“Drop the potato chips and no one gets hurt!” I barked, refusing the empty paw. 

“What the smell is that woman saying?” Mom grumbled the umptieth time I heard it. “Wait, you can hear it too?” 

“Don’t you dare take off!” Mom hissed, hooking her frozen claws around my collar and trapping me for monster meat. 

Before we even started our hike, we found a real treasure: an unlocked people-potty!

“I thought that being right was the only thing you liked about talking to other people,” I said. “You can’t correct people without disagreement.”

“Who’s in charge of milk-checking around here?” I asked. “Just say the word and I’ll get him fired.” 

These days, bushes crowded in too close for a car to squeeze through and roots had chewed up most of the pavement, but you could still smell the rusty skeletons of old wrecks buried in the bushes like a forgotten bone. The ghosts blew in with the morning fog and swirled featherlike through the brush until the sun shined them away around lunch time. 

The Stuck House was supposed to be the only place where the universe had to obey her rules, but now she couldn’t even boss around a lousy banana.