My Dog's a Scaredy-Cat Page 7

  Oh, it got even better from there. Luke was the perfect test for our haunted house. He was born to be grossed out.

  First of all, he loved it when the skeleton’s arm bone detached in his hand.

  “Wow, decay,” Luke said. “I love decay. I don’t brush for that very reason.”

  And when it came to the eyeball grapes in egg whites, not only did he stick both hands in and feel them, he ate a couple, too.

  “Excellent eyeball goo, dude,” he said.

  After he touched the brains, he licked the goopy crud off his fingers and then pretended to barf. At least I think he was pretending. Not to gross you out, but the sound effects were pretty realistic. So I pushed the record button on the tape recorder to get them on tape. They would come in handy later.

  The best was when Luke pulled the napkin off of Ashley’s head and saw her ketchupsplattered face.

  “She’s been attacked by zombies!” he shouted, like he had just seen a herd of killer zombies himself. “The living dead!”

  Ashley let out a bloodcurdling scream. Then Luke screamed. Then Ashley screamed. Then Luke. Then Ashley. Then Luke. I thought they were both going to pass out.

  “This is the most fun I’ve ever had,” Luke said.

  I was amazed that he could even talk. You’d think that he would have been really weak after that screamfest. He must have been really pumped up, because when Frankie lowered the spiders onto his head, he jumped five feet in the air.

  “Man-eating giant tarantulas!” he yelled. “I’m poisoned.”

  Frankie dangled the spiders over Luke’s head, and Luke batted at them in the dark room. He battled with the spiders so much that his mummy wrapping started to unravel. Pretty soon, he was dragging a giant tail of toilet paper behind him.

  “My mummy skin!” he shrieked. “I’m coming apart! Help! I’m turning to dust.”

  Luke continued to shriek as he ran out of the haunted house, out of our living room, and out the door of our apartment.

  “So long, dudes,” he screamed. “Great event!”

  As he rode down in the elevator, we could hear his voice in the shaft yelling, “Help! I’m dissolving.”

  That guy just couldn’t turn it off.

  When he was gone, Frankie and Ashley came flying out of the haunted house.

  We couldn’t stop laughing and high-fiving one another.

  Wow. Had we ever pulled it off! We were a giant hit. A complete success. We had passed the Luke Whitman test. We had made a totally cool, totally scary, totally terrifying, totally fun haunted house.

  The trap was ready.

  We were set to go.

  Now all we needed was a victim.

  Bring on Nick McKelty!

  CHAPTER 18

  WE TOOK OUR PLACES AND WAITED. It was so quiet in the living room, you could hear the blip blip blip of my dad’s laptop computer from his bedroom.

  He must be getting an e-mail from one of his crossword-puzzle buddies.

  Those guys are such crossword fanatics, they actually send each other clues over the Internet.

  Hey, I have a clue. What is a seven-letter word for a scared bully?

  M-c-K-E-L-T-Y.

  Wow, Hankster. I think you even spelled his name right. That’s a first.

  “Hank,” my mom called out from the kitchen. “Come in here.”

  “Not now, Mom,” I hollered back. “We’re waiting for Nick McKelty.”

  “It’s important, Hank. Come here now.”

  That wasn’t her usual tone of voice. That was her I-mean-business voice. I told Frankie and Ashley not to move a muscle, and hurried into the kitchen.

  “What’s up, Mom? I’m kind of busy right now.”

  “Have you seen Cheerio?” she asked.

  “Maybe he’s sleeping in my room,” I said.

  Cheerio likes sleeping in my room best. He never sleeps in Emily’s room because he’s not a big fan of Katherine flicking her nasty gray tongue out at him. It’s one of the many things he and I have in common, along with a love of juicy steaks, large ears, and a fear of the squirrels in Central Park. Maybe all these things we have in common are what make us close. Anyway, I think he likes sleeping in my room best because everything smells like me—not that I smell so great, but that the smell reminds him of me. Like sometimes, if I toss my shirt on the floor when I go to take a shower, when I come back he’s all curled up on it, fast asleep. A boy and his dog. You can’t beat that.

