by Betsy Uhrig
“Here’s the problem, though,” said Javier after a moment of filming me from behind as I worked.
“What problem?” I said, having lost the thread of the conversation.
“What if, when we scared the neat, coffee-drinking trespasser, we didn’t scare them all the way out of the house? What if we only scared them into, like, a closet?” He pointed toward the pair of closed doors next to the fridge. One was probably the door to the basement, the other maybe a pantry or a broom closet. All good hiding places.
And now the memory of the Noise came back to us. Along with the feeling that a Presence could be lurking very nearby.
“We should get out of here,” I said.
“Agreed,” said Javier.
13
SO WE LEFT THE OLD WEINTRAUB PLACE in a hurry. And we didn’t stop hurrying until we were on Javier’s porch again. We reviewed the recording, from my running up the front steps, all carefree and optimistic, to the overlong footage of my butt as I dried the kitchen floor.
“Will this do?” said Javier.
“I think it will,” I said. “Once you delete that last section.”
“As if,” my friend said quietly.
It wasn’t until I was home that I remembered Caroline’s book. Which was still sitting on the kitchen table in the Old Weintraub Place. All my ideas about making the story interesting. All my sensory details.
Crud. I was going to have to go back there and get it. But not today. First I would give the trespasser / cleaning person / ghost of Mr. Weintraub time to clear out. And even I was tired of running back and forth to Javier’s neighborhood.
I took a shower, after carefully checking the shower curtain, of course. Then I killed the time until dinner trying to get past Chin Level on my current favorite game, Pimple Patrol.
* * *
Javier and I went back to the Old Weintraub Place on Sunday afternoon. He wasn’t thrilled by the idea, but he went anyway, which was the kind of thing that made him a good friend.
I used the key to open the front door again, and without pausing for any sensory details or bug attacks, we hurried into the kitchen, where we found the book on the table. There was no coffee this time—everything was exactly as we’d left it.
Or so we thought until we got back to Javier’s house.
First of all, and hard to miss: There was a brown ring on the first page of the book. The type of ring that would result if someone had set a mug of coffee down on it. Only, I hadn’t. And neither had Javier. Which meant that someone—or something—had put a cup of coffee down on the stack of paper between our visits yesterday and today.
“Are you sure it wasn’t there before?” Javier asked.
“I don’t drink coffee,” I said.
“Probably a good thing,” said Javier. “You’re kind of the nervous type already.”
“I am not nervous,” I said. “Unless there’s good reason. I’m nervous when any halfway intelligent person would be nervous.”
“Maybe your aunt did it before she even gave it to you,” Javier suggested.
“She didn’t,” I said. “Look—see where I wrote ‘Why a frog?’ on the first page?”
“Yes. And it’s a good question.”
I nodded. “And see how it’s a little smeared from the coffee?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, that couldn’t have happened if I had written my note after the coffee cup was placed on the paper. It could only have happened if someone—or something—put the coffee cup down on top of my writing.”
“So,” said Javier, “forensically speaking, we have to conclude that someone—or something—was in the house after we were. Or was still in the house when we left. And that they had another cup of coffee and set it on this particular piece of paper.”
“Forensically speaking, yes.”
14
“I DON’T THINK THINGS DRINK COFFEE,” said Javier after a moment’s thought. “I’m pretty sure we can narrow it down to someone.”
“I agree,” I said. I’d started to thumb through the pages. “Because things don’t tend to write suggestions in the margins of books either, do they?”
I handed Javier page 2 of Caroline’s book, where I’d written the stuff about the creepiness and the Presence and where was Grampa?
There was my writing, in the Red Pen of Ideas for Improvement. But there was more writing underneath it. A lot more. In black ink.
Javier read aloud what the black ink said: “ ‘What about a time vortex? Grampa could have been imprisoned in a time vortex by a powerful warlock. That would explain why the house looks as if it has been empty for a while.’ ” He looked up from the page. “A time vortex. That’s a cool idea.”
“Right? Keep going.”
“ ‘Perhaps Grampa himself is a warlock and has lost a battle with a more powerful (and evil) foe.’ ”
“Foes always work,” I said. “Everyone likes a powerful foe in a book. Especially an evil one.”
“They do,” Javier agreed. Then he read, “ ‘Gerald, naturally, will have to rescue his grandfather from the evil warlock’s vortex.’ ”
Which was sort of like my storm drain idea, only ten times better.
“So then what happens?” Javier asked, flipping quickly through the pages. “How does it end?”
“They get a prize for biggest zucchini at the county fair,” I said.
“No way.”
But now that he’d come to the end, Javier saw that it was true. The Black Ink of Excitement didn’t go past the second page. Gerald and Grampa still wound up with just a big zucchini for their troubles.
“That’s disappointing,” said Javier.
“No kidding. But whoever wrote this has some good ideas. If Caroline goes for these suggestions, maybe she can put in the rescue herself, and that would change the ending.”
“What if Grampa doesn’t grow vegetables in his garden?” said Javier after a moment. “What if he grows other, way more interesting plants? Magic plants. Because he’s a powerful warlock.”
