Cursed! (5 page)

I decided I had to do something about the Spirit Man before anything worse happened. I emailed Grandma, told her all about school and Kara and Mrs. Von Hirschberg, and asked her to say hi to the Spirit Man for me.

Her answer arrived after dinner. She's usually much slower. She says she has more interesting things to do than check her email every day. She wrote:

Dear Mackenzie Jane,

I'm so glad to hear from you, but sad to hear about
your strict teacher. I had one of those, and I didn't like
it either. Of course, she's the reason I write well.

As you requested, I said hi to the Spirit Man for
you. I'm afraid he didn't say anything back. He looked
rather stern.

Love you all,

Grandma

I groaned. That didn't help. By bedtime I'd come up with another plan. I emailed Grandma again, and said that if the Spirit Man wouldn't say hi, perhaps she could give him a cookie for me.

I checked for a reply after school the next day, but there was nothing.

I could hear BB bugging Lewis while he was trying to read. I picked up Old Moby and wandered into their room.

Lewis's corner was filled with stacks of books, even though he couldn't read them. He was sitting on his bed, studying another book about Egypt, trying to understand burial customs without being able to read most of the words.

Lewis gets one corner of the room, while BB's junk—clothes and balls and every toy he could borrow from Dad—covers the rest of the floor.

BB was bouncing a small ball, mostly off the floor, but sometimes off the wall or the door or Lewis. When I walked into the room, he threw it straight at me. I tried to catch it, missed and bent down to pick it up.

When BB saw Old Moby, he groaned. “Jane, if you have to keep that pathetic thing, at least keep it in your room. Don't bring Old Mopy in here!”

I handed Old Moby the ball. He hung on tight. “‘You'd better be nice, if you want your ball back,'” Old Moby said.

With a cry, BB leaped off his bed and snatched the ball out of Old Moby's little felt hands. He gave a shout of victory and bounced the ball off Lewis's book. Lewis tried to ignore him.

“C'mon Lewis,” I said. “Grab your book and come to my room.”

My room was smaller and much tidier. It was the one place where I could control the chaos.

I shut my door behind us. I always do, to block out the endless traffic. Lewis and BB have to walk by my room to get to theirs, and BB never passes up a chance to bang on my door or bounce a ball off it. Mom and Dad walk past to get to the office; then they race down again whenever a package arrives, to collect it before BB and the Dalek exterminate the delivery guy.

Lewis curled up on my bed with his book and asked me to read to him.

“You need to learn to read,” I said gently.

“I know,” he said. “I want to. I'm just too stupid.” He looked down, but I'd seen how sad his eyes were.

“Lewis Jack Bartolomé, you are not stupid,” I said. “You are the smartest person I have ever met. You just can't read yet, that's all. I'll help you.”

I grabbed a pad of paper and wrote:
Old Moby.

Lewis studied it. “Old,” he said.

I nodded.

“
Ffff
,” he said, glancing at me.

I frowned.

“
Sssss
?”

“Lewis!”

He flushed. “I told you I was stupid.”

“Not stupid,” I said firmly. “It starts with an
M
.
Mmmmm
.” I picked up Old Moby.

“Old
Mmmmm
?” he said.

Old Moby nodded.

Lewis grinned. “Old Moby,” he said with confidence.

Then we worked through
Old Mouldy
,
Old Mopy
,
Old Baldy
—all of BB's mean names for Old Moby. Lewis read his way through them all, puzzling over the sounds of the different letters, but always understanding the meaning.

When we were done, he laid out a fresh piece of paper. “
M
words, please,” he said.

I printed carefully:

Old Moby

mummies

monkey

mermaids

Lewis studied them. Then he handed me another sheet of paper. “
B
s, please,” he said.

I thought about it, and printed:

Baldy

BB

Brandon

big

brother

bully

Bartolomé

Lewis and I read them together. Then he took both pages and stood. “Can we do more tomorrow?” he asked.

