Double the Danger and Zero Zucchini

by Betsy Uhrig

  I grabbed some paper towels from the counter and told him to dry off. Then I went to work on myself.

  “You said we wouldn’t touch anything,” Alvin protested. But he sat down on the floor and started carefully blotting his muddy socks.

  I was about to reply with my usual older-brother logic when I saw a piece of paper on the kitchen table. It hadn’t been there when I’d picked up my note last time. Maybe it was a message for the cleaning person. If it was, I would add something about needing more paper towels.

  But the note wasn’t for the cleaning person. It was from the ghost. (Who could have been a cleaning person, if you’ve been keeping track. Though I don’t blame you at all if you’ve given up on that.) The message was for me. It was about the book, about Grampa’s sacrifice. It started out, “Here’s an idea that might enable Grampa to make a sacrifice without dying.”

  I put down my wad of paper towels and picked up the paper. Which was when Alvin said, completely out of the blue, “Are there ghosts in this house?”

  “Why would you think there were ghosts in this house?” I asked. I folded the paper and put it in my pocket for later. “Just because it’s empty doesn’t mean there would be ghosts.”

  Alvin flinched as thunder rumbled overhead, but it wasn’t as loud now. The storm was moving away.

  “I heard something,” Alvin said. “Like a ghost noise.”

  “What’s a ghost noise?”

  “Listen,” said Alvin.

  We stayed quiet, listening. And then I heard what he’d been hearing. A low moan. Like a ghost noise.

  104

  IN ALL THE TIMES I HAD been in the Old Weintraub Place, I had never heard an actual moaning-type ghost noise. And neither had Javier or Marta. It was something they would have mentioned.

  The fact was, if any of us had ever heard an honest-to-goodness ghost noise here, none of us would ever have come back. We came back because, deep down, we didn’t believe there was a ghost haunting this house. I don’t think even Marta truly believed it.

  But now? I didn’t know what that noise was, but it sounded way more ghostly than any noise I’d ever heard in real life.

  “The storm’s moving away,” I said to Alvin. “We should go home. It isn’t as dangerous outside now.” As it might be in here was definitely the unspoken end of that sentence.

  “If you can hear thunder, it’s still dangerous,” said Alvin. “Besides, we need to find out what that noise was.”

  We really didn’t. But as I said, Alvin was only afraid of lightning. So given the choice between lightning outside and ghost noises in, Alvin was going to stay in. And given a mystery, he was going to try to solve it. He stepped toward the basement door. “I think it came from here,” he said. And he opened the door.

  Alvin opened the door to the place where the scary noises were coming from because he’d never seen a horror movie. I had. (Accidentally, at a sleepover. My parents were not pleased.) I knew that opening the door was the last thing you wanted to do in this situation.

  With the door all the way open, we could both clearly hear what came next. Which wasn’t a ghost noise. It was a person noise. And the person was saying, very softly but not so softly that we couldn’t hear it, “Help. Help me. Please.”

  Alvin ran down the basement stairs immediately. I followed him into the darkness, wishing that one of us was wearing Marta’s flashlight helmet.

  Alvin stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “There’s someone here,” he said quietly, as if he didn’t want to disturb whoever it was. “Lying on the floor.”

  105

  IT WAS SO DARK IN THE basement that I had to wait until my eyes adjusted before I could see what Alvin was talking about. When they did, I saw what looked like a heap of laundry on the floor.

  “Are you okay?” Alvin asked it.

  There was a sigh from the laundry heap. “Obviously not,” it said.

  And here I have to mention that although Alvin may have been a pitiless negotiator, he had a big heart. He knelt on the floor and reached into the laundry heap and took its hand. “We’ll save you,” he said.

  I went around Alvin to the other side of the person lying on the floor. Which was when I recognized her. “Great-Aunt Rosa!” I said.

  “None other,” she replied faintly. Her face glowed ghastly white in the dim basement. She was flat on her back. “I fell on the stairs,” she said. “I think I broke my hip.”

