The Best Halloween Ever Read Free Page B

kids, including Charlie, buy back their own candy.
    “So,” Mother said, “this year will be different. This year Halloween will be entirely in Woodrow Wilson School, controlled and safe. Don’t forget—there almost wasn’t any Halloween at all, because of the Herdmans. The mayor wasn’t kidding when he called it off.”
    Charlie was still in shock about no trick or treat when Mother answered my main question. “I guess the Herdmans will be there,” she said. “Can’t very well keep them out, but nobody has to worry about them. After all, how much trouble can they cause right there in school, with teachers and parents everywhere? What can they do?” Mother smiled at us, as if that was that. It wasn’t.

4
    N ormally none of the Herdmans ever looked at the blackboard, or knew what was on it—especially if it was homework, which they never did anyway. So it was possible (this was Charlie’s idea) that they wouldn’t know about Halloween being at school and nowhere else.
    “They’ll go out,” he said, “just the way they always do, looking for kids they can shove around and candy they can steal, and there won’t be any! No kids, no candy! They won’t know what happened. They’ll go crazy!”
    This made a great picture—all the Herdmans running up and down the empty streets, getting more and more frustrated, bumping into each other, maybe even running into trees or parked cars—but you knew it would never happen.
    Besides, the Herdmans didn’t have to read the blackboard to know all about the Woodrow Wilson Halloween. There were signs about it everywhere; all the first-graders had take-home notes pinned to them that said,
There will be no community Halloween. Come with your family to Woodrow Wilson School, 7 o’clock, Halloween night
; and almost every day Alice showed up with a new extra credit report about owls or bats or bonfires till Mrs. Hazelwood took pity on us (“Took pity on
herself
!” my mother said) and shut Alice down. “New school policy,” Mrs. Hazelwood said. “No more extra credit.”
    Somebody had straightened Mr. Crabtree out about when Halloween really was, and every morning he got on the PA system to tell us what we had to look forward to on October 31—costume parade and prizes, cookie-decorating contest and prizes, Meet the Monsters …
    “Meet the Monsters might be okay,” I said.
    “Not really,” Stewart Walker said.
    “It’s better than drawing faces on cookies,” I said.
    “Not really. They aren’t real monsters.”
    I stared at him. “Come on, Stewart! I know that.”
    He shook his head. “No, I mean they aren’t normal monsters. These monsters are going to be parents. Yours … mine … “ He pointed around the room. “His … hers … “
    Parents? “Mine?” I asked.
    “Well … mine. My father’s going to be
    Dracula. He’s got these fake teeth, like Boomer’s braces.” He sighed.
    “I’m sorry, Stewart,” I said.
    I didn’t think my father would agree to be a monster, but Charlie wasn’t so sure.
    “Maybe not a monster,” he said, “but there’s other things people have to be—ghosts and ghouls and living dead and all.”
    “Ghouls?” my father said. “Living dead? I don’t think so.”
    “Stewart Walker’s father gets to be Dracula,” Charlie said, “and Gloria Coburn’s mother is a witch, and Margaret—”
    “Well, good for them!” Mother said. “I told Hazel Wilson I wouldn’t be anything like that, so they put me on the pumpkin committee. I really want to do my share because I want this to succeed. Just think … peaceful Halloweens, year after year! I guess I could be a witch if that’s what they need … not one of the main ones, though.”
    “You’d be good on the pumpkin committee,” I said. I didn’t know what the pumpkin committee was, but it had to be better than your mother running around in witch clothes where everybody could see her.
    I didn’t know who the main witches were, but Alice did.
    “There