by Larry Parr
Wesley was already backing out and there was no way I could make him listen to me. He kept the engine running loudly on purpose, I think, just so he couldn’t hear me! “Where’s Jennifer?” I yelled toward the passenger window. Jason leaned out as Wesley put the bug in first and screeched away. “Doctor’s appointment!” he yelled and then waved as my friends disappeared in a sea of other cars. I was left standing alone in the middle of the parking lot, with cars streaming by me. One actually touched me and honked! I nearly jumped out of my skin!
I just couldn’t believe my luck today. Nothing had gone right!
Chapter 11
Mr. Greenwald’s unexpected story
I thought about not showing up in Mr. Greenwald’s class at all. After all, there wasn’t anything he could do to me if I didn’t show up. It’s not like he wanted to discuss anything having to do with school. Well, anything having to do with my work at school, anyway.
But I was curious. I had been thinking about last night a lot, all day, and now that it was light and I wasn’t so scared, I was really quite curious about what he had been up to last night. After all, he had as much—or more—to explain than I did!
I walked into his class and found him seated at his desk, correcting papers. He looked up and gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Oh good,” he said in a relaxed, casual tone, “I was afraid you might not show.”
“I’m here,” I said curtly as I took a seat near the door, at the back of the class.
He looked at me and gave me another tight-lipped smile. “You can sit up front. I won’t bite. I promise.” With that he gave me a full smile.
I had decided to keep my distance and let him do most of the talking, but seeing him sitting there, his slightly longish hair, tinged with gray, looking messy like it usually did, with those gold-colored wire-rimmed glasses and that old sports coat with the leather patches at the elbows that he seemed to wear to school every single day, and especially those blue jeans and white tennis shoes that he wore, somehow I couldn’t find in me to be afraid of him. Slowly I got up and walked to the front of the class, directly in front of his desk and sat down.
He stood, walked around his desk and sat on the front corner of it. He leaned forward slightly. “There. That’s better,” he said. “I suppose you know why I asked you to stop by?” he asked.
His voice sounded slightly hopeful, as if he was uncomfortable and wanted me to make the first move. I realized at that very moment that I was in charge of this meeting. I had all the power. He was a lot more afraid of me than I was of him.
I know this might sound really stupid, but this was the very first time in my whole life I’d ever felt that way when I was talking to an adult. Especially a teacher! It felt great! I liked being in charge! I loved having the upper hand! I didn’t want to do or say anything that would give the power back to Mr. Greenwald. “Why don’t you tell me?” I said, folding my arms and looking him square in the eye. A little voice inside my head said: “Wow! That was great! That was the perfect thing to say!”
Mr. Greenwald looked uncomfortable and got up from the corner of his desk. He quickly sat in the chair next to mine. We were now on the same level. He looked into my eyes and I could see he was troubled. “That was you last night, wasn’t it?”
I decided to play this for all it was worth. The feeling of power this situation had given me was going straight to my head! I was feeling pretty invincible! “Was it?” I asked, keeping my gaze firmly on his eyes.
Now he really started to squirm. He broke eye contact with me. On some level I knew I had just won the first round in some strange, undeclared contest. My feeling of invulnerability was soaring!
He sighed and looked very tired. He took his glasses off and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Suddenly I was beginning to feel sorry for him. “Look, we’re not going to get anywhere if we keep playing this cat and mouse game, and I’m really worried you’re going to get hurt.”
“Get hurt?” I asked, genuinely curious.
He got up out of the chair and began to pace back and forth in front of me, as if he was very nervous. “Yes, hurt. I’m not totally sure yet who all is involved in this ghost business, but I have an idea, and these people don’t want anyone messing around in all this. They have a lot to lose and they’re not above hurting people to stop them. I want you and your friends to stop trying to find the ghost.”
“Who is it?” I asked. “And why are they pretending there’s a ghost at the school?”
