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Authors: Maureen Bush

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Cursed! (6 page)

BOOK: Cursed!
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Dad nodded. “Ted's been looking for six weeks. He leaves in two days. We're Bear's last chance.”

“Are you sure he's safe?” I asked. “I mean, with Lewis?”

Lewis slipped out of his chair and draped himself over Bear. “Of course he's safe,” said Lewis, as Bear licked mashed potatoes off his chin.

I sighed. “Okay,” I said.

And with that, Bear was ours.

The next day Kara came over after school to work on our Halloween costumes. First, I introduced her to Bear. Then I told her about the Spirit Man. “I keep seeing him,” I said. “Just a glimpse, and then he's gone. But it's creepy.” I shivered.

“It's your imagination,” Kara said firmly.

“I'm not so sure.”

“Jane, you have a
really
great imagination. There's no way he's actually here. Email your Grandma— she'll tell you he's still there.” She paused. “But it does sound like you've been cursed.” Then she grinned. “I'm going to be a Spirit Man for Halloween. You could be
Cursed Jane
.”

“I already am,” I said. “I want to be something different.”

What I really wanted was to be Jane Mackenzie, my great-great-grandmother, to find out what it was like to be brave. Or maybe I could borrow one of Dad's light sabers and be a Jedi knight. But you have to feel brave to pretend to be brave. I felt more like a mouse.

When I told Kara, she giggled and said, “Mice are nice. You could be a really big,
scary
mouse.”

I kind of liked that idea. “A mouse like me, but brave,” I said. “A Mackenzie mouse.”

“Then you won't be afraid of my Spirit Man,” Kara added.

I shuddered.

Mom and Dad and Lewis joined us in the kitchen for milk and cookies and pickles. Well, Lewis had pickles. They're his favorite.

Bear came too, hoping for crumbs. When Churtle got to them first, Bear started to growl and follow Churtle around the kitchen floor.

The robot headed under the table. Bear followed. We pushed Bear out, but the robot kept circling around, trapped by table and chair legs. Bear struggled to squeeze under, desperate to reach any crumbs first.

Finally Mom groped under the table and grabbed Churtle. “Send it back,” she said, handing it to Dad. “We'll let Bear clean the floor.”

“I want to be Bear,” said Lewis.

We stared at him.

“For Halloween,” he said, giggling. “I want to be a dog like Bear.”

Mom shook her head. “I don't have time to sew any costumes right now. You'll have to choose something you can make yourself.”

“My mom can help,” said Kara. “If we can find everything we need here, she'll help us sew.”

Grabbing extra cookies, Lewis, Kara, Bear and I trooped down to the basement to look for supplies. Our basement is mostly used for storage, with stuff piled everywhere. Mom and Dad have plans to renovate, but they keep waiting for the right time, and the right time never comes. So BB and Lewis share an upstairs room, and the basement is ignored.

We have piles of dress-up clothes on a clothes rack, with more stuffed in baskets. Toys and books are stacked on shelves in a dusty, musty muddle. The shelves that aren't loaded with books are spilling over with fabric and craft supplies.

As we pawed through the dress-up clothes, Kara sighed in ecstasy. She held up a Spanish veil, a pair of Arabic pants, and a handmade string bag from Papua New Guinea. “This is why I love your house,” she said, grinning.

We found fabric for a Spirit Man and a mouse, and a big roll of black fake fur for a Bear costume.

We spent Saturday at Kara's house, cutting and sewing and painting. Kara's mom showed me how to pull my hair up into knobby pigtails for mouse ears, and to draw on a nose and whiskers with face paint. By the end of the day, Kara and I had wonderful costumes, and Lewis had a promise for a Bear costume to be delivered in time for his school party.

Later I remembered what Kara had said about checking in with Grandma. I sent her an email asking if the Spirit Man was up to anything.

“No,” she wrote back. “He's just hanging around.”

I assumed that was her way of saying he was still standing beside the toilet, not lounging on the sofa. But knowing that didn't really help. I still felt like he was watching, planning new ways to torment me.

CHAPTER 7
Halloween

The night before Halloween, snow started to fall. It snowed all night, wet and deep and silent. Dad walked with Lewis and me to school. He wasn't sure Lewis could get through on his own, but Dad didn't want to drive, even though it wasn't very far. Bear came too, leaping ahead to break trail. We played explorers caught in a terrible snowstorm, struggling to make it to safety.

