Peeled

by Joan Bauer

  “No calories in cardboard,” I told him.

  He got up grumbling and headed outside.

  I sat down and opened The Bee to Madame Zobek’s new column.

  “It is the beginning of a great gathering,” she wrote. “I sense there is a deep moving here. I sense a great darkness.”

  She wrote that she had personally spoken to several spirits at the Ludlow place and they told her there were many more who would be joining them.

  Terrific…

  I didn’t like the way Madame Zobek was making her presence known. She was open for business in a small store next to the offices of The Bee. I’d walked by it the other day. She’d hung thick purple curtains over the window, hung a black and silver sign on the door: RING THE PSYCHIC DOORBELL.

  Tanisha got a photo of the sign.

  “If she’s really psychic,” Zack said when he saw Tanisha’s photo at school, “why does she need a doorbell?”

  But people of all ages began to ring the bell and seek her advice. She had a brochure, too.

  Advice from the ages on…

  love

  life

  family

  career direction

  medical problems

  depression

  addictions

  college choices

  the stock market

  pet compatibility selection

  how to chose a contractor for

  a home remodeling project

  The list went on and on.

  Cash only.

  Chapter 10

  Joleene Jowrey stood on the makeshift stage in the cafeteria, faced Lev Radner’s smirking face, and delivered one of the worst lines ever written in the history of the stage.

  “Just because you don’t love me anymore, Jason, doesn’t mean I don’t still love you. I will love you until the rivers run dry and the stars fall from the sky.”

  I swear, this play made you desperate.

  “I need you to give me more with that line, Joleene,” Mrs. Terser shouted. “Make me a believer.”

  Joleene looked at Lev, who belched. She took his hand and said, “Just because you don’t love me anymore, Jason, doesn’t mean I don’t still love you. I will love you until the stars run dry and the rivers fall from the—wait—” They both started laughing.

  “Let’s get our metaphors straight,” Mrs. Terser directed. “Rivers run dry, stars fall…”

  I put on my Are you desperate? cap and headed off to a very long day.

  Lessons came at me fast and furious.

  In history I learned that fiefdoms stink.

  In English I learned that Moby-Dick wasn’t just about sea life.

  In chemistry I learned it’s a really bad idea to add water to sulfuric acid.

  In room 67B, The Core’s office, I learned how to get to the heart of a story.

  Baker Polton had commandeered the desk in room 67B. He had put a photo of a pretty, smiling woman with a little boy on it, too.

  “Nice picture,” I said.

  He nodded as Royko buzzed near the food heap. “How do you kids work in here?”

  I shrugged, looked back at his photo. “Is that your family?”

  “My ex-wife and son.”

  “Sorry.”

  He gazed long and hard at that picture. “Not as sorry as I am.” Then he leaned forward in his chair and said, “Biddle, are you hungry enough to get to the heart of the Ludlow story?”

  I felt my face get hot. “I’m plenty hungry!”

  “Then explain to me why you haven’t contacted anyone who knew Sallie Miner.”

  “I’ve been doing other things,” I stammered. “I’ve been calling D&B Security. I just get the answering machine.”

  “That’s not what hungry looks like. Let me see your notes.”

  This wasn’t going to be pretty. I took my notes out of my book bag, lay them folded and crumpled at his desk.

  “Wait, there’s more.”

  I grabbed some from the side pocket, pushed my notepad toward him, took a piece of paper from my pocket. I tried to smooth it.

  He picked up a wrinkled sheet. “Polton’s Second Law—If you’re not organized, it’ll kill you.” He spread out the sheets. “Why aren’t they numbered?”

  “I never thought of that.”

  He looked at one page from my notebook when I went to the courthouse. He underlined two words and handed it back to me.

  Boston

  Martin

  “Don’t you think it’s odd,” Baker said, “that with all the security companies here in New York, D&B Security from Boston was checking out the Ludlow property?”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s a hole in the story. Make a list of what you don’t know and where you might find it.”

  “I don’t know anything about Sallie Miner except that she went to Banesville Elementary.”

  I grabbed the phone, called the school, asked if anyone remembered who Sallie’s third-grade teacher was.

  “Oh, yes,” said the secretary. “That would be Eileen Leary. She’s living in Madison, Wisconsin, now.”

  I turned to Baker excitedly. “I got a lead on the teacher.”

  “Follow it.”

  I called directory assistance, got her phone number.

  Hildy Biddle, ace reporter, had been let loose.

  I made the call. A woman answered. I said, “I’m trying to reach Eileen Leary—who taught third grade in Banesville.”

  “That’s me…,” she said cautiously.

  “Mrs. Leary, I’m Hildy Biddle. I’m researching an article about the Ludlow house in Banesville for my high school paper. I’m trying to determine facts from fiction. Can I ask what you remember about Sallie Miner?”

  “Well, she was always scared of that house, living as close to it as she did.”

  I was writing. “Really? What was she afraid of?”

  “The ghost. Some unnamed evil. Sallie had such an imagination. She was always telling us about seeing something unusual. I think it became her reality. She was a good student. She always brought a valentine for every child in the class, very thoughtful. Have you talked to her father?”

