School of Meanies Read Online Free PDF Page B

and center,” I said, picking an apple from a nearby apple tree.
    “He must be afraid of something. Every still-alive is afraid of something.”
    “Well,” I said, “he did look afraid when you wisped out from his curtains. Only for a moment, and then he sort of pulled himself together.”
    “Hmm,” Wither said. “It seems to me that this mean-spirited still-alive is indeed afraid of ghosties, but only a bit.”
    “What are you getting at?” I said, crunching the rosy apple.
    “It’s like this. Let’s say I’ve just penned a quite-good poem. If I wish to lift the poem to greatness, I simply write a further two hundred verses.”
    “But that makes the poem worse,” I said.
    “Your poetry is drivel. The less of it there is, the better.”
    Wither didn’t seem to hear. I think he was lost in a poetic reverie or something.
    I tossed the half-eaten apple into a hedge. “Wither, I know you’re trying to help—”
    “Allow me to finish,” Wither said. “If this headmaster is afraid of one ghosty a bit, he will be afraid of a lot of ghosties a lot.”
    I thought about this for a moment, then said, “That actually makes sense.”
    “Let’s see.” Wither held up his knitting-needle fingers and began to count. “There’s myself, you, and I—that’s three. And the three girl ghosties makes six. And then there’s Charlie.
    And Humphrey—that’s you—which makes eight—”
    “Shh,” I said. “Listen.”
    Wither cupped his ear with his hand. “But, Humphrey, you’re not saying anything.”
    “Not to me. To, um, everything else.” We listened.
    Wither said, “I can’t hear anything. Well, only the ghost children at Ghost School across the field there, but—”
    “Wait here,” I said, and I flitted across the field and over the high gray wall and into the Ghost School playground.
    After a quick float around, I spotted Samuel Spook floating by the bike shed.
    We used to be good friends, but when I wafted across the playground toward him he turned up his nose.
    “Samuel,” I said, “I need your help. There’s this headmaster at Still-Alive School, and—”
    “I can’t hear you,” Samuel said, and he poked his fingers into his ears.
    “But, Samuel, we’re friends.”
    “After you bumped me into the sausage trolley in the cafeteria?”
    “I’d forgotten about that.”
    “Fight your own battles,” Samuel said, and he floated off.
    Just as I felt ready to give up and wisp back to Wither, I spotted the terrifying twins, Phil and Fay Phantom.
    When I floated over, Fay folded her arms, and Phil looked through his shoes.

    “I need your help,” I said. “There’s this headmaster—”
    “You’ve got nerve,” Phil said.
    “You bumped me into the swimming pool,” Fay said and tossed her hair.
    “Only in fun, Fay.”
    “And you bumped me down the stairs,” Phil said. “If I wasn’t dead, I might’ve been hurt.”
    “I can explain.”
    “Don’t bother,” the twins said together, and off they wisped.
    I floated, slowly, back over the high gray wall and across the field to where Wither wafted poetically beneath the leaves of a sycamore tree.
    “Humphrey, you look like you’ve found a cupcake and dropped it.”
    I explained how the ghost children refused to help, and about how they hated me because I’d bumped them.
    “What you must do,” Wither said, “is return to Ghost School and move the children to tears with a heartfelt speech. The children will flock to your cause like moths to a flame.”
    “I’m no good with words, Wither.”
    “I’ll wisp back to the house,” Wither said,chewing a wasp, “and write a speech on the clicky-clacky typewriter.”
    “If you don’t mind, I’d rather make it up as I go along.”
    Together we floated across the field, higher this time, so high that the sheep and trees and the Ghost School building looked like toys.
    I floated down, waving my arms above my head. The children gathered around to hear what I had to say.
    “I’m