by Linda Bailey
He spoke carefully. “That’ll make it … harder. I’ll … I’ll have to think about it.”
“Think?” yelled Jack. “More thinking? I say we puts the thumbscrews to him. See how he likes a taste of—”
“Stow that talk!” interrupted Crawley. “If the lad says he must think, then that’s what he must do. We’ll just settle ourselves to wait.”
With a flourish of his coattails, he claimed the wicker chair, while the others found places around the room. Everyone fell silent.
Lewis stood it for twenty seconds.
“I can’t!” he said.
“Can’t what?” said Crawley.
“Can’t think with all of you watching me.”
Crawley looked surprised. “You wants us to leave?”
“Well,” said Lewis, “if you don’t mind. Just for a while. So I can think.”
Jack spat on the floor in disgust.
But Crawley just smiled. “Why didn’t you say so, lad? We can disappear. Nothing easier.”
“Really?” said Lewis. “Thank you.”
They began to fade immediately. Emboldened by success, Lewis called, “Wait!”
They paused, and Lewis was treated to the fascinating sight of seven transparent bodies.
“I don’t know if I can figure out a good plan right away,” he told them. “I might have to come here in the afternoons … to think! It might take a while.”
“Not to worry.” Crawley was now barely an outline. “We’s waited this long, hasn’t we, mates? We has lots of time, we has.”
“All the time in the world,” added Moyle’s voice from an empty spot near the desk.
Lewis covered his mouth to hide his delight. He could barely believe his luck. To think that he could come here tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. He had done it.
Libertalia was his again.
At the end of the second week of school, a new girl turned up in Lewis’s class. Seeing her walk in, Lewis felt a wave of relief. The more the kids noticed her, the less they would notice him. She had a strange name, Abriella, and a mother who was, if possible, even more embarrassing than his own.
“Sorry we’re late,” puffed the mother, bending over Ms. Forsley’s desk so that her large blue-jeaned backside faced the class. “We’ve been on a bus for five days, can you believe it? All the way from the west coast.”
Hearing a giggle, the mother turned. There it was—the thing the kids had spotted as she entered. A bare midriff and, right in the middle, her belly button, hanging out for the whole world to see, between rolls of fat. And, worse, it was pierced with a bellybutton ring!
Off to one side stood Abriella in a long green dress. She was odd, too, but in a completely different way. Skinny and long-legged, she’d be easily the tallest kid in sixth grade. Big eyes, almost pop-eyed. Long nose. Mouth so wide, the corners had to turn up in a smile even though she had absolutely nothing to smile about. Not with that mother.
The mother was telling Ms. Forsley her life story—how she’d married “a real zero,” moved across the country, gotten a divorce, lost her “crappy job in a florist shop.” It seemed she’d never stop.
“We’re staying with my folks now, just till I get on my feet.”
The woman wasn’t Lewis’s mother, but even so, he felt like going la-la-la in his head. He peeked at Abriella again. Chin tilted up, she was meeting the eyes of each new classmate in turn. Suddenly she was looking at—him! Not just at him. Through him! With those giant eyes. It was like being x-rayed. He glanced down, mortified.
After the mother left, Ms. Forsley said the usual things about making the new girl feel welcome.
“You can sit here, Abriella.” She pointed to the desk in front of Lewis.
“Abbie,” said the girl firmly as she sat down. “With an ‘i-e.’ Abbie.”
At recess, everyone watched her. Lewis watched, too, uneasy, waiting for her to make mistakes. But she wandered the schoolyard with a loose, easy stride, an occasional cheery bounce punctuating her steps. Everywhere she went, she talked. Lewis was surprised—shocked even—at the way she talked to anyone at all. First-graders. Boys. Mrs. Reber. He couldn’t hear what she said, but they all answered. When she reached the swings, she dropped into one and began pumping, her skirt riding up to show thin bare legs and scuffed black boots, higher and higher till she was almost even with the top frame. A sixth-grader, on a swing! When Mrs. Reber scolded her—the playground was crowded, she could hit someone—she just grinned. “Sorry,” she yelled, dragging her feet to slow herself down.
