by B. A. Frade
“So?” I pushed Connor to google faster.
“Got it,” he said, then took a deep breath. “Look at this!” Connor turned the screen so we could both see it. “It’s true, Nate!” He started to read the print under the video: “‘A middle school student from Southside Junior High disappeared Monday night at the Natural History Museum. Blake Turner, twelve, was on a field tr—’”
“Nate! Connor! There you are!” My mother stormed into the gift shop. She was carrying my duffel in one hand and Connor’s in the other. “What took so long?” She didn’t pause to let me answer. “You were supposed to meet me. Your classmates are ready to start the tour. Mr. Steinberg sent me to find the two of you.” She looked at the museum bag still on the counter. “Did you get what you needed?”
“Yes,” I said. “We were just looking up… something… and got distracted.”
“Well, you’d better hurry,” she said, grabbing the bag off the counter. She set my duffel on the ground and stuffed the museum bag inside it.
My duffel was black with a green stripe. Connor’s was the same but with a red stripe. We’d bought them together. She picked up my duffel, leaving Connor’s on the floor. “Let’s go, boys.” She pointed at Connor, then at his duffel. “You can carry yours,” she said with a grin. “What’s in there, anyway? It weighs a ton.”
“Pillow, sleeping bag, extra blanket, flashlight, heavy jacket and extra sweatshirt, second flashlight in case the first one doesn’t work, and extra batteries in case that’s the problem.” It sounded to me like Connor had brought most of his bedroom. We were going away for one night, and he’d packed for a week. He went on, “Battery-operated reading lamp, water bottles, and a few comic books.”
Yep, that was pretty much everything he owned.
Connor’s brothers had probably helped him pack. They’d have pushed him to bring more and more stuff, laughing as he tossed in random things he’d never need.
Hefting his bag over his shoulder, Connor held out his phone toward me.
“We have to watch the video and find out what happened,” he said, shaking the phone near my face. “And before your mom leaves, because once she’s gone, I can’t go with her.”
“We’ll watch it. Don’t worry. What website is it on?” I asked as we followed my mom out of the store.
“I’ll check.” Connor looked down at his phone, then realized he couldn’t read, walk, and carry his heavy bag at the same time. “Let’s put our stuff down first.”
My bet was that it wasn’t a real news site. His brothers had probably set it up. They would have known that Connor would find it. It was a bit unlike them to push a prank that far, but maybe they’d gotten frustrated that Connor refused to take the bait when they’d tried to scare him with the story in the first place.
We were just about to cross out of the shop doorway when the strange shop clerk called my name. “Nate?”
Had I told the woman my name? I didn’t remember.
I turned back toward her.
“You forgot your package.” She held out a museum bag.
“That’s not ours,” I said. “My mom took ours.” Mom was too far ahead to stop and confirm, but I was certain I’d seen her put the bag into my duffel. One hundred percent sure.
“This belongs to you,” the woman insisted. She held the bag out farther to me. Her eyes looked purple again.
“It can’t be.” I was going to refuse it again, but then Connor stepped forward.
“Your mom must not have taken the bag,” Connor said, reaching the register in a few long steps.
“I guess…” I said, watching Connor stuff the museum bag into his own duffel.
“I’ve got it,” he said.
That was actually a good sign. “Does that mean you’ll stay? Now that you’re the keeper of the candy?”
“Maybe.” Connor lifted his duffel. “I want to finish researching the ghost first. Then I’ll decide.”
“It’s fake,” I repeated for like the zillionth time. “You have to stay.”
“We’ll see,” Connor told me, holding his phone tightly, keeping the website open.
A cool wind seemed to blow from behind us as we were leaving the store. Chills ran down my spine. I looked back toward the counter, where the woman was standing, staring at me the way she had when I first saw her. She had a strange smile on her face. The corners of her mouth curled up, just a little, and her eyebrows pulled together.
I smiled back to be polite. Then I turned away and hurried off to catch up with my mom before she left the museum.
There was a big pile of suitcases and overnight bags by the museum’s registration desk. Connor tossed his bag on top and said, “Quick, Nate. We’ve got to watch the video.”
Mom was talking to Mr. Steinberg, so I knew we had another minute. Everyone was greeting each other and chatting about the sleepover. I waved at our friends Bella Samson and Emily Vu and gave them a one-finger signal that meant we’d come hang out in a minute.
We moved to the side of the desk and put our heads together over the small phone screen.
Connor put in the password to unlock his phone. “Wait. What? This doesn’t make sense,” he said, scrolling through his open apps and pages. “Where is it?”
“Where’s what?” I asked him.
“The story,” Connor said, frantically swiping. “The video is gone. And the news site doesn’t seem to have it anymore.”
“Maybe someone took it down,” I said, leaning in close over his shoulder.
“In the last three minutes?” Connor asked, still searching. He got very quiet. Then he said, “Google’s got nothing anymore.”
“That’s because it never happened,” I told Connor. “No story. No missing kid. You have to stay.”
