As Simple as It Seems

  Missing You

  “Brittany. Bethany. Beatrice. Beulah.”

  “Beulah?” I said. “Who would name a boat Beulah?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just trying to come up with all the B names I can think of,” said Pooch. “I have an aunt named Beulah.”

  “If only we had a couple more letters, I bet we could figure it out,” I said.

  But the B was all that remained of the name—the other letters were all long gone.

  “We don’t even know for sure if it’s a girl’s name,” said Pooch.

  “You said yourself all boats are shes.”

  “Titanic’s not a girl’s name. It’s not even a boy’s name. Maybe the B stands for something random like Banana or Bubble Wrap.”

  “What’s the point of even trying to guess?” I said. “We’re never going to know for sure.”

  “Think like an Indian,” said Pooch. “You’ll feel better.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Indians used to choose a name when a person was born and then change the name whenever anything important happened to them. This boat would have just rotted away if you hadn’t found it, right? So it doesn’t matter what the old name was, because it needs a new name anyway to celebrate having been found.”

  “Do you know as much about dinosaurs as you know about Indians?” I asked.

  “Actually, more,” said Pooch.

  We spent the rest of that afternoon sanding the boat and trying to come up with a name for it.

  “How about Tippy?” Pooch said. “That would be a good name for a boat, don’t you think?”

  “Are you kidding? That’s a terrible name. Who wants a tippy boat?”

  “What about Tofu?” Pooch suggested.

  “Tofu?”

  “It’s bean curd.”

  “I know what it is,” I said. “I’ve seen it floating around in a bucket at the health food store.”

  “Exactly,” said Pooch. “It floats. That’s why it’d be a great name. Plus it’s good for you.”

  “Spinach is good for you too. Do you think we should name the boat Spinach?” I said.

  “Does being dead make everybody grumpy, or were you like this before you were a ghost?”

  I stuck my tongue out at Pooch, and he laughed.

  I didn’t like Tofu or any of the other names Pooch came up with for the boat, and he wasn’t wild about any of my names either.

  “What do you think about Bonners Darling?” I said.

  “Gross,” said Pooch.

  “Silver Slipper?”

  “Even worse.”

  We finally agreed that each of us would come up with a list of ten possible names for the boat that night, and in the morning we’d meet and compare lists.

  “Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, you know,” said Pooch.

  “I know,” I said, refolding the piece of sandpaper I’d been using in order to find a rougher side.

  “Do you like fireworks?” he asked. “My mom says they’re going to have some in town. And there’s a concert too.”

  “I used to like fireworks,” I said, “but I don’t anymore.”

  “I love them,” said Pooch. “I hope it doesn’t rain. You can’t have fireworks if it rains.”

  “Is it supposed to rain tomorrow?” I asked.

  “They said so on the radio.”

  “Yeah, well they said that about today too,” I said, squinting up at the sky.

  The sun was shining brightly, and even though he was wearing the floppy hat, Pooch’s nose was beginning to turn pink. I pushed my glasses up with a bent knuckle and pulled them partway back down again.

  “Why do you do that?” asked Pooch, who had taken a break from his sanding and was watching me.

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “Push your glasses up and then pull them back down.”

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “It’s just something I do.”

  “Can you see without your glasses on?” he asked.

  “Not very well.”

  “That’s what I figured. Otherwise why would you wear them, right? Hey, maybe you were a bat in a past life and that’s why you can’t see.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said. “Bats are hideous mice with wings. And they eat bugs.”

  “I think mice are cute,” said Pooch.

  “You would. What did you do with that mouse that you caught in the mousetrap?” I asked.

  “My mom picked it up with some salad tongs and put it the trash,” he told me.

  With all the unfortunate pets my mother had taken in over the years, there had been plenty of deaths. Sometimes my mother would take the bodies back to Dr. Finn at the shelter, but the smaller animals she quietly buried in our backyard. My mother would never have put any animal, even a mouse, in the trash.

  “When I die, I want to be cremated and have my ashes sprinkled outside Gray’s Papaya,” Pooch said.

  “Where’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s on the corner of Seventy-second and Broadway. They have the best hot dogs in the world. Hot dogs are carcinogenic—that means they give you cancer—but so is pretty much everything else.”

  “Lovely,” I said. “You must be a lot of fun at a cookout.”

  Pooch got up and went to get a fresh piece of sandpaper out of the package I’d brought with me. He folded it in half and started rubbing it back and forth along the edge of the boat.

  “If reincarnation were real,” he said, “it sure would explain a lot.”

  I groaned. It was my own fault for having asked about what had happened to the mouse in the mousetrap, but it was clear that if I didn’t stay on top of Pooch, one way or another he was going to find a way to circle back around to his favorite subject—death. And I didn’t want to think about death. I’d had a dream the night my father told me about what Mike Colter had done to get himself thrown in jail. I saw Mike put his hands on the man’s shoulders and push him. The dream was so vivid that when I woke up I could still hear the sound of the bones in the man’s neck breaking. I’d been afraid to go back to sleep.

  “We made a deal about this death stuff yesterday, remember?” I told Pooch.