Every day he studied his lists. When he came across interesting words in his books, he'd get me to read them and add them to the right page.
Egyptians
.
Excavation
.
Sphinx
.
Tomb
.

When he asked me to write down
Curse
, I asked, “Do you think Grandma's Spirit Man could curse someone?”

“Of course,” he said, not even looking up from his book. “Grandma's Spirit Man is very cursey.”

My hand shook as I printed
Curse
on his
C
list.

After three days of helping Lewis, I got an email from Grandma:

Dear Mackenzie Jane,

I gave the Spirit Man a cookie. He liked it very
much (it really was delicious).

Oh, no! Grandma had eaten the Spirit Man's cookie!

When I die—which I hope will not be for quite a
while, so please don't worry about that!—when I die,
I want you to have the Spirit Man, since you're so
fascinated by him.

I squeaked in horror. She was going to give me the Spirit Man?

Now don't squeak, Jane. Everyone has to die, but I
don't plan to for quite some time. I just wanted you to
know that the Spirit Man is yours.

With lots of love,

Grandma

I'd just made things worse!

When I closed my eyes, I could see the Spirit Man. His face was still, but I could almost see a smile forming at the corner of his mouth. It wasn't a nice smile.

CHAPTER 6
Bear

I decided I'd have to endure the Spirit Man until next summer, when I could get back to Grandma's and remove the curse. But I didn't think it would be so hard.

Byron was awful. Now that Kara wasn't in his class, he'd decided to pull
my
hair. Not that I have curls, but he didn't care—pigtail, ponytail, braid— they were all the same to him. He sat in front of me, where he couldn't reach my hair, but that didn't stop him. He'd walk to the back of the room to sharpen his pencil, over and over every day, because that was the one thing that Mrs. Von Hirschberg allowed him to do when he couldn't sit still any longer. On his way back, he'd pause by my desk and give my hair a tug. Then he'd grin and sit down and work for a while.

After a really awful day with Byron and Mrs. Von Hirschberg, I walked home with Lewis through a late-fall soggy day, gusts of wind dumping showers of water and wet leaves from the trees above us.

Damp and shivery and glad to be home, I opened the front door to a hairy black monster barking hysterically. I grabbed Lewis, and we backed down the sidewalk. I thought I saw the Spirit Man watching from the stairs, but I blinked, and he was gone.

“Bear!” Dad shouted. “Bear, stop it!” He raced down the stairs and grabbed the monster's collar.

A bear? I thought. Dad has a bear?

The Dalek advanced on the bear, not at all intimidated by his size. “Ex-ter-min-ate. Ex-ter-min-ate!”

Bear barked back.

It's a dog, I realized, a really big dog named Bear. I shuddered. The name was exactly right.

“Brandon, stop it!” Dad yelled at Brandon, who was running the remote control from the stairs. Dad turned off the Dalek and settled Bear. Then he made Lewis and me squeeze into the front entry with him, Bear and the Dalek.

“Jane, Lewis, this is Bear. Bear, meet Jane and Lewis.”

Lewis and I just stared at Bear.

“You can pet him,” Dad said.

Lewis reached out and scratched his ear.

“You too, Jane.”

“Why is he here?” I asked, hesitantly touching his fur. It was thick and soft, but attached to something much too big.

“I'll tell you all about him at dinner,” Dad said. “Come on, Bear.” Bear whined at the silent Dalek and followed Dad up to his office.

We talked about Bear at dinner as we sat around the old wooden table in the dining room.

“Bear lives one block over,” Dad said. “His owner, Ted, has a new job in Saudi Arabia and can't take Bear with him. He hasn't found anyone to adopt him, and he knows that if he takes Bear to the animal shelter, no one will want him because he's so big.” He paused. “I'd like to adopt him. What do you think?”

Dad went around the table, checking with each of us. Everyone agreed, one by one. When it was my turn, Dad said, “Jane? What about you?”

I looked at Bear, huge on the floor. He scared me, although not as much as the Spirit Man. “Are you sure?” I asked. “That there's no other place for him?”