Now You See Me ... (7 page)

“Holy moley, Lena! Talk about awkward!” Abby clutched Lena's hand and pulled her down the cracked walkway, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Mrs. Henson wasn't coming after them. Though it appeared they had gotten away safely, Abby didn't slow down until the thrift store was well out of sight.

Abby laughed nervously as they rounded a corner and stopped to breathe with their backs pressed against the red wall of a vacant brick building.

Lena couldn't laugh. She could barely speak. “I don't know why I did it,” she stuttered. “I couldn't stop it. It felt like I was possessed….”

The Impulse still hung around her neck with the picture she took sticking out of it like a tongue,
mocking her. She pulled it free. The image was even more haunting and depressing than she imagined — a close-up of a sad, defeated old woman hiding from the past behind wizened hands. Her crooked fingers spread across her face and into her gray hair like a thick web. It was a beautiful and depressing shot. Looking at it made Lena feel caught in a tangle — just like the jeweled butterfly on the ring on Mrs. Henson's hand.

“Hey, paparazzi. Now you're a thief, too?” Abby pointed at the yellow duffel hanging from Lena's shoulder. “I don't think you paid for that.”

Lena shrugged off the shoulder strap and stared. “I … I didn't. I just took it. I couldn't leave without it….”

“Holy moley,” Abby said again. “I don't think you're being haunted. I think you're possessed!” She looked up and down the essentially deserted street before pulling Lena through the door of the abandoned building.

Hiding in the dusty darkness, Lena felt like a fugitive. “We can give it back,” she whispered.

“Great.” Abby grabbed the strap and started out, obviously ready to get this business over with. “But I'm not knock —”

Lena pulled her friend back by the other strap. “No. I mean after we have a look inside.”

Abby's big brown eyes got even bigger in a silent plea. “But that's breaking and entering. Or snooping. Or something. Something bad,” she said. “That bag is stolen property.”

Lena knew Abby was right. But now that she had the bag, she had no choice but to look inside. It was the reason they'd come to Phelps in the first place. “If we give it back, it's only borrowed,” she rationalized. Abby didn't look convinced, but didn't say anything else.

The two dropped to their knees beside the duffel. Lena tugged at the closure. The zipper echoed like a freight train in the silent building, and Lena nervously reached inside and began to feel around.

One by one she laid the bag's contents on the concrete floor and tried to ward off a wave of disappointment. There wasn't much: an Impulse instruction manual, a school ID, a tattered sketchbook, and a battered tin decorated to look like a treasure chest. Her heart thudding, Lena opened the tin. It was empty.

She swallowed, trying to push down her feeling of defeat.

“Now can we go?” Abby asked impatiently, popping up to stick her head out the door. “All this illegal activity is kind of freaking me out.”

“Yeah, we can go,” Lena said. She shoved the items back into the bag, pausing with the sketchbook in her hand. She hadn't opened it yet. Flipping it to the first page, she thumbed through. “Maybe we should hang on to this,” she said so quietly that Abby didn't hear. She didn't know if she could justify keeping it if her friend protested.

The “illegal activity,” as Abby called it, was freaky, but it didn't hold a candle to being haunted. Lena pushed the notebook into her own bag. Zipping the duffel shut, she got to her feet and followed Abby into the daylight.

A few minutes later the girls were closing in on Ruth's Thrift, their pace slowing in unison.

“I say we drop it on the porch and run,” Abby suggested. “No sense in upsetting Mrs. Henson any more than we already have.”

“But what if somebody else takes off with it?” Lena was the one who took the bag; it was her responsibility to make sure it got back … with
most
of its contents. “I'll do it,” she offered.

“Okay, okay. I'll go with you,” Abby agreed, making it sound like Lena was twisting her arm.

They walked the rest of the way in silence. Lena's mind was spinning. They knew more about Robbie than ever, but still had no idea why he was haunting her. What did he need help with?

“Look! It's closed.” Abby practically crowed as they turned up the path. A crooked sign hung in the window. “We're in luck!”

While Abby rejoiced, Lena felt her chest tighten. Closed. Apparently, she'd upset Mrs. Henson more than she thought — so much that the woman had closed up shop for the day.

