CHAPTER SIX

The Lovelorn Ghost of Western Joe

It was so dark inside the theater that Danya could barely make out the shape of Sancho’s tail as it whipped around the corner. His hooves clip-clopped against the floor as he trotted away.

“Sancho!” she hissed, creeping forward as quickly as she could. “Sancho, get back here!”

The theater smelled like dust and mothballs, just like the coat closet back home. Thick shadows stretched down the hall, penetrated only by the occasional bare, yellow bulb swinging from the ceiling. The floorboards creaked beneath Danya’s shoes.

She turned a corner and saw Pia and Sancho standing on a stage made of shiny wood. Three walls were painted black, and instead of a fourth wall, a thick, velvet curtain hung from the ceiling. Just beyond the curtain Danya heard the echoing sounds of people talking. An audience. The chattering sound reminded Danya a bit of the chickens her dad used to keep in the backyard and she felt a sudden, hard tug of homesickness.

“There must be a show soon,” Danya whispered, pushing aside thoughts of home as she came up behind Pia and Sancho. She was suddenly uneasy. If there was a show starting, shouldn’t there be actors? Props? Scenery? Instead the stage was bare. Every few seconds, Danya thought she heard someone scurrying here and there in the darkness, but whenever she turned her head, there was no one.

“You know what I think?” Pia whispered. “I think this theater is haunted.”

She wagged her fingers spookily in Danya’s face. Danya batted them away. Sancho whinnied, and Danya patted his neck to calm him.

Just then a low, mournful moan swept over the stage. Sancho snorted and took a few steps backward, his hooves making hollow thumps on the floorboards. Danya grabbed Pia’s arm, then dropped it, embarrassed. Pia gave her a crooked smile and raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not scared,” Danya said firmly. Ghosts were stupid, she told herself. Just something from fairy tales and stories—not real at all. She pulled her lucky gel pen out of her pocket, trying to think up a story in her head to make her feel better.

But this whole place reminded Danya of the burned-up shed and scorched grass back home. Even though she absolutely did not believe in ghosts, she always had a strange feeling like she was being watched whenever she went near that place. She got that same feeling now. Like there was someone waiting in the shadows who she couldn’t see . . .

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Danya said out loud, more to convince herself than anyone else. Sancho neighed in agreement, his tail twitching nervously. He pawed at the stage floor like he was trying to dig a hole, and when that didn’t work, he trotted over to the thick, velvet curtains and hid behind one of the folds.

Pia shrugged. “Sure.” She nudged Danya and pointed to the corner on the other side of the stage, where a figure crouched in the shadows. “Look.”

The man wore a tweed suit that wasn’t quite long enough (there was a good inch of bare skin between the bottom of his suit pants and the tops of his loafers, and his wrists were showing out of the cuffs of his suit jacket). As they got closer, she noted that he also wore a purple plaid shirt with a polka-dot tie. He was very thin, and there was a cowboy hat on his head so large Danya was amazed he was able to sit up straight. He kind of looked like a tweed cowboy-shaped umbrella. He sat on a low stool, his face in his hands. Surrounding him were bits of scenery, boxes of props, and a large, industrial-size fan.

Danya and Pia took a few tentative steps closer. Sancho shook out his mane, and Danya had to grab onto his reins and pull to coax him out of the curtains.

In the dim yellow light backstage the man looked faded and fuzzy, like he wasn’t entirely there. In fact, the only parts of him that looked solid were his giant cowboy boots, his giant hat, and the battered old banjo sitting on his lap.

“It’s Western Joe,” Pia said, gripping Danya’s arm. She hopped a little, actually excited by the possibility of a ghost waiting for them across the stage.

“We made up Western Joe,” Danya muttered, but she couldn’t help the fear that wrapped itself, tentacle-like, around her heart. Ghosts aren’t real, she told herself. Ghosts aren’t real. She took another step forward and the stage floor creaked.

The shadowy cowboy suddenly looked up. “Who’s there?” he said.

Danya’s heart climbed into her throat, and she squeezed her gel pen so tightly the cap fell off. Sancho snorted and pawed at the stage again, yanking back on his reins. Pia grinned, running her tongue through the gap in her teeth.

“My name is Pia,” she called out. “And this is Snap and Sancho.”

Sancho crept closer to the cowboy and nudged him with his nose. Finally satisfied he wasn’t a ghost, Sancho chomped at his hat—like he thought it looked like a tasty treat. Danya pulled back on his reins so he wouldn’t try that again.

The cowboy seemed unconcerned by Sancho’s attempt to eat his hat. “Would you mind just leaving me alone for a little bit?” he asked, sniffling. Danya and Pia shared a look. Was he crying?

“Are you okay, Mr. Joe?” Pia continued. The cowboy wiped his nose with his sleeve.

“Mr. Joe?” The man shook his head. “My name is Kevin.”

