59 - The Haunted School (3 page)

Thalia narrowed her eyes at me. “What weird girl?”

“I don’t know her name,” I replied. “She’s big—a lot taller than me. And
really tough looking. And she has the weirdest gray eyes, and—”

“Greta?” Thalia asked. “You knocked over Greta?”

“Is that her name?” I replied.

“Dressed in black?” Thalia asked. “Greta always dresses in black.”

“Yeah. That was her,” I said. “I knocked her flat. Then I fell on top of her.
Smooth move, huh?”

“Watch out for her, Tommy,” Thalia warned. “Greta is definitely weird.” She
started to roll up her banner. “So what happened to you upstairs?”

“I heard something,” I told her. “When I got to the art room. I heard voices.
Kids’ voices. But when I went inside the room, there was no one there.”

“Huh?” Thalia’s mouth dropped open. “You—you
heard
them?” she
stammered.

I nodded.

“You really heard them?”

“Yes. Who were they?” I demanded. “I kept searching for them. All over the
third floor. I heard them, but I couldn’t see them. And then Mrs. Borden—”

I stopped talking when I saw that Thalia had tears in her eyes.

“Hey—what’s wrong?” I asked.

She didn’t answer me. She spun away—and ran from the gym.

A few days later, Thalia had a run-in with Greta. And it almost turned
violent.

It was Thursday afternoon. Mr. Devine, our teacher, received a message from
the office. He read the message a few times, moving his lips as he read. Then,
muttering to himself, he left the room.

It was near the end of the school day. I guess everyone was tired of sitting
in school. We were all ready to break out of there.

So as soon as Mr. Devine disappeared, everyone kind of exploded. I mean, guys
jumped up and started running around the room. Doing funny dance moves and just
goofing.

One kid turned on a boom box he had hidden under his desk and cranked the
music up. Some girls were laughing wildly about something in the back of the
room, tossing their heads and slapping their hands on their desks.

I sit in the back row since I’m a new kid. Ben was absent. I think he had a dentist appointment or something.

So since I didn’t really know anyone else yet, I sort of was left out of all
the fun.

I tapped my hand to the music and pretended I was having a good time. But
actually, I felt kind of awkward and lonely. And I secretly wished that Mr.
Devine would come back so that things could return to normal.

I stared out the window for a while. It was a cloudy autumn day. Very windy.
The swirling wind gusts sent red and yellow leaves sailing and twisting over the
playground.

I stared at them for a while. Then I turned back into the room, and my eyes
landed on Thalia in the front row.

She wasn’t paying any attention to all the dancing and joking and wild
laughter. She had her little mirror raised to her face and was slicking a layer
of lipstick onto her lips.

I waved and tried to get her attention. I wanted to know if she and I were
going to work on decorations after school in the gym.

I tried calling to her. But she couldn’t hear me over all the noise. She
stared into her little mirror and didn’t turn around.

I started to stand up and walk over to her—when I saw Greta lean over
Thalia’s desk and grab the lipstick tube from her hand. Greta laughed and said something to Thalia. She held the lipstick tube out of Thalia’s reach.

Thalia let out an angry scream. She swiped at the lipstick. But she wasn’t
fast enough to grab it back.

Greta’s gray eyes glinted with excitement. She laughed and heaved it to a guy
across the room.

“Give that back!”
Thalia shrieked.

She leaped to her feet. Her eyes were wild, and her face was pale.

“Give that back! Give it! Give it!”

With a furious growl, Thalia dove across the row of desks and tried to tackle
the boy.

Laughing, he dodged away from her and tossed the tube back to Greta.

The metal tube hit a desk and bounced onto the floor.

Thalia hurtled herself to the floor, grabbing at it wildly with both hands.

I was halfway to the front of the room. As she and Greta wrestled on the
floor for the lipstick, I gaped at Thalia in shock.

What is the big deal? I wondered. Why is she so desperate to get that tube
back? It’s only lipstick, after all.

Other kids were watching the struggle. I saw the girls at the back of the
room laughing at Thalia. They were the ones who had teased her about wearing
makeup.

