Philip and the Haunted House (9781619500020) by John Paulits Page B

said Emery. “My mother’s fussy about
marks.”
    “ Of course. So’s mine. So’s
everybody’s.” Philip had sunk into a bad mood because of his
missing sandwich. “What’s on the list?”
    “ Okay, listen. Visit sick people in the
hospital.”
    “ Yuck. We might catch something, and
besides, they didn’t even let me in once when my mom and dad went
to visit somebody. I had to sit in the lobby and look at a
hundred-year-old magazine about furniture.”
    “ All right. Skip the hospital.
Hospitals are scary anyway. Visit a homebound elderly.”
    “ A what?”
    “ A homebound elderly.”
    They looked at one another in silence.
    “ Did Mr. Ware explain this one?” Philip
wanted to know.
    “ I think he did. I think it’s like some
old person who lives alone and never goes out of the
house.”
    “ Never?”
    “ I don’t think so.”
    “ So what do they do all
day?”
    Emery shrugged. “Look out the window, I
guess.”
    Philip paused. “You want to sit and look out
a window for social studies?”
    “ Not much. Sounds pretty easy, but I
guess it’d be boring.”
    “ Way boring. I
don’t want to sit and look out a window. What else is
there?”
    “ Raise money for a charity.”
    “ You mean like sell cupcakes or
candy.”
    “ I guess.”
    “ Do they give us the candy?”
    “ I don’t think it’s a good idea to have
you sell candy.”
    “ Why not?”
    “ Remember you got in trouble before
when you sold the candy and kept it after it came. You didn’t give
it to the people who bought it. You hid it and wanted to eat it
all.”
    “ What else is there?” said Philip
impatiently, not wanting to be reminded. He hated to eliminate
something so promising, though.
    “ Beautify the neighborhood.”
    “ Go on. What else?
    “ That’s it.”
    “ Only four things?”
    “ I read the whole list,” said Emery,
folding up the paper and stuffing it back into his
pocket.
    “ An awful short list,” said Philip.
“What’ll we do?”
    “ The only thing we didn’t cross off was
beautifying the neighborhood.”
    “ How do we beautify the
neighborhood?”
    Emery shrugged. “Maybe you could cover your
face.”
    Philip stared at Emery.
    “ That was a joke,” Emery
explained.
    “ So why didn’t you laugh?”
    “ I’m not supposed to laugh. I made the
joke. You’re supposed to laugh.”
    “ Ha,” Philip burst out, his stare
boring into Emery.
    “ Never mind. You have no sense of
humor. Look, let’s ask our parents tonight and see what they
say.”
    Philip knew his dad could always come up with
something when he got stuck with a school project. He recalled the
prize his dad helped him win in the Walk-Mor Shoe Store poster
contest. “Good idea. Oh,” Philip moaned. “There’s the bell
already.”
    Emery and Philip left the sheltered corner of
the school building and stepped out into the chilly wind. They ran
to where Mr. Ware waited for the class to line up.
     
     

Chapter Three
     
    After dinner Philip worked on his homework in
his bedroom. He paused when he smelled something funny. He sniffed
five, six, seven times. He left his room and went downstairs. His
father sat contentedly by the open window in the living room with a
big cigar in his mouth! A small fan Philip hadn’t seen since the
summertime went back and forth on a table blowing air toward his
father. Philip watched as his father blew out a straight line of
smoke, and the air from the fan caught it and sent it toward the
window. Philip watched in fascination as the smoke appeared to melt
through the screen.
    “ Mom’s going to be mad,” Philip warned.
He’d heard his mother and father’s cigar conversations
before.
    “ No, she’s not,” his father
answered.
    “ Why not?”
    “ She isn’t here. She went down to Mrs.
Moriarty’s for an hour. On purpose.”
    “ She’ll smell it when she gets back.
She’ll be mad.”
    “ She bought it for me.”
    “ No, she didn’t.”
    His father laughed. “I received news at