Scary School

by Derek the Ghost

  As you may remember, Mr. Spider-Eyes is the strict hall monitor who has one hundred tiny eyes on each side of his head. His wife is Mrs. T. Because he has so many eyes, being in bright places for too long gives him a bad headache. He therefore keeps his office pitch dark, which is the perfect amount of light for him. Nobody is sure what his office looks like since he keeps it so dark.

  During lunch, Stephanie, one of Lindsey’s friends, handed Charles Nukid a note that said to report to Mr. Spider-Eyes’s office immediately.

  Great, thought Charles to himself. What did I do this time? Wear the wrong color socks?

  Charles got up from the table and left the lunch hall for Mr. Spider-Eyes’s office. All of Lindsey’s friends started giggling to themselves. Penny Possum left her lunch and followed him out.

  She considered Charles to be her only friend and didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. Charles didn’t consider Penny to be a friend. He thought she wouldn’t talk to him because she didn’t think he was cool enough. Since he wasn’t in Ms. Fang’s class, he had no idea she never spoke to anybody.

  As Charles walked down the hallway, Penny ran in front of him and started jumping, waving her arms, and doing a dance to try to stop him, but he thought she was making fun of his skinny arms and kept walking.

  When he got to Mr. Spider-Eyes’s door, Penny tried to pull him back, but Charles squirmed away and opened the door.

  A rush of light poured in, Mr. Spider-Eyes hissed, and for a moment, Charles and Penny saw the figures of Mr. Spider-Eyes and another man, who was thin with gray hair and wore glasses and a drab gray suit. Charles and Penny did not recognize him in the dark, but you, my sharp readers, know him as Franz Dietrich Wolfbark, the chairman of the Ghoul Games.

  “Close the door! Close the door!” shouted Mr. Spider-Eyes.

  Charles went inside and closed the door behind him as Penny sneaked in with him at the last second.

  It was pitch black inside and Charles couldn’t see a thing, but with her large eyes and extraordinary night vision, Penny saw everything. Mr. Spider-Eyes was reclining against a large spiderweb. Franz Wolfbark was standing next to him, and they seemed to be drinking glasses of blood and eating bats on a skewer.

  Mr. Spider-Eyes hissed sharply, “What are you doing here?”

  “I got a note that you wanted to see me?” said Charles.

  “You?” said Mr. Spider-Eyes. “You follow every rule to the letter every second of every day. Why in the world would I want to see you? I think someone is playing an April Fool’s prank on you.”

  “Oh. Okay,” said Charles, “I’ll leave then.”

  “Wait,” spoke Franz Wolfbark. “These two have seen us together. Surely we can’t let them report what they’ve seen.”

  “Good point, Franz. Sorry, kids, looks like this is your unlucky day.”

  Mr. Spider-Eyes hopped off the web and suddenly turned into a giant spider. Franz Wolfbark removed his glasses and his tie, and turned into a giant werewolf. Penny would have normally played possum right then, but instead, she was only thinking of saving Charles.

  Penny tried to turn the door handle, but the door was locked.

  “Please,” Charles begged, “we won’t say anything. Just make it a rule, and you know I’ll follow it.”

  “Sorry,” said Franz Wolfbark, “we can’t take that risk and jeopardize our plan for the Ghoul Games.”

  Mr. Spider-Eyes and Wolfbark the werewolf lunged toward them. The kids were about to be torn to shreds, but at that moment, Penny felt something inside her that she hadn’t felt in years.

  Her voice.

  It stirred in her belly then burst from her mouth as she screamed, “Noooo!”

  And because she hadn’t spoken in so many years, her voice had been building up inside her all that time, and it exploded with the force of ten fighter jets soaring into the sky.

  It was so powerful that Mr. Spider-Eyes and Franz Wolfbark flew against the back wall like they had been hit by the wrecking ball from the goblin Halloween show. Seeing stars, they remained on the floor, muttering unintelligibly.

  Penny saw a chain of keys sitting on the desk and grabbed them. She opened the door and pulled Charles out into the hallway. They ran as fast as they could back toward the lunch hall, but when Penny heard a loud roar from around the corner, she pulled Charles into a crevice between lockers 217 and 218, a secret hiding place many of the kids used when they were in a pinch.