Lewis was so busy watching, he didn’t hear Seth approach.
“That your girlfriend, Dearborn?”
The boys in white laughed.
“Oh, wait, I forgot. You have to talk to get a girlfriend. Even a weird one like that.”
Lewis swallowed. He opened his mouth to say—he didn’t know what. Nothing came out.
“Duh,” said Seth. “Come on, Lewissssser, you can say it. Duh! Your mouth’s already open.”
More laughter.
“How about ‘Ma-ma’? I bet you can say ‘Ma-ma.’ ”
Lewis felt heat shoot through his body. Luckily, at that moment, Mrs. Reber strolled by. The boys in white scattered.
Lewis looked up. Abbie’s swing had stopped. She was staring at him—at his tomato face.
He ran inside.
There was another surprise waiting for Lewis that day—when he got home from school. His father was wearing an apron! A giant white chef’s apron, crisp and new.
It wasn’t a total surprise. More and more, when Lewis came home, he’d been finding his father in an odd place—the messy, cluttered kitchen. Mr. Dearborn, it seemed, was helping Mrs. Binchy cook. How this had come about, Lewis didn’t know. But the first time he saw his father bent over a cutting board, he could hardly believe his eyes. His father never cooked.
Seeing Lewis’s face now, Mr. Dearborn waggled the knife he was holding above a pile of chopped walnuts. “Just making myself useful,” he said cheerily.
Lewis glanced around. Mrs. Binchy was stirring a huge, steaming pot on the ancient stove. Her cat Patsy lay curled on a stack of newspapers. Fiddle music blared from a radio on the counter, half hidden under a pile of potato peels, while from the oven rose a rich baking smell.
Mrs. Binchy held out a wooden spoon. “Have a taste, dear. It’s chowder.”
Lewis blinked in surprise. She was offering him the spoon from the pot. He never ate from the pot spoon. It was unsanitary. His mother said so.
But his mother wasn’t there. She was teaching. She wouldn’t be home till six.
“Go on,” said Mrs. Binchy, pushing the spoon at him.
Lewis glanced at his father. Mr. Dearborn grinned.
Obediently, Lewis took a slurp. The chowder was rich and creamy, thick with potatoes and seafood. He closed his eyes in wonder. Like everything Mrs. Binchy cooked, it was the best he’d ever tasted.
“There,” said Mrs. Binchy. “I knew you’d like it. Want to help?”
“I … um, homework,” said Lewis.
“Here,” she said, “take a cheesy biscuit.” She handed him two, still warm from the oven.
Biscuits in hand, he headed up to Libertalia.
He was feeling more at home in the tower room all the time. The pirates had kept their word about leaving him alone. Every day after school, he climbed the stairs to Libertalia and stayed till dinnertime. And what did he do there? Anything. Everything. Whatever he wanted. There was neither a whiff nor a whisper from the ghosts.
And because they were so quiet, there was only one thing Lewis didn’t do during his time in Libertalia. He didn’t think about the pirates. Not once.
It wasn’t that difficult, really.
Lewis was good at not thinking about things.
Several weeks later, on a dull, wet Thursday, Lewis’s parents went out to a special dinner at his mother’s college. It happened to be Mrs. Binchy’s night off.
“We’ll hire a ba
bysitter,” said Mrs. Dearborn.
“What?” said Lewis. “No! Please! Nobody my age has babysitters. Kids my age are babysitters.”
His mother rolled her eyes. What other kids did, she said, was no concern of hers.
Mrs. Binchy came to the rescue. “Not to worry, Mrs. Dearborn. I’ll be home early, eight at the latest. And, really, it’s as peaceful as the grave out here.”
Reluctantly, Mrs. Dearborn agreed.
“Keep the doors locked,” she told Lewis, as she and Mr. Dearborn left for dinner. She was wearing her shoes with the buckles instead of the ones with the laces. For her, Lewis knew, that was dressing up.
“You have my number,” she said. “And if you have to call the fire or police—”
“Nine-one-one,” said Lewis. How stupid could he be not to know that?