  “Reincarnation isn’t about death,” said Pooch. “It’s about life. Don’t you think it would be cool to get to live life all over again as something other than what you were the first time around?”

  “Like what, a rock?” I said.

  “Well, not a rock. That would be pretty boring. But how about a bird?”

  “I wouldn’t want to be a bird, “I said. “They don’t have hands. The only way they can pick anything up is with their beaks.”

  “I never thought about that,” said Pooch. “It would be a drag not to have hands.” He reached around to scratch the back of his neck. “Especially if you were itchy.”

  “I wouldn’t mind being a horse, I guess,” I said. “I think they’re beautiful.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but horses don’t have hands either,” Pooch pointed out. “You don’t have to come back as an animal though, you know. You could be a person. I read about this woman who swears she was Abraham Lincoln in another life.”

  “Do you believe that?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure what I believe anymore. It all kind of changed after I met you.”

  Part of me wanted to come clean and tell Pooch the truth. It wasn’t right for me to be making him question what he believed. Selfishly, though, I didn’t want the game to end. In a way, it was almost as if the wish I’d made when I’d blown out the candles on my birthday cake had come true. I was a different person when I was with Pooch. Sure, I was Tracy Allen’s ghost, but I was also myself—my old self—the one I’d been before everything had gone wrong. All this time I’d thought it was only Annie I missed, but what I realized now was that the person I’d been missing most was me.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Girl Next Door

  “Why did you come looking for me anyway?” I asked Pooch later that
afternoon down by the lake. “Aren’t you afraid of ghosts?”

  “I’m only afraid of bees,” said Pooch. “And walnuts.”

  “Don’t forget about Dixie,” I added, baring my teeth and pretending to snap at him.

  Pooch laughed. He had stopped sanding again and was leaning against the boat.

  “Who told you to take a coffee break?” I said.

  “Nobody, but don’t you think maybe it’s smooth enough? We’ve been working on it forever and there’s no more sandpaper left. I took the last piece a while ago, and now it’s all used up too.”

  My arms ached and my fingers were scraped and sore. I was just as tired of sanding as Pooch was.

  “I wish we could put it in the water now,” said Pooch. “Maybe the patch dried faster than we thought it would. Let’s check it.”

  But a quick examination of the patch revealed that the boat was not ready to be launched yet.

  “We’re not finished anyway,” I said. “We still haven’t come up with a name. If we work hard on our lists tonight, maybe we’ll have something by tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” said Pooch, “tomorrow.”

  As we began to gather up the tools and the crumpled pieces of used-up sandpaper, Jack, who’d been napping on a patch of moss under a tree the whole time, struggled to his feet, yawned, and stretched and looked at me expectantly.

  “He sure does act like he’s your dog,” said Pooch.

  “That doesn’t mean he is,” I said.

  “Listen,” Pooch said, “I know you’re probably going to say no, but since it’s still early and we can’t do anything more on the boat today, do you want to maybe come over?”

  I had the same problem with this idea as I’d had the day before. As curious as I was about what the inside of the Allen house might be like, I didn’t want to meet Pooch’s mother in my nightgown. After I’d spent two days in it working on the boat, it was not only tattered now, but also covered with dirt and pine sap. Suddenly my mother’s words came floating into my head, offering me a solution.

  You be me.

  “Tell you what,” I told Pooch. “I’ll meet you at your house in half an hour.”

  “Honest?” said Pooch.

  “Honest,” I told him. “But don’t be surprised if I look a little different when I show up, okay? Now turn around and cover your eyes.”

  It was the last time I would leave Pooch counting by the lake.

  When I got home, there was a pot of spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove and my mother was in the den working on a scrapbook. She glanced at my filthy nightgown but, to my surprise, said nothing about it. I wondered if she was still mad at me for the mean thing I’d said earlier.

  “It smells good in here,” I told her.

  “I made meatballs,” she said. “You still like meatballs?”

  “Of course I still like meatballs,” I said.

  She smiled and I smiled back at her, grateful that she didn’t seem to be holding a grudge.

  There was a pan of brownies cooling on the counter out in the kitchen. Perfect! I thought when I saw them.

  “Can I have some brownies?” I called to my mother.

  “How about a sandwich first?” she called back.

  I went and stood in the doorway of the den.

  “They’re not for me,” I explained. “I was thinking about taking some brownies over to those new neighbors you were telling me about. You know, to welcome them to the neighborhood.”

  My mother put aside her scrapbook and stood up. She was wearing a pair of black slacks and a white blouse I didn’t recognize. I wondered if her new outfit had anything to do with the comment I’d made the other day about her dress looking like a tent.

  “What a nice idea,” she said. “Do you want me to come along?”

  “No,” I said quickly, “I’d rather go alone if you don’t mind.”

  She hesitated for a minute.

  “Please don’t bite my head off for asking this, Verbie, but are you going to change first? Forgive me, but that nightie looks even worse now than it did this morning.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’m going to change.”

  My mother’s face flooded with relief.

  “I’ll cut you some brownies right away,” she said.

