I wasn’t sure if I actually said the words or just thought them—but I felt Sunny move forward. And I moved forward with her. We clung to each other so tightly that we were basically one person, half-crawling toward the front door. I didn’t see Alice’s stuff before I stumbled over it. I grabbed her leg braces, and Sunny picked up her crutches. We turned around, and Sunny bumped Alice’s crutches into the wall. The loud thump made us freeze in place. I peeked back toward the closet door.
Was it a tiny bit open?
It was a tiny bit open!
My heart started banging in my chest.
There are no such things as ghosts.
My heart thumped away.
There is no such thing as little men that live under couches that grab your feet and pull you under.
My heart was obviously not listening to me at all.
Only mice live in attics . . . or in closets.
I looked closer into the darkness of the closet. I thought I saw the shining of two eyes.
“Sunny,” I whispered.
“I hear it,” she said.
“What? What do you hear?” I whisper-screeched.
“Your heart,” she said. “It’s tachycardic. That means that it’s beating really fast. But don’t worry, you can’t explode your heart. It can actually beat up to two hundred times a minute for a long time and still be fine.”
My heart felt like it was now beating five hundred times a minute, and I was sure that it would explode.
“Sunny,” I said.
“What?”
“I think the ghost is in the coat closet.”
I don’t know who leaped first, but we were both back on the couch with Alice’s stuff in less time than it took Junchao and Alice to yell when we crashed into them.
The four of us sat clinging to each other with Alice’s braces and crutches jabbing each of us in different places. All I could think was that we had made it! Sunny and I were back on the couch alive!
Although I totally wished I hadn’t thrown the blanket away.
So You Think You Have a Ghost?
Alice managed to get her braces on even with the three of us squished up next to her. I kept my eyes locked on the closet door. I couldn’t totally tell, but it looked like it had opened just a tiny bit more.
We had to get to the kitchen.
“Ready?” I asked. The only response I got was Junchao’s nails digging into my arm. “Maybe we should line up and—”
Before I could finish, Sunny hopped from the couch and took off.
Junchao, Alice, and I didn’t even blink—we just ran—in a big ball of arms and legs and the metal of Alice’s crutches. It was only about twenty feet to the kitchen, but I was panting like a dog stuck in a hot car when I got there. So were Alice and Junchao.
“Sunny!” I hissed, stopping in the center of our kitchen to breathe some more. “You could have waited.”
“Sorry, I was scared,” she said, turning her back to rummage around in the kitchen drawer for the flashlight.
“You don’t sound scared.”
She turned around with the flashlight on and shined it right in our eyes.
Junchao, Alice, and I moaned and ducked.
“Give that to me,” I said, taking it from her.
I scanned the kitchen with the light. Everything looked normal. The big spaghetti pot was on the back burner of the stove, where my mom liked to keep it. The salt and pepper shakers with the big S and big P sat on the kitchen counter next to the cutting board. The yellow clock ticked on the wall over the sink. “Boy, that clock sounds loud, doesn’t it?” I whispered.
“My grandmother says that if a clock stops while you’re in the room it means that you’re going to die,” Alice said.
“That’s called predictive superstition,” Sunny said. “When you believe that an event, like a clock stopping, will cause something to happen in the future.”
“Would all four of us die?” asked Junchao. “Or does the clock pick one of us?”
“We have the flashlight now,” I said, changing the subject. “Let’s go to Sunny’s room for supplies and my mom’s iPad. And,” I said, “can we do it without freaking out, please? We have to keep it together if we’re going to get rid of this ghost. I’m going to go first. Sunny will come next. Alice will follow Sunny. And Junchao will come after Alice.”
“Why do I have to go last?” Junchao whined.
“Because you are the bravest,” I said.
Junchao gave her famous ho-ho-ho laugh. It’s the first time she did that since we discovered we had a ghost. It made me feel like maybe we could fix this . . . if we stuck together.
