R. L. Stine_Mostly Ghostly 07 by Freaks, Shrieks

M Y SISTER , T ARA, AND I were arguing. For a change.
    “You didn't have to throw the fish up in the air,” I said. “You got Max into a lot of trouble.”
    “It was a joke, Nicky,” Tara said. “It was supposed to be funny.”
    “Max didn't think it was funny,” I said. “And what about the rest of the class? When the fish cracked in half, those poor kids started screaming their heads off.”
    “That's what made it funny,” Tara replied. She jammed her floppy red hat down over her dark hair.
    It was a sunny, warm afternoon. Tara and I were walking home from Max's school.
    Tara and I don't have a school of our own to go to. That's because we're dead.
    We're ghosts.
    Max Doyle is the only person we know who can see and hear us. Sometimes being a ghost islonely and boring. So Tara and I follow Max to school and try to help him out.
    Today we didn't help him out much.
    Today was Pet Day in Ms. McDonald's sixth-grade class. But Max didn't want to bring his big, furry wolfhound, Buster, to school. That's because Buster
hates
Max.
    Buster starts to growl and snap whenever Max comes near. When he sees Max, he only thinks, Meat! Max gets a little tired of having his dog chew on him all the time.
    So Max didn't bring Buster for Pet Day. Instead, he did a very funny thing. He brought a big fish to school. A dead one. It was the stuffed bass that his dad had mounted on the den wall.
    Max pulled the fish off the wall and carried it to class. When it was his turn, he carried it to the front of the room. He told everyone it was his pet fish, Ernie.
    That's when Tara decided to help Max out.
    I tried to stop her. But my sister is stubborn. Once Tara makes up her mind to do something, forget it. That's why I call her Hurricane Tara.
    She floated up to the front of the room and took the fish from Max's hands. “Maxie, let me hold it up while you describe it,” she said.
    “No—give it back!” Max cried. He made a grab for the fish—and missed.
    A lot of kids in the class were kinda shocked.They couldn't see Tara. They could only see the fish jumping out of Max's hands. Max seemed to be standing there arguing with
himself
!
    “Give it back!” Max shouted again. He grabbed the tail and tugged.
    Tara tugged back. “I'm only trying to make your talk more interesting,” she said.
    It became a real tug-of-war.
    Ms. MacDonald's mouth dropped open. “Max—what are you doing?”
    “Trying to reel him in,” Max said. “He's … uh … trying to swim upstream.”
    Some kids were laughing hard now.
    Tara should have stopped. But my little sister doesn't know the words “give up.”
    “Nicky! Catch!” she shouted. And she tossed the big fish high in the air. Over the kids' heads to me at the back of the room.
    “It's okay, everyone!” Max shouted. “It's a
flying
fish!”
    Tara threw it too hard. It bounced off the chalkboard, sailed back, and hit a girl in the head.
    She started to scream.
    The bass hit the floor hard—and broke in half. Hundreds of cockroaches poured out from inside it, scampering over the floor.
    And then
everyone
was screaming. Screaming, stamping their feet, leaping onto their chairs.
    It was way funny. But no one was laughing.
    Max was in major trouble. Tara and I decided it was time to leave.
    So now we were walking past sparkling green front yards, on our way back to Max's house. Our old house—when we were alive.
    “Max didn't look too happy,” I said.
    Tara sighed. “I was only trying to make Pet Day more fun. It's hard to have fun when you're … when you're a ghost.”
    Two squirrels came chasing each other across the grass. They ran right between Tara and me. One of them brushed my leg. They had no idea we were there.
    “Yeah. I hate being invisible,” I said. “I'm tired of being a ghost. I wish Mom and Dad would hurry back.”
    Our parents are ghosts too. We don't know why. We don't know what happened to our family.
    Mom and Dad were scientists. They had a lab where they found a way to