I beamed at Bart, and we gave each other the high five. “Thanks, Mr. Bla — I mean, Will,” I said. “Thanks for everything.” I turned and cupped my hands around my mouth. “Okay, Krashers!” I yelled. “Let’s get going. Next stop, Stoneybrook!” The kids came running.
We said a quick good-bye to Will Blackburn, threw our stuff back into the van, and headed out. Without really meaning to, I held my breath as we passed over the bridge. I guess I didn’t trust that it was fixed until we were safely on the other side. The creek was still running fast. The water looked muddy and lots of twigs and small branches were being swept downstream.
“We made it!” cried Karen, as soon as we’d crossed the bridge. “Now we can go home.”
“Yay!” yelled the other kids.
Charlie drove on for a few minutes without saying much. I saw his eyes searching the road. Before long, we came to a small general store and Charlie pulled over. “I’ll go in and check on directions,” he said to me. “Why don’t you call home and tell them we’re on our way?”
I hadn’t noticed the phone booth before he said that, but as soon as I saw it I was out of the car and dialing my home number.
“Watson?” I said, when he answered. “It’s me, Kristy. I’m safe and sound — we all are — and we’re on our way home. We were stranded in the storm. We should be there within an hour.”
“Kristy —” Watson said. His voice sounded strange. Then I heard him gulp, and he spoke again. “We’ll be waiting for you,” he said, trying to sound calm.
I felt tears come to my eyes. I knew there were tears in Watson’s eyes, too. “Will you call the other parents?” I asked.
“You bet I will,” said Watson. “It’ll be my pleasure.”
After we hung up, I ran back to the van. Charlie was already in the driver’s seat. “Let’s go!” I said. “They’re waiting for us!” I was beaming, even though I could still feel a lump in my throat.
“Wait!” said Jerry. “I want to call my mom.”
“Me, too,” said Joey.
Suddenly a clamor arose from the back seats. Every kid wanted to make a phone call. I understood, but I knew we’d never get going if we had to wait for the kids to tell their parents what was going on. “My stepfather is going to call your parents,” I said. “He promised. And the sooner we get going, the sooner we’ll be home.”
The kids seemed to understand. Charlie started up the van, and we were on our way home. We sang again, just like we had the morning before. (The game against the Raiders seemed like a week ago!) We sang the “Tomorrow” song from Annie. We sang “Happy Days Are Here Again.” We sang every happy, upbeat song I could think of. It felt so great to know that we’d be home soon.
Less than an hour later, we were back in Stoneybrook. I can’t tell you how good it was to drive by the familiar buildings. I was even happy to see my dentist’s office. The kids were pointing out landmarks and acting as if they’d been away for months. “There’s the library,” said Karen, grabbing my hand. “Remember when you took me there and I got out the book about Frog and Toad?”
“Do I remember?” I asked. “I should hope so. It was only two days ago!”
Everybody laughed. Karen pouted for a second, but then she laughed, too. “Hey,” she said, in the middle of a giggle. “Look! We’re almost at Daddy’s house.”
Two minutes later, Charlie pulled into our driveway and honked the horn. Watson came striding out of the house to greet us, with my mom and Sam right behind him. And behind them was a huge crowd of people. I saw Karen’s mother, and Buddy’s parents, and Mrs. Rodowsky. I saw a whole bunch of Krushers: Margo and Claire Pike, Patsy and Jake Kuhn, and Hannie Papadakis. I saw a lot of adults I didn’t know: they must have been Basher parents. Everybody was yelling and grinning and waving their arms around.
Watson and my mom caught me and David Michael and Charlie and Karen in a huge hug. My mom was sniffling, but she was smiling through her tears. “I knew you were all right,” she said. “I just had a feeling.” She knelt down to hug Karen again. Watson was shaking Charlie’s hand, congratulating him on getting us home safely. Sam was pounding Charlie on the back. I looked around at the crowd.
“Kristy!” I heard someone call. “Over here!”
