“Renee,” I heard Ms. Biniam say. “If you need help, all you have to do is ask.”
That was it. I did some research, and the next day at lunch I said to Henry, “I think I know what to do. To get rid of Edgar. We need to ask him to leave.”
“Great idea, Barbara Anne. I’ll get going on a letter right away.”
“No. Really. We need to just straight-out tell him that it’s time to go. I’ve done some reading, and I have a whole list of what we need.”
“Let me see that,” Henry said, grabbing for my notebook.
For someone who didn’t think it would work, he sure seemed curious about my plan. He opened the notebook to the first page and found this list:
Smudge stick
Bells
Casting a circle
“Smudge stick?” Henry asked.
“Yes,” I told him. “Everybody does it. It’s a bundle of herbs—sage mostly—and you set it on fire and wave it around. The smoke removes the spirits. It cleanses the space.”
“Smoke?” Henry asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know it seems drastic, but it’s a time-honored method. I promise.”
“For setting off smoke detectors,” Henry said.
“We could always take the batteries out before we start,” I said. “What? My grandmother does it all the time when she’s cooking and something starts to burn. You just put them back in later.”
“Look,” Henry said. “We’ve done enough damage at my house already. If you don’t mind, I’d rather not burn it to the ground.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “So we’ll just do the other two.”
We agreed to go to his house after school the following day to test out methods two and three. Henry wasn’t convinced they would work, but he didn’t have anything to lose either.
* * *
—
“What are we waiting for?” Henry asked as we stood outside school the next day.
“Renee and Zack,” I said.
“I thought it was just us.”
“That won’t work,” I told him. “You can’t cast a circle with two people.”
“Oh, of course,” Henry said. “What was I thinking?”
“Henry, you don’t have to be so sarcastic. I’m trying to help.”
“What’s in there?” he asked, nodding toward the extra bag I was carrying.
“Tools of the trade,” I said.
“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” he asked.
I shrugged like it was no big deal, but we both knew what the answer was. Who doesn’t want to test stuff out once they learn something new? And this wasn’t something ordinary like making soup or finger knitting. (Although, I will say that there are some kids at school who can finger knit so quickly it’s like a magic trick, and they have a strand now that stretches practically halfway across the playground—which is impressive, but still nothing compared to learning to banish a ghost.)
Zack and Renee joined us a couple of minutes later, and Zack couldn’t wait to get started. “So, what do we have to do?” he asked. “Once we get there?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Henry said. “Barbara Anne will tell us exactly what to do from now on.”
I scowled at him, even though he was right, and the other two might as well know what they were in for. Some people just don’t appreciate leadership ability.
* * *
—
When we got to Henry’s room, I unpacked my canvas bag first thing. Here is what was inside:
A candle
Two bells
A notebook and pen
A small bunch of herbs tied with a string
“Is that a smudge stick?” Henry asked me. “I thought we said no smudge stick.”
“Dude, relax,” Zack said. “It’s a tiny pile of leaves.”
“He’s right,” I said. “Relax. Nobody’s going to burn the house down. I’ll be really careful. Besides, if it gets too smoky, I can switch to this.”
I pulled one last thing from the bag: another candle. “Electric,” I said.
“Hey, these are cute,” Renee said, picking up one of the little bells. “Where’d you get them?”
“Leftovers from when my mom planned her friend’s wedding reception,” I said.
“Huh. What are they for?”
“Haven’t you ever seen these? You ring them to make the bride and groom kiss.” Then I added, “But we’re not going to use them that way here. Obviously.” Because I didn’t think there was anything going on between Zack and Renee, but I didn’t feel like testing it out.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s start.”
I had everybody stand in a circle and hold hands. I had Henry’s hand on one side and Zack’s on the other, and they both felt disgustingly moist. I didn’t even want to think about how long it had been since Zack had washed his.
“Okay,” I said. “Now take a giant step backward, but try to maintain the circle.” I was using my most confident voice, because I learned at babysitter training that children will listen to you if you stay calm and sound sure of yourself. So far, it was working, even on Zack, and that was saying something.
Then I stepped out of position, lit the smudge stick, and walked toward the three of them, one at a time. At each side of the room, I waved the flaming herb bundle in a little circle. I was holding it up as high as I could—Statue of Liberty style—to make up for the fact that I’m not very tall. At each spot, I stopped and recited the words I’d memorized from the book.
Oh, great guardians of the north—
“I’m pretty sure that’s the south,” Henry said.
Renee shushed him.
“I’m just saying.”
But it was ruined then, so I had to start over.
Oh, great guardians of the south
Cleanse this space and
Protect all those who reside within!
The smoke was beginning to get kind of thick, which was really not my fault but more a result of the way everybody kept interrupting me. That and, I guess, the fact that we forgot to open a window before we started.
Renee kept coughing.
“Finish up before she hacks up a lung,” Zack said.
“Okay, okay!”