Some kids cheered as Greta came up with the lipstick. She raised it in her
big fist.

Thalia screamed and grabbed at it.

And then Greta raised the lipstick tube higher toward Thalia’s face.

And drew a red smiley face on Thalia’s forehead.

Thalia had tears in her eyes now. I saw that she was totally losing it.

I didn’t really understand why she was so
insane
about it. But I
decided I had to do something.

Hero time for Tommy Frazer.

“Hey—give that back to her!” I boomed.

I took a deep breath and stepped forward to teach Greta a lesson.

Greta was holding the lipstick tube high over her head, pushing Thalia away
with her other hand.

“Give it back to her!” I insisted, trying to sound tough. “It isn’t funny,
Greta. Give Thalia the lipstick.”

I jumped up—and grabbed the hand with the lipstick in it.

I heard some kids cheering and clapping. I didn’t know which of us they were
cheering.

Using both hands, I started to pry the tube from Greta’s big hand.

And that’s when Mr. Devine returned to the room.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

I turned to see him glaring at me through his round, black-frame eyeglasses.

I lowered my hands from Greta’s fist. The lipstick tube dropped to the floor.
It rolled under Thalia’s desk.

With a tiny cry, she dove for it.

“What’s happening in here?” Mr. Devine moved quickly to the front of the
room.

“Tommy, why are you up here?” the teacher demanded. Behind his thick glasses,
his eyes looked as big as tennis balls! “Why did you leave your seat?”

“I was just… uh… getting something,” I choked out.

“He was helping me,” Thalia chimed in. I gazed down at her. She seemed a lot
calmer now that she had her lipstick back.

Meanwhile, my heart was pounding like crazy.

“Get back to your seats, everyone,” Mr. Devine ordered. “I should be able to
leave the room for two minutes without everyone going berserk.” He turned his
stare on Greta.

“Just goofing around,” she muttered. She tossed back her white-blond hair and
dropped heavily into her seat.

I slumped back to my desk and took deep breaths. I wanted to ask Thalia what
the big deal was about her lipstick. But she didn’t turn around.

It took a few more seconds for Mr. Devine to get everyone calmed down. Then
he glanced up at the clock above the chalkboard.

“We have twenty more minutes until the bell rings,” he announced. “I have to
take care of some paperwork at my desk. So I’d like you to use the time for
quiet reading.”

He pulled off his glasses and blew a speck off one of the lenses. His eyes looked like tiny marbles when he took the glasses
off.

“Your book reports are all due on Monday,” he reminded us. “So this would be
a good time to do some reading.”

There was a lot of chair scraping and book bag thudding and thumping as we
all pulled out our reading books. A few seconds later, the room fell silent.

I was reading a book of short stories by Ray Bradbury for my book report. I’m
not a science-fiction freak or anything. But these stories were really good.
Most of them had surprise endings, which I really like.

I tried to concentrate on the story I was reading. It was about these kids
who live on a planet where it never stops raining. A very sad story. They never
ever see the sun shine. And they can never go outside to play.

I read a couple of pages. And then I nearly dropped the book when I heard a
voice. A girl’s voice. Very soft—but very near.

“Please help me,”
she cried.
“Help me….”

Startled, I slammed the book shut and glanced around.

Who said that?

My eyes landed on Thalia. Was she calling to me?

No. She had her face buried in a book.

“Help me—please!”
I heard the girl plead again.

I spun around. No one there.

“Did anyone hear that?” I asked, more loudly than I’d planned.

Mr. Devine raised his eyes from his papers. “Tommy? What did you say?”

“Did anyone hear that girl?” I asked. “Calling for help?”

A few kids laughed. Thalia turned and frowned at me.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Mr. Devine replied.

“No. Really,” I insisted. “I heard her. She said, ‘Please help me.’”

Mr. Devine
tsk-tsked.
“You’re too young to start hearing voices.”

Some more kids laughed. I didn’t think it was very funny.

I sighed and picked up my book. I couldn’t wait for the bell to ring. I
really wanted to get out of that classroom.

I thumbed through the book, trying to find my page.

But before I found it, I heard the girl’s voice again.