“I… I…” He kept looking for the story for another second and then said, “But where did the website go?” He raised his eyes to mine. “It has to be here.” He kept searching, typing quickly and swiping his fingers over his phone’s screen. “There’s no way something was here one minute and gone the next. The Internet is forever.”
“I bet your brothers did something to your phone. It must have been a made-up news story that they somehow planted for you to find when you thought you were searching the Internet.”
Connor seemed to calm down a little bit as he considered what I said. “You really think so?” he asked.
I nodded. Because I did think so. Connor was right about one thing—Internet stories don’t just disappear like that.
“Class!” Mr. Steinberg’s voice echoed through the great hall. “It’s time to begin our sleepover adventure.” I looked over at our teacher. He was holding up a basket. “Place your phones in here. I’ll give them back to you tomorrow afternoon.”
Connor gave me a panicked expression. “I can’t give him my phone. If my brothers did do something to my phone, I’ll be able to find it. And if they didn’t, well, then… I need to figure out what happened to Blake!”
Mr. Steinberg came to stand in front of us. “Phones, please.”
I put mine in the basket and turned to Connor. “You’ve got to give it up,” I told him. He was gripping the phone tightly in his hands.
“We’re going to have fun. I promise. Just forget all about the stupid story.”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head, “I just don’t know.…”
“Come on, Connor,” Mr. Steinberg said. “You’re holding up the others.”
“But…” He looked to me for help.
“It was made-up. It never happened.” I told him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “C’mon, don’t let this scare you. Stay the night. It’ll be a blast.”
Very slowly, Connor let go of his phone and put it with the others. His face looked like it had the night I told him we were watching a comedy and it turned out to be a horror. It was my April Fools’ prank, but Connor didn’t think the joke was funny. And now he was giving me that same suspicious expression.
“Pinkie promise,�
� I said, holding up my little finger. “There are no ghosts in the museum.”
He took a deep breath and linked pinkies with me. We shook them.
“I’m trusting you, Nate,” Connor said.
“You’ll remember this night forever,” I told him, smiling hard. I was so glad he was staying.
We walked over to Bella and Emily.
“Where have you been?” Emily leaned in to ask me.
Before I could answer, Mr. Steinberg called for our attention.
“Say good-bye to your parents,” our teacher announced. “It’s time to begin.”
Chapter Three
The planetarium show was honestly the coolest thing I’d ever seen. It was all about black holes. There were these awesome shots showing the death of a star. It was a little violent, dramatic, and completely epic. I also realized that I didn’t know a lot about outer space. I was thinking I’d have to ask Mom to get me a book.
“Welcome to the dark side,” Connor said in a low, rumbling voice. That was what the narrator at the beginning of the star show sounded like.
“I love the dark side,” Emily said in a creepy voice as she walked between us. She had long hair that reached to the middle of her back. She pushed it forward to form a curtain in front of her face, and then she breathed through her hands to sound like Darth Vader.
Connor and I laughed.
We were walking out of the theater, down a long, narrow aisle between the seats. Emily’s family had membership passes to the museum, so she’d been there a ton of times. She’d seen the movie before too. “Did you feel it when the seats rumbled?” she asked us in her normal voice.
“That was the best part,” said Emily’s best friend, Bella, leaning over Emily’s shoulder. The aisle was so narrow that the three of us barely fit across it, so Bella walked slightly behind us. She put her hands on my back and gave a small shake, just like in the beginning of the show, when we’d “blasted off” into space.
We stepped into a wide hallway in front of the planetarium. Our whole class was gathered there.
A few kids had to go to the bathroom before the next activity. While we waited, Bella said, “The planetarium has convinced me. I’m going to outer space.” Her hair was as long as Emily’s but twisted into two tight braids. She tossed her braids back, saying proudly, “I’ll be the first black woman astronaut.”
“It’s a little late for that,” Emily told her. “Mae Jemison was the first.”
“Oh well,” Bella said with a shrug. “I’ll find something really important to be first at.”
“President,” Emily suggested. “You’d be a great president. I’d vote for you.”
“Thanks. But I think I’d prefer to be an explorer,” Bella said. “I could go under the sea or to the top of every mountain,” she said. “Find somewhere that no one has ever gone.”
“Send me a postcard,” Connor joked.
Bella and Connor were opposites. Where he was afraid of everything, Bella was afraid of nothing.
While they talked about places Bella might explore someday, I wondered how Emily knew about Mae Jemison. I mean, she loved science and history, but so did I—and I’d never heard of Mae Jemison before.
“How’d you know about the first African American woman astronaut?” I asked her.
“Turn around,” Emily said with a wink and a grin.
I rotated on a heel. Behind me was a picture of Mae Jemison and a little plaque that told about her.
“That’s been here for years,” Emily said, reminding me that she often came to the museum.
The seventh graders all came back from the bathroom break, and the museum tour officially began.
“This is a scavenger hunt,” Mr. Steinberg said, holding up pencils and sheets of paper. “You can go in small groups of three or four. You must stick together. And”—he pointed to a clock on the wall—“meet up by four o’clock, for snacks before our night health program.”
A few kids clapped their hands. Most of us were looking forward to the health program. It was all about how the body works.
