Peeled (10 page)

This paper sure got thrown down a lot.

I picked it up. “If people don’t work hard to get the truth and print it, this is the best we’ll get,” I told him. “If people just get mad at the paper and don’t demand better reporting, nothing will change. I’m trying to change things.”

He looked at me. “You sound like Mitch.”

I smiled. Mitch was my dad.

Felix sighed. “He was the fighter, I was the farmer.”

“You fight the weather,” I reminded him.

“Mitch was always marching off to right some wrong.” Felix looked miserably at his bag of rice cakes. “Might as well gnaw on cardboard.”

“No calories in cardboard,” I told him.

He got up grumbling and headed outside.

I sat down and opened
The Bee
to Madame Zobek’s new column.

“It is the beginning of a great gathering,” she wrote. “I sense there is a deep moving here. I sense a great darkness.”

She wrote that she had personally spoken to several spirits at the Ludlow place and they told her there were many more who would be joining them.

Terrific…

I didn’t like the way Madame Zobek was making her presence known. She was open for business in a small store next to the offices of
The Bee.
I’d walked by it the other day. She’d hung thick purple curtains over the window, hung a black and silver sign on the door:
RING
THE
PSYCHIC
DOORBELL
.

Tanisha got a photo of the sign.

“If she’s really psychic,” Zack said when he saw Tanisha’s photo at school, “why does she need a doorbell?”

But people of all ages began to ring the bell and seek her advice. She had a brochure, too.

The list went on and on.

Joleene Jowrey stood on the makeshift stage in the cafeteria, faced Lev Radner’s smirking face, and delivered one of the worst lines ever written in the history of the stage.

“Just because you don’t love me anymore, Jason, doesn’t mean I don’t still love you. I will love you until the rivers run dry and the stars fall from the sky.”

I swear, this play made you desperate.

“I need you to give me more with that line, Joleene,” Mrs. Terser shouted. “Make me a believer.”

Joleene looked at Lev, who belched. She took his hand and said, “
Just
because you don’t love me anymore, Jason, doesn’t mean I don’t still love you. I will love you until the stars run dry and the rivers fall from the—
wait
—” They both started laughing.

“Let’s get our metaphors straight,” Mrs. Terser directed. “Rivers run dry, stars fall…”

I put on my
Are you desperate?
cap and headed off to a very long day.

Lessons came at me fast and furious.

In history I learned that fiefdoms stink.

In English I learned that
Moby-Dick
wasn’t just about sea life.

In chemistry I learned it’s a really bad idea to add water to sulfuric acid.

In room 67B,
The Core
’s office, I learned how to get to the heart of a story.

Baker Polton had commandeered the desk in room 67B. He had put a photo of a pretty, smiling woman with a little boy on it, too.

“Nice picture,” I said.

He nodded as Royko buzzed near the food heap. “How do you kids work in here?”

I shrugged, looked back at his photo. “Is that your family?”

“My ex-wife and son.”

“Sorry.”

He gazed long and hard at that picture. “Not as sorry as I am.” Then he leaned forward in his chair and said, “Biddle, are you hungry enough to get to the heart of the Ludlow story?”

I felt my face get hot. “I’m plenty hungry!”

“Then explain to me why you haven’t contacted anyone who knew Sallie Miner.”

“I’ve been doing other things,” I stammered. “I’ve
been calling D&B Security. I just get the answering machine.”

“That’s not what hungry looks like. Let me see your notes.”

This wasn’t going to be pretty. I took my notes out of my book bag, lay them folded and crumpled at his desk.

“Wait, there’s more.”

I grabbed some from the side pocket, pushed my notepad toward him, took a piece of paper from my pocket. I tried to smooth it.

He picked up a wrinkled sheet. “Polton’s Second Law—If you’re not organized, it’ll kill you.” He spread out the sheets. “Why aren’t they numbered?”

“I never thought of that.”

He looked at one page from my notebook when I went to the courthouse. He underlined two words and handed it back to me.

Boston

Martin

“Don’t you think it’s odd,” Baker said, “that with all the security companies here in New York, D&B Security from Boston was checking out the Ludlow property?”

“What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know. But it’s a hole in the story. Make a list of what you don’t know and where you might find it.”

“I don’t know anything about Sallie Miner except that she went to Banesville Elementary.”

I grabbed the phone, called the school, asked if anyone remembered who Sallie’s third-grade teacher was.

“Oh, yes,” said the secretary. “That would be Eileen Leary. She’s living in Madison, Wisconsin, now.”

I turned to Baker excitedly. “I got a lead on the teacher.”

“Follow it.”

I called directory assistance, got her phone number.

Hildy Biddle, ace reporter, had been let loose.

I made the call. A woman answered. I said, “I’m trying to reach Eileen Leary—who taught third grade in Banesville.”

“That’s me…,” she said cautiously.

“Mrs. Leary, I’m Hildy Biddle. I’m researching an article about the Ludlow house in Banesville for my high school paper. I’m trying to determine facts from fiction. Can I ask what you remember about Sallie Miner?”