We lined up in our order and headed out of the kitchen and down the hall toward Sunny’s room. It was the first door on the left down the hall, so we didn’t have far to walk. Although it was far enough for Sunny to practically pull my pajama pants off me. I had to hold them up with one hand and shine the white beam of light with the other.
For one second, I thought about going straight down the hall into my mother’s room, where I knew Mrs. Song was sleeping. She would know what to do about the ghost in our front hall closet. Mrs. Song knew a lot about stuff that you wouldn’t think she knew. Like she knew how to play the flute. And she knew all about starfish.
But I couldn’t do it to Alice. She was right. Her parents would never let her go to another sleepover again.
It was just one ghost.
We could get rid of one ghost.
And maybe we were wrong to be scared of it. Maybe it was one of those nice ghosts, you know, the kind that are just stuck here and really want to move on. Maybe it needed our help. Maybe we would help it and then we’d actually be sad when it left. Maybe it would even tell us some great secret, like where a treasure was hidden, or . . .
There was a crashing sound like someone banging cymbals together.
Our orderly little line scattered as if we were ants whose rock had just been turned over. We piled into Sunny’s room. Junchao and I dragged Alice under her armpits straight from the door to Sunny’s bed—with all of us yanking our bare feet up and away from the little men underneath it.
Alice grabbed Sunny’s pillows and piled them up in front of us like a giant fluffy wall. When I saw what she was doing, I scooped up Sunny’s stuffed animals and made them part of the wall too. A bunch of stuffing between us and the ghost was better than not having a bunch of stuffing between us and the ghost.
Once we were done, the four of us peered out over the fluffy barricade at Sunny’s open door . . . waiting. Would the ghost walk right in or float in like you see on TV? Would it be carrying cymbals or was it able to make different sounds using only its ghost mind?
There was a plunk, plunk, plunk sound at the window, followed by lots more plunks. It was raining. “Maybe that crash was just thunder,” I said.
A giant flash of lightning lit up the room . . . followed by the biggest clap of thunder I’d ever heard.
“Why is there a storm?” Junchao moaned.
“Because strong rising warm air currents called updrafts are meeting with cooler downdrafts,” said Sunny.
“I know that,” said Junchao. “But why now? Don’t you think it’s weird?”
“There are an estimated forty-four thousand thunderstorms that occur around the Earth every day,” Sunny added. “So this is not much of a coincidence.”
“My grandmother says that spirits take energy from things around them,” Alice said. “And a storm has electricity in it, right, Sunny? And that’s energy.”
I looked over at my little sister. Lightning lit up her face. Thunder rumbled. It was so loud that it seemed to shake the room. But maybe it was just me that was shaking.
“Yes, thunderstorms have electricity in them. And electricity is energy.”
“So the ghost is getting lots of energy from this storm,” Alice whispered.
Junchao squished down deeper between the wall and the pillows. “I don’t like the idea of an energetic ghost.�
�
Another bolt of lightning flashed. All four of us held on to one another as we waited for the crash of the thunder. We still jumped when it hit.
“Where is the iPad, Sunny?”
“Over on my desk,” she said.
Sunny’s desk was pushed up under the window at the end of her bed. I squinted over at it in the dark. It was overflowing with papers, wires, and metal junk, and there were a million jars and glass beakers filled with weird stuff floating in them.
“Go get it,” I said.
“Not me,” she squealed.
“You weren’t scared when you ran into the kitchen.”
“I was too. That’s why I ran.”
My heart fell. I didn’t want to have to go over there.
I shined the light around her desk.
We screamed! There in my beam of light was the ghost.
Or . . . maybe not the ghost . . . but something absolutely horrible.
“That’s just Allan,” Sunny said. “He’s an anatomical model.”
“He’s a skeleton!” Junchao shouted. She was halfway under the pillow wall and shaking as if she were wearing a wet bathing suit at the North Pole.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “It’s just some of Sunny’s science junk.” But I felt a little like my neck was going to let my head roll right off of it. Being scared was a lot of work.