  As they sat and caught their breath, Charles lifted his hand to fix his hair, but before he could even touch it, Penny was already fixing it for him.

  When Penny finished, she smiled at Charles and Charles did something very strange by his standards. He put his hands in his hair and mussed it so that it was a complete mess. He then smirked at Penny as if to say, “Fix that.”

  Penny laughed, and that made Charles laugh for the first time since he could remember.

  “What happened in there?” Charles said through his laughter. “It was so dark, I couldn’t see.”

  Penny, with her newfound voice, gleefully told him everything that had happened in Mr. Spider-Eyes’s office, but Charles didn’t hear a word Penny said because his ears were still ringing from her mighty yell.

  Chapter Twenty

  Lindsey Learns a Lesson

  Lindsey had long blond pigtails and was quite certain she was the prettiest girl at Scary School.

  Because she thought she was the prettiest, Lindsey also thought she must be the most popular, but the truth was, hardly anybody liked her because she seemed so sure she was better than everyone else.

  Her only friends were Stephanie and Maria, who weren’t very smart, so they believed Lindsey when she told them she was the most popular girl in the school. They thought being friends with Lindsey would make them popular, too. They weren’t smart enough to realize it had the opposite effect.

  Back on the first day of school, Lindsey, Stephanie, and Maria ran out to the hopscotch courts at recess. They were the first ones to get there and claimed Hopscotch Court #1 for themselves. It was the best hopscotch court because it was the only one in the shade. Lindsey took out a piece of pink chalk and wrote their names on the asphalt next to the court—LINDSEY, STEPHANIE, AND MARIA. Then, Lindsey shouted to the whole yard, “Listen, everyone! This is my hopscotch court because I got here first. I am the only one who is allowed to use it for the rest of the year. No one else can use it unless you have my permission. Got it?”

  Stephanie and Maria crossed their arms and gave threatening looks to get the point across.

  Everyone thought Lindsey must be some kind of tough Scary kid to make such a bold claim, and they all nodded their heads.

  “I bet she’s a harpy,” Fred said to Jason.

  “No way,” said Jason, “she must be Medusa. Don’t stare into her eyes or you’ll turn into stone.”

  “Yeah, I bet that’s it,” said Johnny.

  “Yeah, she’s definitely Medusa,” said Fred.

  The rumor quickly spread that Lindsey was the young Medusa, and everyone on the playground turned around and dared not look at her.

  “Well, that worked well,” said Lindsey to Stephanie and Maria. “You see, when you’re the most popular girl, you get that kind of respect.”

  “Um . . . no one’s even looking at us,” Maria grumbled.

  “Of course,” said Lindsey. “It’s because we’re so pretty. They don’t want to be reminded of how ugly they are.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  The other thing Lindsey loved (besides hopscotch) was dancing. She took dance classes every day after school. She was very sad that Scary School never had any school dances for her to show off her moves. That’s why she was so excited when Principal Headcrusher made this announcement on a Monday morning in early May:

  “Students, as you all know, the Ghoul Games begin next week. I have just been informed by the gracious Mr. Wolfbark that students from the other Scary schools will be visiting us and attending classes with you all
this week. The exchange will culminate with a school dance called the Dance of Doom this Friday night in Petrified Pavilion. I expect you all to be gracious hosts for our Scary guests this week and to make them feel at home. That is all.”

  Lindsey could hardly contain her excitement. When she heard about the dance, she screamed out, “Yes!” at the top of her lungs. A rush of thoughts were swirling through her head: I can’t wait to go get a new dress, and new shoes, and a new haircut, oh, and I wonder who’s going to ask me. . . . I bet everyone is going to ask me. . . . Who will I say yes to?

  At that moment, three hideous monsters walked into the room—each one uglier than the next.

  “Awoo-Aloo!” said the monsters.

  “Awoo-Aloo!” said the class back to them, and the monsters did backflips.

  “Hi, I’m Pob-Lob,” said the first ugly monster.

  “Hi, I’m Dorba,” said the even uglier monster.

  “Hi, I’m Gurk,” said the ugliest one of them all.

