Dad was out of the room, because Dad doesn’t
like it when I have sleepovers on a “work night.”
Last summer Rowley spent the night at my
house, and we slept in the basement.
25
I made sure Rowley took the bed that was closest
to the furnace room, because that room really
freaks me out. I figured if anything came out of
there in the middle of the night, it would grab
Rowley first and I’d have a five-second head
start to escape.
At about 1:00 in the morning, we heard something
in the furnace room that scared the living daylights
out of us.
It sounded like a little ghost girl or something,
and it said —
i’m hiding…
can you
find me?
Me and Rowley practically trampled each other to
death trying to get up the basement stairs.
26
We burst into Mom and Dad’s room, and I
told them our house was haunted and we had
to move immediately.
Dad didn’t seem convinced, and he went down to
the basement and walked right into the furnace
room. Me and Rowley stayed about ten feet back.
I was pretty sure Dad wasn’t going to get out
of there alive. I heard some rustling and a few
bumps, and I was ready to make a run for it.
thunk
whump
27
But a few seconds later he came back out with one
of Manny’s toys, a doll named Hide-and-Seek Harry.
peekaboo!
Last night me and Rowley waited for Mom and
Dad to go to bed, and then we watched our
movie. Technically, I was the only one who
watched it, because Rowley had his eyes and ears
covered the whole entire time.
chips
28
The movie was about this muddy hand that goes
around the country killing people. And the last
person who sees the hand is always the next victim.
crawl
crawl
The special effects were really cheesy, and I
wasn’t even scared until the very end. That’s
when the twist came.
After the muddy hand strangled its last victim,
it came crawling straight at the screen, and
then the screen went black. At first I was a
little confused, but then I realized it meant the
next victim was gonna be me.
I turned the tv off, and then I described
the whole movie to Rowley from beginning to end.
29
Well, I must’ve done a pretty good job telling the
story, because Rowley got even more freaked-out
than I was.
I knew we couldn’t go to Mom and Dad this
time because they’d ground me if they found out
we watched a horror movie. But we didn’t feel
safe in the basement, so we spent the rest of
the night in the upstairs bathroom with the
lights on.
30
I just wish we had managed to stay awake the
whole night, because when Dad found us in the
morning, it wasn’t a pretty scene.
Dad wanted to know what was going on, and
I had to fess up. Dad told Mom, so now I’m
just waiting to hear how long I’m gonna be
grounded for. But to be honest with you, I’m a
lot more worried about this muddy hand than
any punishment Mom can dream up.
I thought about it, though, and I realized
there’s only so much ground a muddy hand can
cover in a day.
31
So hopefully that means I have a little while
longer to live.
Tuesday
Yesterday, Mom lectured me about how boys my
age watch too many violent movies and play too
many video games, and that we don’t know what
Real entertainment is.
I just stayed quiet, because I wasn’t sure
exactly where she was going with all this.
32
Then Mom said that she was gonna start a
“reading club” for the boys in the neighborhood so
she could teach us about all the great literature we
were missing out on.
I begged Mom to just give me a regular punishment
instead, but she wouldn’t budge.
So today was the first meeting of the Reading
Is Fun Club. I felt kind of bad for all the boys
whose moms made them come.
reading is fun
33
I was just glad Mom didn’t invite Fregley, this
weird kid who lives up the street, because he’s
been acting stranger than usual lately.
wanna hear
about my
“hygiene issues”?
I’m starting to think maybe Fregley’s a little
dangerous, but luckily he doesn’t really leave his
front yard during the summer. I think his parents
must have an electrical fence or something.
Anyway, Mom told everyone to bring their
favorite book to today’s meeting so we could pick
one and discuss it. All the guys laid their books
on the table, and everyone seemed pretty happy
with the selection except Mom.
34
sudoku
insanity
ULTIMATE
VIDEO GAME
CHEATS
volume
8
green
wasp
a major
motion
picture
xtreme
pop-up
sharks
Mom said the books we brought weren’t “real”
literature and that we were gonna have to
start with the “classics.”
