by Amber Benson
“It’s okay,” Noh said grudgingly. “I didn’t mean to upset you, either.”
Trina gave Noh a smile, but her lower lip was quivering.
“I just can’t believe Henry’s gone. He was kind of mean sometimes, but he was my friend.”
Noh felt like she should tell Trina that she was sorry her friend was gone, but no words would come out of her mouth. She decided that words didn’t say enough. Instead she pulled the paper that was with Henry’s letter from her back pocket and handed it to the ghost girl.
“What’s this?” Trina said as her lower lip instantly stopped quivering and her eyes lit up with curiosity.
“It’s a secret code,” Noh offered mysteriously. “I’m taking it to the physics teacher so he can tell me what it means.”
Trina scrunched her eyebrows together. She didn’t know how to explain to Noh that the living didn’t see the dead. Surely the other girl had realized at least this much… but no, if she thought she was alive still, well, that put things in a different light entirely.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Trina said finally. She decided that honesty was the best policy in this situation.
“Why not?” Noh said. Did the ghost girl know something about the physics teacher that she didn’t know?
“Well, I guess the best way to say this is with the truth,” Trina said. “You’re dead, Noh, and as hard as that is to believe—”
Trina wasn’t prepared for the loud snort that popped out of Noh’s nose. The snort immediately turned into a giggle, then a belly-burning guffaw, and finally, big, wet tears began to roll out of the corners of Noh’s eyes and down her cheeks. Trina didn’t know what to do. She hadn’t meant to make the new girl cry.
“I’m so sorry. I know it’s really a terrible thing—”
This just made Noh laugh/cry harder.
“Please… ,” Noh said between sobs and loud gulps for air. “Don’t talk…”
“But I—”
“Please… no more… stomach hurts… it’s gonna… burst…”
Trina nodded, working very hard to stop herself from saying anything that would make Noh’s stomach burst. This was very hard for her because Trina loved to talk more than anything in the whole world. In fact, asking Trina not to talk was like asking a normal person not to breathe. It was kind of impossible.
“I just—,” Trina said, not able to help herself. This made Noh—who’d just begun to calm down—start laughing/crying all over again.
“Sorry!” Trina yelped, feeling awful. She and the new girl had gotten off to a terrible start. She just hoped Noh didn’t believe all that hooey about first impressions being the most accurate—otherwise, she would never want to be Trina’s friend.
Finally, Noh stopped laughing enough to explain to Trina why she had started laughing in the first place.
“It’s just that all the ghosts here at New Newbridge seem to think I’m a ghost too, just because I can see them,” Noh told Trina, who only looked confused. As far as Trina knew, Noh being alive had to be an impossibility. Trina had been dead for a pretty long time, and she’d never met a living person who could see ghosts before.
“I don’t know about that,” Trina said. “Maybe you think you’re alive, but you’re really dead.”
Noh shook her head.
“I’ll prove it to you,” she said.
As Noh reached out to shake Trina’s hand, Trina gasped. Noh’s fingers went right through her own. Trina took a step backward, and if she hadn’t been floating an inch above the ground, she’d have tripped over a rock and fallen on her butt.
“But… but… but that’s impossible,” Trina stammered. “You’re not a ghost… ?”
Noh shook her head. At last, Trina seemed to be getting the point.
“Oh my goodness,” Trina continued, comprehension dawning on her face. “You’re a… realie!”
No Apologies
The nasty thing that refuses to be named would like to interject something at this point in the story. It wants you to know that when you read the next few chapters, you will not think very well of it… and that the nasty thing feels perfectly fine about this.
It wants you, the reader, to know that it doesn’t care one iota what you think of it. It says that “it is what it is” and that you are just going to have to deal with it.
Caleb DeMarck
I’m going with you,” Trina said, and no matter what Noh did, the ghost girl wouldn’t take no for an answer. That’s how Noh ended up at the physics teacher’s office, trying to listen to what he was saying about the secret code while she glared at a ghost that no one else could see, who wouldn’t stop talking and distracting Noh from the business at hand.
When Noh had knocked on Caleb DeMarck’s office door, the physics teacher had immediately opened it and ushered Noh inside. It was a large office with carved wooden panels running up and down the walls.
The place was a mess. There were papers everywhere—on the big wooden desk, on both of the chairs that stood in front of the desk, all over the floor, and covering the tops of two large metal filing cabinets. Caleb DeMarck had gestured for Noh to take a seat, but she declined, worried that she’d disturb whatever creature might be living underneath all the mess on the chair.
Instead she’d remained standing, handing him the note from Catherine Alexander and waiting for his response. After reading it, he’d wanted to look at the secret paper right then and there. Noh fished it out of her back pocket and handed it to him.
He was so excited by his first glimpse of the mathematical equations that littered the page that he almost tore it in half as he yanked it out of Noh’s hand.
“That was weird,” Trina said as the physics teacher began to devour the equations like jam on toast—which reminded Noh that it was getting close to dinnertime and her tummy was starting to rumble.
The teacher’s hands began to shake as he became more and more engrossed in what he was reading.
“Ask him why he was wandering around the West Wing,” Trina said suddenly, but Noh had no idea what she was talking about and ignored her.