  “No.” I couldn’t imagine doing that.

  “He and his wife divorced after the accident. He’s living in Miami, I believe. He was a good man. I remember him coming to Parents’ Night. I think his first name is Larry. Larry Miner. I don’t know if he would talk to you, but it’s worth a try.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Leary. I’m trying to find the truth.”

  She sighed. “That would be most welcome after all this time. Good luck to you.”

  I sat back in my chair, numbered my notes, and showed them to Baker.

  “You know, Biddle, whoever breaks this story open can really help this town.”

  “I want to do that!” I hit the Miami phone book online.

  There were eleven Lawrence Miners in the Miami area. But what would I say when I called?

  Hi, is this the Lawrence Miner whose little daughter, Sallie, was killed five years ago?

  I couldn’t do that, could I?

  “The thing is,” I said to Mom, “Baker says that breaking the Ludlow story open could really help Banesville, so I’ve got this mission now to track down every lead, and I’ve hardly got time for homework, much less doing school tours at the orchard.”

  “I know you’ll find a way to fit it all in,” Mom answered with a supreme lack of compassion as the yellow school bus pulled up the driveway. “Here come our little guests.”

  Twenty-nine first-graders, to be exact. They ran off the bus screaming. It was school visiting day at the orchard.

  “Remember, Hildy,” Mom said. “We want them to care about where their fruit comes from.”

  “Cantwell!” I screamed at the six-year-old boy who swiped a pile of Nan’s chunky apple brownies after major warnings from me not to eat, suck, destroy, bruise, toss, spit upon, or touch them in any way. “If you eat them, Cantwell, i
f you move or do anything other than breathe, your time in the orchard barn will be over. Got it?”

  Cantwell nodded, which technically was moving, but I decided to let it go. I looked at the other children, who looked back at me to see if I meant it and decided I did. The teacher and the parent helpers were off in the corner by the Johnny Appleseed poster.

  The orchard barn was where we gave demonstrations, where we had our small market.

  I took out my guitar and taught them a song that only required three chords—C, D, and E minor—the only ones I knew how to play.

  Up, down, all around,

  Apples begin from a seed in the ground.

  Juan-Carlos showed them the hand motions. He really got into this.

  “Arriba! Arriba!” he shouted, which means “Up! Up!” in Spanish.

  We sang the song over and over. Then I read them the story of Johnny Appleseed’s love of apples, his total focus on one fruit, how his commitment to a dream benefited generations to come. I glared at Cantwell. “Now, everybody, it’s time for your snack!”

  The kids descended on the plate of apple brownies like moths to a light source. A little girl, Sara, ran up and hugged me. “You have a pretty face, Hildy.”

  I hugged her back. “You have a pretty face, too.”

  Missy Grimes marched up, a very complicated little girl. I used to babysit for her. She had a bandage on her elbow. “Hug me, Hildy! Hug me, too!” I gave her a big one.

  Missy’s eyes were wide. “I saw something and it was big! Huge, even!”

  “Really?”

  I babysat Missy last summer and was exhausted by the experience. Missy claimed to see lots of big things—giant bats, enlarged worms, gargantuan bees—all swooping down to get her. Her parents were going through a nasty divorce. Mrs. Grimes kept calling me to babysit again, too. I’d been avoiding her.

  Missy grabbed both my hands. “I saw it,” she insisted. Then she lowered her voice. “I can’t tell the other part. But you can read about it!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do we say, children?” the teacher asked, beginning to steer the kids onto the bus with their apple bags.

  “Thank you!” shrieked the first-graders of Banesville Elementary.

  I took Missy’s hand. “Missy, what are you talking about?”

  “It’s a secret,” she whispered, and ran onto the bus. She sat at the window staring out. She always seemed lonely.

  The bus pulled away.

  You can read about it.

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  Chapter 11

  “I hear up by Ludlow’s place there’s more coming,” Crescent Furl, owner of the A to Z Convenience Store, said to me. She had the headache medicines up front at the counter now—they used to be in the back.

  I grabbed a bottle of water from her refrigerator. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Crescent sniffed. “All I heard is some talk.”

  To get Crescent to really talk, you had to buy more. I grabbed two Hershey bars, peanuts, a pocket Kleenex, and put five dollars on the counter. “Tell me.”

  Crescent rang up the order slowly. “It’s not like I’m some kinda telegraph center.”

  I smiled. “Crescent, you know everything going on in town.”

  She liked that. “I hear,” she said, “they saw another one.”

  “Another what?”

  “Another ghost,” she said ominously.

  “Who saw it?”

  “Didn’t hear who, just what.”

  A tired mother with four children came in. The kids were screaming, running everywhere. More people came in. The store was close to packed. Not the time to try to talk to Crescent.

  I didn’t have to wonder long.

  The Bee hit the street with a special edition blaring the news.

  ANOTHER LOCAL GIRL INJURED BY LUDLOW’S GHOST

  CROWDS SURGE ONTO FARNSWORTH ROAD

  The name of the girl was being withheld “to protect the innocent,” but the girl went into vast detail about biking down Farnsworth Road and all that she saw in the upstairs room of the Ludlow house.

