“AH-CHOO!”

  A huge sneeze comes out, and when it does, my friends looks at me, and then they look at Pamela, who rubs her eyes, and then opens them.

  I shine my flashlight in her direction.

  Pamela looks confused. “Why is everyone staring at me?” Then she looks down at her hands. Even in the dark, she can see there’s something on them. Pamela looks even more confused. She gets out of her sleeping bag and walks down the hall to my room.

  We wait for her to come back, but she doesn’t.

  “What do you think she’s doing?” whispers April after what seems like a very long time.

  “She’s been back there forever,” says Emma.

  I don’t know what Pamela is doing, but whatever it is, I don’t think I like it. “Do you think I should go check on her?” I ask.

  But I don’t have to check. Someone turns the lights on in the living room. Pamela walks into the living room, and Mom and Dad are with her. I don’t know who looks more upset, Pamela or my parents.

  The next thing I know, the doorbell rings. Pamela starts picking up her stuff.

  “Pamela is very upset by what you girls did to her,” Mom says. She puts an arm around Pamela and walks her toward the door. “She called her mother, and she’s going home.”

  Mom and Dad walk outside to talk to Pamela’s mom. I know I need to do something. I get out of my sleeping bag and grab a party favor. I walk over to the door.

  I try to give Pamela her party favor. “Pamela, I’m really sorry.” I try to explain what happened.

  But Pamela doesn’t want my apology or my explanation or my party favor.

  I watch a tear fall across one of the flowers on Pamela’s cheek. Pamela’s mother takes Pamela’s things from her and leads her to her car.

  I feel like my Super Sleepover just turned into a super mess.

  Some messes can be cleaned up with sponges, rags, and a mop, but some messes are much harder to clean up, and I think this is one of those messes.

  NIGHTMARE ON WISH POND ROAD

  A Super Scary Story

  by Mallory McDonald

  (NOTE #1 TO READER: This super scary story was not told at my sleepover. Even scarier . . . It happened at my sleepover!)

  FOREWORD

  Once upon a time, there was a little girl. Actually, she wasn’t so little. She was ten, which isn’t little at all. Anyway, this girl had a sleepover party to celebrate her tenth birthday. She invited some friends and planned some fun stuff to do, but her sleepover turned out to be nothing like other sleepovers.

  (NOTE #2 TO READER: That was just the background info. We haven’t gotten to the super scary part yet.)

  Her sleepover was different. It all started in the kitchen. She and her friends were supposed to be neatly decorating cupcakes, but her friends weren’t neat cupcake decorators. They made a big mess doing it.

  Then, before they could clean the mess up, they got into a water balloon fight with the girl’s brother and his friends. Water got everywhere. Not just on people and not just outside in the backyard where it should have gotten. But some water got inside the house too.

  This all happened while the girl’s parents were out taking a walk. It shouldn’t have happened because the parents left a babysitter in charge of the kids, but it did, because instead of babysitting (or in this case, kid sitting), the babysitter (or in this case, kid sitter) was busy talking on her cell phone to her boyfriend. You’re probably wondering why the girl didn’t just go get the sitter when the problems started. Well, a lot of people, like the sitter and the girl’s parents, wondered that too.

  (NOTE #3 TO READER: You’re probably also wondering when this story gets scary. Keep reading!)

  When the girl’s parents came home, a couple of things happened.

  First: They saw the mess.

  Second: They got kind of mad. (Actually a little more than kind of i mad, but we won’t go into all that here.)

  Third: They made the girls clean up everything.

  Then something good actually happened The party continued

  (NOTE #4 TO READER.: I bet when you read the part about the party continuing, you decided this story is not bad and certainly not super scary. You were probably th'ink'ing that all things considered, it sounded pretty good. But we are getting to the super scary part, I promise.)

  The girls did things that most girls do at sleepovers.

  They put on their pajamas. They told stories and roasted marshmallows around a fire. They watched a movie and ate late-night snacks.

  Then some of the girls did something that most girls probably don’t (and shouldn’t) do at sleepovers. They decided to decorate (actually, a little more than decorate, but we won’t go into all that here) one of the girls who fell asleep early.

  When she woke up and saw what they had done, she got so upset that she called her mom and told her she wanted to go home.

  (NOTE #5 TO READER: OK. Here’s what you’ve been waiting for. The super scary part is about to begin.)

  So she left, and right when she did, ?the party girl’s parents told the party girl they wanted to see her in their room. She didn’t really want to go to their room, but she knew she didn’t have a choice.

  When she got there, her parents looked mad.

  The super scary part was that she had never seen her parents look so mad.

  It was like all of a sudden they were transformed from nice, normal-looking parents into scary creatures like the kind you see in late-night horror movies.

  Their eyes got big. Their faces -turned red.

  Their bodies started to shake.

  Their teeth looked long and sharp.

  Then they started to yell. (If you asked them, they would say they were not yelling. They would say they were talking sternly. But if you ask the girl, she would say that whatever you want to call the way they were talking was even scarier than the way they looked.)

