Chapter 3

Chapter 3 Mushrooms Take Over the World personification (n) giving lifelike characteristics to an inanimate object or an abstract idea; describing an object as if it were alive Candy! A box of candy hearts fell out of Jessie's Valentine's Day shoebox, and now all the kids were tearing open the lids of their own boxes and finding candy, too. "Sweet!" Evan shouted, scooping up the miniature box of candy conversation hearts. "Thanks, Mrs. Overton!" said Nina Lee when Mrs. Overton hurried into the classroom from the hallway. She'd been at the photocopier, making copies of the Poem of the Day.

"Thanks for what?" asked Mrs. Overton. "The candy!" shouted Jack, holding his box high and rattling it as if it were a maraca. "Where did this candy come from?" asked Mrs. Overton, looking surprised. "Who cares?" said Scott, popping three candy hearts into his mouth and crunching loudly. "I care!" said Mrs. Overton, her voice rising with alarm. "Hey, look what my hearts say," said Tessa. She held one up. "GREAT VOICE." "That's so weird!" said Cindy. Tessa had the best singing voice in the whole school. Every year, she sang in the talent show, and it was like watching an episode of American Idol. "Look at this!" said Christopher. He held up his candy heart. "Mine says MASTERPIECE." Christopher was always drawing, and when he grew up he planned to be an artist. "What does yours say?" asked Jessie, turning to Salley Knight.

"It says BEST LUNCH." No one could argue with that. Salley's mom owned a restaurant, and she always packed the best food in Salley's lunchbox. "Who brought these candies to school?" asked Mrs. Overton. No one had a clue. "Well, don't eat them," she said, but almost everyone had already popped the sugary hearts into their mouths. "Should we spit them out?" asked David, sticking out his tongue with the melting candy on the tip of it. "No! No spitting!" said Mrs. O. "Just..." She went to the class phone and made a quick call, then returned to the front of the class. "Let's refocus and get started on our morning work," she said. "We've got a lot to do today." But it was a good five minutes before everyone stopped comparing the messages written on their candy hearts: BEAUTIFUL HAIR, YOU MAKE ME LAUGH, MATH GENIUS. All of them seemed to say something about the person.

All of them except for Evan's. His just said FOR YOU. Well, he didn't care what the candy said as long as it was candy. He popped three hearts in his mouth and shoved the box in his back pocket. On the playground at lunch recess, most of the kids agreed that it must have been Mrs. Overton who had left the candy hearts for them. She had pulled a few sneaky-surprise tricks on them during the year. In January when they were studying the Revolutionary War, she'd had Officer Ken come to school and arrest them all on charges of sedition. During their famous inventors unit, which happened to fall around Halloween, she had left strange things around the classroom (burned-out light bulbs, bits of wire and springs, an antique crank phonograph, and a few ghoulish notes on the blackboard) that seemed to suggest that the ghost of Thomas Edison was haunting 4-O. Evan figured this was just one more prank.

"I'm home!" Evan shouted the next day as he walked through the front door after practice, dropping his basketball in the hall and taking off his sneakers. "Garage, please," said his mom, pointing to the ball and the shoes. "How was practice?" she asked after Evan came back into the kitchen to grab a snack. "Great. My team won both scrimmages. Can I eat this in my room?" He held up a banana. "Yes, but don't leave the peel in your trash can. It'll smell." Mrs. Treski was standing at the kitchen counter, chopping vegetables. She had already made a neat pile of diced carrots and another one of onions, and now she was slicing up celery. That meant enchiladas for dinner! This day just kept getting better and better. "And don't eat more than that," said Mrs. Treski as Evan headed up the stairs. "Dinner's in an hour."

Evan went up to his room and stuck the Locked sign on the outside of his door before closing it. There weren't any actual locks on the bedroom doors in their house, but Mrs. Treski believed everyone—even kids—had a right to privacy. So they each had a laminated cardboard sign that they could hang on their doors. When the sign was up, it meant everyone else in the family had to act as if the door was actually locked. Before this school year, Evan had almost never "locked" his door. But now that he and Jessie were in the same class at school—together all