I looked toward the apple tree, and there they were: every other member of the BSC. Mary Anne was waving madly, and Mallory and Jessi were jumping up and down. Claudia, Dawn, and Stacey were holding up a huge banner. WELLCOME HOME, KRASHERZ! it said. I knew Claudia must have been responsible for that, since she can’t spell to save her life. But, misspelled words and all, the banner was beautiful. I felt tears rolling down my cheeks as I ran to join my friends.
“We didn’t want to get in the way of the family reunions,” said Mary Anne. “But boy, are we glad to see you.” She threw her arms around me. Then everybody else crowded in, and soon we were tangled up in a group hug. That’s a BSC tradition, you know.
For the next half hour, everybody wandered around in our yard, hugging and laughing and crying and trading stories. Then, the yard began to clear out as parents took their kids home. I hugged the kids good-bye. I also hugged Bart, and he sneaked in a little kiss. Then I told my friends I’d see them later — we’d decided to have a special meeting of the BSC that afternoon — and went inside to take a shower and have something to eat.
Boy, was I happy to be home. To be in my own house, with my own stuff. To open the refrigerator and see eight different things that I might want to eat. To lie down on my cozy, comfortable bed, and then to jump up again (I wasn’t feeling at all tired, even though I’d barely slept the night before) and take a long, hot shower. Boy.
That afternoon, in Claud’s room, I told the other BSC members about our stay in the famous haunted house on Sawyer Road. Just as I’d predicted, Dawn was green with envy. I tried to explain that there was no mystery left, but maybe I wasn’t very convincing. That was partly because I wasn’t totally convinced. Something was nagging at me — something about the story that hadn’t been explained. But since I couldn’t figure out what it was, I put it out of my head.
The others told me about their night, and about how worried they’d been. Then Claudia proposed that we have a real slumber party the following Friday night, to celebrate my return. We thought it was a great idea, and Stacey even agreed to take money out of the treasury for a pizza bash.
That night, as I lay in bed, all I could think of was that line from The Wizard of Oz: “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home!” For the first time, I really understood what that meant.
“Okay, you guys,” I said. “Listen, I think I’ve got it.” Nobody paid any attention. They were all talking at once, and each of them was talking about something different. “Hey, come on!” I said, a little louder. “We have to get this settled.” Still no response. The talking and giggling seemed even louder than before.
“Do you guys want pizza or not?” I finally yelled.
That got them. All of a sudden, I had everyone’s undivided attention. It was Friday night, and every member of the BSC was at my house for a slumber party. I was about to order pizzas, but I needed to find out what everybody wanted on them. It isn’t easy to order pizza for the seven of us; we all have strong feelings about our toppings! I’d spent the last half an hour trying to figure out how to order two large pizzas that would make everyone happy.
“Okay, here goes,” I said. “One of the pizzas will have half with sausage — that’s for Claudia and me — and half with onions, for Jessi and Dawn. That pizza will also have mushrooms all over it. The other pizza will have half extra cheese and pepperoni, for Mary Anne and Mal, and half plain, for Stacey and anybody else who isn’t happy with what they got.” I looked around the room. “How does that sound?” I asked. I crossed my fingers, hoping that everyone would agree with what I’d figured out.
“Uh, Kristy?” asked Claudia. “I think you forgot something.”
“Oh, no!” I said. “What?”
“The topping we all love the most,” said Claud. “Anchovies!” She rolled over on the bed, laughing hysterically. Everybody else cracked up, too, including me. Actually I like anchovies, but everybody else hates them.
“Who really eats those things, anyway?” asked Stacey. “I mean, they are totally gross!”
“You know who eats them?” I said. “Sam, that’s who!”
Stacey shrieked. She and my brother Sam have had this on-again, off-again romance for awhile. I can’t imagine what she sees in him, personally. “Ew, ew, ew!” Stacey was saying. “He really likes them?”
I nodded. I had the feeling that Stacey was re-thinking her relationship with Sam. “He loves them,” I added, just to rub it in. Then I headed for the kitchen, to phone in our pizza order.
When I returned to my room, I discovered that the others had started to tell ghost stories. The story of my night at the Sawyer house had spread, and ghosts had been a major topic of discussion that week, both in our meetings and at school. The other topic was how brave I, Kristy Thomas, was!
