I don’t know what I’ll do if I actually see one.
“Gather round, everyone.” Mrs. Warner claps her hands together as the storm rages outside. We are in the library now. “It’s time for the scavenger hunt!”
Oh, boy! A scavenger hunt! I LOVE scavenger hunts. They’re my favorite—wait. What’s a scavenger hunt?
Whatever it is, it must be fun because all the kids go zooming over to Mrs. Warner. They smell excited. So I zoom over, too. I nose my way into the circle between Connor and Michael.
Mrs. Warner holds up some papers. I sniff them. They don’t smell like the papers Connor found in the box with the flashlight.
“Each group will get a list of things to find around the school,” Mrs. Warner explains. “The first group that finds everything on their list is the winner.”
I wag my tail. I’m good at finding things.
“Can we pick our own groups?” Michael asks.
“No, we’re going to number off,” Mrs. Warner says. She points to each kid and says a number.
I sit up extra tall so Mrs. Warner sees me. But she doesn’t give me a number.
“Okay,” Mrs. Warner says. “Ones over here. Twos over there. Threes over there. And fours over there.”
“Whichever group finds all the items on their list first wins the scavenger hunt,” Mrs. Warner says. “Are you ready? Go!”
Go? I don’t know where to go. I see Connor and some girls hunched over their paper. I scamper over to them.
A girl who smells like pizza, cats, and nail polish reads from the paper. “A straw, a pink bead, a white rock, a left mitten, a lock of red hair, a book told from a dog’s point of view.” She looks up at the others in the group. “Where are we supposed to find all this stuff?”
“We can find the book here,” another girl who smells like pizza and different nail polish says. “Who knows a dog book?”
“Shiloh!” the first girl says.
Connor says, “That’s told from a boy’s point of view, not a dog’s point of view.”
“How are we supposed to find one from a dog’s point of view?” the second nail polish girl says.
“Aaaaaaaaaaa!” someone shrieks from the far book shelf. Several boys and girls run out from those shelves. “Mrs. Warner! Mrs. Warner!” they all cry. “There’s a ghost back there!”
What? Really?
“There are no such things as ghosts,” Mrs. Warner says.
“Yes, there are,” one of the girls insists. “We all heard it. It said, ‘Staaaaay out of the baaasement,’”
That’s the same as the message I got from Cat with No Name.
I hurry over to where all those kids came from. If Agatha is back in those book shelves, I want to meet her. I want to talk to her. A bunch of kids and Mrs. Warner all follow me.
Halfway down the aisle, I hear the ghostly voice, too. “Staaaaay out of the baaasement.”
Sniff … sniff … I smell something behind those books.
The last time I smelled something behind some books in the library, it was a blue-tongued skink! My friend Maya hid him and some other lizards in the school basement, but then he got loose! I found him in the library, but he escaped before any of the humans found him. It took a long, long, long, long time to find him after that. Now he lives in a glass cage behind Mrs. Warner’s desk. His name is Fluffy, but I call him Blue Tongue.
Whatever is back there today, it doesn’t smell like a blue-tongued skink. Whatever it is smells dusty and electrical. It’s making sort of a scratchy, whispery noise.
I stand up on my hind legs and nose some of the books out of the way.
“What’s Buddy doing?” one of the girls asks.
“Mrs. Warner,” another girl says. “Buddy’s knocking books on the floor.”
“He probably smells something,” Connor says.
“I do! I smell—hmm. What is that thing on the shelf?” Some sort of metal box. It’s small, so I pick it up with my mouth.
“What is it?” a girl asks. “What does Buddy have?”
Connor takes the box from me. It starts talking in Connor’s hand. “Staaaaay out of the baaasement.”
“It’s an old tape recorder,” one of the girls says.
Mrs. Warner holds out her hand and Connor gives her the tape recorder. Mrs. Warner presses a button on the recorder. There’s a loud click and the whispery noise stops.
“Whose is this?” Mrs. Warner asks.
All the kids look at each other, but no one raises a hand.
