Jeffrey asked his friend.
“Are you kidding? This is fun,” Max said. “I mean, what could be more funsville than staying in bed and being waited on by your mom all day?” He immediately turned on the TV—loud.
“You’d better turn it off, Max,” Jeffrey said.
“But, like, this is medicine, Jeffrey,” explained the ghost.
“No TV. My mom needs quiet to write.”
“Why doesn’t she use a pencil like everyone else?” Max asked. Then he cracked up at his own joke.
“Jeffrey!” Mrs. Becker called. She walked into the living room a few seconds later. “Jeffrey, you know better than to turn on the TV while I’m working.”
“Uh, well, Mom,” Jeffrey said. “I had to turn it on. Im using TV to fight my cold.”
“This I’ve got to hear,” Mrs. Becker said. She turned off the TV, crossed her arms, and waited for an explanation. But before Jeffrey could answer, Max turned the TV back on again.
“Not funny, Jeffrey,” his mother said. “Let go of the remote.”
“But, Mom! I can’t! You know how you always tell me that too much TV will rot my brain?” Jeffrey said. “Well, I just read that the part of the brain that rots is the same part that makes you get colds. So I need to rot my brain to fight my cold.”
Mrs. Becker ran her fingers through her hair. “Keep the volume down, Jeffrey,” she said. “I’ve got to finish my work.”
“Whew. That was a close one,” Jeffrey said as his mother returned to the den.
“Naah,” Max said. “Like, she’s a mom, dig? That’s her job—cooking and cleaning and taking care of the kids.”
“Moms aren’t always like that anymore,” Jeffrey said. “Boy, are you living in the past.”
The ghost looked thoughtful. “I know how to make you feel better,” he said. “What dessert do you dig the most?”
“That’s easy,” Jeffrey answered. “Strawberry shortcake with ice cream and whipped cream.”
“All right,” Max said. “Now tell your old lady to get on the stick and make it for you.”
“Are you crazy, Max?” Jeffrey sputtered. “No way is my mom going to spend hours in the kitchen making me strawberry shortcake. Especially not when she’s got a deadline for the newspaper.”
“Hey, dig this, man. Like, when I was sick, I had my mom running around in circles doing special scenes for me. And it worked. Believe me, if you had strawberry shortcake, you’d get better in ten seconds,” Max said. “Go ahead. Just ask her. Be sure to tell her lots of whipped cream.”
“Forget it. I’m not calling her, Max,” Jeffrey said.
Max grabbed the remote and pointed it toward the TV. Once again, the volume blasted out. Mrs. Becker came charging back into the living room.
“What is it, Jeffrey?” she asked. “I know you’re trying to annoy me to get my attention.”
“No I’m not,” Jeffrey said. “I’m just hungry, Mom.”
“Oh. Well, that’s a good sign. You must be getting better,” Mrs. Becker said with a smile. “What would you like?”
“How about strawberry shortcake with ice cream and lots of whipped cream?”
“Jeffrey,” his mother said sternly. “If you’re well enough to drive me crazy, you’re well enough to get your own lunch.”
With that, she walked back to the den.
“Terrific idea, Max,” Jeffrey grumbled. “Now what do we do?”
“Now we fix lunch,” Max said cheerfully.
Jeffrey got off the couch and shuffled out to the kitchen. Max, floating several inches off the ground, followed behind.
Jeffrey sat down on a tall, yellow kitchen stool. “Well, what are you going to fix, Max?”
“Me?” asked the ghost. “I already told you, my mom did the cooking. I never dug the pots and pans scene.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not too good at it, either,” Jeffrey said with a sigh.
Finally, they decided to have cereal. Jeffrey got
out two bowls and Max got out the milk and raisins. When Max poured the cereal, the free prize fell into his bowl. It was a small stamp pad with a cow’s face on it.
They ate their cereal and stamped each other’s hands with the toy. After that they played board games and watched old Abbott and Costello movies on the VCR until Jeffrey’s father came home. Then Max disappeared.
Jeffrey was sick the next day, too. But it wasn’t as much fun on Wednesday as it had been on Tuesday.
For one thing, Melissa had brought Jeffrey’s homework over the night before. Jeffrey put it on his desk and tried his best to ignore it. But his eyes kept going back to it. Then Jeffrey and Max couldn’t agree on what games to play.
And Jeffrey missed his other friends. Ben and Kenny couldn’t possibly be getting along without him—or could they?
“I’ll bet right now Ben is explaining the structure of the atom to the entire class,” Jeffrey said.
“Hey, Daddy-o,” said Max. “Dig this plan. Like, maybe I’ll bop over to the little red schoolhouse and check out the scene. See who’s hip and who’s zip.”
That idea improved Jeffrey’s spirits immediately.
“Great,” Jeffrey said. “You could be my eyes and ears.”
“Yeah, but, like, I refuse to be your nose,” said Max. “It’s all red and drippy. I’ll be back in a flash after school. See you later, alligator.”
A full report about what was going on at school! That was going to be great! Jeffrey blew his nose and looked at the clock. He couldn’t wait for three-thirty to come.
Chapter Three
Jeffrey waited all afternoon for Max to come back. He was dying to know what had happened at school. But three-thirty came and went, and still no Max. Pretty soon, Jeffrey began to wonder if something bad had happened. Maybe it was something Max didn’t want Jeffrey to know about.
But when Jeffrey went back to school the next day, he forgot all about Max. Because the minute he walked into the classroom, things started to happen.
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