Abby hung back on the path, waiting for Lena to drop the bag on the doorstep so they could go.

“I'll just knock,” Lena said. “In case.” She raised her fist and struck the door once.

It immediately opened with a jerk. Lena's heart jumped into her throat when she saw Mrs. Henson. Her eyes were red and the look on her face was terrifying.

“I'm sorry, I …” Lena held out the bag, unsure of what to say.

Mrs. Henson grabbed it and clutched it close.
Her eyes were locked on Lena's face, but Lena couldn't stop staring at the woman's hands.

“Your ring. What happened to your ring?” she asked. The butterfly ring she had seen in the picture was not on Mrs. Henson's hand. But as soon as the question had been asked, Lena realized that she'd never actually seen it on Mrs. Henson's finger. It had never been there at all — it was only in the picture!

Touching the spot above her knuckle where the jeweled butterfly ring had perched in the photo, Mrs. Henson looked startled … and angry. “I've heard enough of your accusations,” she spat. “Robbie never would have taken that. Never. His father gave it to me when — oh, why can't you leave him alone? Just let it go!”

She slammed the door hard, forcing Lena to take a step back off the small stoop. The woman's final, angry words echoed in Lena's head.
Just let it go!

Lena swallowed hard, her eyes welling with tears. If only she could!

Shuffling toward the bus back to Narrowsburg, Lena realized that she actually felt worse than she had that morning — a feat she hadn't thought possible. In the last six hours she had taken off without telling her parents where she was going, upset an old woman — twice — and stolen a duffel bag and a sketchbook. And she wasn't any closer to figuring out what Robbie needed or, more importantly, how to get him to stop haunting her!

Lena dragged her feet in the dust beside the road, kicking up brown clouds to match her mood. Abby was uncharacteristically quiet beside her. Everything about her demeanor screamed that she was over the search, the hunt, the haunt … all of it.

“Last bus comes in ten minutes,” Abby announced, consulting the bus schedule mounted on a signpost at the corner. She turned to lean on the post and pointed across the intersection. “Hey, look.”

On the other side of the street, a shaggy-looking teenager was selling late-season raspberries out of the back of his truck. It was the same one they'd seen in Narrowsburg two days before, the one with bottle caps glued mosaic-style all over its metal body. The one that Robbie had “appeared” in.

Lena and Abby crossed the street to get a closer look. While Abby fished around in her pockets for berry money, Lena felt herself leaning in to study the truck.

“These are the last of the season,” the berry seller called to them.

“How much?” Abby asked.

Lena barely heard them. The pickup was a marvel, with every inch covered. Now that she was seeing it up close, Lena noticed that it was plastered with more than just bottle caps. There were bits of tile, mirror, and colored glass as well as tiny plastic animals affixed here and there.

“Where do you get all this stuff?” Abby asked as Lena rounded the front.

“On the ground,” the guy replied with a grin. “Every bit. It's a rule — anything I stick on has to be picked up. It's my way of recycling.”

Abby laughed. “I get it. It's your ‘pick up' truck.”

Lena didn't crack a smile. She was too busy looking into the truck's cab. The seat had been recovered with some salvage scrap, and the dash was decorated with a myriad of tiny things. The stuff on the inside was more whole than the stuff on the outside. There was a plastic gecko missing a leg, PEZ dispensers, tiny race cars, and more. What held Lena's eye were the colored glass bottles glued in a line over the glove compartment.

“Where'd you get all of those?” Lena asked, finding her voice.

The scruffy teen poked his head around to see what she was talking about. “Those? The bottles? I found them picking strawberries, right around here. There were a bunch of them, and some glass, too. Way out in the middle of Tower Field, I think.”

Tower Field! Lena wanted to ask more, but right then the bus roared into view and Abby pulled her
away. If they missed the bus they would have more than a little explaining to do….

“Try one,” Abby coaxed, waving the basket of water-bottle-rinsed raspberries under Lena's nose. They had made the bus and were safely seated in the back. “Come on. They're soooo good. And I got him to give me two baskets for three dollars!”