  “I looked in your room,” my mom said. “And in our room. And under the beds and in the bathroom and in the closets, too. He’s not here, Hank.”

  Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen Cheerio since we started to build the haunted house. I remembered that he hadn’t come when I called him. That wasn’t like him. My heart started to pound in my chest.

  “I’ll look outside in the hall,” I said, and bolted for the front door.

  “Is McKelty here yet?” Ashley called as I dashed past the haunted house. I didn’t even stop to answer.

  I ran out into our hallway and looked around. Mrs. Fink’s door was locked up tight, which made sense because she was at the bowling alley with Papa Pete. A big bowl of candy bars sat on a TV tray that she had left outside her door. I knocked on apartment 10C, Mrs. King’s door. When she opened it, she was holding a bowl of candy. I’m sure she thought I was going to be a trick-or-treater.

  “Mrs. King, have you seen Cheerio?” I asked. “He’s missing.”

  “Why no, Hank,” she answered. “Tyler and I just came back from trick-or-treating in the building. I didn’t see him anywhere.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. King,” I said. “I have to go now.”

  I looked frantically around every inch of the hall, including the dark corners near the elevator. Cheerio definitely wasn’t there.

  I practically flew back into the apartment. By that time, Ashley and Frankie had come out of the haunted house, and my parents were in the living room.

  “Cheerio’s gone,” I said. I could hardly believe my own words.

  “When did you see him last?” my mom asked.

  “When I came home from school with Papa Pete,” I said. “I gave him a big tummy scratch.”

  “And since then, did you leave the front door open?” my dad asked.

  “Of course not, Dad. Well, I don’t know. We were just so busy putting everything together. Maybe I did forget to close the door. Oh man, how stupid can I be?”

  “When was the last time you heard him in the house?” My dad’s forehead was all crinkled up. My mom calls those his worry lines.

  “I’m not sure, Dad. I didn’t notice. I just don’t know.”

  “I’ll go look for him on the street,” my dad said, throwing on his overcoat.

  “And I’ll call the animal shelter,” my mom said, going into the kitchen.

  I felt terrible, like someone had punched me in the stomach.

  “I’m sorry, dude,” Frankie said, laying aside the fishing pole and putting his hand on my shoulder.

  “He’ll turn up, Hank,” Ashley said. “Cheerio wouldn’t run away. He loves it here.”

  “He loves it here on normal days,” I said. “But imagine what today must have been like for him. Dark rooms, black lights, scary sounds, skeleton bones, people screaming. Poor little guy must have been scared out of his mind.”

  I remembered that Papa Pete had said how much Halloween scared dogs. Why hadn’t I listened to what he was telling me?

  “I’ll go look on the other floors,” I said. I had a lump in my throat as big as one of those prune-taffy globs.

  “We’ll help,” Ashley offered.

  “What should we do about the haunted house, Zip?” Frankie asked. “And McKelty? He’s supposed to be here in fifteen minutes.”

  “I don’t care about McKelty anymore,” I said. “If I hadn’t been so focused on getting even with him, I would have paid more attention to what was going on. I would have looked out for Cheerio.”

  “You can’t blame yours
elf,” Ashley said, giving me a hug.

  But I did blame myself—and my stupid brain that can’t do two things at once. I should have been able to build the haunted house and watch out for my dog, don’t you think?

  I left the apartment and headed for the stairway.

  Cheerio, where are you, boy? Come home.

  CHAPTER 19

  FRANKIE, ASHLEY, AND I searched up and down every single floor of our apartment building. Kids swarmed all over the halls, dressed as pirates and princesses and skeletons and fairy godmothers. There were jack-o’-lanterns near the doors that glowed with candlelight and smelled like pumpkin pie. All of the children were knocking on doors and grabbing handfuls of candy, and all the grown-ups were smiling and saying, “And what are you supposed to be?”

  They were happy. Not me. I was miserable.

  We split up and went to each apartment. We asked everyone if they had seen Cheerio. No one had.

  My dad came back in from the street. He had asked people up and down the block if they had seen a brown dachshund with a red collar.

