The Smoky Corridor

40

The next three weeks flew by.

Almost every day, Zack bumped into a new guardian ghost sent to protect a family member from the potential zombie threat. Some of the ghosts Zack knew, like Kathleen Williams, who he’d met over the summer at the crossroads and again at the Hanging Hill Playhouse. She had been a nightclub and Broadway musical star back in the 1950s. Turned out her great-great-grandniece, Laurel Jumper, was a sixth grader at Pettimore Middle School.

“I heard her singing in the shower this morning,” the ghost gushed. “She has a marvelous voice. Simply marvelous! I only wish she believed in her talent enough to try out for the school choral group! Laurel could be a star on Broadway! A star!”

So Zack found Laurel and made a few subtle suggestions. Laurel auditioned for the school chorus and was, of course, snapped up right away. She even had a solo in the upcoming fall concert.

Laurel Jumper and other kids Zack helped joined his lunch bunch in the cafeteria, which had grown so large he and Malik had had to drag two tables together to make sure everybody had a seat.

Judy volunteered as a class mom a couple of times and got to meet a few of the ghosts. Bartholomew Buckingham gave her tips on how to make Curiosity Cat more Shakespearean.

“I saw your show,” he told her. “Jolly good fun. But perhaps you might consider having a few of your cats duel each other in the final act?” He then put on a brief demonstration of feline fight choreography. There was a lot of leaping, prancing, hissing, and posing.

Judy told him she’d think about it.

Benny had new ideas every day (except when Judy was the class mom) about what Zack should blow up next.

Azalea depressed everybody with gloomy poems she wrote (but she always winked to let Zack and Malik know she was messing with their heads).

Chuck Buckingham’s irregular heartbeat turned out to be a pretty common heart murmur, so he could take gym class, which he and Zack were actually enjoying, because Coach Mike—despite the whistle, shorts, and buzz cut—wasn’t the typical P.E. teacher. More encouraging, less screaming. By the fourth week of September, when Zack flexed his arm, he could swear he saw a muscle bump.

Assistant Principal Crumpler was grouchier than usual, because Wade Muggins, the school’s custodian, had “gone AWOL”—which Zack found out from Azalea was an army term for not showing up to do your job. There was a new janitor every week. They all kept quitting. None of them could stand working for Mr. Crumpler.

Ms. DuBois ate at Zack’s table whenever she was on cafeteria duty. So did Ms. Rodgers, the school nurse.

Even Kyle Snertz, Kurt’s younger brother, was sitting at the table and he wasn’t mumbling anymore, either. In fact, he was pretty funny. Everybody swore he would be a stand-up comic on TV someday and he said, “Wow, maybe I will.”

And so far, his big brother, Kurt Snertz—who said he hated Zack even more for turning his little brother into a “nerd loser”—hadn’t made good on his multiple threats to stick Zack’s head down a toilet.

Some days, after school, almost half of the sixth grade would hang out at Zack’s house. (Well, it felt like almost half.) Everybody wanted to meet Zack’s famous stepmom, Judy Magruder, because they had all grown up reading her Curiosity Cat books. They all liked Zipper, too.

Yep, for the first time in his life, Zack Jennings was cool.

He was also popular—well, at least with all the other unpopular kids, who, come to think of it, always outnumbered the popular kids anyhow. There could be only one star quarterback, one head cheerleader. There were tons of geeks, nerds, dorks, and dweebs. That was probably why they had so many names for being different.

All in all, September was a totally awesome month.

Then, in early October, Zipper got lonely.