The first I’d heard about it was when Cokie Mason approached me in the hall late Tuesday morning. “Kristy,” she said breathlessly, “I hate to admit it, but you are really awesome!”
Now, for Cokie to say something like that — well, it’s sort of a miracle. Cokie and I are not friends and we probably never will be. I stared at her. “Well, thanks, Cokie,” I said. “That’s nice of you to say.” Then I started to walk off. I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Kristy, wait,” she said, running after me. “I just have to ask you — did you really feel the cold, slimy hand of the ghost just as the clock struck twelve?”
“What?” My first thought was that Cokie had gone crazy. But my second thought was that she had heard about my night at the Sawyer house. Now, I was pretty proud of myself for getting through that night. Not because of ghost stories, but because I’d been responsible for eight kids and they’d all survived. However, I figured that if Cokie wanted to give me credit for being a Ghostbuster, I’d take it. “Uh, yeah, sure I did,” I said. “Well, got to run!” I escaped from her as quickly as possible and headed for the cafeteria to meet my friends.
“Dawn,” I said, setting my tray down next to her a few minutes later, “I have a feeling you’ve been telling people about my night in the haunted house.” I knew Dawn was responsible, because she’s the only one who would make up details like that “cold, slimy hand.”
“Um, well —” Dawn began hesitantly. She looked down at her sprout-and-tomato sandwich.
“It’s okay,” I said. “But you’d better tell me what I supposedly did.”
Dawn’s eyes lit up. “I guess I might have exaggerated a little,” she said. “Or at least, I filled in the details of the story you told us.” She grinned at me. “I hope you don’t mind,” she added.
I didn’t mind. It was fun being a hero at school. Anyway, as I walked back into my room after ordering the pizzas that night, I heard Claudia telling a ghost story.
“So then, three days later, the guy goes to the house that the hitchhiking girl had pointed out,” she was saying, “and he knocks on the door, and when this woman answers he holds up the sweater.” She took a deep breath. “And he tells the woman that her daughter left it in his car.”
“Yeah?” asked Dawn eagerly. “And then what?”
Claudia leaned forward. “The woman tells him that her daughter has been dead for fifteen years!”
Everybody gasped.
“She takes him to the cemetery and shows him her daughter’s grave,” Claudia finished. “Isn’t that wild? It’s true, too. It happened to my cousin’s friend, out on this road near Greenvale.” She shuddered.
“Awesome,” said Dawn. “I’m going to have to remember that one.”
“You should write a book of ghost stories,” Mallory said to Dawn. “Claud and I could do the illustrations.”
“Great idea,” said Mary Anne.
“Maybe I will someday,” said Dawn. “For now, it’s fun just to tell them — and listen to them — on nights like this.”
Half an hour later, we’d finished with ghost stories and had started in on makeovers, when suddenly there was a knock on my bedroom door. “I bet the pizza’s here!” I said. I jumped up and opened the door. A delivery boy stood in the hall, holding two boxes of pizza.
“Two large pizzas,” he said. “Double anchovies on both!”
My jaw dropped, and I heard my friends squeal. “Anchovies?” I asked.
Sam popped out from behind the delivery boy. “Gotcha!” he cried.
I paid the delivery boy. “How much did he give you to come up here and say that?” I asked. “Just out of curiosity.”
“A dollar,” the boy said, grinning.
“And there really aren’t any anchovies on these pizzas, right?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said, still grinning.
I took the pizzas from him and stuck out my tongue at Sam. “Thanks,” I said. “See you.” I closed my bedroom door behind me and put the pizzas on my desk. We’d already brought paper plates, napkins, and sodas to my room, so we dug right in.
As soon as everybody had grabbed a slice, Claudia held up her hand. “Wait a second,” she said. “I think we should have a pizza toast, to Kristy.” She held up her slice, point out. “Here’s to our president, who survived a night in a haunted house.”
“And a night with eight kids,” added Mary Anne, holding up her slice.
We all held up our slices and bumped the points together. Then we cracked up. It’s a silly tradition, but we love it. I took a big bite of my pizza. “Mmm,” I said. “This makes up for a night of bread, water, and apples.”
