The Ghost in the Third Row

by Bruce Coville

  We pulled open the big brass and glass doors and stepped into the theater. It seemed much spookier than earlier in the evening, when everyone else had been in it. A single worklight was burning on the stage. Other than that it was dark. Very dark.

  “Let’s go out the front way,” I said nervously.

  “Don’t be a wimp,” whispered Chris. “Come on!”

  “Why are we speaking in whispers?” I asked—speaking in a whisper myself.

  Chris shrugged. I knew what she meant. There wasn’t any logical reason. It just seemed the right thing to do.

  We began tiptoeing down the aisle. Suddenly Chris put her hand on my arm. “What’s that?” she hissed.

  I stopped dead in my tracks. It took a moment for me to locate the sound. Finally I realized it was coming from the front of the theater.

  But it wasn’t the ghost. It was Pop. He was sitting in the third row, crying his eyes out.

  CHAPTER TEN

  More Costumes

  It was almost eleven by the time Chris and her father dropped me off. I found my dad in the kitchen, stirring something in a big bowl.

  “Hi, babe,” he said cheerfully as I walked in. “How’d rehearsal go?”

  “Don’t ask,” I sighed, poking my finger into the bowl. I took out a glob of something kind of purple and stuck it in my mouth. “Not bad,” I said. “What is it?”

  “Slopnuggets.”

  Slopnuggets are my father’s own invention. They’re something he came up with after my mother left. Basically, he takes the biggest bowl he can find and throws in anything he thinks might make a good cookie that night. Then he stirs it all up and bakes it. They never come out the same twice, but he’s never made a batch I didn’t like, either. He claims the trick is to avoid things like pickles and sauerkraut. Sometimes we make them together. It can get a little hysterical when we do.

  My father knew that I knew he was making slopnuggets. What I really wanted to know was what made them purple. I raised an eyebrow and stared at him.

  “The secret ingredient of the night is black raspberry Jell-O,” he said, without my having to ask again. “Except now it’s not a secret anymore. So much for surprises. Anyway, I repeat—but only because you told me not to, so I’m assuming it must be really interesting—how did rehearsal go tonight?”

  “Well, somebody tore Lydia’s main costume to shreds; the whole cast got scared because they thought the ghost did it; Gwendolyn had a screaming fit; and Chris and I almost caused a panic in the theater when the ghost sat down behind us.”

  “You’re right,” he said, dumping some baking soda into the bowl. “I shouldn’t have asked. But since we’ve gone this far, you have to tell me what happened next. I’m fascinated.”

  So I told him about the meeting in Gwendolyn’s office and about how we had decided to walk out through the theater when it was over. I told him about hearing Pop crying.

  “What did you do?” he asked.

  “We turned around and went out the other way. I don’t think he even knew we were there. I figured he wanted to be alone.”

  “Good move,” my dad said, shoving Sidney out of the way with his foot so he could get a cookie sheet out of the cupboard. “What are you going to do next?”

  “Go to bed!” I said, trying to keep down a yawn. “I’m exhausted.”

  “That’s two good moves,” he said. “Then what?”

  “I’m going to get up.”

  “And then?” he persisted.

  “And then I’m going to find out what’s going on in that theater!” I said emphatically.

  He nodded. “That’s what I figured.”

  “You don’t mind?” I asked cautiously.

  “Of course I mind!” he said. “You’re probably going to get in as much trouble as people usually do when they stick their noses in other people’s business, though I suppose I should be used to that by now. The real reason I mind is that I’m jealous.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Sure. I’ve never even seen a ghost. But if this one keeps appearing to you, odds are she wants your help for some reason. I suppose you’d better give it to her.”

  I still don’t know if he really meant that, or if he said it just to scare me.

  “Scare you,” said Chris the next day when I met her at the theater. “Definitely. But not enough to get you to leave things alone. Just enough to get you to be careful. Your father is incredibly cool. You want to trade?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Losing one parent was enough to last me forever.”

