Annie Pitts, Swamp Monster Read online

  Annie Pitts, Swamp Monster

  Written and illustrated by

  Diane deGroat

  Copyright © 1992, 2001, 2009, 2012 by Diane deGroat

  All rights reserved.

  Published by StarWalk Kids Media.

  Except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and articles, no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher.

  Contact: StarWalk Kids Media, 15 Cutter Mill Road, Suite 242, Great Neck, NY 11021.

  www.StarWalkKids.com

  Contents

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Creature from Miss G.’s Class

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mean and Green

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Road to Fame

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Let’s Give Her a Hand!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Getting the Willies

  CHAPTER SIX

  Slimebreath Meets Fungusface

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Home Again, Home Again

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Very Interesting People (VIPs)

  CHAPTER NINE

  Presenting…

  CHAPTER TEN

  Smile! You’re on Candid Camera!

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Creature from Miss G.’s Class

  Finally. After three videos and four bowls of Count Chocula cereal, my research on movie monsters was just about done. All morning I had been watching people screaming and running away from spaceships and dinosaurs and some weird thing from the Black Lagoon.

  I needed to make a scary costume, so Grandma picked up some monster movies for me at the video store—old black-and-white movies from the 1950’s. I couldn’t believe how fake the monsters looked back then. The Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Thing from Outer Space were obviously tall men in rubber costumes. And Godzilla looked like a giant radio-controlled robot. But Grandma thought they would be good references for me.

  Nowadays, movie creatures look so real, they can scare the pants off you. I’m not allowed to see the really good ones though, because I’m only eight, but I’ve seen the previews, and those were scary enough. I still get nervous whenever I have to go down to the basement in our building to get the laundry. There are always strange noises coming from under the stairs, and if monsters are hiding anywhere, it’s usually under the basement stairs.

  I know something must be there because every load of laundry comes back with one missing sock. Mom says that the dryer eats it, but I’m not about to wait around to see a one-footed creature sneaking through our laundry basket just to prove her wrong.

  So far, the only monster I’ve ever really seen is the one who sits next to me in class. His name is Matthew McGill, and he sure acts like he comes from another planet.

  Last week he changed the words on my spelling homework when I was in the girls’ room. He turned “breath,” “unselfish,” and “Brazil” into “dogbreath,” “fishface,” and “Bra.” He also changed my name at the top of the paper to “Arm Pitts” but Miss Goshengepfeffer—or Miss G., as she lets us call her—knew that it was my paper anyway, and I had to write each misspelled word ten times.

  My grandma said Matthew acts that way because he likes me. I think he’s just plain weird.

  In fact, the only good thing about him is that he has a brother in high school who makes videos. When I heard he needed a swamp monster for one of his films, I volunteered. That’s why I was doing all this research. I wanted to be the best monster I could possibly be.

  Of course, I would rather have a more glamorous role for my first movie, but from what I’ve seen so far, the women who star in these monster movies spend most of their time screaming and fainting. Forget it. The monster is really the star, and I, Annie Pitts, am going to be the star of the movie.

  And after I have a chance to show everybody what a great actress I am, then I can get other jobs too, like TV shows and commercials. I think it would be so cool to have everyone watching me as I smile into the camera and tell them to try new Golden Glo shampoo.

  They’ll say things like, “Didn’t she play the swamp monster in that McGill movie? I didn’t notice that her hair was so beautiful!”

  I watched my reflection in the TV as I tossed my beautiful hair, first to the left, then to the right. And then I noticed the credits rolling by at the end of The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

  I was sure Matthew’s brother would want to use credits at the end of his movie too, so I wrote down some of the important ones. Next to “Director,” I wrote “Mark McGill,” because it was his movie. Next to “Assistant Director,” I wrote “Annie Pitts.” He’ll probably need my help.

  Then I wrote in large letters: “THE ROLE OF THE SWAMP MONSTER IS PLAYED BY ANNIE PITTS, FAMOUS ACTRESS.” Then, next to the mummy, I wrote in very small letters: “Matthew McGill.”

  That was the only bad thing about this acting job. Matthew was going to be in the movie too. Mark is calling his movie Daughter of Swamp Monster Meets Son of Mummy, so I guess he needed Matthew to be the mummy. I hope it’s a small part, though. Maybe the mummy could just scream and faint when he meets the swamp monster. Matthew should be able to handle that.

  I sat up straight on the sofa and looked at my reflection again. I didn’t really think the swamp monster was going to have to do a lot of smiling, but I needed to practice for those other jobs I would get after Mark’s movie.

  My mother came into the living room just as I was doing one of my most difficult smiles—smile #3—the one where just the top teeth show, and the comers of my mouth turn up a little.

  Mom was not impressed. “You’re still in front of that TV?” she asked. “What about your homework? Don’t you have a biography due Monday?”

  “I’m doing research,” I answered.

  She picked up one of the videotapes. “And whose biography are you doing? Godzilla’s?”

  “The tapes are part of my research for Mark’s movie,” I explained. “I need ideas for my costume before we start shooting this afternoon.”

