Allergic to Dead Bodies, Funerals, and Other Fatal Circumstances Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Lenore Look

  Jacket art and interior illustrations copyright © 2011 by LeUyen Pham

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Schwartz & Wade Books,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Schwartz & Wade Books and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Look, Lenore.

  Alvin Ho : allergic to dead bodies, funerals, and other fatal circumstances ; /

  Lenore Look ; [illustrations by LeUyen Pham].—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: A fearful second grader in Concord, Massachusetts, learns about death

  when his grandfather’s best friend passes away and he offers to accompany his

  grandfather to the funeral.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89882-2

  [1. Fear—Fiction. 2. Self-confidence—Fiction. 3. Death—Fiction.

  4. Grandfathers—Fiction. 5. Chinese Americans—Fiction.

  6. Concord (Mass.)—Fiction.] I. Pham, LeUyen, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.L8682Akv 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010046968

  The illustrations were rendered in ink.

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  This book belongs to

  Francisco Nahoe,

  who gave me the idea and dared me to write it.

  “Death …,” he said. “I bet your editor won’t go for it.”

  Well, she did.

  And here it is!

  —L.L.

  This one is for Kolbe.

  —L.P.

  AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “I—smell—death.… I can smell somebody an’ tell if they’re gonna die.”

  —Dill, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

  “The millions are awake enough for physical labor, but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?”

  —Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

  Writing a book takes your soul. I know this because every time I finish a book, I will weep uncontrollably. It will start at my desk; then I will get up and walk through the rooms of my house, wailing and howling as if I have lost someone dear to me and I am looking for them. It is only when this happens that I know for certain that my book is finished. During the writing of this book, this strange weeping happened TWICE before I got to the end. Each time was when Alvin nudged me awake enough to glimpse life, real life, for a brief second—and it was beautiful, so beautiful that I wept. And it was then that I realized why I weep at the end of a book. When your soul is taken, the feeling is not death, but rapture, which is a fancy word for losing your soul and having to look for it.

  Thank you, thank you, thank you to all who worked on Alvin, especially Ann Kelley for her marvelous editing and LeUyen Pham for bringing Alvin to wonderful, joyful life. Thank you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Acknowledgments

  Chapter One - How to Get History Straight

  Chapter Two - The March of History

  Chapter Three - Roofing Isn’t a Hobby

  Chapter Four - Dad Body No. 1

  Chapter Five - You Can’t Rub the Spot

  Chapter Six - Death Omens

  Chapter Seven - “Alvin’s Going to a Funeral.”

  Chapter Eight - Paper Houses

  Chapter Nine - Paying Respects to the Widow

  Chapter Ten - How to Write a Condolence Letter

  Chapter Eleven - Like She’d Seen a Ghost

  Chapter Twelve - A Bucket List

  Chapter Thirteen - The Nail in the Coffin

  Chapter Fourteen - Relieved

  Chapter Fifteen - How to Pass a History Test

  Chapter Sixteen - Here Lies the Body of Alvin Ho

  Chapter Seventeen - How to Dress for a Funeral

  Alvin Ho’s Deadly Glossary

  About the Author

  call me alvin ho.

  I was born scared, and I am still scared. And this is my book of scary stories. I tell the truth mostly, on account of that’s what happens when you’re all freaked out. You tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God. And if you’ve read my other books, you know that they get scarier and scarier, which means that the book you’re holding should have made you run away by the title alone.

  So if you’re afraid of creepy stories, you might want to put this down and read something else, like Charlotte’s Web or Alice in Wonderland, two books about girls. And girl stories, as everyone knows, are not nearly as terrifying as boy stories. On second thought, maybe you should read the dictionary, which isn’t frightening at all … until you get to … “abominable snowman n. a large legendary manlike or apelike creature …” Gulp. Never mind. But if you’re still reading this, don’t turn the page. If you do, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

  Normally, on this page, I’d tell you about all the things that scare me, such as:

  Book reports.

  Reading in class.

  Thunder.

  Lightning.

  Poisoned darts.

  Poisoned apples.

  Fairy tales.

  Vampires.

  Principals.

  Drowning in the bathtub.

  But this is not normal. There’s no time for all that.

  There’s not even time to tell you that I live in Concord, Massachusetts, which is hard to spell. Or that this was once a fantastic town where the American Revolutionary War began, with lots of explosions and bad language and dead bodies on all the lawns. But it’s not that kind of town anymore. It’s now a boring place on account of explosions and bad language have been outlawed except on Patriots’ Day, which is when they try to start the American Revolutionary War all over again every year, charging and firing and cursing at one another, just like in the old days. But if you try to start a war or use a bad word any other day, you’ve got all sorts of trouble coming to you and none of the red bean mochi cakes that your pohpoh made. And as for dead bodies all over the place, I’ll get to that soon enough.