  “Divorce?” asked Chris sympathetically.

  I shrugged. “Not yet. But they’ve been separated for two years.”

  Chris shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Want to talk about it?”

  “No. At least, not right now.”

  Chris didn’t push. I knew she wouldn’t. “Some other time,” she said. “We’ve got work to do anyway. Let’s get busy.”

  We began walking toward the theater, which was one long block up from where the bus let me off. We hadn’t gone more than halfway when Chris grabbed my arm and dragged me into a store entryway.

  I was getting better at this detective business. I managed to beat down my first reaction, which was to yell, “What do you think you’re doing?” and replace it with a very quietly hissed, “What’s up?”

  “Look down there,” said Chris, gesturing with her thumb.

  Poking my head around the corner of the entryway, I spotted Alan Bland and Lydia Crane stepping into a restaurant called the Brass Elephant, which was a hangout for most of the adult members of the cast. Lydia was holding Alan’s arm and leaning against him in a very possessive way.

  “Are they going out?” Chris asked gleefully.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Alan’s a nice guy. But he doesn’t seem like the type a beautiful woman like Lydia would be interested in.”

  Chris shrugged. “Some women just go nuts for skinny intellectuals.”

  I wondered if Chris was trying to tease me about my crush on Edgar. He could certainly be classified as a skinny intellectual, even if he was about ten times as gorgeous as Alan.

  We had to walk past the Brass Elephant to get to the theater, and we wanted to look inside without making it seem obvious. We decided that just as we reached the restaurant’s window, I would bend down to tie the laces of my sneakers. As I bent over, Chris stood there tapping her foot impatiently, just as we had planned. I took enough time doing my laces for her to get a good look through the window.

  “Well?” I asked, when I was ready to move on. “Could you see them?”

  “Could I ever,” said Chris. “They were sitting in a little booth near the front, with their hands on the table and their fingertips almost touching. I couldn’t see Alan’s face, but Lydia was looking at him like she thought he was wonderful. A real romance! I love it.”

  “If that’s a romance, I’ll eat my sneakers,” I said, as we walked through the big front doors of the theater. I looked up at the giant mural on the wall and touched the brass elephant, just as I always did. The place seemed so bright and cheerful in the daytime it was hard to believe such strange things were going on at night.

  “Well, where do we start?” said Chris.

  Before I could answer, Eileen Taggart, the costume designer, swooped down on us. “Just the two I wanted to see!” she shrieked joyfully. “I can’t believe you’re here just when I need you.”

  “It’s a knack we have,” said Chris dryly as Eileen led us off to her fitting room at the back of the theater. There she stood me up on a hassock and started trying different ratty old dresses on me, babbling along merrily as she did.

  “You’re awfully cheerful today,” said Chris. “Aren’t you upset about Lydia’s costume? It must have been an awful lot of work for you.”

  “Not hardly!” said Eileen, jabbing a pin through several layers of fabric. “It was something they had hanging around from a show they did three years ago. I hated the thing
myself. I kept telling Gwendolyn that if she let Lydia wear it in the show I wasn’t going to have my name on the program! Oh, dear, this looks like poop, don’t it, love,” she added, tearing off the last skirt she had wrapped around me.

  I glanced at Chris, who nodded her head in response. All of a sudden we had someone with a motive for destroying the costume!

  Eileen chattered on, totally unaware of what we were thinking. “’Course, I don’t know why I’m doing this show, anyway,” she said as she dove into a box filled with stuff that looked like it had been rejected by the Salvation Army. “I told Edgar I didn’t think he ought to do a show by a looney bird.”

  She gasped and put her hand to her mouth. “I wasn’t supposed to say anything about that. Oh, well, it’s no big secret anyhow.”

  “What isn’t?” asked Chris innocently.