Danya breathed a sigh of relief. Kevin was such a nice, normal, human-sounding name. Not ghostly at all.

“And am I okay?” Kevin hiccupped a little. “Of course I’m not okay! Everything is ruined!”

“Is there something we can do to help?” Pia asked, moving closer to him. Danya shot her a glance. Even though there wasn’t a clock backstage, she could almost hear the sound of the second hand ticking and ticking, counting down every minute they wasted and warning her that her parents and maybe even actual policemen were closing in on them. . . .

Kevin’s polka-dot bow tie was lopsided, and his nose was raw and red. He laughed, and his laugh turned into a hiccup. “I’m in love, sweetheart. There’s no one who can help me now.”

“See, he said there’s no one who can help him,” Danya muttered, grabbing Pia’s arm. “So let’s just go.”

But Pia’s eyes grew wide. “I told you,” she whispered to Danya while Kevin blew his nose on his tweed suit jacket’s sleeve. “This is our next heroic task. We were meant to be here. Destiny guided us!”

Danya frowned. She didn’t see how destiny had anything to do with this—there were probably a lot of lovesick people in Nashville.

Still, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for Kevin. His eyes were all red and puffy, and his nose had been rubbed raw, he’d blown it so many times. He looked so downtrodden—like there was nothing in this world that would lift his spirits. Danya thought back to how she felt after her parents told her they were going to sell Sancho and understood what he was going through. Some things were so terrible you just couldn’t get over them.

Pia crouched in front of Western Kevin and patted him on the knee comfortingly. Danya wished she’d done that, but she wasn’t bold like Pia was. New people made her nervous.

“It’s okay, Kevin,” Pia said. “We’re going to help you.”

He gave another sniffle that was half a laugh. “You can’t help me.” Hiccup. “Not unless you know how to climb up to the rafters and get my ring.”

“What ring?” Danya asked.

Kevin explained that he’d been planning to propose to his girlfriend, Lovelorn Lola, tonight after the show.

“It took me two whole years to save up for that ring!” he admitted. “Lola’s performing today—she’s a singer.” Kevin hiccupped again. “And I had this big plan, see? I’m a stagehand, so I rigged up this device in the rafters. When the performers were doing their curtain call, it was going to send a shower of rose petals over the stage, then I was going to come down from the rafter strapped to a harness and present the ring and ask her to be mine. Well . . .” He motioned to the banjo on his lap. “I mean, I was going to sing it. Had a song and everything.”

“What happened?” Pia asked, still crouching next to him. Sancho rested his head on Kevin’s knee, like he always did for Danya when she was feeling bad. She heard the ticking clock in her head again—tick tick tick—but she tried to ignore it. Maybe Kevin really did need her help?

“I set up a ladder on the side of the stage to rig up the petals.” Kevin patted Sancho’s head absentmindedly and motioned to a bag of rose petals leaning against his stool. “But that ring fell right out of my pocket and onto one of the spotlights overhead. I’m too big to climb out there to get it back—the rafters will snap right in half if I do.” Kevin sniffed, then hiccupped again. “It’s gone! I’ll have to wait two more years to save up for another ring.”

Pia stood up. Her neck was craned back, and she stared up into the rafters, her eyes narrowed.

“So the ring fell there, right?” she asked, pointing to a spotlight just below the main catwalk. If Danya squinted, she thought she could make out something sparkling. Kevin nodded, sniffling.

“May as well be outer space,” he muttered, leaning against the industrial fan. Pia handed her overnight bag to Danya and wrapped her skinny arms around a rope hanging from the rafters. She pulled herself up with a grunt.

“Pia, what are you doing?” Danya spat out.

“Helping,” Pia said with another grunt as she hauled herself up even higher. Kevin stood, accidentally knocking over his stool.

“Is that safe?” he asked.

“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Danya said nervously, watching Pia climb. Pia wrapped her skinny limbs around the rope and shimmied up, pulling herself onto the catwalk. For the first time, Danya noticed two different socks peeking out of Pia’s sneakers—one was green with tiny yellow polka dots on it, and the other was orange-and-blue striped. Pia barely took a second to catch her breath before starting to crawl toward the spotlight.

Kevin was right—the catwalk wasn’t very sturdy. It shifted back and forth beneath Pia’s weight, creaking and groaning under the strain. Kevin held onto Danya’s shoulder and squeezed. He looked so nervous that even his bow tie trembled. Danya wrapped her fingers in Sancho’s mane and held her breath as Sancho whinnied nervously.

When Pia was directly over the spotlight, she leaned down and tried to scoop the ring up with her hands, but it was too far away. She frowned, sitting back up.

“I think I have an idea,” she called.

“Be careful!” Danya said. Pia twisted around so her legs were anchored over the catwalk, then she leaned backward until she was hanging upside down above the spotlight. She reached out as far as her arms would go. . . .

