Megan Stine_Jeffery & the Third-Grade Ghost 03 by Christmas Visitors

Chapter One

    “Oh, wow!” Jeffrey Becker shouted to his friends as he stepped outside. It was two weeks before Christmas. But this wasn’t just another gray, go-to-school December Monday. Overnight, the whole world had turned sparkling white. The trees, the houses, the cars, the streets—everything was covered with deep snow. And, best of all, there was so much snow that school was closed!
    “Oh, wow,” he said again. Steam came out of his mouth. The snow was still falling fast. Fat flakes stuck to his brown hair.
    “Give up, Jeffrey!” called Benjamin Hyde. “You’re about to become a snowman!”
    Jeffrey laughed as he saw his friends scoop up handfuls of snow. There was no getting out of it. He was about to be zapped with snowballs from every direction.
    “You guys couldn’t hit an elephant with a watermelon,” Jeffrey teased.
    “We don’t want to hit an elephant. We want tohit you,” Kenny Thompsen said with a laugh. He threw a snowball that hit Jeffrey right in the chest.
    “Missed me!” Jeffrey shouted.
    “No way!” Kenny said in disbelief.
    Melissa McKane used her very best pitcher’s windup. Her snowball tagged Jeffrey on the arm.
    “Missed!” Jeffrey shouted.
    “I did not!” Melissa shouted back.
    Jeffrey stepped off his front steps. All at once, Ben and Melissa and Kenny and Ricky Reyes threw snowballs. Every one of them hit Jeffrey.
    “Sorry. You lose, guys,” Jeffrey said. He unzipped his jacket. Underneath he was wearing a down vest. “This is a special ‘snowball-proof’ vest.”
    They all groaned and blasted more snowballs at Jeffrey. Finally, he was laughing so hard he had to give up. He backed away fast and almost crashed into a snow wall.
    “Hey, who made this?” Jeffrey asked.
    “I did,” Melissa said proudly. She was Jeffrey’s next-door neighbor. “I got up early and started a fort in your yard.”
    “Yeah. Because it’s been scientifically proven that you have the best yard,” Ben added. Ben was Jeffrey’s best friend. Almost everything he said was scientific. He wanted to be a scientist when he grew up.
    “But the fort’s not done yet,” Ricky Reyes said.
    For a moment, Jeffrey looked at the wall of hard-packed snow. It was in the perfect position. It stretched between two huge, snow-covered bushes. But it was only two feet high.
    “It’s got to be higher. It’s got to be higher than anything we’ve built before,” Jeffrey said. Melissa agreed, and she snapped into action.
    “Ricky,” she said, “you and I will make the snow blocks. Kenny and Ben can put them into place.”
    The wall grew. After a while, it stopped being a wall and became a high-jump hurdle. They took turns leaping over the top headfirst. Jeffrey rolled in the soft, cold snow on the other side.
    Finally, the wall was four feet high. Melissa declared that it was now done.
    “Hey, slimeballs!” a kid shouted from down the street. Jeffrey recognized the mean voice and the nasty laugh. And that ugly yellow and green knit cap. It could only be one person: Melissa’s older brother, Gary.
    Gary and a bunch of his fifth-grade buddies came into Jeffrey’s yard. They had ice skates hanging over their shoulders.
    “Neat fort,” Gary said. “How long did it take to make it?” As he spoke, he chipped away at the wall with the toe of his boot.
    “Get away from our fort, Gary!” Melissa shouted. “You’re wrecking it!”
    “Ooops,” Gary said. He kicked at the top of the wall. A big chunk of snow broke off.
    “Why don’t you just crawl back into your hole,” Jeffrey said to Gary. “Because it’s a long time until Groundhog Day.”
    “How’d you like a mouth full of snow, slime-ball?” Gary answered.
    Thwappp!
Gary pushed a wet snowball right into Jeffrey’s face.
    “Perfecto,” said one of Gary’s friends. They gave each other high-fives.
    But then something excellent happened.
Splat!
A snowball suddenly hit Gary on the back of his head so hard it knocked his cap off. Gary