As Simple as It Seems

  “Was it a baby mouse?” I asked him.

  “Nope. Regular sized. I found it in a trap right before I came down here.”

  “You mean it was dead?”

  “Not quite,” he said. “My mom saw mouse droppings on the kitchen counter when we got here, so she set some old traps we found under the sink. She used peanut butter for bait. If a mouse tries to eat it, the trap snaps closed and breaks its neck. See, there’s this little spring and when the mouse steps on the—”

  “I know how a mousetrap works,” I interrupted impatiently. “What I don’t know is why you’d try to catch a mouse in a bottle if you’d already caught it in a trap.”

  “The traps only catch their bodies,” said Pooch.

  “What else is there?”

  He gave me a strange look.

  “That’s a pretty funny question coming from you,” he said.

  It took a minute before I realized what he was trying to say, and then the hair on my arms prickled up.

  “I read somewhere that your soul leaves your body when you breathe out for the last time,” said Pooch. “I could tell the mouse was about to die, so I put the bottle up against its nose to see if I could catch its soul on the way out.”

  “That’s creepy,” I told him.

  “Why?” he said. “Death is a natural thing, just like getting born.”

  “Death is the opposite of getting born,” I said.

  “They’re both natural,” Pooch insisted. “And interesting. Especially death.”

  “I don’t see what’s so interesting about it,” I told him.

  “That’s because you already know all the answers.”

  “What answers?” I asked.

  “Well, for starters, what’s the deal with reincarnation? And what about heaven? If you don’t believe in heaven while you’re alive, and then you die and find out you were wrong—can you still go there?”

  My head was beginning to spin. I’d gone to church with my parents plenty of Sundays, but I never really listened when Reverend Fyfe delivered his sermons. He used too many big words, and his deep rumbling voice made me feel sleepy. I had no idea what the rules were about getting into heaven, let alone reincarnation. I was beginning to wonder if I’d bitten off more than I could chew with this whole pretending-to-be-a-ghost thing.

  “Look,” I said, handing the empty bottle back to Pooch, “I think there’s something we’d better get straight here. Ghosts don’t like to talk about death.”

  “Really?” he said. I could tell he was disappointed.

  “There must be other things you’re interested in.”

  He thought for a minute.

  “Dinosaurs.”

  Not a favorite subject of mine.

  “Anything else?”

  “I like to build stuff,” he said. “I’m pretty good at it too. I made the Empire State Building out of marshmallows and toothpicks once. Too bad I don’t have it anymore—you could eat it for dinner. At least the marshmallow part.”

  At the mention of food, my stomach grumbled. That peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich I’d eaten earlier was beginning to wear off. However, my concern about the rumbling in my stomach was overshadowed by my excitement about what Pooch had just revealed.

  “If you’re good at building things, does that mean you’re good at fixing things too?” I asked.

  “I guess so.”

  “If I show you something, do you promise not to tell anybody?” I said.

  Pooch used his index finger to draw a little X over the pocket of his shirt.

  “Cross my heart and hope to die,” he said.

  The words were barely out when he clapped his hand over his mouth.

  “Sorry,” he told me. “I didn’t mean to say that part about dying.”

  I had to laugh. He had the exact same guilty look on his face that Jack always got when we caught him sleeping on the couch or eating cat food out of Honey’s dish.

  “Don’t worry. That doesn’t count,” I told Pooch. “It’s just an expression.”

  Pooch looked relieved.

  “All I was trying to say was that I won’t tell anybody,” he said. “I’m good at keeping secrets.”

  “In that case,” I told him, “follow me.”

  And I led him into the tall weeds.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Little Boat

  Pooch gave a low whistle of appreciation when he saw the boat.

  “Is it yours?” he asked, resting his hands on the side.

  “You know what they say. Finders keepers…”

  “Losers weepers,” he said, finishing the thought.

  We were interrupted by a commotion in some nearby bushes. A few seconds later a rabbit came shooting out into the open, followed by Jack in hot pursuit, his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth.

  “Look at him go!” Pooch shouted.

  They rounded a curve, but just as Jack was closing in, the rabbit zigged, then zagged, then bolted back into the bushes. Jack skidded to a stop, lost his balance, and fell over onto his hip. By the time he’d struggled back to his feet, the rabbit was long gone. Jack stood staring after it, panting hard.

  “Did you see that?” cried Pooch, “He came this close to catching that thing.”

  “Trust me, the only thing Jack ever catches is a face full of skunk squirt,” I said.

  Pooch’s eyebrows bunched up.

  “Does he belong to you?” he asked. “Because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that dog before.”

  I’d forgotten that Pooch and Jack had already met.

  “He’s not mine,” I said, figuring it would be easier to deny it than to have to explain how a ghost could have a pet. “The only reason I know his name is because he belongs to someone who lives around here and I hear them calling him sometimes.”

  “Oh,” said Pooch. “Do you know what happened to his leg?”

  “He probably got hit by a car,” I told him.