“Listen, Sunny,” I said. “Since you’re the one who is best friends with the skeleton . . .”
“Allan,” she said.
“You really are a mad scientist,” I growled.
“Mad sounds too emotional,” Sunny said, smiling like I’d just complimented her. “I would say that I’m a different kind of sane.”
“Well then, take your different kind of sane self over to your desk and get the iPad.”
“What about the little men under the bed?” she whined.
Junchao gave a howl and burrowed even deeper under our pillow wall. She was practically part of the wall now. “Did you see the little men?” Her voice was muffled by Sunny’s brown teddy bear. “Do you think they can climb up to the top of the bed?”
“No one saw any little men,” I said. “And no, they cannot climb.” But I quickly sucked in a big breath and held it as I glanced down at Sunny’s pink comforter—my heart thumping as I waited to see if teeny monster guys were clinging to the ruffles and making their way up to us.
Nothing moved.
I let out all the air in me in one long breath.
Then I glared at Alice.
She shrugged. “It was my grandmother, not me,” she whispered.
“How about I shine the light and you run go get the iPad,” Sunny said.
I tried to think of a way out of this, but only for a second because I knew I was going to have to go get it.
I scanned the room with the flashlight, making sure to recheck the edge of the bed for any monster men peering up at me. No little eyes. I kept the light away from Sunny’s bony little best friend. Fortunately, I could see my mom’s iPad sitting on top of one of Sunny’s books on the desk toward the back. Unfortunately, I could also see all of Sunny’s creepy science stuff.
“What is that floating in the pickle jar next to the iPad?” I asked.
“That’s a specimen jar, not a pickle jar,” said Sunny.
“What is the thing in the specimen jar,” I demanded.
Junchao crawled out from under the pillows and peeked over at the desk. “Oh my gosh!” she shouted. “It’s a human brain.”
All three of us gasped.
“Whose brain is it?” Alice asked.
“Don’t tell us!” I said. “We don’t need to know.”
Maybe my little sister was really and truly mad. Maybe she was doing horrible things to more people than just me. Maybe she was going to do that to my brain one day!
I looked down at Sunny. She smiled back at me. I shivered.
“It’s not a human brain.” She giggled.
I felt myself relax. Of course it wasn’t a human brain. It was probably just a piece of floating clay made to look like a brain. Maybe it even doubled as a pencil sharpener. My mom had a statue of a little puppy on her desk that was also a pencil sharpener. She’d always wanted a dog, but Sunny is allergic to their hair.
“It’s a cow’s stomach,” Sunny said. “The butcher at the ShopRite saved it for me.”
“Yuck!” Alice said.
“Does Mommy you know you have that?” I demanded.
“She asked the butcher for me,” she said.
“That is disgusting, Sunny,” I said.
“Well, I’m not the one who eats cows, Masha. That would be you.” She chuckled.
“You just stuff their stomachs in jars!”
Before Sunny could say anything, we heard them.
CLOMP. CLOMP. CLOMP.
They sounded closer than they ever had before.
We all dropped down behind the pillow wall.
I held my head stiff and still so I could hear as well as possible. The rain beat against the window, but the thunder and lightning had quieted down. I didn’t hear the ghost. Was it floating right outside in the hall? Was it thinking about coming in?
Wooo. Wooo. Wooooo.
We all jumped, clanking our heads together as we dove under the pillows.
“We need that iPad,” Sunny whispered.
She was right. She was always right.
I took a big breath and sat up. Alice and Sunny did too. Junchao didn’t.
I looked around the room with the flashlight. Nothing. I pointed the light back on Sunny’s desk, trying not to look too closely at the cow guts in the jar or the stupid skeleton. And then I told myself to move . . . but I didn’t.
“What are you doing?” Alice said.
“Getting ready.”
“You know that I’d do it if I could. Right, Masha?” she said.
