The Mystery of the Graffiti Ghoul

by Marty Chan

  “Why are you here?” Remi went on the attack. “Are you following Marty again?”

  “Hel-lo,” she said snarkily. “I’m visiting my grandmother’s grave.”

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  “Over there,” Trina waved to the other side of the cemetery.

  “Show us,” I said.

  She scratched at her arm nervously and stuttered, “I-i-it’s over there somewhere. M-my mom is the one who always brings me here. I-I never paid attention. I think I’m lost. All the tombstones look alike.”

  Sure that she was lying, I cornered her. “Maybe we can help you look.”

  She glared at me. “I don’t need your help. If you don’t mind, I have to pay my respects.”

  She spun around and walked away. The back of her hair was covered with tiny yellow leaves — the same ones from the prickly bushes.

  “Wait a minute,” I cried out. “You have leaves in your hair.”

  She brushed her head and shook out her hair. “So what?”

  “Were you hiding in the bushes by the fence?”

  “No.” She fidgeted, shifting from one foot to the other, looking like she had something to hide.

  I decided to lay out a trap. “Well, that’s a good thing, because they’re poison ivy.”

  Remi tried to correct me, “No, they’re not . . . ”

  I elbowed him. “He meant they’re not regular poison ivy. They’re cemetery poison ivy.”

  I cracked my neck to the left and right, then yawned, covering my mouth with both hands.

  “Marty’s right.” He picked up on our signal. “It’s the deadliest poison ivy.”

  Trina shook her head. “I never heard of it.”

  “You didn’t read about it?” Remi asked. “Marty did.”

  I nodded. “Cemetery ivy is a hundred times worse than regular ivy. The first thing that happens is that the person gets itchy all over.”

  She looked down at her hands.

  Remi added, “It starts in the hand.”

  “Then it moves through the whole body in less than five minutes. In fact, doesn’t Trina’s face look red?”

  I could see my friend trying to keep from grinning. “A little bit,” he said.

  “That’s a very bad sign,” I clucked.

  “Why?” Trina demanded.

  “It means the infection has gone to your face,” I said.

  She started to reach for her cheeks but stopped herself.

  “I bet it feels like ants crawling up your face,” he said.

  “I’m not itchy,” she claimed, but her nose twitched.

  “Do you know what the worst thing about cemetery poison ivy is?” I asked. “It’s what happens if you don’t scratch.”

  “What happens?” Trina leaned forward.

  “You’ll grow a beard of leaves,” I said. “Scratching stops the ivy from taking root.”

  Remi shuddered. “You’ll have a face of dandelions. Not the pretty yellow ones, but the ugly ones with fuzzy white heads.”

  “Yes, and you’ll have to shave every day,” I added.

  Trina scrubbed her face. “Ew. Gross! Get it off! Get a doctor. I’m going to have weed face!”

  As she danced around the tombstones, scrubbing her cheeks, I smirked. This was great revenge for all the times she picked on me, but when she didn’t stop screeching, I started to feel a weird flutter in my chest. I felt like I was listening to a baby cry; I had to make her stop.

  “Relax,” I said. “There’s no such thing as cemetery poison ivy.”

  “He’s lying,” Remi said. He whispered to me, “Don’t let the monkey butt off the hook.”

  She stopped scratching. “What do you mean?”

  “I made up the ivy story to prove you were hiding in the bushes,” I said.

  “You’re no fun,” he said, elbowing me in the ribs.

  Trina glared at us, “You won’t find it so funny when I tell everyone I caught the two of you Crossing The Line.”

  “No one’s Crossed The Line,” I said. “It’s just a coincidence that we’re here at the same time.”

  “Hel-lo. I know you’re friends. I’ve been following you everywhere. The library. The hardware store. And now here. I know you’ve been trying to catch this Graffiti Ghoul. Except, you’re on the wrong track. It’s not one ghoul; it’s a bunch of them.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  Trina took off her backpack, unzipped it and reached in. She pulled out a piece of wood, the broken piece from the shed door. One side was blank, but the other side had a spray-painted “s”.