  “Oh, about that Alan Bland,” replied Eileen, perfectly happy to spread some gossip. “They packed him away for a few months last year, you know. Nutty as a fruitcake, though you wouldn’t know it to look at him now. Not that he’s normal, or anything. But he doesn’t give you the idea that there are little bats flying around in his head anymore, if you know what I mean.”

  I could feel my mind spinning. If Alan Bland had mental problems, was it possible he was crazy enough to be sabotaging his own show? It didn’t seem logical. But then, crazy people aren’t supposed to be logical. Anyway, now we had to add Alan to our list of suspects.

  “Oscar Hammerstein spent some time in a mental hospital, once,” said Chris. “You know, the guy from Rodgers and Hammerstein. He wrote some of his best stuff after he came out.”

  “You don’t say!” shrieked Eileen happily as she tore the sleeve off an old blouse. “Here, this might work for your first scene in Act One, love,” she said, fitting it on me. After a few pokes and pulls, she said, “Jump down now, that’s a good girl. And you hop up, Miss Chris.”

  Chris looked at me helplessly. It was clear that Eileen had totally missed her point about Alan. I shrugged. I figured we might as well let Eileen babble on and see if we could learn anything else.

  The plan worked halfway: she kept babbling, but we didn’t learn anything more worth knowing.

  “Even so, it was worth it,” Chris said as we walked away from the costume room. “We did pick up a couple of suspects. Plus we had our first costume fittings. Which puts us ahead of most of the cast.”

  “How did you know that thing about Oscar Hammerstein?” I asked. “Or did you just make it up?”

  “No, it’s real. My father’s a big musical theater fan. He knows all that kind of stuff. You can’t shut him up about it. It rubs off, I guess. I probably wouldn’t—”

  I never did find out what Chris probably wouldn’t, because Pop came walking past us right then. Chris stopped talking and jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow. “Let’s follow him,” she whispered. “He’s a suspicious character if I ever saw one.”

  I hesitated. We were on shaky ground being in the building as it was. I didn’t think Pop would take kindly to it if he spotted us tailing him. “Oh, why bother,” I said. “He’s just an unhappy old man. How many secrets can he have?”

  While we were trying to decide whether or not to follow Pop, a familiar voice called my name. “Nine! Come here, will you? I need to talk to you.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  One of the Ten Stupidest Things I’ve Ever Done

  It was Paula Geller. She was standing on the stage with a stack of music clutched in her arms. Her red hair was pulled back in a tight braid that dangled over one shoulder.

  “I never knew this place was so busy during the daytime,” whispered Chris as we walked down the aisle to join Paula at the front of the theater.

  “I’m glad I spotted you, Nine,” said Paula, as we climbed the steps at the side of the stage. “I’ve been working on your solo, and I think I’ve taken care of that spot where you were having trouble.”

  “You changed the music?” I gasped.

  “Sure,” said Paula. “Why not?”

  “But that was the way the song was supposed to be. You can’t go changing it just because I couldn’t sing it.”

  Paula looked at me strangely. “Nine, who wrote the song?”

  “I thought you did,” I answered.

  “Well, there you are. If I can write it, I can rewrite it. It’s not like it’s an old standard. Alan and I are still working on it.”

  “You change stuff after it’s all written?” I asked.

  Paula burst out laughing. “If you want it to be any good you do,” she said. “Haven’t you ever heard of second drafts? Or fifteenth drafts? I get the feeling you’re worried that I’m going to ruin my song just so you can sing it.”

  I nodded my head.

  “Well, get rid of that idea right now,” said Paula firmly. “Songs are just like stories and poems. They aren’t written so much as rewritten.”

  That made about as much sense as saying “black is white,” and I said so. Actually, I didn’t put it quite that way. I think my exact word was “Huh?”

  “You act like writing is something magical,” said Paula. “As if things always came out right the first time.”

  “Don’t they?”

  “My poor little Nine,” said Paula. “I hope you’re planning to be something simple when you grow up. Like a tax lawyer. Every once in a while a song comes out right the first time. And those times are magical. But mostly it’s just hard work—writing it over and over until you get it as good as you can. Sometimes a song doesn’t work at all. Alan and I threw out more songs than we kept while we were writing the show.”

