“Gross!” squealed Pam Wright.
“He figures he’s going to make millions on it,” Dub added.
“Sure he is,” said Karen scornfully.
“I think I’ll bring my grandfather to school again,” said Joey. “He was there the day that blimp, the whatchamacallit—the Hindenburg—blew up. It’s a great story, the way he tells it.”
“No fair,” protested Karen. “You have to do the interview and make the presentation yourself.”
“Nice try, though, Joey,” said Allie with a smile.
“I think my aunt used to be a nurse in the coal mines or something,” said Pam. “That could be kind of interesting.”
Karen gave Pam a look, as if to say, You’re not actually getting into this dumb idea, are you? She leaned back in her chair and tossed her braid over her shoulder. “I have no clue who to interview,” she said. “I mean, my grandmother lives with us, but she’s a total vegetable. All she ever does is watch the home shopping channel and order useless stuff that my mother has to send back.”
Allie felt sorry for anyone who had to live with Karen. She figured Karen’s grandmother kept the TV on so she wouldn’t have to listen to Karen complaining all the time. But she kept her thoughts to herself.
Allie didn’t care if Karen thought Mr. Henry’s idea for Elders Day was boring. She had always been interested in people’s stories, especially in the things they usually kept hidden. She was curious about what lay beneath the surface. She decided that she was going to find someone really fascinating to interview.
“Maybe I’ll pick my Uncle Hal,” said Brad Lewis. “Once he ate forty-seven pickled eggs and won a hundred bucks, and he won another contest for smashing beer cans on his forehead. I think he demolished thirty-three cans before he knocked himself out.”
Everybody laughed, and Dub said, “Mr. Henry said this project might teach us about some milestones in history, and it looks like he was right.”
“And get this,” Brad added. “Every time he smashes a can, he hollers, ‘Recycle this!’”
Allie was just opening her mouth to speak when a voice blurted, “Well, my subject is going to be Mrs. Hobbs.”
Allie felt her eyes widen in astonishment. She looked around the lunch table to discover who had said such a foolish thing and saw that all of her classmates were turned toward her, their faces registering shock and disbelief.
Horrified voices whispered, “Mrs. Hobbs?”
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
“You’re going to interview the Snapping Turtle?”
“Old Hobbling Hobbs?”
“That’s not even funny, Al,” said Dub, looking worried. “She hates kids.”
Allie’s hand flew to her mouth. Was she really the one who had spoken? What in the world was she thinking? Why had she said such a thing?
Mrs. Hobbs had worked in the cafeteria as long as Allie could remember. All the kids, even the sixth-graders, were terrified of her. Many of them, like Allie, brought their own lunches from home just so they wouldn’t have to pass through the food line under her unblinking glare.
Allie glanced toward the front of the cafeteria and shuddered. There stood Mrs. Hobbs, her thin, wrinkled lips tightly clamped and her beady eyes darting from side to side, like a snapping turtle sizing up its next victim. As she ladled glops of food onto trays, her eyes seemed to devour each child who crept by.
The nickname Hobbling Hobbs referred to her peculiar, lurching gait, which had caused some kids to speculate that she wasn’t human at all but a robot whose inner controls had gone haywire. Allie had seen kindergartners burst into tears at the mere sight of Mrs. Hobbs.
What was even more unsettling than the prospect of a one-on-one, face-to-face interview with Mrs. Hobbs was that Allie had blurted out this startling information without having any idea she was going to do it.
The last time something like that had happened was three weeks before, when Allie was being haunted by Lucy Stiles’s ghost. The same chill she had felt then was creeping down her neck. A familiar feeling took hold of her, a mixture of excitement and dread.
Was it happening again?
An Imprint of Macmillan
THE GHOST OF FOSSIL GLEN. Copyright © 1998 by Cynthia DeFelice. All rights reserved. For information, address Square Fish, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Square Fish and the Square Fish logo are trademarks of Macmillan and are used by Farrar, Straus and Giroux under license from Macmillan.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
DeFelice, Cynthia C.
The ghost of Fossil Glen / Cynthia DeFelice.
p. cm.
Summary: Allie knows it’s not her imagination when she hears a voice and sees in her mind’s eye the face of a girl who seems to be seeking Allie’s help.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-3053-6
[1. Ghosts—Fiction. 2. Diaries—Fiction. 3. Imagination—Fiction.] I. Title
PZ7.D339255Gh 1998
[Fic]—dc21
97-33230
Originally published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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www.squarefishbooks.com
The Ghost of Fossil Glen Page 12