  Pooch stood with his left arm bent behind his back in order to use his thumb to scratch between his shoulder blades. Together we watched Jack wade out into the lake until he was chest deep and noisily lapping up water with his long tongue. Pooch kicked at a clump of old cattails, setting loose a shower of pale fluff.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said.

  “That depends,” I told him, hoping I wasn’t going to have to remind him that the subject of death was off limits.

  “Do you think if we pull this boat out of the mud, we could fix it up and get it to float?”

  We gave it everything we had, but pulling the boat out of the mud proved to be much harder than either of us had anticipated.

  “Maybe we should try pushing it instead,” Pooch suggested.

  I wasn’t wild about the idea of wading out into the water.

  “Ghosts aren’t supposed to get wet,” I told him. “We wrinkle.”

  Pooch didn’t question me; he just sat down and began taking off his shoes and socks. Then he rolled up his pant legs and waded out into the water.

  “Brrr!” he cried, wrapping his arms around himself and hopping up and down. “It’s freezing!” But I could tell he didn’t really mind it.

  I pulled while Pooch pushed, but even working at it from both ends our combined efforts were not enough to budge the boat. After a while Pooch waded back out and leaned over the side of the boat, looking in at the stagnant water pooled in the bottom.

  “It wouldn’t be so heavy if it didn’t have all this water in it,” he said.

  “We could bail it out,” I suggested. “All we need is an empty can.”

  I thought of the tin can I’d left behind in the flower bed at home, where I’d been interrupted digging for worms. If only I’d remembered to bring it along. We kicked around in the weeds for a while hoping to find something we could use, but the only thing we turned up were a few moldy candy wrappers.

  “How about we use a couple of my bottles?” Pooch offered.

  But after five minutes of painstaking
ly filling and emptying the tiny bottles, we abandoned that idea in favor of a different approach. Taking up positions on either side, we began to rock the boat like a giant cradle between us, finally succeeding in loosening it enough to be able to flip it over. Jack sniffed at the dark water with great interest as it ran out onto the ground and quickly soaked in.

  “He loves anything that smells bad,” I explained.

  “Same with Dixie,” said Pooch.

  “Who’s Dixie?” I asked, suddenly remembering the anxious concern in Pooch’s mother’s voice when she’d asked where Dixie was.

  “Dixie’s my mom’s dog,” he said. “She’s named after a paper cup.”

  “What kind is she?” I asked.

  “Maltese. She’s purebred, but she looks like a dirty old bathmat. And she bites. Especially me.”

  “How come you’re allergic to all those other things, but you’re not allergic to dogs?”

  “I am,” Pooch said. “Unfortunately, Dixie’s hypoallergenic.”

  Without the water in it, the boat, although still heavy, was light enough for us to be able to drag it up onto dry ground. My heart was pounding so hard from the effort, I could feel it in my cheeks. I sat down on the ground to catch my breath, and Pooch, who was also winded, bent over, resting his hands on his knees. He reached around and started scratching the back of his neck.

  “You nervous again?” I asked.

  “Actually, yeah. See, there’s something I think I’d better tell you,” he said. “It’s about where my mom and I are staying.”

  “I know where you’re staying,” I told him.

  His eyes widened.

  “You do?”

  I nodded.

  “I also know that your mom doesn’t like the house very much. Or Clydesdale. Or three-legged dogs either.”

  Pooch’s cheeks turned pink again.

  “She’s not usually mean. She was just in a bad mood because her face was hurting.”

  “What’s the matter with her face?”

  “Nothing. But she decided she didn’t like it anymore, so she got it fixed,” he said.

  “What do you mean, fixed?”

  Pooch put his hands on his cheeks and pulled the skin taut. “Plastic surgery,” he told me through his stretched lips. “She’d kill me if she knew I was talking about it. We came up here so nobody would know. It takes a couple of weeks for the swelling to go down.”

  I thought about the floppy hat, the jewelry, and the big dark glasses.

  “Is your mom a movie star or something?” I asked.

  Pooch laughed. “No. She works in a bank. But she wants to get married again, and she says men don’t like women who look their age.”

  “How old is she?” I asked.

  “Thirty-eight.”

  I thought about my mother’s smooth, wide face. She didn’t have any wrinkles and she would be fifty on her next birthday.

  “Where’s your dad?” I asked.

  “East Eighty-first Street. I see him on Wednesdays. We have dinner. His girlfriend is a Pilates instructor. The first time I met her, she told me that exercise is her life.”

  Now I had to try to imagine what it would feel like to have a father who had a girlfriend.

  “Do you mind?” Pooch asked.

  “Mind what?” I said.

  “That we’re staying in your house. I mean, it must be kind of weird knowing some kid you don’t even know is sleeping in your room.”

  I’d never been inside the Allen house, but I’d always wondered what it was like. I imagined that the air was cold and damp and that it was filled with a sad, musty kind of smell. Houses have a way of soaking up the lives of the people who live inside them.

  “How do you know it’s my room?” I asked.

  “You scratched your initials on the windowsill, remember?” said Pooch. “T.A.” He drew the letters in the air.

  A shiver ran up my spine. I didn’t even know what Tracy Allen looked like, but she suddenly seemed more real to me than ever before.