“I can’t answer all your questions yet, but I guess I’d better tell you as much as I know, though there isn’t really all that much to tell. ” He sat back down on the corner of his desk and look his glasses off. He didn’t look at me, instead he seemed to be looking at a spot in the distance, somewhere over my head. “The whole thing started about ten years ago. There was a big robbery of a coin store downtown. Thompson Coin and Jewelry. Whoever robbed the place knew exactly what they were doing. They got away with close to half a million dollars in coins, mostly old gold coins.”
Despite my resolution not to give away anything and to keep the upper hand I couldn’t help but look up at the mention of gold coins. “Gold coins?” I asked. “Like twenty dollar gold pieces?”
He looked at me very deeply. “Yeah. How did you know that?”
I knew I had just made a big mistake. Now he was asking the questions. I mentally kicked myself! When would I ever learn to just keep my mouth shut. I hoped maybe I could salvage the situation. “I’ll explain later. Go on with your story.”
He put his glasses back on and looked at me again over the tops of the lenses. Then he stood and began to pace around the room. “Where was I? Oh yeah, the robbery. The thief, or thieves, got away with gold coins and gold jewelry worth more than half a million dollars ten years ago. Today they’d be worth well over three million. To this day only a couple of coins have ever been recovered.”
I thought about Mr. Bell’s twenty dollar gold piece, but this time I did keep my mouth shut. Mr. Greenwald was looking at me as if he hoped I would say something. When I didn’t he gave a tiny shrug of his shoulders and continued. “There was one policeman back then who had an idea who had taken the coins, but he was never able to prove it. He thought Mr. Thomas A. Thompson had robbed his own store for the insurance money. When he couldn’t prove his case, that policeman not only lost his job, he was sued by Mr. Thompson. Thompson lost his law suit, but the cost of the case wiped out that police officer and destroyed his family.”
I didn’t know what to say. Mr. Thomas Thompson was now Mayor Thompson. He owned a big construction company, a new car dealership, a discount electronics store, a small chain of frozen yogurt shops, and I’d seen his name on some kind of stock brokerage firm downtown. Thomas Thompson was the richest and most powerful man in town. His son, Ben Thompson, was in my civics class; he was dumb as a post and one of the school’s biggest bullies. “Are you talking about Mayor Thompson?” I asked, just to be sure.
“He wasn’t mayor then,” Mr. Greenwald continued. “In fact, he was almost bankrupt. He was what they call leveraged in gold. That means he’d borrowed a lot of money based on the price of gold and the price of gold was dropping. That meant he owed a lot of money he couldn’t pay back. Not unless a miracle happened. Like a robbery. He used the insurance money from the robbery to start his construction business, and from there he started—”
“Wait a minute! Did his construction company build this school?” I asked.
Mr. Greenwald sat down next to me and looked deeply into my eyes. “You do know something about all this, don’t you?”
Now it was my turn to stand up and pace. I didn’t know what I thought. All I knew was I had a lot of half-ideas running around inside my head. I needed to say some of them out loud. I needed to start putting them together and making sense of them. But now that I was ready to talk about them, I couldn’t figure out how to start. I mean, when you came right down to it, what did I really know?
Noth
ing. Absolutely nothing.
But ideas were starting to form. Just baby ideas now, but I knew if I left them alone for a while they would group themselves together in my brain and begin to grow. Pretty soon I’d have a notion, then a thought, and then—well, then I’d have this whole ghost thing figured out.
But at that moment I realized I had nothing. I felt terrible! For a few seconds I really thought I had something. Now I looked at the floor sheepishly and sat back down. I glanced up at Mr. Greenwald. He patted my arm and stood up. He crossed to his desk and sat down. He took off his glasses and stared out the window, saying nothing.
I felt as if I’d let him down—but I didn’t know exactly how I’d let him down. I started to get up to leave, but suddenly I realized there was a lot of Mr. Greenwald’s story he hadn’t told me yet. “I still don’t understand what you were doing dressed like that at school last night. What does all this have to do with you?”