“Not hungry,” Lena mumbled. She was too wrapped up in her mixed-up thoughts to think about food. She was also a little dizzy, and the lurching bus was not helping. There were so many questions and so many clues, and still so few answers. She felt like a guinea pig on a treadmill, running around and around and getting nowhere.

Without thinking, Lena pulled out Robbie's sketchbook and began to flip through.

“Holy moley. You swiped the sketchbook?” Abby whispered, gathering up a few more raspberries in her red-stained fingers.

“Um. Yeah. I think Robbie wanted me to,” Lena replied defensively. It sounded nuts, even to her. “I think it might help us,” she said.

Abby sighed and kept munching while Lena
thumbed through the pages, hoping something would jump out at her. Anything. Nothing did. It was mostly a bunch of scrawled notes — ideas Robbie had jotted down for his pictures, and lots of drawings.

After a few minutes Abby stopped eating and got strangely quiet. Lena tried to tune out her friend's irritation and focus on the book. She was running out of time. And Abby would forgive her as soon as she unpuzzled this puzzle, wouldn't she?

The book smelled faintly musty and the pages were stiff but filled with notes and drawings. From what Lena could tell, though, Robbie was a great photographer
and
a pretty decent artist. He mostly drew fantasy stuff — dragons and castles — not really Lena's thing. But even so, the scenes were detailed and evocative and she found herself turning the pages eagerly to see what else she could find. Further in, the pages were covered with tiny still lifes — images of trinkets, like the colored bottles, miniature vases, and figurines — little things.

Near the back of the book, Lena found a couple of postcards. “Look.” She handed them to Abby. “From his dad.” Abby took them with a heavy sigh.

The truck-stop postcards were signed, “Love, Dad,” and that was all. There were no messages, no information about where he might be headed.

Abby licked a lingering bit of berry off her fingers and leaned in to take a closer look at the book, interested in spite of herself. “Wow. He was pretty good at drawing,” she noted.

Lena nodded. “And check this out.” She flipped back to a page where she had been keeping her thumb. There was a charcoal sketch there that she kept returning to — a picture of a knight on a rearing horse in front of a stone tower decorated with triangular designs, angled like the legs of the water tower. A dragon was emerging from the other side of the page, breathing fire. It was an exciting scene if you were into that kind of thing. But what kept Lena looking was the tower window. Where you might expect to see a damsel in distress, there was only a small chest — a larger version of the tin box they'd seen inside the duffel. The drawing was signed at the bottom, and titled:
SAFE IN THE TOWER.

Reading the slanted scrawl, and remembering her awful dream, Lena felt anything but safe.

Lena rolled over. Robbie's fantasy drawing flashed in her head, mixing together with whirling images — the actual tower, his grandmother with her head in her hands, the row of little bottles on the scruffy guy's dashboard, and the photos in the scrapbook. She felt like she had dumped a 1,000-piece puzzle out on a table. The number of pieces was overwhelming. She knew they went together, but at the moment it was just a jumble.

The pictures of Robbie in younger, happier days were troubling Lena the most. Robbie certainly looked like a pretty cheerful kid when he was little. It made Lena wonder how it would feel to have one of your parents up and leave. Of course it would feel
awful. Horrible. And for a loner like Robbie, probably worse than that.

Just go to sleep,
Lena told herself as she rolled onto her other side and closed her eyes.
Time's up. You start school tomorrow!

On any normal night before the first day of school, Lena would be lying awake thinking about what she was going to wear and who she was going to see. Not this year.

This year, Lena's mind was a tangled mess, and none of the strands had anything to do with first-day jitters. A hopeless feeling came over her in the darkness. Helping Robbie seemed impossible. So far she'd only succeeded in getting more questions, and if Abby stuck to her word, which she usually did, Lena couldn't count on her to help anymore. She was on her own. And
that
was assuming she could keep Abby from taking away the Impulse.

When the morning sun finally spilled its light onto Lena's bed, she threw off the covers and got to her feet. Her head throbbed dully and her body was tired and achy — she felt like she had the flu. She stepped around the library printouts and photos she had spread on the floor before going to bed and pulled some clothes off a chair next to the closet. As
she glanced in the mirror, she noted that she didn't look any better than she felt. Her wide-set green eyes had dark circles under them and even her freckles seemed pale.

