“Shhh!” The girls glanced down the table to see Lucinda glaring at them, her finger held up in front of her mouth. “Do you three ever stop talking?”
“Why would we?” Maude whispered to Tiny and CJ, who smiled back.
“And now, please listen to Mrs. Von Howl, who has an important announcement,” Principal Von Howl said.
“It’s time to distribute the Field Day T-shirts,” Mrs. Von Howl announced. On a table behind her, cardboard boxes were neatly stacked. “I will call up one team at a time.”
Maude, CJ, and Tiny waited patiently, finishing up their breakfasts, as she called up the first team and handed out yellow T-shirts.
“Good!” Maude told them. “I was hoping we wouldn’t be assigned yellow this year!”
The first team sat down and then the second team trouped up to receive orange T-shirts.
“Excellent,” Maude said.
“Let me guess,” CJ asked her. “You didn’t want orange, either?”
“Correct,” Maude answered.
“You do know that we’re going to win no matter what color we wear, right?” Tiny asked.
“Oh, I know,” Maude assured her friend. “I just prefer a more neutral color.”
“What’s a neutral color?” Tiny asked. “Isn’t a color a color?”
“Oh, Tiny,” Maude sighed. “Orange and yellow are just so … clashy!”
Then their names were called and they joined their teammates at the front of the room. Maude was very relieved to see Mrs. Von Howl reach into a new cardboard box and pull out light-blue T-shirts.
“Oh, yes,” Maude said happily. “I can definitely work with blue!”
As the girls headed back to their rooms after breakfast, chattering and laughing about Field Day, Maude’s attention turned, once again, to the problem of Ms. Finley.
She was preoccupied throughout their whole Supernatural Science class. She didn’t even laugh at Mr. Vex’s emanation jokes.
CJ and Tiny noticed her silence.
“Is anything wrong, Maude?” Tiny asked as they hurried through the hallways to Undead Language Arts.
“Hmmm?” Maude asked.
“Why are you so quiet?” CJ asked. “Are you upset about something? I mean, something besides Ms. Finley? Besides the fact that our whole world may come crashing down? Besides—”
“You said you liked the blue T-shirts, right, Maude?” Tiny interrupted. “What’s going on? Mr. Vex always makes you laugh. But you didn’t even crack a smile! ‘Why did the ghost cross the road? To emanate from the other side!’ That one gets me every time!” She couldn’t help laughing again.
“What? Oh, yes,” Maude assured her friends. “I love the blue; it absolutely works with the rest of my Field Day outfit.”
“Well, that’s a relief!” Tiny said, rolling her eyes.
Maude playfully stuck out her tongue at her friend. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I admit it; in class just now, I wasn’t even listening to Mr. Vex and his jokes.
I’m just thinking really hard about another test for Ms. Finley.”
“Okay,” CJ told her friend. “You worry about the test. Finding out if Ms. Finley is truly a ghost is the most important thing right now. Tiny and I will take extra-careful notes and we’ll catch you up later.”
“Thanks!” Maude said.
It wasn’t until halfway through Undead Language Arts class that a plan began to form. Oddly enough, it was an innocent comment from Mrs. Graves that started an idea germinating in her head.
They’d been discussing their summer reading book, Frontier Ghost, and Mrs. Graves called their attention to various sections. They read some aloud and some silently to themselves.
“What do you think life would have been like for a young ghost on the prairie?” Mrs. Graves asked. “How might haunting have been done differently?”
Lucinda waved her hand.
“Yes, Lucinda?” Ms. Graves asked.
“There was no electricity on the prairie, right?” she asked.
“Correct,” Ms. Graves answered.
“So ghosts would have been unable to turn lights on and off to alert humans to their presence,” Lucinda said.
“Maybe frontier ghosts caused cooking fires to burn higher or lower?” guessed Tiny.
“That’s an excellent suggestion, Tiny,” Mrs. Graves said.
“That’s what I was going to say!” Lucinda complained.
“Can you think of another way to haunt?” Mrs. Graves asked her.
