08 - The Girl Who Cried Monster Read Free

against the counter and pretended to listen. The basic idea of
the lecture was that my stories were doing permanent harm to my delicate little
brother. That I should be encouraging Randy to be brave instead of making him
terrified that monsters lurked in every corner.
    “But, Mom—I saw a real monster under the hedge this morning!” I
said.
    I don’t really know why I said that. I guess I just wanted to interrupt the
lecture.
    Mom got really exasperated. She threw up her hands and sighed. She has
straight, shiny black hair, like Randy and me, and she has green eyes, cat eyes,
and a small, feline nose. Whenever Mom starts in on me with one of her lectures,
I always picture her as a cat about to pounce.
    Don’t get me wrong. She’s very pretty. And she’s a good mom, too.
    “I’m going to discuss this with your dad tonight,” she said. “Your dad thinks
this monster obsession is just a phase you’re going through. But I’m not so
sure.”
    “Life is just a phase I’m going through,” I said softly.
    I thought it was pretty clever. But she just glared at me.
    Then she reminded me that if I didn’t hurry, I’d be late for my Reading
Rangers meeting.
    I glanced at the clock. She was right. My appointment was for four o’clock.
    Reading Rangers is a summer reading program at the town library that Mom and
Dad made me enroll in. They said they didn’t want me to waste the whole summer.
And if I joined this thing at the library, at least I’d read some good books.
    The way Reading Rangers works is, I have to go see Mr. Mortman, the
librarian, once a week. And I have to give a short report and answer some
questions about the book I read that week. I get a gold star for every book I
report on.
    If I get six gold stars, I get a prize. I think the prize is a book. Big
deal, right? But it’s just a way to make you read.
    I thought I’d read some of the scary mystery novels that all my friends are
reading. But no way. Mr. Mortman insists on everyone reading “classics”. He
means old books.
    “I’m going to skate over,” I told my mom, and hurried to my room to get my
Rollerblades.
    “You’d better fly over!” my mom called up to me. “Hey,” she added a
few seconds later, “it looks like rain!”
    She was always giving me weather reports.
    I passed by Randy’s room. He was in there in the dark, no lights, the shades
pulled. Playing Super Nintendo, as usual.
    By the time I got my Rollerblades laced and tied, I had only five minutes to
get to the library. Luckily, it was only six or seven blocks away.
    I was in big trouble anyway. I had managed to read only four chapters of Huckleberry Finn, my book for the week. That meant I was going to have to
fake it with Mr. Mortman.
    I picked the book up from my shelf. It was a new paperback. I wrinkled up
some of the pages near the back to make it look as if I’d read that far. I
tucked it into my backpack, along with a pair of sneakers. Then I made my way
down the stairs—not easy in Rollerblades—and headed to the Timberland Falls
town library.
    The library was in a ramshackle old house on the edge of the Timberland
woods. The house had belonged to some eccentric old hermit. And when he died, he
had no family, so he donated the house to the town. They turned it into a
library.
    Some kids said the house had been haunted. But kids say that about every creepy old house. The library did look like a perfect haunted house,
though.
    It was three stories tall, dark shingled, with a dark, pointy roof between
two stone turrets. The house was set back in the trees, as if hiding there. It
was always in the shade, always dark and cold inside.
    Inside, the old floorboards creaked beneath the thin carpet the town had put
down. The high windows let in very little light. And the old wooden bookcases
reached nearly to the ceiling. When I edged my way through the narrow aisles
between the tall, dark shelves, I always felt as if they were about to close in