Henry made it back to school just in time for Halloween. You would think he would be celebrating that fact, but Henry hadn’t forgotten that I’d told the rest of the pod about Edgar. How could he? Renee kept bringing it up, even though I repeatedly begged her not to. Every other comment from her started with “Can I just ask you one thing?” And then she would want to know “Does he always show up in the same spot?” or “Is he solid, or can you see right through him?” or “Doesn’t the rest of your family know he’s there?”
And the more she kept asking, the longer Henry stayed mad at me.
“Why did you have to tell them?” Henry asked, more than once.
“I’m sorry,” I kept saying. “It just slipped out.”
“Just slipped out? How does that even come up in conversation, Barbara Anne? At school? ‘What answer did you get for number four, oh, and by the way, did you know Henry’s house is haunted?’ ”
“It just—”
“Never mind,” Henry said. “Soon the whole school will know about it, but whatever. It would have been faster to take out an ad on a billboard, Barbara Anne.”
And it went on like that. He was really mad. In those moments, he hated me with the same steely concentration my grandmother uses to copy down order numbers off the Home Shopping Network.
And Henry’s continued anger wasn’t even the only thing I had to face at school. Biniam was threatening to ruin Halloween.
“I’m not saying you can’t have fun,” she said.
“Here it comes,” Zack whispered.
“But it’s important to be safe.”
This is how it always goes. Before you even make a plan, some adult is telling you why it’s too dangerous. It’s like some horrible math problem: amount of fun at Halloween = excitement + sugar + costumes + adventure + friends – (safety rules + parents who won’t let you go out alone even in a group of one hundred kids + people who give you an apple or a toothbrush or pocket change because they didn’t even remember it WAS Halloween).
Biniam was on the side of the toothbrush people. To be fair, she was paid to be. That’s why she started in with the rules on the board. And she did it in the worst possible way—by making us come up with them ourselves, like it was our idea. Classic teacher move. Even I didn’t fall for it, and let’s face it, my hand is pretty much permanently up in the air.
“Yes, Renee,” Ms. Biniam said.
“No masks,” Renee said.
“That’s a good one. Anything else?” Ms. Biniam asked, all smiles, like she was a waitress offering to bring us pie. “Alonzo?”
“No weapons,” Alonzo said.
“Yes! School policy. Good reminder. Would you like to come up and add that to the board?”
Zack looked disgusted. He was leaning back with his hands crossed over his chest. Biniam gave him a look that meant he should stop tipping the chair back on two legs already, but Zack ignored her. Typical. But then he did something really un-Zack-like. He raised his hand.
“Yes, Zachary?” Ms. Biniam asked.
“I don’t want to say what I’m going to be, because that would ruin the surprise, but it does have something that comes with it….”
“Okay,” Ms. Biniam said slowly. “But remember, right now we’re just listing some rules—really just some…good reminders, let’s say—about how to have a safe Halloween, okay? So let’s finish our list.”
Zack put his hand down for a while, and the list grew. It was the worst group assignment ever: we were ruining our own Halloween.
When Zack raised his hand a second time, Ms. Biniam called on him before she was even all the way turned around. (It was almost like she had eyes in the back of her head. Which, by the way, would be a GREAT costume.)
“Is this a question, Zachary, or a comment?” she asked.
“A question,” Zack said. He looked really indignant, but also confused, like if he didn’t spit it out fast, he might completely forget what he wanted to say.
“Go on,” said Ms. Biniam.
“Well, an axe is really more of a tool than a weapon,” Zack told her.
“No weapons,” said Ms. Biniam with a tight smile. “School policy.”
That’s why it was so hard for the class to come up with our Halloween costumes: nine million rules that we wrote ourselves! At library/computer time, we were allowed to pick a book first or use the computer. Everybody was over by the limit-of-three Halloween books, and that’s why I went on the computer first—to this one educational site that the filters don’t block. And I found out all about Halloween. Like, for example, did you know that Halloween began a really long time ago as this other holiday (called Samhain)? Well, it did. Like, a really long time ago. Two thousand years. And then they kept changing the name until they finally ended up with Halloween.
And wearing masks? That got started because people believed that spirits returned on Halloween night and wandered the streets. The only safe way to go out into the night was to wear a mask, so the ghosts would mistake you for one of their own. It was basically like a game of ghost/human hide-and-seek.
It was all pretty interesting. That’s why I went to find Henry, to tell him. And also, to see if he would talk to me. But he wasn’t at the computers or with the kids who were pulling books from the shelves.
