Double the Danger and Zero Zucchini

by Betsy Uhrig

Nate had been teasing me by calling me Albert? Was that what they’d all been smiling about around the table? I really had a lot to learn.

  Caroline looked up at the sky for a second, then back at me.

  “I wish you’d known Big Al. He would have been an amazing grampa.” Her eyes were getting shiny again. Now she was sniffling and rummaging in her pockets for a tissue.

  “I got lots more good old-man stuff,” I said quickly. “Like winking and saying ‘ ’Nuff said.’ I’ll write it all down and send it to you.”

  “That would be fabulous,” Caroline said, dabbing at her eyes with a linty blob of pocket tissue. “This book is really shaping up, and I’m so happy you’re helping.”

  Then she grabbed me by the face and kissed me. ’Nuff said.

  33

  JAVIER HAD FILM CLUB AFTER SCHOOL on Monday, so I hung around and then we walked to his house together. We were going to meet Marta there after her elbow checkup, then go over to the Old Weintraub Place to see if we had an answer from the ghostwriter.

  When we got to Javier’s front walk, we could see someone sitting on the porch swing. It was a small person, but it wasn’t Great-Aunt Rosa. It was Marta. As we got closer, she jumped up and ran down the porch steps.

  “Guys!” she said. “Where have you been? I’ve been texting and texting.”

  We looked at our phones. She was correct: She’d been texting Where r u??? over and over again to both of us.

  “Javier had film club,” I said. “You knew that.”

  “I guess I did. I forgot in all the excitement.”

  “Weren’t you at the doctor? How was that exciting?”

  “I was only there for about two seconds. They say I’ve been ‘moving it around too much’ and it’s ‘not healing as fast as it should be.’ They don’t know what they’re talking about,” she said, waving her arms around to make sarcastic air quotes.

  “Clearly,” said Javier, gently pushing her injured arm down to her side with one finger.

  “Dud,” she said. “But never mind. Because look what I have!”

  She reached into her bottomless backpack and pulled out a stack of paper. Caroline’s pages.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked. “It’s supposed to be at the Old Weintraub Place.”

  “It was,” said Marta. “I got tired of waiting for you, so I went over to conduct some experiments around the outside, just see what kind of energy patterns I could detect.”

  Javier snorted, and it was good to hear it directed at someone who wasn’t me.

  “You couldn’t wait for us?” I asked. But we all knew she couldn’t.

  “It turned out the back door was unlocked,” Marta said. “So I walked right in.”

  34

  “WE DIDN’T LEAVE THE BACK DOOR unlocked,” I said. “Did we?”

  “Nope,” said Javier. “We used the front door.”

  “Then how could it have been unlocked? It can’t have been unlocked ever since Mrs. Weintraub moved.”

  “Maybe the cleaning person left it open,” said Javier.

  “I thought we agreed there was no cleaning person,” said Marta. “I thought we agreed it was a ghost we’re dealing with.”

  “We did not agree to that,” said Javier. “That was never formally agreed to.”

  “We did,” said Marta. “At least Alex and I did. Right, Alex?”

  I honestly had no idea what I’d agreed to at this point. “Why did you take the book?” I asked her. “We need to leave it there until we have an answer.”

  “Why do you think I’ve been texting till my thumbs are stubs?” Marta said. “We do have an answer. And I think you’re going to like it.”

  “You already read it?” I asked.

  “Of course I did. I’ve been sitting out here in the cold forever! I needed something to read.”

  “Let’s see it,” I said.

  She handed the pages to me, and we sat down on the porch steps.

  “Read it out loud,” said Marta.

  I did. “ ‘When he fell from the trellis, Gerald accidentally entered a slipstream that leads to an alternate world. His grandfather created the slipstream to move between the two worlds. The warlock followed him from the alternate world into this one, where he captured Gerald’s grandfather, then covered his tracks with the void. The time vortex where the grandfather is imprisoned is in the alternate world.’ ”

  “Doesn’t that sound good?” said Marta. “I have no idea what a slipstream even is, and I’m still all in with it.”