“Kevin?”

The voice came from the other side of the stage, where a woman had just stepped out from behind the curtains. Her hair was pinned back in cascading blond curls, and she wore a long purple gown.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked, her voice thick with a Southern accent. “The show is about to start!”

“Oh . . . uh . . . hi, Lola.” Kevin straightened his bow tie and took off his cowboy hat, giving the girl a sheepish smile. Danya glanced up at the rafters. Pia’s fingers were two inches away from the ring. One inch . . .

 . . . and suddenly she was falling, cartwheeling through the air like some sort of giant Frisbee. Danya screamed, and Sancho reared back. Pia grabbed onto a rope at the last second—the rope that controlled the curtains, which swept open with a whoosh, revealing Danya, Sancho, Western Kevin, and Lovelorn Lola, all standing together onstage. Sancho snorted and trotted in place, suddenly shy. He pawed at the wooden stage, like he was trying to dig a hole to hide in. An audience of several hundred people blinked and stared.

“Kevin,” Lovelorn Lola said through a wide, forced smile. “What is going on?”

Kevin was so white he actually did look a little like a ghost. His eyes darted over to the audience below and, for a moment, Danya worried he might faint.

“I . . .” Hiccup, hiccup. “I mean . . .”

“Psst!” Pia hissed from the rafters. Kevin glanced up and she tossed him something, which he caught in one hand. It glittered from his palm, and Danya gasped. The ring!

Gripping the ring tightly, Kevin held up the banjo and launched into song. . . .

“Before we grow one moment older . . . I need your hand in marriage, my Lovelorn Lola. . . .”

Danya tried not to cringe. Kevin’s voice was bad. It cracked a little, sounding off-key. A few members of the audience snickered and giggled. Danya looked over at Lola, wondering whether her reaction would be the same.

For a long moment, Lola stood frozen, staring at Kevin with eyes as wide as two silver dollars.

Someone watching shouted, “Kiss him!” Sancho’s ears twitched, and Danya put a hand on his nose. Her heart beat quickly in her chest. Finally, Lola’s lips curled into a smile.

“You always were tone deaf, you know that?” she said.

Kevin stood up and held out his hand. “Maybe you could show me how it’s done?”

As if on cue, Lola swept out into the center of the stage, facing the audience. She held her head back and took a deep breath . . . then let out the clearest, sweetest, most beautiful note that Danya had ever heard. Lola’s voice floated past the catwalk and the rafters, filling the entire space with music. Kevin was so excited he started to dance. Danya’s mouth fell open as he moved his skinny limbs across the stage, spinning and twirling around Lola with the grace of a ballerina. He held the banjo close to his chest, like it was part of the dance, too.

Lola’s smile held firm as she sang. She spread her arms wide, like she could stretch that note as easily as stretching her back after a nap.

When she’d finished, the note hung in the air all around them. Kevin stopped dancing and dropped down to one knee.

“Can I take that as a yes?” he asked with a crooked smile.

Instead of answering, Lola threw her arms around his neck. He lifted her off her feet and swept her in a wide circle across the stage.

Danya stared, moon-eyed, her heart welling inside her. It was so romantic! Like a fairy tale. She looked up at Pia, and her cousin winked, as if to say, I told you so . . .

Danya would never admit it, but maybe Pia was right. Maybe there was always time to be a hero . . . at least in the name of love?

Sancho came up behind her and nudged her elbow with his wet nose. Danya glanced down and saw that he had Kevin’s bag of rose petals clenched between his front teeth.

“Sancho, that’s sweet, but I don’t think I can,” she muttered, glancing out at the audience. No way would she go onstage in front of all those people!

Sancho whickered and pushed the rose petals into her hands again. Then Danya’s eyes fell on the old, industrial-size fan just behind the main curtain. Maybe she could help the moment feel special without going onstage after all. . . .

Darting behind the fan, she flipped a switch she could only hope would power it up. Sure enough, the fan’s blades began to whir.

Grinning, Danya grabbed a handful of flower petals from the bag and tossed them in the path of the spinning blades. The petals whirred and twirled onto the stage around Kevin and Lola like a colorful tornado. Sancho moved his weight from hoof to hoof to hoof, almost like he was dancing. Out on the center of the stage, Kevin lifted Lola off her feet. They kissed long and deep as petals floated around them.

Danya grabbed another handful of petals and leaned forward to toss them into the wind. Then the backstage door slammed open, and she jumped, turning so fast she scattered petals everywhere, coating all the equipment and props stacked behind the stage curtain with a layer of pink.

A police officer with a bushy mustache and a shiny, star-shaped badge affixed to his black uniform walked through the open door. He glared at Danya with beady eyes, and her heart climbed into her throat.

“You!” The cop’s mustache twitched as he spoke, and he pointed a thick, calloused finger right at Danya. “I’ve been looking for you.”