“Too bad it's not Halloween,” she said grimly. “I could go as a raccoon.” Maybe she should call Abby and request a quick makeover before school…. She could really use her best friend right now.

Right on cue Lena's door burst open, revealing none other than Abby herself. “Ready for our first day of sev — yikes, Lena,” she blurted, interrupting herself. “You look like you've been up all night!”

Lena tried to smile but grimaced instead. “I'm all right,” she said feebly.

“No, you're not. But if I have anything to say about it, you will be. Pronto.” Springing into action, Abby whirled around the room, retrieving everything that had anything to do with Robbie Henson — the photos, the sketchbook, and the library printouts.

Panic rose inside Lena, squeezing her lungs and making it hard to breathe.
Time's up,
she repeated to herself.

When Abby had gathered everything Robbie-related, she stuffed it unceremoniously into her bag
and gave Lena a long, hard look. “I am hereby forbidding you to even think about anything that has anything to do with this spooky Robbie business,” she announced. “You hear that, Rob?” she called to the ceiling. “I am exorcising you!” Then she cracked a smile. “You don't want to flunk out of seventh grade over the ghost of some dead kid, do you?”

“Definitely not,” Lena replied honestly. But she was also pretty certain that it wasn't up to her! Abby was a force to be reckoned with, but Robbie was a
ghost
— a ghost capable of haunting someone and making her do all kinds of crazy things, like steal sketchbooks!

Abby planted one hand on her hip and extended the other one expectantly.

“What?” Lena asked, widening her eyes innocently. If she pretended to have forgotten the details of the deal they made, she might be off the hook.

“Um, the Impulse?” she said, as if it should be obvious. “The one you promised you'd hand over?”

Lena held her hands over the Impulse protectively. Funny … she hadn't even remembered putting it on. “This old thing?” Her voice cracked.

“Here.” Abby retrieved Lena's digital from her
desk and offered it in trade. “You can still take pictures, just not, you know,
his
pictures.”

“But, I …” Lena racked her brain for something to say … a reasonable argument for keeping the camera. Only there wasn't any, because nothing about being haunted was reasonable.

Feeling a simultaneous flash of resentment and frustration, she forced her hands to lift the strap over her head. She must have looked tortured, because before she got it all the way off, Abby gave in. A little.

“Oh, forget it,” she said, putting the digital back on the dresser. “I guess I can't deprive you of your art. But no more talk about towers or helping ghosts. And no taking the camera to school. Deal?”

Lena gulped. “Deal,” she said quietly as she set the camera on her dresser. She felt odd and shaky without it, and for five full seconds neither girl said anything.

Then, with a quick glance at Lena's clock, Abby was back in action. “Wowza. We'd better get moving. Horace Brighton Middle waits for no one.”

Lena pulled on her backpack and started to follow Abby out of the room. Then, at the last second,
something made her turn and grab the camera off her dresser.

“Thanks, Robbie,” she whispered. At least they agreed about one thing — the Impulse belonged with her. She stuffed it deep in her pack and promised herself she wouldn't take pictures.

In the kitchen Abby forced a banana into Lena's hands. “Eat this,” she said, grimacing at Lena's exhausted face. “Maybe a little potassium will help.” She opened the fridge and poked around, finally emerging with a bagel and a package of cream cheese. “No time for toasting.” She sliced the soft bagel in half and spread it with a generous amount of cream cheese. “Breakfast of champions,” she said, handing it over.

Lena raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, maybe not. But it will get you through your first homeroom of the year, and if you're lucky, all the way to lunch.”

Lena forced a laugh and took the bagel. “Thanks,
Mom
.”

“You're welcome,
dear,
” Abby replied, leading her friend out the door.

The air was still cool and the girls decided to walk fast, so that Lena could have time to eat. They
waved to a group of girls up ahead and did their best to avoid being run down by Josh Windham and his skater crew as they flew past on their boards.

When they finally stepped onto the school yard the place was in a state of first-day chaos, which meant that things weren't as crazy as usual. The sixth graders were totally new, and looked sort of confused and worried. The seventh and eighth graders were clustered in small groups, talking and laughing with quiet excitement. Even Josh and the other skaters were holding their boards instead of riding them.