As soon as they left, he headed upstairs and stretched out on the brass bed. It was just quarter to five, and he thought he might read for a while before eating the casserole Mrs. Binchy had left in the oven. Soon he was deep into a novel about two boys lost in the Amazon rain forest. Snakes, giant insects, piranhas …
When his skin prickled, he thought it was just the danger in the book. Then he glanced up.
Seven dead pirates were gathered around his bed.
He let out a scream!
The pirates let out a few good screeches themselves. Most of them glowed several shades brighter.
“It’s true!” cried Lewis, once he’d caught his breath.
“What? What?” demanded Crawley, looking rattled. “Speak, boy!”
“It’s true that you get brighter when you’re upset.”
“Who’s upset?” hollered Jack, shaking his fist. “Why, I’ll—”
“Sssst!” ordered Crawley. He raised his eyebrows at Lewis. “Well?”
The others smiled expectantly.
“Oh,” said Lewis, looking around. “I guess you’re here about …”
“Aye!” said Crawley. “The plan!”
Lewis felt a stab of guilt. “It’s not quite ready,” he said. “I’m … I’m working on it.”
“Aye.” Crawley nodded happily. “We sees you sitting here, day after day, dreaming up schemes. I’m sure it will be a grand plan, what with all this thinking.”
“Pah!” said Jack.
“Well …” said Lewis, suddenly eager to leave. He closed his book and scrambled off the bed.
But Moyle stepped forward, blocking his way. “Why, lookee here, Captain! See this great thick book the lad holds? As easy for him as climbing a mast. I told you he could read to us.”
Lewis held his breath. What now?
“Aye,” agreed Captain Crawley. “Doubtless, he can. Adam! Fetch the book.”
Adam ran to the glass cabinet. He held up a book. “This one?”
“No,” said Bellows. “It were red.”
Adam searched again. “This?”
“No, it were smaller,” said Skittles. Pushing past Adam, he reached for a shabby red book. “Here it be!”
He thrust it in Lewis’s face. “Read!”
Lewis peered, dumbfounded, at the cover. Peter and Wendy, it said in letters so faded they were almost indecipherable. He thought for a moment. “Peter Pan?”
“Aye,” chorused the pirates. “Peter Pan.” They sank, one by one, to the floor and gazed raptly up at him. Looking down, Lewis thought that—except for their age and filthy clothes and missing body parts—they could have been a storytime group in a library.
Tentatively, he opened the book.
“Read!” demanded Crawley.
“I’m not … very good at reading aloud,” said Lewis. “Usually I just—”
“Read!”
Lewis took a deep breath and began. “All … all children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew—”
“No!” said Moyle. “Not that! Find where it tells about Captain Hook!”
“Aye,” said the others. “Give us Hook!”
Lewis tried to explain. “It’s not that easy. You can’t just open a book to—”
Jack leaped to his feet. “FIND CAPTAIN HOOK!” he roared, his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“I’ll try,” said Lewis quickly. He leafed through the book, checking pages at random. Finally, he spotted the word “Hook.” As he began to read, growls of appreciation drifted up from the floor.
And so he read about Captain Hook and the crocodile who had swallowed Hook’s hand and then followed him around, waiting for the rest. Moving through the paragraphs, Lewis couldn’t help peeking at his own pirates, with their various missing bits. No wonder they were fascinated by Hook.
He read on, losing track of time, losing track of himself, hypnotized, like the pirates, by the story and the sound of his own voice. Whenever the book drifted to other characters—Peter, the Lost Boys, Wendy—the pirates grew impatient. “HOOK! HOOK!” they cried, forcing him to search again.
“Ah, that were a treat,” said Crawley finally, with a deep sigh. “You reads like a charm, young Lewis. Near as good as your great-granddaddy.”
“Great-Granddad read to you?”
“Aye, when he were about your age. He read us about Hook many a time.”
And, indeed, Lewis had noticed that in certain parts, the pirates’ lips had moved in unison with his. They had actually memorized sections.
“I wish we’d met this Hook,” said Moyle, “but in all our sailing of the seven seas, we never come across him.”