“That makes sense,” I said. “What self-respecting warlock would grow vegetables? Here.” I handed him a pen from his desk. “Write that down.”
He did. Then he looked up. “This is good stuff,” he said.
I nodded.
“One thing, though,” said Javier.
“Yeah?”
“No way is Gerald a frog.”
15
“YOU HAVE TO SALT THE WATER,” I reminded my mother that night. “It’s your only chance to season the pasta.”
“Stop hovering,” she said. “You’re in charge of dressing, remember?”
I backed off, but not before tossing a palmful of salt into the pot on the stove. Three summers ago, when some child-care plans fell through, I’d spent a lot of time with my grandma Sally. She didn’t cook, but she was a huge fan of cooking shows. I learned many things that summer, number one among them the importance of salt.
“I saw that!” my mother snapped. “Caroline and Lu are here—go let them in.”
Caroline and Lulu were having dinner with us. Caroline came inside carrying a fresh stack of paper and looking pleased with herself. Lulu, on the other hand, looked a little off. She said being pregnant was making her queasy.
Caroline and my mother took their places side by side at the kitchen counter and started chopping salad ingredients—both using the same poor knife technique. They were lucky they still had twenty whole fingers between them.
I went back to work on my famous lime vinaigrette.
Lulu came into the kitchen as I was emulsifying—a crucial, sometimes tricky step in making dressing where you combine the oil and the acid (in this case lime). “Alex!” she said. “Can I see you for a minute?”
I finished whisking first—you can’t rush the emulsification process, as any cooking-show veteran knows—and nodded.
Lulu grabbed my upper arm and pulled me into the living room. “Thank you for helping Caroline with her b
ook,” she said when we were alone. “It means so much to her. I think she was more freaked out by what the agent said than she let on. I was starting to be sorry I’d gotten involved.”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s kind of fun.”
“She was really inspired by your suggestions,” Lulu said. “She stayed up late rewriting the whole first scene to make it more—ominous? That was your idea, wasn’t it?”
“I was thinking creepy, with some danger. Danger in a book is like salt in food,” I went on like I knew what I was talking about. “You need to add some to make it interesting.”
“Right. Although can we not talk about food?” Lulu begged. “I think that’s what she’s done. She won’t show it to me, though. She wants to get your approval first.”
I was weirdly pleased to hear that.
“Anyway, I want you to know that I think you’re a great nephew and you’re going to make a great cousin!” Lulu pulled me into a hug, which I didn’t love. “And now if you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I’m going to sit outside on the porch where the smell of food can’t reach me.”
And she practically ran out the front door.
16
THE NEXT PERSON TO GRAB ME by the arm was Caroline. Why were the aunts so grabby this evening? I hoped it wasn’t turning into a trend—my arm was going to get all stretched out and not match the other one.
“Alex,” she said, dragging me toward the sofa. “I’m so excited about the new beginning for the book.”
“Great,” I said as she sat and yanked me down next to her. I took my arm back and kept it close by my side.
She ran her hands through her hair, pulled it into a ponytail, then let it go again. “The only thing is…,” she began. Ponytail, unponytail. “Now that I have the creepy beginning and the Presence with the capital P and the missing grampa…”
Ponytail, swirling around into a bun, unbun: She was going to be bald by the time this conversation was over. On the plus side, my arm was safe.
“I know,” I said. “Where do you go from there? I’ve given that some thought.”
“You have?”
“I have notes. I’ll go get them.”
“Um, okay, sure.”
I ran upstairs and came back with my copy of the book.
She left her hair and my arm alone while she read the notes on the first pages.
“Alex, these sensory details are incredible!” she said. “The cobwebs, the creaky floors… You have quite an imagination.”
I smiled modestly.
“It’s funny how your handwriting changes when you change pens,” she said.
I was caught off guard by this. She thought all the ideas written on the pages were mine, naturally. Who else’s would they be? I couldn’t tell her they included major contributions from a coffee-drinking ghost or maybe cleaning person. That was way too complicated. “Huh?” I managed.
Fortunately, she didn’t pursue it. She was busy reading. “A vortex and a warlock… That’s definitely a new direction. But…” She reached toward her hair and then changed her mind. “I just don’t know if it’s my style.” She studied me for longer than was comfortable. Finally, she said, “Will kids your age go for a supernatural twist like that?”
“Sure,” I said. Did she not watch TV?
“That would solve the problem of the missing grampa. And making him a warlock in his own right—I could do that.” She kept reading. Then she said, “I love this about Grampa growing magical plants…. What if, instead of a warlock—because I’m not sure you can even have a good warlock—we make him a… potion master? He grows the magical plants to use in his potions. Would that work?”
“Sure,” I said. “And Gerald can rescue Grampa, right? From the evil warlock and the vortex? After a battle of some kind?”
“Gerald has to save Grampa,” Caroline said. “That’s what happened in the original too.”
Was it? I nodded politely.
“But I don’t know about an actual battle. I don’t want it to be too violent. Won’t that scare kids?”
