Sunny Sweet Is So Not Scary (10 page)

“Great idea, Sunny!” I patted her on the shoulder. I had to remember this moment. Sunny Sweet could so get on my nerves, but tonight she was really saving us.

“The wheelbarrow?” Alice said. But I was already lining us up at the door.

I cracked the door open about two inches and pointed the flashlight out into the hallway. And then I turned around and nodded to my posse. We started out and down the hallway again and back into the kitchen. I took us straight to the back door.

“Should we try the wishing on the spoon thing, since we're here?” Junchao asked.

I looked out the kitchen window into our dark backyard. I didn't like the thought of all the forks and knives chasing us around the house, but the idea of
traveling out into the night in sight of the moon
was freaking me out even more right now. I opened up the utensil drawer.

First, I picked up a tablespoon. But then I put it back and picked up my mom's giant spoon that she serves ice cream with. This was better. I turned around and handed Sunny the flashlight. “What do I do?”

“It just says to wish the ghost gone,” she said.

I shrugged. And then I held the big spoon in both my hands and closed my eyes, which felt like the right position for a wish.

“Be polite,” Alice whispered. “My grandmother says that sometimes ghosts have been haunting around so long that they've forgotten they're dead. So maybe you should remind her nicely, and that this is your home now, and it's time to move on to the light.”

I opened up one eye. “What's the light?”

Alice took her hand from her crutch and pointed up.

I closed my eye and took a big breath and said, “Dear ghost—”

“You should call her Trudy,” Sunny whispered.

“I don't want to,” I whispered back. And then I started again. “Dear ghost, I hope you're having a good night.”

Junchao gave a snort.

“We are not having the best night because . . .” Now how to say this nicely? “We're not sure if you remember this or not, but you're . . .” I didn't want to use the word
dead
. It seemed kind of harsh. “You've passed away.” I hugged the big ice cream spoon to my chest. “And it's time that you moved on . . . to the light.” I gestured up to the sky with the spoon, just in case the ghost didn't know which direction the light was. “I bet it's a really nice place up there. I bet it's like Disneyland, only with free soda and no lines at the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride.”

Alice cleared her throat. Maybe I was getting off track a bit.

“So, again, about the light. We were thinking . . . actually, we were wishing that you would take that nice trip up into the air toward the light.” I squeezed the spoon
tightly in my hands. “And we wish that you would do it, um, now.”

I was afraid to open my eyes. After a few seconds of silence, I blinked them open. Sunny, Junchao, Alice, and I were standing in the middle of the kitchen in a tight little circle. Sunny was the last one to open her eyes. Then all four of us stood blinking in the light of the flashlight. The kitchen clock ticked away on the wall. None of us moved.

Was it over? Maybe it was over. It could be over. And we didn't have to go outside into the light of the moon!

But then it happened.

CLOMP. CLOMP. CLOMP.

It's like the ghost was walking around in the same place and for the same amount of time, almost as if it were doing some weird dance move.

Wooo. Wooo. Wooooo.

I quickly slammed the utensil drawer shut before the forks and knives could get out.

 

The Wheelbarrow Probably Wasn't a Good Idea

The kitchen door opened up with a loud squeak. The sound would have made my heart start pounding, but the thought of going out into the dark night already had it beating away. Even the wet night air smelled spooky.

All four of us piled onto our tiny wooden back porch. It took me and Junchao holding onto each of Alice's elbows to help her down the step from the kitchen door to the porch. There was a little roof over the porch so it was dry. Sunny held the flashlight and a bunch of kitchen towels I told her to grab in case the wheelbarrow was wet. I closed the door behind us.

Sunny shined the flashlight out into the yard. The beam of light only made it about halfway across, making the yard seem so much bigger than I remembered it being yesterday. Our swing set, which was blue and pink and happy in the sunshine of the day, looked like a giant metal monster crouching in the corner of the yard under the big tree. The big tree, which I loved to climb just about every day of my life, seemed as if it were bending and stretching its branches, getting ready to grab us. I was glad that we didn't have to go anywhere near them. I looked over to where we did have to go, toward the shed.

