My Dog's a Scaredy-Cat Read online

  Actually, I could probably reach McKelty there, too. In the ape cage.

  I dialed carefully, and while the phone was ringing, I grabbed a dish towel and put it over the receiver. I had seen this trick in an old movie once that I watched with my dad when I was home with a sore throat. A detective in a weird plaid hat was calling his cousin who was planning to rob a bank. The detective didn’t want his voice to be recognized, so he put a towel over the receiver. His own cousin never even knew it was him. I didn’t know if the dish towel would work, but I figured if it worked for the guy in the weird plaid hat, it was worth a shot.

  “Hello,” said Nick the Tick on the other end of the phone.

  You dialed it right, Hank. Now go for it. Lay it on.

  I lowered my voice as low as it would go.

  “Nick McKelty,” I growled into the dish towel, “are you man enough to risk being scared all the way to Pluto and beyond?”

  Wow, where did that sentence come from? It was great!

  “Who is this?” McKelty said.

  “No questions,” I growled into the phone. “Just listen. Tonight at seven-thirty sharp, and I mean like a razor, you are to come meet the ghoul of all ghouls, the terror of all terrors, the zomb of all zombies . . .”

  “Hey, who is this?” I couldn’t tell if McKelty sounded annoyed or scared.

  “Are you a scaredy-cat?” I went on, having fun with my own voice. “Is your blood running cold? Are your nervous zones sweating yet? Or will you show up?”

  “Show up where?” McKelty asked. I had him! He was buying it!

  “210 West 78th Street,” I said. “Apartment 10A. The home of your deepest fears.”

  “Hey, I know that address. Is that you, Zipperbutt?”

  “I live in Hank Zipzer’s house,” I growled. “But I am not him. I am the ghost of Halloween past, the restless spirit, come to haunt the living and terrify the weak.”

  “You don’t scare me,” McKelty said, even though his voice sounded somewhat higher than usual.

  “Then come and test your nerves,” I said. “We’ll find out if you are the man you say you are.”

  “I’ll be there,” McKelty said. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  I hung up.

  “Yes,” I said, pumping my fists in the air.

  I can honestly say that was the best phone call I have ever made. Even better than when I called my sister and told her I was an iguana psychiatrist and that her pet iguana, Katherine, was having a nervous breakdown and needed to be institutionalized. She let out a scream so loud, I almost went deaf. Man, that was fun.

  Back to the plan, Hank. Don’t let your mind wander.

  I picked up the phone and dialed Frankie.

  “Can you meet me in the lobby in five minutes? And pick up Ashley. We have important stuff to do.”

  “Talk to me, Zip. What important stuff?”

  “You’re not going to believe the plan I just came up with. Trust me.”

  Before Frankie could answer, I hung up the phone and ran back into the living room where Papa Pete was still sitting at the green desk, writing. It looked like he was working on some kind of a list.

  “Papa Pete, you can’t be writing now. We have haunted house stuff to do.”

  “First of all, Hankie, I left a note for your father, telling him about the haunted house. He’ll read it when he brings Emily home from her Girl Scout meeting.”

  “Great thinking yet again, Papa Pete,” I said. It hadn’t occurred to me that it was a good idea to let your parents know when you’re turning their living room into the scariest place on earth.

  “And second of all, I made you a list of all the instructions for the haunted house. Right here is everything you need to know.”

  He held up a piece of paper covered with writing. Wow, that was a lot of words.

  “Why are you making a list?” I asked him. “Aren’t you going to be here to help us?”

  “I can’t,” Papa Pete said. “I have a date with the rear end of an elephant costume.”

  I just stood there for a minute, letting the words sink in to my head. I think they went in for maybe a second or two, but then my brain just spit them back out again.

  “Papa Pete, that is the weirdest sentence I’ve ever heard you say,” was all I could answer.

  “That’s because it’s the weirdest date I’ve ever had,” Papa Pete said with a smile. “Mrs. Fink and I are going to the Halloween costume party at McKelty’s Roll ’N Bowl.”

