“Buddy,” I replied, “I’m not your wicked stepmother, but I am your tutor, and it would help if you followed directions.”
“Oh, brother. All right.” Buddy stared at the page. Then he stared out the window for awhile. I let him.
When he didn’t give any indication of going back to the workbook pages, I said. “You just used up two minutes of your free time.”
“What?!” Buddy shot me a look that I’m sure he usually reserved for Mr. Moser.
“Please read the instructions.”
“O-kay.” Buddy paused. Then he began reading. “‘On the page … below … are — are puh-puh …’”
I think Buddy was waiting for me to tell him the word. “Sound it out,” I said.
“Pars?”
“Almost.”
“Oh, pairs. ‘Pairs of … wuh-words. Some … words ruh-ruh …’”
The word was “rhyme.” How would he ever sound that out? “I’ll give you a clue,” I told Buddy. “‘All’ and ‘tall’ are words that …”
“Rhyme!” cried Buddy, actually sounding pleased. He returned to the directions. “‘Some words rhyme and some words … donut.’ I mean, ‘don’t. Cir-circle the rhyme words.’”
“The what?” I said.
“‘The … rhyming words.’”
“Good.”
Buddy heaved another sigh and picked up his pencil as if it weighed a ton. He looked at the first pair of words, then at me, then at the words again. Maybe I was making him nervous. “I think I’ll take a two-minute break,” I said, “since you got one.” I sat on Buddy’s bed while he worked halfheartedly on the page. When I returned to the desk, Buddy had completed one column of words — and most of them were wrong. I made him go back, read the words to me, and do a lot of erasing. When the dreaded page was finally finished, Buddy said, “What time is it?”
“Five-fifteen,” I replied.
“Five-fifteen? It’s only five-fifteen?”
“Sorry,” I said.
“I want to play with our video game.”
“At five minutes of six you can do whatever you want.”
“No fair,” muttered Buddy, but he returned to his work.
What was I doing wrong? I wondered. I’d thought I would enjoy this. I’d thought Buddy would see what fun reading could be.
Nothing was going as I’d planned.
At long last I looked at my watch and said, “Five of six, Buddy. You can stop working now.”
“All right!” Buddy closed his reading book with a flourish. Then he took the books and the flash cards and stashed them under his bed — I guess so he wouldn’t have to look at them.
As I walked back to my house I thought, There has got to be a better way.
That night, Vanessa finished her homework early and went to the rec room to play with Margo and Claire.
I sat on my bed with a pencil and a pad of paper and tried to think of ways to make reading more interesting for Buddy. Why do I like reading? Because it’s fun, I thought. Because it means something. Buddy’s flash cards and workbook pages were not fun and they didn’t mean much. The stories in his reader weren’t much fun, either. But what could I do to change that? I didn’t have any ideas, so I put the pad and pencil down. I picked up Sophie’s diary instead. Suddenly, even though I hadn’t finished my homework, and even though I didn’t have any ideas for Buddy, I decided that tonight was the perfect night to read about Sophie’s life in 1894.
I started at the very beginning. It was winter, of course, and Sophie seemed to have been invited to a lot of parties. Her family had known a lot of the other families in town. Maybe Sophie had been rich after all, despite the smallish size of her house. Or maybe in 1894, that was a big house. At the parties, Sophie and her friends played “parlour games,” but Sophie didn’t explain what they were. I would have to find out sometime.
Around the beginning of February, Sophie started mentioning a boy named Paul Hancock. Her diary entries got pretty mushy:
Blechh. I will never pine for a boy.
On February 11th, Sophie wrote:
Sophie finally decided to send Paul a valentine card and, as it turned out, Paul was secretly pining for Sophie, so everything worked out okay.
I called Jessi to tell her what was happening in Sophie’s life. Then I went back to the diary. For a few weeks, all Sophie wrote about was school and Paul. Then Sophie’s March 3rd diary entry said that her mother had just learned that she was going to have a baby:
Whew! I had to call Jessi and read her that passage. Then I skimmed through spring and summer in the diary because I couldn’t wait to find out what happened in October.
