Free School of Meanies by Daren King Page B

School,” Tabitha said. “At least, he was.”
    “Ah, the Rotund Rascal,” the Ghost Headmaster said with a smiling mustache. “That’s what the teachers call the boy. Humphrey Bump, the Rotund Rascal.”
    “I’m not a rascal,” I said, my voice shaking. “I just bump a lot, for fun.”
    “Yes,” the Ghost Headmaster said. “And, thus, expulsion.”
    Charlie frowned. “If only Wither were here,” he whispered. “Wither understands all that poetic talk.”
    “What the Ghost Headmaster is saying,” Tabitha whispered, “is that the reason poor little Humphrey got expelled is because he bumps.”
    “Always bounding about,” the Ghost Headmaster said as he sat in a transparentghostly chair. “The boy simply does not fit in. Humphrey Bump is a round peg in a square hole.”
    “It’s hardly my fault the hole is the wrong shape!” I yelled, and Charlie elbowed me in the tummy and told me to shush.
    “Take, for instance, the brass band incident,” the Ghost Headmaster went on. “I’d arranged for a marching band to parade by the school gates. All went well until Humphrey here bumped the conductor, and the conductor got his head stuck in the tuba and tumbled into the percussion section and bounced off the big bass drum and ended up up-ended in a hedge.”
    “Bumping is fun,” I said, and I bumped the Ghost Headmaster, knocking him off his ghostly chair.
    “You oaf!” the Ghost Headmaster cried, wisping to his phantom feet. “Get that boy outof my school at once.”

4
    Plums
    That afternoon, I heard the clack-clack-clack of the clicky-clacky typewriter, so I peered into the study, and there was Wither typing up his poems, and Agatha dialing a number on the telephone, and Pamela, Charlie, and Tabitha floating by the window.
    “Wither,” Charlie said, “leave it to Agatha. By the time the post-phantom delivers the letter to the other ghost school and the ghostly head teacher types a reply, Humphrey will be old enough for college.”
    Wither wasn’t typing up his poems as I’d thought. He was typing a letter to another ghost school!
    “Don’t be mean,” Wither said as he typed with one bony finger. “The typewritten word carries a certain—”
    “Let Wither waste his time if he likes,” Tabithasaid. “Agatha, have you finished dialing that number yet?”

    “My hair keeps blowing into my eyes,” Agatha said, “and I dial a wrong digit and have to start all over again.”
    Agatha Draft is the sort of ghosty who blows an eerie breeze wherever she floats. She’s also dead posh.

    “There!” Agatha said as she finally finished dialing.
    “Put this in your mouth,” Pamela said, and she popped a purple plum between Agatha’s lips.
    “What is it?” Agatha said, sounding more posh than ever.
    “A plum,” Pamela said, “to make your voice plummy.”
    “Agatha’s voice is plummy enough as it is,” Charlie said, adjusting his tie.
    Tabitha and the other grown-up ghosties gathered around to listen as Agatha talked into the mouthpiece. “We were wondering if you had room for our boy. Humphrey is the name. Humphrey Bump.” Agatha raised an eyebrow at this point and plonked the telephone receiver back into its cradle.
    “What happened?” Tabitha asked.
    “The rude thing hung up on me,” Agatha said.
    Agatha telephoned several other ghost schools, but whenever she mentioned my last name, they hung up.
    When Tabitha announced that there were no ghost schools left to call, I bounced through the door and bumped every ghosty in that study—no fibbing!
    “Calm down, Humphrey,” Charlie said, straightening his trilby.
    “Hooray!” I yelled. “I won’t have to go to Ghost School ever again.”
    “I’m afraid Humphrey is right,” Tabitha said. Just as I was about to bounce off to the garden and bump the ghostly gardener into a prickly hedge, Tabitha added, “There is only one thing for it. Humphrey will have to go to Still-Alive School, with the still-alive children.”
    Wither