  Mom handed me my backpack and said, “I think you have time to squeeze in some homework before you go.”

  I, in turn, gave her smile #12, the one that says, “I’m-going-to-start-it-right-this-minute-and-thank-you-for-reminding-me.”

  I rummaged through my pack, still smiling that same smile. That seemed to satisfy my mother, and she went back into the kitchen to do whatever she was doing before she interrupted my research.

  Except for a candy wrapper and a Burger Barn key chain, the only thing in my bag was a book I had taken out of the school library yesterday. It wasn’t a biography. It was a book called Myths, Monsters, and Mysteries.

  I opened to the chapter on swamp monsters and saw a drawing of a creature described by a Mrs. Luella Blinsinger of Palm Beach, Florida. She swore on a stack of Bibles that she saw this monster near Lake Okeechobee around Easter of 1974. Apparently, it was never seen again. Not even by Luella.…

  The drawing in my book showed a tall hairy creature covered with scales. That’s exactly what I wanted for my swamp monster costume.

  Tall might be a problem for me, though. After all, I was only in third grade. But I could be scaly, and I could be hairy.

  I brought the book into my room and closed the door. I put on my artichoke costume my grandmother had made for the school play last month. The green leaves sort of looked like scales.

  Hairy was no problem either. My curly red hair stuck out all over the place, just like my mother’s and my grandmother’s. The three of us live together, and sometimes people say we look alike.

 
; Of course, we don’t look exactly alike. My mother’s red hair is mostly gray, and my grandmother’s red hair is neon orange because she dyes it.

  Well, this swamp monster was going to be as hairy as I could make her. I bent over so my hair hung down toward the floor. Then I sprayed it with a whole can of hair spray and waited for it to dry.

  As I was waiting, the blood was rushing to my head. When my lips felt like they weighed about ten pounds each, I stood up. In the mirror, I could see that my face was as red as my hair, and my hair was as big as a house.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t look like a swamp monster.

  I looked like a troll.

  Obviously, I needed to work more on my costume.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mean and Green

  I didn’t want to look like a troll. I wanted to look like a scary monster.

  Then I remembered that the Creature from the Black Lagoon had webbed hands and feet. I dug through the closet until I found my old swim flippers that I used in the town pool last year. The problem was that I had put on the artichoke costume before putting on the flippers, and believe me, it’s not easy trying to bend over and put flippers on when you’re a big puffy vegetable. I was barely able to get the toes of my sneakers in just far enough.

  Unfortunately the flippers were bright pink. Pink was my favorite color last year. My clothes were pink. My room was pink. Even my toilet paper had to be pink. So, of course, my flippers were pink too. I really didn’t think a swamp monster would have bright-pink feet, though. Maybe a troll would. But not a swamp monster.

  I took out the can of hair coloring that I had bought for Halloween and I sprayed my flippers a lovely shade of neon green.

  I also sprayed the tops of my sneakers and the floor all around my feet. When I stepped away, there were two flipper shapes inside a circle of green. It looked kind of cool, but I didn’t think my mother would think so. I pulled the rug over it.

  Just in time, too, because I heard my mother’s footsteps coming down the hall. When she got to my door, she said, “Annie, I made you a sandwich. Can I come in?”

  My mother was trained not to come into my room whenever there was a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the knob. I left it there all the time.

  “Don’t come in,” I said. “I want to surprise you.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll leave it out here.”

  Lunch would have to wait until I finished my costume. I shook the can again and sprayed my hair. I could still see some red, but the tips were nice and green.

  My face was pasty white, now that the blood had drained out, so I sprayed some green color onto my hands and rubbed it all over my face.

  There was still something missing, though. I wished I had another pair of flippers for my hands. But maybe I had something even better.

  Grandma once bought me a package of fake fingernails at a garage sale. Mom wouldn’t let me wear them to school because she thought I might accidentally poke someone’s eye out. They were perfect for my costume, though, because they looked like claws.

  I peeled off the back of each nail and stuck it onto my own. You were supposed to trim them down, but I left them nice and long. And Ruby Red. After all, I was a female monster.

  The nails were kind of dressy, so I thought I might as well go all the way and add some earrings. I had humongous gold clip-on earrings that Grandma gave me to play dress-up when I was little. They were just what I needed to give the swamp monster that extra elegant touch. Now all I needed was some slime.

  I peeked out of my bedroom door. My mother was back in the kitchen, and Grandma was out. I flip-flopped out into the hall, stepping right onto the tuna salad sandwich my mother had left outside my door. Part of it stuck to the bottom of my right flipper. It was slimy, all right, but it wasn’t what I had in mind.

  I peeled the squished tuna sandwich off my foot, flip-flopped across the hall to the bathroom, and flushed it down the toilet. Then I searched for some real slime.

  I knew that my grandmother had a bottle of super-smelly shampoo called “Mountain Moss” in the medicine cabinet. She called it “earthy-smelling,” but I thought it smelled more like rotten garbage—a perfect smell for a swamp monster.

  I poured some of the Mountain Moss onto the tips of my scales. It oozed and dripped down, making dark smelly splotches all over the green felt. Now I was ready. I was mean and I was green. And I was slimy and smelly too.