Mr. Greenwald put his glasses back on and picked up the pile of papers he had been working on when I walked in to his class. He tapped the papers on his desk, a clear sign that our meeting was basically over. “The policeman whose life was destroyed, that policeman was my father. I’ve sworn to solve the case and clear his name.”
Mr. Greenwald lay the papers back on his desk, took out his red pen, and began reading. He made a quick mark on the top sheet, turned it over and began reading the next sheet. I stood up awkwardly, not knowing if I should say anything or not, not knowing what I could say, and left the classroom. Mr. Greenwald didn’t look up or say another word as I left.
Chapter 12
Ben Thompson
After I left Mr. Greenwald’s class I was really at a loss for what to do. My mind was reeling from everything he’d told me, but I still felt tired and drained from my experiences with Mr. Greenwald and the ghost last night; my head felt as if it was filled with wet cotton. None of the ideas trying to swim around in there stood a chance right now.
What I really need to do was go home and get some sleep, and then start out fresh tomorrow. But I guess my mind was so tired I just couldn’t see the right path —both literally and figuratively. Suddenly I realized I’d taken a very wrong path and I was standing at the very back of the school where all the trash containers are.
I’d never actually been back here before, but I’d heard stories that this is where some of the kids came to smoke cigarettes and pot between classes and after school. The moment I realized where I was I knew I’d made a mistake. I started to turn around when suddenly someone stepped in front of me.
I knew immediately who it was—and my heart skipped a beat. My body went cold all over. I tried to hide my fear, but I’m not a good actress. I’m sure even someone as dumb as Ben Thompson could see the fear on my face.
I could smell the cloying, sweet smell of marijuana coming off Ben and that made me even more scared. But at the same time a little voice in the back of my mind started trying to tell me something. The voice wasn’t quite loud enough for me to hear it clearly, but there was something about Ben that was familiar. I’d seen him somewhere else today, and it wasn’t in class. No. I’d seen him . . . .
“Well, well, lookie who we got here!” Ben said, inching his way closer and closer to me. Ben had been held back at least one year, maybe two. He was big, and mean, and dumb. He was slowly backing me up. Suddenly my back was up against a brick wall. Now I was really scared. “The snoop. So now ya come to spy on me, huh?”
“I’m not spying on anybody,” I said, trying unsuccessfully to push past him. He laid a big, beefy hand on the wall next to my head, blocking my escape.
“Is that so?” he said, leaning close to my face. The smell of marijuana was almost overpowering. “Well I hear you’ve been doing a lot of spying. You and your faggot friends. What’s your dorky boyfriend’s name? Jimmy? Jannie? No. Wait. Jason. Jason the nerd. Jason the nerd with two broken legs and two broken arms if you don’t stop your snoopin’. Understand, little girl? Or do you need me to give you a little demonstration?”
“I-I understand what you’re saying,” I answered as I ducked my head below the tattooed tree trunk he called his arm and hurriedly made my way to the walk leading back to the school grounds. For a moment he looked as if he was going to follow me, or stop me. I had the idea that he’d decided to hurt me to show me he meant business. But at that moment two janitors came down the walk pulling wheeled carts filled with trash cans.
One of the janitors looked at me; I’m sure he could tell how scared I was; then he looked at Ben and I could see a hardness come over his face. Both janitors immediately made room for me to get by. The one janitor never took his eyes off Ben as he said to me: “This ain’t no place for a nice girl like you, missy. You get on home.”
I didn’t look at Ben. I was so scared I didn’t even look at the two janitors as I slipped past them quickly. I’m not even sure they heard me as I whispered, “Thank you!”
The next thing I knew I was running across the campus, then down the hill. I don’t think I fully stopped running until I reached Wesley’s house.
* * *
I was counting on the fact that the guys would be at Wesley’s, working on his history project, but when I got there, his bug wasn’t in sight and no one answered when I rang the bell.
