Claudia and the Lighthouse Ghost Read online

  “No way!” The words finally exploded out of me. “I can’t live in the same room with her!”

  “Claudia, she’s your sister,” Mom said.

  And she will drive me absolutely out of my mind, I wanted to scream.

  “But the room is crowded already,” I pleaded, “and I need space to do my art, and besides, what about the Baby-sitters Club?”

  “Exactly!” Janine agreed. “I can’t be expected to concentrate with a room full of nattering girls —”

  “We do not natter!” I shot back. “Whatever that means.”

  Janine folded her arms tightly. “It just won’t work!”

  “Why not put one of the sisters in my room,” I suggested, “and the other in Janine’s?”

  Mom shook her head. “Apparently Laura and Caryn refuse to be separated.”

  “Look, I know it will be a difficult adjustment at first,” Dad said. “But keep in mind it’s quite temporary.”

  “It might even be fun,” Mom added.

  “Fun?” Janine and I both groaned at the same time.

  I could tell Dad was reaching his patience limit. His smile had faded into a small, tight line. “When I was starting out in business, struggling to make ends meet, Alex Hatt was one of the only people who helped me. I have never forgotten it. Now his family needs our support, and they’ll have it. Would you pass the rice, please?”

  So that was it. No arguments, no nothing. The Hatts were coming, and I was going to share a room with my geeky sister. I could just picture it: Janine lecturing me about my study habits. Stepping on my paint tubes. Complaining about my radio. Clacking away on her computer keyboard while I’m trying to concentrate. Finding my hidden candy bars. Tattling on me. Refusing to leave during BSC meetings. Making everybody feel stupid.

  No. No. No! I would run away from home before agreeing to this. That would convince them.

  I thought of the money I’d saved up. That would take me as far as New York. Maybe I could call Stacey’s dad, and he could find me a cheap apartment. I’d pretend to be eighteen and sell my paintings in Central Park.

  I braced myself. In my mind I worded my announcement. I stood up and prepared to let them all have it.

  Mom and Dad looked at me curiously. Janine was downing a glass of milk.

  The teriyaki aroma wafted up to me. My mouth began to water.

  I ladled some more on my plate and sat down again. Tomorrow I’d run away.

  Janine angrily slapped her milk glass down on the table. Unfortunately it was a little too close to the edge. It spilled over onto her skirt.

  Her nice Friday-night-date skirt.

  “Aaaaugh! I have to change!”

  Janine bolted up from the table. As she raced upstairs, Mom and Dad gave her sympathetic glances. Me, I munched quietly on my beef.

  Served her right, I thought. (I’m not sure why. It just did.)

  The rest of dinner was a snoozefest. Mom hardly said a word. She seemed a little shell-shocked by the way Janine and I had reacted. Dad had that don’t-think-of-trying-to-change-my-mind look, so I didn’t bring up the Hatts again.

  By the time Janine came back downstairs, we were starting to clear the table.

  “We left your plate,” Mom called out. “I’ll put it in the microwave —”

  “No, thanks,” Janine replied from the living room. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

  I cleared her plate, loaded the dishwasher, and wiped off the table. What did Janine do to help? Nada. Zip. When I went into the living room, she was staring out the front window. “I guess looking for Jerry is more important than cleaning up,” I grunted.

  “How do I look?” she asked.

  She was wearing a gray pleated wool skirt and a white Oxford button-down longsleeve shirt. “Very clean,” I replied.

  “He should be here by now. The movie starts in fifteen minutes.”

  Guess what? Jerry didn’t show up at his promised time, 8:10. Or at 8:20. Or 8:30.

  By 8:45, Janine was a train wreck. Her face was all red, and she was pacing the living room like a caged but very smart beast. “How can he do this to me?” she muttered. “Does he think I have time to waste?”

  “Call him,” I suggested. “Maybe something happened.”

  “I hope it was awful.” Janine looked at her watch. “I’ll give him another couple of minutes.”

  I was in my room, working on a still-life sketch of a bowl of chips, when the family phone rang.

  “Janine, it’s Jerry!” I heard my mom call from downstairs.

  My clock read 8:58. I ran to the top of the stairs and listened. (I know. What a sneak.)