Noh knew that she shouldn’t feel so annoyed at Trina—the ghost had directed her right to Caleb DeMarck’s office without making her go up or down any flights of stairs at all—but the silly girl wouldn’t stop talking. At first Trina just made quiet asides to Noh, commenting on how nervous the physics teacher looked, or how messy his office was, but then she started bugging Noh to ask him questions about his whereabouts, and that’s when Noh wanted to strangle her.
Finally, Caleb DeMarck looked up from the letter, and if Noh hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he was hiding something. His pupils were larger than they’d been before, and he had a shifty look on his face.
“Well, I think our librarian may have jumped to conclusions… ,” he began, his hands still clutching the letter like a security blanket.
“Ask him why they used lemon to hide the equations,” Trina said, distracting Noh and making her miss the physics teacher’s next words. “Just ask him. It might be important. Oh, and don’t forget to ask him about the West Wing!”
Noh was trapped between a rock and a hard place. She couldn’t tell Trina to be quiet because Caleb DeMarck didn’t know the ghost was even there, and she couldn’t ask the physics teacher to repeat what he was saying because then it would look like she had the memory retention of a peanut.
“I’m sorry, Mr. DeMarck,” Noh said, interrupting Trina and the teacher at the same time. “I don’t understand. What does Ms. Alexander think the equations mean?”
The physics teacher laughed, and it was such a weird, strange laugh that it made the hairs on the back of Noh’s neck stand at attention.
“Why, our librarian seems to think that these equations might be part of the lost files of our school’s first trustee and cofounder, Eustant P. Druthers. He was an amateur inventor, an inveterate explorer… and a genius,” Caleb DeMarck boomed, his eyes shining.
; “He’s weird,” Trina said in a small voice. “Especially his laugh.”
Noh glared at Trina before turning her attention back to the physics teacher.
“Wow, that’s cool, but what do the equa—,” Noh started to say, but was interrupted halfway through the word “equation.”
“You have to understand that he was a great man!” the physics teacher continued. “You wouldn’t know much about him since he was such a private person, but he did amazing things.…”
The physics teacher talked for a long time, extolling the numerous feats and virtues of Eustant P. Druthers. Noh started to get the impression that no matter what she did, she was never gonna get the answer to her question.
“Let’s get out of here,” Trina said with a yawn. “We can go back to the West Wing and find Nelly and maybe go to—”
But Noh quickly shook her head. Caleb DeMarck had just said something that had piqued her interest.
“… and he also equipped the school with all kinds of secret passageways and hidden rooms,” the physics teacher said as he nervously scratched his nose. “But don’t tell anyone I told you that. I could get into a lot of trouble.”
Noh’s stomach rumbled, but she ignored it.
“Secret passageways?” Noh asked. She had a feeling that she might have already come across one of them back in the girl’s dormitory bathroom earlier that morning. Which meant that Hullie knew all about the secret passageways and hidden rooms, because he’d found her toothbrush stuck in one of the entranceways.
“There are lots of them sprinkled around the school, but none of the students are supposed to know about them, so not a word,” the physics teacher said quickly, his eyes darting around the room.
“Since you don’t think that paper is part of the lost collection, could I have it back?” Noh said suddenly.
“No!” he said loudly, then cleared his throat and said in a much less angry voice, “I think I’d better hold on to this for a while.”
“But if it’s not important… ,” Noh said with a sharp smile.
The lanky physics teacher didn’t say another word—he just pulled open the top desk drawer, set the paper inside, and shut it with a firm click. He took a key from his pants pocket and locked the drawer.
“I’m confiscating this paper,” he said, fixing Noh with a steely eye. “And if you make a big stink about it, I’ll tell them that I caught you trying to steal it from me in the first place.”
That’s cheating, Noh thought angrily, but she knew better than to press her luck. Caleb DeMarck was not the sort of a person that he had appeared to be. There was nothing gentle or meek about the rude man sitting behind the wooden desk.
Trina echoed her thoughts.
“Adults shouldn’t lie,” Trina said hotly. “That’s, like, against the law!”
Noh agreed with her. Adults should be setting a good example—especially teachers—for the children around them, but Noh was fast discovering that the world was a very different place from what she had originally thought.
“Do I make myself understood?” Caleb DeMarck said, his eyes fixed on Noh’s. She nodded but didn’t say a word.
“Good. Now, it’s almost time for dinner, so I suggest you go to the cafeteria and forget all about finding that paper.”
Once again, Noh only nodded.
From the way she was nodding, most people—this included the spiteful physics teacher Caleb DeMarck—would think that Noh had given up, that she had put the memory of finding the equation-covered paper into a secret drawer in the back of her brain and locked it away, never to be seen again.
But they would be wrong. Noh held her tongue for one reason and one reason only.
She was busy formulating a plan.
A Dip in the Pool
Noh’s plan consisted of three things:
1. Missing dinner
2. Being observant
3. Not telling a living soul one little thing about her plan.
“But how do we know he’s not going to dinner?” Trina asked for the third time since Noh had explained the plan to her new friend.
