ChupaCarter and the Haunted Piñata by George Lopez & Ryan Calejo

Author:George Lopez & Ryan Calejo [Lopez, George & Calejo, Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2023-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

My grandpa’s little pep talk had done a pretty good job of cheering me up. Still, I wasn’t smiling much as I swept the floors inside what was left of Liza’s dad’s butcher shop.

The place was hardly more than a blackened skeleton now, the floor tiles scorched with smoke, the ceiling beams caved in and cracked like badly busted ribs.

It was really tough seeing it like this. I had some pretty cool memories in here. This was where I’d first come to score some grub for Carter. This was the place Liza and I had first hit it off as buds. Heck, even my abuela liked to shop here, and she pretty much hated everything! Liza’s family had built something special. A landmark. Kind of like the Hollywood Walk of Fame back in L.A., only “beefier.” But now all that hard work—all those years of blood, sweat, and tears—was gone. Poof! Just like that. I could only imagine what she and her dad must’ve been going through.

As I swept an ashy path toward what used to be the prep area (where Liza had once caught me sneaking around), I could feel tears burning behind my eyes. I tried to tell myself that it was just all the gritty stuff swirling in the air, but it’s kind of hard to lie to yourself.

“Jorge, watch out for nails,” my grandpa called from the other side of the shop. “There’s clavos all over the place. And your grandma’s going to kill you if I have to pay the hospital twenty bucks to give you a tetanus shot.”

Yep. That sounded like my sweet ole nana.

“I’ll be careful,” I started to say, and then clunk! The head of my broomstick crashed into something.

Something hard.

Something heavy.

It was buried deep beneath a pile of blackened rubble, maybe two feet from where the back door had stood, and it really didn’t want to budge.

So naturally, I decided to investigate . . .

And what did I find? The lock/handle combo for the back door. The door the authorities believed the arsonist had broken in through.

But it wasn’t the fact I’d found it, or even its surprising unmelted-ness that had me staring, that had my heart doing Simone Biles–level cartwheels in my chest.

It was what I’d noticed about it. Just a tiny little detail, really—but a detail that would change everything.

The lockset was unlocked!

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