Then I spotted him—all by himself in a big, cushy chair in the corner. He was sitting with his knees drawn up, staring out the window. When I got closer, I could see that he had a sketchbook open on his lap. And it was the weirdest thing. It looked like he was writing, but he wasn’t looking down at all. I figured maybe he was just doodling. Or maybe he saw something outside, where the sky was turning gray. A rainstorm was just beginning. As I walked toward Henry, the lights in the library flickered.
“What if the power goes out?” I heard Renee asking the librarian. “Do we get to go home?”
She didn’t answer because she was telling everyone to line up. It was time to go back to class. Even if we had no electricity, even if the roof caved in, the schedule would stay the same.
“We have to line up,” Renee said. “Tell Henry. Where is Henry?”
“Over there,” I said. “Trying to ignore me.”
But when I turned to look at Henry again, I started to worry. He was staring right at us, but Henry looked so weird, like he was in some sort of trance.
“What’s the matter with him?” Renee asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, you better go get him,” Renee said. “He’s gonna get in trouble.”
I knew Renee was right, but it wasn’t as easy as she thought. Henry was in such a daze that I had to grab him by the arm and pull. “Henry!” I said. “What’s wrong with you? Stop playing games. It’s time to line up.” Henry was looking at me like he didn’t know who I was. I was relieved when he finally unfolded himself from the chair and moved toward the door.
The rain started to really pour down then. No chance of outside recess. As we were leaving, I turned my head to say to Henry, “Guess we’re stuck inside again.” And that’s when I noticed that Henry had left his sketchbook behind on the chair. I was the very last person in line, so I went to get it for him. By the time I returned, the rest of the class was a little ahead of me, down the hall. As I walked toward them, I glanced at the page Henry had been working on, and it was the strangest thing.
In the center of the page was a squiggle, like a line of cursive handwriting. Except that it didn’t form any words I could make sense of. It was too neat to be just a scribble, though. It looked too much like handwriting to be a random design. I couldn’t figure it out, and I hate it when I can’t figure things out. I could have asked Henry, I suppose, but he had been acting so weird that I was afraid he’d just snatch the sketchbook before I had a chance to solve the riddle.
Back in the classroom, we had silent reading time. We got to sit wherever we wanted; this time I was the one who headed for a corner. I hid Henry’s sketchbook behind a big book about Egypt and stared at what Henry had drawn.
Was it a foreign language? Was that it? Henry was pretty smart. Maybe the letters didn’t look right because it wasn’t English. Maybe that was it. But then it came to me, and my hand shot into the air. I had to leave. I asked Biniam for permission to go to the bathroom. Then I bolted down the hallway with Henry’s sketchbook clutched to my chest.
The bathroom was empty, so I walked to the sink and held the sketchbook up to the mirror. Instantly the letters reversed themselves and fell into their proper order. The lights flickered; then there it was again:
The air around me seemed to grow cold as I stared into the mirror. I knew I was alone, but suddenly it felt like someone was there, like someone had tapped me, gently, on the shoulder.
I spun around. And as I raced out into the hall, dropping the sketchbook, I swear I could hear Edgar behind me. Laughing.
I flew through the classroom door, out of breath and terrified. And everyone there was still reading, lost in their own little worlds. The only one who even looked up was Ms. Biniam.
“Barbara Anne?” she asked. “Are you all right?”
Henry looked over then, and I knew he was listening. I knew he realized, or would soon, that Edgar was at it again.
“I’m okay,” I said, but my voice sounded shaky, and I wasn’t sure she believed me.
“Do you feel well?” she asked. “Would you like to go see the nurse?”
The nurse! That was a good one. If only someone could just put a bandage on this whole thing and make it go away.
“No,” I said. “I just…I bumped into someone, and it startled me. I’ll be okay as soon as I sit down.”
But then I realized that it was still out there, in the hallway, Henry’s sketchbook. “I just need a minute to get something from my locker,” I told Biniam.
Instead, I walked down the empty hallway and stooped to pick up the sketchbook. When I turned around, I jumped. Henry was standing right behind me. “Henry! Don’t do that!”
“Do what?”
“Sneak up on me like that,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” Henry said. “Are you okay? What happened?”
His voice was kind, and he looked worried. And in that moment, I was so happy to have him back, the real Henry, my Henry, who recognized me and was still my friend, my first real friend. My eyes filled with tears.
Henry hugged me and awkwardly patted my back. “It’s okay,” he said.
“Hey,” I told him, wiping my eyes. “I need to show you something.”
And as we walked back, I explained about the sketchbook and the message. All of it.
It was still scary, of course, but not nearly as bad with Henry by my side.