My Dog's a Scaredy-Cat Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  To all the children who work so hard to shake hands with their learning challenges, I salute you. And as always, to Stacey.—H.W.

  For Lynne and Alex, with happy memories of all those Halloweens.—L.O.

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

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  Text copyright © 2006 by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver Productions, Inc.

  Illustrations copyright © 2006 by Grosset & Dunlap. All rights reserved. Published

  by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc. S.A.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2006004898

  eISBN : 978-1-101-09886-8

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  CHAPTER 1

  “YOU’RE GOING AS A WHAT?” Frankie Townsend, my best friend, practically screamed at me.

  “I’m telling you, Frankie,” I shot back. “No one has ever had this idea for a Halloween costume before.”

  “That’s because no one is as insane as you are, Zip.”

  I had called Frankie and Ashley and told them they had to hurry to our clubhouse for a special meeting to discuss my brilliant idea for a Halloween costume. Ashley hadn’t arrived yet, but I was so pumped up that I couldn’t wait, so I just blurted my idea out to Frankie. It was not hard to notice that he didn’t seem to think my idea was as brilliant as I did. As a matter of fact, I noticed that he thought it was totally stupid. And insane. And dangerous, too.

  Usually, Frankie and I agree on most everything. Like the fact that our teacher Ms. Adolf is the worst teacher in the world. Like the fact that The Moth That Ate Toledo is as excellent an example of moviemaking as you could ever hope to find. Like the fact that boxers are better than briefs, and that your feet should never be tucked in tight when you’re in bed. We think it sucks having the sheets so tight that they squish your toes under your feet like you’re some kind of three-toed sloth.

  So you can probably see why I was shocked that Frankie didn’t like my idea for a Halloween costume.

  “Frankie, the trouble with you is that you don’t have an imagination with personality,” I told him.

  “Hank, the trouble with you is that you have an imagination that is totally freaky.”

  “What is wrong with going as a table in an Italian restaurant?” I demanded to know. “Tell me in twenty-five words or less.”

  “I can tell you in one word, Zip. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.”

  “Are you seriously telling me that my idea isn’t clever and original?”

  “I’m telling you that you’re going to be laughed out of the school yard, if not pushed.”

  I flopped down on the beat-up purple-flowered couch and sighed. Then I coughed, because when you flop down on that couch, a huge cloud of dust erupts from the pillows like a volcano. Our clubhouse is in the basement of our apartment building, just down the hall from the laundry room. The clubhouse is really supposed to be a storage room where people keep things they don’t use every day, like Christmas decorations or a bicycle with a flat tire. Mrs. Park, who lives on the seventh floor, put the flowered couch there last year when she got a new brown velvet one. There’s a lot of dust that’s collected in its pillows since then, but we don’t care. I mean, how many kids do you know who have a clubhouse that comes complete with its own purple-flowered couch?

  I put my feet up on the big iron birdcage that Mr. Grasso kept his pet parrot in before it flew away. Mr. Grasso told us that he named his parrot Gershwin because the bird liked to sing old Broadway tunes written by this guy named George Gershwin and his brother, Ira. That’s a funny name, Ira. It sounds like it should be the name of a government office building, like: “The Ira Building will be closed on Saturdays and public holidays.”

  I hope Gershwin is living in Central Park now, with some bird friends who like to sing, too.

  “Zip,” Frankie said, snapping his fingers in front of me. “Where are you, man?”

  “I was in Central Park, but I’m back now,” I said.

  My mind wanders a lot, but Frankie is used to that. You get used to everything about each other when you’ve been best friends your whole lives.

  “Hey, guys. I came as soon as dinner was over.”

  It was Ashley Wong, our other best friend, who lives on the fourth floor of our building. She was breathing hard as she rounded the corner into the clubhouse, so she must have run down the stairs instead of taking the elevator.

  “What’s the urgent meeting about?” she asked me. “Another Hank Zipzer brainstorm?”

  “Hank wants to discuss his idea for the Halloween costume he’s going to wear in the school parade tomorrow,” Frankie said. “Hank, my man, go ahead. Tell Ashweena what you’ve decided to go as.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I said to Ashley. “Frankie’s got a problem with the fact that I’m going as a table in an Italian restaurant.”

  “That’s amazing,” Ashley said, “because I’m going as a bowl of pasta in white clam sauce.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “Yes, I am,” she snapped back. “And I hope you are, too. Tell me you’re not serious, Hank.”

  “What is wrong with you two?” I asked. “Does everyone have to go as some kind of bloodsucking vampire? That’s so third grade.”

