Noah McNichol and the Backstage Ghost

by Martha Freeman

  The three of us were standing center stage, Mike looking at Clive and me, his back to the wings. Now, without turning or looking over his shoulder, he said, “Emma? You can come out anytime.”

  And she did.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Emma emerged from the darkness directly behind Mike, coated up and wearing her backpack, a confused frown on her face. “How did you—” she started to ask.

  “A ghost knows.” Mike turned to face her. “May I help you, Emma? Why were you eavesdropping?”

  Clive gasped. “Like Polonius!”

  Emma said, “Not like Polonius because I do not eavesdrop. It’s only that, uh… I forgot my coat.”

  “You’re wearing your coat,” I said.

  “I am now,” Emma said.

  “I can’t help wondering,” Mike said, “if Miss Howard might be hoping to damage my reputation, perhaps even get me fired, by telling everyone that I’m a ghost.”

  Clive gasped. “Blackmail!”

  “Oh, puh-leez,” Emma said. “I would never! Besides, it doesn’t matter if you’re queer or straight or trans or, uh… a ghost. The important thing is to be your authentic self. That’s what they teach us in health class.”

  Mike nodded approval. “Health class has come a long way since I was a kid.”

  “There is, however, one little thing,” Emma said.

  Mike said, “Yes?”

  Clive and I said, “Yes?”

  “I don’t love the new Hamlet script,” she said, “which technically is the old Hamlet script. My parents say that all good stories have morals.”

  Mike said, “We’re all entitled to wrong opinions, I suppose,” which Emma, very busy expressing her own thoughts, must not have heard.

  “I would never make a fuss,” she continued. “It’s not in my sweet nature. But I was thinking that if we go back to the original script, then I wouldn’t have to tell Coach Fig and Mrs. Winklebottom and my parents and the entire town of Plattsfield about how you are delusional and think you are a ghost.”

  “Delusional?” Mike seemed hurt. “Miss Jessel, just to clarify, I am a ghost.”

  “Mr., uh… whatever your name is,” Emma said. “We all know there is no such thing. Ghosts are figments of overactive imaginations.”

  “Put another way, perhaps your imagination is underactive?” Mike said.

  “I am not the problem here!” Emma said.

  “Miss Jessel—Emma—I am neither unreasonable nor am I harsh, I hope. At the same time, I dislike having my credibility called to account. Put another way, what can I do to convince you?” Mike asked.

  “Rattle some furniture?” I suggested.

  Clive shook his head. “Oh no, that’s okay, Mike. You don’t need to…”

  Mike himself did not move, but from behind us came squeak-clatter-CLUMP, squeak-clatter-CLUMP. Oh wow—the fifteen folding chairs seemed to be doing a waltz!

  Emma glanced backstage and shrugged. “Big whoop,” she said.

  Mike’s expression changed from hurt to annoyed.

  Clive gulped, worried, like me, about what an annoyed ghost might do. I mean, he was Mike, the good guy who had volunteered to help with our play, but judging by movies and books and TV, ghosts were moody, and things could get ugly fast.

  Then, bingo, a by-now-familiar chill wind propelled the curtains into flight and rattled invisible chains at the same time—the truly freaky part—a ghastly green lightning bolt zapped ceiling to stage and back again.

  “How about now? Do you believe I’m a ghost now?” Mike asked, his words echoing like the voice of God in some old movie.

  “I believe!” Clive said.

  “Me too,” I said.

  Emma rolled her eyes. “Anyone can do sound effects.”

  “And this?” Mike asked, and then there were three Mikes, one on each side of the original, then five, and then seven, and then nine—each one translucent with a rainbow glow like a bubble, then—poof—they were gone and a single Mike remained, staring at Emma expectantly.

  Emma tossed her hair. “So you used to work for Pixar or something.”

  Hands on hips, Clive turned to her. “Seriously? I mean, sure he could be some kind of engineering genius, but wa-a-ay more likely he’s a ghost.”

  Emma did not bother to respond. I had one last idea. “Can you fly?” I asked Mike.

  “With or without wings?” Mike said.

  “With,” Clive said.

  “Eagle or angel?” Mike said.

