Shadow School #1

by J. A. White

  Mr. Liu glanced over at her. Cordelia wondered if she saw a hint of suspicion in his eyes or if she was just being paranoid.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ll give it a little more time.” He tapped the steering wheel in rhythm to the music playing softly on the radio. “How are your friends doing? I haven’t asked you in a while.”

  “They’re fine,” Cordelia said. “Actually, lunch yesterday was pretty funny. Benji ate a whole plate of spaghetti with a spoon, just to prove that he could do it. Me and Agnes couldn’t stop laughing.”

  Mr. Liu smiled to himself.

  “I meant your friends in California,” he said.

  “Oh. They’re fine too, I guess.”

  Mr. Liu dropped her off at the curb. Cordelia entered the school, pausing to stomp the snow off her boots, and went straight to the gym. The boy’s crying stopped the moment she flicked on the lights. He came to the edge of the open bleachers, waiting for her with a smile on his face.

  “Good morning,” Cordelia said. She slid her bookbag off her shoulder and pulled out a wooden train whistle. “Let’s try this today.”

  Despite her daily attempts, Cordelia had gotten no closer to discovering the boy’s Brightkey. Her first idea had been a tissue for his tears. When that hadn’t worked, she’d considered the fact that he was wearing pajamas—which seemed like an obvious clue—and changed her focus to bedtime items. In the following weeks, Cordelia had tried a glass of milk, a cup of water, a blanket, a pillow, three different kinds of nightlights, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and floss.

  Nothing had worked.

  The wooden whistle was the latest in a series of train-themed Brightkeys, including toy trains, stuffed trains, train tracks, and a conductor’s hat. Cordelia placed the whistle at the boy’s feet and watched anxiously as he bent down to grab it. Come on, she thought, clenching her hands tightly together. Come on!

  His hand passed right through the whistle.

  Other ghosts often grew upset at these failed attempts, but the boy clapped his hands in delight, as if he and Cordelia were playing some sort of game.

  “I thought for sure that would work,” Cordelia said, stuffing the useless whistle back in her bag. She looked the boy over, wondering what she should try tomorrow, and noticed a new detail on his T-shirt: four black lines that crossed the locomotive at a slight angle. That’s weird, Cordelia thought. It looks like someone drew over his shirt with marker. She wondered if the marks had always been there, or if she had just never noticed them before; the lines were very thin. It probably doesn’t mean anything, she thought. What about the glasses? Don’t you usually take them off when you go to bed? Maybe that means he’s leaving them on so he can see the pictures in a book—his Brightkey might be a bedtime story!

  While Cordelia wondered how many train books she could find at the public library, the boy took a seat at the edge of his ghost zone and crossed his legs like a kindergarten student at circle time. He gazed expectantly at Cordelia with his bespectacled eyes, waiting for her to talk to him as she did each day.

  “Don’t worry,” Cordelia said, with confidence she didn’t feel. “It’s only a matter of time before we figure out your Brightkey. We’re getting better and better. Just yesterday, we freed a man in the faculty bathroom upstairs. He wanted a cap to hide his bald spot.”

  The boy covered his mouth and rocked back and forth in silent laughter. Cordelia grinned. During times like this it was easy to forget that the boy was a ghost at all. Since his visibility level was only one, he looked no different from a living child.

  That’ll change if I can’t figure out his Brightkey, Cordelia thought.

  “Listen,” she said, the smile vanishing from her lips. “I have some bad news. I might not be able to come here as often.”

  The boy pouted and crossed his arms. Cordelia held out an open hand.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to,” she said. “But I think my parents are starting to catch on that I’m not coming to school for extra math help. If they figure out the truth, I won’t be allowed to come at all.”

  The boy nodded with a serious expression. Although he couldn’t reply, Cordelia knew he understood everything she said. She wasn’t sure why he was different from the other ghosts, who often seemed confused and frustrated by her presence. Cordelia believed that the boy’s growing ability to communicate had something to do with the amount of time she spent with him—that she had, in some way or another, woken him up.