  “It was big,” she asserted. “Huge, even.”

  Specifically, it was a floating head, and after she saw it, a branch fell from a tree in the Ludlow yard and scared her, causing her to fall off her bike. She was taken to the emergency room and kept under observation into the evening. There was a spooky picture of the Ludlow house with a new sign front and center.

  There was a picture of Sallie Miner, too, under the heading “Are Our Children Safe?”

  What power was causing branches to fly off trees and attack children? That was another question The Bee pursued exhaustively, with help from Madame Zobek.

  “There is some property so haunted that even the trees are taken over,” she wrote. “I am concerned about the safety of Banesville’s children.”

  What about teenagers? Are we safe?

  And what about good old Reality?

  No one would take Missy Grimes seriously.

  Right?

  And it’s not like I saw something and it was big, huge, even is all that distinctive.

  But I couldn’t seem to let it be.

  I could go talk to her, I suppose. I could ask her mother. I could mind my own business.

  No, reporters can never do that.

  I talked to Baker, who said, “Well, you could always babysit.”

  That seemed awfully extreme.

  In case anyone wondered about my dedication to journalism, it was now official.

  Hildy Biddle, Undercover Babysitter.

  I sat under a folding table playing castle with Missy Grimes. She was the princess, I was her lady-in-waiting, and the bad news was that several fire-breathing dragons had surrounded the castle and only one of us (Missy) was brave enough to fight them.

  Missy raised a spatula and screamed, “I’ll waste some of you before you bring me down!”

  Mrs. Grimes had warned me that Missy’s father let her watch violent movies.

  I was trying to find a comfortable way to kneel. “Well, Princess—methinks you scared the dragons away.”

  “They’re still out there,” Missy said. “I can smell them.” She sniffed the air. “They smell like bad milk.”

  My back was close to spasming. “I’ve heard that dragons leave the bad-milk smell when they’re retreating.”

  She shook her head. “That’s wrong. My daddy is going to come to rescue us.”

  “That’s good.” I handed her a wand covered with sparkling stars. “I was told, Princess, that this wand will scare off the dragons.”

  That was wrong, too.

  “Listen, Missy. Do you remember when you and your class were at my orchard?”

  “Shhhh. They can hear you.”

  I whispered, “When you were at the orchard, you mentioned seeing something big. Huge, even.”

  She nodded, waved the wand around.

  “Was that a dragon you saw?”

  “No.”

  “What was it?”

  “It was a ghost.” She screamed, “Dragons, get ready to die!”

  “Where did you see the ghost?”

  “At the bad house.”

  “Where is that?”

  “The one that killed the little girl.”

  Careful. “What were you doing there?”

  She looked down. “I was riding my bike and I got lost.”

  “Was your mother with you?”

  “Yes.”

  I decided not to ask how you get lost in your hometown when your mother’s with you. “Missy, what happened after you saw the ghost?”

  “I got scared.”

  “I bet.”

  She crawled out from under the folding table. I followed. She ran up to her room and handed me a well-worn copy of The Brave Little Chipmunk.

  “You read it to me, Hildy, because I’m supposed to hear it when I get afraid.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry if anything I said—”<
br />
  “Read it to me! Read it to me!”

  I started reading about Chappy Chipmunk, who overcame an evil badger who had it in for small animals. The book ended with Chappy, surrounded by a grateful chipmunk community, saying her closing line.

  “Anything is possible when you have a true heart.”

  Missy shouted the last line with feeling. I remembered reading this to her when I babysat last year.

  Missy looked in the mirror, tossed her hair, and smiled. “I’m famous.”

  “Are you the girl they wrote about in the paper?”

  She nodded. “And Daddy is very worried, and he’s coming to save me all the way from Atlanta.”

  She jumped on her pink bed, burrowed among the stuffed animals, and grinned.

  Baker was out of town for the next few days.

  I was sitting in Tanisha’s kitchen, eating spicy orange beef, which her mother made when she needed to feel good about the world. Mrs. Bass was a counselor at the middle school and was making a lot of spicy orange beef these days. It was rich and dense with just enough sweetness. Pookie was curled up in her dog bed.

  “So what do I do about Missy?” I asked Tanisha.

  We’d already discarded the idea of doing a blog about her under an assumed name.

  “I think you should write down everything about Missy that you remember, Hildy.”

  “That will take decades,” I mentioned.

  “She’s only six.”

  I put my head in my hands. Where do I start?

  Tanisha took out a yellow pad and started writing. “Her dad lets her watch violent movies. Getting scared and exaggerating is the way to get her parents’ attention.”

  “Her parents’ divorce has been hard on her,” I added.

  Tanisha wrote that down, too. “That doesn’t mean she should make the front page.”

  I shrugged. “She already has, though, and it’s selling newspapers! You’ve seen how The Bee is getting bigger with every issue. They’ve got so many ads!”

  “Ads,” Tanisha said, “not content.”

  I sighed. “They’re successful, Tanisha, and that makes them powerful.”

  “You’re saying that Pen Piedmont has more power than the truth because he’s got a lot of ads?”