Smart Cookie

by Elly Swartz

  Then I bite my lip, click submit, and hope Dad doesn’t kill me.

  “Impressive,” Elliot says. “Now, for your second bold act of the day, let’s go into the shed.”

  I look at Elliot like he’s grown five heads, doesn’t know me, and has never met Gram. “We can’t.”

  The needle jiggles as a loud bellow of thunder shakes me from the inside.

  “We should go back,” I say.

  Elliot stares hard at me.

  “It’s not that. It’s just Dad and I have the picnic thing, assuming it’s, um, not rained out.”

  “Wait. I’ve got something. And I think it’s coming from inside the shed.”

  “There’s no ghost hanging out in Gram’s shed.”

  The meter beeps again. The needle slides to seven.

  “I’m pretty sure that wasn’t one of the really important things Gram brought with her to the B&B.” When Mom died and Dad and I moved here, Gram and all her stuff moved into the B&B with us. Dad says it was so we could keep an eye on her. Gram says it was so she could keep an eye on us. The only thing they agreed on was that Gram’s overflow stuff, all the things she needed to bring with her but couldn’t fit in her room, stays in the shed. And I don’t think a ghost was part of her overflow.

  The big red wooden door begs me to break Rule #2: Stay out of the shed.

  Elliot ignores the NO TRESPASSING sticker pasted across the door. “If we just walk into the shed, we can’t mess anything up. No one will even know we were in there.”

  The needle moves to eight as the sky rumbles with purpose.

  Elliot stares at me. “Even the hair on my arms is sticking up. This is what happens right before a spirit shows up on The Great Ghost Pursuit. We have to check it out.”

  Maybe he’s right. Maybe if we look and don’t touch anything, no one will know. Besides, Dad doesn’t want me outside in lightning. That’s Rule #1: Stay inside during a lightning storm. And, really, this isn’t even about me or Elliot’s ghost meter. This is about making sure the B&B is safe. What if by some minuscule chance Elliot’s right? What if there is some ghost in there? What if it’s Mom? I mean not her, but her ghost or being or spirit or whatever thingamajig you call it. What if she came back to be with me? Or tell me something really important?

  “Come on, let’s go in,” Elliot says again, his nose turning red from the chill that’s fallen around us.

  The needle flutters around the eight mark. He moves a few steps so he’s standing right in front of the big red door.

  I start to say something, but the hair on my arms prickles. I look down and read the meter.

  Ten.

  I step in front of the door and turn the doorknob.

  This. Is. It.

  The big red door doesn’t budge. It’s locked. Tight.

  The ghost meter screams at us.

  Ten. Ten. Ten.

  Another lightning bolt cracks across the sky.

  We run from the shed to the B&B. See Rule #1. I wipe my muddied feet across the YOU ARE HOME welcome mat and wriggle my now-cold-and-wet feet to warm them up.

  Elliot shakes his shaggy hair. “We were so close. I can’t believe the shed’s locked. We need to talk to your gram about that.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” I say the words, but inside it kind of does. I know what’s in there. I mean, not exactly. But, I know it’s Gram’s stuff. And, I know she wants it private. Kind of like Headquarters. But it feels weird to be locked out of part of my home. I mean, at least Gram gets to be an honorary member of Headquarters.

  “Whether or not we can get inside the shed, I know there’s a ghost in there. The meter said so. Maybe the ghost is stuck. Like it hasn’t passed to the other side.” A broad smile forms across his freckled face, flashing his blue-and-red braces.

  I look at my watch. The Mendelsons check in soon. I need to make more cookies and get the special Mendelson Twizzlers out of the pantry. I step over the boxes of new multi-use hangers and baking tins and candles that Gram had delivered to the B&B and drag the yellow stepstool across the honey-colored wood floor. Last summer, I stopped asking Elliot to reach things for me. I’m now a solid three inches taller, though he’s somehow convinced himself that we’re the same height. I hand Elliot the red licorice, flour, brown sugar, regular sugar, vanilla, salt, chocolate chips, and baking soda that I pull from the top cabinet. I had made a batch of cookies earlier, but Elliot ate about half. Taped to the outside is Rule #3: Put the pantry items back where you found them. Open and out on the counter is not where you found them.