I sniff the recorder. It’s has Jillian’s scent all over it.
I turn to Jillian, but she is looking at the ceiling. Why doesn’t she tell Mrs. Warner that the recorder is hers?
Why would Jillian hide a tape recorder behind the books? Does she want people to think there’s a ghost in the library? Is she trying to scare people? Why would she do that?
“Fine. I’ll just keep this until someone claims it,” Mrs. Warner says. She brings the recorder over to her desk and puts it in the top drawer.
4
Why Is Everyone Acting So Weird?
After the scavenger hunt is over, the kids scatter to different parts of the school. Some stay in the library and read or play board games. Others go to the gym. I follow Connor to the art room.
On most days, Mrs. Sobol is the alpha human in the art room. But she’s not here tonight.
Mom was here a little while ago. She set out some paper, pencils, and paints, but then she went to check on the kids in the gym. I don’t think there is an alpha human in the art room right now.
I guess that means I’m in charge.
I stroll around the tables and glance at everyone’s artwork. Michael is painting a school with ghosts coming out of it. A girl who smells like chocolate and mints is drawing the girl beside her. Connor is hunched over his paper, so it’s hard to see what he’s drawing. But I nudge my nose in anyway. It looks like letters. Just letters. No picture. A … B … C … D … E … F … G … H … I … J … K … L … M … N … O … P … Q … R … S … T … U … V … W … X … Y … Z.
That’s weird.
Do those letters spell any words when they’re spread out all over the paper like that?
Connor picks up his paper and walks over to the window. He peers out into the darkness. What? Is there something out there? I go over to the window and look. All I see is rain pouring down.
Connor grabs an empty jar from the shelf below the window, hides it under his paper, and scurries over to the door. He is acting very strange.
“Hey!” I say, trotting after him. “Where are you going?” The door starts to close on my face, but I push it back open.
“Connor, wait up!” I follow him down the hall.
Connor turns when he hears me. “Go back to the art room, Buddy,” he says in a low voice.
“No!” I say. “I want to know where you’re going.”
“Or go find Mom,” Connor says. I sit. I’m not going anywhere.
Connor sighs. “Okay. But if you’re coming with me, then you have to be quiet.”
I can be quiet. But I wish Connor would tell me where we’re going and why he’s acting so strange.
We turn down another hall. A dark one. We tiptoe past one … two … seven more doors until we reach the music room. Connor’s eyes dart back and forth, then he turns the doorknob. The door creaks open and we slip inside.
It’s even darker in here than it was in the hallway, but Connor doesn’t turn on the light.
He’s about to bump into a table, so I nudge him out of the way. Lightning flashes and lights up the room. Connor shuffles over to the piano and sets the empty jar and the paper on top. Then we leave.
“Why did you put that jar and paper on the piano?” I ask as Connor closes the door behind us.
Connor doesn’t answer.
We walk back down the dark hall.
As we go around a corner, Connor almost crashes into Michael.
“There you are!” Michael says. “
Where were you? We’ve been looking for you. A bunch of us are choosing up for basketball. Do you want to play?”
Oh, boy! Basketball. I LOVE basketball. It’s my favorite sport!
“Sure,” Connor says. “Let’s go!”
Yeah, let’s go! I follow Connor and Michael down the main stairs to the gym.
Pepperoni-Fish-Frog Boy and Dog Boy are choosing teams. I run back and forth between them saying, “Pick me! Pick me!” But neither of them does.
Oh well. I’ll play on both teams.
I race up and down the gym, chasing the ball. “Mine!” I say, jumping up and grabbing it away from some kid. But I can’t hang onto the ball very well with my paws. It rolls to the side of the gym.
“Buddy!” someone yells at me.
“Sorry,” I say.
Connor jogs after the ball. He tosses it to Pepperoni-Fish-Frog Boy and the game starts again. I see out the corner of my eye that Michael is leaving. Why is he leaving in the middle of the game? Maybe he needs to go outside.
I dart in between kids and grab for the ball. But once again it slips through my paws and rolls away.