For the first time ever, I noticed exactly how scary our shed looked. It was short, fat, and wooden, with a door that didn't close right because it wasn't the right fit for the shed. Sunny had destroyed the real door this past spring. She said that she was doing experiments on turning wood into gas. I don't know if the shed door turned into gas, but it did turn into a black and twisted mess. Mom left it out for the trash men and put an old
closet door that we had down in the basement on the shed.

But because it wasn't the right kind, it didn't go all the way down to the bottom of the frame, so there was a three- or four-inch gap at the bottom. When I stared at it in the dark, I swear that I saw the shadow of feet under the door. And we had to pass right by that shed to go into the woods to get around the fence and into Mrs. Song's yard.

I looked for our wheelbarrow. The moon lit up the back side of our house, making the windows look like dark eyes staring out into the yard. The wheelbarrow leaned against the side of the house between the windows, making it look like a giant nose.

“Wait here,” I said. I stepped off the porch and walked along the wet pavement toward the wheelbarrow; my jewelry clanked in the night like the bones of a skeleton. I held the chains to stop them from making the scary bone sound.

The wheelbarrow was under the eaves of the house, and it didn't look too wet. I reached for the handles . .  . but then I remembered the millions of daddy longlegs
that liked to hang out against the back of the house, and I turned and ran back to the porch.

“What's wrong?” Alice asked.

“I need the flashlight.”

I wasn't going to mention the daddy longlegs to poor Alice. I might have to touch the wheelbarrow, but she had to sit in it.

Sunny handed me the flashlight, and I ran back to the wheelbarrow and shined it all around. I didn't see any spiders. I put the flashlight down in the grass so its beam shot up into the sky, and then I grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow and pulled it from the house. Something ran up my bare arm.

I dropped the wheelbarrow and jumped back from the house, tripping over the flashlight and falling right on my butt in the cold, wet grass. The wheelbarrow clanged against the house while it fell. It was loud enough to wake the dead, but then I remembered the dead were already awake. But it was also loud enough to wake Mrs. Song as a metal ring echoed through the silent neighborhood.

Sunny, Junchao, and Alice all crouched together in a heap on the porch with their hands covering their ears.

We waited.

A dog barked from down the street. Then a far-off beep of a car horn. And then nothing but the breeze blowing through the tops of the trees in the little woods in the back of our yard and the sound of plopping raindrops hitting the leaves on the ground.

“The ghost is going to die of old age before we get it out of here,” complained Junchao.

“How can something die if it's already dead?” I grumbled.

I picked up my hanger hat and put it on, and then I wiped at my arms and legs to be sure there was nothing crawling on me. My pajama bottoms sagged a bit in the butt from getting wet when I fell. Then I set the wheelbarrow straight, put the flashlight in it, and wheeled it over to the porch. “Your chariot, my princess.”

Alice stood up but didn't let go of her crutches.

“I think you should leave your crutches here,” Junchao said.

Alice didn't look like she was into this idea.

“We'll be with you the whole time,” I told her.

She leaned her crutches against the door and gave me a smile. And this time, the curling shape of her lips didn't hide any sadness; it was all happy.

Sunny jumped down from the porch and plucked the flashlight from the wheelbarrow and then put all the kitchen towels down in the bottom of it. Then Junchao and I first helped Alice into a sitting position onto the porch, and then up and into the wheelbarrow.

“Sunny,” I said, “give Alice the flashlight. And you and Junchao get on either side of the wheelbarrow so I don't tip it. I'll push.”

Sunny handed Alice the flashlight. The two of them took their positions on either side of the wheelbarrow. “Ready?” I asked.

Alice turned around and looked at me. “I'm pretty sure that this is one of the things that my mom and dad were afraid of when they said they didn't want me sleeping over.” She laughed.

Junchao joined in with her loud, “Ho-ho-ho.” Even Sunny couldn't keep herself from laughing. We did look pretty funny . . . the four of us in our pajamas,
wearing hangers and pencils on our heads and covered in baby powder and sparkly jewels, with Alice riding in a wheelbarrow out into the wet woods in the middle of the night.