  This rule happened after someone, who might have been me, left the brown sugar out and open. The next morning, when Dad went to make French toast, the sugar was hard as a brick. He made eggs.

  “There’s no ghost,” I say with a speck of maybe in my voice.

  Elliot lines up each box on the counter by height. “The evidence would seem to prove otherwise.”

  I stick my head in the refrigerator to grab the butter and eggs, but they’re stuffed behind the Mendelsons’ special hors d’oeuvres. This year, Mr. and Mrs. Mendelson asked Dad to renew their vows since he’s now an official, certified online rabbi. I slide the deviled eggs and smoked salmon to the right. “Take these,” I say to Elliot. He puts the eggs and butter with the rest of the cookie stuff, then launches into his list of reasons that prove there’s a ghost according to ghost hunters everywhere, which somehow now includes Elliot.

  A ghost meter never lies.

  A ghost meter rarely reaches ten.

  When a ghost meter reaches ten, there’s always a ghost.

  He crosses his arms, waiting for praise for his insightful revelations to pour out of me.

  I say nothing. I mix most of the ingredients together, scoop a heaping spoonful of pre-egg batter, and promptly shove it into my mouth. Hands down the best part of making cookies. Elliot rolls his eyes. He’s more the crunchy baked-cookie type.

  “Mixer.” I point with my now floured elbow and yolk-covered hands to the drawer to his right.

  “That’s all you can say?” Elliot spouts as he hands it over. “I give you proof there’s a ghost yards from the B&B and all you can say is, ‘Mixer’?”

  “A reading of ten on a ghost meter that I bought online isn’t proof of anything,” I say loudly over the clank of the metal spoon. “Maybe it’s a squirrel or a fox or an ant hill.”

  Or my mom. I keep this guess to myself.

  I toss in the chocolate chips, twice the recommended amount, and steal the spatula out of the Trinket Treasure Drawer—started and named by Gram. Every time a guest leaves something behind or gives us a small present, it goes into the drawer. The spatula from Chef Louise sits next to a crystal star from the Reed family, a tiny clock from the Mendelsons, and a little gnome from Mason Hernandez. He told me the miniature ski gnome would bring me luck. I guess if there’s a ghost under the shed, then it’s not working.

  I slide the dough balls onto the tray and pop them into the oven. A trail of flour footprints follows me.

  “It’s not a squirrel or a fox or an ant hill. The meter only registers human ghosts.”

  “Says who?” I ask as I wipe away the flour that coats the kitchen tile.

  “Ghost hunters everywhere and the meter handbook.”

  “Then it must be true.” I laugh, but inside something pokes at my heart.

  “You don’t have to believe me, but I’m right. Remember, I was the one who told you about Jameson?”

  “Yes, but everyone knew about him.”

  “Everyone but you.”

  The first day I moved here from Boston, I met Elliot. He wasn’t living next door yet. Back then, that was still Jessica’s house. He walked over from his house on Kensington Lane and told me there’d been a murder. I remember it taking me a while to swallow. He must have noticed my face turning the pasty color of snow, when he added the killing was over a hundred years ago. He told me Jameson Gross was killed by his cousin Lloyd Hogan over some property. It was never proven, but th
e whole town knew it was Lloyd. Then Elliot told me there are only two Hogans still living. Mickey, who’s always in debt, and Reggie, a guy who owns a lot of the land and doesn’t give out candy on Halloween. I remember thinking that I wished we’d moved to Seattle.

  “But that was a hundred years ago and this is today,” I remind him.

  Thunder shouts through the closed windows.

  “That body may have been the first, but who knows how many restless spirits are floating around this town?”

  When I think of a birthday picnic, Weinstein’s Cemetery doesn’t scream perfect place. But for the last seven years, this is where we’ve celebrated Mom’s birthday—me, Dad, Gram, and Mom’s headstone.

  Today she would have been forty-four.

  It finally stopped raining and thundering and lightning. Like the weather gods knew it was her birthday. There are three salami sandwiches with yellow mustard and extra-sour pickles on bulky rolls, one big bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos, two cream sodas, and one root beer piled into Mom’s favorite picnic basket. The one with the blue-and-white-checked insides and woven handle that’s fraying. Mom used to say it’s frayed from love. I think it’s frayed because she and Dad bought it like a hundred years ago and it’s falling apart.