  “I found this near the shed. It fits at the end of ‘Ghoul’,” she said, smugly trumping our investigation with her evidence. “The real message was ‘Ghouls Rule’.”

  More than one “Ghoul.” Why hadn’t I figured out that the “s” might have been missing from the word “Ghoul”? Did this confirm my theory that the Gangstas were responsible for the graffiti? If Trina had the “s”, what other clues did we miss and she find? Was she a better detective than Remi and me?

  “What else do you know?” I asked, pretending not to be interested.

  “That’s none of your business,” Trina said.

  “Why do you even care about this case? You think you’re Nancy Drew?” Remi said.

  She shot back, “You two think you’re the Hardy Boys.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the Hardy Boys,” I said.

  “There’s nothing wrong with Nancy Drew.”

  “She’s a girl,” Remi said. “Like you.”

  “Well, this girl is taking over the graffiti case.”

  “Says who?” I said.

  “Hel-lo. I’m Litter Patrol Leader,” Trina said. “Graffiti is litter, and this is my jurisdiction.”

  “Who’s Jerry Dixon?” Remi asked. “Is he related to Franklin Dixon, the guy who wrote the Hardy Boys?”

  I could figure out the meaning of hard words by listening for the smaller words that made up the big word. “Juris” reminded me of Jurassic, the dinosaur age. “Dick” was old-time slang for a private detective, and “shun” meant to stay clear of, or avoid. Putting them all together, I figured “jurisdiction” meant that Trina thought we were extinct dinosaur detectives and wanted us out of her way.

  “She’s telling us to drop the case,” I explained.

  “Forget it,” he said.

  I agreed with my best friend. “We found the graffiti first. We found the can of spray paint. And we’re going to find the criminal. We don’t need another partner.”

  “I’m not going to be your partner. I’m going to be your boss, and you’re going to be . . . my Nancies.” She grinned wickedly.

  “Nancies?!” Remi blurted. “No way.”

  “You can’t make us do anything,” I said.

  “Sure I can. I’m using my authority as Litter Patrol Leader to make you my Nancies. And now I’m going to delegate you your assignments.”

  “What’s that mean?” he whispered.

  “It’s when I tell other people to do work and I get the credit when the job is done,” said Trina.

  “You can’t make us work for you,” I said.

  “I can make your lives miserable,” she threatened.

  “You gonna tell everyone we Crossed The Line?” Remi asked, sneering.

  “There’re worse things than ninety-nine nurples.” Her cold voice sent shivers up my spine. What was worse than ninety-nine nurples? She turned and started to walk away.

  I whispered to Remi, “Don’t get her mad.”

  He whispered, “She’s bluffing. Besides, we’ll crack this case before she can do anything to us.”

  I hoped my friend was right, because I was pretty sure that no amount of garlic could ever stop Trina.

  THIRTEEN

  The next day things were different at school. No one made fun of my fuzzy pants. No one joked that I should change the Band-Aid that held the bridge of my glasses together. No one even looked my way. While I appreciat
ed the break from teasing, I sensed something was up. Maybe the kids were gearing up for a huge tease attack and were ignoring me so I’d let my guard down. Remi would know why everyone was treating me this way; he had the inside dirt on all schoolyard tricks, French or English.

  When I reached the Jesus statue, I spotted my friend sitting alone on the stone steps leading to the second floor of our school. I couldn’t help but think how weird this seemed, because normally Remi was surrounded by his French friends. Now, the same guys were veering around him like he was contagious, or worse: like he was the stinky kid. Something was definitely wrong.

  A group of French girls walked past the statue, whispering and pointing at Remi. I tiptoed behind them to eavesdrop, inching along the invisible line like a tightrope walker. A girl in sweat pants and a pink top chewed on a huge wad of gum.

  She nodded toward Remi. “You know what kind of people live in those places, don’t you?”

  The other girls leaned forward.