  “But what are you doing here?” I asked. Which, looking back on it, wasn’t the first thing most rescuers would have asked.

  “I came down to get a book,” she said.

  This response invited a lot of questions. The first one that came to me was:

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at the beach?”

  “I stayed home to have some time to myself. Then Marina decided to stay home too. So I came over here to read in peace.” She looked at Alvin when she said, “Big sisters. Am I right?”

  Alvin nodded readily. “I’ve got a big brother. Same thing, though.”

  Great-Aunt Rosa closed her eyes.

  “She needs help,” Alvin whispered. Like he was afraid Rosa might find out she needed help if she heard him.

  “I know,” I said. “I’ll go get Marina.”

  Rosa’s eyes opened. “Useless,” she managed. “Also… at the mall.” Her eyes closed again, and she sighed at the uselessness of older siblings everywhere.

  “I’ll call Dad,” I said. “He’s probably home by now.”

  Alvin shook his head. “Dad’s an accountant,” he said. “She doesn’t need her taxes done. She needs an ambulance. You have to call 911.”

  106

  AUNT ROSA’S EYES WERE CLOSED, BUT Alvin’s were wide open and staring at me, begging me to do what needed to be done.

  “I have to go upstairs to call,” I said. “The reception won’t be any good down here.” Not exactly a lie, since it might have been true, but it was not my reason for going upstairs.

  “Okay,” said Alvin. “But hurry!”

  In the kitchen, I sat down at the table and got out my phone, which was damp and gave off a whiff of dog pee. I wiped it with a paper towel and immediately called not 911 but Dad. It went to voice mail.

  Crud on a cracker topped with crud croutons.

  I didn’t leave a message for my dad. Where would I even begin? I stared at my phone. I brought up the keypad. My finger hovered over the 9. I put the phone down, my hand trembling.

  I needed to call for help. This was an actual emergency. Aunt Rosa was a nurse, and if she said she had a broken hip, she knew what she was talking about.

  Then again: What if it was just a sprain? What if the EMTs got here and picked her up and said she’d be fine, and then turned to me and said, Are you the kid who called 911 about this minor injury?

  Then again again: What if Rosa was hurt really badly and she was being brave and trying not to scare us? What if she was in big trouble and every second counted?

  “Alex!” came Alvin’s scared voice from downstairs. “She’s all sweaty!”

  She wasn’t the only one.

  It’s exciting when you’re reading a book and there’s danger. Danger makes a book that might otherwise be dull more interesting. That was my theory when I’d started making suggestions about Caroline’s book. I’d wanted Gerald swept down a storm drain way back when he was still a frog. I’d wanted to add danger from the very beginning. I’d made her add a whole battle because I thought it would be thrilling.

  But I’m here to tell you that real-life danger isn’t exciting. It’s awful. It’s terrifying and you feel like puking and you are desperate for it to end. You can’t put real danger aside when things get too scary and wait to read that part in daylight.

  And if you have a crippling fear of calling for help, that awfulness is multiplied by a factor of a lot.

  But as I sat at the table, letting the seconds go by, I realized something important. Caroline had asked for my help with her book, and I’d been ha
ppy to give it to her. And Javier and Marta had helped. And the seniors had helped—and really enjoyed it. People asked for help all the time, and people gave it all the time. Gladly. Just because two police officers had scared me once—and they probably hadn’t meant to scare me at all—didn’t mean that asking for help was wrong.

  Then I looked at it another way. Rosa needed my help. Rosa needed my help, and I needed help to help her. I was Vern the Pigeon, and Rosa was Gerald, and her broken hip was the battle, and I needed to contact the Absolute Authority….

  I picked up the phone and shakily punched in 911.

  107

  A LADY ANSWERED MY 911 CALL. I was almost positive it was not the lady who had answered my previous one. They must have had more than one person answering, right?

