Free The Yggyssey by Daniel Pinkwater Page A

you."
    "You know, you should follow me around someday. You'd enjoy seeing all the stuff I get up to."
    "I'll make a point of doing that," I said.
    "Good. I'm sure you'll learn things."

CHAPTER 33

Invitation to Insanity
    "Melvin wants to treat us to a meal at Clifton's!" Neddie Wentworthstein said. "It's Crazy Wig's birthday. It will be you, me, Seamus Finn, Crazy Wig of course, Aaron Finn the movie star, Al from school, and Billy the Phantom Bellboy."
    This was perfect. "This is perfect," I said. "I have something interesting to discuss with all of you." Al from school is Al Crane, one of the military school kids. He hangs out with Neddie and Seamus, but not all the time. His father is the manager of the Gibbs Brothers Circus, and frankly, he usually has better things to do.
    "Everybody has to bring a suitable present, and you can't order anything over five cents—but the restaurant
provides a free cake if it's a birthday party," Neddie said. "Doesn't it sound like fun?"
    "Actually, it sounds like someone is going to entertain eight people for thirty-five cents—since the ghost doesn't eat—and get a free cake and presents out of it, but I will attend, noting that I appear to be the only female any of you know and the occasion would be drab without me."
    "Melvin could invite your boyfriend, Bruce Bunyip," Neddie said.
    "I never said he was my boyfriend," I said.
    "He says different," Neddie said.
    I had not run into Bruce Bunyip since I met him bongo-ing on the Day of the Dead, but I had attained some status at the Harmonious Reality School once word got around that I was stepping out with practically a criminal. I did nothing to discourage the rumor. Apparently, Bruce Bunyip had been doing something similar at the Brown-Sparrow Military Academy. Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

CHAPTER 34

Loopy Birthday to You
    Neddie brought Crazy Wig a pair of fluorescent pink fuzzy shoelaces. Seamus brought him a petrifed possible wolf's tooth. Al gave him a pair of tickets to the circus. Aaron Finn gave him a pair of swordsman's gloves he had worn in some movie. I gave him the latest edition of
Mad Comics.
Melvin gave him argyle socks. Billy, being a ghost, didn't have anything material to give him, but he told him the location of some buried Spanish gold coins. Crazy Wig seemed pleased with his presents. He had on a nice suit and the buffalo-skin hat with horns he always wore, and also a hand-painted necktie with a hula dancer and a palm tree on it.
    We had a good table in one of the grottos, with plenty of stucco sculptures looking like those Easter Island heads, and a neon palm tree nearby. We all had the five-cent Multiple Purpose Meal—whole wheat bread, vegetable soup, salad with your choice of dressing, Jell-O in all known flavors, and all the coffee we wanted. The management of Clifton's sent around a tiny cake, just big enough for each of us to have a thin slice, and some Clifton's employees in biblical robes stood around and sang "Happy Birthday." Crazy Wig said it was the best party he'd ever had. While we were sitting around drinking coffee and licking cake crumbs off a fingertip, I decided the right moment had come.
    "Neddie and Seamus, you remember our wager. I will be collecting free crullers from you every Sunday for the next two months."
    "What's this?" Aaron Finn said. "You children had a wager?"
    "They bet me I couldn't find out anything about the recent disappearance of so many ghosts," I said. "Naturally, I found out plenty."
    "Impossible!" Billy the Phantom Bellboy said. "That stuff is top secret."
    "All the same," I said. "I know what I know."
    "All right, Miss Smartypants," Billy the Phantom Bellboy said. "Tell what you know, and I'll tell you if you have it right."
    "To begin with," I said, "the ghosts are all going to Hackensack."
    "Hackensack? In New Jersey?" Aaron Finn asked.
    "It's a different Hackensack. And this one is Old New Hackensack," I said.