Lucinda was silent for a moment.
“Well,” she said, “maybe they made noises on the roofs of houses?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Graves said. “We know from some of our oldest ghosts that they did exactly that.”
Lucinda smiled smugly.
“Let’s go on to the next passage,” Mrs. Graves suggested. “Who’d like to read aloud for us?”
“I will,” said Lucinda quickly, looking at Maude curiously. It was usually a competition to see who would speak more often in class: Maude or Lucinda.
But Maude was thinking about the word passage …
By lunchtime, her plan was coming together.
“I think I’ve got it,” Maude whispered to CJ and Tiny over their turkey sandwiches.
“Great!” Tiny cried.
“What’s great?” Lucinda asked from farther down the table.
“Uh …” Tiny thought quickly. “My sandwich is great!”
“You can be so strange, Tiny,” Helen chimed in.
“One ghost’s strange is another ghost’s normal,” CJ answered loftily. It was a saying that Principal Von Howl was fond of repeating. Ms. Finley had started saying it, too. It made the girls like her even more.
“Whatever!” Lucinda said, turning back to her lunch.
“Later,” Maude whispered to her friends, winking, and she began talking about her Field Day outfit.
“So what’s the plan, Maude?” CJ asked.
The three girls were tucked in their beds. Tiny’s feet were resting on her pillow and CJ’s stuffed bat was nestled under her arm. Ms. Finley had just knocked three times and then poked her head in to say good night and turn out their light.
“May all your dreams be scary!” she called as she headed to her room. “Rest up—tomorrow’s a big day!”
Maude had insisted that they wait a few minutes to talk about the plan.
“I don’t want Ms. Finley to hear us,” she cautioned. “I really like her and don’t want her to think that we doubt her.”
“But we do doubt her,” CJ pointed out. “Even though I hope she’s really a ghost. I don’t want her to be human. That would be the worst thing ever!”
“But we have to do what’s right for Boo La La,” Tiny interrupted. “Right?”
“Right. We all really like Ms. Finley,” Maude said. “But to be here, she needs to be a ghost.”
The girls lay quietly in their beds and listened as their end of the hallway grew silent.
“Now will you tell us?” CJ asked.
“Yes!” Maude said. “This was a tricky test to come up with—I thought the door-knocking test would work.”
“So did we,” CJ said loyally.
“But it didn’t prove anything one way or another,” Maude reminded them. “We talked about a lot of things that are specific to ghosts, but I kept coming back to one fact: Ghosts can pass through humans, but they can’t pass through other ghosts.”
“That’s one of the first things we learn in kindergarten!” CJ said.
“Otherwise, kindergartners would do nothing but stub their toes and bang their heads on each other,” Tiny said cheerfully.
“Exactly,” Maude said. “So my plan involves one of us trying to pass through Ms. Finley.”
CJ shivered. She heard Mrs. Von Howl’s voice in her head: Girls, it’s just not done!
“I know it goes against everything we’ve been taught,” Maude continued. “But if we can pass through her, then we’ll know Ms. Finley is human and not a
ghost at all. If we can’t, then we can assume that she is a ghost and rightfully belongs with us here at Boo Academy.”
“So who’s going to try?” CJ asked. “And when?”
“Tiny, I think you’re our best hope,” Maude said.
“Me?” Tiny squeaked.
“You,” Maude said. “And tomorrow’s our best chance. You’re our star basketball player. You’re going to be on the court the entire time during the student-faculty game. At some point, you can run right into Ms. Finley.”
After a few moments, Tiny answered. “Okay. I’ll do it. You guys know how clumsy I can be—my mom always says that my brain hasn’t caught up with my body! So it won’t seem strange if I bump into her.”
“And then either way, we’ll know,” Maude said. “If you bounce off Ms. Finley, she’s a ghost. If you pass through her, she’s … not.”
“Oh, it will be so embarrassing if she’s really a ghost!” CJ said.
“But we need to do it,” Tiny said, nodding “A little embarrassment will be okay if it means saving Boo La La!”
