The Best Halloween Ever Read Online Free PDF Page B

three at a time, down the stairs, past the boiler room, and out the back door.”
    I had never heard of one teacher, all by herself, letting her class leave early. “Why did she do that?”
    “She has to get ready to be the swamp witch, she said. Besides, our room is going to be the swamp, and that takes time.”
    “Even so, I don’t think she’s allowed to do that.”
    Charlie nodded. “I know. That’s probably why we weren’t supposed to tell anybody. But I think there was someone in the boiler room. I think someone saw us leave, so will Miss Seaworthy get in trouble?”
    I didn’t think so. Everybody had already said that the whole school should get out early so the PTA could move in and set things up.
    “All those children will be in the way!” Mrs. Wendleken had complained.
    “No,” my mother said. “
We’ll
be in the way. After all, this Halloween party is for them.”
    But it wasn’t, really. It was for the mayor and Mr. Crabtree and the fire chief and the police chief and all the storekeepers like Mr. Kline—everybody who wanted the Herdmans off the streets on Halloween.
    There was a note from Mother on the refrigerator.
Gone to school with pumpkins,
it said.
If I don’t get back in time you and Charlie can come with Louella. Mrs. Coburn broke her ankle and can’t be a witch, so …
Here the paper had got caught in the refrigerator door and torn off, so we didn’t know what the rest of it said.
    “She won’t be here?” Charlie said. “She won’t see our lion!”
    “She’ll see you at school,” I said.
    “But she’s always here when we get our costumes on and go out for trick-or-treating!”
    “This year is different,” I said.
    “I’ll say,” he grumbled.
    I didn’t know whether Charlie was missing Mother or missing trick-or-treating or missing the candy or just generally missing a normal Halloween, but he did cheer up when Cecil arrived with the E-Z Wring floor mop, dripping.
    “Cecil,” I said, “it’s all wet!”
    “It was a lot wetter before,” he said. “My mother forgot and washed the kitchen floor. I put the mop in the clothes dryer and that helped some, but it began to smell funny.”
    It still smelled funny, so I thought Cecil might offer to be the front half of the lion and wear the wet mop, but he didn’t offer and Charlie didn’t ask, so I went ahead and pinned them into the slipcover.
    I had to cut extra eyeholes for Cecil so he could see out in every direction, but Charlie could hardly see out at all because the wet mop strings were all stuck together.
    “It’s like being in a car at the car wash,” he said, “when those long rubbery things slap up over the windshield and you can’t see anything.”
    “You don’t have to see anything for a while,” I told him. “You can hang on to Louella or me till we get to school, and by then the mop will probably dry out and we can get the strings out of your face.”
    “And then I’ll be able to see, right?” he said. “In case something happens, right?”
    Cecil had the same thought. “If something happens,” he said, “and I have to get out of the slipcover in a hurry, can I just leave it there?”
    Louella, too. “It isn’t fair,” she said. “Either we have to worry because the Herdmans are going to be there messing everything up, or we have to worry because the Herdmans
aren’t
going to be there, so whatever is going to happen tonight won’t happen to them. It’ll happen to us.”
    As usual, Louella was a Pilgrim, “ … but my mother had to pin my skirt together,” she said, “so I look like a fat Pilgrim, and I don’t think there were any fat Pilgrims, except maybe on Thanksgiving Day, with the big dinner and all.”
    “Look at me,” I said. “Do you know of any belly dancers who wear sneakers?” My mother had said I absolutely could not wear flip-flops with sequins glued all over them. “Not in October,” she said.
    “I don’t know any belly dancers at all,” Louella said, “and