Double the Danger and Zero Zucchini

by Betsy Uhrig

  He was scanning the visible page now with his hungry-shark eyes, gobbling words in big gulps.

  “Okay,” he said. “I can wait.”

  Which was way too easy, looking back on it.

  39

  I MANAGED TO TYPE UP THE new ghostwriter ideas and e-mail them, along with my full grampa-conversation report, to Caroline before I went to bed. My actual homework was still in my backpack, untouched.

  I didn’t like the idea of the ghost of Rob Weintraub floating around town, taking note of our conversations, but I kept reminding myself that so far he seemed harmless and even helpful. Just another book and coffee lover, like any customer at the bookstore café downtown, except ectoplasm based. And he couldn’t help that, could he?

  I was too tired to text Javier and Marta about Snarko the Imp and the Daredevil that night. So it was lunch the next day when I told them, which means I told them in person and was able to see their responses.

  Marta shrugged. “Shoundsh good to me,” she said through an enormous mouthful of pasta salad.

  “What sounds good to you?” I asked.

  “Two shidekicksh. One can shee the truth, the other can fight her brainsh out without getting hurt. That’ll work, right?” she said and somehow swallowed at the same time.

  I glanced at Javier, waiting for him to tell Marta that (a) Snarko and the Daredevil were based on him and her, and (b) this clearly meant that the ghost of Rob Weintraub was the one helping us with the book.

  Instead, he stared back at me blankly, his eyes unfocused. He looked like he’d been replaced by his identical but much dumber twin.

  “Javier?” I said, snapping my fingers in front of his face. “Do you have a response to this?”

  His eyes refocused, thank goodness. The blank stare had been disturbing.

  “Snarko the Imp?” he asked.

  “He’s you, right?” I said. “I mean, the Daredevil is Marta and Snarko is you.” I desperately needed someone to back me up on this.

  “And he’s an imp,” Javier said, still not helping.

  “Yes. You know what an imp is, right?” I asked him.

  I was hoping he did, because I wasn’t sure myself. I knew in general, of course. But if he wanted a dictionary definition, I didn’t have one.

  (Then. I do now. Here it is: “imp: a small demon: fiend. A mischievous child: urchin.” Here we were dealing with the first kind.)

  “Yes, I know what an imp is,” said Javier. He took a bite of pasta salad with a green pepper chunk still visible inside it. I waited for him to spit the intruder into a napkin, but he didn’t. He chewed it, and then he swallowed it. Which wasn’t right at all.

  But maybe a bit of vegetable was what he needed, because smart-twin Javier returned from wherever he’d been. I could see his intelligence snap back into place. I let out a sigh of relief.

  “So what you’re wondering is how did whoever wrote this know exactly what Marta and I said to you after you fell off the trellis?” Smart Javier asked.

  “That’s exactly what I’m wondering,” I said. I didn’t hug him and I never would, but I kind of wanted to at that moment.

  “Can shomeone pleashe exshplain to me what you’re talking about?” said Marta from behind a spray of orange Jell-O.

  40

  “THAT’S RIDICULOUS,” MARTA SAID when I’d finished explaining how A logically led to B.

  “Thank you!” I said. If Marta thought the ghost thing was ridiculous, then I could definitely put away the old Humpty Dumpty night-light I had been forced to plug in last night. “So what do you think is going on if the ghostwriter isn’t a ghost?”

  “Oh, it’s definitely a ghost,” said Marta. Crud. Back to Humpty Dumpty. “What I mean is, it’s ridiculous that you duds think the Daredevil is me. My elbows are not weak spots.”

  “Your elbow is broken,” Javier pointed out.

  “That’s only because I fell on it.”

  “Which is how things get broken.”

  “It’s one of the ways.”

  “It’s the primary way.”

  I wasn’t sure why Javier was chasing this particular rabbit so far down its bottomless rabbit hole. Usually he gave up a lot quicker and just changed the subject.

  “Um, guys?” I said. “Can we go back to the issue here?”

