Megan Stine_Jeffery & the Third-Grade Ghost 01 (3 page)

Jeffrey leaned over to Ben, who was reading a book called
Ten Science Experiments That Might Blow Up Your House
.

“Bet your lunch I can get a detention without saying a single word,” Jeffrey said.

“You’re on,” Ben said. “But I’m warning you. My mom gave me turkey bologna today.”

“That’s okay,” Jeffrey said. As long as I get a detention,
I’ll eat anything, he thought to himself.

Jeffrey opened his desktop, took out his water gun, and aimed at Arvin’s back.

Mrs. Merrin looked calmly at Jeffrey. “I knew you would test me, Jeffrey. No detention, but I’ll take the gun again. Now behave yourself.”

Later, during arts and crafts, Jeffrey whispered to Melissa that Mrs. Merrin had accidentally lost her wedding ring in one of the paint jars. Then he sat back and watched the action. Jeffrey knew there was no better way to get anything organized than by telling Melissa. Soon she had most of the class stuffing their hands into paint jars, spilling and splashing paint. It made a truly memorable mess.

“Jeffrey, clean all of this up right now,” Mrs. Merrin said.

“And see you after school?” Jeffrey asked, trying to finish her sentence.

“No detention,” Mrs. Merrin said.

After noon recess, Jeffrey was getting desperate. So he came into the classroom without his shirt on. He said he wanted to give a book report on “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

“Jeffrey Becker!” Mrs Merrin said. Her voice was no longer calm. “Are you
trying
to get another detention?”

“Yes,” Jeffrey said.

“Why? Tell us all why this is so important to you.”

“You want the truth?” Jeffrey asked.

“The absolute truth,” Mrs. Merrin said.

“All right,” Jeffrey answered. “This is the absolute truth. Yesterday I saw a living hand floating inside my desk. And I want to stay after school to see if it’s still there today.”

Mrs. Merrin threw her hands up in the air. “That does it. You have a detention for lying.”

Jeffrey was happy for the rest of the day, although he didn’t feel great about the way Mrs. Merrin looked at him. She wasn’t angry. She just seemed sad.

After school, Jeffrey sat behind his desk and Mrs. Merrin sat behind hers.

“See your living hand yet?” she asked without looking up at him.

“I think I have to be alone to see it,” Jeffrey said.

Mrs. Merrin stood up. “My husband was going to take off work early today,” she said. “We were going to go to the pet store to buy our new dog. Now we can’t.” Then she left the room.

As soon as she left, Jeffrey opened his desk.

It was there!

It was a hand, a hand about as big as Jeffrey’s. It was floating inside his desk! Slowly, it floated up into
the space above his desk. Then it swooped around Jeffrey once.

Jeffrey’s heart was pounding. He was almost afraid to move.

A minute later, the hand began to grow, or rather to fill in. First, an arm appeared. Then another hand and another arm. Then Jeffrey saw a chest materialize. It was wearing a plaid flannel shirt. Then two legs in baggy blue jeans with cuffs appeared. Little by little, a transparent boy was taking shape right before Jeffrey’s eyes!

It was a boy about Jeffrey’s age. He had black hair slicked back on the sides. Somehow he had gotten Jeffrey’s water gun back from Mrs. Merrin. He was twirling it around his finger the way a cowboy would. And he floated in midair!

There were lots of things to say about what was happening. But Jeffrey summed it up in three words.

“You’re a ghost!” he cried.

Jeffrey stood up fast, knocking his chair over behind him. His feet couldn’t move, but his mind was racing as he stared at the ghost. What was he doing here? What did he want?

Then the ghost smiled a sly smile and started to open his mouth. Jeffrey held his breath. The ghost was going to speak to him.

The ghost stopped twirling the water gun and said, “Like, what’s shaking, Daddy-o?”

What did that mean? The only things shaking were Jeffrey’s knees. And did the ghost really think Jeffrey was his father? “Do you speak English?” Jeffrey asked cautiously.

