Megan Stine_Jeffery & the Third-Grade Ghost 01 by Mysterious Max Page A

classroom window. Ben had curly brown hair and gold, wire-rimmed glasses. His glasses seemed to glow in the sunlight.
    Ben and Jeffrey had been best friends ever since kindergarten, when the class was studying dinosaurs. One day the teacher had called on Jeffrey to explain why dinosaurs became extinct. Jeffrey, as usual, had been ready with a smart answer.
    “Mrs. Gorshlak, dinosaurs aren’t extinct,” he had explained. “They just went to another planet where no one could make fun of them for being so ugly.”
    Ben had laughed. Even in kindergarten Benhad known more than anyone else about dinosaurs. He had thought Jeffrey’s answer was great—unscientific, unbelievable, but great. They had been best friends from then on.

    “Come on down, Jeffrey,” another voice called. It was Melissa McKane. She was standing next to Ben.
    Melissa McKane was Jeffrey’s next-door neighbor. She was so much taller than Ben that she practically made a shadow on him. Melissa’s hair was long and red. And she always wore it in a pony tail to keep it out of her face in case she suddenly decided to climb a tree, walk all the way home on her hands, or pitch nine innings of baseball. And she did all of those things superbly.
    “Hey, Jeffrey,” Ben shouted. He pulled out a small plastic squirt gun and aimed it up at the window. “Say ‘ah.’ ”
    Jeffrey saw the tiny squirt gun and laughed. It looked like an ordinary, dumb squirt gun, the kind that leaks faster than it shoots. Jeffrey knew that Ben was too far away to hit a target two stories above the ground.
    “Ready, aim, fire!” Melissa shouted.
    Ben squeezed the trigger. And suddenly a blast of water hit Jeffrey smack in the face. One second Jeffrey was laughing at Ben. The next second he was soaking wet.
    “What do you think?” Ben asked with a wicked grin. “I’ve been working on it in my laboratory.” Ben wanted to be a mad scientist when he grew up. He called his bedroom his laboratory.
    “Uh … pretty cool,” Jeffrey called out. Then he turned around quickly and glanced at the door. Mrs. Merrin still hadn’t come back.
    “But not as cool as the Super Power Water Blaster than I’ve got hidden under my notebook,” Jeffrey muttered to himself. He ran back to his desk, water still dripping from his face.
    He opened his desktop, started to reach in—and snatched his hand back. His muscles froze, his mouth dropped open, and he forgot how to breathe.
    There, floating in midair inside of his desk, was
a living hand
! It wasn’t connected to an arm or a body, or to anything else for that matter. It was just a hand floating inside Jeffrey’s desk.
    Before Jeffrey even had time to slam the desktop shut, the hand picked up his Super Power Water Blaster and squirted him in the face.
    “I don’t believe this,” Jeffrey said. “I just got squirted with my own gun!”

Chapter Two

    Jeffrey couldn’t move. He looked and felt like a statue. If the statue had a title, it would be, “Boy Frozen at His Desk with His Mouth Open Wide Enough for Birds to Nest In.” Did what just happened really happen? Did a ghostly hand actually squirt him in the face with his own gun? Or did he just think it happened?
    There was only one way to find out: He had to look in his desk again. But just as Jeffrey was about to peek in, Mrs. Merrin came back into the classroom. Jeffrey closed his desk with a slam that made Mrs. Merrin jump. She looked at Jeffrey carefully.
    “What’s going on?” she asked.
    “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Jeffrey said.
    “It’s worth a try, isn’t it?” the teacher asked with a smile.
    “I’ve been working on my list, that’s all,” Jeffrey said.
    “You’re right. It doesn’t fly, Jeffrey,” Mrs. Merrinsaid in a calm voice. “Why is your face soaking wet?”
    “I’m sweating. It’s really hot in here, don’t you think?”
    Mrs. Merrin shook her head. With a sigh, she walked toward Jeffrey.
    She was going to look in his