  Our next-door neighbor Mrs. Fink has had a crush on Papa Pete for a long time. At least, I think it’s a crush. I’m not sure what you call it when older people like each other in a romantic way. But let me be clear about this. The crush is definitely one-way. Mrs. Fink’s crush on Papa Pete is way bigger than his crush on her. At least, that’s what I had always thought.

  “You asked Mrs. Fink out on a date?” I couldn’t believe my ears!

  “She was the only person I know large enough to fill out the hind end of the elephant costume I rented,” Papa Pete explained.

  He had a point. There was a whole lot of Mrs. Fink. She must have been enjoying her own cherry strudel for many years, which I can understand because, as I’ve mentioned, her strudel could be the best in the world.

  “But, Papa Pete, we need you,” I said.

  “The Chopped Livers need me, too,” he answered. “Our team has challenged the Lucky Strikers in the costume contest. My teammates are counting on me.”

  “But I don’t know if I can do this without you,” I said.

  The haunted house was a lot to take on by ourselves with no grown-ups to help. My mom wasn’t coming back from the deli until almost seven. And even though my dad would be back from Emily’s Girl Scout party pretty soon, he wouldn’t be much help. Scary fun isn’t exactly his specialty, unless it’s a clue in a crossword puzzle.

  “You’ll do fine,” Papa Pete said. “I’ve written out all the instructions for you.”

  Papa Pete handed me a piece of lined notebook paper that was filled with writing. I looked at it quickly, and the letters started to dance all over the page. That happens to me all the time, especially with anything written on narrow-lined paper. Words never stay where they’re supposed to be. They jump from line to line and zoom all over the page. Some of them even dive right off the edge and I miss them completely. My eyes get really tired trying to follow them.

  I didn’t have time for dancing letters right then, so I took Papa Pete’s list, folded it up, and put it in the back pocket of my jeans.

  “Don’t you want to read through the list?” he asked. “I’ll go over it with you.”

  I don’t like to read in front of other people, even Papa Pete. It’s hard for me to read, and I’m really slow at it. And my reading problems get even worse when someone is watching me. So I try to do my reading in private. It keeps the embarrassment down that way.

  “No time right now,” I said to Papa Pete. “Frankie and Ashley are going to meet me downstairs to get the supplies.”

  “The Roll ’N Bowl party starts at six,” Papa Pete said. “I’ll try to be back here by seven-thirty. We’ll just stay for the judging.”

  “Isn’t Mrs. Fink going to want to stay for the whole thing?”

  “Emily is coming, too,” Papa Pete said. “I’ll use her as an excuse for coming home early.”

  At least Emily comes in handy for something, I thought. But I didn’t say that out loud because I knew Papa Pete wouldn’t like that.

  “You go ahead and build the haunted house without me,” Papa Pete said. “You’re a creative boy, Hankie. You can pull this off.”

  I threw my arms around Papa Pete and gave him a huge hug.

  “Remember this, Hankie, if you only remember one thing I ever taught you: A good brain is two things. Mushy and slimy.”

  “Got it, Papa Pete.”

  I ran out the door to meet Frankie and Ashley and search for the mushiest, slimiest brains I could find.

  Just you wai
t, McKelty. I’ll show you who’s the gross-out king.

  CHAPTER 11

  WHEN I TOLD FRANKIE AND ASHLEY the idea for the haunted house, they couldn’t get over what a great idea it was. That was, until they realized that if they were going to help me with it, they were going to have to give up trick-or-treating.

  “I don’t know, Zip,” Frankie said. “You’re asking me to turn my back on a huge bag full of candy. That candy lasts me two months.”

  “Candy is very bad for your dental health,” I said to him. “You don’t want to develop cavities, do you?”

  That wasn’t the best argument, I know. But understand that time was short, and we had a lot to do. I didn’t have time for quality debate.

  “Could I at least wear my dolphin costume in the haunted house?” Ashley asked.

  I wanted to say yes, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that dolphins do not live in haunted houses.

  “I’m afraid not, Ash,” I said. She looked disappointed.

  “Look, guys,” I said, “I know this is asking a lot. And I promise that next year we’ll go trick-or-treating together and get the most candy any three kids have ever gotten. But this year, I need your help. Just think about how rude and mean McKelty is. The guy needs to be put in his place.”