It was very sad.
Sophie’s mother gave birth to a tiny baby boy, Edgar, but two days later she died. I couldn’t believe it. I had to call Jessi again. And I knew I should finish my homework, but maybe if I woke up extra early the next morning, I could do it then.
I shouldn’t have called Jessi so quickly, I soon realized, because Sophie’s story just got more and more interesting … and mysterious. In fact, I had to call Jessi five more times — until Mrs. Ramsey said no more phone calls. Luckily, I’d told Jessi almost all of the story by then. This is what happened:
Three days after Sophie’s mother was buried, a portrait of her disappeared from Sophie’s grandfather’s house. Mr. Hickman lived in a mansion across town. He was incredibly wealthy, and Sophie’s family would come into a lot of money when he died. As it was, he gave them quite a bit of money while he was alive. Anyway, Grandfather Hickman accused Sophie’s father, Jared, of stealing the portrait — and everyone in town believed him and shunned Sophie and her father and baby brother. Apparently Jared had sort of a shady past. In the first place, he came from a poor family, and Mr. Hickman called him a gold-digger. He said Jared only married his daughter for her money. But there was more to Jared than that. Before he got married, he had been arrested for stealing — twice. And he had a reputation for being violent. To be honest, he didn’t sound like a very nice person. But Sophie wrote that he was her father, he had always been kind to her, and she loved him.
At any rate, when the painting disappeared, Grandfather Hickman wrote Sophie, Edgar, and Jared out of his will. And of course he stopped giving them money. At least he didn’t make them move out of their house, which he also owned, but they didn’t have much to live on and, because Hickman was a well-respected member of the community and Jared wasn’t, hardly anyone would give Jared work. He took to selling firewood and doing little things like that.
You could tell that Sophie was furious. Her mother’s portrait, she wrote, was not in their house, and anyway, she knew her father hadn’t stolen it. She wanted his name cleared. It was unfair that he’d been accused just because of his bad reputation.
The last entry in Sophie’s diary, on December 31st, read:
As Claudia would say, “Oh, my lord. Oh, my lord!” And I had to wait until the next day to tell Jessi about this last diary entry? Impossible. I couldn’t wait. I absolutely could not wait…. Could I? How do you keep from telling your best friend news like this?
Then — Just a second! I thought. Stacey’s the one I should be telling. She was the one whose house Sophie and Jared would return to haunt.
Oh, my LORD!! Had Stacey and her mom bought a haunted house?
I looked at my watch. Almost ten o’clock. I couldn’t call Stacey then. For one thing, it was too late at night to call a person and scare her with possible ghost stories. For another thing, it was bedtime. I could hear Vanessa and the triplets coming upstairs. At our house, the bedtime for anyone nine and older has recently been made ten o’clock. Now a Pike kid looks forward feverishly to his or her ninth birthday.
I waited patiently for a turn in the bathroom, washed my face, and brushed my teeth. When I returned to our room, Vanessa was already in bed. I quickly changed into my nightgown and hopped into my own bed.
“What were you doing up here all evening?” Vanessa wanted to know. “Ho
mework?”
I shook my head.
“Thank goodness. I wouldn’t go to middle school if I thought I was going to get so much homework.”
I smiled. Then I decided to tell Vanessa the story of Sophie and Jared. Sometimes I tell her secrets, sometimes I don’t. If I don’t, it’s usually because she’s in one of her poetry-writing phases and wouldn’t be paying attention anyway. Or else it’s because I want to enjoy keeping the secret to myself.
But that night Vanessa wasn’t lost in her thoughts — although she did look pretty sleepy — and no way could I keep the secret to myself.
“You will never guess what I was doing,” I said to Vanessa.
“What?” (She never guesses.)
“Reading Sophie’s diary. And you will never guess what I found out.”
“What?”
“Guess, Vanessa, guess!” I cried. “You always just say ‘What?’”
“You always tell me I’ll never guess — so I never do.”
I sighed. Then I told Vanessa not to take things so literally. And then I told her about Jared and Sophie and the missing painting. We were both in bed and the lights were out (after all, we were supposed to be asleep), and I have to admit I felt pretty spooked.