“Don’t be so squaresville,” said the ghost. “And wipe that are-you-really-a-ghost? look off your face. What do I look like? A slice of pizza? Stay cool, Jeffrey.”

Jeffrey backed away a step. “How do you know my name?” he said.

“Are you putting me on? I’ve been watching you
all week. Man, when you threw the globe across the room, that cracked me up, Daddy-o,” said the ghost.

“Yeah, I thought that was pretty good, too,” Jeffrey said, relaxing for a second. “I can’t believe this. I’m talking to a ghost.”

The ghost grinned. “I haven’t had anyone to talk to for years.”

“What’s your name?” Jeffrey asked.

“My friends used to call me Max,” the ghost answered. “But my mom called me Maxwell. And my dad called me ‘Didn’t I tell you not to read comic books at the dinner table?’ ”

Jeffrey laughed and Max laughed even louder. He flew over and started walking on top of Mrs. Merrin’s desk.

“This used to be my school before they closed it down,” Max said. “Now it’s all painted, with weird new lights and stuff. They even gave it a new name—Redwood School. When I went here, it was called Bragaw School,” the ghost went on. “And I was the coolest kid in the third grade. We stole the room keys all the time. Once we even stole the piano keys.”

A ghost talking to you nonstop was strange enough. But even stranger—Max was talking to Jeffrey like a friend.

Max shook his head. “This place just doesn’t look like it did in ’55.”

“Wow! Is that the year you …” Jeffrey stopped. He didn’t want to say anything that would hurt Max’s feelings.

“The year I graduated to ghostville?” Max said. “Yeah, Daddy-o.”

“What happened?” Jeffrey asked. But he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.

“Detentions,” Max answered. “I had the longest detentions of anybody. Like, by the time I got out of school every day, my teacher grew a beard. And that was Mrs. Scott. Yeah, that’s what happened. I was in detention so long, everyone just forgot about me.”

Max looked at Jeffrey and Jeffrey knew that look. Max was checking to see if Jeffrey believed his story or not.

“Hey, you don’t believe me?” Max said. “Like, if I’m lying, I’m flying.”

Jeffrey looked at the ghost’s feet, which were floating two feet off the ground. “You
are
flying, Max,” Jeffrey said. “Boy, if I were a ghost, there are a million things I’d do. I’d glue the teacher’s grade books closed. And I’d put plaster of paris in the finger paint—”

“Who do you think invented the ‘teacher lost
her wedding ring in the paint jars’ trick?” Max said. “I did! But after twenty or thirty years, it starts to get lonely. Ghosts have to be careful about talking to people. Say hi to the wrong person and it’s heart-attack city. Next thing you know, you’ve got a new ghost buddy. You’re the first cat I thought it would be safe to talk to.”

That made Jeffrey smile. But he couldn’t help adding, “And safe to squirt in the face!”

“I did not. I was just trying to see how your gun worked and your face got in the way,” Max explained. “But when I saw you in detention day after day, and I heard the stories you made up, I knew you were my kind of guy.”

Just then the classroom door began to open. “Uh-oh. See you later, alligator,” Max said. And then he was gone. Like a window shade rolling up, he disappeared into thin air.

“Jeffrey? Are you all right?” Mrs. Merrin asked. She was standing in the doorway with a concerned look on her face. “You’re white as a sheet.”

“They don’t wear sheets. They wear plaid flannel shirts,” Jeffrey said.

“Jeffrey, you’re not making much sense. Did you eat a well-balanced lunch?” asked Mrs. Merrin, walking to her desk.

“Turkey bologna,” Jeffrey answered. He hadn’t
gotten the detention until after lunch, but Ben gave him his sandwich anyway.

“Oh. Well, did you see your hand?” she asked.

Jeffrey didn’t want to answer. “Uh, can I go now?” he asked.

