Megan Stine_Jeffery & the Third-Grade Ghost 02 (5 page)

Ricky Reyes was dressed as a karate expert. He gave the class a martial-arts demonstration. While Ricky was splitting boards with his hands, a
voice whispered in Jeffrey’s ear, “What’s shaking, Daddy-o?”

“Max! It’s about time,” Jeffrey whispered back. He looked around, but Max was invisible, even to him.

“Don’t get unwrapped,” said the third-grade ghost. “I’ve got everything under control.”

“And now it’s time for Jeffrey,” said Mrs. Merrin.

Jeffrey nodded his head.

“Excuse me, I mean, Jeffrey the Mysterioso,” said Mrs. Merrin.

Everyone applauded.

“Thank you, thank you,” Jeffrey said, walking to the front of the class. “My first trick will be the Floating Stuffed Rabbit trick.” He put his top hat on Mrs. Merrin’s desk. “Watch carefully,” Jeffrey announced, waving his wand over the hat. “You are about to see a rabbit float up from the hat.”

Everyone watched carefully. All of a sudden, soap bubbles started to come from the hat. It was funny—but it wasn’t a stuffed rabbit. It wasn’t the trick Jeffrey and Max had rehearsed.

The class started to laugh.

“Uh, well, it looks like the rabbit is busy taking a bubble bath right now,” Jeffrey said.

“Max, what are you doing?” Jeffrey whispered
angrily. But he still didn’t see Max, so he didn’t know where to whisper.

“I’m just making with the magic, man,” Max whispered back.

Jeffrey tried to smile at his audience. He pretended nothing was wrong.

“And now Jeffrey the Mysterioso will try another trick. I call this trick: The Amazing Flying Cape!” Jeffrey waved his magic wand twice. “Keep your eyes on my cape. Watch it lift into the air—all by itself!”

That was the way the trick was supposed to work. But Max changed things around again. He untied the cord that held Jeffrey’s cape around his neck. Suddenly, the cape fell to the floor.

There were screams of laughter. But Jeffrey’s face was turning red.

“Sorry, I forgot,” Jeffrey said. “It’s
one
wave of the wand to make the cape fly.
Two
waves to make it fall onto the floor. Never mind. Now for my third trick—and this one is really going to work,” Jeffrey said, hoping Max would get the point.

But he heard a familiar voice say, “Like, man, they’re all working right on the money, if you ask me.”

Jeffrey cleared his throat and announced, “The Disappearing Pitcher of Water.” This trick
had
to
work because Jeffrey had set it up himself. Before class he had put a pitcher of water on Mrs. Merrin’s desk. Then he’d covered it with a large black handkerchief.

“For this trick we need an ordinary pitcher filled with ordinary water,” Jeffrey said. He walked over to Mrs. Merrin’s desk. But the pitcher of water was gone! Max had taken it away. Only the black handkerchief was there, lying flat on the desk.

Jeffrey thought quickly. Then he picked up the black handkerchief with a quick jerk of one hand.

“There you have it. I’ve already made the pitcher of water disappear! How about that?” Jeffrey said. “I knew it was going to work.”

“Hey, I know how you did that. The pitcher was never there,” Ricky Reyes said. “That’s no trick.”

At that moment, Jeffrey wished he could make himself disappear.

“Okay,” Jeffrey said. “Now for the hard part. To make the pitcher reappear.” Jeffrey waved the black handkerchief in the air. Then he spread it on the desk and waved his wand. Secretly, he crossed his fingers. “Come on, Max,” Jeffrey said under his breath.

And when he lifted the handkerchief, there was … a baseball?

“Well, looks like the
pitcher’s
in the dugout! But
here’s his ball,” Jeffrey said, trying to laugh. Everyone roared at the joke. They were having a good time. Max was having a great time. But Jeffrey was a nervous wreck.

“Now for my last trick. The Living Hand. Watch carefully as—”

Jeffrey had no more than announced the trick when a large can appeared on the desk. Jeffrey picked it up and read the label: Canned Ham.