  “Welcome,” said Ms. Fang. “I take it you’re our exchange students from other Scary schools.”

  “Yop. We from Ogre Prep. We learn here. We need seat.”

  And so the monsters joined the class and seemed just as smart as any of the other kids, even though they talked funny.

  “Sorry about the whole Golden Torch thing,” whispered Jason to Pob-Lob. “I hope you weren’t too mad at us.”

  “Huh?” said Pob-Lob. “Oh yesh! Thanks to you for stopping Golden Torch running! It saved many monsters from being smashed by trolls in contest to carry stupid torch. We were very gratefuls to you for that.”

  When class ended, Lindsey met Stephanie and Maria at their hopscotch court. They immediately began discussing all the details of the dance and who they were hoping to go with. Then the three monsters came up to the hopscotch court and looked right at Lindsey. It was the first time anyone besides Stephanie or Maria had looked at her in nine months, and she was a bit shocked.

  “We play hop-hop with you humans,” said Pob-Lob.

  “Eww,” said Lindsey. “In case you haven’t noticed, we are the prettiest girls in school.”

  “You look just as ugly as every other human,” said Gurk.

  “Whatever,” said Lindsey. “Maybe you can’t tell, but we are definitely the prettiest, and we do not play with ugly monsters like you, so go find some other weirdos to play ‘hop-hop’ with.”

  The three monsters grrrred and walked away, then played a very nice game of hopscotch with Rachael and Raychel.

  It was Thursday afternoon. The day before the Dance of Doom, and nobody had asked Lindsey to go to the dance yet. Everyone must be scared to ask me because I’m so pretty and they’ll think I’ll say no, she thought. I guess I’ll have to ask someone myself.

  She caught Fred in the hallway and said, “It’s your lucky day, Fred. I want you to take me to the Dance of Doom.”

  “Sorry,” said Fred. “I’m going with Rachael.”

  “Oh, are you sure you don’t want to drop her for me?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” said Fred, trying not to make eye contact.

  Next, Lindsey asked Jason, but he was going with Frank (which is pronounced “Rachel”). Johnny was going with Petunia, Peter was going with Cindy Chan, and Ramon was going with Wendy Crumkin. Everyone had a date already!

  During lunch, she thought to herself, I can’t believe I’m going to do this, and she went up to the skinny, geeky Charles Nukid and asked him to the dance.

  “Sorry,” said Charles. “I’m going with Penny Possum.”

  Friday at recess, Lindsey was playing hopscotch with Stephanie and Maria.

  “I guess we’ll all just have to go to the dance together,” she said to them.

  “Actually,” said Stephanie, “I’m going with Benny Porter. He just came back as a zombie.”

  “Yeah, and I’m going with Antonio. He’s a vampire in the sixth grade,” said Maria.

  “So you two have dates, and I don’t?” said Lindsey, astonished.

  “Yeah.”

  That made Lindsey snap, and she yelled out to the whole school yard, “Don’t any of you realize how pretty I am?”

  Then she burst into tears and ran out of the school yard. She curled up in a corner behind the lockers and continued crying.

  Eventually someone came and found her. She looked up, expecting to see Stephanie or Maria, but instead she saw Gurk, the ugliest exchange-monster of them all. His face looked something like a rotten head of broccoli. He had squinty eyes, a pig’s snout, and a forked tongue.

  “What wrong, human girl?” Gurk asked.

  “None of your business!” she snapped back.

  “My name Gurk,” he said. “You go to Dance of Doom with Gurk?”

  Lindsey looked up at him and could only retch.

  “Ugh!” she said. “You’re the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. I would rather go alone, thank you!”

  “Okay,” said Gurk. “Gurk understands. You do Gurk a favor though?”

  “What?”

  “Tell Gurk if his monster dance is good or not.”

  Lindsey chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “This ought to be good.”

  Gurk put a music player on the ground and turned it on. A hit song blasted, and he started dancing.

  Lindsey’s jaw dropped. He was incredible. He was better than Justin Timberlake and Usher combined. She’d never seen anything like it.

  “That’s amazing. Are all monsters as good at dancing as you?” Lindsey asked.