  “The issue?” said Marta. “Did you say ‘issue’?”

  “I can say ‘issue.’ ”

  “You really can’t. Only Javier can say ‘issue.’ And only very rarely,” Marta added, giving Javier the side eye.

  “I never say ‘issue.’ ”

  “Oh, I think you do, my friend. I think you do….”

  And here is where our lunch period ended. With absolutely nothing solved or even really discussed, and my two friends acting as if they’d agreed to hold hands and jump off the Cliff of Remaining Sanity together.

  It made my trip to Ghostville seem positively normal in comparison.

  41

  I WENT RIGHT HOME AFTER SCHOOL, partly because I had to do yesterday’s homework on top of today’s fresh load. But also because I was eager to hear what Caroline thought of the new plot twist from the ghostwriter.

  Sure enough, there was an e-mail from her. But it wasn’t at all what I had expected.

  First, she thanked me for the grampa research and said she was definitely going to use it. Then things went south fast.

  Thank you so much for the ideas about the slipstream and moving into an alternate world. You are so imaginative! And you clearly know your fantasies. I thought your mom said you were a reluctant reader, but she must not count those. What a snob!

  I’m afraid that I’m not nearly as comfortable creating an alternate world as you are, though. This feels like a giant leap out of my comfort zone as a writer, and I’m afraid it would show. I did try! I wrote up the scene with the new characters. But I think I’m going to go back to the original after Gerald falls from the trellis. He’ll wake up and his grampa will be there, and the whole void thing was a hallucination he had as a result of hitting his head in the fall.

  I feel like I’m on firmer footing with the gardening plot (no pun intended). But I think the changes in the beginning will really draw the reader in, so thanks for all your help with that! I’ll be certain to give you your well-earned money when I see you next, and throw in a bonus too!

  As a PS, she added: “Not to worry—Gerald still isn’t a frog!”

  Oh no was all I could think. What a disappointment. Javier and Marta were going to be so bummed. But not as much as I was. As I sat there in front of this depressing e-mail, I realized how much I’d been enjoying thinking about this book. And collecting sensory details and ideas for it. And even reading the new parts as she wrote them. I wanted to know what happened next, especially now that there was an alternate world and inhuman sidekicks involved.

  And what about the ghostwriter? What was our ghostwriter going to do without this hobby? Hang around heating up coffee and waiting for trespassers to eavesdrop on? What kind of afterlife was that?

  I had no idea how to respond to Caroline’s message, so I closed it and figured I’d come up with something polite later, when I’d had a chance to digest the news. Which was going to be hard—I hate zucchini.

  42

  I GOT MY HOMEWORK DONE AND went to bed without plugging in Humpty Dumpty. It was weird, but my worry about a ghost had faded. The ghost seemed to have been part of the whole Gerald fantasy, and now that we were back to prize zucchinis and “It was all a head injury” (Really, Aunt Caroline? The old Wizard of Oz movie trick? I thought you were better than that), I was back in real life without even a ghost to liven things up.

  I had texted Javier and Marta with the bad news before I went to bed. I’d been lying there for a while in the dark when my phone buzzed.

  The text was from Marta, to me and Javier. It said:

  Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

  Then one came from Javier. It said: Bummer.

  Then Marta: Maybe
we can keep going ourselves!

  Javier: We’re not writers.

  Marta: We could be!!!!

  Me: We really couldn’t.

  Javier: Maybe you can convince your aunt to change her mind.

  Marta: You have to!!!

  Me: Stop using so many exclamation points!!!

  Marta: You are a complete du

  And nothing more from her after that, because her mother had taken her phone away. This happened frequently after bedtime. I’m surprised her mother didn’t just confiscate her phone every night. But theirs was a strange relationship.

  Then, after a while, during which I almost fell asleep…

  Javier: Frog?

  Me: Nope.

  Another pause.

  Javier: Zucchini?

  Me: Yup.

  Javier: Shame.

  Me: Yup.

  And that was the end of that for the night.

