9 Much Ado About Nothing

Chapter 9 Much Ado About Nothing Me and the guys went back up to the boardwalk. We walked past a Chinese fast-food restaurant there. Just seeing it made me hungry. But I couldn't get food because I spent the money my mom gave me on saltwater taffy. And I gave most of the taffy to Andrea. Bummer in the summer! "What do you wanna do?" I asked the guys. "I don't know," said Ryan. "What do you wanna do?" "I don't know," said Michael. "What do you wanna do?" "I asked you first," I said. We went back and forth like that for a while. Finally, Neil the nude kid suggested

we go booger boarding, which made no sense to me. Who wants to put boogers on a board? But then he said he meant boogie boarding, which is completely different and much more fun. The only problem was that we didn't have a boogie board. "We could dig a hole," suggested Ryan. "Digging holes is cool," said Michael. "Maybe we'll find buried treasure," Neil the nude kid said. "Then we can use it to buy some food." We went down to the beach to dig a hole. My friend Billy, who lives around the corner, told me that if you dig a hole deep enough, it will go all the way to China. "Hey," I told the guys, "if we dig a hole to China, maybe we'll end up near a Chinese restaurant. I bet they'll give us Chinese food."

"Then we won't even need to find buried treasure," Michael said. "Great idea, A.J.!" said Ryan. That's why I'm in the gifted and talented program at school. The four of us started digging with our hands. I could almost taste the Chinese food we were going to eat once we reached China. "Hey," Ryan said, "what's the deal with jumbo shrimp? It's either jumbo or it's shrimpy. It can't be both." "Yeah," said Michael, "and how can you have sweet and sour pork? Either it's sweet or it's sour. What's up with that?" "Yeah," I said, "and how do they know which ribs are the spare ones?" Chinese food is weird. We were all digging in the sand when the strangest thing in the history of the

world happened. "Hey!" Neil suddenly shouted. "There's something down here!" "What is it?" I asked. "Buried treasure?" "No, it's… a hand!" "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" we all screamed. "And the fingers are moving!" "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" we all screamed. "It's the sand monster!" I shouted. "My sister told me about it. It's a zombie, and it eats boys!" "Run for your lives!" shouted Neil. That's when this giant, human-shaped creature pushed its way out from under the sand. It stood up! "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" we all screamed.

The sand monster started shaking sand off itself.

And that's when I realized it wasn't a sand monster at all It was Mr. Granite, that. weird guy who swam all the way from Australia! "Thanks for digging me up, blokes," said Mr. Granite. "I must have dozed off on the beach. I guess some kids covered me with sand as a prank." Then he just walked away, like that was completely normal. Mr. Granite sure has a weird way of popping up out of nowhere. Down the beach, we saw that Mr. Sunny had put up a big fence around his sand castle. I guess he was afraid that somebody might damage it before the judging. A bunch of kids were watching him work on the castle, but Andrea wasn't around. "Where's Andrea?" I asked Mr. Sunny. "I cannot talk right now," he replied. "I must have silence with the sand."