“Too bad you didn’t have me along on that trip,” said Claudia. “I’ve always got plenty of food with me.”
“That is, if you call Doritos ‘food,’ ” said Stacey, smiling.
“Doritos are food!” said Claudia. “They are! I mean, you eat them, right?” She looked as if she was ready to defend Doritos to the death.
Just then, we heard a knock on the door. “Who’s there?” I called, hoping it wasn’t Sam and the delivery boy again.
“It’s me, Karen.”
Karen and Andrew were staying at Watson’s that weekend. Nannie had promised to keep the little kids out of our hair for the night, and she’d done a great job so far. I glanced at the clock, then opened the door. “Karen, do you know what time it is?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“It’s after ten. You should be in bed.”
“I know,” she said. “Nannie put me to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I keep thinking about Dorothy Sawyer.”
“Have you been having bad dreams?” I asked, looking at her closely. Maybe the ghost stories had been too much for her, even though she loves creepy stuff.
“No, it’s not that,” she said. “It’s —” She stopped and looked around at my friends, who were listening closely. “It’s just that I keep thinking she reminds me of somebody. Don’t you think so, too?” Karen held out her hand, palm up. In it was a small picture of Dorothy, one that had been in the album we’d found.
“Karen!” I said. “I can’t believe you took that.”
“I know I shouldn’t have,” she said. “I’ll send it back.”
“And anyway,” I said. “Who could she possibly remind you of? Dorothy is dead.”
“Not necessarily,” said Dawn suddenly. “They never found her body, remember?” Dawn’s cheeks were pink, and her eyes sparkled.
I took the picture from Karen and looked at it carefully. My friends crowded around to see it. Then I heard Mary Anne gasp.
“I know her!” she said. I looked at her, and her face was white as a sheet.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“She’s the woman who runs the sewing store downtown. You know, the one where I buy needlepoint patterns sometimes?” Mary Anne took a closer look at the picture. “That’s her, I swear!” she
said. “Only in this picture she’s much, much younger.”
“You’re right,” said Karen. “That’s who I thought she looked like. I go to that store all the time, with Mommy.”
I looked back and forth between Karen and Mary Anne. They seemed so sure about what they were saying. “Well,” I said, “now what do we do?”
We talked for a long time that night. The possibility that Dorothy Sawyer was actually alive, after all this time, was really awesome.
“You know,” I said, at one point, “when I first saw Will Blackburn I thought he looked kind of creepy and mean. But once we got to know him a little bit, I saw that he wasn’t so bad. And now that I think about it, he’s probably just a really lonely, sad old man.”
“So what are you saying?” asked Mary Anne. She could tell I had something on my mind.
“I’m saying that maybe we ought to try to get the two of them together,” I said. “Like maybe I should ask Charlie to drive me back to Sawyer Road. I’ll tell Will where Dorothy is, and make him happy.”
“Whoa,” said Stacey. “Not so fast. I mean, what if it isn’t really her? He’d be so disappointed.”
“It’s her,” murmured Mary Anne. “I just know it is.”
Claudia held out a bag of M&M’s, offering them around. “I think it’s such a romantic story,” she said. “And it would be really cool if we could get the two of them together again. But we should be careful, too. For all we know, she could be married to somebody else by now.”
We discussed the situation from every angle, and finally decided that we would go to the sewing store to see “Dorothy” the next day. We weren’t positive that was what we should do, but we were going to do it. Then we went back to doing makeovers, eating tons of junk food, watching a scary old movie on TV, and doing all the other stuff you do at sleepovers. Of course, none of us slept much, but that’s typical.
I looked around my room when I woke up the next morning. Mary Anne was still sleeping, in the guest bed next to mine. Mal and Jessi, lying on the floor in sleeping bags, were whispering together as they looked at a book of horse pictures. Claudia and Stacey were sitting at my dressing table, checking out each other’s newest lip glosses and trading makeup tips. They were still in pajamas, but their faces were made up as if they were ready for a fancy night out. And Dawn was curled up in my reading chair, dozing, with a half-read magazine in her lap.