Box of Shocks by Chris McMahen Page B

she tries to coax me down to dinner, but this time, it’s no use. I refuse to budge.
    â€œHe’ll come out when he’s hungry,” I hear Dad say to Mom.
    I sit at the window, staring across the street without taking my eyes off my old house. Eventually, the people living in my house have to come home.
    It gets dark, but there are no lights on in the old house. They’ve been out for a few hours now, and who knows when they’ll return? Should I take a chance and run over there right now? There’s a house key hidden under a rock in the back garden. It wouldn’t take me more than a minute to run upstairs to my old room and rescue my Box of Shocks.
    I think about it for a minute, but then a really old car with no muffler, squeaky wheels, grinding brakes and a sputtering engine drives up the street and turns in to the driveway. The car stops, the doors slowly open, and three people get out—two adults and a kid. It’s too dark to get a good look at them.
    â€œLights out, Oliver,” Mom calls from the hall. “It’s way past your bedtime.”
    â€œBedtime?” I call back. “It’s only ten o’clock. At Uncle Ned and Aunt Jean’s, I stayed up until at least three every morning.”
    â€œOliver! You heard me,” Mom says.
    It’s useless to argue. Arguing with my parents is like wrestling a five-hundred-pound gorilla armed with a bazooka. So I turn off my light and pretend to go to bed while I wait for her to go downstairs. I count to a hundred slowly, and then I slip out of bed and cross my room to sit by the window.
    There’s a light on in the living room of my old house. Then I see something I don’t like one little bit. It makes me want to throw open the window and jump down onto the front lawn, tear across the street, break down the door and charge upstairs.
    There’s a light glowing from the side of the house. I know exactly where that light’s coming from. My old bedroom! Someone is in my bedroom! Probably the kid! And if the kid’s in my bedroom, he’ll be using my closet! And if he’s using my closet, he’ll discover the loose wall panel at the back! And if he loosens the wall panel at the back, he’ll find my Box of Shocks! And if he finds my Box of Shocks, then what will he do? Maybe he’ll eat the candy I got from the Milburn house. Or maybe he’ll think it’s a bunch of junk and throw it all out, including the box. That kid has no idea how important that box is to me.
    I bite my lip so hard I can taste blood. There’s no time to lose. I have to break into my old house and rescue my Box of Shocks as soon as I can.
    Suddenly the lights go off in my old house. I breathe a sigh of relief. If the lights are out, the kid won’t be able to find my Box of Shocks. For now, it’s safe.
    I lie on my back on the bed and clasp my hands behind my head. In one hand, I’m still holding the bolt. There has to be a way to get back inside my old house without being caught.
    But the more I think about it, breaking into my old house seems pretty risky. For one thing, it’s probably against the law. For another, I don’t know what the new people are like. Maybe they have poisonous pet snakes that run loose in the house. Or maybe they’re professional knife throwers who can pin me to a wall from forty feet. Or maybe there’s something worse that I haven’t even thought of.
    This makes trick-or-treating at the Milburn house look easy. It makes jumping from the Pegasus Valley Bridge look like a walk in the park.
    But when I sit up, open my hand and see that rusty bolt, it doesn’t matter how dangerous going back into my old house might be. I have to get my Box of Shocks back. But how?

Seven
    I hide the bolt in the bottom drawer of my desk in a pencil case and go back to bed. I’m not going to sleep. I’m going to think. Think about how to get my Box of Shocks back.
    At