  “Criminals,” the gum girl answered.

  A girl with super-thick glasses added, “I heard trailer park people are so poor they don’t even have running water. Do you know what else, Natalie? I heard they steal it to take a bath.”

  “You think that’s bad, Denise? I heard they go to the bathroom against fire hydrants like dogs,” Natalie said.

  “Gross,” the other girls chimed.

  A girl with blonde pigtails raised her hand.

  Natalie nearly spit out her gum from laughing. “Colette, we’re not in class. You don’t have to ask permission to talk.”

  Colette lowered her hand. “What’s so bad about living in the trailer park?”

  Denise asked, “Do you like stepping in pee?”

  “No one pees outside,” Colette argued.

  Natalie stepped forward. “How do you know?”

  Colette said nothing.

  Denise guessed, “I bet she lives in the trailer park too.”

  Colette looked down at her feet.

  “She does,” the girls said.

  Natalie sneered. “You’re T.P. trash?”

  Denise nodded. “We should’ve known. You smell funky, like a fire hydrant.”

  The other girls agreed, repeating Natalie’s insult. Colette backed away, accidentally bumping into me.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  “My fault,” I said.

  “Colette’s always tripping over her big feet,” said Denise, her eyes as big as dinner plates behind her thick glasses.

  Natalie agreed. “Accident magnet.”

  Denise added, “Clown-Feet Colette.”

  Colette tried to hide her right foot behind her left leg but lost her balance and stumbled into me again. Everyone laughed.

  “Your feet don’t look big,” I said.

  “Thanks,” Colette mumbled.

  “Get away from him,” Denise warned. “You’ll get Chinese cooties.”

  Natalie laughed. “And then your eyes’ll turn slanty.”

  I felt a case of teasitus coming on fast.

  “Do you have cooties?” Colette asked me.

  “What does it matter?” Natalie answered before I could. “She’s T.P. trash anyway. She already has cooties.”

  “It’s not called a trailer park,” I said. “It’s Forest Heights Estates.”

  “Who cares?” Denise said.

  Natalie laughed. “Do you hang out with T.P. trash?”

  “Who else would be friends with the Chinois?”

  “Go back to where you came from,” Natalie said. “Go back to China.”

  I wanted to tell Natalie that I was born in Canada and that I never saw China, but if my force field couldn’t stop teasing then nothing could, especially not talking back. The only thing that worked was to walk away, which I did.

  “That’s not nice,” Colette said. “You shouldn’t pick on him.”

  Denise teased, “Why don’t you go sit with your T.P. boyfriend over there?”

  Sure enough, standing up against teasing only invited more teasing.

  Natalie yelled loud enough so I could hear. “You two can get married on the Boudreau Bus.”

  Denise smirked. “The T.P. transporter.”

  “The smelly-pee shuttle,” Natalie said.

  “The Loser-Bago,” Denise said, laughing.

  Silence. Her joke failed.

  “Loser-Bago. The opposite of Win-a-bago . . . ” Denise started to explain.

  I couldn’t be bothered with the rest of her explanation, because I had to talk to Remi. He moped on the steps, looking down at the cement sidewalk.

  “Smelly sneakers,” I whispered, giving the code phrase for our secret meeting place when we couldn’t meet at the Jesus statue.

  I headed to the boot room, which was the only place where the French and English kids could be together, but no one spent much time in the room because it was full of smelly sneakers. It was the perfect secret meeting place. Remi shambled into the boot room, looking pale like he had a severe case of teasitus.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Duh! Do I look like I’m okay? Every monkey butt at school knows I live in the trailer park.”

  “I know. I heard the French girls talking.”

  “How did everyone find out?” he asked.

  “There’s only one person who could spread rumours this fast,” I said. “Trina.”

  “But it’s not a rumour. How did she find out?”

  “Maybe she followed us after the graveyard. She did say she’d find something worse than ninety-nine nurples.”

  “She did. None of my friends’ll talk to me now. You don’t know how that feels.”

  “I’m talking to you.”