35
Then she brought out a bunch of books that she
must’ve had since she was a kid.
little women
THE YEARLING
old yeller
Anne
of green gables
These are the exact same types of books our
teachers are always pushing us to read at school.
36
They have a program where if you read a “classic”
in your free time, they reward you with a sticker
of a hamburger or something like that.
I don’t know who they think they’re fooling.
You can get a sheet of a hundred stickers down
at the arts-and-crafts store for fifty cents.
I’m not really sure what makes a book a “classic”
to begin with, but I think it has to be at least
fifty years old and some person or animal has to
die at the end.
Mom said if we didn’t like the books she picked
out, we could go on a field trip to the library
and find something we all agreed on. But that
won’t work for me.
37
See, when I was eight years old I borrowed a
book from the library, and then I forgot all about
it. I found the book a few years later behind my
desk, and I figured I must’ve owed about two
thousand dollars in late fees on that thing.
So I buried the book in a box of old comics in my
closet, and that’s where it is to this day. I haven’t
been back to the library since then, but I kno
w if
I ever do show up, they’ll be waiting for me.
Greg heffley, you are
under arrest for
failing to return “how
to make sock puppets.”
fictio
return
38
In fact, I get nervous if I even see a librarian.
is that
you, susan?
pat? it’s
been such
a long
time!
I asked Mom if we could get a second chance to
pick out a book on our own, and she said we
could. We’re supposed to meet again tomorrow and
bring our new selections with us.
Wednesday
Well, the membership of the Reading Is Fun
Club took a big hit overnight. Most of the guys
who came yesterday bailed out, and now there’s
only two of us.
39
Rowley brought two books along with him.
How to Find
Garden
Faeries
Me & My
Mommy
Silly
Playgroup
Activities
The book I picked was the ninth volume in the
“Magick and Monsters: Dark Realms” series. I
figured Mom would like it because it’s pretty long
and there aren’t any pictures.
Shadowdoom
dark realms
Volume 9
40
But Mom didn’t like my book. She said she didn’t
approve of the illustration on the cover because
she didn’t like the way it portrayed women.
I’ve read “Shadowdoom,” and from what I can
remember, there aren’t even any women in the
story. In fact, I kind of wonder if the person
who designed the cover even Read the book.
Anyway, Mom said that she was gonna use her
veto power as the Reading Is Fun Club’s founder
and choose the book for us. So she chose this
book called “Charlotte’s Web,” which looks like one
of those “classics” I was talking about before.
Charlotte’s
Web
41
Just from looking at the cover, I guarantee either
the girl or the pig doesn’t make it to the end of
the book.
Friday
Well, the Reading Is Fun Club is down to one
member, and that’s me.
Yesterday Rowley went golfing or something with
his dad, so he kind of hung me out to dry. I
didn’t do my reading assignment, and I was really
counting on him to cover for me at the meeting.
It’s not really my fault that I couldn’t finish
my reading assignment, though. Mom told me I
had to read in my bedroom for twenty minutes
yesterday, but the truth is, I just have trouble
concentrating for long periods of time.
42
After Mom caught me horsing around, she
banned me from watching tv until I read the
book. So last night I had to wait until she went
to bed before I could get my entertainment fix.
I kept thinking about that movie with the muddy
hand, though. I was afraid that if I was watching
tv all by myself late at night, the muddy hand
might crawl out from under the couch and grab my
foot or something.
The way I solved the problem was by making a
trail of clothes and other stuff all the way from my
bedroom down to the family room.
43
That way I was able to make it downstairs
and back without ever touching the ground.
Hop
This morning Dad tripped over a dictionary I
left at the top of the stairs, so now he’s mad
at me. But I’ll take Dad being angry over the
alternative any day of the week.
My new fear is that the hand is gonna crawl up
on my bed and get me in my sleep. So lately I’ve
been covering my whole body with the blanket
and leaving a hole so I can breathe.