  “That’s definitely true.” Frankie nodded. “The big jerk shouldn’t get away with that lousy attitude of his.”

  “Picking on little Mason like that,” I added. “And making fun of Emily and Robert. They can’t help it if they’re geeks.”

  Frankie can’t stand bullies. I knew my arguments were getting to him. I turned to Ashley.

  “What about you, Ash?”

  “Well, I suppose building the haunted house could be very creative,” Ashley said.

  “A great opportunity to explore your artistic side, which we all know is very strong,” I agreed.

  It was quiet for a long minute.

  “Okay, I’m in, Zip,” Frankie said.

  “Me too.” Ashley nodded.

  Do I have great friends or what?

  “If I’m giving up trick-or-treating, at least I want to be in charge of the haunted house decorations,” Ashley said right away.

  “And I want to be in charge of all slimy things,” Frankie said.

  “Unless they’re slimy decorations,” Ashley told him. “Then I’m in charge.”

  “What about a slimy eyeball that’s hanging from the wall?” Frankie asked her. “Tell me, Ash, is that a decoration or is that a slimy thing?”

  “Guys,” I said. “Ticktock. We don’t have time for this now. We have to get to the store and get going.”

  “Race you to Gristediano’s,” Frankie said. And he shot out of the lobby door like a bolt of lightning.

  Gristediano’s supermarket is just around the corner on Broadway, right next door to Ricardo’s shoe-repair place. Since we don’t have to cross any streets to get there, we are allowed to go there by ourselves. We were there before you could say “Nick McKelty is a scaredy-cat.”

  We grabbed the grocery basket and raced up and down the aisles. I felt like one of those contestants on a TV game show who runs up and down the aisles throwing things into a cart as fast as possible. Frankie and Ashley and I were all talking at once, because the ideas were shooting from our heads like a volcano that had just blown its top.

  “We’ll need grapes for eyeballs,” I said.

  “As the chief of all slimy things,” Frankie said, “I’m not sure grapes are slimy enough for eyeballs.”

  “I have an idea,” Ashley said. “Let’s get lychee nuts. They’re slimier and squishier, like a real eyeball.”

  Ashley’s family is from China, and they eat a lot of things that I’d never heard of before. Sometimes when I eat dinner at her house, we have lychee nuts for dessert. I know they sound like they’d have a shell and be crunchy like other nuts, but actually they’re soft and sweet and syrupy.

  “I like the way you’re thinking, Ashweena,” I said. “Lychee nuts will give our haunted house an international flavor.”

  Unfortunately, Gristediano’s didn’t have lychee nuts, so we had to give up on international flavor and settle for just plain American grapes.

  “Purple or green ones?” Frankie asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, “because we’re going to peel them anyway. Underneath their skin, they’re all the same color.”

  “Wait a minute, Zip,” Frankie said. “You expect me to peel grapes?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’ll happen when I change my name to Bernice.”

  “Frankie, you said you wanted to be in charge of all slimy things,” I told him. “And a grape feels like a grape. But a peeled grape feels slimy, like an eyeball.”

  Frankie saluted, like I was the captain of a spaceship.

  “Aye, aye, captain,” Frankie said.

  Ashley giggled and saluted, too.

  “You lead, we follow,” she said.

  “Good, that’s the way I like it,” I answered in my best Captain Kirk voice. This was really fun. “Now, I figure we’ll need two boxes of spaghetti.”

  “Smart thinking, captain,” Frankie said. “We have to have dinner.”

  “Frankie, we’re not eating the spaghetti. We’re boiling it until it’s mushy so we can make it into brains.”

  “Brains are good,” Frankie said.

  Papa Pete’s words echoed in my head. Two things a brain has to be—slimy and mushy.

  We raced down Aisle 9 and found the pasta section. As I was putting the spaghetti in the cart, Ashley started twirling her ponytail like she does when she’s thinking.

  “Captain, I have a suggestion,” she said, wrapping her ponytail around her index finger. “How about we get some hot dogs and tell people they’re intestines?”

  “Yeah, we’ll drown them in ketchup and make them into oozing intestines,” Frankie added.

