A Llama in the Library

by Johanna Hurwitz

  “What about Alana?” I asked, but it was too late. He couldn’t hear me. Now I was stuck. I couldn’t even call Alana to postpone the meeting. I still didn’t know her address or her phone number or even her parents’ first names. I opened the phone book and counted thirty-seven Browns. I’d never known there were so many around here.

  So it looked as if I had no choice. But though I felt sorry for Justin, in a way I was pleased. It wouldn’t be so terrible to be alone with Alana.

  At ten o’clock I was locking up my bike in the parking lot of the White House Inn.

  There were a couple of dark clouds above and a cold wind up on the hill this morning. I can remember more than one year when we’ve had several inches of snow in October. Maybe this year we’d even get snow in September, I thought as I walked through the parking lot. I studied the license plates of the parked cars: North Carolina, Florida, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey. I saw a great bumper sticker that my mom would get a kick out of: fleece on earth, good wool to ewe.

  “Hi,” a voice called out. “Where’s your shadow?”

  Because I was still wearing my biking helmet, I didn’t hear her very well at first. But then I turned around and saw Alana getting off her bike.

  “What did you say about shadows?” I asked, confused.

  “Justin. I always see the two of you together,” she explained.

  “He’s home sick. He wants us to wait until next week.”

  “Why wait?” Alana asked me. “We don’t need him, do we? If we find a ghost, we’ll tell him all about it,” she said.

  I stared at her. She was really beautiful, I thought. Besides her long golden braid and the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, I really liked her smile. One of her front teeth was a little chipped, but it just made the smile seem bigger.

  At that moment I was very glad that Justin wasn’t there. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  I was acting as if I knew what I was doing, but really I had no plan at all. We walked up the steps of the inn, and I could already smell the fire going in the fireplace. If I hadn’t been feeling nervous about walking into the inn, it would have felt good to be going inside, out of the wind.

  “Wow. This is some place,” Alana commented. “How would you like to live here?”

  “It’s hard to imagine that it used to be a home for one family,” I responded.

  Before I had time to think which way to go, a man appeared, walking toward the front entranceway. He stopped when he saw us.

  “Are you kids looking for someone?” he asked.

  I could hear the distant tinkle of china, and once again I could smell the coffee and other breakfast smells. For a moment I paused, not knowing what to say to him. “Well, not exactly looking for someone . . . ,” I stammered. “That is, I saw a book in the library that says there was a ghost in this place. Have you ever seen it?”

  The man smiled. “I’ve seen that book, but I’ve never been able to spot the ghost. In fact I keep a copy of the book in our sitting room for the guests to read.”

  He held out his hand to us as if we were adults. “I’m Mr. Grinold. I own this place.”

  I shook his hand. “Doesn’t it scare them knowing that your place might be haunted?” I asked.

  “No one’s ever checked out with a complaint,” said Mr. Grinold. “In fact I think some people sit up nights hoping for a sighting.” He paused a moment. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Adam Fine, and this is Alana Brown.” Alana nodded in greeting.

  “Ah. Brown,” the man said, smiling again.

  “Yeah,” I said. “After reading about the ghost appearing only to people named Brown, we thought we should test it out.”

  “Why not?” asked Mr. Grinold. “You ought to start with the secret stairway.”

  “Secret stairway?” both Alana and I echoed.

  The man smiled and nodded. “Come along,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

  Justin would really have something to feel sick about when he heard that he’d missed seeing the secret stairway at the White House, I thought.

  We followed Mr. Grinold into one of the dining rooms that weren’t being used that morning. He opened a door of what looked like an ordinary china cabinet. Then he pressed a hidden latch, and suddenly he was able to move the entire cabinet to reveal that it was really a door. Behind it was a stairway.

  “You can walk right on up to the top,” Mr. Grinold told us. “Turn left, and you’ll find another door. When you open it, you’ll be on the second floor.”

  “Why did they build this?” I asked, looking up at the dimly lit stairwell.