Vanessa must have felt that way, too. “Do you think the spirits of Jared and Sophie are roaming around Stacey’s house right now?” she whispered.
“I don’t know.” I sat up in bed and looked out the window. It faced the backyard, but I couldn’t see anything.
“When you think of it,” I said, settling back into bed after a few moments, “an awful lot of people have moved in and out of that house. We’ve lived in ours for over twelve years — since before I was born. But I can think of at least six families or couples who have owned Stacey’s house before she and her mom bought it. There must be a reason for that.”
“Yeah …” said Vanessa softly.
“Plus, Stacey told me that her mother didn’t have much money to spend on a house. That’s how they wound up with Sophie’s house. It’s big and old … and it was cheap. Why would such a nice big old house be so cheap?”
“Don’t know.”
“Gosh, I wonder what really did happen to that portrait. But you know, if Jared did steal it, I can almost understand why. He might have wanted a reminder of his wife. But Sophie is sure her father didn’t steal it. Besides, why steal something like that? You’d have to keep it hidden.”
“Maybe just to have it close by,” murmured Vanessa.
“Maybe…. I wonder if Sophie ever cleared her father’s name. I mean, if he really was innocent. If she did, then we don’t have to worry about ghosts over at Stacey’s. But if she didn’t, well, I certainly wouldn’t want to live in a haunted house. And maybe all those people who lived there before Stacey moved in felt the same way. But they didn’t tell the real estate agent why they were moving out because they were too embarrassed. I bet they made up other excuses — like an old house needs too many repairs. Or something like that. You know? … Vanessa? Vanessa?”
Silence. Vanessa was sound asleep.
I turned over and tried to fall asleep myself, but I was trembling with excitement. A haunted house. A century-old mystery to solve. It was all too much!
I hadn’t been able to wait to tell the BSC members about my mystery, so I spread the word in school the next day, and at that afternoon’s club meeting, we discussed things between job calls. Everyone was fascinated, of course, especially Stacey, but I didn’t realize just how fascinated Kristy had been until I read her entry in the club notebook.
It was a rainy Saturday on the following weekend. It was also one of the weekends when Karen and Andrew, her little stepsister and stepbrother, were staying at their father’s house. Kristy likes those weekends. It makes Watson’s mansion feel fuller. More importantly, she loves being with Karen and Andrew.
Shortly after lunch, Kristy’s mother and Watson took off for a meeting of the parents’ council at the private school that Karen goes to and that Andrew and Emily will one day attend, and Nannie took off for bowling.
Kristy’s grandmother is really neat. She doesn’t seem like a grandmother at all. She has all these friends and hobbies and activities (being in a bowling league is one of her favorites), and she drives this rattly old car that she painted pink and calls the Pink Clinker.
After the adults had left, Kristy’s big brothers went to a pep rally at Stoneybrook High — and Kristy’s baby-sitting job began. She found herself facing four bored children.
David Michael, the oldest (he’s seven, in case you forgot), whined, “I’m bo-ored.” (David Michael can be a champion whiner.)
Karen, who’s six and not a bad whiner herself, added, “I want to go outsi-ide.”
Andrew, four, just said, “Yeah.”
And Emily asked hopefully, “Cookie?”
Kristy looked at her new little sister. Emily Michelle has short, jet-black hair and dark eyes that are so pleading they could make you say yes to anything. She’s adorable. However, her speech is not great for a two-year-old. One reason is that the language she heard from birth until the time she boarded a plane to the United States was Vietnamese, and now she hears only English. Also, no one is sure what kind of care Emily got in the orphanage in Vietnam, but we’re betting no one had much time to spend with any of the kids there. Emily’s pediatrician in Stoneybrook calls her “language delayed,” so the Brewers and Thomases have spent hours talking to Emily, reading to her, and trying to teach her words and phrases. When she makes the effort to ask for something in English, she usually gets it.
So when she asked for a cookie, Kristy said, “Sure!” Then, brightening, she added, “Why don’t we all have a snack?”
“We just had lu-unch,” whined David Michael.
