3. YES, THEY ARE SO REAL GHOSTS

“CLASS!” MRS. D. CALLS. WE keep talking.

Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap. Mrs. D. is trying to get hold of our attention. But even Gwendolyn Swanson-Carmichael is yakking away about her Halloween costume.

TWEET! TWEET! Mrs. D. blasts a whistle. Harvey grabs his ears.

Whoo-whee. We all shut our traps at the exact same moment.

Mrs. D. says, “I know that everyone is VERY excited about Halloween on Friday.”

She smiles and has a dreamy look on her face. I know she’s imagining all the candy she’s going to get when she goes trick-or-treating. ’Cause she luh-huvs candy.

“Gumdrops, what are some of the things you think of when I say the word ‘Halloween’?” Mrs. D. asks.

“Candy!” we shout.

Mrs. D. writes candy on the board.

“Pumpkins!”

She writes pumpkins on the board, right underneath candy.

“Ghosts!” I say.

Now Mrs. D. starts another column on the board and she writes ghosts.

“Werewolves,” Harvey says.

She writes werewolves right under ghosts.

We also tell her “witches” and “goblins” and she puts those right under werewolves.

Finally, we have two really long columns.

Mrs. D. asks, “Who can tell me what the difference is between these two columns?”

Timo Toivonen shoots up his hand. “In Finland, we do not celebrate Halloween.”

“Thank you, Timo. Can you tell me the difference between these two columns?” Mrs. D. has her Waiting-For-Toast-To-Pop-Up look.

“No,” Timo says. “They both contain Halloween items. In Finland, we dress up and trick-or-treat on Easter.”

“You’ve got that wrong!” Harvey bursts out. “Easter is for chocolate bunnies.”

“I don’t celebrate Easter,” Ben Wexler says. “I celebrate Passover.”

“I celebrate Día de los Muertos and Halloween,” Jessie says.

Mrs. D. takes a swig of coffee from her travel mug.

Ruby Snow shoots up her hand. “In the first column, it’s all stuff to eat.”

“What about the black cat?” Gwendolyn Swanson-Carmichael points out. “You can’t eat a black cat.”

“Unless it’s a cookie shaped like a black cat,” John Carmine Tabanelli says.

I think I know the answer. I shoot up my hand. “In the second column, that’s all the stuff that scares the living daylights out of you.” I smile my I’m-Right Smile at the whole class. “That’s the really true stuff about Halloween. The other stuff is just food.”

“Actually,” Gwendolyn says in her You’re-Not-Right Voice, “the first column is things that are real. The second column is things that are made up. Right, Mrs. D.?”

“Yes,” Mrs. D. says. “Ghosts and goblins and witches are make-believe.” She writes Make-believe over that list. She writes Real over the other list.

Harvey asks, “What about werewolves?”

“Make-believe, too,” Mrs. D. says. “It’s nice to have fun on Halloween with costumes and candy. But it’s also nice to remember that it’s make-believe.”

Humph. Mrs. D. is always right. But I know what I heard last night. And what I saw. It was a spooky, scary, ding-dong dead ghost.

Mrs. D. just called me a ball-face liar, teacher-style.