Oddest of All

  “Murphy!” hisses Tiffany. “Your shoelace!”

  I glance down. I have forgotten to untie it, which is the key to one of my first funny bits. Out of habit, I lift my foot to take care of the lace. At that instant the curtain opens, which startles me so much that I lose my balance and fall over, landing onstage in full view of the audience.

  There they are. The enemy. The people who are going to stare at me, judge me, whisper about me tomorrow. I am so frozen with terror I cannot move. I just lie there looking at them.

  And then the laugh begins. My temperature goes in two directions, my blood turning to ice at the same time that the heat rises in my face. I have a long moment of terror—well, it feels like a long moment; according to Mikey, it was less than two seconds—while I think that this is it, I will never stand up again, never come to school again, never leave my house again. I will ask whoever finally picks me up to carry me home and put me in the attic. My parents will have to shove my meals through a slot in the door, because I will never be able to face another living human being.

  Love saves the day. “Murphy, are you all right?” hisses Tiffany.

  For the sound of that voice I would do anything—even get back on my feet.

  And then, the second miracle. Some brilliant portion of my brain realizes that this is a comedy, and I have just started us off with a big laugh. I stand at the edge of the stage to do a fake knock. In rehearsal, I only mimed it. Now, for some reason, I say loudly, “Knock knock. Knockity-knock-knock. ”

  For some reason the audience finds this funny. Another laugh.

  Tiffany comes to the door, and we go through our opening business, which establishes that she is prim and proper and I am a total idiot, which doesn’t take much acting because it is pretty much real life anyway. But something is happening. I’m not making up lines, but I am making bigger gestures, broader moves, weirder voices than I did in rehearsal. People are howling. Tiffany’s eyes are dancing, and I can see that she is trying not to laugh. I am feeling like a genius.

  We get to the imaginary restaurant. Laurel comes out to take our order, and I have the same effect on her.

  I am starting to feel as if I’m having an out-of-body experience. Who is this funny person making everyone laugh? How long can it go on? Can I keep it going, keep cranking up the jokes, hold on to this glorious lightning bolt I’m riding?

  Laurel disappears to get our order. I fake blowing my nose on the cloth napkin, then inspecting it to see the results. I act as if I am fascinated by my imaginary boogers. Tiffany acts as if she is repulsed, but I can see she is hardly able to keep from bursting into laughter—especially when I hand the napkin across the table so she can examine it, too.

  The audience is just about screaming. I am beginning to think that this kind of laughter is even better than the sound of Tiffany’s voice.

  Laurel comes back with our “order,” which, because this is a skit and we are on a low budget, is a plate of Hostess cupcakes. Chocolate.

  I am supposed to eat in a disgusting way. The script does not specify how. Still riding my wave of improvisation inspiration, I pick up a cupcake and stuff the entire thing into my mouth. Tiffany’s eyes widen and she turns her head to hide the laugh she can’t hold in. Her shoulders are shaking. This is too good to be true.

  I deliver my next line—which is about how beautiful she is—with bits of chocolate spewing out. It’s disgusting, but hilarious. Tiffany has tears streaming down her cheeks from trying to hold in her laughter.

  Desperate to keep the riff going, I cram another entire cupcake into my mouth.

  This is when disaster strikes. Suddenly I discover that I can’t breathe, because there is a chocolate logjam in my throat. I only need a minute, I think, and I’ll get this. I try to give my next line, but nothing comes out. Tiffany starts to look alarmed. The audience is still laughing, but it’s starting to die down, as if some of them realize I am in trouble.

  Which is when Mikey comes barreling onstage from behind me, screaming, “He’s choking! He’s choking!”

  He grabs me around the waist and jabs his fists into my belly.

  I’ve been Heimliched!

  Those of you who know about the Heimlich maneuver will remember that basically it forces the air out of your lungs, blowing whatever is blocking your breathing out of your mouth.

  Those of you who have been staging this in your mind as you read will remember who is directly across from me.

