4. The Ghost

4 The Ghost I don't know how long I was sleeping. But sometime in the middle of the night, I heard something moving in my room. And then I heard an eerie voice. "Andrea... Andrea..." I was in a deep sleep. I had forgotten that Arlo was sleeping on my floor. I just heard that creepy voice. When I opened my eyes, there was a big, shapeless creature

standing next to my bed and scary shadows on the wall behind it. "Eeeeeeeeeeek!" I screamed. Then I realized it was just Arlo. He had the sleeping bag over his head. "Andrea... Andrea..." "Knock it off, Arlo!" I told him. "I'm trying to sleep." "I'm not Arlo," he replied. "I'm the ghost of Arlo." "Oh, yeah?" I said. "If you're the ghost of Arlo, that must mean Arlo is dead." "That's right," he said. "He ran away to Antarctica to live with the penguins. But he fell off an ice floe and froze to death. It was tragic."

I decided to play along.

"What's your name?" I asked. "Name?" he said. "My name is... the ghost of Arlo." "That's not a name," I told him. "You're supposed to have a name. Ghosts have names." "How do you know what ghosts are supposed to have?" Arlo said. "Have you ever met a ghost?" "This is silly, Arlo! Take the sleeping bag off your head. You almost scared me to death." "You should be scared," Arlo said in a scary voice. "After you go to sleep, I'm going to paint your pink room black." "You are not." "Yes, and I'm going to hide under your bed," Arlo said. "And when you go to sleep, I'm going to replace your Barbies with G.I. Joe action figures. Because that's what Arlo

would do. If he was still alive. Which he isn't." "Don't you dare touch my Barbies," I warned him. "Then I'm going to take away your encyclopedia," Arlo said. "And I'm going to change all your As to Fs on your next report card." "Go to sleep," I told him. "There's no such thing as ghosts. You're Arlo." "I am not." "Are too!" "R2D2." At that moment, the door opened. "Eeeeeeeeeeek!" Arlo and I screamed. It was Arlo's dad and my dad. "We heard a noise," Arlo's dad said. "Is everything okay?"

"I'm dead," Arlo said. "This is my ghost." "Go to sleep!" they both shouted. And then they slammed the door. The #4 reason why I love school... We get to learn new things!