  The doorbell rang, and then I heard Mrs. McGill and my mother talking in the living room. They were planning to go shopping after dropping us off at Tibbetts Brook Park. Because we don’t have any swamps in our neighborhood, Mark decided to shoot the movie in the woods there.

  I opened the bathroom door just as Mom was coming down the hallway to get me. We stood face-to-face. She was looking at a swamp monster, and I was looking at a woman with a very weird expression on her face.

  “Annie!” she finally said. “You look … awful!”

  “Thank you,” I answered. “I’m supposed to. I’m a swamp monster.”

  “Well, you certainly smell like one,” she said.

  I gave her smile #7—the one that says, “Aren’t-you-proud-to-have-such-a-talented-daughter?”

  I flip-flopped past my mother, down the hall, to the living room. Mrs. McGill was standing by the front window. When she saw me, she didn’t even act surprised like my mother did.

  Instead she said, “You look great, Annie. Mark’s going to love the costume. The boys are waiting in the car, so you go ahead. Your mom and I will be down in a minute.”

  Gee. I was hoping for more of a reaction. I guess when you have a kid like Matthew, you’re used to seeing gross stuff all the time. I thanked her anyway and headed out the door.

  My whole life was about to change. After this movie, I would no longer be Annie Pitts, plain kid.

  I would be Annie Pitts, FAMOUS ACTRESS!

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Road to Fame

  We live on the second floor of a two-family house, so I had to flip-flop my way down to the front door. All the way down I wondered if anyone, besides my mother, would ever believe that inside this artichoke costume was the Ever-Dreadful Swamp Monster.

  Certainly not Matthew. As soon as he caught sight of me, he shouted from the car window, “What’re you supposed to be—moldy broccoli?” I ignored him. Eight-year old boys can be so immature.

  Mark was much more grown-up. “Looks great,” he said.

  “But she’s wearing earrings!” Matthew said. “Swamp monsters don’t wear earrings!”

  But Mark didn’t seem to mind. He leaned over Matthew and opened the car door for me. I was lucky to have such a mature high school person like Mark for my first movie director. When I go on talk shows, I’ll mention how he helped me get started in show business.

  I climbed over the mummy and sat in the middle seat. “Hey, Slimeball,” Matthew said, “don’t sit next to me. You stink!”

  “I’m supposed to stink,” I said. “I live in a swamp.”

  I was about to say that Matthew stank too, but then I realized that he actually smelled good. He smelled like the Burger Bam, my favorite place for hamburgers. Then I saw the ketchup that Matthew had poured all over his mummy costume to look like blood.

  Mark got up and said, “I’ll take the middle seat. Annie, you can sit by the other window. I don’t want my costars fighting. Not yet, anyway. Save that for the movie.”

  Mark was so nice. I’m sure he wished he were my brother instead of Matthew’s.

  We switched seats, which wasn’t easy because one of my flippers got caught on the camera case. The other came off somewhere between Matthew’s elbow and Mark’s right knee.

  “Watch it!”

  “Sorry.”

  “Ouch!”

  “Sorry.”

  When I was finally seated, I said to Mark, “You will be pleased to know that I’ve practically memorized every scene from The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Only I’ve decided that in our movie, the s
wamp monster shouldn’t die at the end because we may want to do a sequel—I know I will—also, I made a list of credits. Here. What do you think?”

  I flashed the list in front of Mark’s face. Mark just stared blankly at the paper while Matthew groaned and banged his head against the window.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Can I have my script now? I’d like to go over my lines.”

  “Script?” Mark said.

  “Script,” I repeated. “Script. What am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to do? And how exactly do I kill the mummy?”

  Matthew yelled, “Forget it, Slimeface! The swamp monster gets it in the end.” He made a karate chop across Mark—“Hee-yah!”—just missing my knee.

  “Nobody dies,” Mark said calmly. “And nobody gets a script. I’ll tell you what to do and when to do it. I have it all worked out. Up here.” He pointed to his head. I could see the director was going to need my help after all.

  Our mothers finally joined us and we drove off. The ride was pretty quiet, which was good because I needed to psyche myself up for my role as the swamp monster. I really wanted to do a good job.

  I looked at my reflection in the window and experimented with all kinds of scary monster faces. I stuck out my teeth and squished my eyes shut. I tried to pretend I was no longer Annie Pitts. Instead, I was DAUGHTER OF SWAMP MONSTER!

  When I opened my eyes, I discovered I was making scary monster faces at a passenger in the car next to us. An old man was staring back at me.

  I hope I didn’t scare him too much. I didn’t want him to have a heart attack and go to the hospital and tell everybody that a green scaly monster was threatening the city of Yonkers.

  But the man suddenly did something I didn’t expect. He laughed. He laughed hard. All the way to the next light.

  What was wrong with my costume? At this point I wished I was the mummy instead of the swamp monster. You couldn’t mistake a mummy for a vegetable or anything else. Even the worst mummy costume would look like a mummy. A couple of rolls of bandages and some ketchup. Bingo. You’re a mummy.