Peeled (8 page)

“P.A.?” I asked.

“Possible apparition,” Lev explained. “Sallie Miner’s ghost, I heard.”

“They should burn that place down,” said Ryan Gallagher from the table behind us.

“Or blow it up,” another kid suggested.

“That’s kind of extreme,” Zack said quietly.

“Look, man,” Lev snapped, “we’ve got a problem here.”

“I know,” Zack answered.

“What do you know about it?” Lev demanded.

Zack was quiet for a minute. “Well, reports like this tend to build on themselves. Someone sees something a little weird, and the first thing that comes to mind is eerie. Then the rumors start growing, and people get scared. Just like now.”

“That house has been a problem for years!” Lev insisted. “We’ve got weird people hanging out there day and night.”

“I heard.”

Lev snarled, “Maybe you’ve also heard that people have died on that property.”

“I’ve heard that, too. Unfortunately, people die lots of places.”

Mr. Nordstrom, the librarian, rapped his shut-up-or-leave pencil.

Lev stood there sputtering.

Zack smiled and went back to reading his book.

Quiet strength goes a long way with me.

Midnight.

I get courage at midnight. I think it’s because it’s the end of things and the beginning of things.

Dear Mr. Polton,

Hildy Biddle here. I’m sure you’re busy, but

Don’t cower. I deleted that.

Mr. Polton—

I enjoyed meeting you at Career Day and

Don’t lie. I hated every minute of it.
DELETE
.

Hey, Baker—

Your attitude is awesome and

Big
DELETE
.

Mr. Polton—

I learned a lot from you at Career Day.

Not bad.

And because of that, I need to ask you a question. Would you consider helping us on our school paper? I’m not sure if you would even be interested or if you have the time. What I am sure about is this—I want to be the best journalist I can be and I could use your help.

Thank you for considering this.

Hildy Biddle

I didn’t send it right away.

I circled the computer, reread the e-mail again and again.

I pressed
SEND
.

Sleep wouldn’t come.

The hall light cast a thin strip across my bedroom floor. My rug had geometric patterns, but at night in a dark room, it seemed like a crazy maze that I was trying to get through. I could hear MacIntosh sleeping by the bed.

How do you get around that dark room, Hildy?

That was a big question I had to figure out after Dad
died. His death was so shocking, so sudden, it made me feel like anything bad could happen—the earth could explode, the ocean could evaporate, the stars could melt in the sky.

Mom found a therapist for me to see. Her name was Gwen. I didn’t want to go at first because I don’t talk about my troubles with just anybody. I’d sit in Gwen’s soft navy blue swivel chair and face the wall. It was easier to talk to a wall in the beginning.

“How are you feeling today, Hildy?”

“Awful.”

“Are you feeling scared today?”

I was scared a lot that eighth-grade year.

“Can you describe the fear, Hildy?”

“No.”

“Because sometimes when I’m scared,” Gwen said in her soothing voice, “I feel a little like I’m in a dark room with all the lights out. Have you ever felt like that?”

I turned halfway toward her and nodded.

“And what do you do?” she asked.

“I guess I try to find the wall.”

“That’s right.”

“I try to find the things I know are there and get to the bed.”

“You look for things that are familiar,” Gwen said. “And you know, that’s what you’ve got to do now.”

It took a while to find the real touch points of my life
again. But when I started looking, I realized they were everywhere—the orchard, my school, my friends, my family, my dog.

I got out of bed, touched MacIntosh’s head. “Good dog.”

I turned on the bed lamp and walked to my desk.

My laptop beckoned.

I checked my e-mail; spam, actually.

Thin thighs in thirty minutes

Delete.

If I don’t get one thousand dollars by Thursday, I

will die. Can you help me?

Delete.

Are you naughty?

Nope. But you are. Delete.

Your request

I was about to zap it, then I saw the sender.

Baker Polton! He’d responded already.

I took a deep breath. This could be my big break. I clicked on the message excitedly, up it popped:

Can’t do it. I’m swamped.

B. Polton

I sat there looking at the screen.

On Friday morning
The Core
was published. My Ludlow house story was front and center, too. No typos, either, but there was some unfortunate wording in a classified ad:

DOG FOR SALE—Eats anything and is particularly fond of children.

I got ready for the onslaught of kids congratulating me on getting the facts right in my article.

That didn’t exactly happen.

I walked through the hallways holding the paper as a visual aid, hoping someone would comment on it.

That didn’t happen, either.

In biology lab,
The Core
was used to wrap up dissected frog carcasses.

Jerry Sizer used his
Core
to wipe mud off his boots.

It’s best for journalists not to focus on the alternative uses for their work.

Didn’t anyone care about the truth?

I walked to my locker, saw Zack rush by. “Great article!” he shouted on his way to class.

Finally! Too bad he couldn’t stop and go into more detail.

I headed to the Student Center, where Joleene Jowrey was arguing with her twin sister, Jackie, about whether vampire marks were on the dead body. I walked up to them, doing my part as a truth teller.

“The sheriff told me there were no scratches on the body, no vampire marks, nada. Come on!”

“You come on, Hildy! You think the sheriff is going to tell the truth about that?” And they went back to arguing about whether the ghost was still on the property or roaming the streets looking for his next victim.

I walked past the
DO
NOT
ENTER
sign plastered across the auditorium door. I wondered when that collapsed auditorium roof would be fixed. It was one of many places in town that needed repair. I’d called the mayor’s office and the Board of Ed about it, but hadn’t gotten anywhere.

“Stay with a story,” Dad always told me. “Stay with it until it makes sense.”