“Well, no,” said Lewis, “you couldn’t. He’s—”
He was going to say “not real,” but stopped. The pirates, still in the grip of the story, had a strange contented light in their eyes. It would be like telling a five-year-old there was no tooth fairy.
He closed the book instead.
“I … I have to go now,” he said. “Dinner.”
At the door, he looked back. They were sitting where he’d left them.
“What are you going to do now?” he asked.
Crawley grinned crookedly. “No way of knowing, lad. But you’ve put us in a fine way to make a grand evening of it. Hasn’t he, boys?”
“Aye!” cried Bellows. “We’ll shake the floor tonight, by thunder.”
Lewis waited. Shake the floor? But no explanation was offered. He left.
The macaroni and cheese was dry, but still tasty. Lewis ate it standing at the counter. Afterward, he washed and dried his dishes.
Then he headed for the spare room where he’d been sleeping, even though he still didn’t think of it as “his” room. The bins and boxes were gone now, but his mother’s sewing machine still sat like a lump in the corner. The couch, made up neatly into a bed, looked as if it were awaiting a paying guest.
Lewis walked to the window and tried to raise it, but it was stuck. He made a few more efforts, grunting. Then he stared at the empty driveway.
What were they doing upstairs?
His toes began to tap. Slowly. Nervously. Then faster.
He ran for the back staircase.
He only meant to take a peek. He only wanted to satisfy his curiosity.
But when he saw what looked like a party, when he heard the shouts to “Come in, lad!” he couldn’t stop himself. Soon he was perched on the edge of the brass bed, watching what appeared to be a card game—except that Lewis had never seen cards played so actively before. Skittles, Moyle and Jonas squatted tensely in a circle, slamming down cards with such force that Lewis couldn’t help jumping. The rules were unclear, but there seemed to be a lot of shoving and whacking across the head, neither of which Lewis had ever imagined to be part of a card game.
Across the room, Adam was playing a small metal flute for Jack and Barnaby Bellows, who were dancing a kind of jig. Mostly this consisted of hopping from one foot to the other with ferocious energy, but occasionally the partners seized one another and spun in a frenzied circle. The floor, Lewis noticed, actually did shake as Bellows’s huge feet pounded the boards.
Come, ye young sailors with spirits bold.
We’ll venture forth in search of gold.
Way hay, let the winds blow,
There’s forty fathoms and more below.
Here, other voices joined in:
And if we drown while we are young,
Better we drown than e’er be hung.
Way hay, let the winds blow,
There’s forty fathoms and more below.
Nail the black flag to the mast,
We’re Libertalia bound at last.
Way hay, let the winds blow,
There’s forty fathoms and more below.
The captain hoisted his tankard. “To the Maria Louisa!”
The others clinked their mugs before glugging the contents down. At least, they appeared to be glugging.
Lewis couldn’t stand it any longer. He whispered a question to Skittles.
“No,” said Skittles morosely. “We can’t drink a drop and we can’t eat nothing, neither, more’s the pity. We tried at first, but it just went right through us.”
“Now we pretends,” said Jonas, overhearing. “But it ain’t the same. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a pint of grog.”
“I’d give me right arm,” said Skittles. “If I had one.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Lewis noticed that Adam had wandered over to the onyx chess set. He was picking up a pawn.
Lewis was about to say “Stop!” but something in Adam’s face made him catch himself. Joining the cabin boy, he whispered, “Do you know how to play?’
Adam shook his head.
“Would you like to learn?”
A huge crooked smile was Lewis’s answer.
And that’s how it happened that, twenty minutes later, the two boys—human and ghost—were engaged in a head-to-head chess game. The other pirates gathered to watch and to shout encouragement to the cabin boy, along with ridiculous suggestions. The entire audience was on Adam’s side, and at first this bothered Lewis. But then he told himself that Adam was new to the game and lacking in confidence. Adam needed fans.
Still, Lewis couldn’t help being unsettled by their reaction when Adam lost. The pirates howled their disapproval, waving their pistols and accusing Lewis of cheating. Jack threatened to give him twenty lashes.