  Sometimes, in the darkest hours of the night, she wondered how he had died. Had he been ill? Or had there been some sort of accident? In the end, she always ended up crying and feeling stupid for even thinking about it in the first place. What was the point? She couldn’t change what had happened. There was only one way she could help him now.

  “I wish I knew your name,” Cordelia said.

  The boy nodded: I wish I could remember it.

  Even Cordelia had to admit that the lunchroom at Shadow School was pretty cool. It used to be a ballroom, back when the building had been used as a home and not a school. A giant chandelier hung from the cathedral ceiling, and the scuffs and scratches on the wooden floor only accentuated its natural beauty. Floor-to-ceiling windows lined the walls, revealing hallways on three sides and a stunning view of the White Mountains on the fourth.

  Given the room’s grandiose appearance, Cordelia had hoped that the food would be something special; alas, it was no better than her old school. In this one way, Shadow School and Ridgewood were precisely, depressingly equal.

  “Look at this thing,” Cordelia said, poking her lasagna. “The noodles are all mushy and overcooked, but half the cheese is still unmelted. I don’t even know how that’s possible.”

  “You boil the noodles before you put it all together,” Benji said. “They must have overcooked them, then they didn’t bake the lasagna long enough to melt the cheese.”

  Cordelia and Agnes glanced across the table in surprise.

  “You can cook?” Agnes asked.

  “I have to take care of my little sisters when my parents work late,” Benji said. “So yeah, sometimes I make dinner. Nothing fancy. Spaghetti, tacos—things like that. I’ve made lasagna a couple times. It’s pretty good, but it takes forever.”

  “Shouldn’t your parents hire a babysitter or something?” Agnes asked. “I mean, technically you’re too young to—”

  Benji waved the thought away.

  “What are they going to do? Pay some high school student ten dollars an hour just to sit on the couch and text her boyfriend? There’s no need for them to waste their money. I got it.”

  Cordelia forced down a bite of her lasagna, feeling guilty. She never cooked, unless you counted microwave popcorn. She had no responsibilities, no chores. And yet all she had done since the move was complain.

  “I wish I had a little sister,” Agnes said. She had an older half brother from her father’s first marriage, but he lived in Boston with his mom. “That must be so much fun.”

  “Hmm,” Benji said, picking a soggy fry off Cordelia’s plate. “I don’t know if ‘fun’ is the word I’d use. How about . . . ‘exhausting’? I actually fell asleep on the couch last week like an old man. And Sofia—”

  “The six-year-old?” Cordelia asked.

  “The twins are six,” Benji said. “Sofia’s eight, and she’s the real troublemaker in the family. Anyway, she sneaks up while I’m sleeping and—” He paused, reconsidering. “I don’t know if I should tell you this.”

  “You can’t stop now!” Cordelia exclaimed.

  “Fine,” Benji said. “While I was sleeping, Sofia painted my fingernails with this glittery nail polish. Neon pink.”

  Cordelia and Agnes broke into laughter.

  “Stop it,” Benji said, though he was smiling himself. “It took me all night to get that stuff off. I had to scrub and scrub with soap and water. I have no idea how you girls do it.”

  “Um . . . nail polish remover?” Cordelia asked.

 
Benji’s face fell.

  “That’s a thing?” he asked.

  Agnes’s laughter, which had already been pretty loud, now rose into a series of snorts—which made the three of them laugh even harder. Other students turned in their direction. Mrs. Machen, who was on lunch duty that day, gave them a withering gaze and placed a finger to her lips.

  All of a sudden, Agnes stopped laughing and turned bright red. At first, Cordelia had no idea why. Then she saw Mason staring in Agnes’s direction while making snorting, pig-like noises. His friends laughed hysterically.

  “Ignore him,” Cordelia said. “He’s a jerk.”

  “I’ll make him stop,” Benji said.

  He rose from the table with a dark look in his eyes, like he was about to do some kind of stupid boy thing that would only get him in trouble.

  “Don’t bother,” Agnes said, straightening. “Cord’s right. It’s not worth it.” She smiled with a hint of color in her cheeks. “But thanks anyway.”

  Benji settled back into his seat.