44
But that strategy has its own risks. Rodrick
got into my room today, and I had to spend
the morning trying to wash the taste of a dirty
sock out of my mouth.
Sunday
Today was my deadline for finishing the first
three chapters of “Charlotte’s Web.” When Mom
found out I wasn’t done yet, she said we were
gonna sit down at the kitchen table until I
was finished.
READING IS FUN
45
About a half hour later there was a knock at
the front door, and it was Rowley. I thought
maybe he was coming back to the Reading Is
Fun Club, but when I saw that his dad was with
him, I knew something was up.
Mr. Jefferson had an official-looking piece of
paper with the country club logo on it. He said it
was a bill for all the fruit smoothies me and
Rowley ordered at the clubhouse, and the grand
total was eighty-three dollars.
All those times me and Rowley ordered drinks at
the clubhouse, we just wrote down Mr. Jefferson’s
account number on the tab. Nobody told us someone
46
I still didn’t really understand what Mr. Jefferson
was doing at my house. I think he’s an architect
or something, so if he needs eighty-three bucks, he
can just design an extra building. He talked to Mom,
though, and they both agreed that me and Rowley
needed to pay off the tab.
I told Mom me and Rowley are just kids and it’s
not like we have salaries or careers or whatever.
But Mom said we were just gonna have to be
“creative.” Then she said we would have to suspend
the Reading Is Fun Club’s meetings until we paid
what we owed.
To be honest with you, I’m kind of relieved.
Because at this point, anything that doesn’t
involve reading sounds pretty good to me.
clink
47
Tuesday
Me and Rowley racked our brains all day yesterday
trying to figure out how to pay off that eighty-
three dollars. Rowley said maybe I should just go
to the Atm and withdraw some money to pay off
his dad.
The reason Rowley said that is because he thinks
I’m rich. A couple of years ago during the holidays,
Rowley came over and we had just run out of toilet
paper at my house. My family was using these holiday
cocktail napkins as a substitute until Dad got to the
store again.
Rowley thought the holiday napkins were some
kind of really fancy toilet paper, and he asked
me if my family was rich.
merry
Christmas
48
yep.
I wasn’t gonna pass up the opportunity to
impress him.
Anyway, I’m Not rich, and that’s the problem.
I tried to figure out a way a kid my age could
get his hands on some cash, and then it hit me:
We could start a lawn care service.
I’m not talking about some average, run-of-the-mill
lawn care service, either. I’m ta
lking about a company
that takes lawn care to the next level. We decided
to name our company the V.I.P. Lawn Service.
We called up the Yellow Pages people and told
them we wanted to place an ad in their book.
And not just one of those tiny little text ads,
but a really big one with full color that takes up
two whole pages.
49
But get this: The Yellow Pages people told us it
was gonna cost us a few thousand bucks to put
our ad in their book.
I told them that didn’t make a lot of sense to
me, because how’s someone supposed to pay for an
ad if they haven’t even earned any money yet?
Me and Rowley realized we were gonna have to do
this a different way, and make our oWN ads.
I figured we could just make flyers and put them in
every mailbox in our neighborhood. All we needed was
some clip art to get us started.
So we went down to the corner store and bought
one of those cards women get each other on their birthdays.
50
Hope your
birthday is
HOT, HOT, HOT!
Then we scanned it into Rowley’s computer and
pasted pictures of our heads onto the bodies
from the card.
51
After that we got some clip art of lawn tools and
put it all together. Then we printed it out, and
I have to say, it looked great.
v.i.p.
lawn service
pamper yourself and
your lawn with our
award-winning,
world-class service!
call 555-2941
52
I did some math, and I figured it would cost
us at least a couple hundred bucks in color ink
cartridges and paper to make enough flyers for
the whole neighborhood. So we asked Rowley’s
dad if he’d go out to the store and get us all
the stuff we needed.
Mr. Jefferson didn’t go for it. In fact, he told
us we couldn’t use his computer or print out any
more copies of our flyer.
I was a little surprised by that, because if Mr.