When I am grown-up and I am taking care of someone younger than me because their bossy aunt will not let them be on their own, I will definitely cook them din ner. It is only fair. But Mathilda did not cook us dinner. It was getting really late and Wanda and I were hungry. We asked Mathilda what was for dinner. She shrugged and said, "I don't know.

    What is for dinner?" "But you should know, " said Wanda. "You're looking after us. " Mathilda looked vague and said, "We could order a pizza. " "What do you mean?" I asked. "What's a pizza? What are you going to order it to do?" Wanda laughed. "Cook dinner, " she said. And Mathilda laughed too. I had a definite feeling I was missing some thing here. "What's so funny?" I asked, really annoyed, as it is not nice when people laugh at what you say and you don't know why. "A pizza is something you eat, " said Wanda. "You can get someone to cook you one in a pizza shop and they bring it to you on a bike. " Now it was my turn to laugh. "Don't be stupid, " I said. "Why would anyone want to cook us something and bring it here on a bike?"

    "I don't know, " said Wanda, "but they do. Mom and I used to order lots of pizzas before we moved here. I miss that, " she said, sound ing a bit sad, then she perked up and said, "Pizzas are really yummy. " So Mathilda called up the pizza place, and sure enough, about half an hour later the doorbell rang. As Wanda and I rushed to get the door we heard a loud yell and some thuds. When we opened the door there was no one there--except Ned and Jed, of course. And three boxes scattered down the path. And a bike racing away down Spookie Lane. "Drat, " said Mathilda--at least that's what I thought she said, although Wanda told me later that it was something much more rude.

    Mathilda ran out and gathered up the boxes. "Ned, Jed, " she yelled, "you idiots! That was our dinner. " I don't know why Wanda said pizzas were yummy, because they weren't--although Wanda said that pizzas were not usually mashed up into cold gooey sludge with bits of grit in them. When people are taking care of you they usually do all the cleaning up and stuff like that, although obviously you have to be polite and offer to help (and hope that they say, "That's all right, you go off and play"). But we never got as far as the offering-to-help part because Mathilda didn't do any of the cleaning-up. We had eaten our pizza/sludge in the big room at the front of the house because Mathilda and Wanda both said that is what you did--you ate pizza and watched TV.

    Well, there isn't a TV at Spookie House because Aunt Tabby does not approve of them, so I lit the fire that good old Nurse Watkins had laid in the grate. Oops--did I just say "good old Nurse Watkins"? Wanda and I picked up all the empty pizza/sludge boxes, plus the empty root beer glasses and all of Mathilda's candy wrappers-- as she chewed a lot of licorice and dropped the wrappers anywhere. While we struggled out of the door with our arms full, Mathilda sat by the fire, flicking through one of the magazines she had brought with her. She unwrapped another piece of candy. "Want one?" she asked,  holding the bag out dreamily, still reading her magazine. I don't like licorice and neither does Wanda. We shook our heads and staggered out  with all the yucky stuff. "Missed one, " Mathilda called out as we went. "Missed what?" I asked. "Candy wrapper. Over there. " "Pick it up yourself, " muttered Wanda. When I am almost grown-up I will most definitely not sit hogging the fire, reading dumb magazines and stuffing my face with licorice while someone else cleans up my soggy pizza box. Okay, so I don't like licorice anyway, but that is not the point. I would not even behave like that with Swedish Fish.

    Although there are lots of kitchens in the base ment of Spookie House, the one we always use now is the third-kitchen-on-the-left-just past-the-boiler-room, as Brenda says it is foolish to keep using different kitchens like we used to before she and Barry and Wanda came to live with us.

    But it is a long walk along the basement corridor to get there, and by the time we did our arms were aching. I should have realized we were in for trouble when we saw Ned and Jed leaning against the door. The third-kitchen-on-the-left-just-past the-boiler-room looked like something had exploded in it. The kitchen was full of a huge cloud of flour and there was food everywhere. "Duck!" yelled Wanda suddenly. "Where?" I asked, wondering how a duck could possibly cause so much mess. And then an egg hit me on the back of my head and ran down my neck and I dropped the pizza stuff.

