Mrs. Patty Is Batty! (3 page)

We marched around the playground for about a million hundred hours. Finally the dumb parade was over and we could go home.

Or at least I
thought
we could go home. First we all had to go back inside the school and sit in the all-purpose room.
There was a fancy chair up on the stage. It was like one of those chairs you see in a palace.

When all the classes were seated, music started playing and some tall guy came into the all-purpose room dressed up like a king. He was wearing a gold cape, and he was holding a big sword.

It was Mr. Klutz, our principal! Even though he was wearing a crown on his head, I knew it was him because he is completely bald. I mean
completely
.

“Off with their heads!” Mr. Klutz shouted as he marched down the center aisle. “Let them eat cake!”

Miss Daisy told us that, in the old days,
kings were constantly chopping off people's heads and making them eat cake. That must have been a cool time to live. I like to eat cake, but I don't think I would like the chopping-off-your-head part very much.

“I rule the school,” Mr. Klutz announced as he sat in the fancy chair. “Quiet down or you will be thrown in the dungeon in the basement.”

That was a complete lie. Everybody knows the dungeon is on the third floor.

“Cool costume, Mr. Klutz!” some kid yelled.

“Silence!” Mr. Klutz hollered. “I know not this Klutz person of whom you speak. I am King Louis the Fourteenth of France.”

“Why are you dressed up like a king?” Ryan asked.

“As king,” he replied, “I need not
worry about parent-teacher conferences and behavior problems and head lice and bus schedules and test scores. I am all powerful. What I say goes.”

Mr. Klutz was talking just like a real king. It was cool.

After he finished acting all kinglike, he talked to us about Halloween safety. He told us to have fun trick-or-treating, but to look both ways before we crossed the street. He said we shouldn't go inside any strange houses, and we shouldn't eat any candy that isn't wrapped up.

“What should we do if we come to a house and they don't give us any candy?”
asked one of the third graders.

“Off with their heads!” said Mr. Klutz.

“What if some kids don't get any candy?” asked one of the first graders.

“Let them eat cake!”

Mr. Klutz enjoyed being king a little too much, if you ask me.

I couldn't wait to get out of school because, well, I can't wait to get out of school
every
day. But this day was special because we would be going trick-or-treating and getting candy.

Finally the bell rang and we got out of jail…I mean, school. Everybody poured out the front door.

“Free at last!” Michael shouted.

“It's candy time!” Ryan yelled. Mrs. Patty was standing on the front steps of the school in her witch costume. Her wart still didn't fall off. She told us again that we should make sure to trick-or-treat at her house because she has more candy than anyone in town.

“And remember,” she said, “don't let the Halloween Monster catch you.”

The
what
?

“I've never heard of the Halloween Monster,” I said.

“Oh sure,” said Mrs. Patty. “Every year the Halloween Monster chops up kids, steals their candy, and keeps it for himself.”

Yikes! The Halloween Monster? I looked at Michael. Michael looked at Ryan. Ryan looked at me. Then we all tore out of there as fast as we could.

This was the first Halloween that me and Michael and Ryan were allowed to go trick-or-treating without our parents. We went home to drop off our backpacks and get pillowcases to hold all the candy. Then we met up again at Michael's house.

“Let's go!” Ryan said. “If I don't eat a
Twizzler in about five minutes, I'm gonna die.”

“Not so fast,” Michael said, opening up a big map he had drawn. “I worked it all out so we'll have the maximum candy accumulation.”

Wow! Big words. Michael should be in the gifted and talented program.

Me and Ryan looked at Michael's map. Michael doesn't like to just walk up and down the street collecting candy like a normal kid. He always plans a careful route so he can go to all the houses that have good candy and not waste any time at the houses where people turn off their lights and pretend they're not home.

Michael is weird.

“We'll save Mrs. Patty's house for last,” Michael said. “She says she has more candy than anybody in town. Let's go!”

I was thinking about what Mrs. Patty said earlier at school.

“Do you think there really
is
a Halloween Monster?” I asked the guys as we headed up the street.

“Of course not,” Michael said. “Mrs.
Patty was just yanking our chain.”

“We'd better be careful just in case,” Ryan said.