The day was mostly chaos, with everyone wet from the snow and excited about the afternoon Halloween parties. None of the teachers tried to get anything done except Mrs. Von Hirschberg. She wasn't going to let snow or Halloween interrupt our learning!

After recess she gave us a snap math test. “I know it will be a waste of time to do this tomorrow.”

She made us work almost until the party started, finally letting us dash to the bathroom to change. Kara helped me with the face paint. It didn't look as good as when her mom did it, but I liked it.

The party should have been fun. Byron was away with chicken pox, the food was great and the games silly. Kara's Spirit Man wasn't too scary under the school lights, but I still felt spooked. My costume was itchy, and the paint made my face twitch.

I trudged home after school through deep snow. Lewis followed, goofy from too much candy. As soon as I got home, I scrubbed off the face paint. I'll put it on fresh for tonight, I thought as I rubbed my skin.

For some reason my stomach felt itchy too. I gave it a good scratch and then took a look. The skin was red from my fingernails, but there were spots in the redness too. Weird.

I changed, left my costume in my room and headed upstairs. When Mom and Dad built their office in the third-floor attic, they put dormer windows into the sloping ceilings. Their desks are nestled into the dormers, one at each end of the room. There are worktables in the middle, with skylights above them. The room was in its usual chaos, with piles of papers everywhere, artwork tacked to the walls and a table piled high with computer gear, Dad's toys, packing material and cardboard boxes.

I stopped to let R2D2 by, delivering a sticky note. Then I walked up to Mom, hard at work on her computer. “Mom, I have an itchy spot on my stomach.”

She frowned and turned from the computer. “Let me see.”

I pulled up my shirt.

“That's weird. It looks like chicken pox, but you've already had it. And all the kids in your grade should have had it or been vaccinated.”

“Byron has it.”

“Who's Byron?” she asked, sounding distracted.

“He's in my class. He sits in front of me and pulls my hair whenever he can. Except right now he's home with chicken pox.”

Dad joined us, examining my stomach. “Looks like chicken pox to me. I guess you'll be missing Halloween.”

“What?” I squeaked.

“You're contagious. You can't go out.”

I sagged. “But I've already had it!”

“BB and Lewis were really sick, but you barely had any spots,” Dad said. “Some people get it again if they had it lightly the first time.”

I sniffed. “Can I hand out candy, at least?”

Dad shook his head. “Sorry, no. You have to stay away from other kids.”

“But it's Halloween!” I cried. What could be more horrible than this? I stumbled down the stairs, knowing it was all the Spirit Man's fault.

By the time we'd eaten and cleaned up after dinner, it was obvious to everyone that I had chicken pox. Red spots were appearing all over my face. I was itchy everywhere: my face, my stomach, even the soles of my feet.

Mom kept nagging me not to scratch. “If you scratch the spots, they might get infected and leave a scar. It's really important that you don't scratch.”

My spots had a different opinion. They begged to be scratched.

BB set out early to go trick-or-treating with his friends. Lewis got ready to go out with Dad. His Bear costume was amazing—Lewis looked just like a big black dog. Oddly, Bear was still bigger than Lewis.

Lewis wanted to bring Bear with them, so there would be two of them.

“He'll bark,” I said.

Dad agreed. “But he only barks at Daleks, and any Daleks will be big enough to bark back.”

“Dad!”

Dad smiled. “I'll keep him on a leash.”

When the first trick-or-treaters called out at the front door, Bear came barreling down the stairs. I snagged him as he swept past me, and yanked him back. We sat on the stairs and watched three tiny kids creep up to the door, afraid of the jack-o'-lanterns lining the front steps.

Kara bounced up to the door behind them, scary in her Spirit Man costume. Her eyes widened when she saw my spots. “
Cool
! A new costume! This is even
better
than a mouse. You look
exactly
like you have chicken pox!”

“I
do
have chicken pox!”

“That's
so
good! You sound exactly right too, like you really are sick.”

I moaned.

“Kara, she really is sick,” Dad said.

Kara spun around. “
What
? Oh,
no
!” She rushed to the stairs.

Dad grabbed her and held her back. “No—you'll get it too.”

“Oh, I had it years ago. I was really sick.” She walked up the stairs and sat beside me. “It's the Spirit Man again, isn't it?” she whispered.

“I'm sure it is,” I whispered back, tears stinging my eyes.

Kara took a big breath. “I'll do the rounds really quickly, come back and share my candy with you.”

Dad said, “You can have it when you feel better.”

“You have to fix this,” said Kara.

“I know.”

BOOK: Cursed!
4.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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