  Frankie came over and flopped down next to me.

  “Hank, let me tell you how i
t is,” he said, coughing from the dust his butt had kicked up. He put his hand on my shoulder and got that look on his face that he gets when he’s explaining complicated things to me, like the plot of The Moth That Ate Toledo (Part Two) or how you figure out the earned run average of a pitcher. He looked me right in the eye.

  “Hear me, dude. Blood is Halloween. Fangs are Halloween. Oozing scars and a rubber nail stuck in your cheek are Halloween. A table in an Italian restaurant is so not Halloween. It’s not even Easter.”

  “Hank,” Ashley chimed in. “It’s our duty as your friends to warn you that if you go in the costume you’re thinking of, everybody in the entire fifth grade will be talking about you. And you won’t like what they’re saying.”

  “Fine, you’ve warned me,” I said. “But when you see me tomorrow in a red-and-white checkered tablecloth, with breadsticks in one hand and garlic-scented olive oil in the other, your minds will be changed forever.”

  “Did he just say garlic-scented olive oil?” Frankie asked Ashley.

  “Yes, I’m pretty sure he did.” She nodded.

  “Ashweena, that tells me that this is way more than we can deal with. Way more.”

  “I can pull this off, guys,” I said. “I don’t want to be just another mummy. I want to express myself. Be creative.”

  “Will you consider a bribe?” Ashley said.

  “I’ll buy you two slices of pepperoni pizza if you change your mind.”

  I shook my head.

  “Not even for a whole pizza with sausage, Canadian bacon, pineapple, and extra cheese,” I said.

  Frankie got up and headed for the door, stepping over Gershwin’s cage and a box of Mrs. Fink’s old baking pans. Mrs. Fink lives next door to us, and she makes the best cherry strudel in the world. If you ever run in to her, you have got to ask her for a piece. Put some vanilla ice cream on top, eat that puppy up, and you’ll be smiling for a week. I’m not kidding.

  “Hankster, we tried to warn you, but we failed,” Frankie said. “So good luck. And when you come home tomorrow after the parade and crawl under your bed for the next six months, don’t forget to send me a postcard.”

  “You’ll see,” I said to Frankie and Ashley. “I’m going to win first prize for originality. And by the way, I’ll be accepting all apologies tomorrow in the clubhouse between the hours of four and six-thirty.”

  Boy, I hoped I was right. I was sure my costume was going to be brilliant.

  I had to be right.

  I’m absolutely right.

  Right???

  CHAPTER 2

  AS I RODE UP IN THE ELEVATOR to the tenth floor, I could hardly stand still. Now, that’s not so unusual for me, because I have learning differences. Dr. Berger, who is my educational therapist at school, says that lots of kids with learning challenges are in constant motion. Sometimes I’m just sitting in school and I look down and notice that my leg is bouncing up and down a mile a minute.

  But that night, I knew that my bouncing around in the elevator wasn’t from my learning challenges. It was from being both very excited and very nervous about turning myself into a walking Italian table.

  Ashley and Frankie had given me some pretty strong warnings, which I have to confess, were making my stomach do a few double backflips. But I have the kind of personality that when someone tells me not to do something, I want to do it even more. My mom calls it a stubborn streak. Talking to Ashley and Frankie got my stubborn streak all fired up and made me determined to become a table in an Italian restaurant.

  As I got closer to our floor, I noticed that thoughts were flashing through my mind faster than the numbers flashing above the elevator door. It’s cool when I have an idea that I think nobody’s ever had before. It makes my brain all busy and full of thoughts, like the way the very first caveguy who discovered fire must have felt.

  Wait! What if the caveman was a cave-woman? Who said it had to be a caveguy? Well, whoever it was, I’ll bet he or she felt really great about it.

  I couldn’t wait to get started building my costume. As I got out of the elevator, I made a mental list of what I would need. I’d start with my mom’s old red-and-white checkered tablecloth and cut a hole in the middle for my head to slip through. I’d need cardboard to make a square tabletop. I’d cut a hole in the cardboard and slip that over my shoulders before I put the tablecloth on.

  Mental note to self. Don’t use a cardboard box that our dog Cheerio pooped in.

  Then I’d need to put some things on the tabletop. Things you’d find in an Italian restaurant. Like a glass filled with breadsticks. And maybe a candle stuck in an old bottle.

  Mental note to self. Don’t light candle. It would be a drag to set off a fire alarm in the middle of the Halloween parade.

  Then I had what I considered to be my most brilliant idea yet. I could make a chair out of cardboard and tape it to my butt.