  I couldn’t believe such waste. “You guys are crazy!” I said.

  Did you ever wish you could take your tongue and tie it in a knot so it would stop getting you in trouble? As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I remembered what Eileen had just told us about Alan. Actually, I probably would have been all right even then if I could have just let things alone. But not me. No. What did I do? I clapped my hands over my mouth and looked horrified. “Like a complete idiot” was the way Chris described it later. She was right.

  Paula looked at me sharply. “I take it you’ve heard about Alan’s problem,” she said softly.

  I was so embarrassed I think my toes were blushing. I nodded my head, afraid that if I opened my mouth I might say something stupid again.

  Paula sighed. “Come with me. I want to have a talk with the two of you.”

  Half an hour later I knew more than I ever wanted to know about mental illness. I also knew a lot about Alan Bland and how brave he was. That was the main thing that came through in Paula’s talk with us. How much courage it had taken for Alan to put his life back together after things had gone haywire.

  By the time she was done, I was pretty much convinced that Alan Bland would not try to wreck his own show.

  Not only that, I could sing my song! It turned out that half the problem had been the song and half had been my nervousness, which was largely because of Melissa’s judging me.

  “Now, think for a minute,” said Paula. “If having Melissa watch you makes you so nervous you can’t sing, what do you think it does to Alan to know people are watching him for any little sign that he’s going to mess up his whole life?”

  I thought about it. I didn’t like it. “Should we say something to him?”

  “Yeah. ‘Hi. How are you? I like the show. I don’t like the show.’ The same kind of stuff you’d say to anybody. Don’t treat him like he’s different or anything. Here, hit this note.”

  I did. It sounded wonderful, if I do say so myself.

  “Perfect. Now scram, you guys. I’ve got work to do.”

  Chris and I didn’t have to be told twice. We scooted out of Paula’s practice room and back down the stairs toward the lobby. We had a lot more investigating to do before the day was over!

  We had almost made it to the stairway when a brassy voice called out, “What are you two doing here?”


  Gwendolyn! I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t the people in that theater have anything better to do than hang around and look for kids they could bother?

  “We’ve been working with Paula,” said Chris quite honestly. “Just wait till you hear Nine’s song! By the way, do you know where Pop is?”

  I wished I could be cool like that. It was unbelievable. Chris stood right in front of Stone-face Gwendolyn Meyer and without blinking an eye convinced her to tell us what we wanted to know.

  Gwendolyn told us we would probably find Pop in the theater and also told us where his office was, in case we had to leave him a message.

  We headed for the theater. Sure enough, there was Pop, fixing a broken seat near the back.

  Suddenly it hit me that I had no idea what to do next. “What are we going to say to him?” I whispered to Chris.

  “Nothing, dummy. We don’t want to talk to him at all. We’re heading for his office.”

  That didn’t stop her from waving and shouting a cheerful “Hi, Pop!” as we went strolling by. Pop looked up from the seat he was working on, scowled at us, and made a noise that may or may not have been a greeting. We continued on down the center aisle as if we owned the place.

  Behind the stage was the stairway that led up to the dressing rooms. There was also a down stairway. That was where Gwendolyn had told us we would find Pop’s office.

  We stood at the top of the stairs and looked down. Neither of us moved. I had a feeling we were each waiting for the other to go first.

  “Dark down there,” said Chris after a while.

  “Sure is,” I said. I was squinting down the steps, trying to make something out.

  “Person might get hurt, stumbling around.”

  “Sure could,” I said.

  “They ought to keep it better lit.”

  “Sure should,” I said, getting ready to turn around and leave.

  “Well, let’s get on with it,” said Chris. She started walking down the stairs.

  I couldn’t believe it! I thought she had been trying to talk herself out of going down there. The truth was, she had just been building up her courage.