The Best Halloween Ever Read Online Free PDF Page A

missed Starbursts, but what we all really missed was just Halloween candy on Halloween.
    The only good thing about it was that it would be Herdman-free, which, according to Alice, was the whole idea in the first place.
    “We were wrong about the homework,” she reported. “That wasn’t why Mr. Crabtree decided to have Halloween at school. The mayor made him have Halloween at school so they could keep track of the Herdmans, my mother said.”
    “But they aren’t coming,” I said.
    “Well, the mayor didn’t know that would happen, and Mr. Crabtree didn’t know that would happen, but at least
we
get to have a Herdman-free Halloween!”
    Alice was so pleased with herself and her inside information that she didn’t even notice who was standing around to
hear
the inside information, but I did.
    Besides me and Louella, there was Boomer Malone and Gloria Coburn and Junior Jacobs. And, right outside the door, taking in every word and repeating “Herdman-free?” to herself … was Imogene.

6
    “N
ow
exactly how
did she look?” Louella asked me. “Did she look mad? What do you think they’ll do? Do you think they’ll come after all?” She was pacing up and down the hall, really nervous. “I think they will, just to
show
the mayor and Mr. Crabtree and Alice’s mother.”
    Of course Louella was worried about whether to tell her mother, “ … because if I do bring Howard and then the Herdmans show up anyway, I’ll get killed, plus I won’t get my eight dollars!”
    I thought she was probably right about the eight dollars. The last time the Herdmans got their hands on Howard, Imogene and Leroy drew pictures all over his bald head and charged people twenty-five cents to look at him. Howard didn’t seem to mind, but Mrs. McCluskey had a fit. “Who knows what they’d do to him next,” she said, “if they ever got the chance?”
    Louella would have to make up her mind in a hurry, though, because Halloween was only two days away. This was all Charlie knew how to say lately. “It’s only four days away … three days away … ,” and now, “It’s only two days away, Beth. When are you going to help us with our costume?”
    Charlie had changed his mind about being a Happy Hobo, and he and Cecil Farmer were going to be the front and back of a lion. “We always wanted to be a two-person thing,” Cecil told me, “but it wouldn’t ever work with trick-or-treating. So this is our chance.”
    They used Mrs. Farmer’s E-Z Wring floor mop to be the lion’s mane—Charlie put it on his head with all the strings hanging down for me to see—and the rest of the lion would be Charlie and Cecil underneath the old slipcover.
    I had to pin it around them. “Cut some eyeholes for Cecil to see out of,” Charlie said.
    It didn’t look much like a lion, and cutting eyeholes for Cecil wouldn’t help, but of course he didn’t want to walk around all night and see nothing but the inside of a slipcover. I only had time to cut one hole because Cecil had to get back home with the mop, but he would have more time, he said, on Halloween night.
    He also said he wouldn’t do this at all if the Herdmans were going to be there. “I wouldn’t even be the front half of the lion if the Herdmans were there.”
    I didn’t blame him, but front or back, it wouldn’t matter. If the Herdmans decided to take the lion apart, neither end would be safe.
    Boomer Malone offered to be half of the lion if Cecil changed his mind. “I was going to be King Kong after all,” Boomer said, “but my grandmother sent her fur coat to the cleaners in case it had bugs, and it got stolen.” He sighed. “I even bought a gorilla mask.”
    “Then you can still be King Kong,” I said. “You could wear a sweatshirt or something.”
    Boomer shook his head. “Not without my grandmother’s coat.”
    I could understand that. In the fur coat and the gorilla mask Boomer would be a terrific King Kong, but without it he would just be a fake ape in a