{"product_id":"the-nightmarys-isbn-9780375842573","title":"The Nightmarys","description":"Timothy July has a secret. And it's giving him nightmares. \u003cbr\u003eAbigail Tremens has a problem. Her nightmares are haunting her . . . while she is awake. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen they team up for a school project, they don't realize that Abigail's past and Timothy's present are making them the target of a terrible curse. A curse that turns their worst fears to reality. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut their fears are just the beginning. The curse stems from a strange artifact that gains strength by devouring a human soul. And it needs to feed again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDan Poblocki has honed his storytelling skills, as every page is filled with chills and thrills in this, his fast-paced second novel. \u003ci\u003eThe Nightmarys\u003c\/i\u003e will have his readers mesmerized until the last page . . . and then sleeping with the lights on.Beginning in fifth grade, DAN POBLOCKI would gather his friends after school, frightening them with tales of ghosts, monsters, and spooky places.  When his mother began to receive phone calls from neighborhood parents, warning that her son's stories were giving their children nightmares, Dan decided to write the stories down instead. Dan now battles his own neighborhood monsters in Brooklyn, NY.Timothy July first noticed the jars lining the top shelf along the side of room 117 at the beginning of the school year, but by mid-April he’d still not looked closer. The specimens inside the jars had been pickled decades earlier in an opaque and yellowish liquid by some forgotten alumnus of Paul Revere Middle School. Over the years, most of the labels had faded or peeled away from the glass, and so the true identity of the strange multilegged worms, the twisted slimy bodies of mammalian fetuses, and the hollow exoskeletons of beetles would be left to the imaginations of those students who bothered to crane their necks and peer into the dusty heights of the classroom’s shadowy wall.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Until today, Timothy had taken no interest in them. No one had, not even Mr. Crane, Timothy’s seventh-grade history teacher, over whose classroom the specimens watched silently and who was presently providing instruction for the next day’s field trip.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You’ll work in pairs,” said the teacher evenly, pacing in front of the long green chalkboard. “Together, you will choose a single artifact to study. I want ten pages from the two of you, illustrated in the manner of your choice--collage, drawings, charts, graphs, whatever--describing where your artifact is from, how it compares to the art of the era, and how . . .”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Timothy was not paying attention. Something in one of the jars was staring at him with a glassy black eye.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Stuart Chen leaned across the aisle and nudged him. Timothy jumped. “This is so lame,” Stuart whispered. “I thought field trips were supposed to be fun. I can’t believe he’s actually going to make us do work.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Timothy glanced at his friend and distractedly grunted in agreement before turning back to the specimen in the jar. It’s funny, he thought, how things that were once invisible suddenly become visible. The black-eyed creature continued to watch him, silent and unmoving, as if waiting for him to turn away so it could shift position . . . or maybe unscrew the lid. Timothy shuddered with the sudden thought that there might be countless other invisible things out there in the world that he’d never noticed before, watching him all the time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “The whole idea is dumb,” Stuart quietly droned on, speaking over Mr. Crane’s speech. “I mean, how are we supposed to know what to pick? Anything in the whole museum . . . ?” He glanced at Timothy. “You’re going to have to choose for us. I don’t really care.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Timothy nodded. “I don’t care either,” he whispered.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e To his right, he heard a strange clicking sound. For a brief moment, he thought the thing in the jar had actually moved; then he quickly realized that the sound had not come from the shelves above but from two rows away in the back corner. The new girl was hiding something underneath her desk. She rested her left ankle on her right thigh and stared at something she held in the crook of her knee. Timothy heard the clicking sound again and watched as a small flame from a silver lighter burst at this new girl’s fingertips.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Let’s get you paired up,” said Mr. Crane, taking a notebook and pen from his desk.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As the teacher began to ask each student whom they would like to work with, Timothy watched the new girl in the last row continue to quietly flick the lighter open and closed. Like the specimen jars above her head, he’d never really paid attention to her before. She’d only been at the school for a month. She was quiet and didn’t speak to anyone. She wore gray--sweatshirt, jeans, sneakers. If it weren’t for her thick, messy red hair, she might have faded entirely into the wall. The next time she lit the lighter, to his surprise, she held it against her ankle. The flame raced up her white sock before extinguishing itself. Timothy couldn’t have been more shocked if the thing in the jar had leapt off the top shelf behind her and landed in her lap.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “This is going to stink,” Stuart said, not noticing the pyro in the corner. Timothy was too fascinated by what she was doing to pay any attention to his friend. Stuart poked Timothy in the shoulder and said, “Right?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Suddenly, her brown eyes shifted toward him, and Timothy realized that he’d been caught.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Abigail Tremens?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The girl cupped the lighter in her fist and looked to the front of the classroom, where Mr. Crane was staring at her. “Yeah?” she said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Who would you like to work with?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Oh.” Abigail let her eyes fall to the desk. “I . . . uh . . . don’t know.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Mr. Crane peered across the blank faces of his students, who waited in silence for him to continue. “Would someone please volunteer to be Abigail’s partner? We’ve all got to have a partner.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Abigail seemed to shrink into her seat with embarrassment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The class did not answer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Timothy absentmindedly scratched at his ear. Mr. Crane suddenly exclaimed, “Timothy July! Good.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Surprised, Timothy managed a weak whisper. “But--”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Mr. Crane didn’t seem to notice. “Abigail and Timothy,” he said pointedly, writing their names down in his notebook.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Timothy turned around. The girl stared at him, her mouth open in shock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Moving on. Stuart Chen, who would you like to work with?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Timothy glanced apologetically at the boy who had been his usual partner, whenever they’d been given the opportunity, since kindergarten. But Stuart’s mouth was pressed tightly shut; his face shone faintly red through his olive skin. He glared at Timothy, sending a different type of fire across the three-foot aisle.","brand":"Yearling","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300271804645,"sku":"NP9780375842573","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375842573.jpg?v=1767740733","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-nightmarys-isbn-9780375842573","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}