Burp or Treat . . . Smell My Feet! Read online

  For Amanda, who finds Halloween magical!—NK

  For all the fiends that have helped me celebrate Halloween throughout the years

  —AB

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Text copyright © 2014 by Nancy Krulik. Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Aaron Blecha.

  All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-0-698-18154-0

  Version_1

  Contents

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Title Page

  Who Dunnit?

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Spider Cider

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  About the Author and Illustrator

  “Get the full-size candy bars, Mom,” George Brown pleaded. “Kids hate when you give them the mini fun-size ones.”

  George’s mom looked at the stacks and stacks of bags of Halloween candy on the store shelf. “Nope, sorry. It’s the mini candy bars, or no candy bars.”

  “At least your mom gives away candy on Halloween,” George’s best friend, Alex, said. “My mom gives everyone mini tubes of toothpaste. Talk about embarrassing.”

  George gave Alex a sympathetic look. “I guess that’s what happens when your mom is a dentist.”

  Alex nodded and pointed to the shelves filled with ooey, gooey sugary candy. “This place is my mom’s worst nightmare. She calls candy bars a cavity waiting to happen.”

  “Which is why it’s good you boys will get toothpaste in your trick-or-treat bags,” George’s mom interrupted. She gave George a stern look. “And you really have to watch how much you eat in one sitting. Remember what happened last year.”

  “Don’t remind me,” George said with a groan. This Halloween, he would try not to eat his whole bag of candy in one night. But then again, he made that same promise every year.

  “I still have a few things to buy,” George’s mom told the boys. “Why don’t you two go over to the next aisle and take a look at the masks?”

  “Good idea!” George shouted.

  “Right behind you, dude,” Alex said as he followed him to the costume aisle.

  Alex picked up a clown costume in a box. “I remember when I used to wear these kinds of costumes,” he said. “I hated the plastic masks with the rubber band around the back.”

  “Me too,” George agreed. “I could never see through the eyeholes, and it got all hot and sweaty near where my nose was supposed to go.”

  Alex walked farther down the aisle and picked up a rubber monster mask. “Now this is cool,” he said.

  George looked at the mask. It had rubber nails jammed into the neck, big bulging eyes, and blood dripping down the sides. It was scary.

  But not nearly as scary as what was suddenly happening in the bottom of George’s belly. There was something really frightening going on down there. Bubbles. Hundreds of them. And they were bouncing around madly.

  Bing-bang. Ping-pang.

  George gulped. Those weren’t ordinary, weak, wimpy bubbles. They were strong, crazy bubbles. Bubbles that kickboxed his kidneys and boomeranged from his bladder. Bubbles that were threatening to burst out of him at any moment, and . . .

  Just then, George let out a powerful burp. A super burp. A burp so loud, and so strong, it knocked the rubber mask right out of Alex’s hands.

  “Dude! No!” Alex shouted.

  Dude! Yes! The magical super burp had escaped. And now, whatever the burp wanted to do, George had to do.

  The burp wanted to eat some candy corn. So the next thing George knew, his feet were running back over to the candy aisle. His hands reached out, grabbed a big bag of candy corn, ripped it open, and started pouring the orange-and-yellow candies into his mouth.

  “Kid, what are you doing?” one of the store’s employees shouted at him.

  Then he called across the store to George’s mom. “Lady, is this your kid?”

  George’s mother turned around. “Oh no. Not again!” she cried out. Her cheeks got all red. “George! Stop that right now!”

  George wanted to stop. He really did. He didn’t even like candy corn. But the super burp loved candy corn.

  “Lady, you’re going to have to pay for that candy,” the employee said.

  “George, get out of the candy aisle this instant!” his mother yelled.

  For once, the burp let George do what he was told. George bolted back toward the costume aisle.

  A few older girls were standing there, buying face paint. George pushed them aside and grabbed a green rubber mask with bulging eyes and snakes for hair.

  “Can’t you say excuse me?” one of the girls demanded.

  George wanted to say excuse me. But he couldn’t. The burp never said excuse me for anything.

  Instead, George threw on the mask and started shaking his head. The rubbery snakes wiggled all around.

  “Hiss! Hiss!” George’s mouth said.

  One of the older girls shuddered. “I hate snakes,” she told her friend. “Even fake ones.”

  “Snakeman bites!” George said.

  The girls grabbed packets of face paint and hurried out of the aisle.

  George’s mother came running over. “Put that mask back on the shelf. NOW!”

  George stared at his mom. Her face had gone from red to purple. She looked like her head might explode.