  Mental note to self. Use lots of tape to cover butt region so chair stays connected to butt during parade.

  As I walked to my apartment, I was worried that I was going to forget all my mental notes before I could put them into action. You know me. I have a thought and it’s with me for five or ten minutes. Then, all of a sudden, it packs its bags and takes off for a journey into the unknown. Sometimes it returns, and sometimes it just shoots off into the universe and never comes back even for a visit. I’m not like Frankie, who remembers every thought he ever had.

  I opened our apartment door with my key—which took about five minutes to find. During the time I was downstairs in the clubhouse, my key must have moved from pocket to pocket, just to throw me off. I could have sworn I’d put it in my shirt pocket, but I found it in the back pocket of my jeans, buried in between some old gummy bears. I had to peel those sticky suckers off the key before I could fit it into the lock.

  By the time I finally got into our apartment, I was so ready to start my costume that I felt like I was going to pop. I must have been really distracted because I almost tripped over our dachshund, Cheerio. He was waiting for me in the front hall, doing what he likes to do best—spinning around in circles.

  “Slow down, boy,” I said, trying to scratch him behind the ears, which was hard to do since he was spinning so fast. “If you keep going like that, you’re going to lift off like a helicopter.”

  Cheerio collapsed in a dizzy heap like he always does, and I took off down the entry hall. Unfortunately, as I hit the living room, I ran smack into my dad.

  “Hey, Dad. I have the greatest idea for a costume in the entire history of Halloween!” I said to him.

  “Not so fast, mister,” he said. “Halloween comes after . . .”

  “Tonight,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me that Halloween is tomorrow, Dad. I’m counting the hours until the school parade.”

  “If you’d let me finish my sentence, Hank, I was about to say that Halloween comes after homework.”

  “You’re kidding me, right, Dad?”

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  I looked at his face. His glasses were sitting on top of his forehead where he usually wears them when he’s working a crossword puzzle. His teeth weren’t showing, like they do when he smiles. His eyes weren’t squinty, like they are when something amuses him. His mouth wasn’t turned up at the edges, like it does when he’s laughing. Nope, I saw not one bit of kidding in his face. Not even a teensy, tiny bit.

  “Dad, you’re not going to make me do homework on the night before Halloween, are you?”

  I pleaded. “I’ve got to make my costume.”

  “Halloween comes second. First comes math, reading, social studies.”

  “Actually, that would make Halloween come fourth,” my sister, Emily, piped up from the dining room, “after math, reading, and . . .”

  “We can all remember what Dad said, Emily,” I snapped. The last thing I needed now was Miss Perfect ticking off all the subjects I had homework in.

  I walked into the dining room, hoping my dad wouldn’t follow me.
No luck. He did.

  “Do you have homework in every subject?” he asked. Boy, his curiosity about my homework was out of control.

  I looked around the dining room, trying to come up with a decent argument about why tonight was not the night to get serious about homework. I was desperate. Emily and her nerd boyfriend, Robert Upchurch, were sitting at the dining-room table, working on their Halloween costumes. They had decided to go as twin flu germs, which will give you an idea of how much fun they are.

  Emily was using Play-Doh to make pus pockets, and Robert had yellow and green markers to color in infected areas. And get this, they had figured out that their costumes would double as a science project. That way, if they didn’t win top prize in the Halloween parade, at least they’d get extra credit for educating the students at PS 87 about runny noses. And, by the way, they don’t need extra credit because they’re each getting an A-plus in science. Or even higher.

  What’s higher than an A-plus? Maybe an A-plus-plus. I wouldn’t know because I’ve never gotten one. I’ve only traveled to C-ville and parts south.

  “Emily’s making her costume,” I said to my dad. “I don’t see her doing homework.”

  “That’s because it’s already done, doofus,” Emily answered. “As a matter of fact, I did it the minute I walked in the house. Didn’t I, Robert?”

  “Indeedy do, you did,” Robert said.

  Then he laughed his snorty little hippo laugh, like he had said something funny. Robert is so skinny that when he laughs, you can see his ribs moving around in his chest. I saw him laugh once during a swim class at the 98th Street YMCA when he didn’t have a shirt on, and you could have mistaken him for a skeleton in the Museum of Natural History. Fortunately, he keeps his chest covered most of the time with the white shirt and tie that he wears every day to school. You heard me. I said a tie!

  “Some of us know the importance of time management,” Emily said. “That’s why I like to complete my homework as early in the day as possible.”

  My sister. She can have a real attitude when she wants to.