We set off on our candy quest. There were lots of kids in weird costumes walking up and down the street. Giraffes! Darth Vaders! Two-headed astronauts! Princesses! Cowboys! Ghosts! Four kids dressed up as a bunch of giant bananas! What a freak show!

We saw teenagers dressed up like bums. Teenagers always dress up like bums on Halloween. That must be an easy costume to make, because teenagers dress like bums even when it
isn't
Halloween.

“Trick or treat!” we shouted when we
got to the first house on Michael's map. A lady opened the door.

“Ooh, you boys are scary!” she said, even though she totally didn't look scared at all. “What are you supposed to be?”

“We're a zombie football player, a zombie hockey player, and a killer zombie penguin,” Michael said.

“From outer space,” I added.

“You can each have a piece of candy,” the lady said, holding a bucket out for us.

“Can we take two?” I asked, grabbing a Milky Way.

“Well, okay…”

“Can we take four?” I asked, grabbing a Butterfinger.

“No,” the lady said, pulling back the bucket.

That lady was mean. We went to the next house and got candy there. Then we went to the house around the corner and got candy there.

Before we went to the next house, each of us took a piece of candy out of our pillowcase and ate it. There's no reason you have to wait until the end of trick-or-treating to start eating your candy. You need to start eating your candy right away, so you'll have enough energy to get
more
candy. That's the first rule of being a kid.

Michael led us a few blocks away to the
next house on his map. He rang the doorbell, and the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened. A lady answered! Well, that wasn't the weird part, because ladies answer doors all the time. The weird part was
who
the lady was.

She wasn't a regular person. She was Mrs. Cooney, our school nurse!

It was weird. I thought Mrs. Cooney lived in the nurse's office. But she lives in a regular house just like a regular person.

“Trick or treat!” we shouted.

“Ooh, I'm scared,” Mrs. Cooney said, even though she totally didn't look scared at all.

Mrs. Cooney brought out a bowl filled with apples, carrots, and nuts. Apples, carrots, and nuts?

Who gives out apples, carrots, and nuts for Halloween? That's health food!

“You can each take one,” Mrs. Cooney said.

“Uh, do we have to?” I asked.

“Don't you have any candy?” asked Michael.

“Candy isn't good for you,” said Mrs. Cooney. “It rots your teeth.”

“I'd rather have rotten teeth than no candy,” I said. But we each took a bag of nuts anyway because that was the closest thing to candy, and we didn't want to hurt Mrs. Cooney's feelings. She doesn't know the first thing about Halloween. You're not supposed to give out healthy food!

Mrs. Cooney is loony.

Luckily, most people gave us candy. But at one house a man gave each of us a quarter instead. He said he ran out of candy. Getting a quarter is almost as good as getting candy because you can use it to
buy
candy.

We had been trick-or-treating for some time when we walked past a spooky
graveyard. That reminded me of the Halloween Monster again.

Nothing scares me. I would fight a
bear. I would fight a lion. I would fight an elephant. (Well, I don't think elephants fight. If one of them did, I would beat it up.) But I really didn't want to see the Halloween Monster.

It was starting to get a little dark and scary out.

“Hey, if you guys get chopped up by the Halloween Monster,” I asked Ryan and Michael, “can I have your candy?”

“There's no such thing as the Halloween Monster, dumbhead,” Michael insisted.

But just in case, we made a deal. If one of us was chopped up by the Halloween Monster and the other two survived, they would split the dead kid's candy. And if
two of us were chopped up, the kid who lived would get all the candy.

I wondered if Ryan and Michael were secretly hoping that I would get chopped up by the Halloween Monster so they could split my candy. I figured they were probably thinking that, because I was secretly hoping they would get chopped up by the Halloween Monster so I could keep all
their
candy.

It really didn't matter, because each of us was filling our pillowcases with about a million hundred tons of candy. Mine was getting heavy. It would be hard to eat all that candy in one night. But my mom tells me I can accomplish anything if I put my mind to it.

“I'd better eat some more of this candy,” I said, reaching into my pillowcase. “It's getting too heavy to carry.”

“You'll still be carrying it,” Michael said. “It will just be in your stomach.”

“But it weighs less in your—”

I never got the chance to finish my sentence because at that very moment, the most terrifying thing in the history of the world happened. A horrible creature jumped out from behind a wall right in front of us.

It was the Halloween Monster!