  “A slipstream is an area of low pressure behind a fast-moving vehicle,” said Javier.

  “How does he know that,” I asked Marta, “if we don’t? When did you learn that?” I asked Javier. “Were we out sick that day?”

  He just smiled and shrugged.

  “So, is a slipstream the same as a vortex?” Marta asked.

  I left that one to Dr. Dictionary.

  “Not really,” said Javier. “A vortex is more like a whirlwind. That’s why you can get trapped in a vortex but slide through a slipstream. It makes sense if you think about it.”

  Did it? Enough, I guess. Marta was nodding, anyway.

  I went back to reading the note. “ ‘The grandfather’s house in the alternate world is intact—the void hasn’t crossed over—but it is different from the original: It is the house of someone with magical powers. And the inhabitants of this world are not all human. In fact, most of them are not.’ ”

  “That opens up some possibilities,” said Javier.

  It did, but I had no idea how I was going to interview gryphons or elves or whatever else the ghostwriter had in mind. Grampas were enough of a challenge.

  “Read the last part,” Marta said.

  “I’m getting there,” I said. “Don’t rush me.

  “ ‘Gerald can use the magical resources in the alternate house to rescue his grandfather,’ ” I read. “ ‘As long as the warlock doesn’t know he’s there.’ ”

  35

  “HUH,” I SAID WHEN I WAS DONE.

  “Huh,” agreed Javier.

  “ ‘Huh’?” said Marta excitedly. “Do you see where the ghostwriter is going with this? This turns the story into a real fantasy with an alternate world. Like the books we saw in the basement,” she said. She let that hang a moment for effect. “The books belonging to a ghost. A ghost named Rob,” she concluded. She sat back like a lawyer who had just proved that her accused client’s pet hamster was the murderer.

  “Maybe…,” said Javier slowly. “Maybe…”

  “Maybe what? Speak up,” said Marta. “Maybe what?”

  Javier ignored her hectoring. “Maybe Rob isn’t Mrs. Weintraub’s dead husband. Maybe he’s her son, and he’s secretly living in her old house because he lost his own in a fire, or he gambled it away, and now he doesn’t have anywhere to go but—”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Mrs. Weintraub only has a daughter. I know that for a fact. From my mom.”

  “A daughter Roberta?” asked Javier hopefully.

  “Melinda. And Mrs. Weintraub lives with her.”

  “Oh, well. I tried.”

  “You did try,” said Marta. “But you failed.”

  Javier took his defeat pretty well. “Fine,” he said. “I give up with the rational explanations. All aboard the express train to Ghostville.”

  “Yes!” said Marta, and she made a bunch of train-type noises that don’t deserve a description here or anywhere else.

  I knew Javier wasn’t really on board the express train, and neither was I. There were still any number of reality-based explanations for the notes on the book pages. And Javier and I could discuss them as much as we wanted—as long as Marta wasn’t around. When Marta was around, we would ride along in her slipstream. Or maybe swirl around in her vortex.

  It was just easier that way.

  I stood up and put the pages in my backpack. “I’m going home,” I said. “I want to send these ideas to Caroline as soon as possible.”<
br />
  “It’s not an organ for transplant,” said Javier. “I think it will last until you get there.”

  “I don’t know,” said Marta. “It seems like the heart of the book to me.”

  She wasn’t joking.

  “In that case, I’ll get a cooler,” said Javier.

  He was.

  36

  I WAS EAGER TO SEND THE ghostwriter’s ideas to Caroline when I got home, but fate, as they say, had other plans.

  My mom was on her phone when I walked in the door. “How’s he doing?” she was saying. “Do they know what it was?” She looked over at me and grimaced.

  That’s how I knew this had something to do with Alvin.

  “Okay. Let me know when you can,” she said, and ended the call.

  “Your father and brother are at the doctor,” she told me.

  “What now?” I asked.

  I really was curious to hear what had happened. Because with Alvin, it was always interesting.