  “And tie your shoelace,” George’s mom continued. “You’re going to fall.”

  “Hissssss!” George replied.

  A little boy who had been looking at a Superman costume started to cry. “SNAKES! That monster’s scary!”

  The boy’s mother turned to George’s mom. “You need to control your son!” she told her.

  “George!” his mother shouted. “NO MORE WARNINGS. Stop what you’re doing this instant.” She reached out and tried to grab him. But George was fast. He began to run down the aisle.

  “Hisssss!”

  Whoops!

  Plop.

  George tripped over his shoelace and landed on his belly. Quickly, he flipped over onto his back. His arms and legs waved crazily in the air. He looked like a
n upside-down crab. Well, an upside-down crab with a scary snake-haired mask on its head.

  George yanked off his sneakers and waved his stinky feet in the air. “Trick or treat! Smell my feet!” he shouted.

  The little boy cried harder.

  The smell of stinky feet spread through the store.

  Pop! Just then George felt something burst in the bottom of his belly. All the air rushed out of him. The super burp was gone.

  But George was still there, with the mask on his head, and his feet in the air. Quickly he sat up, whipped off the mask, and looked around. No one looked happy. Even Alex was shaking his head.

  “Dude, your feet smell,” Alex said.

  George opened his mouth to say, “I’m sorry.” And that’s exactly what came out.

  “George, get up,” his mom demanded. “And put your shoes back on. We’re going home. We’ll talk about this later.”

  George frowned. He was in trouble. Again.

  Stupid super burp. It was all tricks and no treat.

  “How much trouble are you in?” Alex asked George over the phone later that afternoon.

  “My mom’s pretty angry,” George admitted. “I had to pay her back for the candy I ate at the store. And then she made me clean out the garage as a punishment. Not exactly the way I wanted to spend Sunday afternoon.”

  “It could have been worse,” Alex pointed out. “The burp really made you go out of control.”

  “I hate burps,” George groaned. “More than anything.”

  “I know,” Alex said, trying to sound as if he understood. But how could he? George was the only kid in town who was bugged by burps. Oh sure, other kids burped sometimes. But nobody burped quite the way George did.

  It all started when George and his family first arrived in Beaver Brook. George’s dad was in the army, so the family moved around a lot. George knew that first days at school could be pretty rotten. But this first day was the most rotten.

  In his old school, George had been the class clown. He was always pulling pranks and making jokes. But George had promised himself that things were going to be different at Edith B. Sugarman Elementary School. He was turning over a new leaf. No more pranks. No more whoopee cushions or spitballs shot through straws. No more bunny ears behind people’s heads. No more goofing on teachers when their backs were turned.

  Of course, being the non-funny new kid in school didn’t exactly make him popular. And as he left school that first day, the only friend George had was the same one he walked in with: Me, myself, and I.

  That night, George’s parents took him out to Ernie’s Ice Cream Emporium. While they were sitting outside and George was finishing his root beer float, a shooting star flashed across the sky. So George made a wish.

  I want to make kids laugh—but not get into trouble.

  Unfortunately, the star was gone before George could finish the wish. So only half came true—the first half.

  A minute later, George had a funny feeling in his belly. It was like there were hundreds of tiny bubbles bouncing around in there. The bubbles hopped up and down and all around. They ping-ponged their way into his chest, and bing-bonged their way up into his throat. And then . . .

  George let out a big burp. A huge burp. A SUPER burp!

  The super burp was loud, and it was magic.

  Suddenly George lost control of his arms and legs. It was like they had minds of their own. His hands grabbed straws and stuck them up his nose like a walrus. His feet jumped up on the table and started dancing the hokey pokey. Everyone at Ernie’s Emporium started laughing—except George’s parents, who were covered in the ice cream he’d kicked over while he was dancing.

  That wasn’t the only time the burp burst out of George. There had been plenty of major gas attacks since then. And every time the burp burst out of him, it made George do terrible things. Like juggle raw eggs in the middle of the classroom—which would have been fine if George knew how to juggle.

  Or jump so high on a trampoline that his tighty whities got caught on a tree branch on the way down. Talk about getting the world’s worst wedgie. Ouch!

  And then there was the time the super burp made George tickle Louie Farley’s underarms during a lice check.

  That had been horrible. Louie was George’s worst enemy, and he had really stinky pits. George wound up with smelly Louie sweat all over his fingers. Yuck!