“Two weeks from now this scene will be totally different,” Lena noted as the first bell rang.

“Indeed,” Abby confirmed in her best Principal Cohen voice. The two girls started up the stairs with the orderly throng of middle schoolers. “None of these children will be following the yard rules, pandemonium will ensue, and detention will be given appropriately.”

Lena giggled and slipped inside the door, passing a pack of sixth graders who had no idea where to go.

Thank goodness this isn't my first day at Horace Brighton
, she thought gratefully, remembering how
nervous she had been when she'd started middle school.
That, on top of being haunted, would definitely put me over the edge.

“Hurry up,” Abby said, waving a piece of paper in the air. It was the letter the school had sent the week before with her class schedule and locker assignment. “I need to find locker 218!”

Since locker assignment was alphabetical at HB Middle, Lena and Abby would never have lockers right next to each other. Still, they were dying to know where they'd end up.

“I'm 242,” Lena said. They made their way down the hall with the rest of the students, hunting for their lockers.

“I'm over here!” Abby called, stepping to the side of the hall.

Lena tracked the numbers on the other side. 238, 239, 240, 241 …

“We're right across from each other!” Lena half shouted through the throng. Total score!

After pulling out her locker assignment sheet, Lena twirled her combination dial, and was struck by the happy realization that since she'd left her house she'd felt fairly normal. She looked around the hallway and smiled. Maybe school was the answer
to her haunting problems. Maybe Robbie would disappear right along with summer. The guy couldn't fault her for paying attention to her teachers, could he? Reaching into her pack, Lena toyed with the idea of leaving the Impulse in her locker. She started to pull it out, then decided not to mess with a good thing. She felt okay, didn't she?

“You ready, or what?” Abby leaned next to Lena and eyed the swarms of passing kids. “What's the holdup? You can't be finishing your homework,” she joked.

Laughing nervously, Lena pulled her hand from her bag. Her thumb tangled in the Impulse's strap and it flopped out, too. Her secret was revealed!

Biting her lip, Lena waited for Abby to say something.

The bell rang. They had to get to class. Abby was silent.

“See you at lunch?” Lena mumbled.

“Yeah, see you.” Abby disappeared into a cluster of kids. Lena slammed her locker closed and made a beeline for class, trying to ignore the cold feeling in the pit of her stomach. She wasn't sure which was worse — being haunted or getting caught lying to her best friend.

All things considered, Lena did a decent job keeping her mind on her schoolwork. It helped quite a bit that Miss Jones seemed to be the best English teacher ever, and that they were starting to read
Chasing Redbird
by Sharon Creech, one of her favorite authors. And that Mr. Greene, her science teacher, had some interesting plans for learning about cells.

But by the time she got to lunch, all Lena could think about was the look on Abby's face when she'd seen the camera strap. Scanning the crowded room for her friend, she stepped into the lunch line. She was digging around for change in the bottom of her bag when her fingers brushed across the smooth, familiar surface of one of her Polaroid photographs. Before she could stop herself, she'd pulled the photo out of the bag.

Glancing down at the image, she was instantly irritated to see that it was the shot she took of the window of Don's Pawn. And there was Robbie, reflected in the corner of the window, looking intense as usual. Lena felt anger rise in her stomach at the sight of him. Hadn't Abby given him the brush-off? Why couldn't he go haunt someone else? The
sun glinted off the glass storefront in the picture, making most of the dusty junk on display almost impossible to see while highlighting a gaudy row of jewelry. What was that weird-looking thing in the center, anyway? Some kind of insect?

Lena was about to chuck the photo into the nearest trash can when everything kind of shifted and her blood ran cold. No, it wasn't an insect. It was a butterfly. A butterfly ring. The same butterfly ring that had shown up on Mrs. Henson's hand in the photo she took at the old woman's house — the one with the giant opal in the middle.

Jerking her head up, Lena scanned the lunchroom for Abby a second time before she realized that even if Abby were standing right next to her she couldn't talk to her about the ring. All things Robbie were off-limits.

There was only one thing to do, and she would have to do it alone. Lena left her tray on a nearby table and darted out of the lunchroom.