When the school day ended, Abby walked through the library to the storage room in the back. It was a small room packed with books—books on shelves, in cardboard boxes, and stacked up on the floor. There were two chairs and a table and one small window.
Abby sat and started taking stuff out of her backpack.
This happened every day. Abby and Doc’s mother was a teacher at the school and ran an after-school program for younger kids. Their dad taught at the middle school and stayed late to coach track. So every day, after school, Abby and Doc had to stick around for about an hour, until their mom was ready to leave. They were supposed to sit in this room and do homework or read.
It was usually the longest hour of the day. Not this time.
Doc came in and tossed down his backpack. He stepped onto a chair, then onto the table, and from there he climbed onto one of the stacks of boxes. His head almost touched the ceiling.
He pointed to a tall box about six feet away.
“Probably,” Abby said. “But I’m not saying you’d live.”
“I’m the Amazing, um, no, I’m Doctor Frog-Leg!”
“You are?”
“Well, that’s my pro-wrestling name,” he said.
That was the big thing in school that week. There was going to be a pro-wrestling tournament in the gym Friday night, and kids were joking about what their wrestler names would be.
“Watch this!” Doc said.
Abby looked down at her notebook. Her mom had married Doc’s dad three years before, so she was used to him. They mostly got along. But sometimes she felt it was best to ignore him. For example, any time he said “Watch this!”
“I’m really gonna do it,” he said.
“I’m trying to read,” she said.
“Here goes!” he said.
“Hold on!” a voice shouted. “Don’t jump on me!”
Doc looked at Abby.
“That wasn’t me,” she said.
“Don’t jump!” the voice said again. A man’s voice.
Abby pointed to the big box. “Almost sounds like it was coming from …”
The box shook. Something was moving around inside it.
The voice said, “It’s so dark in here.” The box flaps flipped open, and the voice said, “Ah, that’s better.”
Then a black hat appeared, then a head, then a chest. It was a tall man in a black suit. He had a thin, bony face and wild hair sticking out from under his hat.
He looked a lot like Abraham Lincoln.
