“So, have you guys decided what you’re going to dress up as for the Halloween parade?” Chris asked Alex and George as the boys met up on the playground before school the next morning.

George shook his head. “Not yet. This has to be an extra-special costume. It’s my first parade.”

“True,” Alex agreed. “The rest of us have been doing this since kindergarten.”

“But it’s still special,” Chris said. “That’s why I’m going to be Toiletman!”

George laughed. Toiletman was a cartoon superhero Chris had created. Whenever there was a chance to dress up—for the school talent show or a Halloween parade—Chris put on his Toiletman cape.

“My mom said I could buy a new plunger, so I’m really psyched!” Chris added. “And I know that no one else is coming dressed as Toiletman.”

“That’s for sure,” George said.

“I’m thinking of coming as Sir Alexander Fleming,” Alex told Chris and George.

George looked at him curiously. “Who?”

“Sir Alexander Fleming,” Alex repeated, sounding kind of surprised that George didn’t know who he was talking about. “He was a scientist who worked with mold and bacteria. He discovered penicillin.”

“Oh,” George said. “Well, mold’s kind of cool.”

“Mold’s very cool,” Alex corrected him.

“I bet no one else will have that costume, either,” Chris said.

The pressure was really on George now. He had to come up with an original costume idea. But what?

Rrrinnngggg. Just then, the bell rang. It was time to go inside. School was starting. Halloween was going to have to wait.

“What’s going on?” George wondered as he and his friends walked into the school building. It looked like every kid in the school was in the lobby.

“I don’t know,” Alex said. “But something definitely has to be going on.”

“Whoa,” George heard someone in the crowd gasp.

“Principal McKeon’s going to have a fit,” someone else added.

George just had to know what was happening! He squeezed himself through the crowd of kids that had gathered in the middle of the school lobby.

“Oh man, check out Edith B.!” George laughed so hard, he snorted. Someone had put fake eyeglasses, a rubber nose, and a mustache on the sculpture of Edith B. Sugarman. The school was named for Edith B. Sugarman—although no one seemed to know who she was or why anyone would name a school after her. The sculpture was pretty weird looking to begin with. But now it looked hilarious.

Alex started to laugh, too. So did Chris. And Julianna. And even Louie. Before long, everyone was hysterical.

Well, almost everyone.

“You think this is funny?” Principal McKeon bellowed from behind the crowd. “Well, I don’t. I demand to know who did this.”

“There’s a note on the bottom of the statue,” Louie pointed out.

Principal McKeon grabbed the note and began to read it out loud. “‘I cover my tracks well. You will never find the Phantom.’”

“AAAAAHHHHH!”

Just as Principal McKeon finished reading, a scream came from Nurse Cuttaway’s office.

Uh-oh. What now? George looked at Alex.

Alex looked back at George and shrugged.

There was only one way to find out. The boys raced toward the nurse’s office. The rest of the kids headed that way, too.

“Oh wow!” George peeked into the nurse’s office and tried not to laugh. But holding in giggles was almost as hard as holding in burps. “Hahahahahha!”

George wasn’t the only one laughing. It was hard not to laugh at a life-size bony skeleton with a green rubber monster mask over its head. The mask had bulging eyes and snakes for hair.

“Hey, George, isn’t that the same mask that you . . . ,” Alex began.

But before Alex could finish his sentence, Principal McKeon walked over and yanked the mask off the skeleton’s head.

“Who did this?” she demanded, waving the rubber mask in the air. The rubbery snakes wiggled and jiggled. “This skeleton belongs in the science room,” Principal McKeon continued. “Not in the nurse’s office.”

Clunk. One of the skeleton’s feet fell off.

I guess the foot bone’s not connected to the ankle bone anymore, George thought. But he didn’t say that out loud. He had a feeling Principal McKeon wouldn’t find that funny, either.

“There’s a note near the skeleton,” Sage said. She began to read it out loud. “‘This guy doesn’t have a brain, a heart, a stomach, or an appendix. He’s got no body. And nobody can guess the Phantom’s true identity!’”

“As I told a group of you yesterday, I am prepared to take away some very important privileges if this prankster is not stopped immediately,” Principal McKeon said to the crowd gathered outside the nurse’s office. “There have to be consequences for someone’s actions.”

George frowned as he noticed the principal’s eyes drifting toward the Halloween parade banner in the front hallway of the school. He knew what she meant. And he bet the other kids did, too.

“George, you better cut it out,” Louie said as the kids started moving down the hall to their classrooms.

“Me?” George asked. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Yeah, right,” Louie said. “These are just the kind of weird, freaky jokes a weirdo freak like you would play. If Mrs. McKeon cancels that parade, it’s gonna be your fault.”

Louie said that last part really loud. A bunch of kids in the hall turned and stared at George.

George shook his head. “It wasn’t me,” he repeated. “I’m not the Phantom.”

The kids kept staring. Some of them were glaring. Louie was the only one smiling. Louie was never happier than when he was causing trouble for someone else—especially for George.