We started out. I pushed the wheelbarrow toward the shed, hoping that the hangers and the pencils and the powder and the jewelry worked on shed monsters as well as ghosts.

When we got close to it, I picked up speed. Alice clung to the sides of the wheelbarrow. Because I was pretty scared, I was having trouble keeping the wheelbarrow steady. We hit a big stick, and the wheelbarrow leaned toward Junchao. Junchao caught the side of it in her hands and kept it from tipping over.

“Be careful, Masha!” she said in a whisper.

But we were past the monster in the shed. My heart stopped pounding, and I calmed down enough to grab the handles of the wheelbarrow tighter. We were almost at the edge of the woods.

I pushed Alice toward the line of forsythia bushes. “Close your eyes, everyone,” I said. I closed mine too, which maybe was not the best idea.

We went under.

All the long branches scraped across my face and body, catching on my necklaces and just about knocking off my hanger hat. One long branch wrapped around my ankle as I shoved at the wheelbarrow. It wouldn't let me go, and I tripped out of the bushes on the other side, landing on the cool dirt that surrounded the bushes. The wheelbarrow slid to its side, dumping Alice on top of Sunny.

“I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry,” I howled.

Junchao scrambled to help Alice and Sunny. I got up and righted the wheelbarrow. And then picked up the flashlight. We were all okay, at least mostly anyway. Although we had lost a few pencils from our hanger hats and gained a few wet leaves.

Alice looked pretty shaken up. Junchao squeaked that she wanted to go home. And Sunny stared at me, waiting for me to say something. I knew what I had to say. I just didn't want to say it. But I did.

“You guys,” I started. But they didn't stop grumbling. “YOU GUYS!” I said louder. They stopped and looked up
at me. “We need to head back to the house. You three are going to sit on the porch, and I'm going to run over to Mrs. Song's to get the grass by myself.”

Junchao gasped.

“No!” Alice said.

Sunny didn't say anything.

“We have to do it this way. I'm not strong enough to push the wheelbarrow over the leaves and sticks in the woods. I'm so sorry, Alice.” I felt like such a failure. “And I don't like the idea of leaving the three of you out here without Alice's crutches. We need to go back.”

It was quiet as we each thought about things in the dark. We all knew that I was right.

I turned the wheelbarrow around, and Junchao and I helped Alice back into it. She shined the flashlight ahead of us, and this time I kept control of myself. I wasn't going to dump Alice back onto the wet ground, even if a zombie came out of that shed and started chomping on my leg. We slowly made our way back through the forsythia bushes and past the shed. A zombie did not come out. Although I'm almost sure I heard one moaning in there.

In about five minutes, we were back to the house. Sunny held onto the wheelbarrow, and Junchao and I helped Alice out and then up the two stairs of the porch. I could almost hear Alice's parents sigh in their sleep all the way across town. Junchao climbed onto the porch and took a seat next to Alice. Sunny stood by the wheelbarrow.

I blinked at my friends and my little sister in the dark.

After all the hours we'd battled this ghost together . . . this was good-bye.

 

Being a Hero Is Lonely

I'll be fine,” I told them. Even though I was pretty sure that within a few minutes, I'd be a late-night snack for the monster in the shed. No one mentioned how we were not supposed to separate, or any of the bad things that happened when you did. Maybe this was why it always happened in the movies . . . because there was some big reason why they couldn't stay together.

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

But for us, I didn't see any other way.

I took the flashlight from Sunny. “See ya,” I said. But the “ya” got stuck in my throat so it sounded like I just said “see.”

Alice grabbed me in a big hug. Junchao joined in. And then Sunny did too. I was being smothered by love and poked by a few pencils at the same time. It felt good. Even the pencil pokes. Their hugs made me feel strong. I could do this.

I turned and walked off as soon as they let me go so they didn't see the tears in my eyes. Heroes didn't cry, did they?

It was amazing how fast I got past the scary shed without a big wheelbarrow to push. Then I held my hanger hat on with one hand and ducked under the forsythia bushes. I stood at the edge of the woods and shined the flashlight through the trees.