I knew Henry and I couldn’t count on any more facts about Edgar just landing with a crash at our feet. If we wanted to know more, we had to get serious—like those ghost hunter guys on TV. I was planning on watching them after school with Henry, but he had to go to the dentist, so I asked Renee. To be honest, I was lucky to be watching them with anyone. My mom is not a big fan of television. She calls it “screen time” when I’m around and “the idiot box” when she thinks I’m not listening. I think you get the picture. But she was in an especially good mood that day. She even let us get cake pops when she stopped for coffee. And usually if I ask for anything sweet, all I get is a lecture about sugar, aka “the white death.”
Anyway, when we sat down in the den, I knew what I wanted to watch. But in my house, the rule is “Be nice to your guest.” I mean, it’s not like it’s stitched into a pillow or hanging as a sign on the wall, but that’s the rule. So I let Renee pick first. Big mistake.
Renee has the worst taste in shows ever. The one she wanted was just ladies trying on wedding gowns. They would stand on this little round stage that looked like the top of a cake and twirl around. And their moms and friends would start crying—actually crying!—and saying stuff like, “Oh, Tracy. You look so beautiful. I just wish your father was here to see you.”
“I’m never getting married,” I announced.
“Why?” Renee asked. “You get to dress up like a princess, and everybody gives you gifts. And money. You get a lot of money.”
“They don’t even show the guy she has to marry,” I pointed out. “Or the girl.”
“That’s not the point.”
“But maybe he’s awful,” I said. “Did you ever think about that?”
Renee ignored me. She was staring at the screen like someone had hypnotized her.
“I don’t have to wait that long anyway,” Renee said. “My grandmother’s gonna make me an amazing dress for my quinceañera.”
“What’s that?”
“My fifteenth birthday party,” Renee said. “I might get a tiara too.”
“That sounds great,” I said, but I guess she could tell from my voice that I couldn’t take another minute of the squealing and the twirling.
“You can change it,” she said. “If you want to watch something else.”
She was pouting a little, so maybe she thought I wouldn’t do it, but I grabbed the remote and changed the channel as fast as I could. I flipped past the news and a soap opera and landed on the show I was looking for. This time, they were investigating a haunted hospital. Now, I ask you, what would you rather do: tour an abandoned insane asylum or watch some people you don’t even know go shopping? I think the answer is pretty obvious, but Renee started saying, “Switch it back! This is too scary!”
I had to shush her so I could hear the ghost hunter guy.
“We’re here, just outside the former Edmonds Institute for the Criminally Insane,” he said. “The rest of the team has gone ahead.”
He tried to contact them with some crackly walkie-talkie. Then they switched to the other ghost hunters. (The guys who were filming were obviously better at catching ghosts than working cameras. They kept getting so close to people’s faces that you could see right up their nostrils. So gross!)
“We’re in the East Wing,” ghost hunter guy number two said.
The ghost team was lugging bags of equipment and looking really wide-eyed and freaked out. “I’ve set up the temperature gauges,” he whispered. “And the EMF meter. Now we just have to wait.”
He paused, and the girl who was with him said the date and time. She wrote it down in a notebook, and I made a mental note to get a notebook. I would have written it down, of course, but I didn’t have the notebook yet.
“What’s that?” the guy asked all of a sudden.
“I think we need to head this way,” the girl told him.
She had a headlamp, like a miner. My dad has one of those too, but he’s only ever used it for camping. And once he put it on and grabbed some tweezers because my little cousin stuck a toy sponge up her nose to see if it would fit.
“This is way too scary,” Renee said.
I had the basic idea, ghost hunter–wise, so I switched the channel. Anyway—and I say this just to be completely honest—I was hanging out with Renee only because Henry was busy that day. Henry had the real clues. Henry had the stuff he’d found in the trunk.
It seemed like my house was the best place for Henry and me to go through everything because we’d had enough trouble with Sophie already. And the best time, of course, was when my dad was away on a business trip, my mom was out running errands, and my grandmother was babysitting. My grandmother is not as quick with the “What are you two doing?” questions as my parents.
So I told Henry to bring all the Edgar stuff over to my house.
“Stop telling me what to do,” he said. “You’re so bossy.”
“I am not bossy,” I said.
Honestly, how come everybody always says that about girls? My grandmother says I’m going to run the world someday, and I’m pretty sure she means it in a good way. Anyway, Henry did what I told him to do and brought the stuff to my house, and my grandmother put out some almond cookies for us. Henry was all ready to take the pictures and stuff out of his backpack when my grandmother started to get a little too interested. “What you got there?” she asked.
“Just some stuff,” Henry said. “Barbara Anne asked me to bring it over.”
“Huh,” my grandmother said, which sounds like it means nothing if you don’t know my grandmother but means a lot if you do. It’s sort of hard to explain.
“Let’s take our homework into my room, where we can work on it quietly,” I said to Henry.
“Why don’t you two eat your cookies right here at the table?” my grandmother said.
“You know,” I said, being careful to look straight at Henry and not at my grandmother, “my mother doesn’t even let me have cookies after school. Isn’t my grandmother SWEET to let us have some?”
“Bitsy,” my grandmother said. “Watch your step.”
Things got a little tense for a minute—not really scary, more like in between a staring contest and you’re about to get sent to your room. And then Rachel saved the day by crying, and my grandmother had to go change her diaper.
“What’s the matter with you?” Henry asked. “You should be nicer to your grandmother.”
“I am nice to my grandmother. She’s my favorite person on planet Earth. Grab your backpack,” I said. “And a couple of cookies.”