“Hug huddle!” Maude whispered.
As the three friends embraced, they quietly chanted, “Ghost girls rule!”
The girls woke the next morning to absolutely perfect Field Day weather. It was cool, foggy, and raining lightly.
“It doesn’t get much better than this!” CJ said.
“I’m just sorry the basketball game is in the gym,” Tiny said. “I love playing in the rain!”
“Oooh!” Maude said. “Do I hear thunder? This day just keeps getting nicer!”
Suddenly, Tiny moaned. “Uh-oh!”
“What’s wrong?” Maude and CJ asked together.
“I just remembered what I have to do today,” Tiny answered. “I’m not looking forward to it!”
“You’ll be fine, Tiny,” CJ told her friend.
“But what if I mess up?” Tiny fretted.
“You won’t,” Maude soothed. “I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t know you could do this. The whole thing will be over before you know it!”
“I hope so,” Tiny said. “And I hope Ms. Finley is a ghost!”
Maude tried to change the subject. “How do you like my outfit?” she asked. “I wasn’t sure about the blue shirt with my red shorts, but I think it works. Do you?”
“You look good, Maude!” CJ said. “I wonder what Ms. Finley’s glasses will be like today.”
“Oh,” groaned Tiny. “Can we please not talk about Ms. Finley?”
“We’re all in this together, Tiny,” Maude said. “You’re the one actually trying to pass through Ms. Finley, but we’ll be there to support you. Don’t worry about a thing!”
“Ghost girls rule!” the three friends chanted, high-fived, and then headed down to breakfast, where they found Ms. Finley already seated at the faculty table. Her glasses did not disappoint. In honor of Field Day, they sported multicolored stripes and had a #1 on the nosepiece.
“I guess she’s feeling pretty confident,” Maude noted with a smile as she looked around the dining room. It was a sea of colored T-shirts. The three friends quickly grabbed breakfast sandwiches and juice and joined a noisy group of ghost girls in blue shirts.
“How are you feeling, Tiny?” several of the other girls asked.
Tiny answered them all politely, but her stomach was full of butterflies. She wished the basketball game came at the beginning of the day, not the end. She was going to have to wait through all the other events before she’d get to play.
When everyone glided outside to begin Field Day, Tiny decided to distract herself by making up cheers for her teammates.
Fortunately, Tiny had a lot to cheer about. The day’s first event was the long-distance gliding race. It was the race Maude had been practicing for all summer. She and one member from each of the other teams jostled to line up at the race’s start. When Mrs. Von Howl shrieked, they were off!
The race required the girls to glide around the entire perimeter of the Boo La La campus. It was a very long distance, so Maude paced herself. She didn’t worry when first Amy and then Louise passed her.
She heard Tiny’s voice from far away cheer, “Go, Maude!” which made her smile.
Maude kept true to her pace and stayed within striking distance of the leaders. She concentrated on keeping her glides smooth and efficient.
“Keep it up, Maude!” Even among all the cheering, Maude could make out CJ’s screams.
Almost before she knew it, the finish line was visible in the distance. Suddenly, someone came gliding on her right. “I’m going to beat you!” Helen huffed as she tried to pass.
Maude knew she had to make her move. Using her last bit of energy, she forced herself to glide even faster and began to edge up on Amy and Louise, leaving Helen behind. With the finish line just yards in front of her, she managed to pull ahead and cross first! She glided right into the arms of CJ and Tiny, huffing and puffing but very happy.
“Way to go, Maude!” Her teammates thumped her on the back and shook her hand.
Maude smiled and slowly glided around in small circles, trying to stay loose and relaxed. When Helen glided by, a scowl on her face, Maude said, “Good race, Helen!”
Helen said nothing.
Next it was CJ’s turn to participate in the ectoplasm balloon battle. As every ghost knows, ectoplasm is the material left behind after a successful haunting. Every year, teachers at Boo La La collected it from classrooms, the cemetery, and laboratories … everywhere the students practiced. For Field Day, they’d filled colorful balloons with the slippery material.