  But first I need to start with my history test. Miss P announced that we were going to have a history test in second grade very soon. This wouldn’t be so frightening if I hadn’t already taken the practice test, which was more than I could bear. Worse, I couldn’t ask for help. I can’t speak in school. I can scream my head off on the bus, but as soon as I get to school, my voice doesn’t work. I’m as silent as a hard-boiled egg. This is on account of I have so-so performance anxiety disorder, which is a fancy way of saying school freaks me out.

  And tests freak me out even more.

  At our school, there aren’t any tests in kindergarten or first grade. You just go to class and you learn something new every day. But in second grade
, there are tests, which aren’t about learning anything new at all, but about remembering something old, which is truly frightful on account of I can’t even remember yesterday. Worse, you need to try to PASS the test, even the practice one. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad if they’d told me beforehand that I needed to pass the test, but they didn’t tell me this until afterwards.

  Then it was too late. Even worse, an envelope came home marked “To the Parents of Alvin Ho.”

  “You’re not supposed to open that,” said my brother, Calvin, throwing his backpack on the kitchen floor after school. I threw mine too. But I hung on to the envelope.

  “Why not?” I said.

  “Are you your own parent?” asked Calvin.

  “No,” I said.

  “That’s why,” said Calvin. “ ‘To the Parents of’ means that the letter is private and that your teacher wants to tell Mom and Dad something about you that she doesn’t want you to hear.”

  “I knew that,” I said. But I really didn’t. Maybe I’d figured out some of it by myself, sort of, but I definitely couldn’t say it the way Calvin could. So it was a good thing that my mom and dad were at work and GungGung was babysitting. I put the letter away.

  After a few days, when it was too late to give it to the Parents of Alvin Ho without some sort of trouble, and I couldn’t stand it any longer, I ripped open the letter and read it. Then I was very sorry I did. There was nothing in the letter that said anything good about me. If the Parents of Alvin Ho read it, there would be weeping (mine) and gnashing of teeth (my dad’s) in Concord tonight, that’s for sure.

  So I pushed it, along with my test, into the garbage disposal between the fish skeleton and the coffee grounds, where it should have disappeared. But it didn’t. Who would have thought that the disposal was allergic to tests and scary letters and would vomit it so that my mom could read it?

  “It doesn’t even look like you were ever in class!” screamed my dad when he saw the scary test and read the even scarier letter.

  But I was in class. I was in class every day that they were talking about settlers and Native Americans duking it out, and Minutemen and Lobster backs duking it out, with explosions and gunfire all over the place, which was a lot to learn, but it was no problem really, on account of I love explosions! The problem was getting it all straight and making it stick.

  “History is tricky,” said Calvin when I asked him for advice on how to pass my test. It was after school and he was lying on top of his bed with his arms folded behind his head, doing nothing but looking up at the ceiling.

  “The problem is that so many things have happened in history,” Calvin continued.

  “Yup,” I said. “It’s all mumbo jumbo.”

  “The only way to remember mumbo jumbo,” said Calvin, “is to organize it.”

  “Organize it?” I asked.

  Calvin is nine and he’s really terrific. He’s very smart and full of good advice. The only problem is getting it.

  “What you need are pictures,” said Calvin thoughtfully. “Pictures will make history stick to you like feathers to tar.”

  “I’m not tar,” I said.

  “Trust me,” said Calvin. “I know from experience that pictures will make anything stick, especially if you draw the pictures yourself. In fact, you won’t be able to delete them from your memory except with a blast of firecrackers.”

  “Hooray!” I yelled. “I love explosions!”

  “Yippee!” cried Anibelly. She’s four and she’s my sister. She messes with my things, eats my food, drinks my chocolate milk and generally gets in my way. If I didn’t mention earlier that she was also in my room with me and Calvin, it’s on account of she’s always there, like a piece of furniture. And I’d learned in writing class that you don’t necessarily have to mention the furniture every time.

  “Calvin wasn’t talking to you,” I said. “You don’t even know what history is.”

  “But I know how to draw real good,” said Anibelly.

  I was this close to thumping Anibelly. But I remembered just in the nick of time the first rule of being a gentleman: No hitting, not even girls, which is really annoying. If it weren’t for girls, being a gentleman would be super-duper easy.

  Then Anibelly started picking up the crayons and pieces of paper lying on the floor. “Lalalalalala,” sang Anibelly. “Lalalalalalala.”

  “Owwwwwwooooo,” howled my dog, Lucy, who is also always around and likes to sing too.