“It’s a fine day in Banesville, people,” Mayor Frank T. Fudd boomed at the farmers market. “My, haven’t we been given a sweet town?”

“Getting kinda sour around the edges,” Felix muttered.

The mayor was making his presence known, walking
briskly down the open lanes, showing everyone within earshot that he wasn’t worried about an ever-loving thing.

The pears and quinces were showing up at the market now. The aroma of apple cider filled the air. I was explaining to a customer that apples need to be refrigerated to keep their flavor. If you leave them out on the counter, no matter how pretty they look, they’re going to get mealy in nothing flat.

The mayor strolled past our stand; I heard a woman reporter ask him, “What’s the plan you’re going to unveil to revitalize Banesville?”

I hadn’t heard of any plan.

Mayor Fudd said, “Well, my office is always working on something new. That’s what this administration is all about.”

The reporter smiled brightly. She was wearing a Windbreaker embroidered with the words
Catch the buzz in Banesville…read
THE
BEE
. “Mr. Mayor,” she continued, “I hear this plan is big.”

“It’s a humdinger all right,” he acknowledged, chuckling.

I grabbed a notepad from my backpack and wrote that down. I told Mom I’d be right back and headed toward the mayor, who was saying, “We’re looking ahead to tomorrow. We’re looking at all the places where we can make things better for people and plot a strong course for our future.”

He looked at me and smiled because, I guess, I represented the future. I smiled right back. “Mr. Mayor, I’m
from the high school. I was wondering when our roof problem is going to be fixed.”

His face got a little pink. “We’re going to be taking care of all that.”

“Do you have a completion date?” I continued.

He coughed.

“Have you thought about the danger of having a collapsed roof covered by a tarp on school property?”

He harrumphed. “I take the safety of every citizen of Banesville seriously.”

“How’s the Lupo investigation coming?” I asked.

“Sheriff Metcalf is on that, covering every lead.”

“Any word on the cause of death?”

He glared at me. “The sheriff will be issuing a statement.”

The woman reporter wasn’t too happy I’d barged in. She shouted, “Your revitalization plan, Mr. Mayor. What is that about?”

He smiled. “Making Banesville a better place.”

I asked, “Does the revitalization plan involve the high school, Mr. Mayor?”

Irritation flashed across his face; he walked away from me. “You ask a lot of questions, young lady.”

How else do you find things out?

I’ve been asking questions all my life. My first official word as a baby wasn’t
Mama
or
Dada.
It was
Whazzat?

All day long I’d point at things.

Whazzat?

“Newspaper,” Dad would answer. “Dirt…doggy…doo-doo…
Don’t touch that, Hildy!”

Why is the sky blue?

Why do birds fly?

Why does Mrs. Johnson’s breath always smell funny?
Mrs. Johnson was my kindergarten teacher.

Why does Mrs. Johnson’s voice get like that?

I kept asking until someone looked into it. Turned out Mrs. Johnson had gin in her water bottle. By the time we got to phonics, she was feeling no pain.

She got a leave of absence and we got a new teacher.

Who says kids don’t have power?

A woman in a purple cape was at Allie’s craft stand, holding up an Applehead Doll—the apple heads wrinkled up when they dried, making this a popular gift for people over thirty. She was saying to Allie, “I have seen this craft in my homeland, Romania. A wise woman made them—most respected.”

Allie liked that.

That woman in the cape walked down the lanes of the market like a queen, pausing briefly to look at things.

I followed her and she stopped at our stand, smiling warmly at the
BIDDLE
FAMILY
ORCHARDS
sign, picked up a jar of Nan’s chunky applesauce, and held it to the light like she knew something deep about it.

“How much, dear one?” she asked Elizabeth in a smoky, accented voice.

“Six dollars.”

“Where have you been?” Nan asked me.

“Investigating,” I said.

The caped woman looked at me; her dark eyes bored through me. She took out a beaded coin purse and slowly unfolded the bills. She handed them to Elizabeth and smiled broadly.

Then she moved on.

“Who
is
that woman?” Elizabeth asked me, putting the money in her apron.

“Another weird tourist?”

On Sunday
The Bee
broke the news.

She was so renowned,
The Bee
proclaimed, that she was considering an offer to appear regularly on the new hit cable show
Hair-Raising Haunts.

People came to her from all over the world to seek her wisdom. She had come to town because of the Ludlow place. “It drew me,” she explained in the article. “I felt the spirits of the dead calling me to come. I cannot tell how long they will ask me to linger, but I must obey.”

“Hopefully, not too long,” Minska said when she read the article.

Tanisha and I were sitting in a window booth at Minska’s. I dipped a deep-fried apple slice into thick caramel
sauce, watched the caramel drip slowly onto the plate. Caramel takes its sweet time. It’s my favorite flavor.

Tanisha took out her latest photos of life in Banesville. “It’s getting harder for me to photograph people who don’t seem a little nervous, Hildy. I see it on their faces.”

I looked at the photographs of stern-faced growers in the Red Road orchards, of mothers rushing into cars with their children.

“You see this one?” She held up a shot of Main Street on a Saturday night with not a car in sight. “Since the dead guy was found, people aren’t going out the way they used to.”

It was dinner time and Minska’s wasn’t packed with people, either—that hardly ever happened.

I looked at the photos of Minska’s father on the back wall. He worked in the shipyards in Gdansk, Poland. That’s where the protests began that ultimately led to Poland’s freedom. Minska’s father was jailed and beat up, but he never stopped believing that Poland would be free. “The stirring for freedom was everywhere,” Minska told me in our interview last spring. It was the best article I’ve written. People asked for copies of it long after it ran.