  “Where have you been?” was Janine’s greeting. “What do you mean, forgot? … You’d better be sorry! Do you realize how much I could have accomplished in this time? … I’m too tired right now, and it’s late…. No, I’m going to get ready for bed. Good night!”

  SMACK went the receiver into the hook.

  Thump! Thump! Thump! went her footsteps as she headed for the stairs.

  I scurried back into my room, sat at my art table, and pretended to be drawing.

  “He says he forgot!” Janine snarled as she passed my open door. “Forgot! Can you believe it? Oooooh, I hate boys!”

  She ran into her room and slammed the door. Moments later, classical music was blaring from her speakers.

  “Hrrrm hm haaaa …” she hummed along tunelessly.

  Tack-tack-tackety-tack! banged her fingers on the computer keyboard.

  I slumped into my chair.

  My parents expected me to room with that?

  Over my dead body.

  Sunday was moving day.

  My body was not dead. In fact, I had to help Janine move into my room.

  Which felt sort of like drilling the cavities in my own teeth.

  I knew that rearranging the room for Janine’s stuff would be a family affair. I’d spent the morning in search of my hidden junk food, and then crammed it all into the back of my closet. The last thing in the world I needed was for my parents to discover my secret.

  Dad backed into the room, helping Janine carry in her computer desk. He glanced over his shoulder and announced, “Looks like you’ll need to move the bed over a bit.”

  Mom and I ran around to the other side of my bed, hooked our fingers under the frame, and pulled.

  Janine and Dad shimmied the computer desk into the corner.

  “It’s too cramped,” Janine grumbled.

  “I agree,” I agreed.

  “You’ll survive,” was Mom’s reply.

  A spare bed was already against the other wall — where my easel had been. The easel was now wedged in another corner with my art desk, just beyond my sweets-packed closet.

  My heart was breaking. My room looked like a storage closet. My escape, my studio, my own little world — shattered. On my wall shelves, beautiful art books were side-by-side with titles such as Fundamentals of Thermodynamics and Programming Tips for DOS Users.

  Only a few weeks …

  Only a few weeks …

  I kept repeating those words to myself.

  “What’s that smell?” Mom asked.

  “What smell?”

  Mom sniffed, looking toward the closet. “It’s sweet. Chocolatey. Don’t you smell it?”

  Yikes!

  “Smells normal to me,” I replied, which was sort of the truth.

  I have heard the brain has amazing powers. I once saw a TV show about a girl who could make objects move just by concentrating on them.

  I willed my closet door to close.

  Over my dead body, it seemed to answer.

  Whock! Whock!

  From outside my window I heard the smack of car doors. We all ran to look.

  A minivan was parked at the curb. I recognized Mr. and Mrs. Hatt, who were each holding wrapped presents. The kids, however, looked totally unfamiliar. Especially the tall, wavy-haired teenaged guy with the high cheekbones and the ripped jeans jacket.

  “I
s that Thtevie?” Janine asked.

  “Janine, don’t you dare say that to his face,” I warned her.

  Mom and Dad were already running downstairs, leaving the chocolate smell behind. I slammed my closet door and ran after them with Janine.

  Dad was the first one out the front door. “Alex! Flora! What a pleasure!” he exclaimed.

  Mr. and Mrs. Hatt were beaming. They threw their arms around my parents, saying how little they’d all changed. (Which was a lie. Mr. Hatt, for one thing, had been neither fat nor bald, as I recall.)

  Mrs. Hatt gasped when she saw me. “Goodness, this must be Janine!”

  “No!” I yelped. “I’m Claudia.”

  “Little Dodee-a!” Mrs. Hatt exclaimed. “You’re so grown-up!”

  Dodee-a? That was worse than Thtevie.

  All the adults gushed and mushed over everybody. We kids stood there in Duh-ville, smiling and nodding politely.

  Ecthept Thtevie. He kept looking angrily up and down the street, as if he were expecting someone he didn’t particularly like.

  He did talk a little, though, to my mom. She said, “What a handsome young man! I’ll bet no one calls you Stevie anymore.”

  “Uh-uh,” he said. “Steve.”