  “No,” said Gurk. “Gurk just loves to dance. No one dance as good as Gurk.”

  “Well, you are fantastic,” Lindsey said. Then she got up and started to show Gurk her own moves.

  “Wow!” said Gurk. “You good dancer, too!”

  “Thanks! We should totally go to the dance together.”

  Lindsey couldn’t believe she’d said that. She just never wanted to stop dancing with Gurk.

  “But you said no already,” said Gurk.

  “I was just kidding,” she fibbed. “It’s what humans do sometimes.”

  “Oh. Okay. Yaaay!”

  That night, Gurk and Lindsey walked into Petrified Pavilion together for the Dance of Doom. She was wearing her new white dress and her new red shoes, and he was wearing a bright blue suit.

  There were some snickers when they walked in and stepped onto the dance floor. No one could believe they had come together.

  Then the music started. Lindsey and Gurk grasped hands and began dancing together. All the snickering ceased, and the whole crowd immediately formed a circle around them and watched Lindsey and Gurk do the most amazing dance anyone had ever seen. There were gasps, cheers, and shouts for more. No one could believe the spectacular display they were witnessing.

  As the song was finishing, Gurk tossed Lindsey thirty feet in the air, spinning her like a top. Her dress spun so fast, it held her up in the air like a helicopter, and she flew around the pavilion to waves of applause and celebratory screams. Then she dove down to Gurk, and he caught her in a dramatic finishing pose just as the song ended.

  For the first time in her life, Lindsey actually was the most popular girl in school.

  After the dance, Lindsey gave Gurk a kiss good-night. Gurk’s green face turned red, and Lindsey laughed.

  She never judged anyone by their looks again.

  Lindsey made more friends that last month of school than she ever had before.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Ghoul Games Week

  Aside from being the nicest teacher at Scary School, Ms. Fang is also a world-class checkers player. Last summer, she went back home to Transylvania to play in the Vampire Checkers Championship.

  She made it all the way to the finals and was matched against five-time checkers champion Count Checkula for the grand prize. By the end, she was down to one piece left against his four kings. In an amazing maneuver, she performed a quadruple jump to win to the game. The problem was, she was moving at super
-fast vampire speed, which is so fast that it looks like a blur to human eyes. In her excitement, she knocked the top checker off the last king, and it shot around the room as fast as a bullet.

  The vampire crowd ducked out of the way as the flying checker ricocheted off walls and poles. Ms. Fang tried to catch it, but it slipped through her hands and hit her right in the left fang, which popped out of her mouth. Not only did she lose her fang, she lost the game as well, because knocking a checker off the board is an automatic disqualification in vampire checkers.

  Ms. Fang was crushed. That’s why she was in such a foul mood the first day of school.

  However, she found redemption during the school year when the students in her checkers club went on to win the state championship, led by their captain, Wendy Crumkin. Now they faced the ultimate test in the Ghoul Games, as they would be matched against the number-one ranked checkers team in the world from Bloodington Elementary in Transylvania.

  It was May 10, the first day of the Ghoul Games.

  The week leading up to this day had been a resounding success by all counts. The students from all the different Scary schools were getting along, making new friends, and learning about the lives of all the different Scary kids from all over the world.

  Petunia and Frank made friends with three zombie girls from the School for the Mostly-Dead. Rachael and Raychel found four more Rachels to be friends with from four different schools—Scream Academy, Wolfsbane, Ogre Prep, and Bloodington Elementary.

  Everyone was supposed to be practicing for their Ghoul Games events, but they ended up taking time off to participate in all the fun activities going on.

  Johnny, Ramon, and Peter went bowling with the three giants they were going to play against in basketball. Lindsey taught pixies how to play hopscotch. Jason and Fred joined a pack of werewolves from Wolfsbane and learned how to howl at the moon.

  Charles Nukid and Cindy Chan were joined in class by a group of young dragons from Firecrest. On Saturday afternoon, there was a big water balloon fight at Scary Park, and the young dragons let Cindy and Charles ride them so that they could drop water balloons from the air. Then, Frank N. Stein pulled up in a brand-new truck, and a whole family of freshly made monsters unloaded box after box of freshly made donuts for everyone at the park.