“Buddy!” several kids yell at me now.
“Sorry!” I say. I’m doing the best I can.
“Maybe you should take your dog back to the library, Connor,” Pepperoni-Fish-Frog Boy says. “He keeps getting in the way.”
What? No!
“Okay,” Connor says. “Come on, Buddy.” He grabs me by the collar.
“That’s not fair!” I cry. “I’m not the only one who can’t hang onto the ball. Why do I have to stop playing?”
But before Connor can answer me we hear a shriek from somewhere outside the gym. It sounds like Michael.
“Michael?” I call, tearing out of the gym. I run up the stairs and around the corner to where I heard the shrieking. A bunch of kids follow me.
“There’s a ghost in the music room!” Michael cries, his eyes wide. He is standing in front of the door to the music room. Some of the kids press their noses to the window and peer inside.
“I don’t see any ghost,” says Pepperoni-Fish-Frog Boy.
“Neither do I,” says Dog Boy.
I force myself in between them. There was no ghost when Connor and I were in there five or fifty minutes ago. I sniff all around the door. I don’t smell anything unusual. The kids all want to know more about the ghost. “What kind of ghost did you see?” “What did it look like?” “What did it do?” “Was it Agatha?” they ask.
“I don’t know if it was Agatha, but it was definitely a girl ghost,” Michael says. “She was out here in the hall at first, just sort of floating around. Then she went into the music room. She went right through the wall. Then she disappeared.”
“Wow,” says one of the kids as thunder crashes above us.
There’s only one problem with Michael’s story. It’s not true.
I can see and smell the lie all over Michael.
Mom makes her way through the crowd. “Kids, listen to me,” she says. “There are no such things as ghosts. I think this storm is causing your imaginations to run away with you.”
“It wasn’t my imagination,” Michael insists.
“Well, regardless of what you saw, I want you to stay away from the music room,” Mom says. “That goes for all of you. We’re going to start a movie in the library in about half an hour. You can be in the library, the art room, or the gym until then. But please don’t go running around the school. Okay?”
Everyone agrees, and Mom turns back toward the library.
“I really did see a ghost,” Michael says in a low voice. “I know I did.”
But he’s still lying.
Why would Michael say he saw a ghost when he didn’t?
Why would Connor sneak an empty jar and a big piece of paper into the music room?
And why would Jillian hide a tape recorder with a ghostly voice behind some books?
Have all the kids in this school gone crazy?
5
Comparing Notes
I am lying half on Connor’s sleeping bag and half on Michael’s sleeping bag. The lights above are dim. A movie is playing on the TV. Rain pounds against the library windows.
Connor and Michael both seem kind of restless. I don’t think either one of them is enjoying the movie very much. I don’t blame them; there are no dogs in this movie.
Across the library, I see Jillian get up and tiptoe around all the sleeping bags.
A little while later, Michael leans over and whispers to Connor, “I have to go to the bathroom. Will you tell your mom if she wonders where I’m at?”
“Sure,” Connor says.
But soon after that Connor gets up and heads for the door.
“Where are we going, Connor?” I ask, trailing after him. “Are we going to the bathroom like Michael?”
“Do you have to go everywhere I go, Buddy?” Connor asks when we are in the bright hallway outside the library.
I think about that for a few seconds. “Yes,” I say. “You’re my human!”
It turns out we aren’t going to the bathroom. We are headed toward that dark, dark hallway again. The one where the music room is.
I stop. “Didn’t Mom say we should stay away from the music room?”
Connor keeps walking. All the way to the music room. I don’t want to get left behind, so I run to catch up. Even though I’m not sure we should be here.
Connor cracks the door open and we slip inside. Again. But this time we’re not the only ones here. Michael and Jillian are here, too. They are sitting on the floor by the piano, waving lit flashlights around the dark room. I run over to greet them.
“Hi, Buddy,” they both say, petting me.
Connor closes the door. “What are you guys doing here?” he asks.