  “I don’t mind that you’re staying at my house,” I told Pooch. “It’s not like I live there anymore.”

  “Where do you live?” he asked.

  “That subject is off limits too. No personal questions allowed.”

  Jack waded out of the water and shook himself so hard he fell over. Then he rolled onto his back and lay in the dirt, belly up, to dry. My stomach grumbled again, this time in earnest.

  “I’m kind of hungry,” I said.

  Pooch’s face lit up.

  “Why don’t you come over for dinner?” he suggested. “I don’t think we have any marshmallows in the house, but we definitely have milk. And maybe my mom could make you some mashed potatoes.”

  He was all excited about the idea of my coming over, but as hungry as I happened to be and as curious as I was to see the inside of the Allen house, there was no way I was going to go over there in a ripped-up nightgown, pretending to be a ghost in front of Pooch’s mother.

  “Maybe some other time,” I said.

  But Pooch persisted.

  “We don’t have to tell my mom who you are if that’s the problem. We could just say you’re a neighbor girl or something.”

  I couldn’t tell him why that was funny, or that what I really wanted for dinner was pork chops with apple cider gravy, since clearly that wasn’t on the white-food list.

  “Thanks,” I said. “But I need to get going.”

  Pooch started scratching the back of his neck.

  “What’s the matter now?” I said.

  “Are you going to come back tomorrow?” he asked me.

  “Of course I am. It’s my boat, remember? You think I’m just going to walk away and let you have all the fun of fixing it up? I’ll bring some rope—that way we can tie the boat to a tree and it won’t float away.”

  Pooch was looking at me funny; his eyes narrowed to slits and his head tilted to the side.

  “You’re not lying, are you?” he said.

  The sun, which had momentarily slipped behind a cloud, reemerged, spilling its yolky glow over us.

  “Lying about what?” I said.

  “About coming back tomorrow.”

  I breathed a silent sigh of relief. I knew it wasn’t nice of me to be leading Pooch on, but if he figured out I’d been lying to him, he might get mad, and then he wouldn’t want to help with the boat.

  “You worry too much,” I told him. “I said I was coming back, didn’t I?”

  “Honest?” said Pooch.

  His round little face was so full of hope, it almost hurt to look at it.

  “Honest,” I told him. “I’ll meet you back here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Now cover your eyes and count to a hundred. Don’t try to follow me and don’t tell anyone you saw me down here either. Not even your mom.”

  Pooch drew an X over his heart with his finger. Then he covered his eyes, and I left him counting by the lake.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Round and Round

  “If you don’t believe in heaven while you’re alive, but then when you die you find out it’s actually a real place, can you still go there?”

  I was sitting at the kitchen table, finishing up my breakfast. My mother was standing at the sink, stringing beans.

  “Where in the world did that question come from?” she asked.

  “Nowhere,” I said. “I was just wondering. Is that where Grandpa Colty is? Heaven?”

  My mother looked at me.

  “Your grandpa Colty was a very good man. If there is a heaven, I’m sure that’s where he is.”

  “Where else could he be?” I asked.

  “Different people believe different things,” she said, turning her attention back to the beans.

  “What do you believe?” I asked.

  “Well, if I had to put it into words, I guess I’d say that I believe life is like a big circle,” she said. “Each ending marks a new beginning.”

  “Some people believe that your soul leav
es your body the last time you breathe out,” I said, remembering what Pooch had told me.

  My mother set down her knife.

  “It’s a beautiful day outside; we don’t need to be talking about last breaths, do we?”

  I shrugged and took a bite of my pink eggs.

  Pink eggs had been a favorite of mine when I was little. You make them by frying an egg and then at the last minute putting a drop of water in the pan and covering it up to steam the yolk until it turns pink. I hadn’t had them in years, but my mother had made them for me that morning without asking.

  “I just thought it was interesting, that’s all,” I said.

  My mother’s face suddenly brightened.

  “Speaking of interesting, I have some interesting news,” she said. “Guess what—we have a new neighbor. Someone has rented the Allen house.”

  I almost choked, but I took a swallow of milk to cover it. I wasn’t in the habit of lying to my mother, but I didn’t want her to know that I already knew about the new neighbors. It would only lead to questions. She’d noticed my torn nightgown, of course, but she’d been satisfied with the explanation I’d given her about going for a long walk with Jack the day before and having caught it on some blackberry brambles.

  “It’s a woman and her little boy,” my mother went on. “Francine told me about them this morning when I went down to get the mail.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to keep my voice even as I peeled a piece of crust off my bread and laid it along the edge of the plate. “What did she say about them?”

  My mother hesitated, obviously weighing whether or not to repeat what she’d heard.

  “You know how Francine likes to talk,” she said with a wave of her hand.

  “What did she say?” I asked, doing my best not to sound overly interested.

  “Apparently the woman wasn’t feeling well, because she stayed out in the car. Only the boy came inside. Francine said he was odd—scratching himself a lot and asking all kinds of strange questions.”

  “Francine should keep her big trap shut,” I said, surprised at the feeling with which the words came out.