  The first time we came to Weinstein’s for Mom’s birthday, I thought it would be creepy. All those dead people eyeing my lunch. But it wasn’t. It was actually nice in a weird kind of way.

  “Francine, grab the other end of the blanket,” Dad says as we set up between Mom and Gramps. Gramps was Gram’s husband (Mom’s dad), Michael. I don’t remember much of him, except his shiny bald head and his fake teeth. I’d ask him to take them out and cross my heart that I wouldn’t scream. He’d do it, and then I’d shriek and run upstairs. Gram always says, “He was the best man who ever lived.” I don’t point out that she’s kind of insulting Dad because I think she just wants me to know Gramps was one of the good guys. Really all I needed to know was that he always had two helpings of Gram’s strawberry banana cream pie. For breakfast.

  Gram grabs a handful of chips and walks over to talk to Gramps. I hear her tell him how her best friend, Mabel, cheated again in the last gin tournament at Mills Senior Center and how Mrs. Rudabaker knit her another scarf, bringing the count to five—two blue, one red, one green, and one yellow. Then she laughs and tells him how she’s perfected her blueberry bread. I wish I remembered more about him than his shiny head and pink gums.

  I turn to Dad. “Did you bring the stuff?” I ask, sitting down next to a big red maple.

  He pulls out my sketch pad and a new pack of colored pencils.

  Another tradition. Each year I draw a picture while we’re picnicking. Dad scours the area for just the right stone, and before we leave, we put the drawing under the stone for Mom. I’m not sure how it works, but somehow I think she sees the picture I make for her.

  Mom lays next to Gertrude Levine, 1935–2014 Grandmother, mother, sister and friend, and across the row is Markus Martin, 1925–2005, Father, brother and son, and Beverly Simms, 1970–2007, Daughter, and Nathaniel “Nate” Johnson, 1993–2000, Son and brother. There’s a picture of him with a happy smile and missing teeth on his headstone. I wonder about all of them. Gertrude was seventy-nine, Markus eighty, Beverly thirty-seven like Mom, and little Nate was younger than me.

  “Do you think Mom and Beverly are friends?”

  “Maybe,” Dad says, trying to swallow a too big bite.

  “Do you think people like Mom and Gertrude and Markus and Beverly look after little ones like Nate?”

  He nods.

  “Do you think she’s doing anything other than taking care of dead kids?” I wonder about this a lot. While I’m down here trying to figure out life without her, and Dad’s cooking, fixing stuff, and taking care of Gram and me, what’s she doing?

  “Don’t know. She used to love to paint, so I like to think she’s spending a lot of time at her easel.”

  I finish a mouthful of pickle. “Should I pose in case she’s trying to paint me right now?”

  Dad laughs. I love his laugh. It fills the space between us.

  “I’m sure she’s watching over you. That’s just the way she was,” Gram chimes in.

  I do remember that. Not all the things we did, but the feeling of her. She was like hot chocolate with extra, extra marshmallows after the first snow.

  I use the brown and orange pencils to color the damp grass surrounding us.

  “Do you still miss her?” I ask.

  Gram nods.

  “Every day,” Dad says.

  “What kind of non-Mom-Dad stuff did you guys do?” It’s not that I don’t know what he’s going to say. It’s actually the same every time. But I don’t care. I like talking about her, and since she’s dead, there’s never any new stuff to ask about.

  “Your mom loved to hike. And pick flowers. So we hiked every weekend, and when you came along, we popped you into the baby sling and you hiked with us.” On Dad’s desk, there’s a photo of me as a little kid with my hiking boots and orange knit hat, and Mom in her matching cap. We’re both stretched out across a patch of wildflowers along the side of her favorite trail. Arms out. Legs out. Smiles out. Sometimes I stare at that picture, squeeze my eyes super tight, and try to remember that moment.

  But most of the time I just get dizzy.

  Dad’s still talking. “She was also a great rock climber.” He pauses and stares at her headstone. “I was terrible at it.” He laughs. “I mean, so bad.”

