Toil & Trouble: A Know Not Why Halloween (Mis)adventure by Hannah Johnson Read Free Book Online Page B

chainsaw killer. If you could recruit Amber and Mitch to
be brains-eating zombies, that would be fantastic. Kristy, if Cliff
would like to join us, he’s more than welcome to do the same.”
     
    “He’s gonna be so excitedddd,” Kristy says, with
approximately ten percent of her usual enthusiasm.
     
    “And I ...” Arthur finishes, “will be the ghostly
troubadour.”
     
    Everyone stares at him.
     
    “What the hell is that?” Howie says then.
     
    “There’s no way that kid requested a ghostly
troubadour,” says Cora.
     
    “Maybe not specifically,” Arthur says. “But it will
be in keeping with the theme.”
     
    “Yeah, okay, Zombiever,” Howie scoffs.
     
    Now everyone stares at him.
     
    “Like Bon Iver,” Howie explains.
     
    Cora shakes her head. An oh hell no kinda head
shake.
     
    Howie looks hopefully at Kristy.
     
    “Not your best,” she admits.
     
    “Damn it,” Howie mumbles.

    “I assure you I’ll be suffering just as much as the
rest of you,” says Arthur—sorry, wait, The Ghostly Troubadour.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to spend all of my spare time
from now until haunted house day learning the complete
discographies of Taylor Swift and ... a snake and Little John—”
     
    “What?” says Howie.
     
    “—and writing new eerie arrangements to reflect our
terrifying Halloween setting.”
     
    “Okay, that’s pretty bad,” Cora acknowledges,
snorting.
     
    “What about this whole situation isn’t?” Arthur
replies.
     
    Wouldn’t you know, dude has a point.
     
     
    +
     
     
    It’s 12:42. A really excellent time to be asleep.
Howie is trying for the whole asleep thing, but it’s made
kind of difficult by the fact that Arthur is still up and sitting
at his desk beside the bed. He’s got his guitar in his lap and
headphones on, and he’s watching YouTube music videos with a
chilling fixedness.
     
    Howie never thought he would find himself battling
Taylor Swift for his boyfriend’s affections.
     
    So, you know, at least wonders never cease.
     
    “Babe,” Howie croaks in a very sleep-mushy voice.
Words ... hard. “You could just, you know, do ... not that. Come
on. Sleeeeeeep.”
     
    “Is it just me, or is You Belong With Me inherently
frightening?” Arthur says, his bleary eyes locked on the computer
screen. “There’s a very menacing undercurrent to these lyrics.”
     
    “Or you could just keep doin’ what you’re doin’,”
Howie says, “that’s okay too,” and covers his head with his
pillow.
     
    Arthur twangs a few melancholy Swiftian notes on the
guitar.
     
     
    +
     
     
    The sexy mummy costume arrives in the mail.
     
    Yaaaaaaaaay, Kristy thinks to herself.
     
    She’s become very big on Yay s without
exclamation points lately.
     
    She decides to model her sexy mummy costume for Cora
in the kitchen after the store has closed for the day. It’s
basically a little white dress and leg warmers: it’s not like she
hasn’t worn less to go swimming.
     
    But it just seems like an inaccurate and
disrespectful way to entomb someone who’s on their way to the
afterlife.
     
    “On the plus side, you look fucking adorbs,” Cora
says.
     
    “Thank you,” Kristy says glumly, and does a shuffly
little spin. She figures a mummy wouldn’t be a super graceful
spinner.
     
    “And you know you won’t even have to do anything.
It’s not like you’ve suddenly got to act like a stripper. All you
gotta do is walk around, and at the end of the day we’ll have an
awesome blog review to look forward to. By the way,” Cora adds, “I
fucking hate that I’m in a situation where I have to get excited
over a blog review.”
     
    “It’s not as fun as blogs are supposed to be,” Kristy
agrees morosely.
     
    Cora laughs. “How fun are blogs supposed to be?”
     
    “I don’t know! More fun than this!”
     
    “Maybe there’s tons o’ fun in store.” She grins
devilishly. “For example: just think of all the sexual awakenings
you’ll