We got to choose our own groups, so mine included me, Connor, Bella, and Emily. We went to get the scavenger hunt paper from Mr. Steinberg.
“Have fun,” he told us. “But beware of the bears.” Our teacher pushed up his glasses and chuckled at his own joke.
“Everyone’s a comedian these days,” Connor said to me in a soft voice. “Mr. Steinberg sees them as stuffed bears in a permanent exhibit. He’s probably interested in their habitat and boring stuff like that. But not me. When I see those bears, all I’m gonna do is wonder if they know anything about a kid named Blake.”
“The kid never existed,” I said. I’d been hoping that Connor had forgotten all about Blake, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. I looked down at the scavenger hunt list. The first question was “When do bears go into their dens to hibernate?” I was pretty sure I knew the answer, but going to the bear exhibit would be helpful.
“We get to go to the bears first,” I told Connor. “We can ask them about Blake when we see them.”
He wasn’t amused.
“Want to take a shortcut?” Emily asked us.
The faster we finished the scavenger hunt, the more time we’d have to explore the museum on our own, so I said, “Sounds good. But could we swing by the room where our bags are?” I wanted my own map of the museum and the bear book I just bought. There were other maps available around the museum, but I wanted mine. I’d made notes on it of specific exhibits I wanted to see and some questions I had about them.
We made a quick stop by the luggage area. I went to grab my bag when Connor pulled his out instead.
“I took the bag, remember?” he said, pulling the museum shopping bag out of his duffel. “Let’s just take the bear book,” Connor continued. He was kneeling in front of his bag. “We can eat the candy at snack break.”
“What candy?” Bella asked, excited. “My mom wouldn’t let me bring any food.”
“We bought a few things at the gift shop to share,” Connor explained. He reached into the gift bag. “We got…” He pulled back his empty hand. Then Connor turned the bag so that he could look inside. “The candy isn’t here,” he said, looking up at me.
“Bummer,” Emily said with a frown. “Do you think someone stole it?”
That was also my first thought. But no one in our class would steal from another student. No way. “Hang on,” I bent down next to Connor, who was still hunched over his duffel. “It has to be there. Maybe the candy fell out of the bag?”
Connor shook his head. “No candy. And no bear book either.” He pulled out what was in the gift shop bag.
“Whoa! It’s that journal!” I exclaimed, recognizing the leather-bound book that the shop woman had carried out of the storage room. “She must have given us the wrong bag!”
I quickly went to get my own duffel. I’d been right all along: After unzipping it, I found the other museum store bag. “Here’s our candy.” I showed the girls the gummies and licorice. “And here’s my book on Ursus arctos.”
Connor looked as confused as I felt.
I kept the bear book and put the candy away, then sat down on the ground next to him. “Let me see the journal,” I told Connor.
“I think we need to return it,” Connor said, holding the book away from me. He sounded really nervous. “This isn’t right, Nate. I can feel it.”
“It’s fine,” I told him. I reached out and pried the journal from his fingers. “We can return it in a few minutes.” I’d wanted a closer look when I’d seen it in the store. Now was my chance.
“Hey, Em,” I said, glancing up at the girls. “Can we spare an extra five minutes? Will we still finish the scavenger hunt in time?”
“I know this museum like my own house,” she said. “I’ll get us anywhere, no problem.” She sat down next to me on the floor. Bella joined us. We were in a circle around the old journal.
“What’s that?” Bella asked me and Connor
. She reached out and ran a finger over the rough brown leather. “There are these strange triangles etched in the leather,” she noted, pressing into the gold lines that made each triangle. Bella pulled back her hand, saying, “I’ve never seen anything like this before. Where’d it come from?”
“No clue,” I said. “The woman at the museum store gave it to us by accident.”
“Or on purpose,” Connor said, his voice in a near whisper. “Do you think my brothers set this up too?”
I quickly caught Bella and Emily up on the legend of Blake Turner.
“I never heard of anyone disappearing in the museum,” Emily assured Connor. “And I’d know.”
“Weird things are happening,” Connor said, his voice trembling. “And I don’t like it.”
“It’s just a normal journal,” I told him. “Look.” I flipped open the small brass latch on the cover and opened to the first page. “And it’s blank.”
The paper was thick and slightly yellowed with some stains and strange marks, but other than that, there were no words on the pages. I scanned through the first third of the book. Nothing. I went back to the first page and sighed.
“Boring,” I complained. “For such a cool cover, I expected there to be something cool inside.” I was about to close the cover and suggest we run it over to the museum store when, suddenly, Emily gasped.
While I examined the book, she’d been sitting next to me, twirling the pencil we’d gotten for the scavenger hunt. When I looked over at her now, she’d stopped twirling the pencil and was using it to point at the journal instead.
I followed her eyes back to the open page.
There was writing now.
It said:
Tales from the Scaremaster
Then, under that:
You think I’m boring?
Let me entertain you.
“Stop messing around, Nate,” Connor said, a warning in his voice. “It’s not funny.”
“I didn’t write that,” I told him. “I swear.”
“But there wasn’t anything on the paper before.” Connor scooted away from me and the book.
