I suppose it’s possible you don’t believe me. Even now. Maybe you’re thinking Henry and I are just two kids making up some game to scare ourselves. Like that time my cousin Monica and I went to Girl Scout camp, and everyone charged out of the cabin in the middle of the night, screaming, so sure they’d just seen Mary Worth in the bathroom mirror. Mrs. Sorenson was standing there, in a flannel pajama top and sweatpants, yelling, “If you girls don’t want to settle down, we can just load up the vans RIGHT NOW and head home!” Immediately everybody got really quiet—which I don’t understand, because it was so obvious that she wasn’t going to do anything until she had a full night’s sleep and at least two cups of coffee. P.S. We got to stay until the next day, when they told us to “forage” for our breakfast, which turned out to be miniature boxes of cereal hanging from the nearest trees. This is supposed to teach us to survive in nature? Seriously? Not much of a camper, that Mrs. Sorenson.
But just because the Mary Worth thing was a big fat fake doesn’t mean something didn’t happen that day with Henry and me. Lots of people have held séances with Ouija boards. You can look it up. Once, a really long time ago, there were these two sisters called Maggie and Kate Fox. They lived in a farmhouse in New York, and they wanted to scare their parents, so they started making ghost noises in the middle of the night. They tied apples together and bounced them along the floor to make it sound like footsteps. They taught themselves to make loud snapping sounds with their toes, which isn’t easy. I’ve tried it.
Anyway, once their mother heard the noises, she was completely convinced the farmhouse was haunted. She just got up out of bed, lit a candle, and started searching for ghosts. That’s when Maggie and Kate started to think that maybe they’d gone too far. They tried to say that it was almost April Fools’ Day, and maybe someone was playing a joke. Hint, hint, hint. But it was too late. The whole thing had gotten out of hand. Before they knew what hit them, Maggie and Kate were conducting séances for money. They had to learn how to snap their toes with shoes and socks on, but I suppose it was worth it. I bet it paid a lot better than collecting chicken eggs.
I guess when I read about those two, I might have taken it as a warning to slow down on the whole Edgar thing. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Edgar wasn’t a game. He wasn’t a trick that Henry was playing on me. Even if Henry didn’t always want to admit it, Edgar was real. And he kept showing up.
One day after school, I was at Henry’s house, playing catch in the yard. It wasn’t our first choice, but Sophie said we should go outside, and I figured Henry could use the practice. Not that he appreciated my efforts. At all.
“You have to stand sideways,” I told him. “Sideways and shift. That’s what my dad says.”
“It doesn’t matter where my feet are,” Henry said. “This isn’t dance class, Barbara Anne. It’s about my arm.”
I was sincerely hoping that wasn’t true, because Henry had an arm like an overcooked spaghetti noodle. And he wasn’t any better at catching than he was at throwing. Every ball I threw escaped him. Even when I threw right to him, Henry kept missing. It was like his mind was a million miles away. The ball sailed past him and rolled toward the bushes at the edge of the yard so many times that I quit helping him search for it.
I sat down in the grass instead. And when Henry got back, he joined me. “What’s up with you?” I asked him.
“I saw him,” Henry said.
“Just now?” I asked.
“No,” Henry said. “Last night. It’s getting worse. It happens all the time now.” And that’s when Henry told me that the night before, Edgar had shown up in his room. “He was right there,” Henry said. “Standing at the foot of my bed—by the window. He had this brown wooden yo-yo. And he was doing tricks with it. The one my grandfather used to do where you hook your fingers through the string and form this opening. Then the yo-yo just hangs there in the center, swaying.”
“Rock the Baby,” I told him.
But Henry wasn’t listening.
“He looked right at me!” Henry said. “His voice was all breathy and strange.”
“You talked to him? What did he say?”
Henry turned to me, his eyes creepy and wild; he grabbed my hand really tightly in his own.
“What did he say?” I asked again.
Instead of answering right away, Henry started lacing our fingers together. Then he looked off into the distance like he was watching a movie that only he could see. When he finally looked at me again, he had those strange, scary eyes. “Play with me!” Henry said.
And I screamed. Not an Oh no, I’m about to be tagged on the playground scream. An actual full-out scream that scraped against the back of my throat. That’s how real Edgar was, even for me. And I’d never seen him.