  Upstairs I put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Then I stood in front of the mirror combing the tangles out of my hair. When I had finished, I pulled it back into a tight ponytail and fastened it with a rubber band.

  “I remember you,” I whispered as I tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

  Downstairs my mother was happily bustling around the kitchen. She had cut the brownies into squares, and she’d made me a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich too, which I wolfed down in a couple of bites, much to her delight. Five minutes later I was standing on the porch of the Allen house knocking on the front door.

  “I’m your next-door neighbor, Verbena Colter,” I said when Pooch’s mother came to the door. “I brought you some brownies to say welcome to the neighborhood.”

  Her face looked a little puffy, and you could tell that she had tried to cover the bruises under her eyes with makeup. She was wearing another tight black outfit, but instead of the fancy shoes, she had on flip-flops with little rhinestones glued on them.

  I handed her the plate of brownies. She seemed surprised, but not as surprised as Pooch, who was standing behind her with his eyes popping out.

  “Come in—Verbena, did you say?” said Pooch’s mom. “Let me introduce you to my son. Shake hands with Verbena, Pooch.” Dixie came running in to check me out, growling and baring her sharp little teeth at me. “Don’t mind Dixie. The only one she ever actually bites is Pooch.”

  “I swear I didn’t recognize you at first,” Pooch whispered the minute we were alone. “And how’d you come up with that name?”

  “It’s real,” I told him, “Her family lives next door. I floated over there and borrowed some of her clothes. And some brownies. And her name.”

  “Awesome,” said Pooch.

  Pooch’s mom came back into the room.

  “I was just about to make lunch, Verbena. Can I interest you in some tuna fish?” she asked.

  “Verbena only eats marshmallows,” Pooch told his mom. “And mashed potatoes.”

  I gave Pooch a look. He was going to have to be a lot slicker than that if this was going to work out.

  “Thank you, ma’am, but I ate lunch already,” I said.

  Pooch’s mother grimaced.

  “Ma’am? That makes me sound so ancient. I’m Shari. Shari with an i.” She made a little dot in the air with her finger. “I know it’s a little late for lunch, but better late than never, right? Run along, you two, and I’ll call you when the sandwiches are ready.”

  Pooch turned to me.

  “Do you want to look around?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  The house didn’t have much furniture in it, and what was there was old and worn. I wondered if the Allens had taken everything with them, or if these were the same couches and chairs that Tracy and her family had sat on.

  “Is it like you remember it?” asked Pooch. He sniffled. His nose was dripping, and I noticed his eyes looked a little pink.

  “Not really,” I said, amazed that I was actually standing inside the Allen house. Annie would never have believed it. She and I had peeked in the windows hundreds of times, fascinated by the spooky-looking shapes of the sheet-draped furniture. I had been right about the musty smell and the feeling of sadness in the air. It was hard to imagine anyone ever laughing or being happy under that roof.

  Pooch sniffled again, then sneezed three times in rapid succession.

  “Take your pill!” Pooch’s mom called from the kitchen.

  “I did!” he called back. Then he pulled a pack of tissues from his pocket, took one out, and blew his nose. “Dust,” he explained, waving his hand in the air. “It’s everywhere. Do you want to go upstairs now and see your room?”
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  I did want to see the room, but for the first time since I’d walked in the door, I felt scared. I didn’t believe in ghosts. At least I didn’t think I did. But after all the conversations I’d been having lately about death and reincarnation and all the rest of it, I realized I hadn’t made up my mind yet what I believed.

  “Are you okay?” Pooch asked. “You look kind of funny.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  Tracy Allen’s old room was at the top of the stairs. There were rosebuds on the yellowed wallpaper, which was peeling in places. I walked over to the window and ran my fingers along the sill, feeling the sharp ridges in the paint where she had carved her initials. T.A. I wondered what kind of girl she’d been. Whether she’d had a best friend, or a dog who liked to follow her around. And as much as I didn’t want to think about it, I couldn’t help but wonder what her last moments on earth had been like too.

  “Pooch!” called his mom from the foot of the stairs. “Lunch!”

  I didn’t stay while Pooch ate his lunch. I really didn’t like being inside that house. I hoped that it had been a happier place when Tracy Allen had lived there and that wherever she was now she wasn’t too scared or lonely.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” Pooch said when he took me to the door. “For the big launch, right? Do you want me to bring the rope? I think I saw some down in the basement.”

  “We won’t need much,” I told him. “I don’t want to go out too deep because—”

  “I know,” said Pooch. “Wrinkles.”

  “Ten o’clock,” I told him. “And remember to make your list of names tonight.”

  “Are you absolutely sure you don’t like Tofu?” he asked.

  “Positive,” I told him.

  Jack was sitting at the bottom of the Allens’ driveway waiting for me. He’d followed me up the road as far as the house, but clearly the memory of the stone Pooch’s mother had thrown at him had not faded. I was in a strange mood. It was almost as if the sad feeling inside the Allen house had rubbed off on me and a gloomy cloud was hanging over my head.

  “Come on, Jackie,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”