  Their imaginations were both in full gear now, I could tell.

  We got four bottles of ketchup, because we knew we’d need extra to make mummy blood.

  Then we got batteries for the tape recorder. We were going to record Cheerio making scary sounds, and I certainly didn’t want to take a chance on the tape recorder stopping right in the middle of a howl.

  On the way out, we were lucky enough to find the last bag of rubber spiders. Ashley thought they were too ugly, but I insisted we get them.

  “Ash, we’ll tie some of my mom’s thread around them,” I said, “and we’ll use a fishing pole to lower them into McKelty’s hair. Wait. I don’t have a fishing pole.”

  “My dad does,” Ashley said. “We’ll borrow it.”

  “McKelty will think he’s being attacked by man-eating tarantulas,” Frankie said with a laugh.

  “I can’t wait to see his face,” I said. “We have to remember to blindfold him before he enters the chamber. Everything is twenty times scarier when you can’t see.”

  “Boo!” somebody said from behind us.

  All three of us flew three feet in the air. We were concentrating so hard on getting our supplies that we hadn’t heard anyone behind us. When we turned around, we saw that it was Mrs. Fink, filling her cart with bags of fun-size candy bars. She was wearing her false teeth, which she doesn’t do all the time. But I guess when you have a big date, you want all your teeth in place and reporting for duty.

  “Hi, darlings,” Mrs. Fink said. “Listen, I won’t be home tonight when you go trick-or-treating, because I have a date with a very special someone.”

  My stomach flipped. I wasn’t sure Papa Pete knew what he was getting himself in for.

  “I’ve baked your grandfather a cherry strudel and an apple crumble,” she whispered to me. “With an extra poppy-seed Danish thrown in for the holiday.”

  Obviously, when older people get crushes, there is a lot of baking involved.

  “So, Hank, darling,” Mrs. Fink went on. “I’ll leave a big bowl of candy bars outside my door. Just help yourself, and make s
ure the other children do, too.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Fink,” I said, thinking that now Frankie could get some of his Halloween candy. “And good luck in the costume contest. I bet you guys are going to win first prize.”

  I wondered if she knew she was going to be the hind end of an elephant.

  “I’m just looking forward to spending the evening being close to your grandfather.”

  Boy, they were going to be close, all right. If she only knew how close.

  “Come on, Zip,” Frankie said, pulling on my sleeve. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Right. Bye, Mrs. Fink.”

  She waved and continued to load her cart with candy. What a nice lady, that Mrs. Fink.

  At the checkout counter, the bill came to seventeen dollars and ninety-two cents. I pulled out a crisp twenty-dollar bill from my pocket. It was the one Papa Pete had given me the last time we went to a Mets game. I had been planning to use it to buy a new Mets hat. But if that twenty-dollar bill could help me get even with McKelty for being such a mean, big-mouthed jerk, I’d sacrifice a Mets hat any day. Sure, my old one had some pretty major sweat stains on it. But I ask you, who cares about a few sweat stains when crushing McKelty was so close at hand?

  CHAPTER 12

  TIME WASN’T EXACTLY on our side. By the time we got back to my apartment, it was seventeen minutes after five, according to Frankie’s digital watch, which he’d gotten for his birthday in August. We were going to have to work fast. That was okay with me, though, because my mind was bursting with scary ideas for the haunted house.

  “The first thing we have to do,” I said, when we had plopped all our supplies down in the entry hall of my apartment, “is figure out where to build it.”

  “I think it should go right in the middle of the living room,” Ashley said.

  “No good, Ashweena,” I answered. “It needs to be in the corner. That way, we already have two walls built.”

  “Good thinking, dude,” Frankie said. “I always knew you could use your head for other things than to hold up your Mets hat, which as I’ve said many times, I don’t approve of anyway.”

  In case I haven’t told you before, Frankie is a major Yankees fan and I’m a Mets guy, but in spite of that, we’ve stayed best friends. That should tell you something about how much we get along in every other area, because I love the Mets and he loves the Yankees. I mean love love, as in how we feel about pizza and monster movies and silver Lamborghinis.