“I’m ready to go home if you are,” said the teacher. “Maybe you can write
me
an excuse, telling my husband why I’m late.”

Jeffrey stopped by her desk and watched her fill her briefcase. “I’m sorry you didn’t buy your puppy today,” he said.

Mrs. Merrin smiled her Mrs. Merrin smile, not her teacher smile. “Thanks,” she said.

“See you later, alligator,” Jeffrey shouted on his way out the door.

“After a while, crocodile,” Mrs. Merrin called after him.

Jeffrey stopped, turned to Mrs. Merrin, and looked around the empty classroom. “Hey, thanks. I’ll have to remember that one,” he said.

Jeffrey closed Mrs. Merrin’s door behind him. “Max,” he whispered into the empty hall. “Are you here?”

His voice echoed and disappeared. There was no one there. Jeffrey waited until he was sure of that.

Only the squeak of his own sneakers followed Jeffrey down the hall and out the door. He squinted into the late-afternoon sun as he walked down the steps of the school.

“Like, what took you so long?”

Max was standing by the flagpole—and he wasn’t transparent anymore! He looked as real as Jeffrey and as happy to see him, too.

“This is great!” Jeffrey said, pulling Max by the arm. “This is perfect. Come on. We’ve got to hurry.”

“Hey, don’t bruise the merchandise. Where are we going?”

“To a baseball game.”

“Baseball!” Max laughed. “That’s just what I’m ready for.”

“All my friends are there,” Jeffrey said. “I can’t wait for them to meet you.”

Max grinned but didn’t say anything.

On the way to the park, Jeffrey told Max about his team. They were called the Beefrolls because a store named Beefroll Bob’s was supposed to get them uniforms.

And Max, of course, talked about his favorite subject—himself. “The longest baseball game I ever pitched started on July sixteenth. It lasted so long that we finally had to quit because the snow got too deep to play in.”

“Yeah, right. Well, we’ve already got a pitcher. Her name is Melissa,” Jeffrey said as they got to the baseball field.

“Hold the phone!” Max interrupted. “Melissa is a girl’s name! You let a
girl
play on your team?”

Jeffrey smiled. Max still didn’t realize this was the 1980s. “Melissa can hit farther, run faster, and throw harder than every guy on the team except for Ricky Reyes. What would
you
do with a girl like that, Max?”

Max rubbed his chin and thought for a minute. “Like, I’d make her captain,” he said.

“That’s just what we did,” Jeffrey said. “Listen, Max, there’s one thing you’ve got to be ready for. They may not believe me at first about you being a ghost. My friends sort of think that sometimes I make stories up.”

“If they can tell, you must not be making up good ones,” Max said with a sly smile.

Jeffrey rolled his eyes and ran over to the bench where the Beefrolls were sitting. The game had already started. Ricky Reyes was at bat. The other team was on the field. Max followed right behind Jeffrey.

“Hey, you guys, I want you to meet Max,” Jeffrey said.

“Sure, we’ll meet him anytime,” Melissa said. “Kenny, get ready. You’re up after Ricky.”

Kenny Thompsen was a short, shy kid. He wore his blond hair in an overgrown crewcut. He put down the book he was reading and stood up.

“Jeffrey, you’re late!” scolded Captain Melissa. “Why did you get a detention on purpose today? You
know
we’re playing the Lions. They’re the toughest team in the Little League.”

“Max can explain that,” Jeffrey said, winking at his new friend.

“Yeah, when he gets here,” said Benjamin Hyde.

“What do you mean ‘when he gets here’?” Jeffrey asked. “He’s right here. This is Max.”

Max slicked his hair back with his hand and smiled at Jeffrey.

“What are you talking about, Jeffrey? There’s nobody there,” Melissa said. “And we don’t have time for any stories.”

There was the smack of a bat against a baseball and the crowd went wild. Ricky Reyes, the heavy hitter on Jeffrey’s team, had just hit a home run.