“Probably the same thing you’re doing here,” Jillian says.
“Did you get a letter that said come to the music room at 9:15?” Michael asks.
“Yes,” Connor says.
“I knew it!” Michael grins at Connor. “When you said you had a flashlight like mine, and you just got it today, I knew you got a letter, too.”
Connor sits down next to Michael and Jillian. “Why didn’t you say so?” Connor asks.
“Why didn’t you?” Michael asks.
Jillian rolls her eyes. “The letters said, “Don’t tell ANYONE,’” Jillian says, holding up a piece of paper. “At least that’s what mine says.”
“Can I see your letter?” Connor asks.
Jillian hands him her paper. “Can I see yours?” she asks.
“Why don’t we all read our letters out loud?” Michael suggests.
I wag my tail. I like that idea.
“Okay,” Connor says. He hands Jillian’s letter back to her, then pulls a paper out of his pocket.
“I’ll read mine first,” Michael says, holding his flashlight over the paper. “‘Dear Michael. Agatha knows who you are. She has chosen you for a special job.
“Step 1: At exactly 8:35 p.m. stop whatever you’re doing and go to the music room. Don’t let anyone follow you. Once you’re there, act like you saw a ghost in the music room. Be convincing!
“Step 2: At exactly 9:15 p.m. come back to the music room. Bring this flashlight. Wait in the music room for more directions. Warning: Don’t tell ANYONE you received this letter … or else!”
So that’s why Michael lied about seeing a ghost earlier.
“Okay, I’ll read mine next,” Jillian says. “‘Dear Jillian. Agatha knows who you are. She has chosen you for a special job.
“Step 1: Find a tape recorder and make a thirty minute tape of a ghostly voice. The voice should say over and over again, ‘Stay out of the basement.’ Right before the scavenger hunt starts, hide your recorder in the library and turn it on. Don’t let anyone see you.
“Step 2: At exactly 9:15 p.m. come to the music room. Bring this flashlight. Wait in the music room for more directions. Warning: Don’t tell ANYBODY you received this lett
er … or else!’”
And that’s why Jillian hid a tape recorder with ghostly sounds in the library.
Jillian tosses the paper down in front of her. “That was my mom’s tape recorder. Do you know how much trouble I’m going to be in if I don’t get it back from Mrs. Warner?”
“You’ll get it back,” Connor says. “All you have to do is tell Mrs. Warner it’s yours.”
“Yeah, and then I’ll get in trouble with Mrs. Warner,” Jillian says. “She may even tell my mom what I did with the recorder. I’m in trouble no matter what.”
I’m not sure I like the person who sent these letters. He or she is getting my friends in trouble.
“Both your letters tell you to wait in the music room for more directions,” Connor says. “My letter has more directions.”
“Really?” Jillian says.
“What does your letter say, Connor?” Michael asks.
Connor adjusts his flashlight and reads, “Dear Connor. Agatha knows who you are. She has chosen you for a special job.
“Step 1: Go to the art room at exactly 8:05 p.m. Grab an empty jar and a large piece of paper. Write the alphabet on the paper. Leave lots of room between letters. Then take those things to the music room. Don’t let anyone see you.
“Step 2: At exactly 9:15 p.m. come to the music room. Bring this flashlight.
“Step 3: Once everyone is there, have them sit in a circle. Put the paper and jar in the center. Have everyone put two fingers on the jar. Then tell Agatha you are ready. Her spirit will enter the jar. Your fingers will give her strength. With your help, she will move the jar over the letters and spell out her message to you. Warning: Don’t tell ANYBODY you received this letter … or else!”
That’s why Connor snuck a jar and piece of paper into the music room.
“Wow, we’re going to get to talk to Agatha?” Michael says. “For real?”
“With a jar?” Jillian asks. “How is that going to work? If Agatha is really here, why doesn’t she just talk to us? Why does she need a jar and a paper with letters?”
“Have you ever talked to a ghost before?” Michael asks. “Maybe this is how they talk to people.”
Case of the School Ghost Page 2