  With their mad voices and their mad faces, they told the girl how upset they were with her and some of her choices. They talked in their mad voices and with their mad faces for a very long time. (They talked for so long that the girl began to tremble and shake and wonder if she would ever be OK and happy again and could only hope that her friends who were still downstairs in their sleeping bags and pajamas would send someone up to get her.)

  But unfortunately for the girl, no one came to get her. Then, just when it didn’t seem like her parents could make her feel any more scared than she already did, they did.

  They told the party girl that she was free to go.

  (NOTE #6 TO READER.: I bet you are thinking that this was good and it made her happy, but it didn’t. It made her even more scared, and here is why.)

  As the party girl walked down the stairs to join her friends, she knew she had not heard the end of this.

  She knew what her parents really meant when they said she was free to go was that she was free to go FOR NOW.

  Even though she had been plenty scared by her parents’ scary looks and scary voices, she knew that the scariest part of the story was yet to come.

  She crawled into her sleeping bag next to her best friend. Then she rolled over and tried to sleep. But she could not sleep. Something deep inside her ten-year-old body told her that the scariest part of the story would begin in the morning after her friends would all leave.

  And she wasn’t looking forward to that part of the story at all.

  The End. But only for now.

  AFTERWORD

  One more thing happened when the girl crawled into her sleeping bag next to her best friend. She came to a decision. She decided that all the bad stuff that happened at her sleepover wasn’t all her fault. It was her best friend’s fault too.

  Her best friend was the one who told her to invite a lot of people even though she knew the girl’s parents had said to keep things small. She was the one that said to leave the kitchen a mess and to go make water balloons in the house. She was the one who told the girls to throw the balloons. And she was the one who laughed when some of the girls at the party started decorating another girl at the party. She was the one who had not been acting like a best friend.

  The more the girl thought about the things her best friend had done, the madder she got. So when her best friend said, “Good night, sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite” (which is what they always say at sleepovers before they go to sleep), the girl looked at her best friend and said, “I hope they bite you.” And she told her why.

  Then she closed her eyes and pretended to go to sleep. But like I said before, she couldn’t sleep because she was scared, and now to top things off, she was mad too.

  And to be perfectly honest, a little bit confused.

  T-R-O-U-B-L-E!

  All of my friends and my brother and my parents are having hot chocolate and French toast for breakfast. That’s what I’m having too, except mine is being served with a side order of trouble. I can tell by the way Mom is not looking at me that my side order will be served the minute my friends leave.

  And I’m right.

  As my friends start to leave, I give out the beaded picture frames that Mary Ann and I made for party favors. When I try to give one to Mary Ann, she shakes her head like she doesn’t want it. I know she’s mad that I’m mad at her, but I don’t see how that gives her the right to be mad at me.

  As soon as my last friend walks out the front door, Mom and Dad tell me they want to see me in my room.

  “Someone’s in T-R-O-U-B-L-E,” Max whispers as I walk past him.

  I almost never agree with my brother, but this morning, I know he’s 100% right.

  The minute I get to my room, Dad tells me to sit down.

  I sit cross-legged on my bed and look at my parents who are standing up cross-armed. I have never felt so small, and they have never looked so big.

  Dad clears his throat. “Mallory, Mom and I are extremely upset with you,” he says.

  I look down at my bedspread. “I know,” I say in a soft voice.

  “We trusted you,” says Mom. “And you broke that trust in many ways.”

  I look down and focus on a spot on my bedspread. I wish I could be that spot and not me right now. I don’t know what to say to my parents.

  But they seem to know exactly what to say to me.

  “Mallory, we are disappointed in you,” says Mom. “You asked if you could have a sleepover party, and we said yes. We told you that we expected it to be a nice night with a few friends. We told you that we wanted your help in making sure the party did not get out of hand. When you asked if you could invite more people than we had in mind, we said yes. And when extra friends showed up at the last minute, we very nicely told you we understood and that it was your birthday and it was OK.”

  Mom starts pulling back fingers as she talks like she’s keeping a tally of all the things that I asked for and that they gave to me. “You asked for new pajamas, and we got you those. You told us what you wanted to do at the party, and we said OK to everything.”

  Mom recrosses her arms and tucks her hands around her sides like she’s done counting because there’s no sense in even trying to keep track of all the nice things they did for me.

  “Mallory, we did everything we could to make your party exactly what you wanted it to be, and I don’t understand how you could have let things get so out of hand.” Mom stops talking and looks at me.

  Even though I’m glad she’s done, at least for the moment, in a way, I wish she’d keep going. I know I did so many things wrong, and I’m not even sure what to say to my parents.

  Neither of them says a word. It’s my turn to talk, and I know it.

  “Mom, Dad, I’m really sorry about everything that happened at the sleepover.”

  Mom and Dad just look at me like what I said is nice, but it doesn’t begin to explain things. I take a deep breath. I know I owe my parents an explanation. I think back to when Mary Ann and I first started planning the party. Even though Mary Ann wanted everything to be big, big, big, I knew Mom and Dad wanted me to keep things small.

  “Mallory, we’re waiting,” says Dad.

  I know I don’t have a choice. It’s time to start explaining.