  43

  WE WERE SOMBER AT SCHOOL THE next day. Marta suggested going back to the Old Weintraub Place that afternoon, to “scare” the ghost, as she put it. “To see if it can be done,” she said. Which was a little bit intriguing but not enough to lift our sagging mood.

  Javier had a film club meeting, though, and he didn’t want us to scare any ghosts without him. So I ended up going for a long run. Just to blow the smoke off myself, as my mom would put it, quoting Big Al.

  My run ended up at the senior center. I’m not sure why I went in; I could have run by it and kept going. Or circled around it and gone home. Maybe I wanted a chocolate-chip cookie. Maybe I wanted to be called Albert again, now that I knew it was teasing. This time I could roll with it, as if I’d been in on the joke all along.

  There was no one at the desk when I went in. Security in this place wasn’t tight, that was for sure. But based on the workout I saw going on as I headed down the hall toward the room with the cookies, I was pretty sure the seniors could take on whatever they had to. I peered around the doorway into the cookie room to see if anyone I knew was there.

  Sure enough, there were Nate and Ellen and their friends Bill, Henry, and Lucy—sitting at the same table they’d been at last time. Same chairs, too, as far as I could remember. I knew they’d moved in the meantime, though, because they were wearing different outfits. Except maybe Henry.

  “Hey, Albert!” said Nate when they’d seen me hesitating in the doorway. “C’mon over and take a load off.”

  Take a load off. Good one. Except now I didn’t need any fun old-man sayings, did I?

  “Cookie?” Ellen offered.

  “Take two,” said Lucy. “They’re just out of the oven and at their peak.”

  I took two and bit into one. Lucy was right. It was perfect.

  When I was done chewing and swallowing, I said, “Do you always sit in the same places when you come here? Is it like the cafeteria at school? Are there cliques?”

  “I suppose there are,” said Ellen. “But we’re not exclusive.”

  “You’re not?”

  “We let you in, didn’t we?” said Henry. “And you’re not only new, you’re also quite a bit younger than we are.”

  “Also sweatier,” said Nate.

  “Sorry about that. I ran here.”

  “Why?” asked Nate. “Was something chasing you?”

  “No,” I said. “I just don’t like to walk when I can run.” True enough, but that was another story.

  “Ha!” said Nate. “Albert, you are a stitch and a half.”

  Stitch and a half. Maybe Caroline could use some of this good stuff in her new/old version of the book. Maybe a more lively grampa would make it more interesting. Or at all interesting.

  “Albert, you look depressed,” said Nate. “What’s on your mind?”

  I shook my head, not believing it myself. “A book, actually.”

  “It must not be a very good one.”

  “It could have been,” I said.

  44

  THERE WAS SILENCE AROUND THE TABLE. Which felt like my fault. I took another bite of cookie and tried to nudge the conversation away from the book that could have been.

  “So,” I said, “do you like to read?”

  Everyone around the table laughed.

  “Sure we do,” said Ellen. “Who doesn’t?”

  I shrugged like I had no idea and what a wacky notion not liking to read was!

  “What kind of books do you read?” I asked the table in general.

  “Historical fiction,” said Ellen. “Preferably British. With beheadings.”

  “Cookbooks,” said Lucy. “Except when I’m hungry.”

  “Thrillers,” said Bill. “Cold War, mostly.”

  “Military history,” said Nate. “Civil War is my favorite.”

  “Large print!” Henry finished.

  They laughed again.

  “What about you, Albert? What do you like to read?” Nate asked.

  “Me?” I swallowed the last bite of my first cookie. I knew that no matter what I said there would be awkward follow-up questions, so I opted for the truth. “Um. Not much. I’m what they call a reluctant reader.”

  “Who calls you that?” asked Nate. “Sounds like a load of cow flops, if you’ll pardon my French.”

  Cow flops. Pardon my French.

  “If you ask me,” said Ellen, “you just haven’t met the right books yet.”