Noh sighed. She hated overexplaining things, especially plans. She imagined that plans were like falling stars. They just happened near you, and if you questioned them, they disappeared. In the past she hadn’t had to explain anything to anyone because she had spent most of her time by herself, and when she hadn’t been by herself, she had been with her father… and he would never have asked her to explain anything private like that.
Besides, overexplaining just made everything all muddled inside your brain.
“We know he’s not going to dinner because he specifically told me to go there so I wouldn’t be in his way,” Noh said for the third time. Trina nodded, but she still didn’t look convinced.
“I think he’s hiding something for sure,” Trina said. “Nelly and I saw him skulking around the West Wing twice!”
Suddenly Noh heard a sharp click and she sat up expectantly. Her legs were cramped from sitting in the janitor’s closet across from the physics teacher’s room for so long, but she ignored them, excited to finally put her plan into action. She eased open the door and almost screamed when she saw Trina waiting on the other side.
Sorry, Trina mouthed as Noh glared at her. She wasn’t used to ghosts disappearing and reappearing all over the place. Trina pointed down the hall just in time for Noh to see Caleb DeMarck rounding the corner and disappearing into the dark.
“He’s getting away,” Noh hissed, trying not to make squeaky sounds with her sneakers as she jogged down the hall in the same direction the physics teacher had just gone.
Trina disappeared again, but then Noh caught sight of her ghost friend down at the end of the hall, gesturing for Noh to follow her. Noh decided that in the future she wouldn’t get so frustrated with Trina’s quirks. Without her ghost friend’s special abilities—being able to disappear and reappear wherever she liked—Noh would’ve probably lost the physics teacher’s trail, wrecking the whole plan.
Noh followed Trina through three or four long, winding hallways, across a darkened classroom, down two flights of stairs, and into the gym. When she crossed the threshold into the gym, her sneakers squeaking on the polished floor, she saw the safety lights shining onto an empty basketball court. She looked around for her ghost friend, but Trina was nowhere to be found.
Noh was startled by a loud grating sound that filled the empty space, and the whole place began to vibrate. Noh watched in awe as the gym floor started folding in on itself. She quickly stepped backward, her feet making loud squeaks on the slippery floor as she scampered for the doorway that led out of the gym. She had barely reached firm ground when the mechanized floor evaporated right out from underneath where she’d just been standing.
“Wow,” Noh said under her breath as she stared at the Olympic-size swimming pool that had been revealed by the floor’s disappearance. She started to take a tentative step toward the empty pool but stopped in her tracks when she spied Caleb DeMarck coming out of the locker room across from her, a gleeful smile plastered on his face.
He walked along the edge of the pool, paused where it was shallowest, and climbed down inside. Noh watched as he crossed the pool floor and crouched beside the exposed drain.
Once again, Noh wondered where Trina had gone. She found that she was missing the ghost girl’s company more than she realized.
When Noh turned her attention back to the physics teacher, she saw that he was on his hands and knees now, pulling hard on the top of the drain. When nothing happened after a few moments, he sat up and scratched his head. He tried a different tack. This time he pressed his fingers against the drain, probing here and there until Noh heard a tiny crunch. She watched in amazement as the drain began to sink into the concrete.
“It’s one of those secret things,” Trina whispered into Noh’s ear, making her jump.
“Where were you?” Noh whispered back. Trina frowned.
“I was looking for Nelly, but
I can’t find her anywhere. And none of the other ghosts I’ve talked to know where she went,” Trina said, her eyes wide with fear. “I think… I think she might’ve gone.”
“Like Henry?” Noh said, careful to keep her voice low. Trina nodded.
“And my friend Thomas, too,” Trina said.
There was another crunch, which attracted the girls’ attention, and they both looked down to see that the drain was completely gone and in its place was a massive hole… but where was the physics teacher?
“I’ll check on him,” Trina said, disappearing again. Noh waited for Trina to report back. When the ghost didn’t return in a prompt manner, she stepped out of the doorway and walked over to the pool.
She had a funny feeling that whatever Caleb DeMarck was doing down there… it wasn’t something good.
The Machine
There were ants everywhere. If Trina hadn’t been a ghost, and therefore safe from having to touch insects and other creepy, crawly things, she would’ve run screaming from the room. As it was, she wasn’t really happy about having to make her way through the mass of wriggling, squirming ants, but at least she didn’t have a body for them to climb all over.
The hidden room wasn’t very large—probably the size of an old World War II bomb shelter, except that it was completely empty (if you didn’t count the ants, the physics teacher, and a large metallic machine that stood in the very back). The walls were made of cut stone, and there was one bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, illuminating the whole space.
Caleb DeMarck stood in the middle of the room, ants swarming all around him. From what Trina could see, he seemed to be occupying the only ant-free space in the room. For some unknown reason, the ants kept their distance, leaving about a foot of empty space around the physics teacher. It was almost like he was wearing a layer of extra-strength “instant death” bug spray instead of cologne.
Trina moved farther into the room, invisible to Caleb DeMarck and the ants. Even if she had been a living, breathing girl, the ants and the teacher were so focused on the large circular machine that took over the entire back part of the hidden room that they wouldn’t have noticed her anyway.