Being locked inside Sid’s room really freaked me out because I’m afraid of the dark. It’s because of something that happened back when we used to live in Hog’s Head. For a whole month, I kept hearing noises in my room at night. SLUUUUURP! SLURPITTY-SLURP … SLUUUUURP! When I told my parents about it, they said it was just our old house creaking. But then one morning Mom went to get something from my closet and she found Grandma Loretta sleeping in there, surrounded by a bunch of empty strawberry Frosty shakes. It turns out she was escaping from the nursing home at night to drink strawberry Frostys in my closet. Since then I’ve had a phobia about dark rooms. And I’m not too crazy about strawberry Frostys, either.

Now, in Sid’s pitch-black room, my heart was pounding like crazy. I got all sweaty and started breathing so fast that I was making this hee-hee-hee sound.

“Who’s laughing like that?” Sid demanded. “Is that you, Perry?”

“No,” Perry said.

I was embarrassed to say it was my scaredy-cat breathing so I didn’t say anything. I just kept going, “Hee-hee-hee.”

“Well, quit it, whoever it is!” Sid said. “You’re creeping me out!”

I was getting really frantic now. Then I remembered that red button on Sid’s desk. I stuck my hands straight out in the darkness and started feeling around. After a minute or so, I smacked into something hard. The desk! Perfect!

I jabbed my finger into the blackness, poking at things until I finally felt something big and round. I stabbed my finger into it.

“HEY!!!” Sid screamed. “Who just stuck their finger in my ear??!!”

That’s when someone farted.

“You know what?” Sid said. “You guys are disgusting! Get out of here!” He must have pressed the button because the shark’s mouth started opening very slowly.

We ran out of there, and didn’t stop running until we got to the elevator. Out in the hallway, Perry gave me a high-five.

“That creepy laugh was awesome,” he said.

“Right?” I replied.

As you can see, I am not above taking credit for things that I really shouldn’t.

Still, I do like to be fair. So I added, “But it was Boris’s colossal fart that really did the trick.”

“That wasn’t my fart,” Boris said.

“Well, it wasn’t mine, either,” said Perry.

We all looked at Cat. She smiled back.

That girl is full of surprises.