How to Scare the Pants Off Your Pets Read online

  “Let’s go back by the tree,” Billy suggested, “so my mom won’t see me talking to the air. That never works out for me very well.”

  Billy jogged across the backyard and turned around to see if the Hoove was following him. He wasn’t. He was still only halfway across the yard. It looked like he was trying to glide forward but something was preventing him.

  “What are you waiting for?” Billy asked.

  “This is the problem I was referring to,” the Hoove answered. “You’re seeing it right here.”

  “Hoove, I’m going to need a little more explanation than that.”

  “I’m grounded,” he said. “Stuck in, and I guess just outside, the house until further notice.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Nothing. I was just doing what I always do. And suddenly the Higher-Ups send this bird down with a note that says I’m failing Responsibility to Others. And I might add, that bird had a major digestive problem.”

  “So how long are you going to be punished for?”

  “Who knows? Until they see improvement, they said. And let’s get one thing straight: There is no room for improvement here. I am already the picture of perfection.”

  “According to you.”

  “That’s right. The Hoove’s Rule Number Seven is, ‘When you’re in the presence of perfection, bow to it.’ Which I would do, but I can’t lean forward without slamming into this annoying invisible wall.”

  Billy walked over to where the Hoove was suspended in midair. He reached out but didn’t feel any obstruction. “Are you sure you’re not making this up?”

  “Allow me to demonstrate.”

  The Hoove backed up all the way to the screen door. Then, flying forward with all his might, he came to an abrupt stop halfway across the yard. He tried it again, leading with his shoulder the way a football player charges his opponent. At exactly the same spot, he slammed up against some invisible barrier.

  “Are you seeing what I mean,” he asked Billy, “or do I need to keep doing this until I’m black and blue?”

  “I didn’t know ghosts could get black and blue.”

  “I was trying to relate to you on a flesh level you could understand. Apparently, I misjudged.”

  “Okay, okay, I get the point.”

  “Yeah, well here’s the real point, Billy Boy. What do I do about it?”

  “Well, I remember when I was in fifth grade and I got caught littering on the lunch yard. The lunchroom monitors said I had to clean off all the lunch tables for two weeks. I can’t tell you how many half-eaten peanut butter sandwiches I had to toss out. The thing about peanut butter is it gets stuck under your fingernails and you can smell it all day.”

  “I hope you’re not suggesting that my road to responsibility will require handling used food. That’s not the way I roll. I have sixty-seven rules about that, and that’s not even including the ones about touching used napkins.”

  “All I’m saying is maybe you need to rewrite your rules. The Higher-Ups don’t seem to be joking around.”

  The Hoove flopped down on one of the red-and-white-striped chaise lounges on the patio. It wasn’t often that he felt defeated, but he was up against something too difficult for him to overcome. Billy sat down on the striped chair opposite the chaise. He actually felt bad for the Hoove.

  “Hey, this is not rocket science,” he said. “You’re just going to have to make some better choices in how you behave. You know, show the Higher-Ups that you understand what it takes to be responsible to others.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Go around helping old ladies across the street? If I did that, Billy Boy, there would be an epidemic of fainting in Senior Citizen Land. That would get me an F for sure.”

  “Why don’t you just ask the Higher-Ups what they expect of you? That’s what I did with Mr. Wallwetter when I flunked my vocabulary test. He said he expected me to know the definition of the word indigenous.”

  “And?”

  “I couldn’t spell it, so I couldn’t look it up. I flunked the test again, but at least I knew what he wanted.”

  “Would you be very offended if I told you your adventures in vocabulary not only do not appeal to me, they do not pertain to me and, simply put, are of no help at all. But thank you for that boring story.”

  The screen door creaked open and Bennett stuck his head out. He checked his wristwatch.

  “Six and a half minutes have elapsed … right … now!” he said. “By my calculations, that gives us thirty seconds to hustle down the hall and resume painting. And to continue those precise calculations, we have two and a half walls down and one and a half to go.”