  No one had.

  My mom came in from the kitchen. She had talked to the West Side Animal Shelter and asked if they had a dachshund of any kind.

  They didn’t.

  We gathered back in our apartment. Frankie and Ashley didn’t know what to say. I mean, what can you say to someone whose dog has disappeared?

  I heard the sounds of laughter echoing from all over the building. I saw our haunted house just waiting to be enjoyed.

  And I wondered how such a happy night could have turned so sad.

  CHAPTER 20

  TEN THINGS I MISS ABOUT CHEERIO ALREADY

  1. His brown eyes that look at me and say, “Hank, buddy, I can’t believe you’re not sharing your steak with me!”

  2. His long hot-dog body that is so close to the ground, he could walk under my bed on his tiptoes if he wanted to.

  3. The way he is absolutely positive he’s a big dog even though he’s not.

  4. His floppy ears that perk up when he hears the SpongeBob SquarePants theme song on TV.

  5. The way his bottom teeth stick out over his top teeth to make him look like he’s smiling at you upside down.

  6. The way he looks like a Cheerio when he chases his tail and spins in a circle.

  7. The way he snarls at Katherine when she’s having a hissy fit.

  8. The way he snarls at Katherine when she isn’t having a hissy fit.

  9. The way his little claws click on the linoleum when he’s cruising around the kitchen looking for leftovers, which is most of the time.

  10. The way he drops his favorite golf ball at my feet and looks at me as if to say, “Any chance for a catch, pal?”

  11. A million billion other things that are all so cute if I mention them I swear I’ll start to cry.

  CHAPTER 21

  WE JUST SAT THERE on the couch, my mom, my dad, and me, feeling like a black cloud had blown into our apartment and was raining on our heads. I have to hand it to Frankie and Ashley. They stayed right there by my side, which is hard to do when someone is as sad as I was.

  The doorbell rang.

  “It’s probably more trick-or-treaters,” my mom said.

  “Let’s just turn out the lights and pretend we’re not home,” I said. The last thing I wanted was noisy little pirates swaggering through our door. I know that sounds horrible and grumpy, but all I could think about was Cheerio, out there on the street somewhere, lost and scared and alone.

  “That’s not right, Hank,” my mom said.

  “Frankie, answer the door please and give the children a piece of prune taffy. We shouldn’t deprive them.”

  I could tell Frankie didn’t want to be the one handing out the prune taffy. Trying to give away my mom’s “treats” is a really tough job. Last year when I was handing out her curried fig roll-ups, which looked even more like shoe leather than the prune taffy, one little boy actually cried.

  Frankie is too nice a kid to say no to anyone’s mom, especially mine, who is like his second mom anyway. He took a piece of prune taffy off the platter and opened the door. I was surprised to see that it wasn’t one of the kids from our building. It was Ryan Shimozato, who is probably the coolest kid in our class—after Frankie, that is. He was dressed like a goalie for the New York Rangers.

  “Hey, Frankie,” Ryan said. “I just saw Luke Whitman on the street. He says you guys have an extremely excellent haunted house. Can I see it?”

  “I don’t know, dude,” Frankie said. “This isn’t exactly a good time. The ghosts are kind of resting.”

  “I heard you have a real zombie,” Ryan said. He wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  Frankie didn’t know what to say, so Ashley got up and went to the door. She is very good at handling business matters.

  “I’m sorry, Ryan,” she said. “But the haunted house is closed for repairs right now.”

  “Too bad,” he said. “I wanted one of those Frankenstein eyeballs.”

  “They rolled themselves into the closet,” said Ashley. “Maybe try again next Halloween. And thanks for your interest.”

  Wow, she was smooth. Ryan turned to leave.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Ryan said, just before Ashley shut the door. “McKelty said to tell you guys he’d be here later. He said he had to meet the governor of New York at the bowling alley first.”

  “Right,” said Frankie. “And my name is Bernice. Like I’m sure the governor of New York wants to hang out with Nick McKelty.”