  “Angel,” Clive said.

  And like that, wings budded from Mike’s shoulder blades, shredding his coat on their way to achieving pterodactyl span and sprouting clean white feathers. “Pretty good, right?” Mike looked over each shoulder to admire the effect, then bent his knees, flapped, and rose lightly over the boards.

  What a sight! Like Gabriel himself ascending above Plattsfield-Winklebottom!

  Only it didn’t last long.

  The wings were huge and unwieldy. Mike was not much of a pilot. Soon he’d gotten himself tangled in the rigging above the stage, and there he hung, flailing, unhappy, and stuck.

  “Impressive,” Emma said sarcastically.

  “Do you need help?” I asked.

  “I don’t really like heights,” Mike admitted.

  “I’ll get a ladder,” Clive said, but before he could move, the big extension ladder from backstage came marching toward us—clomp-clomp, clomp-clomp, clomp-clomp—and stopped.

  Without a word, I climbed to the second-highest rung, leaned in, stretched my arm out, and tried to grab Mike’s right ankle.

  Only it wasn’t there.

  That is, his green-and-purple argyle sock was there. I could see it. I could feel the wool. But the warm flesh and bone that should have been beneath the ankle wasn’t, and neither, when I tried to support him as he disentangled his wings from the ropes and wires, was the weight of a grown man. So what did I do?

  I acted.

  “Ready?” I asked Mike.

  “Ready,” he affirmed.

  And rung by rung, hand clutching an ankle I could see but could not feel, I descended the ladder with weightless Mike poised at the end of my outstretched arm.

  Clive applauded. “Better than the circus!”

  Emma said, “Very nice,” and, “I have to go. By tomorrow I expect the original script—Mrs. Winklebottom’s script—will be back at rehearsal. Have a good evening, everybody.” She made a flutter-finger wave, smiled to show off her teeth, and tripped away down the stairs to the house and out the lobby doors.

  Mike’s wings shrank to nothing. His coat fixed itself. He dusted his shoulders and sighed. “Now, boys, I have a question. Which one of us is scarier?”

  “Are you going to go back to the other script?” I asked.

  “No,” Mike said. “I will not give in to blackmail! I will not sacrifice Shakespeare for schlock!”

  I started to explain to Clive about schlock, a Yiddish word my dad uses, but Clive said, “I know, Noah. You’ve been my friend since second grade.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “But, Mike, if you don’t cave, what will happen?”

  “We’ll have to quit, won’t we?” Clive said. “And I was really getting into villainy, too.”

  “I don’t know what will happen,” Mike said.

  “I thought ghosts could predict the future,” I said.

  Mike shook his head. “A lot of rules govern those of us in the afterlife. We cannot be seen by anyone who knew us when we were living; our appearance is always preceded by a warning wind; and each of us is called forth by unique incantation. As for seeing the future, that would require disruption of the space-time continuum. Not even a ghost has that much power.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  (SCENE: NOAH, MOM, and DAD at dinner that same evening.)

  NOAH: Dad?

  DAD (chews, swallows, looks up): Yes, my son?

  NOAH: What’s the space-time continuum?

  MOM: Hoo boy.

  DAD (lo
oks at MOM, raises eyebrows): Aren’t you glad your son is interested in what I do?

  NOAH: Is that what you do, Dad? Space-time? Cool.

  MOM: Your dad does lasers.

  NOAH: Oh. Well. I guess lasers are cool.

  DAD: Thank you.

  NOAH: But you’re a physicist. And space-time—you understand it? Sort of?

  DAD: Of course I understand it. You see, Noah (he settles in for a lengthy explanation)—

  MOM (interrupting): Perhaps you could confine yourself to the thousand-word version?

  NOAH (looks back and forth between them): OMG, are you guys still having that fight?

  DAD: Your mother and I do not have fights.

  MOM: Speak for yourself. I’m not over your crack about science versus art. But we won’t resolve it at the dinner table. So I’ve declared a truce.

  DAD: May I answer Noah’s question now?

  MOM: Five minutes. Tops.

  DAD: So if he asks about, say, the poetry of Emily Dickinson, do we also confine ourselves to five minutes?