  “It appears Mr. I’m - Really - Good - With - Fractions doesn’t care that we’re talking here,” the Hoove grumbled.

  Billy followed Bennett back into the house. The two of them worked the rest of the afternoon to finish the painting job. Since the Hoove couldn’t tolerate the paint smell, he hovered in the hall, calling out comments and critiques.

  “Hey, you missed a spot up there by the ceiling,” he’d shout. Then two minutes later, he’d add, “And tell the dentist there that I can see his butt crack peeking out when he bends over. And it’s making my eyes nauseous.”

  Billy shot the Hoove a look that said, “I wish you’d get lost.” Several times, the Hoove left and wandered around the house, trying to amuse himself. When Mrs. Broccoli-Fielding was downstairs in the laundry room, he took the stack of student absence records she had just alphabetized and shuffled them like a deck of cards. Then he went into Breeze’s room and floated over to the dresser where she kept her vast collection of nail polish bottles. When she wasn’t looking, he took a bottle of yellow and poured in some blue, leaving her with a bottle of pond-scum-green nail polish. Of all of his pranks, he found that one the most entertaining.

  When he could think of no other mischief to get into, the Hoove floated back to Billy’s room, where Billy and Bennett had just finished painting the last wall. They stood back and admired their work.

  “I’m so glad to get rid of all that girly lavender and pink,” Billy said. “Thanks for making this a priority, Bennett. I know you must have had better things to do with your weekend.”

  “Yes, I was going to carve every tooth in the adult mouth out of soap and string them into a necklace for your mom,” Bennett said. “But then I thought, Bill needs me, and his room needs me even more.”

  “The man is tooth obsessed,” the Hoove said, floating into the room to check out the paint job. “Does the subject of molars ever leave his brain? Wait a minute, wind warning!”

  His invisible nose started to twitch, and he took several of his invisible fingers and tried to pinch it hard to stop what was coming. But the sneeze had a mind of its own.

  “Ahchooooooooooooo!”

  The sneeze came out with such a powerful gust that it actually blew the paintbrush that was balanced on the top of the can halfway across the room. Bennett looked around, puzzled.

  “Did you open a window, Bill? That was quite a gust of air.”

  “Uh … no … Bennett. It was me sighing. I know it was a big sigh, but I always let out a big sigh when I’ve finished a major project. You should have heard the one when I finished my term paper on the Bermuda Triangle. I practically launched that green T-shirt over there like a kite.”

  “That was a whopper, Billy Boy,” the Hoove called out. “I’ve heard a lot of excuses in my ninety-nine years as a ghost, and that is definitely in the top ten.”

  “Thanks,” Billy said.

  “You’re welcome,” Bennett answered. “That’s what families do, help each other. Which is why I’m sure Breeze won’t mind that you spend a couple nights in her room.”

  “What?” Billy said. “She’s going to hate that.”

  “Well you certainly can’t sleep in here with all the paint fumes. We’ll move the guest futon into Breeze’s room. It’ll give you two a chance to get to know each other a little better.”

  Nee
dless to say, the news did not go over well with Breeze.

  “You’re kidding me, right, Dad? You expect me to share my personal space with a sixth grader who drools small puddles all over his pillow when he sleeps?”

  “It’s not my fault,” Billy answered. “My nose gets congested when I’m lying down, and I have to breathe through my mouth.”

  “Breeze, Billy is your new brother, and I really need you to cooperate,” Bennett said sternly. “It’s just for a few days.”

  After laying down the law, Bennett turned and left. He’d argued with Breeze often enough to know that a speedy escape was the only way to end the conversation.

  “A few days to you is a lifetime to me,” Breeze hollered after him. Then she suddenly stopped talking and grabbed a pencil. “Wait a minute,” she said. “That’s a great title for a song. I can already hear my guitar solo…. It’ll be tragic, but with a great beat.”