“Well, she was always scared of that house, living as close to it as she did.”

I was writing. “Really? What was she afraid of?”

“The ghost. Some unnamed evil. Sallie had such an imagination. She was always telling us about seeing something unusual. I think it became her reality. She was a good student. She always brought a valentine for every child in the class, very thoughtful. Have you talked to her father?”

“No.” I couldn’t imagine doing that.

“He and his wife divorced after the accident. He’s living in Miami, I believe. He was a good man. I remember him coming to Parents’ Night. I think his first name is Larry. Larry Miner. I don’t know if he would talk to you, but it’s worth a try.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Leary. I’m trying to find the truth.”

She sighed. “That would be most welcome after all this time. Good luck to you.”

I sat back in my chair, numbered my notes, and showed them to Baker.

“You know, Biddle, whoever breaks this story open can really help this town.”

“I want to do that!” I hit the Miami phone book online.

There were eleven Lawrence Miners in the Miami area. But what would I say when I called?

Hi, is this the Lawrence Miner whose little daughter, Sallie, was killed five years ago?

I couldn’t do that, could I?

“The thing is,” I said to Mom, “Baker says that breaking the Ludlow story open could really help Banesville, so I’ve got this mission now to track down every lead, and I’ve hardly got time for homework, much less doing school tours at the orchard.”

“I know you’ll find a way to fit it all in,” Mom answered with a supreme lack of compassion as the yellow
school bus pulled up the driveway. “Here come our little guests.”

Twenty-nine first-graders, to be exact. They ran off the bus screaming. It was school visiting day at the orchard.

“Remember, Hildy,” Mom said. “We want them to care about where their fruit comes from.”

“Cantwell!”
I screamed at the six-year-old boy who swiped a pile of Nan’s chunky apple brownies after major warnings from me
not
to eat, suck, destroy, bruise, toss, spit upon, or touch them in any way. “If you eat them, Cantwell, if you move or do anything other than breathe, your time in the orchard barn will be over. Got it?”

Cantwell nodded, which technically was moving, but I decided to let it go. I looked at the other children, who looked back at me to see if I meant it and decided I did. The teacher and the parent helpers were off in the corner by the Johnny Appleseed poster.

The orchard barn was where we gave demonstrations, where we had our small market.

I took out my guitar and taught them a song that only required three chords—C, D, and E minor—the only ones I knew how to play.

Up, down, all around
,

Apples begin from a seed in the ground.

Juan-Carlos showed them the hand motions. He really got into this.

“Arriba! Arriba!”
he shouted, which means “Up! Up!” in Spanish.

We sang the song over and over. Then I read them the story of Johnny Appleseed’s love of apples, his total focus on one fruit, how his commitment to a dream benefited generations to come. I glared at Cantwell. “
Now
, everybody, it’s time for your snack!”

The kids descended on the plate of apple brownies like moths to a light source. A little girl, Sara, ran up and hugged me. “You have a pretty face, Hildy.”

I hugged her back. “You have a pretty face, too.”

Missy Grimes marched up, a very complicated little girl. I used to babysit for her. She had a bandage on her elbow. “Hug me, Hildy! Hug me, too!” I gave her a big one.

Missy’s eyes were wide. “I saw something and it was big! Huge, even!”

“Really?”

I babysat Missy last summer and was exhausted by the experience. Missy claimed to see lots of big things—giant bats, enlarged worms, gargantuan bees—all swooping down to get her. Her parents were going through a nasty divorce. Mrs. Grimes kept calling me to babysit again, too. I’d been avoiding her.

Missy grabbed both my hands. “I
saw it,”
she insisted. Then she lowered her voice. “I can’t tell the other part. But you can read about it!”

“What do you mean?”

“What do we say, children?” the teacher asked, beginning
to steer the kids onto the bus with their apple bags.

“Thank you!”
shrieked the first-graders of Banesville Elementary.

I took Missy’s hand. “Missy, what are you talking about?”

“It’s a secret,” she whispered, and ran onto the bus. She sat at the window staring out. She always seemed lonely.

The bus pulled away.

You can read about it.

I didn’t like the sound of that.

“I hear up by Ludlow’s place there’s more coming,” Crescent Furl, owner of the A to Z Convenience Store, said to me. She had the headache medicines up front at the counter now—they used to be in the back.

I grabbed a bottle of water from her refrigerator. “What do you mean?” I asked.

Crescent sniffed. “All I heard is some talk.”

To get Crescent to really talk, you had to buy more. I grabbed two Hershey bars, peanuts, a pocket Kleenex, and put five dollars on the counter. “Tell me.”

Crescent rang up the order slowly. “It’s not like I’m some kinda telegraph center.”

I smiled. “Crescent, you know everything going on in town.”

She liked that. “I hear,” she said, “they saw another one.”

“Another what?”

“Another ghost,” she said ominously.

“Who saw it?”

“Didn’t hear who, just what.”