  NOAH: Who’s Emily Dickinson?

  MOM: Funny you should ask. Emily Dickinson—

  DAD: Wait a minute.

  MOM: Only kidding. The space-time continuum. (She puts her fork down.) I’m all ears.

  DAD (side-eyes MOM): Thank you. Most famously described by Albert Einstein in his special theory of relativity, the space-time continuum is the idea that space and time are in fact part of the same thing.

  NOAH: Well, that’s ridiculous. An inch is not the same as a minute. (He thinks.) Is it?

  DAD: Look at it this way. Up is not the same as down, but they both relate to where something is in space.

  NOAH: Oka-a-ay.

  DAD: So in space, there are three dimensions, correct? One dimension is a fixed point, two dimensions is back and forth—a line—and three dimensions adds depth—call it in and out.

  NOAH: Fatness.

  DAD (thinks): Fatness.

  DAD: So space-time adds a fourth dimension, call it when. Anything that exists, exists not only in space, but at a point or multiple points in time.

  NOAH (thinking): So then Abraham Lincoln not only existed in three dimensions in all the places he ever was, but he also existed from this date to that date, birth to death.

  DAD (looks at MOM): Boy’s smarter than he looks.

  MOM: Gets it from my side.

  NOAH (thoughtfully): So if someone existed for a while and ceased to exist—like, uh, died, then…

  DAD: In a way, no one ever ceases to exist. Because everyone has a secure spot in space-time, which never ceases to exist but simply is.

  NOAH: So we don’t die!

  MOM: Except—

  DAD: Killjoy.

  MOM: Except that our consciousness, our awareness, is limited by the biology of our senses. So just as we can’t see the past, we can’t see the dead, even if they’re all around us. Our human eyes and ears and sense of touch, they’re not, uh… enabled for those purposes, which may not be a bad thing. It would be overwhelming to constantly navigate a maze of ghosts.

  NOAH: Tell me about it. So, in other words, ghosts might be real.

  DAD (puts down fork, shakes head emphatically): Wait just a minute. Your mother and I never intended to say that ghosts are real.

  MOM (annoyed): I can speak for myself, thank you, and I am not so sure. Think of thunder and lightning, night and day, the phases of the moon, Noah. Science explains them now, but once they seemed like magic.

  NOAH: So maybe it’s the same with ghosts?

  MOM: Sure. Maybe science just hasn’t gotten around to explaining ghosts yet.

  DAD: Nonsense.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Thursday, Rehearsal Week Two, 36 Days till Performance

  I got to school early the next morning and, like I expected, found Emma by herself at her usual table in the caf. When the weather is good, which in Plattsfield means the first two weeks of school and the last two weeks of school, people wait outside for the bell in the morning. The rest of the time, people hang inside.

  Emma was almost always in the caf early because her parents dropped her off before work and, as she made sure to tell everybody, they were both attorneys and got to their office at practically dawn so they could help the people of Plattsfield get divorced, fight with relatives about money, and sue neighbors over barking dogs and tree branches.

  That last part isn’t according to Emma; it’s according to my parents.

  I swung my butt onto the bench at Emma’s table. She looked up, surprised, but then she turned pink a little and smiled that bright smile, which was weird. I was furious at her, and here she was looking like she was glad to see me.

  “We’re going back to the other script, right?” she said. “Mike realizes it’s for the best?”

  “No,” I said. “We’re not and he doesn’t and besides, you know what will happen if you tell people that Mike’s a ghost?”

  “Thinks he’s a ghost,” Emma said. “The man is probably dangerous.”

  “A danger to you? Or me? Or the Plattsfield-Winklebottom Memorial Sixth-Grade Players? We seem to be doing a great job taking care of ourselves so far. Anyway, if he’s delusional, so am I, and so is Clive, and if you tell everybody he’s a ghost, then people will freak out, and Coach Fig will have to take over, and there will be no Plattsfield-Winklebottom Memorial Sixth-Grade Play this year, and it will be your fault. Did you think of that?”

  Emma tossed her hair, then proceeded to ignore all my very good points. “Who is he anyway? The ghost of who?”