“I don’t understand why you like this game, CJ,” Maude said.
“It’s so much fun!” CJ answered. “We get to run around the entire school and pelt one another with balloons. It’s a blast!”
“If you say so.” Maude sighed.
Each participant grabbed two filled balloons. They were allowed to come back to base and pick up more balloons as the contest went on. The winner was the ghost who could go the longest without being “plasmed.” Mrs. Von Howl allowed time for the players to scatter around the campus, and then she shrieked to get them started.
The air was immediately filled with the sounds of ghosts shrieking, teammates cheering, and the splat, splat, splat as one ghost after another was hit and disqualified.
Nearly all of the balloons had been taken when CJ was finally hit.
“Darn it!” CJ said as she joined her friends, wiping ectoplasm from her T-shirt. “I was sure I could outlast them all!”
“You did really well, CJ!” Tiny comforted her. “You were one of the last ghosts playing.”
“But I don’t know if I earned any points for our team!” CJ worried.
“Don’t worry one bit, CJ,” Maude assured her. “The basketball game is still ahead of us and we have the best player at Boo Academy on our team!”
Tiny grinned weakly. The butterflies in her stomach seemed to have turned into angry ravens!
But then it was time for the tug-of-war. A long rope was stretched out on the field. Two teams lined up on one end and two teams lined up on the other. Maude, CJ, and Tiny were at the front of their line, facing Lucinda and Helen and their teammates.
“You’re going to lose!” Lucinda called.
“Oh, no we’re not!” CJ called back.
At Mrs. Von Howl’s shriek, the ghosts started pulling. At first it seemed that Maude, CJ, and Tiny’s side would win, but then slowly, inch by inch, Lucinda’s side turned the tide.
“Come on, guys!” Lucinda called to her teammates. “Let’s crush them! One, two, three, pull!”
And with a mighty yank, Maude, CJ, Tiny, and their teammates were pulled over the halfway line.
“We won! We won!” Helen cried.
Helen stalked over to the three friends. “Sorry, losers,” she said, and went back to join her celebrating teammates.
“What happened to being good sports?” Tiny wondered. Maude and CJ just shook their heads and
rubbed their sore hands.
At lunch, it took the girls a few minutes to realize what was different about Ms. Finley. Her long gray hair was twisted up into its usual bun but, instead of her familiar floor-length skirt and plain top, she was wearing baggy sweatpants and an ancient Boo Academy T-shirt. Dirty lace-up sneakers were just visible under her sweatpants
“Eat up, girls!” she urged them. “You’ll need lots of energy this afternoon!”
“Those are definitely sneakers,” Maude murmured to her friends.
“She just can’t be human,” CJ groaned. “She’s far too nice!”
The dining room grew quiet as the whole school tucked into soup, sandwiches, and fruit. As they ate, Mrs. Von Howl strode to the front of the room to review the events held already and each team’s score.
As she had thought, Mrs. Von Howl had done a good job of creating evenly matched teams. By the end of the day, all six teams were within a few points of one another.
Finally, it was basketball game time. One combined student team would face off against the teachers. As the tallest girl at school, Tiny was playing center, her favorite position. She started the game facing Mrs. Graves. To her left, playing point guard, Lucinda was jumping in place to keep limber. Tiny decided to try to make the best of working with her unpleasant teammate.
Tiny windmilled her arms around her head, trying to loosen them up, and attempted to tune out all the noise in the gym. After all, in addition to trying to lead her team to victory, she had another more important job to do. She had to pick the right moment to try to pass through Ms. Finley.
The whistle blew, and they were off. Tiny scored first with a beautiful jump shot. Ms. Finley caught the rebound, scurried down the court, and lobbed the ball. Clank! The ball bounced off the hoop.
“Watch your shots,” Mrs. Graves called. “No more bricks!”
“Doing my best!” Ms. Finley answered, giving her teammate a thumbs-up.
“Go, team!” Lucinda called. Tiny looked at her, amazed. Lucinda had a determined look on her face—she was totally into the game.
School for Ghost Girls Page 3