  “Was it part of the Underground Railroad?” Alana asked. I thought that was a really smart question and wished I’d asked it. At school we’d learned that there were houses with secret doors and secret rooms where escaping slaves could hide, back in the days before the Civil War.

  “No,” Mr. Grinold said. “I wish I could pretend the stairway had such an important purpose. I think when the house was being designed at the beginning of the twentieth century, the owner or the architect had a sense of humor and thought it would be fun to add this feature. I suppose the servants might have used it to get from one floor to another and to keep out of sight.”

  Alana started up the stairs, and I followed her. The dining room light lit our way. But as we got farther from it, it became more difficult to see.

  “I wish I had a flashlight,” I muttered to Alana as I bumped into her.

  “I see a little light ahead. It must be coming from the doorway that will let us out,” Alana told me.

  We climbed a few more steps, and then she found the doorknob of the exit. We could see the second-floor landing in front of us. We closed the door behind us, and when we looked back, it appeared to be just an ordinary closet door. Then we raced down the main stairway to the ground floor.

  Mr. Grinold was waiting for us there. “Well,” he asked us, “did you see any ghosts?”

  To tell the truth, I’d been so impressed by that staircase that I’d forgotten I was supposed to be looking for a ghost.

  “Maybe it’s their day off,” said Alana with a grin.

  “As long as you’re here, you’re welcome to look in one of the rooms too,” Mr. Grinold offered. “Go up to room nine,” he said. “It’s on the second floor. The door’s open, and no one is staying there at the moment.”

  “Gee, thanks!” I said, thrilled that this was working out so easily. Too bad Justin wasn’t here. After all, it had been his idea.

  Alana and I slowly mounted the steep staircase in the center hall. Room 9 was at the end of the hall on the second floor. The door was closed, but when I turned the knob, it opened easily.

  “I’ll turn on the light,” said Alana, moving toward an oak dresser with a lamp on it.

  “Ghosts probably prefer the dark,” I said, but it was a dark day and I was glad to have the light on.

  Now I could see that the double bed was covered with a quilt of blue and green fabric. The carpeting was pale blue.

  “It looks more cozy than spooky,” I commented. I walked over to a door and peeked inside. It was the bathroom. There were no ghosts in there using the facilities.

  “This must be a closet,” said Alana, opening another door. Suddenly she let out a little shriek.

  “What is it?” I asked, rushing toward her.

  Alana giggled. “This fell on my head,” she said, picking up an extra pillow that had been resting on an overhead shelf in the closet.

  “Do you suppose someone pushed it down?” I asked incredulously.

  “You mean, the ghost of Mrs. Brown?” asked Alana softly.

  “Well, I don’t believe in ghosts. But it is a strange coincidence that the pillow fell on you.”

  At that moment the light went out. Alana reached out and grabbed my hand.

  I held on, glad not to be alone in the room. The cozy bedroom had turned spooky after all. “Maybe the bulb burned out,” I whispered hopefully.
r />   “Are you scared?” asked Alana.

  “No,” I lied, giving her hand a squeeze. I still didn’t believe in ghosts, but I admit I was feeling a bit shaky. Without letting go of Alana’s hand, I walked toward the bathroom. I tried to turn on the light, but nothing happened.

  “Mrs. Brown, are you here?” Alana asked, looking up toward the ceiling.

  Of course there was no answer.

  “You don’t have to worry. I’m not going to stay. I just came to admire your old house,” Alana told the darkness.

  I sniffed the air. I remember once reading something about how you can smell a ghost. An old woman like Mrs. Brown would have worn some sort of flowery perfume. To my horror, there was a sweet scent in the air.

  “I think we should get out of here,” I said to Alana.

  “That’s fine with me,” she agreed.

  We left the room and hurried back down the stairs. There were a few people in the front room now, and a couple of them were carrying flashlights and candles. Though it was not yet ten-thirty in the morning, the room was dark. It was dark outside too.

  “Look what you did,” I teased Alana, and she giggled nervously. We both felt relieved to be surrounded by other people and not alone upstairs in room 9.