  McKelty exaggerates everything. We call it the McKelty factor—truth times a hundred. Instead of meeting the governor, I bet he was really washing dishes for his dad’s party. But it didn’t matter to me. I really had zero interest in proving what a jerk Nick McKelty was.

  I just wanted my dog back.

  My dad decided to go outside again and look on the street. He was hoping that Cheerio might have wandered into Mr. Kim’s grocery store, since there’s a cat named Butcher there that Cheerio likes to chase. I can’t even tell you how much I was hoping the same thing.

  As my dad opened the front door to leave, we heard the ding-ding of the elevator arriving on our floor. The doors slid open and out came Papa Pete. He was wearing a huge gray elephant head, but you could see his face through a mesh screen under the trunk. He was with Mrs. Fink, who looked exactly like—well, there’s no nice way to say this—the rear end of an elephant. No disrespect intended to Mrs. Fink.

  “Hello, my darling family,” Papa Pete called out as he came galloping into the apartment. “Hankie, say hello to Dumbo, Part One . . .”

  He swished his trunk at me like he was waving hello.

  “. . . And Dumbo, Part Two,” he said, gesturing to Mrs. Fink. “I’ll have you know, you are looking at the second place winners in McKelty’s Roll ’N Bowl Halloween Costume Extravaganza.”

  Papa Pete pulled out a blue ribbon from his trunk and dropped it on the coffee table. I tried to smile, but I couldn’t.

  “Hey, why the long face?” Papa Pete said. “I know it’s not first place, but it’s still pretty good. Oh, I know. You’re wondering where Emily and Robert are. Well, they’ll be along. They stopped off to show Robert’s mother their costumes.”

  Papa Pete looked from me to my mom and dad. He could tell something was wrong. He pushed back his elephant head so I could see his eyes and sat down next to me.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Cheerio has disappeared,” I said. I could hear my voice cracking as I tried to speak. “I wasn’t watching him and he ran away.”

  “Ah, so that’s what this is about,” Papa Pete said.

  I nodded, but I couldn’t look him in the eyes. I felt bad from head to toe. Irresponsible. Ashamed. Stupid. Guilty. Sad. Take your pick, because I felt them all.

  “I take it you didn’t read my note,” Papa Pete said to me.

  “You mean the note with the instructions for the haunted house?” I asked. I wondered what th
at had to do with Cheerio. All I remembered about the note was that I stuffed it in my back pocket because I was too ashamed to read it out loud in front of Papa Pete.

  “Yes, that note.”

  Papa Pete was looking at me funny. He curled the ends of his big, bushy mustache with his fingers. His mustache had gotten pretty droopy under the elephant face. It must have been hot in there. Papa Pete just sat there, rolling his mustache, waiting for me to answer.

  “I . . . uh . . . didn’t have time to finish it, Papa Pete. I had . . . uh . . . a lot to do.”

  “Can I see you on the balcony a moment, Hankie?” Papa Pete said.

  I followed him out to the little balcony that is off our living room and has a peekaboo view of the lights on Broadway.

  “I want you to level with me,” Papa Pete said, “because I am your grandfather and I love you no matter what.”

  I didn’t know what he was going to ask me, but I knew that whatever it was, I was going to tell the truth.

  “You didn’t read my note at all, did you, Hankie?”

  I shook my head no.

  “And why not?”

  “Because . . . because I couldn’t,” I said. My eyes were filling up with tears. I didn’t know if I was crying because I missed Cheerio so much or because I felt bad because I couldn’t read Papa Pete’s note or because I hadn’t really told him the whole truth. All I know was that my eyeballs were very wet.

  Papa Pete put his arms around me. The elephant fur of his costume smelled like peanuts.

  “Talk to me, Hankie.”

  “There were too many words,” I said, the truth suddenly pouring out in one big rush like water tumbling down Niagara Falls. “They were jumping all over the page and getting mixed up and every time I’d try to read them, I couldn’t follow what they were saying. And it was on narrow-lined paper. I hate narrow-lined paper.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me all that?” he asked.

  “Because I’m tired of always having to tell people what I can’t do,” I said. “It sucks. Just once, I’d like to be able to do everything that everyone else can do.”