Early Saturday morning, I’m weeding the O’Hanlons’ front lawn as part of my punishment for putting up the yard signs without their permission. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, because every time I look at the crushed JUST VOTE NO levy sign, I feel like laughing out loud.
After I finish, I head over to Bo’s. He promised to help Ibby and me decorate for the haunted house tonight. It’s our last chance before Election Day to get the word out and raise some money to pay for the campaign.
At first, there’s no sign of the nosey bubble-headed bikers. I’m about to ring the Taubers’ doorbell, when I spy them swinging from an old tire hanging from a huge elm.
“Hi!” I give them a friendly wave.
They stop practically midswing and stare. Little kids never forget.
“You gonna wake Bo up again?”
“Nope, this time I’m sure he’s up, because he promised to help decorate for a haunted house we’re having over at the Blooms’ tonight. You kids should come. It’s going to be really scary.”
The runny-nose one turns to the other and says knowingly, “She’s gonna wake Bo up.”
I can’t win. I ring Bo’s doorbell once, twice, three times.
No answer.
They’ve abandoned the tire and are patiently standing on the property line, watching.
“He’s probably in the shower,” I call over my shoulder.
My fan club sits down in the grass. This could take a while.
“You better not be asleep, Bo!” I mutter.
I ring the doorbell in three quick bursts—nothing.
“Hey, you guys remember that fun game we played last time I was here?”
They nod—sure, they remember.
“Want to play again?”
Nope, they shake their heads. They’ll sit this one out.
What happened to the eager little kids I remember being when I was their age? The ones who would risk playing in traffic if a teenager suggested that kissing hubcaps was the thing to do. “Why not?” I demand.
“Bo’d be mad,” says the girl.
They’re loyal all right, but their allegiance is to the five-foot-eleven, wise-mouthed goalie snoring his head off inside. For Bo’s birthday next month, I’m getting him an alarm clock without a snooze button. I have an idea. “Hey, you kids want to practice for trick-or-treating tonight?”
That gets their attention.
“Practice?”
“Sure, when you get into … what grade are you in?”
“First.”
“First grade—it’s not guaranteed that you automatically get candy when you ring a doorbell. The competition is tough, and if you don’t have your trick-or-treat method down, well, you might be out of luck. They’ll save all the bad leftover candy from last year for you. Licorice jelly beans, old, hard caramels, sugar-free lollipops.”
“Sugar-free?” they say. “Let’s practice.”
“First, we’ll give Bo the trick. You go inside your house, call his phone number, and ask if his refrigerator’s running. When he says yes, then you say, ‘Then why don’t you catch it?’ And you, ring the front doorbell over and over again, while I tap and holler outside his window. When he comes to the door, we’ll all shout ‘Trick or Treat!’ Then he’ll give us the practice candy.”
When Bo finally appears at the door, he says, “Man, this is baaad déjà vu. From now on, don’t sign me up for anything before twelve noon on Saturdays.”
He doesn’t even bother to tie a bandana around his head, just lets his dreads go wild.
“Do you have any candy in the house? I promised those two a practice treat if they helped.”
“Bribed them? Pretty low, Tess. Anyway I ate all the candy. My mom says she’s picking up some more for tonight on her way home from work. So they’re flat out of luck.”
“Come on, Bo. You’ve got to have some sort of candy.”
“My grandma might have something. Let me check.”
Bo comes out of the house with a plastic jar full of multicolored disks and asks them which color they want.
“Those are Tums. Bo, you can’t give them an antacid!”
“Why? You guys are giving me heartburn.”
I take a Post-it note from my purse and write them an IOU for the candy and sign it. “Come to the haunted house tonight and we’ll let you in for free,” I promise. They seem to brighten a bit, but I have the feeling they would have been happier with the Tums.
When we get to Ibby’s house, Bo whistles as we make our way up their circular driveway. “The Blooms went all out for this one.”
And they did.
Painted plywood tombstones poke up from the ground with the names of teams the Cleveland Indians have recently defeated in the playoffs. Huge pumpkins line the walkway up to the front door. There are cobwebs all over the front porch, with fake black-widow spiders hanging from them.
Mixed in with all the Halloween decorations are signs supporting the school levy. A ghost’s says, Vote Yes for our schools: a boo-tiful place to learn! A witch stirs a bubbling cauldron that reads, Cast a yes vote for our schools!
“It looks like they’re all ready for tonight.”
Ibby opens the door. “Where have you guys been? I’ve been waiting for over an hour.”
I give Bo a look. “I had to weed the O’Hanlons’ lawn, and Bo wouldn’t answer his door again this morning.”
Ibby walks us outside and around back to the garage. She punches in a code and the doors open.
“Hellooo pumpkins!” says Bo.
“Oh my God, Ibs—where did you get so many pumpkins?”
“Did my mom go overboard?”
“She raided a freaking pumpkin patch,” says Bo.
“What are we going to do with so many?”
Ibby hands me a special carving knife, serrated on both sides. “Carve?”