  “Has anyone consulted me in this matter?” Hoover said. Billy looked up to see him pacing back and forth upside down on the ceiling of Breeze’s room. “The answer is absolutely not. The Hoove’s Rule Number Two Hundred and Forty-Three: I do not share rooms with girls who sound like injured cats when they sing. End of discussion.”

  “Where else are you going to go?” Billy whispered to him. “In our room, you’d sneeze your nose off, if you had a nose.”

  “What are you talking about?” Breeze said, giving Billy a puzzled look. “Of course I have a nose. I have a great nose, unlike yours, which reminds me of Mount Kilimanjaro.”

  “Listen, Breeze, there’s no need to get personal. I’m not crazy about this arrangement, either, but we’re going to have to make the best of it.”

  Without answering, Breeze picked up her guitar and started to compose her new song. It was rough on the ears.

  “Can you tell her to pipe down?” the Hoove called from inside the closet. “I’m trying to take a snooze before dinner.”

  But there was no telling Breeze what she could or couldn’t do in her own room. Billy helped Bennett move the futon in while she continued to compose, playing the same rotten notes over and over again. Inside the closet, the Hoove was going bananas. He tried stuffing his ears with her velvet scarves, but nothing could drown out the sound.

  Breeze continued writing until she finished her song. When it was done, she cleared her throat and sang the lyrics at the top of her terrible voice.

  A few days to you is a lifetime to me,

  A feeling of heartbreak for eternity.

  I roam and I search and I wail for you,

  But nothing will fill this hole in my shoe.

  From inside the closet, the Hoove held his head and moaned. Getting grounded was going to be much worse than he had ever imagined.

  Billy walked into Breeze’s room after dinner to find her standing on a chair, trying to attach one end of a bungee cord to the curtain rod. The other end was already attached to the top of her doorjamb. She was having a hard time, because the cord was already stretched to its limit.

  “What’s going on here?” Billy asked.

  The sound of his voice so startled Breeze that she let go of the cord. It boomeranged across the room, making a snapping sound as it sailed through the air, and just missed Billy’s nose by the length of a pencil eraser.

  “Whoa,” he said, as he dropped to the rug. “Watch what you’re doing, Breeze. That’s a dangerous weapon you’ve got there. What are you doing with it, anyway?”

  “I’m creating a boundary line.”

  “With a bungee cord?”

  “It’s not finished, doofus. I’m going to string the bungee across my room, then hang a sheet over it. You will stay on your side of the sheet at all times and can only cross over to my side of the room if you say the secret password.”

  “Okay, this is ridiculous, but I’ll play along. What is it?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  Breeze got off the chair and retrieved the other end of the bungee. This time, she successfully hooked it onto the curtain rod. Then she went to the linen closet and brought back two sheets with pink ballerina mice dancing all over them.

  “You’re putting those up?” Billy commented. “I can’t look at pink mice all night.”

  “These were my favorite sheets when I was your age. Seven.”

  “You really know how to hurt a guy, hitting him with a marshmallow like that.”

  Breeze didn’t answer. She was already busy throwing the sheets over the bungee cord and making sure they touched the floor so Billy couldn’t see a thing on her side. The Hoove, who had just woken up from his long nap, stuck his head through the closet keyhole and surveyed the scene.

  “Is she serious?” he said to Billy. “Because if she is, she is seriously misguided. Hoover Porterhouse the Third does not stick to anyone’s boundaries but his own. And certainly not those established by girls with blue streaks in their hair.”

  “Seems to me the Higher-Ups have another opinion about you and boundaries,” Billy whispered.

  “Those don’t count,” the Hoove said. “They’re just temporary until I show them who’s boss.”

  Suddenly, a clap of thunder boomed so loud it made the windows rattle.

  “Where did that come from?” Breeze shrieked. “There’s not a cloud in the sky.”

  Billy looked over at the Hoove.

  “I think the Higher-Ups are talking to you, buddy. You might want to show a little respect.”

  When the sheets were hung to Breeze’s satisfaction, she pushed them aside to enter Billy’s side of the room.