  Alvin was a voracious reader, as I’ve already said, but his reading didn’t make him wise or keep him out of trouble. In fact, the opposite was true. He liked to think of himself as a scientist, but mainly what he experimented on was himself. And the results often led directly to the doctor’s office. Let’s look at it this way: Marta put herself in danger because she thought it was fun and had no understanding of gravity. Alvin did it because he was curious and had no understanding of cause and effect.

  He also seemed to believe that the holes in his head were interchangeable. Here’s one of many available examples: He had to go to the doctor twice in the same day when he was five. The first time, he had shoved a minimarshmallow so far up his nose, he couldn’t get it out, and the second time, he had eaten an unknown number of cotton balls. Several objects have also been pulled from his ears. I’m guessing there are still things inside his head that he hasn’t bothered to tell our parents about.

  “He was making his own sunscreen,” said my mom.

  “Out of what?”

  “That’s what we need to find out. Something he’s allergic to, anyway. His skin broke out in blisters.”

  “Where?” I asked, not really wanting to know.

  “Only his arms, thank goodness.” And then she added the Alvin refrain: “It’s a good thing he’s cute.”

  It was hard for me to admit it, being his brother, but Alvin was ridiculously cute. And that had probably kept my parents from leaving him at the doctor’s on one of their many visits. He was nearsighted, like my mom, and wore tiny kid glasses that made his brown puppy eyes look even huger. I got Mom’s nose. Full size. Alvin had one perky cowlick. I had so many, I looked like I’d been mauled at a petting zoo.

  “Do you want me to make dinner?” I asked. Mom tended to burn things when she was distracted.

  “Would you? I’m going to search his room for whatever he was experimenting with up there.”

  I was pulling out the ingredients for tacos when I noticed that the economy-size cayenne pepper jar was almost empty.

  “Mom?” I yelled up the stairs.

  “Yeah?”

  “I think I know what caused the blistering.”

  37

  DINNER WAS READY WHEN DAD AND Alvin got home.

  Both of Alvin’s arms were wrapped from wrists to pits with gauze, and whatever ointment the doctor had used on them had a funky odor. Dad said he looked and smelled like someone had been called away in the middle of mummifying him.

  “Do we have any gauze?” Alvin asked as we ate our bland, cayenne-less tacos. “And maybe some unguents as well?”

  “Why?” Mom asked him warily.

  “I was thinking that I could finish mummifying myself.”

  Dad put down his fork very, very gently. “Alvin…,” he began, in a soft but in no way patient voice.

  “Never mind.”

  * * *

  So it was a long evening before I sat down with the ghostwriter’s newest plot twist, ready to type it up and send it to Caroline. I opened the pages to the note. And that’s when I realized that the note didn’t end with “as long as the warlock doesn’t know he’s there.” The paragraph ended there. But the note went over onto the back of the page. Apparently, the ghostwriter hadn’t planned what it was going to say before starting to write and had run out of space.

  Marta must not have seen the last part of the note when she read it herself, because she hadn’t jumped down my throat and ordered me to finish after I’d stopped at what I thought was the last sentence. And she definitely would have wanted me to read the rest.

  “When Gerald lands in the alternate world, he’s injured,” the note on the back of the page said. “And there to aid him are two creatures. One is an imp called Snarko. The other is the Daredevil. Snarko has a magic spyglass that lets him see the truth about things. The Daredevil cannot be hurt, with the exception of her elbows. If she is struck in the funny bone, she falls unconscious for several hours. The two agree to help Gerald navigate the alternate world and find his grandfather.

  “It’s important,” the note said, “to have trusty sidekicks on any quest.”

  Okay so far. But there was one more part of the note. And this was the part that threw me. It threw me pretty far, to be honest. And I think I might have landed on my head.

  Here’s what the last part of the note said:

  “When Gerald opens his eyes after the fall from the trellis, Snarko the Imp and the Daredevil are standing over him. He doesn’t believe what he’s seeing at first. He thinks he simply fell into his grandfather’s garden. But gradually he realizes that he is no longer where he started out.

