School had ended for the day, and I was trying to get my locker open. The excitement about the Phantom started a couple of Fridays ago. Ever since our moms met in their bowling league and discovered they lived on the same street. I guess it’s because I’ve known him for nearly my entire life.

But if I don’t wear them, I walk into walls! And in the summer when he gets tan, they practically disappear altogether. After a while, you hardly even notice them. I don’t know why he’s so hung up over a couple of freckles. Zeke hates his freckles almost as much as I hate my glasses. His face always turns a bright shade of red. For instance, I know that Zeke still wears Kermit the Frog pajamas! We know just about everything about each other. Zeke and I have been best friends for nine years. He is also a big horror movie fan, like me. Zeke is cooler and funnier than any girls I know. A lot of the other girls think it’s weird that my best friend is a boy, but I don’t care. My name is Brooke Rodgers, and I’m in the sixth grade at Woods Mill Middle School.

The night we found the Phantom was the scariest night of our lives!

We thought it was all just a big joke.īut when I saw the Phantom for myself, I knew it was no joke. Our teacher told us that the play was cursed, but we didn’t believe her. We found him while we were doing a school play about a phantom. My best friend, Zeke, and I were the ones who found him. No one knew where he lived.īut he haunted our school for more than seventy years.

Phantom of the Auditorium by R.L. Stine