  Those of you with even minimal powers of prediction will know what happens next. An unholy mix of partially chewed Hostess chocolate cupcakes spews out of my mouth and spatters all over Tiffany.

  I am filled with deeper horror than any I have ever known. Wrenching my way out of Mikey’s grasp, I bolt around the table to clean her off.

  Unfortunately, the table is close to the edge of the stage. Too close. Tripping over my untied shoelace, I hurtle headfirst into the darkness.

  My body makes some very unpleasant sounds as it lands.

  Okay, I probably could have accepted the broken leg.

  I might even have been able to live with the memory of the look on Tiffany’s face.

  But when the ambulance guys came and put me on a stretcher, and everyone stood there watching as they rolled me out of the school, and Mikey followed after them to tell me that my fly had been open during the entire fiasco, I really thought that was too much.

  Anyway, that’s how I ended up in this hospital bed, staring at my right leg, which is up in traction.

  Tiffany came to visit a while ago. That would have been wonderful, except she brought along her boyfriend, Chuck. He goes to another school and is old enough to drive.

  Something inside me died when she introduced him.

  To make things worse (and what doesn’t?), it turns out that Chuck was in the audience yesterday.

  “You were brilliant, man,” he says. “At least, until the part where it all fell to pieces.”

  I want to shove a Hostess cupcake down his throat.

  After they are gone, Mikey shows up.

  “Tough luck, Murphy,” he says, looking at my cast.

  I try to remember that he is my best friend, and really thought he was saving my life when he Heimliched me.

  It is not easy.

  “Cheer up,” he says. “It couldn’t get worse than this.”

  He’s lucky my leg is in traction and I can’t get out of bed. He is also lucky I don’t have a cupcake on me.

  After Mikey leaves, I make two decisions: (a) I am going to change my name, and (b) I never want to be thirteen again as long as I live.

  There is another knock on my door.

  “Hello, Murphy,” says a soft voice.

  It’s Laurel.

  She smiles shyly. “Can I come in?”

  I’ve never noticed how pretty she is when she smiles. For a brief moment I think life may not be so bad after all.

  I am pretty sure, however, that this is a delusion.

  After all, my name is still Murphy Murphy.

  And I’m still thirteen years old.

  I don’t even want to think about what might happen next.

  The Ghost Let Go

  THUNDER rumbled overhead.

  A crack of lightning split the midnight sky.

  My father said a word I don’t get to use.

  “What’s the matter, James?” asked Chris Gurley. (My father’s name is actually Henry, but Chris and I were sitting in the backseat and pretending he was our chauffeur, so we were calling him James.)

  “Nothing,” Dad muttered, as heavy drops began to spatter the windshield. “I just wanted to get back to Syracuse before this storm started. I’m exhausted.”

  We were driving home from a Halloween storytelling concert put on by a couple of Dad’s friends. I was thinking about their last story, the tale of “The Phantom Hitchhiker,” when I spotted a woman walking along the road ahead of us.

  I felt a shiver, as if the story was coming true. Stop it, Nine, I t
old myself. You’re being silly. Before I could suggest to Dad that we should offer the woman a ride she turned and ran straight at us, waving her arms wildly. As she got closer I could see that she was screaming. For a terrifying moment, I actually thought she was going to fling herself onto our hood.

  “Dad, watch out!” I cried—unnecessarily, since he was already slamming his foot against the brake and wrenching the steering wheel to the right. I caught a terrifying glimpse of the woman’s twisted, screaming face through my window as we shot past, missing her by inches.

  We were going way too fast when we hit the side of the road. Next thing I knew we were bouncing down a steep bank, and I realized with horror that we were going to roll over.

  Everything seemed to slow down as the car went onto its side, then its top. When we stopped, I was hanging upside down in the dark, held in place by my seat belt. The radio had somehow gotten turned on, and a country-and-westem song was blaring through the dark, which only added to the weirdness.