  “Looks like we’re going to get a storm,” I said.

  “We’d better hurry home,” Alana replied.

  “We seem to have lost power,” Mr. Grinold was explaining to his guests. “I hope all will be in order before it’s time to start cooking dinner.”

  I nodded good-bye to the owner of the White House, but he was so busy talking that I’m not sure he even noticed us. As we left the building, I realized that I was still holding Alana’s hand. “Thanks for being such a good sport,” I said, letting go.

  “Why not?” Alana said. “It was fun. Especially now that we’re out of that room.”

  “Maybe someday you can come over to my house,” I said to her. “We have two llamas in my family. I bet you’d like them.”

  “Neat,” Alana said. “Someone told me you had llamas. I’d love to see them.”

  I unlocked my bike and put my helmet on my head. “Don’t you wear a helmet when you ride?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “I hate the feel of my helmet, so I hardly ever wear it. Only when my father’s watching. He makes a big deal of it.”

  “He’s right,” I said as I mounted my bike. “It’s better to be safe than sorry.” Boy, I thought, that was dumb of me. I sounded just like a teacher or a parent.

  “So long,” Alana shouted, and she was off down the hill. I watched her go. Even under the darkening skies, I could see her golden braid flying out behind her as she rode. At the foot of the hill Alana made a left. My route took me to the right. Why didn’t I invite her home with me today? I wondered. Well, it was too late now. But I definitely would invite her another day soon. I felt the first drop of rain on my hand, and I knew that there would be a lot more to follow. Luckily I made it home before the real downpour began.

  We didn’t have any electrical power at my house either. I guessed the wind must have brought a tree down onto a power line. The telephone lines weren’t affected, however. So after I changed into a dry pair of jeans, I called Justin. Even if he was feeling sick, I knew he’d want to know the details of Alana’s and my visit to the White House. Wait till he heard about the secret staircase!

  6

  The Accident

  Justin’s line was busy. After a couple of unsuccessful tries I went into the kitchen to see if there was any lunch. But it was an automatic move on the part of my legs. It wasn’t as if they were getting an urgent message from my stomach. I wasn’t really hungry at all. In fact I was feeling kind of achy.

  My mother felt my forehead with her hand and announced that beyond a doubt I had a fever. It was too dark in the house, without electricity, to take my temperature with a thermometer. We would never have been able to read it.

  “It must be from being out in that rain,” I told her as I got into bed. My throat was feeling scratchy, and my eyes were burning.

  “One rainstorm shouldn’t make a healthy kid sick,” she announced. “You did the right thing by changing your clothing, but whatever you have must have been incubating inside you already. I’ll bet you caught the class bug, like Justin.”

  For the next day and a half, I didn’t feel like getting out of bed. I slept and drank fruit juice or tea sweetened with honey and then slept again. I didn’t want to watch the baseball play-offs on TV or even listen on the radio. I didn’t miss the electricity and wasn’t aware when it came back on fourteen hours after we’d lost it.

  It wasn’t until Monday morning that I began to feel like myself again. But I still wasn’t well enough to go to school. I was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of hot cocoa and looking at the sports page in the newspaper. When I turned the paper over to the other side, my heart did a somersault.

  The headline read GIRL BIKER HIT BY CAR ON SATURDAY DIES. I thought immediately of Alana. I remembered seeing her ride off in the rain. I scanned the story underneath the headline, but I was so nervous that I could hardly make out the letters. I forced myself to start again at the top and read slowly, word by word.

  • • •

  On Saturday, in the midst of a heavy rainstorm and winds that caused power outages for 20 miles, a young woman riding a bike was sideswiped at the intersection of routes 100 and 9 in Wilmington by a pickup truck. The driver of the pickup was Doug Poole, age 38, of Marlboro. The traffic light was out, and Poole admits he drove through the Wilmington intersection at about 40 miles an hour.

  “I didn’t see her,” the anguished Poole told police who arrived at the scene. “I had no visibility at all, even though my wipers were going at their fastest speed.”