  “Great-Aunt Rosa fell down the stairs,” I blurted at her. “She says she broke her hip. She’s a nurse, so it probably isn’t just a sprain. I’m not sure if this is an emergency, but she needs help.”

  “It sounds like an emergency to me,” the lady said. “So we’re going to send an ambulance, okay?” I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. She asked me where we were, and I had to run outside the front door to get the house number. I was completely out of breath when I gave it to her.

  “Calm down, hon,” she told me. “The ambulance is on the way. Here’s the thing, though. The storm brought some trees and wires down, so it may take longer than it usually would. I’m going to need your help, okay?”

  So now the person I had called for help needed my help to help Rosa. You see how this works? It gets very tangled up.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I’m going to stay on the phone with you until the EMTs get there,” she said. “You do what I tell you and your aunt will be fine.”

  She asked me a bunch of questions and told me a bunch of things to do and not to do. I went back down to the basement with some of the sheets from the furniture to put over Rosa, since there wasn’t anything else around to keep her warm.

  “Are they coming?” Alvin asked me. “Her eyes keep closing.”

  I nodded and pointed to the phone.

  “We need to try to keep her awake,” the lady said. “Can you talk to her? Take her mind off the pain?”

  “We need to talk to her,” I told Alvin. “Distract her.”

  “Aunt Rosa?” said Alvin, gently wiggling the hand he was still holding. “Can you hear me?”

  It took a while for her to answer. “Yes,” she said. “I hear you.”

  “You said you came down here for a book,” said Alvin. “Do you like to read?”

  “I love to read,” said Rosa softly. “Vera Weintraub used to lend me… Rob’s books. I have one… here.” Her free hand scrabbled around on the floor beside her, and sure enough, there was a fat paperback there.

  Rob’s books! I thought. That’s what she’d been doing. Borrowing a book from one of the boxes.

  “It’s too dark down here to read,” said Alvin. “But my aunt wrote a book. Do you want me to tell you about it? It’s very interesting.”

  “Sounds… good,” said Rosa.

  So Alvin started telling the story of Gerald in the Warlock’s Weir, right from the beginning. And Rosa and I and the 911 operator listened until the ambulance arrived.

  108

  THE EMTS WERE TWO YOUNG WOMEN, and they were all business. They were used to giving orders and having people obey them. Then they met Great-Aunt Rosa.

  I had gone upstairs to show them the way to the basement. They told me to stay in the kitchen, which I obediently did. When they arrived downstairs, I could hear them trying to get Alvin out of the way as well. I couldn’t hear what Rosa said, only the responses from her rescuers. The conversation went something like this:

  “The boy needs to wait upstairs while we—”

  …

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but you need to let go of the boy’s hand so we can—”

  …

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Ma’am, you at least need to let go of his hand long enough for us to get you—”

  …

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How about if he—”

  …

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The EMTs must have reached an agreement with Rosa, because Alvin arrived in the kitchen shortly after that. He was carrying Rosa’s book and the sheets we had used to cover her. He dumped the sheets on the table but kept the book, I noticed.

  “Are we going to get in trouble?” he asked me.

  “No,” I said. “This is a real emergency.”

  “I mean because we’re trespassing,” said Alvin. “Aren’t all three of us trespassing here?”

  I hadn’t even thought about that, which was probably a good thing. “It doesn’t matter,” I told him as confidently as I could. “They’re EMTs, not police.”

  “But don’t they all know each other?”

  I had no idea.

  I did know that Alvin and I were damp, filthy, and reeked like storm drain and dog pee. We certainly didn’t look or smell like two fine young lads who’d heard the cries of a lady in distress and heroically gone into a strange house to rescue her. But that was going to be our story. I outlined it for Alvin, and he readily agreed.

  “Ma’am, it’s possible you have other injuries,” we heard from downstairs. “If we could just—”

  …

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  They brought Great-Aunt Rosa upstairs, and she reached for Alvin’s hand immediately. Then the four of them headed out to the waiting ambulance.