So soft and near. And so unhappy.

“Help me. Please. Please, somebody—help me.”

On the night of the school dance, Ben, Thalia, and I got to the gym early.
With only an hour to go, we were busily putting the finishing touches on the
decorations.

I thought it all looked pretty great.

We had banners strung out in the hall outside the gym. And two big banners in
the gym, proclaiming BELL VALLEY ROCKS! and WELCOME, EVERYONE!

We tied huge bouquets of helium balloons to the two basketball hoops. The
balloons were all red and black, of course. And we had red and black crepe-paper
streamers on the walls and over the bleachers.

Thalia and I had spent days painting a big poster of a bison giving the
thumbs-up sign. Underneath the bison, it read BISONS RULE! in red and black
letters.

Thalia and I aren’t very good artists. The bison didn’t really look much like
the photos of bisons we’d found in books. Ben said it looked more like a cow that had been sick
for a long time. But we hung the poster up, anyway.

Now, the three of us were arranging a red-and-black crepe-paper tablecloth
over the refreshment table. I glanced up at the scoreboard clock. Seven thirty.
The dance was scheduled to start at eight.

“We still have a lot to do,” I said.

Ben tugged his end of the paper tablecloth too hard. I heard a soft ripping
sound.

“Ooops,” he said. “Anybody bring any tape?”

“It’s no problem,” Thalia told him. “We’ll just cover the torn part with soda
bottles or something.”

I glanced at the clock again. “When is the band supposed to arrive?”

“Any minute,” Thalia replied. “They were supposed to get here early to set
up.”

Some kids had formed a band called Grunt. It was sort of a strange band—five guitar players and a drummer. And I heard some kids saying that three of
the guitar players didn’t really know how to play.

But Mrs. Borden asked them to perform a few songs at the dance.

It took us a while to get the tablecloth straight. It wasn’t quite big enough
for the table.

“What’s next?” Ben asked. “Do we have decorations for the gym doors?”

Before I could answer, the double doors swung open, and Mrs. Borden came
charging in. At first, I didn’t recognize her. She wore a shiny bright red party
dress. And she had her black curly hair piled up high on her head behind a
silver tiara.

Even with her hair piled up, she still wasn’t much taller than we were!

Her eyes darted around the gym as she hurried over to us. “It looks great!
Just
fabulous,
guys!” she gushed. “Oh, you worked so hard! You did a
wonderful job!”

We thanked her.

She slapped a Polaroid camera into my hands. “Take pictures, Tommy,” she
instructed me. “Snapshots of the decorations. Hurry. Take a whole bunch before
people start arriving.”

I examined the camera. “Well… okay,” I agreed. “But Thalia, Ben, and I
still have some stuff to do. We have posters for the doors. And we need more
balloons over there. And—and—”

Mrs. Borden laughed. “You’re a little
stressed
!”

Thalia and Ben laughed too. I could feel my face turning hot. I knew I was
blushing.

“Take it easy, Tommy,” Mrs. Borden said, patting my shoulder soothingly. “Or
you won’t survive until the dance.”

I forced a smile. “I’m okay,” I told her.

Little did I realize that—after all my hard work—I would never see the
dance.

“Yo! Look out!”

“Move that amp! Hey, Greta—move that amp!”

“Move it yourself!”

“Where’s my wa-wa? Did anyone see my wa-wa pedal?”

“I ate it for breakfast!”

“You’re not funny. Move that amp!”

The band members arrived while I was snapping Polaroids. And they instantly
took over, making a big racket as they set up by the bleachers.

The guitarists were all guys. Greta was the drummer. Seeing her lug her drums
across the gym reminded me of the lipstick battle in class on Thursday.

After school, I’d asked Thalia what the big deal was. “Why did you go nuts?”
I asked.

“I didn’t go nuts!” Thalia insisted. “Greta did. She thinks because she’s so
big and strong she can just grab whatever she wants.”

“She’s really weird,” I agreed. “But you were so upset—”

“I
like
that lipstick. That’s all,” Thalia replied. “It’s my best
lipstick. Why should I let her grab it from me?”