  The young woman, who was not wearing a helmet, probably skidded into Poole’s truck because of the wet road. She was taken to Memorial Hospital, where she was in a coma for 36 hours before her death from brain injuries. Police are withholding her name until her family has been notified.

  Poole agreed to take an alcohol test and was found not to have been intoxicated. “This was an unavoidable accident,” Police Chief Ron Cole announced. “The lack of electricity, the unusual darkness because of the storm, and the heavy rain all contributed to this tragedy.” It is speculated that had the bike rider been wearing a helmet, the fatality might not have occurred.

  I sat at the table and read the article a second and a third time. I didn’t believe in ghosts, yet somehow a ghost had gotten Alana. And it was my fault. She would never have ridden to and from the White House if it hadn’t been for me.

  I discovered that tears were dripping down my face. I hardly even knew Alana. She’d been in my class for only a few weeks, and except for the short time we spent together on Saturday morning, she was practically a stranger. Still, I thought about her beautiful golden braid and the good soapy smell when I stood next to her. I remembered her chipped front tooth and how it made her smile seem even bigger and happier. I remembered how she gasped when the pillow fell out of the closet. We both had laughed, I thought. Now I’d never see her or laugh with her again.

  My mother came into the room. “Adam,” she said, “you look terrible. I thought you were getting better.”

  “It’s not my throat,” I croaked to her. “Look at this.” I held out the paper.

  My mother nodded. “I read that story already. It’s a real tragedy,” she said. “It’s why Dad and I always insist you wear a helmet when you ride your bike.”

  “She was in my class,” I told her.

  “She was?” my mom asked in a puzzled voice. “I didn’t remember that the article gave her name and age.”

  “It doesn’t. But I know anyhow. I was with her on Saturday when it began to rain. I even told her she should wear a helmet,” I said. As I said it, I shuddered with a thought. Why hadn’t I lent her mine? Maybe then she would still be alive.

  “Adam, you may be wro
ng,” my mother said. “Maybe it isn’t your classmate.”

  I shook my head. I just knew.

  Later in the day, when school was over, I phoned Justin. I was hoping he’d tell me that by some miracle Alana had been in class. I tried to sound casual when I spoke to him, as if I’d known nothing about the accident. “Did Alana tell you about the White House?” I asked him after he gave me our math homework.

  “Naw. She wasn’t in school today,” he said. So then I knew for sure. Alana was dead.

  I was well enough to go outdoors, so I went to the shed where our llamas are kept. I put my arm around Ethan Allen. Justin thinks he’s my best friend, but there are some things I can tell our llama that I would never tell Justin. Only this time I didn’t even say anything. I just began crying. Ethan Allen didn’t move. He stood still and let me wipe my eyes on his soft coat.

  Ira Allen moved close to me too. It was as if he were trying to let me know that he cared about how I felt also. “I was going to bring Alana to meet you both,” I sobbed. “You’d have liked her. I liked her a lot.”

  I didn’t go back into the house until I stopped crying. When I did, I ran straight upstairs to the bathroom and washed my face so my parents and April wouldn’t guess.

  The next day Mom said I was well enough to return to school. It was raining, so I took the bus instead of riding my bike. I joked with some of the other kids, but at the same time I was dreading the moment I’d first see Alana’s empty chair in the classroom.

  I tried not to look at the seat where Alana had sat, but my head kept turning in that direction. She’d sat to the left, two rows ahead of me, so it was hard not to notice.

  Mrs. Wurst called us to attention. “By now most of you have heard about the tragic accident that occurred on Saturday,” she said.

  We all nodded, and there was a mumble of voices. “You’ll notice an empty chair in our class,” she continued. “Chad Embers will probably be out for the rest of the week. His sister’s funeral is on Friday morning. She didn’t have any identification on her, and her parents thought she was visiting a friend. So the family didn’t even know that it was Diane Embers who had been killed until she didn’t return home from school yesterday.