  “I can’t believe I used to be friends with that guy,” he said. “Back when I was on the soccer team, we—”

  Someone screamed.

  The lunchroom fell quiet. All eyes turned to a redheaded girl. She was standing at her seat, staring down in astonishment at the chocolate milk splattered across the front of her shirt.

  “Who threw that?” the girl screeched.

  “It was my milk,” said a boy from another table. His face was pale. “But I didn’t throw it. Really. It just . . . it just . . .”

  Mason, always the first to find the humor in someone else’s misfortune, started to laugh. It was high-pitched and cruel.

  He stopped immediately when a plate of lasagna smacked him in the face.

  “Hey!” he exclaimed. A piece of stringy cheese dangled from his nose as he searched the lunchroom for the culprit, murder in his eyes. “Who did that?”

  What followed was chaos.

  Trays flew through the air, raining down lasagna, pizza, bagels, fries, sticky beverages, and the occasional healthy salad. There were no hurricane-force gales, no apparent cause for the objects to be moving on their own.

  They simply moved.

  What’s happening? Cordelia thought.

  A stampede of sixth graders attempted to flee the cafeteria, pushing and shoving their way through the double doors and creating a dangerous bottleneck. Mrs. Machen tried to maintain order, swatting away an obstinate slice of pizza like an annoying fly, but there was little she could do. Grant Thompson was knocked to the ground. Cordelia quickly helped him to his feet. His hair was matted with juice and there were tears in his eyes, as though his pets were dying all over again.

  “Watch out!” Benji screamed.

  The table next to Cordelia was rumbling like a volcano about to erupt. She pulled Grant to safety as it slid across the room, right where they had been standing a moment beforehand. The table flipped over and crashed through one of the interior windows, ending up in the hallway.

  “Thanks,” Grant said, and ran out of the cafeteria.

  Cordelia joined Agnes and Benji, and together they helped a few other kids who had slipped on the floor or refused to come out of their hiding spots beneath the tables. Food and the occasional tray pummeled them from all directions. By the time they managed to get everyone to safety, the trio looked like they had just climbed out of a dumpster.

  Dr. Roqueni entered the lunchroom. She was wearing a pristine white blouse. Cordelia suspected she might regret that decision very soon.

  “You three need to get out of here,” she said. “Now.”

  Cordelia thought she might have a point. Although the storm of food had begun to die down, the chandelier was now swinging back and forth like it was being ridden by a pack of invisible monkeys. Its moorings creaked and strained against the unexpected movement. Cordelia and her friends backed through the main door into a crowd of onlookers. Mr. Ward was standing guard, using his large frame and frightening scowl to keep the more curious students at bay.

  Cordelia peeked past him. As the chandelier finally creaked to a stop, she glimpsed a strange figure standing in the far corner of the cafeteria. He was wearing suspenders over a linen shirt and black-tinted goggles that hid his eyes.

  Ghost, Cordelia thought.

  The man’s gaze settled on her, and a look of surprise flitted across his features. Cordelia looked away, her instincts screaming that she didn’t want this particular ghost to know that she could see him.

  “Benji,” Cordelia whispered. “You see that ghost in the corner of the lunchroom? Take a quick look, don’t make it obvious.”

  Benji did as she asked, but it was already too late. The ghost had vanished.

  The sixth graders were given a chance to clean up as best they could and then ushered into the auditorium. Dr. Roqueni stood on the stage, waiting for them to take their seats. Her lips were pursed with barely suppressed anger.

  “In all my years as the principal of Shadow School, I’ve never seen such behavior,” she said in a cold, quiet voice. “Throwing food at one another like animals! Pushing tables! It’s a miracle that no one was hurt.”

  A few students protested their innocence, but not as many as Cordelia expected. Most were looking down at their laps as if it really had been their fault. How could they think it was just a food fight? Cordelia wondered. They were there! They saw what happened! Then again, things had been so chaotic. She imagined it would be easy, afterward, to assume that it had been a bunch of other students throwing food at one another. She remembered what Benji had said about the brain making excuses for the things it couldn’t understand.