I was still scared to death. My run-in with Ben Thompson had been the ultimate caper to a really bad day! I sat on Wesley’s front porch and I could feel my body shaking with adrenaline-tinged fear. I tried taking several slow, deep breaths, like I’d seen people do in movies when they wanted to calm down, and I felt myself getting calmer and calmer with each breath. Who says it doesn’t pay to go to the movies?
Now that I was calming down that little voice in the back of my head started making annoying noises again. There was something about Ben Thompson. Someplace I’d seen him. And then it came to me!
Of course! The figure hiding near the boy’s locker room at lunch! The one spying on me! Now that I thought about it, it was Ben Thompson!
But why? Why was Ben Thompson spying on me?
I could only think of one reason. If I was right . . . .
At that moment, Wesley’s red bug came around the corner, toward the front of the house. I could see Jason sitting in the front seat, and I could see him smile as he realized it was me sitting on the porch, waiting.
Jason really has a great smile, I thought to myself. A really great smile!
Chapter 13
Gruesome!
I ran to the driveway and opened the door of the car before Wesley had even come to a full stop. Jason looked surprised and a little scared as I leaned into the car, put my arms around his neck and gave him a big kiss, right on the lips!
I don’t know why I did it, except that I was just so happy to be here, with him, and all of us O.K. I guess my run-in with that Neanderthal, Ben Thompson, really affected me.
I knew the kiss was a mistake the moment I’d done it. That was the first time I’d ever kissed Jason quite like that before. He and I had gone out together lots of times in all the years we’d known each other, and there were a couple of times we even called them dates, but we’d never really gotten physical.
We’d hugged a few times, and kissed once or twice—but not like I’d just kissed him. I knew he wanted us to get more physical, but I still wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
But now-now I had kissed him Big Time. And I wasn’t even sure why. And he certainly didn’t know. When I stopped kissing him I saw he had a really surprised look on his face for a moment, but then I felt his hands grab me and pull me down to him again.
This time he kissed me!
Now I was mega confused! I liked it—but I didn’t want to like it. I panicked and pushed away from him so hard I hit my head on the top of the bug’s door frame.
Jason looked at me and smiled in a confused sort of way. “What was that all about?” he asked. Then he leaned toward me and said: “Whatever it’s all about, I like it!”
; “Well, forget it! It’ll never happen again, not in a million years!” I yelled. “So don’t start thinking it will!” I was mad. Not at Jason, but at myself. I had just done something really stupid and now everything was going to get all messed up. And I knew, I absolutely knew that my getting mad would just make things worse, but I couldn’t stop myself!
Suddenly it was as if I was floating above Wesley’s driveway, looking down on all of us, watching myself screw things up and completely unable to stop myself! I’d like to think that a large part of what was going on had to do with my lack of sleep and how worried I’d been all day about my meeting with Mr. Greenwald and how scared I’d been because of my run-in with Ben Thompson, and how happy I was now that everything was O.K.
But I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I’d just blown everything. Nothing would ever be the same again.
I tried to get my unreasonable anger under control as I stood back and watched Jason and Wesley slowly get out of the car. They just stood by the car, staring at me as if they’d never seen me before in their lives.
Alan finally pushed the front seat of the bug forward and climbed awkwardly out. He looked at me, then looked at Jason and shook his head. “You two are crazy,” he said. Then he reached back into the car and pulled out a bag of art supplies. “If we’re gonna help with this project we’d better get started. My Mom has dinner ready at precisely six every night, and if I’m not there—”
“The dog gets it,” Jason finished, not taking his eyes off me.
“That’s right,” Alan said, lamely. “So, let’s get busy. It’s already four thirty.” Alan started walking toward the door. Wesley hesitated, then began following him. Jason and I didn’t move. We just kept looking at each other. Finally Alan stopped, turned, and shouted back: “You two coming, or what?”