“I said
hand
. Not
ham!”
Jeffrey told Max. But the ghost was laughing too hard to listen. And so was everyone else in the class. Jeffrey went back to his desk and sat down gloomily.

“Thank you, Jeffrey,” Mrs. Merrin said. “It may not have been much of a magic act, but it was a very funny comedy act.”

“I didn’t see anything funny about it,” Jeffrey muttered to Max under his breath. He wished Max would appear so that he could—as Max would say—make with a strangling scene! But how could you strangle a ghost?

After school, Jeffrey went home as fast as he could. He went to his room and locked the door. The whole day had been a disaster. Why had he ever trusted Max in the first place? And what was Max planning to do at the McGyver house tonight? Turn
the dagger into a lemon cream pie? Forget it! There probably was no dagger. And Ricky Reyes wouldn’t be Jeffrey’s friend because he’d be too busy laughing.

There was a knock on Jeffrey’s door.

“Yo, Jeffrey,” said Mr. Becker, “I feel the urge for a warmhearted father-son talk. How about you?”

“Can’t handle it now, Dad,” Jeffrey called through the door.

“It’s about your allowance,” said Mr. Becker.

Jeffrey opened the door in two seconds flat.

“I’ve been thinking very carefully about your request to increase your allowance,” Mr. Becker said. He walked into the room slowly.

Too slowly for Jeffrey. “Dad, could we bottom-line this? Yes or no?” he asked anxiously.

“I prefer to drag it out and keep you in suspense,” his father said with a laugh. “Seven dollars and thirty-five cents is a lot of money. But your mom and I have decided to raise your allowance to five dollars.”

“Great!” Jeffrey shouted. Something was actually going right for a change.

“Well, we know that you’re a responsible kid,” Mr. Becker said.

“Right, Dad,” agreed Jeffrey.

“And you’re not a kid who would just go out and blow money on some off-the-wall kind of thing,” said Jeffrey’s father.

“Absolutely, Dad,” agreed Jeffrey.

“So … what
are
you going to buy with the money, Jeffrey?”

Jeffrey thought for a minute and remembered that he had to go into the McGyver house later that night. “Well,” he said, “right now what I really need most in the whole world is a dagger.”

Mr. Becker’s face froze.

“Just kidding, Dad,” Jeffrey said quickly. “It was a joke—honest.”

“Jeffrey,” his father said as he stood up. “Next time you want a raise in your allowance, could you do me a favor?”

“Sure, Dad. Anything. What is it?”

“Ask your mother,” Mr. Becker said with a sigh.

Then he went out and closed the door.

The moon was full that night. But there were clouds in the sky. Sometimes the clouds covered the moon. Sometimes the moon peeked out and made strange shapes. It was a cold and spooky Halloween night.

Ben and Jeffrey were out trick-or-treating. They tried to pretend that it was just like every other Halloween. But they knew this year was different. This year the McGyver house would be their last stop of the night.

“Okay, the Parkers are next. They’re a Code Three,” Ben said as they left one house and walked to another.

“Check,” said Jeffrey.

Jeffrey and Ben had a code system for each house in the neighborhood.

At Code One houses, people always gave out great candy. These were the best houses.

At Code Two houses, people always gave out weird candy. It was either something that nobody
had ever heard of or something nobody wanted to eat.

At Code Three houses, the people answering the door either pretended to be afraid of the trick-or-treaters or took so long guessing who was wearing which costume that they forgot to hand out the candy.

And a Code Four house meant that lots of kids lived there. Ben and Jeffrey had to be on the lookout for booby traps: eggs dropped from the second floor or strange sticky things that didn’t come off your shoes after you stepped on them.

They knocked on the Parkers’ door, and Mrs. Parker answered it. She was a friendly woman who sold houses and always wore different-colored running suits.

“Trick or treat,” said Ben.