  “I didn’t mean for the party to get out of control,” I tell Mom and Dad. “When Mary Ann and I first came up with the idea of having a sleepover, it seemed like a good idea. When I talked to you about it, I know you wanted me to plan something small and nice with just a few friends.”

  I pause. I want to get my words right. “I didn’t think that would be hard. But Mary Ann had different ideas. She thought everything needed to be big to be fun. She wanted to invite a lot of people. And once the party started, it was like everything just kind of got out of control.”

  My lips feel dry, but I keep talking. “I know we shouldn’t have made a mess in the kitchen or had the water balloons in the house. I know I should have gone to get Crystal once things started to get out of hand. But Crystal was supposed to be the babysitter and she shouldn’t have gone outside to talk on her phone.”

  My throat feels tight, but I know I have more explaining to do. I tell Mom and Dad that it was Arielle and Danielle’s idea to decorate Pamela. “I know they shouldn’t have done it, but it was like one thing led to another and before I could stop them, they were laughing, and they just kept doing it.”

  I think before I say what I’m about to say next. “And the biggest problem is that Mary Ann is my best friend and she didn’t help me stop anyone from messing up the kitchen or making water balloons in the house and coloring on Pamela.”

  Mom and Dad listen to what I have to say. I’d like to see them nod like what I’m saying makes sense or hear them say, “Sweet Potato, we understand. Growing up isn’t easy, and don’t worry, we forgive you.”

  But that’s not what they do or say.

  Dad shakes his head like what I’ve said is not a good explanation. “Mallory, Mom and I agreed to let you have a sleepover. We gave you a few simple rules that we expected you to follow, and you didn’t do that.”

  Dad pauses like he wants every word that he’s saying to sink into my brain. “You listened to what Mary Ann and your other friends wanted you to do instead of doing what you knew was the right thing to do.”

  Mom picks up where Dad leaves off. “Mallory, it’s not Mary Ann’s fault that she thought having a big party would make it fun. It was your fault for not explaining to her that your parents said you had to keep the party small. She and the rest of your friends should have known better than to make a mess in the house or color on someone. Crystal shouldn’t have been outside on the phone, but this is your house and it was up to you to go get her and to stop your friends when things started going wrong.”

  I nod, like I understand what Mom is saying.

  But she keeps explaining like she’s not sure I do. “Part of growing up is taking responsibility for your actions and thinking through the consequences of your choices. Just because your friends do something or tell you to do something, does that make it right?”

  Mom looks at me like she’s waiting for an answer.

  “Mallory, as you get older, there will be lots of things your friends might do, and just because they think it’s a good idea or it might be fun, are you going to do those things if you know they’re the wrong things to do?”

  I think about some of the things I’ve done lately, and I know they’ve been the wrong things to do.

  Not listening to what Mom and Dad wanted me to do was wrong. Blaming Crystal and Mary Ann when things got out of hand was wrong. And not stopping Arielle and Danielle from doing something that I knew would upset Pamela was really wrong.

  I look at Mom and shake my head no. “I know what I did was wrong,” I say in a soft voice. I try to swallow, but when I do, I feel tears starting to form in the corners of my eyes. “I haven’t been ten very long, and I already feel like I stink at it,” I say to Mom and Dad.

  Tears start to trickle down my face. Dad hands me a tissue, and I blow my nose into it.

  “I think we’ve talked about this enough for now,” says Dad. “Why don’t you spend some time in your room thinking about what happened.”

  He bends down and kisses me on the forehead. But I can tell it’s not an I’m-so-happy-you’re-my-daughter kiss. It’s more of an I-love-you-because-you’re-my-daughter-but-I-don’t-like-what-you-did kiss.

  “I’m sure you’re tired,” says Mom. She pulls my comforter up over me. “Why don’t you rest while you think.”

  Mom and Dad leave the room. I pull my covers up around my chin. I’m not sure if there’s a word that means tired, sad, bad, upset, and disappointed in myself, but if there is, that’s the word that would describe me.

  And it’s not at all how I want to describe myself.

  NEW BEGINNINGS

  I rub the soft fur behind Cheeseburger’s ears.

  When I turned eight, Grandma told me you get to make one wish for each year old that you are. Right now, I don’t need to make ten wishes. I just need to make one.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and pretend like I’m at the wish pond. I wish I could restart being ten and do a good job of it.

  I keep my eyes closed and think about everything that happened.

  When Mary Ann and I came up with the idea of having a sleepover, it seemed like such a good idea. I thought I would invite a few friends and plan some fun things.

  Even when Mary Ann said we should make it the biggest, bestest sleepover ever, I never thought it would turn into the biggest, worstest sleepover ever.

  I pull Cheeseburger in close to me. Mom and Dad were so nice about letting me have a sleepover. I feel like they did what I wanted them to do, but I didn’t do what they wanted me to do, and just thinking about it makes me feel terrible.

  Mom and Dad were right. I didn’t think through the consequences of my actions. I shouldn’t have listened to what my friends had to say. I should have done what I knew was right. I think about my wish. I really do wish I could start over being ten and do a good job of it. Then it hits me. I can’t start over, but I can do a good job of it . . . starting now!

 

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