I didn’t want to make Henry witness a diaper change, so I decided we should skip my room and just use my dad’s office. Once we were there and Henry started to unzip the backpack, I was so excited I could have peed my pants. All I had seen so far was the one picture Henry managed to show me at recess before the bell rang. Now I got to see the whole stash.
I guess I should tell you that Edgar wasn’t alone in the picture. He was standing on the porch with an older boy and two grown-ups. They looked kind of sad and serious, the way most people do in old photographs. I guess nobody smiled much back in the day. Maybe secretly they all knew they were alive too soon and were missing all the good stuff, like television and video games.
“Who do you suppose they are?” I asked Henry.
“Must be his parents, I guess,” Henry said.
That wasn’t necessarily true. A really good detective would start with a more open mind. I mean, look at Henry. His mom was off in England studying, and he was stuck here with Sophie.
“Maybe,” I said. “But you never know. You don’t live with your mom right now. And Renee just has her dad and that ancient babysitter lady.”
“That’s her grandmother, Barbara Anne,” Henry said.
“Are you sure?” I asked him. “Maybe her dad’s just really bad at picking babysitters.”
Henry gave me a look then. He acts like he’s never said anything even the least little bit mean about anybody, but that just isn’t true. “What else is there?” I asked.
There was so much more: another photo—of a boy and a man standing in front of a piano—a letter, a locket, and a strange little book.
“Let’s read the letter first,” I said.
“Don’t grab it!” Henry said.
And, to be fair, I guess he was right. The paper was so thin it felt more like a leaf than regular paper, and the handwriting was this small, extra-fancy cursive that took some time to get used to. We had to unravel it a little at a time.
My dear Thomas,
You are right to do what you can to prepare now for the coming eventualities. I wish I could be more optimistic, but I share your belief that this illness will reach the farthest corners of the country before it has run its course. It seems a new breed of pneumonia more vicious than any I saw in my civilian practice.
There are ten times the number of doctors that would normally be on base, and even that is not enough as we lose those, and nurses too, at an appalling rate. Each time I take up my stethoscope and hear the rales, I know it is certainly a death sentence, and a rapid one at that. Within hours, the dark spots appear. Cyanosis. Suffocation. As horrible a death as any they could have experienced in France.
“What’s he talking about?” I asked Henry.
“I’m not sure,” Henry said.
“How’s the homework coming?” my grandmother asked from the doorway.
And Henry and I both jumped. Henry stuffed the letter back into his backpack and scrambled to his feet.
“You scared us to death!” I yelled at my grandmother.
“Sorry,” she said with a shrug. “Slipper feet. Henry, would you like to stay for dinner?”
“Henry and I aren’t even finished eating the delicious almond cookies you brought over,” I said.
“You shouldn’t be eating in here,” my grandmother said. Then she sighed. “Just keep the crumbs off the floor. This is your father’s office, you know.”
“Oh, I know,” I said.
Henry elbowed me. “Thank you for the cookies,” he told my grandmother.
That night, at dinner, all I could think about while I pushed the green beans around my plate was the letter inside Henry’s backpack. He was sitting right beside me, and I couldn’t even talk to him about the only important thing there was to talk about. Instead, I had to listen to my mother asking him stupid questions just to make conversation. I mean, who really cared if he’d gotten his hair cut?
“You two don’t seem very hungry,” my mother said. “Did they serve something great for lunch at school today?”
“We didn’t get much homework,” I said.
“Earth to Bitsy,” my grandmother said.
“Mom,” my mom said.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just thinking about homework, I guess.”
“Well, now that you mention it, we better get Henry home so you can get started,” my mom said.
“After we get back, maybe you can help us with the dishes,” my grandmother said.
“I can handle the dishes,” my mom said.
“Thanks, Mom,” I told her. “You’re the best.”
My grandmother rolled her eyes, but my mother didn’t see it, so that was the end of that round. It isn’t nice to keep score, but I think we all know who won.
My idea was that I would walk Henry home by myself, but my grandmother insisted she should come with us. She said it was for safety, but I think she also wanted to know what we were up to.
“It’s getting dark, Bitsy,” my mom said. “Your grandmother should go along.”
“Yeah, Bitsy,” Henry said. “Your mom’s right.” He was smirking at me, and I did not like it one bit.
“Very funny,” I told him. “Just get your jacket. And I want the little book, okay? If you work on the letter, I’ll take a look at the book.”
My grandmother walked in as Henry was handing it to me, and she gave me a curious look. “Just homework,” I said. I kissed Rachel on the top of the head, and then we left.
Technically, my grandmother was walking with Henry and me, but she doesn’t walk all that fast. The closer we got to Henry’s house, the wider the gap became. On the corner across from his house, though, Henry slowed, then stopped. At first, I thought he was just waiting for my grandmother to catch up so the three of us could cross together. But then I saw that he was staring at his house—at his own bedroom window, to be exact.
I swear to you that there was nothing there. The lights weren’t even on. But it seemed like Henry saw something, or someone, up in the dark window of his room. I looked up again, but I couldn’t make out anything. And I guess I shouldn’t have tried. I guess I should have been paying attention.
“Henry!” I screamed when I saw the car.
I remember the red of the brake lights and the loud screech of the tires.
Henry froze right there in the middle of the street. The car missed him by inches, and he didn’t even seem upset. He just stood there with this strange, blank look on his face as the headlights washed over him. Then the lady in the car rolled her window down. “I’m so sorry,” she said to my grandmother, who was by Henry’s side now. “I didn’t see him. He came out of nowhere.”
“It’s all right,” my grandmother said, more to Henry than the lady.
Henry himself said exactly nothing—not then, not ever. He didn’t have to. I knew who Henry saw in the window that night, and I was more afraid of Edgar than ever.