She definitely didn’t watch TV. Or see any movies either.
“I’m pretty sure it won’t,” I said. “But you could put in some other nonbattle stuff for him to do—you know…”
“Trials!” said Caroline. “Tests of intelligence and character.”
“Yeah,” I said. Although I’d been thinking more along the lines of cool adventures and heroic deeds. I hoped she wasn’t going to assign math problems and community service to poor Gerald.
She grinned at me. “Oh, and Alex?” she said.
“Yeah?”
Her shiny pink fingernail tapped the first page of the book and my original note about “Why a frog?”
“Already taken care of,” she said. “Gerald is no longer a frog.”
That was a relief.
“And the zucchini?” I had to ask, bracing myself.
“Compost,” said Caroline.
17
ON MONDAY AT SCHOOL, JAVIER AND I described our weekend to Marta over lunch. Marta had broken her elbow trying to do a handstand on her skateboard Saturday, and her arm was in a sling. At least the purple sling matched the headband she was wearing to hide her bang stubble.
Let’s just say this wasn’t Marta’s first broken bone and it wouldn’t be her last. Marta was the director of Javier’s video series of stupid stunts. She was also the star. Technically, she wasn’t allowed to spend time with us due to some past filming accidents and a strict mother, but Marta didn’t live her life based on technicalities. And, besides, she couldn’t get hurt at lunch. We hoped.
“I can’t believe you guys broke-and-entered without me,” she complained.
“We didn’t break,” I objected. “We only entered. With a key. And you were grounded.”
“I would have come in a heartbeat and you know it,” she said. “So do you think the house is really haunted?”
“Maybe,” I said, just as Javier was saying, “Of course not.”
“We think it was a cleaning person who likes coffee,” I admitted.
“And literary criticism,” said Javier, without looking up from carefully removing the corn kernels from his vegetarian chili and placing them in neat rows on a napkin.
“They weren’t criticizing, they were making suggestions,” I said.
“Same thing,” said Javier. “If it was already perfect, no suggestions would be necessary.”
“True,” said Marta, her mouth full of Javier’s rejected corn. “My mom ish conshtantly making shuggestions about my choishes”—here she swallowed, thank goodness—“and don’t think for a second that she isn’t criticizing.”
We’d met Marta’s mom. She was definitely criticizing.
“So we have to go explore the haunted house, right?” said Marta. “Preferably at night.”
“We aren’t going back,” I said, just as Javier was saying, “Not at night.”
Marta rolled her eyes long and hard. Neither of these responses was what she’d been looking for. She’d been looking for something like, Of course we’re going back! At the stroke of midnight! And to make it extra fun, we won’t bring our phones or even a flashlight!
“I’m going with you next time,” she said. “I’ll put together a kit of ghost-hunting stuff.”
“Don’t you mean cleaning-person-hunting stuff?” said Javier. “You know, maybe a couple sponges we can set out as lures?”
“You’re hilarious,” said Marta. “You’re also a complete dud.”
“So did your aunt take all the suggestions?” Javier asked me. “The ones in the margins? What about my magic-plants idea?”
“She was totally excited about all of it,” I said. “She’s going to use the warlock and the vortex and the magic plants and send me a new version as soon as she’s done.”
“What about the frog thing?”
“Taken care of.”
“Zucchini?”
“Zilch.”
“Well, okay, then.”
18
CAROLINE CAME THROUGH—SHE MUST have stayed up all night again writing—and there was a new version of Gerald Visits Grampa (we were going to have to make some “suggestions” about that title) in my e-mail that afternoon. It was a lot shorter than it had been before, because she’d lopped off the middle and the end. I printed out a paper version for myself and e-mailed copies to Javier and Marta, who wanted to read it too.
Marta texted me before I’d even started reading the new version.
We can do this, she wrote.
I texted back the classic question mark.
(I’m going to write the texts down here as if we were saying them, because writing them the way we texted is too complicated. Marta used at least six different emojis for “dud” alone, depending on her mood.)
The roof. We can get him down.
Gimme a sec, I texted.
I read quickly. Caroline had done a good job—this was way less boring than the original version. Grampa’s house was creepy, and there were some hints at danger, the feeling of a Presence. And the sensory detail was really working. All this I had expected. But then my aunt surprised me.
When Gerald couldn’t find Grampa anywhere, he started searching the house. And as he did, the house starting disappearing. Room by room, it vanished, leaving a misty void. And who doesn’t enjoy a misty void in a book? No one, that’s who.
Gerald had to scramble to get away from the void, and he ended up on the second floor, climbing out a window and onto a porch roof. Where he was stuck, because the whole inside of the house was now gone, though the outside was mysteriously intact.
That’s where it ended. The last line, which was written in a different font and, I figured out after a moment of confused staring, wasn’t part of the book, said:
“How do I get him off the roof?”
That’s what Marta had been texting about. Getting Gerald off the roof. And if anyone knew how to get someone off a roof, it was Marta. There was only one problem. Marta’s experience leaving roofs tended to involve a long drop followed by a painful bounce.