  I let the moment hang. He seems to be reminiscing more with her than me. I look at his face and wonder how many people one person gets in a lifetime. I mean, is there some sort of cap on heart space?

  “Scrabble,” Dad says, interrupting my thoughts just in time for me to catch the mustard that’s oozing out of my sandwich. “Mom was a master wordsmith.” He says I got that gene from her. He might be right. So far I’m winning our life tournament: 27–18 games.

  “And she loved puzzles,” Gram adds. “The more pieces, the better.”

  Dad says, “One time we had a fifteen-hundred-piece puzzle of two horses grazing on our kitchen table for three months. We ate on the couch until we finished the puzzle.”

  “We should get one,” I say.

  “You’re just like her, Francine.” He smiles. “She’d be so proud of you.”

  I wonder if she’d be proud of me if she knew that I just put Dad on the dating market.

  “Love being your dad.”

  “Love being your daughter.”

  We finish our picnic, and while I’m shading in the sky, I see Dad putting wildflowers on Mom’s headstone and hear him telling her all about me and the B&B and Gram. I consider spilling the beans with her about the ad, Sarah Rosen, and the maybe ghost, but reconsider when I look around and wonder if the middle of the cemetery surrounded by dead people is really the place to have that conversation.

  I decide against it and put the picture I drew under the pink and gray stone Dad found.

  “Love you, Mom.”

  On the way home, we stop and get a puzzle.

  After the picnic, I hop up to my Scrabble Room. The right wall is covered with a magnetic board and huge tiled letters. Right now they say Frankie, Winston, Lucy, Gram, and Dad. They don’t say Mom. My closet ceiling slants and is too short for most adults. I slide under my quilt away from the renewed storm and open the journal I keep tucked under my mattress. It’s eggplant purple and has a butterfly etched into the leather cover. Gram gave it to me when I turned ten. It was my 100 percent favorite gift.

  Dear Mom,

  Happy birthday. It’s weird that I miss you even though I was with you today. Well, sort of.

  Dad brought you wildflowers. Sometimes he pretends he doesn’t miss you huge, but then I see his sad slip in. Don’t worry, though, I have a plan to fix everything.

  Except the lightning. No idea how to fix that. I was glad it stopped long enough for Dad, Gram, and me to finish our salami sandwiches, but
now it’s back. It looks like shards of glass piercing my room. I wish it would stop. Truth is, I wish I could stop being afraid of it. Don’t get why I’m scared of it. I don’t even remember that night. Not the rain or the lightning or the smell of the shampoo Dad says you always used. You know, Dad still keeps a bottle of it in the shower.

  One more thing. Elliot says there’s a ghost in the shed. I don’t really believe in that stuff, but, just between us, I was wondering if it was you.

  Is it?

  Love you,

  Francine

  I read my Mom letter to Winston and Lucy. Winston nods like he’s listening. Lucy licks the wings of the dragonfly I drew across the page, catching any remaining crumbs from the Doritos I’ve been snacking on. I give up and grab my laptop to check email. Not my email, but the email I created for Brad A. Greene, aka Dad. His profile has already gotten a few hits. I read through the messages.

  Bradley,

  I assume that’s your real name. I much prefer that to Brad. I’d love to meet you. Tea and cucumber sandwiches sometime? I don’t draw unicorns, but I do know someone who can make us delightful scones.

  Sincerely,

  Abigail Lucinda Smith, III

  My brain bubble kicks on. Um, no. His name is Brad. No one, not even Mom, has ever called him Bradley. And a scone is not the same thing as a cookie. Ever.

  Brad,

  You sound great. Need a bit of time. I’m just getting over a serious relationship. Maybe we can meet next month. Or better yet, you could come with me to my support group. They serve punch.

  And donuts.

  Yours truly,

  Almost There

  Take all the time you need. No.

  Brad,

  You seem like a nice man and you’re quite handsome. I don’t live far from you. Would love to meet sometime soon.

  Best,

  Georgia

  Hmm. Maybe.

  Brad,

  I don’t hike mountains, but have been known to conquer a few laps around the mall. At full speed. If you like older women, I’m your gal. Full disclosure, I’m seventy, but young at heart.