We cast out all who are
Unwelcome
Let them now depart!
Everything got quiet then, and that’s when we all heard it: the creak of the stairs, the sound of someone—or something—slowly approaching. Then, of course, Renee screamed, a sound so high and shrill that dogs should have been the only ones able to hear it. And then, through the toxic smudge-stick haze, Alice materialized in the doorway in her leotard, her hands on her hips. She did not look happy.
“You forgot to pick me up from dance class!” she yelled at Henry. “You were supposed to walk me home.”
The way she looked at the four of us destroyed the whole thing. Suddenly it seemed ridiculous.
Alice waved one hand through the toxic air and said, “Are you guys smoking?! ’Cause if you are, I’m telling.”
“Of course we’re not smoking,” Henry said.
“It’s Barbara Anne’s fault,” Zack said. “For burning that smidgen wand.”
He had a point. I was having trouble putting it out too. I blew on it, but that just seemed to keep it going. “Renee!” I yelled. “Open the window!” I felt like a runner in some crazy relay race where nobody would take the baton.
“Open it! Open it!” I yelled at Renee. Boy, she really was not good in an emergency.
“You are in so much trouble,” Alice said to Henry as the smoke detectors began to beep.
“Have you got a fire extinguisher?” Zack asked her.
“I don’t know!” Alice said.
<
br /> Finally Renee got the window open, and I pushed the smudge stick through it.
“Why are you giving it more air?” Henry yelled. “Do you not understand anything about fire?”
He ran over and tried to grab it out of my hand, and in the struggle, the smudge stick dropped out of the window and landed on Henry’s front lawn.
This was the bad news.
The good news, I guess, was that Sophie had just gotten home, and she doused it with that giant water bottle she always carries. (She likes to stay well hydrated.)
I watched the last of the smoke from the smudge stick drift up to where Henry and I were hanging out of the window. I didn’t know what to do, so I waved. “Hi, Sophie,” I said. “Welcome home.”
Explaining the whole smudge-stick thing would not have been easy. I guess I was lucky that Sophie didn’t even ask. She just kept opening windows and told Zack, Renee, and me that it was time to go home. When I tried to say something, she pushed her palm toward me, which is pretty much the international sign for I don’t want to hear it! My dad wanted to know, though, so I had to tell him that we lit a candle and it fell over. Fortunately, he launched into a long lecture about fire safety, and by the time it ended, he didn’t even think to ask why we needed a candle at four in the afternoon. Also, he said those magic words: “Let’s not mention this to your mother.”
Not long after that, though, I had a real problem because Henry got sick again. Really sick. I was afraid that maybe it was all the smoke from the smudge stick, but my dad said that had nothing to do with it. He told me that it’s caused by either a virus or bacteria, depending on what kind you have. Pneumonia. That’s what Henry had. And, for obvious reasons, the sound of that word terrified me. As soon as I found out, I wanted to go and check on him, but apparently hospitals have some ridiculous rule about how old you have to be to visit—which is why we had to sneak in instead of just going there like regular people, which, by the way, children are.
Zack understood right away that we should go and make sure that Henry was all right, but Renee put up a fuss as soon as I mentioned it.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I do NOT do hospitals. I can’t even stand the smell. Besides, you’re gonna get in trouble, Barbara Anne. We all are.”
I would have argued with her, but she sounded serious. And I could see how Renee might be scared; it was probably because of her mom. So I turned to Zack.
“Where is he?” Zack asked.
“Pacific Lutheran,” I said.
“Oh, great,” Zack said.
“What?”
“That’s where my mom works.”
“That’s perfect,” I said. But Zack wasn’t so sure.
In the end, though, he went along with me. Who knows why? Like my grandmother says, “People are complicated.” Zack took a chance. He helped me get to Henry when nobody else would.
* * *
—
When Zack and I decided to visit Henry, I was part excited, part scared. In my daydream, I pictured escaping from my bedroom in the moonlight—out the window, hand over hand, using a ladder that I’d made myself from bedsheets. (This was never very realistic because I still hated the new gym teacher and had not been persuaded to “work” on my upper body strength.) Imagine my disappointment, though, when I was able to walk right out of the house after dinner without anybody even noticing.
My dad went into his office to work on his computer, and my mom was getting Rachel ready for her bath.
“Well,” I said. “I have a lot of homework, so I guess I’ll just get to it.”
“Okay,” my mom said. “Sounds good.”
You’d think she would have had a few questions, but no! Not this time! She just closed the bathroom door—right in my face! I was one hundred percent sure that she had not heard a word I said. I could have told her, “By the way, Mom, there’s a sea monster in Green Lake, and I spotted him on my walk home.” Or, “Gee, Mom, you don’t mind if I grab your keys and teach myself to drive now, do you?” And she would have had that same answer: “Okay. Sounds good.”