  “These are my conditions,” she began, clearing her throat as if she were an actress on a stage. “First, this is my room and you touch nothing in it, especially my guitar. It’s the instrument by which I express my soul and no one handles it but me.”

  “Maybe someone should tell her that her soul is out of tune,” the Hoove commented.

  “Second, you are to breathe as little air in here as possible. I would appreciate you exhaling in the direction of the door. I don’t want my room polluted by your pizza breath.”

  “Breeze, I haven’t had pizza in a week,” Billy protested.

  “You wouldn’t know it from the pepperoni and garlic aroma that follows you like a cloud.”

  “Billy Boy,” the Hoove said, floating completely out of the closet and coming right up to him. “You’re not going to take this abuse, are you? Because this girl is really razzing my berries.”

  “Furthermore,” Breeze continued, “there’s no eating or drinking in my room. So tell me now where you’re hiding the orange juice.”

  “I don’t have any, Breeze. Honest.”

  “It smells like you brought the orange tree from the front yard in here.”

  Billy had no good answer for Breeze’s complaint. He couldn’t tell the truth. The Hoove always smelled like oranges, because when the property had been the Porterhouse ranchero, he’d spent lots of time wandering around their orange groves. And when he got riled up, his odor got even more intense and tangy.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Billy said. “You can conduct a search of my person if you like, and I promise you won’t find an orange or a grapefruit or any other fruit known to mankind. So is that your third condition … no eating or drinking?”

  “No, that’s a subsection B footnote,” Breeze answered. “My actual third condition is that you can only be in here when you’re asleep. No hanging out in an awake state.”

  This did it for the Hoove. He had reached his limit of taking orders from Breeze. He felt like he was on the verge of exploding.

  “I can’t take this anymore,” he said to Billy. “She is not the boss of us. So stand back and observe as a master rule breaker moves her precious guitar and hangs it from the light fixtures. Let’s see how she likes them apples.”

  “No! You can’t do that!” Billy said in a loud voice.

  “Can’t do what?” Breeze answered. “Let me remind y
ou, youngster, that this is my room and I can do whatever I please, which includes demanding that you turn your ears off when I’m on the phone.”

  As Breeze went on to explain the dos and don’ts of living in her room, the Hoove drifted over to her guitar, lifted it off its stand, and, flying up to the light fixture on the ceiling, hung the guitar from its tie-dyed strap. It seemed to be floating in midair.

  “Hey, music babe,” the Hoove called out. “Take a gander at this. It’s a doozy.”

  Of course, Breeze couldn’t hear the Hoove or see what he had done, but Billy could. As he looked in shock at the guitar hanging from the ceiling, his mouth flew open in horror. Seeing his reaction, Breeze turned around and gasped when she saw that her beloved instrument had been moved.

  “What part of ‘don’t touch it’ do you not understand?” she screamed directly into Billy’s face. And without waiting for an answer, she jumped on her bed and reached up to take her guitar down, cradling it in her arms like a baby.

  “That’s it,” she said to Billy. “You haven’t even been in my room for six minutes and already you have broken my most important rule. I am declaring an end to room sharing right here, right now.”

  She put her guitar back on its stand, then stomped over to the futon. She bent down and grabbed hold of the mattress. Yanking it with all her might, she dragged it through her door and into the hallway, letting it plop down against the wall. Billy followed her out into the hall.

  “Say hello to your new guest quarters,” she said.

  “I can’t sleep out here, and you know it.”

  Without a word, Breeze marched back into her room and answered him by slamming the door so hard that it created enough wind to mess up Billy’s hair. The Hoove floated through the door, holding his sides and laughing up a storm.

  “Did you see the look on her face?” he howled. “We showed her a thing or two.”

  “And what exactly did we show her, Hoove? That I get to sleep in the hall?”

  “Oh, come on, it was worth it. We didn’t let her push us around. I feel very good about that and you should, too.”