Ack! Eek! Ike!
The stalker is a ghost!
A ghost who smells of honey + dirty socks!
I yank the ziplock bag of coffee beans from my purse. I grab a handful of beans and toss them high in the air. It’s raining coffee beans. It’s raining coffee smell. It’s raining SOS signals to my mother.
“Mom!” I scream. “Mom! Mom!”
I flop on the hard desert floor, scrounging coffee beans off the ground and throwing them up in the air again. I’m thinking Mom thoughts. Desperate get-yourself-here-tout-de-suite Mom thoughts. As in, I’m beyond freaking out.
The tumbleweed is shaking. Then it’s spinning on the spot, like it’s pawing the ground and gathering up energy to attack again. The honey + dirty socks odor is overpowering.
Just as the tumbleweed starts toward me, a super-strong coffee smell swishes in.
The honey + dirty socks smell disappears.
“Sherry! Sherry! Are you okay?”
“The stalker’s a ghost, Mom! A ghost! He was here! But he’s gone now!” I take a deep, raggedy breath and tell her everything.
When I’m done, she says, “We need off this case. It’s too dangerous.”
I used to freeze in the face of a challenge. Freeze up like a Popsicle. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t speak.
But not anymore. Now I’m on top of my game.
I lean back on my elbows, legs stretched out, and shake my head. “I don’t want off the case, Mom. I want this guy. If we quit now, it’s like we’re letting him win.”
Mom’s quiet. She’s probably twirling her hair around her finger, thinking. “The fact that the stalker’s a ghost certainly explains a lot, doesn’t it?”
People used to always say how we looked alike, with our curly dark hair and dark eyes. I don’t think they realized we had similar personalities too. I don’t think I even realized it. But it feels excellent to be on track together.
“This ghost is talented,” Mom says. “He picked up a knife and slashed tires. Ballpark guess, he’s five levels ahead of me.” She pauses. “I couldn’t take it if something happened to you, Sherry.”
“Would it help if I got an amethyst?” I ask, thinking back to the psychic fair.
“Yes, in the sense that the stone will break his concentration and make it tougher for him to approach you.” She pauses. “Also, my presence and Grandpa’s will chase him off. We can see him, and he doesn’t want to be identified. The Academy has unpleasant ways of dealing with ghosts who harm the living.”
My arms are misshapen with goose bumps the size of golf balls. But I know my mom will do everything in her power to keep me safe. “Okay. I’m getting amethysts for me and The Ruler and Junie. I won’t go anywhere without coffee beans in my pocket, so I can call you the sec I smell him.”
“Good plan,” Mom says.
“The Ruler isn’t so totally losing it after all. The ghost has been messing with her stuff. And he probably made those prank phone calls in the middle of the night.” I stomp the ground, remembering the dirty sock smell in my room and how I’d blamed Sam. “I bet he sprinkled extra fish food in my aquarium.” And that seals the deal. Because you mess with my fish, you are definitely messing with me.
“I am so annoyed,” Mom and I say at the same time.
I jump up and start walking. “I gotta get outta here before the sun goes down.”
“We’ll talk with Mrs. Howard later,” Mom says, blowing along beside me. “When the Ghostlympics are done for the day.”
“The Ghostlympics!” I hit my forehead. “How’d you do?”
“I did well,” she says slowly, “but I’m disqualified. I left in the middle of an event.”
My stomach sinks to the desert floor, past the earth’s crust, all the way to the core. “I wrecked our chances for Real Time. It’s all I think about. How to spend those precious five minutes with you. And now they’re gone.”
Mom strokes my hair, so light and feathery I can barely feel it. “I think about them too. But calling me was the right thing, pumpkin. We’ll try again next year.”
Off in the distance, a tiny speck of dirt turns into a bigger speck of dirt, which turns into a flapping grandfather.
At the exact moment that Grandpa touches down on my slouched shoulder, the sweet scent of Cinnabon fills the air.
Mrs. Howard’s vague roundish shape lingers above me like a low cloud as Mom does the report thing.
“The PSS assured us this mystery was straightforward.” Mrs. Howard shakes her head. “Had we known the stalker was a ghost, we wouldn’t have assigned y’all the case. Far too risky. We’ll reassign it immediately.”
“No!” Mom and I shout together. “We can solve it.”
“We’re committed, Minnie May,” Mom says. “It’s personal for us.”
“And me,” Grandpa caws.
Mrs. Howard paces in front of me. About a foot off the ground. Finally, she says, “Fine. You can take a stab at it. I’ll give you two days to wrap this case up. Any more time than that, and I’m worried the stalker will lose it like a treed raccoon and the entire situation will spiral out of control.” Mrs. Howard runs pudgy sausage fingers through her hair. “Christine, there’s an independent tutorial in the library called ‘About Ghosts Who Don’t Move On.’ I suggest you review it tomorrow morning.”
“Will do,” Mom says.
Then, Mrs. Howard floats right in front of me. So close, the air is sickeningly sweet. “Sherry, honey, y’all were counting on Real Time?”
“Yeah, but I couldn’t help it; I just freaked when the stalker turned out to be a ghost.”
Mrs. Howard paces some more, then drifts to me again. “I understand how important Real Time is, particularly between a mother and daughter.”
“Without going into great detail, I experienced a similar situation.” Mrs. Howard’s blurry hand covers her blurrier heart. “And, to this very day, I deeply regret the outcome.”
I blink a bunch.
“I do believe the Academy is, in an oblique way, responsible for your mother’s disqualification from the Ghostlympics.” She draws in a breath. “Therefore, if you solve this mystery within the two-day period, we’ll award you five minutes of Real Time.”
We have another chance at Real Time!
“That means talking the stalker into the silver box at midnight on Wednesday.” Her arms jiggle as she waves goodbye.
The sun’s starting to set. Grandpa flies ahead to check on The Ruler. Mom and I keep traveling the dusty road back to town.
“The silver box is for ghosts who haven’t moved on,” Mom’s explaining to me. “You somehow talk a ghost into the box and then deliver him to the Academy, who then moves him on.”
I kick a stone and it skips ahead of us. “Why’s he even hanging around?”
“There’s a variety of reasons. Maybe he doesn’t realize he’s dead. Or he was too sad or angry at the time of death to be able to move on. Or he has unfinished business.”
We catch up to the stone and I send it sailing again.
“You can’t talk a ghost in without knowing his identity.” Mom picks up the stone and lobs it. “Which is why I was saying earlier that the stalker won’t want Grandpa or me to see him.”
“So now we’re tracking down a dead suspect,” I say. “Like a dead student or teacher or parent who’s peeved at The Ruler. Or a dead rival robotics person.”
“Stalkers are often old boyfriends.” Mom scoops up the stone and drops it in front of my foot.
I kick the stone high. “That’s a lot of dead possibilities.”
We discuss our plans of attack. Mom knows a fair amount about ghosts who don’t move on, but the tutorial will teach her the very specific dot-your-i’s-and-cross-your-t’s rules for talking a ghost in.
It’s dusky enough now that people are turning on lights, which twinkle friendly and happy to see me back safe and sound from my desert adventure.
My cell phone sings to let me know I’ve got messages. Which means, of course, that I’ve got service now.
Three people are hiking toward me. Two of them fill me with happiness. The other gives me the blahs.