I looked over at my friend. She gave me that curvy smile that I love. “I know you would.” Alice made me want to be brave. She always did.
“You know that I can’t do it. Right, Masha?” Junchao whimpered from under the pillow.
“You’re always my gui mi, no matter what you can or can’t do,” I told her.
I heard a muffled “ho-ho-ho” coming from under the pillow.
When Sunny glued plastic flowers to my head and I had to shave all my hair off and no one would talk to me at school, Junchao told me I looked cool. She was super brave when it came to standing up to people, just not ghosts. But people can sometimes be scarier than ghosts.
I breathed.
And then I jumped.
I barely felt Sunny’s rug under my bare feet before I was at the desk. I reached across it.
Lightning blinded me.
I knocked over a beaker.
“Watch out! That’s my density experiment!” Sunny shout-whispered, making me lose my balance.
I reached out to break my fall. I grabbed a hold of something thin and smooth . . . and not at all strong enough to stop me from falling. I think it was a rib. Whatever it was, it cracked right off in my hand and I landed in a tangled heap on top of Sunny’s skeleton.
“ALLAN!”
My pajamas got hooked onto a couple of bony fingers. I tried to get away, but he held on to me tightly.
Thunder shook the room.
I ripped the bones from my pants and threw that thing about ten feet. It sounded like a thousand pots falling when it hit the wall.
I was so out of there.
I leaped off the ground as if it were on fire, swiped the iPad off the desk, and swiveled around toward the bed just in time for the flashlight to go out.
“Help!”
I hopped across the room like a crazy rabbit, lifting my feet up high so each of them was spending as little time as possible on the floor. Two steps from safety, something touched my toe. It felt just like a tiny hand!
I flung myself at the bed, ramming into Alice.
She hugged me tight.
I was safe
. . . I was safe . . . I was safe.
My heart thudded in my ears.
I was safe . . . I was safe . . . I was safe.
I never wanted her to let me go—except that I did—because she was hugging me so hard that I was sure she would crack my mom’s iPad, and I really needed her to let go of my lungs so I could breathe.
“Allan,” Sunny moaned.
“The battery died!” I howled as soon as I had enough air in my lungs so I wouldn’t die.
“Highly unlikely,” Sunny whispered.
I would have strangled her, but my arms felt like wet noodles after being almost eaten by the little men. “Just find out how to get rid of the ghost,” I told her, handing her the iPad.
She turned it on and began to search. “Okay,” she said, her face lit up by the glow of the screen. “This looks like a good site. It’s called UnwantedGhost dot com.”
“That sounds perfect,” Alice said.
Junchao unburied herself from our wall of pillows and stuffed animals.
Sunny read, “‘So you think you have a ghost? The first thing you will want to do is keep from jumping to conclusions. You must make sure that you have a real ghost. Many times there can be a logical explanation for strange occurrences in your home. Just because a door rattles or you hear a bang in the basement is not proof that you have a ghost in your house.’”
“It sounds reasonable,” Junchao said.
I agreed. It did sound reasonable. Maybe we were jumping to conclusions. Had I really seen a ghost in the closet? Did the door really open up wider after Sunny and I got back to the couch? Could it just be Mrs. Song walking around in her sleep and snoring in a strange, ghost-howling way? This whole thing was probably a mistake.
Sunny continued, “‘Perhaps you are feeling drafts. Many old homes don’t have enough insulation and may even have cracks in their walls where air is getting in. Just by fixing these cracks, you may notice that the drafts are gone and that the door that seemed to open or close all on its own has stopped.’”
I bet this was it! A draft opened the front hall closet. It wasn’t a ghost. I could feel Alice and Junchao relaxing a little too as we listened to Sunny.
“‘If lights in your home turn on and off, you should have your electrical system checked right away. It is most likely faulty or damaged wiring and not a ghost.’”
Sunny Sweet Is So Not Scary Page 3
