Humbug Holiday Read Free Page A

England.”
    â€œThe birthplace of English class,” I mumbled. “It’s not present day, either. They have old-fashioned streetlights, which means they don’t light up much at all. All in all, it’s sort of a cold, gloomy place to put a Christmas story. I mean, hey. Where are the reindeer and snowmen and elves and presents for me?”
    In the distance, a clock was sounding out the hour.
    Bong! Bong! Bong!
    â€œThree o’clock? Is that right?” wondered Frankie. “It’s so dark.”
    â€œDark or not, three o’clock definitely makes it snack time!” I said, reaching around to my backpack.
    But even as I did, a hand—a pale, white, very thin hand—darted out of the fog, grabbed my backpack right off my shoulder, and snatched it away.
    â€œHey, you!” I yelled. “Lay off the chocolaty goodness of my cookies! Give that back—”
    But even as I tried to wrestle my pack free of the strange white hand— whoosh! —an icy wind swept around me and the hand was gone, and with it— fwit! —my entire backpack!
    I freaked out. “Frankie, it’s gone! Someone stole my backpack! I saw a hand! My cookies are in there! Who would steal cookies from a kid? Especially a kid who’s me? And especially at snack time—”
    The fog closed around us, leaving no trace of the thief.
    â€œMaybe the book tells us!” said Frankie “Keep looking while I read!”
    I scrambled up and down the cobblestone street, but it was so dark and the fog so thick I couldn’t see anything. I had to face it. Whoever took my backpack had escaped.
    I straggled back to Frankie. “Nope, he’s gone. Weird creepy hand. I didn’t even see the rest of him.”
    â€œIf it even was a him,” she said.
    â€œRight. Huh? What do you mean?”
    Frankie was standing under a street lamp whose yellowy light cast a dull glow onto the book’s pages. “Devin, look at this. The actual title of the book is, A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.”
    â€œA g-g-ghost story?” I said. “Are you saying that hand was … a … ghost hand? Mrs. Figglehopper and Mr. Wexler never said anything about ghosts.”
    â€œThis story says something about ghosts,” said Frankie, looking up. “Devin, we’re in an actual ghost story.”
    I shivered. “I didn’t sign on for ghosts. A Christmas story, maybe, but no ghosts. I’m not a fan of ghosts. Ghosts haunt people. Which means they’ll probably want to haunt me. No, no, this is crazy. Who mixes ghosts and Christmas anyway?”
    â€œCharles Dickens does. He’s the guy who wrote it. Good thing it’s a skinny book. Maybe your backpack won’t be too hard to find.”
    I wasn’t so sure. Even a short book in this time and place didn’t seem all that inviting. The weather, for instance, was going to be a problem for California kids like us. It was cold, bleak, and biting everywhere we turned. We could hear people on the other side of the street go wheezing up and down the sidewalk, beating their hands together and stamping their feet on the pavement to keep warm.
    â€œI don’t like this,” I said, shivering. “Let’s read until we get to a good part. Preferably, the part where we find my pack, snarf down my cookies, jump through the zapper gates, and get back to Palmdale in time for a normal, ghost-free Christmas. You read first.”
    Frankie snorted a snort at me. “Good luck. The fog is too thick to make out the words. And you know what happens when we skip ahead.”
    I nodded. I knew.
    It’s one of the major rules of being in a book. If you try to cheat and skip ahead—even a few pages—everything goes kablooey. A big rip appears in the sky over your head and a huge lightning storm starts and you get tossed around until you crash-land in another part of the story.