I try to count the hundreds of different-size pumpkins that are sitting on top of tables and workbenches, piled in baskets, surrounding golf bags, bicycles, and gardening tools. There’s even one forty-pounder resting on the seat of a riding lawn mower. “Ibs, we could carve for the entire day and not even half of these would be jack-o’-lanterns by the time the haunted house opens tonight!”
“Imagine how cool it would be to have all these glowing pumpkin faces lining the driveway?”
Bo grabs a carving knife. “Come on, Munro. Get to work.” And with that, he cuts out a little circular stem cap from the top of the nearest pumpkin.
Ibby lays down newspapers and Bo reaches inside the pumpkin with both hands and scoops out the seeds. “Pumpkin guts!” he says, and throws the tangled wet mass onto the nearest papers.
Splat.
I don’t know if it’s the smell of pumpkin goo or the stringy, seedy glob quivering on the garage floor, but all of a sudden, I get the dry heaves and feel like I’m going to lose my breakfast.
Bo laughs. “Tess Munro—big, tough soccer player can’t handle a little pumpkin puke!”
Ibby smiles as she carves a toothy grin on her pumpkin.
“Stop it, Bo!” I gag. “I’ve never”—gag—“liked … scooping”—cough-gag—
I run over to the other side of the car so they can’t see me if I throw up. Once I’m away from the pumpkin smell, I feel better.
“Hey, Munro, better not hurl on those Beamer hubcaps.”
“Shut up, Tauber!”
Feeling a little light-headed, I sit down on the driveway and lean my head against the car door. “I like jack-o’-lanterns,” I try to explain. “It’s just something about the smell of pumpkin guts.”
“Aw, you’ll get used to it.”
Ibby comes around the side of the car with a couple of shopping bags. “You okay, Tess? You can work on these.”
Inside the bags are the bitty baby pumpkins—no bigger than my hand.
“You won’t have to cut a thing, just paint the outsides, okay?”
I nod, grateful to have a job that doesn’t involve the loss of my dignity or the doughnuts I inhaled for breakfast this morning.
It turns out that Bo has a gift for pumpkin carving. He makes some look like black cats, bats, ghosts, and vampires, but the most amazing ones resemble teachers at our school.
There’s a squat, round Mr. Ramella with Elvis Presley hair, and a pumpkin with Ms. Harper’s straight, China-doll haircut. But the best is Mrs. Bustamonte. For that creation, Bo carved out her small wire-rim glasses and short, spiky do. Best of all is the mousetrap he found in Ibby’s garage and attached to the dried pumpkin vine on top of her head.
“Bo! You can’t do that,” Ibby says. “What if she’s here tonight and sees it?”
“People never see themselves as they really are. And if she even shows, I bet she won’t notice it.”
“She notices everything!” I say.
“Then why can’t she catch the kid who’s stealing mouse balls?”
“Maybe it’s not a kid who’s taking them. Maybe it’s a custodian or a substitute teacher or Vice Principal Korn sneaking into the Tech lab at night,” I offer.
“Why would the vice principal or a janitor steal the mouse balls?” Bo asks.
I shrug. “To sell on eBay?”
Bo turns to Ibby. “Is that nontoxic paint Munro’s inhaling over there?”
Ibby makes a face and continues carving, traditional jack-o’-lanterns with varying-size triangles and toothless grins. “I think Sarah said she found most of the mouse balls along the wall in the gym.”
“Aha!” I say. “Wadler’s the culprit.”
“No,” says Bo. “It just means that when kids steal ’em, they think they’re getting some sort of high-bouncing Superball, but mouse balls don’t bounce. They just kinda go blunk.”
Ibby and I ask the logical next question. “How would you know?”
“Um … I just do,” Bo says with a sheepish smile.
“Klepto!” I go back to painting my tenth baby-pumpkin face. Only this one has a big O for a mouth. “Hey, look, guys.” I come out from behind the car and line up ten little pumpkins in a row. I incorporated one letter on each pumpkin face to spell out S-a-v-e S-p-o-r-t-s.
“Great idea, Tess,” says Ibs.
“Thanks. Think it’ll help?”
Bo stops carving a pumpkin that looks suspiciously like our librarian in her Dutch-girl costume. For once, he appears to seriously consider my question.
“It’ll be close. But I think people will go for it. Why wouldn’t they want us to have sports and stuff?”
Bo grabs a soccer ball–sized pumpkin and hugs it to his chest, shouting, “Don’t separate a goalie from his ball, man! It’s too cruel!”
“I guess I’d miss swimming, too,” says Ibs. “Definitely wouldn’t want to see Ms. Harper or Mr. Chen lose their jobs.”
“Definitely miss taking the bus if my brother has to drive me to school every day,” I mumble.
Ibby looks alarmed. “I’d walk, Tess.”
“Or run,” says Bo. “Next to the car!”
“Very funny.” I make a face at Bo. But suddenly it’s not. Not funny at all, and I feel that queasy sick feeling again in my stomach as I look around at all the pumpkins and think about what’s at stake.
“We’ve got to win,” I say. “We’ve just got to.”