Free School of Meanies by Daren King

1
    Ghost School
    Ghost School is boring. You get told off for bumping!
    Bumping is my best thing. The only thing I like better than bumping is cake and lollipops, and the only thing I like better than cake and lollipops is bumping a box of cake and lollipops, and—
    “Humphrey!”
    It was Tabitha Tumbly. Tabitha is the youngest grown-up ghosty and the nicest of them all—no fibbing!
    “Humphrey Bump, what happened to that box of cake and lollipops?”
    “The cat bumped it,” I said. “I mean, the cat knocked it over, with her paws.”
    Tabitha folded her arms and frowned at the upside-down cardboard box and the lollipops scattered across the kitchen floor and the splodged cake.
    “Humphrey, are you fibbing?”
    “No,” I said. “I mean, yes. I mean, I don’t know.”
    We were in the kitchen at the back of the house, just me and Tabitha, and it was a school day but I didn’t want to go.
    “Put your blazer on,” Tabitha said. “I’ll float you to school.”
    I looked at where I’d left my blazer in a heap on the kitchen table. “I’m not going to school today.”
    “But it’s your first day back.”
    “That’s why I’m not going. The first day back is horrible.”
    My blazer floated off the table and hovered behind me like a bat. Tabitha is a poltergeist. She can move things with her powers. No fibbing!
    “Why don’t you like the first day?” Tabitha asked as I poked my arms into the blazer.
    “It’s horrible. You haven’t seen the other children all summer, and then you have to see them—and they make fun of you because you’re fat!”
    “Children can be so mean,” Wither said, floating in from the garden. “And, Humphrey, you’re not fat. You’re just, er, overly proportioned.”
    Wither is a poet. That’s why nothing he says makes any sense.
    “Come along, Humphrey,” Tabitha said, floating into the hall. “We’d better wisp, or you’ll be late.”
    “I’ll wisp with you,” said Wither.
    “It’s a lovely day for a wisp, and I need to stretch my transparent bits.”
    Ghost School used to be a still-alive school, in the old days, but then it got run down, so the still-alives built a new school on the other side of the village.
    “Wait,” I said as Ghost School loomed into view. “I have to tie my shoelaces.” And I wisped behind an old oak tree and hid.
    “Humphrey?” Tabitha said, floating back and forth. “Humphrey, where did you go?”
    “There’s nobody here,” I said in a sort of tree voice. “Just us trees, and—”
    The two grown-up ghosties peered around the trunk, and Tabitha took my hand and led me back to the path.
    “You’ll be fine when you get there and see your friends waiting for you,” Wither said.

    “I don’t have any friends,” I said. “Everyone hates me.”
    But then I spotted Samuel Spook and Phil and Fay Phantom flitting across the playground, and I let go of Tabitha’s hand and bounced off through the school gates.

2
    Haunted Homework
    “Ghost School is stupid and rubbish, and, um, I’m not going to Ghost School ever again!”
    I’d practiced saying that all the way home, but then I saw Tabitha and Agatha chopping vegetables in the kitchen, and the words bounced about inside my head, and when I opened my mouth nothing came out.
    “Humphrey, how was your first day back at Ghost School?” Tabitha asked as carrots rolled across the cutting board.
    “It was, um, fun,” I said, bobbing by the stove.
    “Dinner will be ready soon,” Tabitha said. “Pie, with your favorite side helping of sausages, pie, sausage pie, french fries, pie and pizza.”
    “Us girls are having salad,” Agatha said, biting a pointy, pointless carrot.
    “I’m not hungry,” I said, even though my tummy felt like a cave.
    “That’s not like you,” Pamela said, emerging from the cellar, her arms piled up with plates. Pamela Fraidy is always nervous, so the plates rattled and clanged.
    “Humphrey,” Agatha said as I floated out to the hall, “you look