  “But no one else will,” he said. In just a day, my friend had travelled from Cool Country to Alien Nation, once a population of me.

  “We have to get Trina to take it back,” I said.

  In the schoolyard the gossip queen perched on the leathery seat of a swing, waiting for her subjects to kneel before her. She drank from a slushie cup and broke into a strawberry-covered smile when she saw us.

  “Did you think you’d get away with it?” I asked.

  “What are you talking about, Marty?” She batted her eyelashes, pretending to be innocent.

  “You told everyone about Remi,” I accused.

  “So I told a little white lie.” Trina sucked on her slushie straw, grinning. “So what?”

  She had no idea her story was true!

  “You did this to get us to work for you?” Remi asked.

  She played with the bendy straw. “I like to get things my way.”

  “Do you really think we’ll help you now?” I asked.

  She let go of her straw. “Of course.”

  “Why?” he demanded.

  She sighed. “If you’re working for me on the graffiti case, then there’s a perfectly good reason why you were near the trailer park yesterday, and you can tell everyone that.”

  “What’s stopping us from telling everyone about the case now?” I asked.

  “Hel-lo. They won’t believe you. They’ll only believe me. I’m the one who started the rumour; I’m the only one who can end it.”

  As much as I hated to admit she was right, Trina had a point. Gossip was like riding a bike down a steep hill. A little pedal power moved the bike down the slope, and gravity did the rest. Once the bike reached top speed, almost no one could stop it. The only person who even had a chance of slowing down the bike was the person riding it. All Trina had to do was squeeze the brakes and the gossip would roll to a stop.

  “Forget it,” Remi said. “I’m not working for a snot gobbler.”

  “I’m giving you a way out,” she said. “Do you want people to believe you live in the trailer park?”

  I knew he didn’t want people to know the truth, but Trina had Remi so mad that he didn’t see the value of her offer. Once he’d made up his mind, he never backed down. Last summer, we fired slap shots against the cement wall
of my parents’ store. The ball kept rolling into dips in the gravel parking lot, so he could never connect properly. Instead of moving the ball to level ground, he whacked at it from the same place a hundred times, getting madder and madder until he finally smacked the ball so hard that it sailed on to the roof and rolled into the gutter, where it stayed. I worried that this same stubborn streak would leave him stuck on a roof with no way down.

  “I’m not going to be your slave,” he said, turning and walking away.

  “I’ll give you until the end of the day to change your mind,” Trina called after him, but he was too far away to hear her.

  “Remi! Wait up,” I called, starting after him.

  “Your friend’s making a big mistake,” she said, stopping me.

  “There’s got to be something else we can do,” I said.

  “Nope,” she said, her tongue bright pink from her slushie drink.

  I watched my friend walk away, unsure of what to do to help him. Eric Johnson and Lawrence Bennet walked past me.

  The rat-faced Lawrence nibbled his fingernails. “Last week I saw the T.P. kid beside my locker, and now I can’t find my pencil.”

  “Yeah, my homework was missing yesterday,” Eric said.

  Lawrence laughed. “That’s because you didn’t do it.”

  “Oh yeah. You were supposed to do it for me.”

  Lawrence stopped laughing.

  Eric smiled. “Kidding. You’re supposed to do my homework this week.”

  They walked away, snickering. I’d been teased enough to know that it wouldn’t be long before the teasing would go from behind Remi’s back to right in his face. The only way to save my best friend was to make a deal with Trina, my worst enemy.

  FOURTEEN

  “Raise your right hand,” Trina ordered.

  “Why?”

  “Hel-lo! I’m going to swear you in as a Litter Patrol deputy.”

  “Do I get a badge?”

  “No, but I’ll let you drink some of my swamp water.” Trina constantly pushed her slushies on people.

  “No way. You were drinking from that straw,” I said.

  “Whatever,” Trina said. “Raise your hand.”

  “Wait a minute. How do I know you’ll hold up your end of the deal?”

  “I’ll swear on it,” she said.