  “The history of Concord, as everyone knows, goes WAY back,” said Calvin, going over to the table, where Anibelly was now sitting and drawing. “But you only need to remember the really important stuff.”

  “But that’s the problem,” I said. “I can’t remember any of it.”

  “That’s because you’re trying to remember everything,” said Calvin. “If you concentrate on a few major events, then it’s easy.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Like the first inhabitants of Concord,” said Calvin, “were the dinosaurs.”

  He drew a dinosaur like this:

  I love dinosaurs! Mine looked like this, it’s a Tuojiangosaurus:

  Next, Calvin said Concord was on the landmass known as Pangaea, which started separating into different continents. So Calvin told me to draw a frying pan broken into several pieces to help me remember the first syllable of Pangaea.

  After that, the Egyptian Pyramids went up.

  Then the Trojan War broke out.

  Then the Great Wall of China began. It looked like this:

  “How come Miss P never mentioned any of this?” I asked.

  “Dunno,” said Calvin.

  “Are you sure this is the right history?” I asked.

  “History’s history,” said Calvin. “It’s the same whether you live in Concord or in Hong Kong.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Next, Calvin told me to draw a leaf for Leif Eriksson, a Viking dude, who was the first European to set foot on the Concord continent.

  After that, Ben Franklin flew a kite.

  Then a hen landed behind bars.

  It was to remind me of the first syllable of Henry David Thoreau, who went to jail for opposing slavery.

  After that, baseball was invented.

  Then Fenway Park was built.

  My pictures were super-duper!

  But they were still mumbo jumbo.

  And something was missing.

  “Hey, how ’bout the Algonkians and Puritans?” I asked. “Miss P keeps talking about them. Didn’t they have something to do with history too? Where do they fit in?”

  Calvin rubbed his chin. He put on his thinking face.

  “I’m pretty sure they were around before Fenway Park went up,” he said thoughtfully.

  “I thought so,” I said. Miss P would be pleased that I knew.

  But I was not pleased. I was panicked. My pile was a real mess.

  “How am I going to keep ’em all straight???” I cried. “I know the dinosaurs came first, but after that … it’s all moong-cha-cha!”

  “It’s easy,” said Anibelly. “Do like me.” Then she fanned out all her pictures in the right order like a deck of cards, just like that.

  “Hmmm,” said Calvin, looking at my mixed-up pile of pictures. “You need Plan B.”

  “Plan B?” I peeped. “What’s Plan B?”

  having a girl for a sister is really annoying.

  But having a brother who has a Plan B is terrific.

  Calvin and I took my mumbo jumbo pictures and ran outside. Anibelly and Lucy hurried out after us. It was a bright and cool fall afternoon. The trees were as naked as skeletons, which is kind of creepy, but not as creepy as they are in the summer when they are full of leaves and dark.

  Anibelly started digging holes right away with one of my carved sticks and singing at the top of her lungs. “Lalalalalalala,” she sang like a little bird.

  But I don’t sing. I scream. “AAAAA​AAAAA​AAAAA​CK!”

  I ran full spee
d ahead around the yard with my eyes squeezed shut, screaming my head off. I love digging holes too, but I love running like a maniac and exploding like a string of firecrackers even more! The only thing missing was my superhero Firecracker Man outfit; it was in the wash. Then I ran over to Calvin, who was attaching our dinosaur pictures to the side of our house with duck tape.

  “It’s called the March of History,” said Calvin. “You march from one event to the next. The idea is to make you see everything in the right order. That way you won’t forget. It’s like baseball—the bases are set out and there’s no mistake about which way to run.”

  I nodded. It sounded like a great idea!

  “Our house is home plate,” said Calvin.

  Then I followed Calvin as he marched fifty steps, which equaled fifty million years later, and we ended up in the garage, where there was a broken planter. Calvin dropped the broken pieces into the shiny black puddle on the floor that had leaked from my dad’s car, and ta-da!—it was continents floating in the scary dark ocean. It was terrific!

  “I’m beginning to remember stuff already!” I cried.

  “That’s the whole point,” said Calvin.

  Then we marched to the sandbox, where Anibelly helped us with the Egyptian Pyramids.

  After that, we raced to the bottom of our driveway, where our mailbox was the perfect Trojan War horse!

  But the Great Wall of China was so long, Calvin said, that we would need to march into town to help us remember it.

  “That’s a long ways off,” I said, staring down the street. “We’re not supposed to go that far.”

  “Hmmm,” said Calvin, who is always a rule-follower and not a rule-breaker, except for emergencies. “Normally, we’re not supposed to go that far … but you’ve got history to remember, don’t you?”

  I nodded.