  After threatening to cancel all field trips if anything like this ever happened again, Dr. Roqueni finally dismissed them. The students silently shuffled out of the auditorium while some of the adults formed a half circle around Dr. Roqueni: Mr. Derleth, Mr. Bruce (sporting a Kansas City Royals jersey), Mrs. Machen, and Mr. Ward. The custodian was wearing a tool belt with the biggest hammer that Cordelia had ever seen.

  “What do you think they’re talking about?” she asked.

  “I know a way we can find out,” Benji said. “Come on.”

  Cordelia and Agnes followed him down the hallway and into a narrow storage room behind the auditorium. They kept the lights off and felt their way between two hanging racks of dusty dresses and animal costumes. Benji opened a second door at the end of the room, and they emerged backstage. The curtains were drawn. Cordelia crept across the stage, wincing at every squeak in the floorboards, and peeked through the narrow opening between the curtains. The teachers were right on the other side, still in the midst of their hushed conversation.

  “. . . don’t know why we’re still talking about this,” Dr. Roqueni said. “It was just some preadolescent nonsense. Even good kids have bad days.”

  “With all due respect,” Mrs. Machen said, “you weren’t there. I saw a carton of milk launch itself across the room and a table move without anyone touching it at all.”

  “I’m sure that’s what you thought you saw,” Dr. Roqueni said in a calming voice. “But we both know that simply isn’t possible. Kids being kids. It’s the only explanation.”

  “Or it could be starting again,” Mr. Bruce said.

  Until this point, Mr. Derleth had been listening with half-closed eyes, looking almost asleep. Now he gazed at Mr. Bruce with intense interest.

  “What could be starting again?” he asked.

  Cordelia remembered that Mr. Derleth was new, which meant he wouldn’t know about events that had transpired before his tenure at Shadow School. The rest of the group shared questioning looks: Do we tell him?

  “If you must know,” Dr. Roqueni finally said, “something similar happened in the lunchroom about ten years ago. More childish nonsense. And then, a few weeks later, there was an incident in an eighth-grade science classroom. The students claimed that lab equipment was flying around the room on its own, but we all know that’s imp
ossible.”

  “Three students had to get stitches,” Mr. Bruce said.

  “Unfortunate,” Dr. Roqueni said. “But that doesn’t prove—”

  “For a while, things went back to normal,” Mrs. Machen said. “We thought it was all over. But then, just before summer vacation, a custodian named David Fisher was working late one night, and he just . . . vanished. No one has seen him since.”

  “That’s horrible,” Mr. Derleth said. “But what exactly are you suggesting? That there’s something supernatural going on here?”

  “The school’s haunted,” Mrs. Machen whispered.

  Mr. Ward barked a laugh. “Come on,” he said.

  “It’s true!”

  “You telling me you’ve actually seen a ghost?”

  “Well, not exactly,” Mrs. Machen said, growing flustered. “It’s more like a feeling.”

  Mr. Ward rolled his eyes.

  “I know exactly what she’s talking about,” Mr. Bruce said, coming to the math teacher’s defense. “I haven’t seen anything either, but you couldn’t pay me enough to stay in this school after dark. There’s something off about this place. You can feel it.”

  “I should have taken that job at Chatham Prep,” Mrs. Machen muttered. “They have a top-of-the-line copy machine there. I saw pictures of it on Facebook. It can make a hundred packets in less than three minutes!”

  “I don’t know what happened to poor Mr. Fisher,” said Dr. Roqueni, “but I’m certain that there is a perfectly rational explanation for everything, including what happened in the lunchroom today.” She checked her phone. “Now, I believe you all have classes to teach. Please keep these rumors to yourself. We don’t want the children thinking that Shadow School is full of ghosts.”

  11

  Agnes Makes a Fish Analogy

  “Mom?” Cordelia called out, checking the contents of their pantry. “Do we have any chips?”

  Mrs. Liu sat at the kitchen counter typing away at her laptop. She was wearing glasses, and her blond hair was tied in a bun. Work mode.

  “There’s hummus and carrots in the fridge,” she said, half listening.