My Dog's a Scaredy-Cat Read Online Free

like a spelling quiz.
    â€œPencils up. Eyes on your own paper,” Ms. Adolf said. And the fun-filled Halloween spelling quiz was underway.
    It seemed like forever until lunch, but it finally came. After we ate, we were allowed to go to the bathroom to change into our costumes.
    I hurried ahead of Frankie so I could grab the first stall and lock the door. I didn’t want anyone to see my costume before it was completely ready. I don’t know much about parades, but I know that you’ve got to make a big entrance if you want to grab the spotlight. I was prepared for that.
    From inside the stall, I could hear the other boys getting ready. They were talking in really excited voices.
    â€œCan you pass me that bottle of fake blood?” Ryan Shimozato said.
    â€œThat scar is disgusto. Very cool,” his buddy Hector said.
    â€œHey, what’d you use for those guts?” Luke Whitman wanted to know.
    How typical. You think Halloween, and you go right to the usual—blood, guts, gore, eyeballs, mummies.
    Not you, Hank. You are a creative thinker.
    As I swung the tablecloth over my head and loaded the breadsticks into the glass in my hand, I felt really good.
    Hank Zipzer, you’ve done it again. Original has got to be your middle name.

CHAPTER 6

    WHOOPS.
    I’d like to apply to officially change my middle name from Original to WHAT WAS I THINKING?????

CHAPTER 7

    IT STARTED WHEN I made my entrance. Everyone else was already lined up in the school yard. I came down the stairs alone, feeling great.
    But the one thing I hadn’t taken into account when I built my costume was the size of the door to the yard in relation to the size of my tabletop. Let me just sum it up this way. The door was smaller than I would have hoped for. Much smaller. The fact is, I couldn’t fit through it.
    I tried it frontways. No go. I tried it sideways. No go. Finally, I had to slant the tabletop practically straight up and down so I could fit through the door. I turned sideways, held my breath, and squeezed through. But even then, I slammed into the door on the way out and knocked off the left part of the tabletop. Or maybe it was the right part. I can never tell.
    And in this stressful situation, it was impossible. Anyway, whichever side it was, it was hanging down like a bird with a broken wing.
    â€œHi, Hank,” said Mason, who was dressed up as a pirate. He’s my little pal from kindergarten. “Is that a cape you’re wearing?”
    â€œI’m a little busy right now, matey,” I said. “Can we talk later?”
    â€œSure,” he said. “I like your cape. But it smells weird.”
    At first, I couldn’t figure out what he meant. Then it hit me. The smell, I mean. As I was trying to squeeze through the door, I had knocked over the bottle of garlic-scented olive oil that was taped onto the tabletop. The olive oil had spilled all over the place. I could now feel it seeping into my T-shirt and running down my arm.
    You know how they say garlic is supposed to keep vampires away? Well, let me tell you, it also works on second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders. As I walked to the yard, everyone backed away.
    And about the breadsticks. Just as I joined the line of kids in the parade, I bent down to scratch my ankle, and the breadsticks slipped right out of the plastic glass that was taped to the other side of the table.
    Crunch! I stepped on them, at which point they were transformed from breadsticks into bread crumbs. I tried to scrape them up from the asphalt and put them back in the glass. I couldn’t get most of them, but the few I did get looked like ground-up grayish crumbs at the bottom of the glass. Even I have to admit, they lost a little of their Italian appeal.
    â€œCheck out Zipperbutt!” Nick McKelty was the first to yell. “What are you supposed to be, creep?”
    McKelty was decked out in gruesome, top to bottom. He had a bleeding eye pasted to