The Smoky Corridor

50

Zack’s terrible day got even worse after school officially ended.

His final class was technology education with another really cool teacher, named Mr. Bill Green, who told them that starting the next day, they’d each be designing, engineering, and constructing a ping-pong catapult to do a trajectory-analysis project.

“That should be fun!” said Malik as he and Zack headed up the crowded corridor toward their lockers. Everywhere Zack looked, he (and no one else) saw guardian ghosts. Some were escorting their relatives up and down the hall. Others were hanging out inside open lockers. One was trying to get a drink from a water fountain but her palm kept passing through the on button.

Two, who looked like a mismatched set—one a lady in a bright green dress, the other a man in a funny bowler hat, both with bullet holes in the center of their heads—stood behind the newest janitor, who was working a push broom down the hall. The newly arrived ghosts were holding their noses and shouting stuff like “Stay away from this one!” and “He’s nothing but trouble!” to anyone who’d listen.

Zack, of course, was the only one who could listen, and frankly, he had enough to worry about without adding a new janitor to the mix, thank you very much.

The couple followed the janitor, blowing unheard raspberries at him as he swept the corridor clean.

Zack and Malik were headed the other way.

They pulled open a door and there was Azalea Torres, working her locker open on the wall outside Ms. DuBois’s classroom.

“Hey, you guys! I just had this awesome idea. It’s October already. Halloween’s coming. We should go on a cemetery crawl!”

“What’s that?” asked Zack.

“Well, you go to a graveyard and take rubbings off the headstones. Some of the inscriptions are wicked funny, like ‘Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake, Stepped on the gas instead of the brake.’”

“That would make an awesome field trip for our history class!” said Malik.

“Yeah,” said Azalea. “I already talked to Ms. DuBois and she said it was an awesome idea, too! We just need to pick a date.”

“The sooner, the better,” said Malik. “The rubbings would make excellent Halloween decorations.”

“Yeah,” said Zack. “We could hang them on our lockers, which kind of resemble caskets.”

Malik’s and Azalea’s smiles instantly curdled into frowns.

“What? Okay. You don’t like the locker-coffin idea. We could—”

Someone grabbed his belt from behind and hoisted him off the ground.

“Well, if it isn’t wacky little Zacky.”

Kurt Snertz.

So that was why his friends had stopped smiling so fast.

“You ready for your toilet swirly, wimp?”