  “Snarko says to him: ‘We need to get you into better shape if you’re going to find your grampa.’

  “And the Daredevil says: ‘You can do it. You just need to push past the pain.’ ”

  Which, if you’re keeping track, is exactly what Javier and Marta said to me after I fell off the trellis.

  * * *

  I don’t think I would have needed the last two quotes to understand that Snarko and the Daredevil were based on Javier and Marta. It was clear from the descriptions. Actually, it was clear from their names.

  But something far creepier was also clear. When I fell from the trellis, we were at Javier’s house. The three of us were alone when Javier and Marta said those things. Well, okay, yelled those things. But not loud enough for someone all the way over at the Old Weintraub Place to hear.

  This meant that the someone—or something—from the Old Weintraub Place had been in or near Javier’s yard when I fell. Was it a cleaning person who had followed us to Javier’s and hidden in the bushes while I climbed down the trellis? Not possible, since we hadn’t been to the Old Weintraub Place the day I fell.

  Was it a vagrant who lurked in Javier’s neighborhood, sometimes having coffee at the Old Weintraub Place and sometimes hiding in Javier’s shrubbery in case anything interesting happened? Possible, but highly unlikely.

  Or, and this was where I’d been headed all along: Was it the ghost of Rob Weintraub, who sometimes got bored at his own house, so flitted around the neighborhood just for kicks? Was it a ghost that could, if it chose, follow us home? I already ran everywhere—I really didn’t want to have to start sprinting.

  That last theory was a first-class, one-way ticket aboard the express train to Ghostville. Which is where I ended up, right there at Ghostville Station, holding my luggage. And if you’d looked into that luggage, you would have seen an old TV antenna and a stupid hat with a flashlight duct-taped to it.

  38

  ORDINARILY, I DIDN’T WELCOME surprise visits from my brother as I was getting ready for bed. Or any other time. He was cute, sure, but he was also a little brother and by definition a pain. Tonight, though, I was coming to terms with a new belief in roaming ghosts, so I was glad for some company when Alvin arrived.

  “How are your arms?” I asked him. “Still hurting?”

  He shrugged. “Not really.”

  “W
hat made you think hot pepper was a good sunscreen ingredient?”

  “The big sun on the label,” he said as if I were an idiot. “There’s a big sun on the label, which implies that the contents are accustomed to being in the hot sun. Which means that they have sun-protecting capabilities.”

  If you’re thinking that I am writing words here that eight-year-old Alvin didn’t really use at the time, think again. This was truly the way he talked. Maybe all those words he gobbled up when he read had to spew out when he spoke or his brain would overheat. Or something. That was my theory, anyway. You’re welcome to offer a better one.

  Alvin’s logic was off, but not all the way off, if you think about it.

  “That big sun on the label means the pepper in the jar is hot,” I said. “Like, spicy hot. Not that the peppers themselves are sun-proof.”

  “They should be sun-proof, though,” said Alvin. “They grow in the sun.”

  “Wouldn’t that make almost all plants sun-proof?” I asked.

  “Maybe they are. I’ve only just started experimenting.”

  “Well, take my older-brother advice and don’t try poison ivy next.”

  “You’re hilarious,” he said. Then he noticed Caroline’s pages, still open to the ghostwriter’s note. “What’s that?” he asked, walking over to my desk.

  My first instinct was to throw the nearest item of dirty clothing over the book and blurt, “Nothing!” But what was the point? He’d already seen it. And it wasn’t like it was a secret book or anything.

  “It’s a book Aunt Caroline is writing,” I told him. “She wanted me to read it.”

  “Can I read it?”

  Could he? I mean, obviously he could read it—faster than I could. But did he have permission to read it? I had no idea. But he was my little brother, which easily decided the matter for me. I didn’t want Alvin elbowing his way into Caroline’s book with his voracious-reader ideas. This was my project.

  “I think Caroline wants me to read it first,” I said. “She’ll probably ask you when she’s done. She’d want it to be perfect before you read it.”