Oh, boy, thought Kristy. The kids must really be bored if they’re turning down food.
She got a cookie for Emily Michelle and tried to think of ways to entertain the children that afternoon. She knew she’d have to come up with something good. They’d already colored, watched Sesame Street and Pee-wee’s Playhouse, played Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders, and built a fort with a moat around it out of blocks.
And then Kristy’s great idea came to her. Her great ideas usually come out of the blue. I mean, she wasn’t thinking about me or Sophie or the mystery right then — she was thinking about whining children — but she found herself saying excitedly, “Let’s explore the attic!”
“The attic?” squeaked Andrew.
“The fourth floor?” cried David Michael.
“Where Boo-Boo won’t go because of Ben Brewer’s ghost?” added Karen.
“More cookie?” said Emily.
Kristy grabbed another cookie for Emily.
“The third floor,” Karen began importantly, “and the attic above it are both haunted. You know that.” She put her hands on her hips.
Karen believes in ghosts and witches. (I was beginning to understand why.) She believes that old Ben Brewer, Watson’s great-grandfather, was haunted by a headless ghost, and then turned into a recluse. After he died, he became a ghost himself, and both he and the headless ghost haunt the third floor of the house (which no one uses), as well as the attic. Boo-Boo, Watson’s old cat, refuses to go above the second floor, which Karen has told the other kids is a sure sign that the third floor is haunted. As she says, animals can sense those things.
Needless to say, the kids (except for Emily, who was too little) were afraid of the idea of exploring the attic, but Kristy could tell they were intrigued, too.
“Who knows what we’ll find up there,” said Kristy. Then, remembering the trunk and Stacey’s attic, she added, “Old clothes to dress up in, maybe some old books. Even some old toys.”
“Old skeletons,” said Karen.
“Old ghosts,” said Andrew.
“I doubt it,” Kristy replied. “Come on. Let’s just see what’s there. If we find anything scary or hear any funny sounds, we’ll come right back downstairs.
”
“I’m not afraid of ghosts,” announced David Michael suddenly. “Especially headless ones. A headless ghost couldn’t even see you.”
“Ben Brewer isn’t headless,” Karen pointed out, but Kristy was already walking resolutely toward the stairs, and Karen and the others were following her.
Kristy carried Emily up the three flights of stairs because Emily is a slow, one-step-at-a-time stair-climber. Karen, Andrew, and David Michael huddled behind Kristy. When she paused at the top of the third flight and fumbled for the light switch, she wasn’t sure what she’d find. Unlike Stacey’s attic, which is small, Kristy’s attic is the entire fourth floor of the house — room after room. But Kristy had never been past the head of the stairs, where she had dropped off stacks of magazines, or gone after Christmas tree ornaments. Watson keeps all the important things right there.
Now Kristy flicked on the light and walked boldly into the room and toward the first doorway she saw. The kids followed her like ducklings after their mother. They passed the Christmas decorations, boxes, and magazines, and found themselves in a room full of furniture, every piece covered with a white sheet.
“Aughh!” screeched Karen. “I think this is the furniture from Old Ben Brewer’s room! Look, there’s his bed … and his rocking chair … and his —”
“Aw, you don’t know this stuff is Ben’s,” said David Michael, apparently on friendly terms with the dreaded ghost.
Andrew and Emily didn’t say anything. Kristy had put Emily down, and she and Andrew were both gripping her hands.
Everyone wandered into the next room.
“Oh, cool!” Karen exclaimed. “Kristy was right. There are old toys up here!”
The room was a dusty mess, and it was dark, even with some light filtering through a dirty window, but it was the most interesting of the rooms so far. Karen had run to a brass doll’s bed with two ancient-looking dolls nestled in it. Andrew found a set of tin soldiers. And Emily spotted a rocking horse, pulled Kristy over to it, and said, “Up?”
Of course, Kristy lifted her onto the horse right away and held her in place while Emily rocked happily. The kids had been playing in the quiet room for almost five minutes when, at the same moment, Emily said, “Down,” and Kristy realized that David Michael wasn’t there.