“Well, who can this be? Let me just guess,” Mrs. Parker said.

“It’s Ben and Jeffrey,” said Jeffrey, opening his bag for the goodies.

“Don’t give me any hints. Let me just guess.” Mrs. Parker tapped her cheek with her finger as if she were making an important decision.

“He’s Ben and I’m Jeffrey. Honest.”

“Well, I just give up. Your costumes are too
good for me,” said Mrs. Parker, shaking her head.

Jeffrey thought Mrs. Parker was ready for an Academy Award.

Finally, she gave them some candy and closed the door.

“Let’s wear name tags next year,” Ben suggested.

“Or T-shirts with our names and faces on them,” Jeffrey said.

“Hey, Jeffrey, you did it again,” Ben said. “Cut it out, okay?”

“Huh?” said Jeffrey.

“Look, my bag is empty,” Ben said. “You’ve got all my candy. Twice is enough. It’s not funny anymore.”

“I didn’t do it, Ben. It’s a Code Ten,” Jeffrey said.

“There is no Code Ten,” Ben said.

“It’s a Max attack,” Jeffrey explained.

“I don’t want to hear about your make-believe ghost,” said Ben. “Just give me back my candy.”

Jeffrey poured half of his bag into Ben’s bag. But he thought to himself, It’s not safe to go trick-or-treating—not when Max is around.

They kept running into problems with Code Tens. At the Dracket house, the doorbell somehow
got stuck and wouldn’t stop ringing. And Mr. Dracket blamed Jeffrey and Ben.

“I suppose you think this is funny?” said Mr. Dracket, who was usually a Code One. He was quickly turning into a Code Five—a person who hated kids. He pounded on his doorbell, trying to get it to stop.

Then at the Carusos’ house they found a hand-painted sign that said:
MEASLES, THIS HOUSE IS QUARANTINED! STAY AWAY!

Jeffrey could tell that Max had been there, too—and not just because the sign was hand-painted.

“Quarantined? What a dumb joke,” Ben said with a laugh. “Doctors haven’t done anything like that in thirty years.”

“I guess some jokers are still living in the past,” Jeffrey said. He shook his head at his ghost friend from the 1950s.

But that didn’t to seem to stop Max’s pranks. A block later, Jeffrey and Ben started across the Shermans’ front yard. Suddenly, the automatic sprinkler system turned on.

“You didn’t say this was a Code Four,” Ben said, running from the water.

Jeffrey knew that it had to be another Code Ten—Max!

They sat down on the curb across the street and opened a couple of peanut-butter granola bars.

“Well, I guess we’ve gone everywhere,” Ben said. “What time do you think it is?”

Jeffrey knew it was probably around seven-thirty. That’s when he had agreed to meet Ricky Reyes. “Almost time to go to the McGyver house,” Jeffrey answered.

“Too soon. Maybe we should try a few houses in a different neighborhood,” Ben said.

“You know, if you don’t want to go with me, it’s okay.”

The two friends looked at each other. They had been through a lot together.

“Okay. I don’t want to go with you,” Ben said.

Jeffrey’s heart sank.

Then he saw Ben smile. “But I’m not going to back out on you.”

“Thanks, Ben,” Jeffrey said. “At least I have one friend I can count on.”

They finished their granola bars without saying much more and then walked to the McGyver house.

With the moon going in and out of shadows, the empty McGyver house looked creepier than ever. Something about Halloween brought out the worst in it.

When Jeffrey and Ben got there, a crowd of kids
was already waiting. Kenny and Melissa and Becky Singer were among them. Ricky Reyes was there, too.

“Well, Becker, I know you’re not a total coward,” Ricky said. “At least you showed up. You ready to go in there and get that dagger?”

“Sure we’re ready,” Jeffrey said. “But before we go in, I’d like to say something on this special night.” He cleared his throat and waited as long as he could for everyone’s attention. “A long time ago, when our forefathers and foremothers and all of our forecousins came to this country—”