  George never told anyone about the super burp. He figured they’d never believe him. George wouldn’t have believed it, either, if he weren’t the one it kept happening to.

  But Alex was smart. He had figured out George’s secret. Luckily, Alex was a good friend. He hadn’t told anyone about the magical super burp. And he’d volunteered to help George find a cure. So far nothing they’d tried had squelched the belch, but the boys weren’t giving up.

  “Have you found any new burping cures?” George whispered into the phone.

  “Not yet. But I’m working on it,” Alex assured him. “I’ve been reading the Burp No More Blog every day. And the new issue of my science magazine should be coming in the mail soon. There could be something in there.”

  “I sure hope so,” George said. “Because this burp attack was really bad. I was afraid my mom was going to ground me, and I’d miss Halloween.”

  “I’m glad she didn’t,” Alex said.

  “I know. I can’t wait for Halloween!” George exclaimed.

  As George hung up the phone, he hoped he’d be able to trick his burp into staying out of sight. Otherwise, Halloween would go from fun to not so much . . .

  HALLOWEEN PARADE THIS THURSDAY!

  The orange-and-black banner was the first thing George saw as he and his friends walked into the school building Monday morning.

  “We’re having a parade?” he asked Alex. “With floats and everything?”

  Alex shook his head. “Not exactly. It’s just everyone marching around the playground. We do it every year.”

  “Oh,” George said quietly. That didn’t sound very exciting.

  “It’s a lot of fun,” George’s friend Julianna said. “Everyone comes in costume, and there’s music and candy.”

  “We don’t have classes the whole afternoon,” Chris pointed out. “And no homework that night.”

  “Oh,” George said again, with a smile. This time he sounded more excited. And also a little confused. He was doing some math in his head, and the numbers didn’t add up. “But Halloween won’t come for, like, a week and a half after that parade.”

  “It’s Principal McKeon’s way of psyching everyone up for Halloween,” Alex explained.

  That surprised George. He never thought of Principal McKeon as the kind of person who would want to psych kids up for Halloween. She only got excited about learning stuff. And Halloween wasn’t supposed to be about learning. It was supposed to be fun!

  “What are you going to be for Halloween, Georgie?” Sage asked. Then she did that weird eyelash-blinking thing she always did when she was talking to him.

  George hated the eyelash thing. He didn’t like being called Georgie, either. “I don’t know yet,” he mumbled.

  “Maybe we could do something together,” Sage suggested. “Like I could be Cinderella and you could be Prince Charming.”

  George shook his head. Uh-uh. Not happening. “I’m probably going to be something scary,” he told her.

  “You mean like Frankenstein?” Sage asked.

  George nodded.

  “Then I could be the Bride of Frankenstein,” Sage squealed happily.

  George frowned. That was not what he had in mind.

  Just then, Louie zoomed by on his wheelie sneakers. “Out of my way!” he shouted.

  “Why are you in such a hurry to get to class?” George asked him.

  “I’m practicing leading the crowd,” Louie said.
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  “For what?” George wondered.

  “For when I’m chosen to lead the Halloween parade,” Louie replied. “The kid who has the best costume always leads the parade.”

  “It’s not the best costume,” Julianna corrected him. “It’s the most creative costume.”

  “My school costume will be the best—and most creative,” Louie assured her.

  “Your school costume?” George asked.

  “Sure,” Louie said boastfully. “I always have two costumes. One for school and one for the actual night of Halloween. And they’re both always amazing.”

  “That’s true,” Louie’s friend Max agreed. “Always.”

  “Amazing,” Louie’s other friend, Mike, added.

  Wow. Two costumes. George had to admit that was impressive. But not surprising. Louie always seemed to have twice as much of everything.

  “I’ll see you guys after school,” Chris said as he turned the corner and walked into his classroom.

  “Later,” George said. He headed toward his classroom, but stopped short at the doorway. Everyone did.

  “What’s going on?” Alex asked.

  George couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Someone had flipped all the desks upside down. The chairs, too. The drawers of the filing cabinet had been pulled open, and some of the books had been taken off the shelves and thrown onto the floor.

  George’s teacher, Mrs. Kelly, was standing in the middle of the room, staring at the mess.

  “Maybe it’s some sort of Halloween prank,” George suggested.

  “Pranks are for April Fools’ Day,” Louie told him. “Not Halloween.”

  “Okay, then you explain it,” George replied.

  “No problem,” Max said. “Louie can explain it.”

  “Louie’s great at explaining,” Mike agreed. “He can explain anything.”

  But Louie couldn’t explain this.