  “He’s the ghost of… uh… Mike,” I said. “Mike who knows a lot about Shakespeare and plays. Mike who is teaching us a lot about Shakespeare and drama. Mike who is going to make sure there is a show this year, which Fig is too busy to do. That Mike.”

  “Uh-huh, and how do I know he’s not dangerous?”

  “Are you even listening?” I raised my voice. She raised hers. We went around again, stuck in a circle, until I, Noah McNichol, had a genius idea.

  “Emma…,” I said, quieting down.

  “What?”

  “What if I find out who he is—who he was? Then would you agree not to rat him out?”

  “How are you going to do that?” she asked.

  “Uh… ask him?” I said.

  “Ha! He very cleverly refused to tell us his last name, remember? And anyway, how would you know he was telling the truth?”

  “So I’ll think of something,” I said. “And when I do, and he turns out to be harmless, you agree to keep quiet about the ghost stuff. Deal?”

  Emma didn’t say anything. She was thinking.

  “Give me a couple of weeks,” I said. “If I haven’t identified Mike by then, you can do what you want.”

  “Problem!” Emma cried. “In a couple of weeks, it will be too late. We’ll have the script memorized. We won’t be able to change back.”

  “Yeah, we will,” I said. “The costumes and sets are the same, and the old script, the No-Trauma one, is way shorter. We can learn it in no time. At least, I can. Maybe not you. Maybe you’re not that good at memorizing.”

  “Are you saying I’m dumb?”

  “I’m saying two weeks.”

  Emma huffed and puffed some more, which I got. It’s totally her personality. She had to show she’d never really surrender. At last she said, “All right, but after that—”

  “After that, tell whoever you want—Mrs. Winklebottom, your parents, the cast, the TV stations, public radio for all I care. Till then, we have a deal.”

  * * *

  Lunch was the kind of flat grilled cheese sandwich that glues your tongue to the roof of your mouth and tastes like salty grease. A caf classic.

  Clive and I sat together at a table away from the drama geeks. I had decided to avoid Emma till I was ready to make my report.

  “If Emma tells everybody…,” Clive began as soon as we sat down. “Tenantless graves! Stars with trains of fire! Disasters in the sun!”
>
  “Act one,” I said. “And I got this.”

  “Good,” Clive said. “Because I like playing Claudius the way he is in the real script, a bad, bad dude. ‘O, my offence is rank. It smells to heaven. It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t. A brother’s murder.’ ”

  Clive was dropping his Rs like he had some English accent, and when he said bruthuh’s muhduh, he leaned in close so I could smell the fruit punch on his breath.

  Creepy.

  “Do you mind?” I shoved him aside.

  “I know, right? My mom thinks it’s alarming to have me in the house. She’s afraid I’ll mix poison in the bathroom sink and pour it in the cat’s ear for practice.”

  “Would you do that?” I asked.

  “Of course not. Probably,” Clive said. “So, uh… you got this, but may I ask exactly how?”

  I told him about my deal with Emma. Then I revealed my plan to learn Mike’s identity, which I had come up with instead of taking notes on the Ming dynasty. It was clever, elaborate, made up of many moving parts, not to mention it required a Sherlock Holmes hat and a magnifying glass and an ample supply of pancakes.

  Okay, not really.

  In fact, it was simple. IRL Mike had been someone who knew about theater, about directing, about Shakespeare. His clothes looked like they were from the eighties maybe. He might’ve been a professor like my mom. Or he might’ve been an actor or a director, on Broadway even, but not famous. I mean, none of us Sixth-Grade Players recognized him, right? He couldn’t be famous.

  Anyway, in Plattsfield there were two people who really knew theater. One was Mrs. Winklebottom, and I couldn’t talk to her.

  The other was Miss Magnus, and here was my plan: pay her a visit, pet the chihuahua, ask polite questions, and with great subtlety and keenness, see if she could identify Mike.

  There was a slight chance this might not work. But at least it was a start.

  I had barely explained all this when I noticed Fuli coming from the food line with her tray, searching for a place to sit.

  I looked at Clive. He nodded. I waved. “Hey, Prince Hamlet—sit with us. Plenty of room.”