Excerpt
My name is Scott Harmon. I'm twelve. Old enough not to be afraid of graveyards. Or creepy, old abandoned houses. Or scratchy creaking sounds late at night. Or howls or whispers or screeches or shadows darting in front of me, or loud car horns or bursts of cold wind or … or …
You probably get it. I'm old enough not to be afraid of a lot of things. But I still am. I mean, a lot of things make my heart skip a beat. Or make me choke or start to jump out of my skin. Or make me open my mouth in a yelp or a hey or a heeelp!
Sure, I tell myself to man up, to get braver. Do you think I don't wake up every morning and tell myself, "Scott, old buddy, old wimp, old fraidycat, today's the day you're not going to be scared of stuff!"?
I say that every morning. Then I push back the covers, lower my feet to the floor — and something happens. Maybe I step into a big bowl of ice water my evil sister, Rita, put beside the bed. And I start off the day with a loud, shrill scream.
Or maybe Rita slips some kind of animal under my sheets. Or maybe she leaves a frightening surprise, some creature big and ugly and dead, for me in my sock drawer.
Rita is bad. She is nine and very cute with big, round black eyes and dimples when she smiles. What makes her smile? Scaring me, her older brother, and watching me scream my head off.
She loves to frighten me and she's very good at it. Mom and Dad think she's adorable. I think she's a terror. And I mean terror in the horror-movie kind of way. Rita can be terrifying.
She even has an evil maniac laugh. If you heard it, you'd get chills, too. Seriously.
And let's face facts, Rita isn't my only problem.
As soon as I leave home, I've got Mickey Klass and his twin brother, Morty, in my face. The Klass brothers are like cavemen or Neanderthals. I mean, ape-men, primitive creatures you see in those science documentaries they make you watch in school.
They are only twelve, but they are very hairy. They both have stringy, long brown hair hanging down their chubby faces. I think they could grow beards if they wanted to. No joke. They're big and wide, built low to the ground, about the same size as those Fiat cars you see on the street, maybe a little bigger.
And guess what? Their main mission in life is to terrify a kid we know and love named Scott Harmon.
When some people find out you're the kind of kid who is scared of things, they love to test you. They love to go after you. They love to make you squirm and scream and run.
Face it. They're mean. The Klass brothers are mean. It's like they saw the word victim tattooed on my forehead. Do you know that word?