  “Nine!” cried my father, shouting to be heard above the radio. “Chris! Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” muttered Chris. I could tell from the sound of her voice that she was also upside down.

  “I’m all right,” I said. “Except for the blood rushing to my head.”

  I noticed that my voice was shaking.

  “See if you can unhook your seat belts,” said Dad.

  I reached down with my hand. The car roof—which was now the floor—was only a couple of inches from my skull. Bracing myself, I fiddled with the seat belt. When I finally opened the buckle I fell to the ceiling, landing on my head.

  I heard a thump as Chris landed beside me. Between the music, the darkness, the hanging upside down, and the terror of the accident, we were pretty confused. It took a few moments of crawling around on the ceiling/floor to find one of the doors, and a few more to pry it open.

  The rain was coming down so hard that within seconds my clothes were soaked and clinging to my skin. I was so relieved to be out of the car that I didn’t really care.

  Once we had finished checking to see if we really were all okay, my father muttered, “I’d like to get my hands on that dame. Do you think that was some sort of Halloween prank, or is she merely crazy?” He stopped as if struck by what he had just said and looked around nervously, obviously wondering if a crazy woman might be watching us even now.

  “Where do you suppose she went, anyway?” asked Chris, sounding as nervous as I felt.

  I looked around, but between the darkness and the rain, I doubt I would have seen her if she was standing more than ten feet away.

  “You two keep your eyes open,” ordered Dad. Then he turned his attention to the car.

  “How bad is it, Mr. T.?” asked Chris after a minute.

  “I won’t know until we can get a better look at it,” he said mournfully.

  I felt really bad for him. The Golden Chariot, as he calls our car, is a 1959 Cadillac. It’s huge (comparing it to a modern car is like comparing a seven-layer cake to an Oreo) and it’s my father’s pride and joy. He’s a preservation architect, after all, and he likes his cars the way he likes his buildings—big, old, and fancy. Given the time and money he had put into the Chariot, I could see why he would feel bitter toward the woman who caused us to plunge into the ditch.

  Despite her spooky appearance, it didn’t occur to me to think the woman might have been a ghost. After all, Dad had seen her, too, and while by this time in our lives Chris and I had seen several ghosts, Dad had yet to spot one. It just wasn’t something you expected of him.

  “Well, we can’t stand out here in the rain,” he said gloomily. “We’d better see if we can find someplace where we can make a few phone calls.”

  “That may not be easy,” said Chris.

  She was right. We had been taking one of my father’s famous “shortcuts” along an old country road and hadn’t seen a house for the last two miles. Which meant we could either walk back those two miles through the pounding rain, or keep going on the hope that we might find a house not far ahead. Since we couldn’t really get any wetter even if we tried, we decided to gamble on going forward.

  “Besides,” said Dad, “maybe we’ll run into that maniac and I can give her a piece of my mind. Wait a minute while I get the flashlight.”

  Lying on his back, he managed to retrieve a flashlight from the glove compartment. Following his lead, we scrambled out of the ditch and up to the road. The rain was pelting down so hard that it hurt. Since there was pretty much zero traffic, we were soon walking side by side. I kept looking around, worrying that the woman might jump out of the bushes or something. What she had done already was so crazy there was no telling what else she might do.

  Here’s the first thing I learned that night: If you walk through freezing rain for twenty minutes, you’ll probably be willing to knock on the door of a house you normally wouldn’t get near on a bet—especially if there’s no other house in sight. Of course, given how dark it was, “in sight” didn’t amount to much in this case.

  Actually, we didn’t even see the house at first. We only realized it was there because I bumped into something and shouted “Ouch!” When Dad lifted the beam of the flashlight to see what the problem was, we saw a mailbox. The name B. SMILEY was painted on the side.

  “They’ve got to be kidding,” snorted Chris.

  “I don’t care if Smiley shares the house with Dopey, Doc, and Grumpy,” I replied, “as long as they let us out of this rain.”