  “Ma’am, we can’t have the boy in the ambulance. Is there a neighbor—”

  …

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  109

  ALVIN AND I RODE IN THE back of the ambulance with Rosa to the hospital. Which was cool, but not as cool as it would have been if the siren had been blaring and we’d been whipping around corners and speeding through red lights. The ambulance went slowly because of all the branches lying in the streets from the storm. And also because Rosa was “stabilized,” which meant we weren’t in a big rush.

  As soon as she was done batting away questions from the EMT riding in the back with us, Rosa asked Alvin to continue telling the story of Gerald. Which he did. He had a phenomenal memory, my little brother. He didn’t leave out a single important detail as far as I could tell, and sometimes he used whole chunks of Caroline’s words.

  It was only then that I remembered the 911 operator. “Hello?” I said into my phone. “Are you still there?”

  “I sure am, hon. You did great. Your aunt should be very proud of you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “And thank you for your help. I guess we can hang up now. You must have other emergencies you need to get to.”

  “As a matter of fact, I don’t at the moment,” she said. “I’m on break. Do you mind if I hang on a while? I want to hear how Gerald makes it past those pigeons.”

  I already knew Gerald’s story, so as Alvin talked and Rosa and the 911 lady and the EMT listened, my mind was free to roam.

  It didn’t roam far. It roamed over to Great-Aunt Rosa. And her presence in the Old Weintraub Place. In the Old Weintraub basement. Borrowing Rob’s books.

  A bunch of facts started to crowd into my head, jostling for attention. Rosa had said she’d come over to the Old Weintraub Place to get away from Great-Aunt Marina. Javier had said Rosa went to the senior center to get away from Marina, but we never saw her there. Rosa liked to read Rob’s books. Rosa often enjoyed a cup of coffee when she was reading. Rosa had been at Javier’s when I fell off the trellis and Javier and Marta said the things to me that the ghost later quoted for Snarko and the Daredevil.

  The ghost. Great-Aunt Rosa was the ghost.

  It all made sense when I thought about it. Rosa had borrowed Rob’s books when she and Mrs. Weintraub were neighbors, and she’d kept borrowing them after Mrs. Weintraub moved away. Maybe she had a key to the ho
use. Then, when Marina moved in, instead of reading on the front porch, she’d moved into the Weintraub kitchen for some privacy. She’d been reading all those fantasies, so she was the perfect person to help with Caroline’s book. She was the one who’d made it into a fantasy to begin with.

  I looked over at Rosa, lying on the gurney, listening to Alvin tell her a story she already knew. A story she’d helped write. I reached into my pocket and felt the note I’d found on the kitchen table. Rosa had come up with a solution to Grampa’s sacrifice, and it was in my pocket.

  But it could wait.

  110

  WHEN THE AMBULANCE PULLED UP AT the hospital’s emergency entrance, the EMT who was riding in the back turned to us and said, “Looks like we’re going to have to rush her right into surgery.”

  “Why?” said Alvin. He clutched even harder at Rosa’s hand.

  Rosa didn’t look nearly as alarmed as he did.

  “To separate your hand from hers,” said the EMT. Totally deadpan. No hint of a smile.

  “You can let go now,” Rosa told Alvin. “But don’t forget you are a hero. No matter how filthy you are.”

  Alvin let go of Rosa. But before he moved away, I saw him slip Rob’s book onto the gurney next to her. Her hand found it, and she smiled.

  The EMTs rolled Rosa down a hall, and Alvin and I followed them.

  They told us to sit in the waiting area, and they disappeared through a set of doors with Rosa.

  After a while the EMTs emerged and walked over to us.

  “She’s going to be fine,” one of them said. “But it’s a good thing you called. You did the right thing, both of you.”

  “Nadia!” someone bellowed from across the room. “Simone! Is that you? Good to see you!”