    Another egg hit Wanda and she screamed and dropped all of her garbage, too. Not that you would have noticed, as the floor was already covered with food. There was flour everywhere and tons of broken eggs and squashed tomatoes and jelly and milk and crushed cookies and all of Brenda's packets of Choco-Drop Krackles tipped out every where. It was awful, but then I saw something that really upset me. "My cheese and onion chips!" I yelled. "Where?" asked Wanda, staring at the dis gusting gloopy mess that covered the entire kitchen. "Everywhere!" I can spot a crushed cheese and onion chip at a hundred feet, and it was true, they were everywhere.

    They were stuck in the jelly,floating in the squashed tomatoes, and sprinkled all over the runny egg. I was furious. And Ned and Jed were still leaning against the doorjamb grinning like it was really funny, so I told them what I thought of them. "You are horrible, horrible ghosts, " I yelled. "Go away!" "Yes, go away and don't come back, " Wanda shouted. "Or else!" Ned and Jed disappeared down the corridor. "That told them, " said Wanda. It was really yucky cleaning up the kitchen and it took forever. Wanda was very grumpy. She stomped upstairs to get Mathilda to help--since it was her ghosts who had caused all the trouble--but Mathilda had gone up to her room and had locked herself in.

    Wanda said she banged on the door and rattled it like crazy but Mathilda did not answer. So we had to do all the cleaning up ourselves. It was not the fun time that I thought we were going to have with Mathilda and two ghosts. We cleaned up the kitchen--all except for the ceiling, which we could not reach, even when I made Wanda stand on the table holding a mop. So we had to leave it covered with squirts of tomato juice, splats of egg, and s tr awb e r r y jelly. I could not help but wonder what Aunt Tabby would say about it when she got home.

     uite a lot, I figured. In fact there was a whole list of stuff she was going to say quite a lot about. It went like this: Things that Aunt Tabby Will Not Like When She Comes Home  

    One garden gate thrown on top of the hedge  One dead spider plant  One house full of bats  One bedroom full of clothes thrown everywhere  Five smashed picture frames  At least two dozen moldy curtains strewn around the house  Ditto books  Ditto flowerpots  One smashed-up chest  Hundreds of old tennis balls  One kitchen ceiling covered in food

    It did not look good. We felt really tired after we had cleaned up the kitchen but there was still more stuff to do before Wanda and I could go to bed. I had to feed the boiler with the special coal mix ture that Brenda gives it and empty all its ash into its boiler bucket. That took forever. Then I had to check that the bat poo hatch where Barry shovels out the bat poo was closed to prevent the bats from escaping in the night. It wasn't--so I had to shovel out a whole sack of bat poo to get it to close properly.

    And then I realized it didn't matter anyway, as all the bats had already escaped. Duh. All Wanda had to do was feed Pusskins and her kittens, and she promised to help when she had finished, but she didn't come back and I just knew she was fooling around play ing with the kittens so that she did not have to help with the bat poo. Wanda said we had to wash all the egg out of our hair because it was icky--which is a baby word--but she was right, it was icky. But then there weren't any towels because Mathilda had left hundreds of wet towels all over the floor of three bathrooms. I added that to the Things that Aunt Tabby Will Not Like When She Comes Home list and I felt really grouchy and tired because by then it was nearly one o'clock in the morning.

    What would Aunt Tabby have said? And what would Nurse Watkins have said? We just fell into bed and were too tired to even draw the curtains around our Tuesday bedroom beds. But just as I was going to sleep Wanda suddenly sat up and yelled,"Araminta!" "Wharrrrrr?" I mumbled. "I know why Mathilda came to look after us--she's got a Plan!" "Whaddyou mean?" "When she goes home she's going to leave Ned and Jed behind. " "Behind what?" I was so sleepy I didn't know what Wanda was talking about. "Behind. Here, " said Wanda impatiently.

    "She's going to leave them here, in Spookie House. I think she has planned it all along. " I sat up and stared at Wanda. I had a horri ble feeling that Wanda was right. I added Ned and Jed to my list of Things that Aunt Tabby Will Not Like When She Comes Home.

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