I have heard of people, people with observant parents, I suppose, who have to come up with all sorts of cover stories and excuses. (I had a few ready.) There are people, I am told, who even leave a note behind to misdirect anybody who might be looking for them. (I had one written and ready to go.) But there was no need. Nobody cared where I was or what I was up to. No reason to tiptoe room to room, eyes darting around like a cartoon cat burglar. I just strolled out and walked over to Zack’s house. Hiding all those pillows under the blankets in the shape of my body had been a big waste of time.
* * *
—
I could see Zack through the front window when I got there. He was sitting at the dining room table with an older kid, like high school age, and he looked really cute. Not Zack. The other one. He had wavy brown hair that was just a little bit long, sort of Disney prince length. Not that I cared. I’m just reporting the facts. Who cared, really, what he looked like? But also, why was he there, and how would I get Zack out of the house now? It was the first interesting difficulty—the first step on my quest to get to Henry. And I had an idea. I saw some tiny stones on the ground near the door, so I grabbed a handful and tossed them at the window. Then I ducked behind a bush. I was pretty proud of myself until Zack answered the door.
“Barbara Anne!” he hollered. “We can see you!”
This forced me out from behind the bush, so he did not need to continue, but he decided to anyway. “Why don’t you just ring the bell like a normal person?” he asked.
“Well, I…”
“Oh, never mind,” Zack said. “Just come on in.”
He motioned toward an empty chair at the dining room table. They were eating sandwiches.
“This is Doug,” he said.
“Aren’t you going to offer her a sandwich?” Doug asked.
“Dude, you’re not my mother,” Zack said.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Barbara Anne. Klein. I’m Zack’s—”
“She sits across from me,” Zack said. “At school.”
“Good to meet you,” Doug said. “I live across from him. Used to be his babysitter before he got so polite and mature.” He smiled, and I noticed that he had very blue eyes and long eyelashes. “I should go,” he said to Zack. “Behave yourself. Nice to meet you, Barbara Anne.”
After he left, Zack said, “You can stop staring at the door, Barbara Anne. He’s not going to reappear.”
“I was not staring at the door!” I said. But I was. I totally was.
“He’s a pretty nice guy,” Zack said.
“How long have you known him?”
“Since third grade. He was the only one my mom could get to babysit me when I was in my ‘acting out’ phase.”
“What’s that?”
Zack shrugged and kept chewing on his sandwich. “I don’t know. That’s what my counselor called it. My parents weren’t getting along with each other, and I wasn’t getting along with anybody!” Zack laughed.
“That’s not funny!” I said.
“No,” Zack said. “It really wasn’t. I used to break stuff. Major temper tantrums. But, you know. My parents settled down, and so did I. So now Doug and me are just neighbors.”
I was sort of surprised, almost impressed, that Zack told me all that. I would have asked him more, but the doorbell rang. Zack hopped up to get it, and there was Renee. I looked out the window and saw her father waving goodbye from behind the wheel of his car.
“I thought you didn’t want to come,” I said to Renee.
“If you’re worried about Henry, then so am I,” she said.
“Enough jibber-jab,” Zack said. “It’s getting late.”
“Jibber-jab?” I asked, but Zack just ignored me. He wrote out a note to his mom, left it on the table, and start
ed talking about what bus we had to take.
* * *
—
You would think that if we were going to get lost, it would be because we took the wrong bus, got off at the wrong stop, or made a wrong turn on the way to the hospital. But none of that happened. We found our way to the hospital like we’d been going there every day of our lives. Once we got inside, though, it was a different story. We went through the big lobby toward the elevators, and then I looked at Zack.
“Now what?” I asked. “Which way do we go?”
It was clear from the look on his face that he had no idea.
“You’re kidding me!” I said. “Didn’t your mom ever take you around? Give you a tour? Introduce you to people?”
I was thinking of the time my dad took me to his office on Take Our Kids to Work Day. Maybe it was different, though, if your parents were doctors. I guess you wouldn’t just get to hang around gawking in the middle of somebody’s operation. What are your parents going to say? “Hi, this is my younger son, Jimmy. He’ll be handing me my scalpels today”? I don’t think so. Still, this was a setback.
“Pick a floor and get in,” I said, because standing in front of the elevator like a litter of lost puppies seemed like the surest way to draw attention to ourselves.
So we started. There were signs, kind of a lot of them, but they were confusing, and the hallway was just blank white walls, more elevators, and strange doors with high, small windows. There were labs, miniature gated-off coffee shops, a gift shop with scarves and a teapot in the window. The place was huge. More like a small city than a building. It was already starting to seem that we might be here all night, wandering around like mice in a maze.
“I don’t like it here,” Renee said.
“We just got started!” I yelled.
I know. I should have been more sympathetic. I could have offered to help her find her way back to the lobby and told her to wait there. I could have told her that it would be okay, or maybe even promised that we would leave soon. But I didn’t do any of that because I was too mad. It was infuriating how easily she was willing to give up.
The Haunting of Henry Davis Page 13