  Though the house wasn’t visible from the road, we found an unpaved driveway just past the mailbox. It was lined with trees whose branches met overhead, making it almost a tunnel. The branches provided a little relief from the storm, but the effect was so creepy I decided I would have preferred the rain.

  Just before we left the tree tunnel a bolt of lightning revealed the house. It was about fifty feet ahead of us. Tall and brooding, it had a steep roof and a pair of spooky gables. It looked like something out of a nightmare, the kind of place you’re supposed to find when your car breaks down on a cold, rainy night. The only light came from a single window on the second floor.

  My father waited until the rumble of thunder had passed, then said, “Well . . . is it?”

  What he meant was, “Is it haunted?”

  This wasn’t an unreasonable question. Ever since Chris and I had met the Woman in White at the Grand Theater, we had been growing increasingly sensitive to ghosts. Sometimes we knew if a place was haunted just by looking at it.

  Sometimes, but not always.

  “I can’t tell,” replied Chris, shouting to be heard above the sudden gust of wind that made the shutters on the house begin to bang.

  “Me, either!” I bellowed.

  I didn’t bother to add that I had come to the conclusion that people were a lot more dangerous than ghosts anyway. Not that I don’t find ghosts eerie. Something about meeting the spirit of a person who has crossed into the world of the dead makes my flesh tingle no matter how many times it happens.

  “Well, standing in the rain is stupid,” said Dad at last. “Let’s go.”

  Leaving the cover of the trees, he sprinted toward the porch. I don’t know why he bothered to run; we were already totally drenched. Maybe it was the promise of shelter being so close. Pointless or not, Chris and I sprinted after him.

  The steps sagged beneath our weight as we dashed up to the porch. It was a relief to be out of the downpour—even if it meant standing at the threshold of such a weird-looking place.

  Dad stared at the door for a moment but didn’t make any move to summon the owner. “Don’t be silly, Henry,” he muttered to himself at last. “It’s just an old house in the country.” He played the beam of the flashlight over the doorframe until he found the doorbell button. He pushed it vigorously.

  No one answered for a long time. I was wondering if we were going to have to start walking again when an old man’s face appeared at the little window in the door. H
is expression was hard to read, and at first I thought he was going to turn around and leave us standing on the porch. But after a moment the door creaked open.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  His voice was scratchy, as if he didn’t use it very often.

  “We had an accident up the road a bit,” said my father. “Could we use your phone, please?”

  A strange expression flickered across the old man’s face. It vanished almost immediately, as if he had caught himself telling a secret. His features froze into place, only his eyes betraying that something bothered him. With a shake of his head he said, “Don’t have a phone.”

  My father sighed. He tried to keep it from showing, but I could tell from his eyes he was feeling a little desperate. “Is there anyone near here who does have a phone?” he asked.

  The old man shook his head again, and I noticed that he was wearing a hearing aid. “No one near here at all,” he said.

  “Any chance you could give us a ride?” asked Dad. He was sounding more desperate with each question.

  Another shake of the head. “I don’t drive anymore.”

  Dad looked back at the storm. He took a deep breath, then said, “I know it’s a lot to ask, but could we possibly stay here for the night?”

  It was the old man’s turn to hesitate. He studied the three of us for a moment, then nodded and stepped aside so that we could enter.

  His silence was spooky, but not as spooky as his house. The place looked like something from another time—or at least as if it hadn’t been cleaned since some earlier period in history. Dust lay thick on every surface. Cobwebs tangled in the corners. The pattern on the carpet had nearly disappeared.

  “My name is Henry Tanleven,” said my father, extending his hand.

  The old man looked at my father’s hand as if he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with it. Finally he took it in his own and said, “Benjamin Smiley.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Smiley,” said my father. “And my apologies for intruding on you this way. This is my daughter, Nine, and her friend, Chris Gurley.”

  Mr. Smiley looked surprised by my name. “It’s really Nina,” I explained, as I did almost every time I first met someone. “People call me Nine because they like the way it sounds when you put it together with my last name.”