介绍:
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 sen- tence 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!