  “It can take time,” said Lucy. “Like meeting the right man.” She looked over at Bill and smiled. He smiled back.

  “Lucy,” said Nate, “you are a hoot.”

  A hoot.

  “But I think Ellen’s right, Albert,” he said to me. “You need to keep trying. Someday you’ll meet a nice book and fall head over heels.”

  This was getting confusing. Were we even talking about books?

  I had the distinct feeling I was being teased again.

  45

  YOU KNOW HOW WHEN SOMETHING BAD happens, you just want your life to go back to the way it was? And if it does, it seems improved: Your old, ordinary life seems better compared with the badness. Well, it turns out the opposite can happen when something interesting happens. If that goes away and you get your old life back, the old life seems duller. It’s like putting your old sneakers back on after you try on new ones.

  I wandered through the next few weeks not appreciating much of anything. Even the weather was gray and wet, which meant a raincoat on most days, which meant an extra layer of insulated sweat when I got home from school. Which is what my mother immediately objected to one Friday afternoon when I got inside the house.

  “Alex, you need to shower,” she said soon after I got my coat off. Insultingly soon, really. “We’re going to Caroline and Lu’s for dinner.”

  * * *

  When we got to Caroline and Lulu’s house, Caroline had a strange look on her face. Like she’d accidentally eaten a bug and couldn’t decide if she’d liked it or not. Conflicted. That’s how she looked, if you want a one-word description.

  She made a grab for my arm, but I was ready for her and dodged it. So she grabbed me by the ear instead. Which was painful and made me regret that I hadn’t let her at my arm. She led me into her “office,” which was a broom closet with a small desk in it instead of brooms.

  “So, this is where the magic happens,” I said when she’d let go of my poor ear.

  “Yup,” she said. “Have a seat.”

  I sat down on a pile of printer paper boxes. She sat in the swivel chair in front of the desk and swiveled around to face me. I rubbed my sore ear and waited for whatever was going to happen.

  “I need your help,” she said.

  Eep. Was there another book on the horizon? Gerald Visits Great-Aunt Letitia? What if she was planning a whole series of visits with increasingly uninteresting relatives? What if Gerald Visits Grampa was the action-packed one of the group?

  “Okay,” I said. “With what?”

  Her hair was up in a bun already. I could see her hand reaching for it and coming back frustrated. She tucke
d nothing behind her ear and said, “With my new book. Gerald in the Warlock’s Weir.”

  46

  THERE WAS A LOT IN THERE to deal with, and I started with the simplest question. “What’s a weir?”

  “It’s like a dam. D-A-M. In a river.”

  “I know what a non-swear dam is.”

  “Sorry. The non-swear dam is where I’m going to hide the vortex. Mostly because it sounds good as a title.”

  “Okay. But I thought you’d given up on warlocks and vortexes.”

  She sighed. “I did. But then I changed my mind.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, that’s an interesting story,” Caroline said. “But it boils down to one very determined person named Lulu, who went behind my back and sent the version of the book I’d given up on to her friend the literary agent.”

  “That seems bold,” I said. “Were you mad at her?”

  “Yes, I was. Sort of. For a while. Until the agent e-mailed me and said she loves the new direction the book is taking and she definitely wants to see it when I’m done.”

  And now the look on her face told me that yes, she’d eaten a bug, and it was crunchy and delicious.

  “She loves it?” I said. “The warlock and the potion master and the vortex?”

  “And the alternate world and the sidekicks and my plan for the trials and the rescue. She says that stuff is very popular now, and if I can finish in the next few months, she’s pretty sure she can sell it.” A big smile crept up her face. “Can you believe it?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s a great idea for a book. Even I wanted to read it, and I’m a reluctant reader.”

  “Pish,” said Caroline. “Your mother has no respect for genre fiction.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about. Writer stuff, I guessed.

  “She never has,” I agreed as vaguely as I could.

  “So I’m going to need you to keep coming up with those great ideas and imaginative details,” said Caroline. “And we’re talking about a lot more than ten dollars.”