  The corners of his lips turned up a fraction of an inch. That tiny motion brought his whole face to life. His eyes were gray-blue, like a winter morning sky. They cut right through the long lock of brown hair that hung over his forehead.

  He looked at me for about about a millionth of a second, then looked back up the street.

  A millionth of a second was enough.

  Maybe these next few weeks wouldn’t be so horrible after all.

  “We’ll show Mr. and Mrs. Hatt and Steve where they’ll be staying,” Mom was saying. “Claudia and Janine, why don’t you take Caryn and Laura upstairs? But come right down, because it’s lunchtime.”

  “Sure,” I said, tearing my eyes away from you-know-who.

  Caryn smiled shyly at me. She had curly blonde hair, freckled skin, and a friendly face. I remembered her as a toddler. It was hard to believe this was she.

  Janine was already leading Laura inside. Caryn and I followed.

  “You two will be sharing my room,” Janine explained as we walked upstairs. “I’ve locked my filing cabinets, but please make sure not to touch my telescope or flip the metal compartments on any of my diskettes. Feel free to read any paperbacks, though.”

  My sister. What a generous soul.

  We walked into Janine’s room. Her bed and a cot were freshly made up, side-by-side. That looked kind of cute. Unfortunately, though, Janine hadn’t done anything to spruce up her room. It looked very … well, Janine-ish. Kind of drab and colorless.

  Staring down from the walls were black-and-white posters of Janine’s heroes. Laura was gazing at them. “Who are they?” she asked.

  Janine began pointing. “Madame Curie, Virginia Woolf, Einstein, Mozart, Richard Feynman, Doris Lessing, Galileo …”

  Laura looked as if she’d suddenly found herself on Mars.

  “It’s really nice of you to give us your room,” Caryn said softly.

  Janine smiled. “No problem at all.”

  “Mmm-hm,” I lied.

  Laura leaned over Janine’s bed and pushed the mattress with one finger, as if she were poking an animal to see if it was dead or alive.

  “What grade are you guys in?” Caryn asked.

  “Eleventh, putatively,” Janine said.

  Laura snorted a laugh. “Puta-what?”

  “Meaning I will graduate with the eleventh-grade class, although I take primarily college-level courses.”

  I was cringing inside. Why couldn’t Janine learn how to talk like a normal kid?

  “I’m in seventh,” I added.

  “Me, too,” Laura said. “Funny, you look older than twelve.”

  “She was sent back,” Janine said flatly.

  “You were?” Laura exclaimed.

  “Yes.” I gave my sister a let’s-change-the-topic-right-now look and spun toward Caryn. “And how old are you?”

  “Ten,” Caryn replied. “I’m in fifth grade.”

  “It must be disorienting to change schools in the middle of the year,” Janine said.

  “We couldn’t help it,” Caryn said. “We had to move, sort of.”

  I nodded. “I heard. Your mom lost her job, huh?”

  “Yes, but that wasn’t the reason,” Caryn replied. “It was mostly because of what Steve did at school —”

  “Caryn, that’s not true!” Laura snapped.

  “They said they were going to expel him,” Caryn said. “I heard Mom talking to the principal.”

  “Steve got into a little trouble, that’s all,” Laura explained with a tight smile. “It wasn’t his fault, and it’s not the main reason we’re thinking of moving back here.”

  “Lunch is served!” my dad called from downstairs.

  Laura took her sister’s arm and led her out of the room.

  I looked at Janine. She shrugged.

  “All I know,” she whispered, “is that he’s cute.”

  With a giggle, she left the room.

  Cute?

  I stood there in shock.

  I wanted to scream.

  I wanted to rip down Einstein, crumple him up into a ball, and throw him at Janine.

  She’d taken half my room. She’d made me feel like a total dork in front of our guests. She’d dragged me down with all her complaints about her boyfriend.

  And now, just when I might have met the boy of my dreams, what did she want to do? Take him away!

  Easy, Kishi, I told myself. You are taking this way too seriously. It’s not a big deal. Steve was a total stranger, anyway. And maybe he wasn’t such a nice guy. Who knew what awful deed he’d done in his previous school?

  Oh, well, one thing was certain. No way would a guy like that be interested in Janine.

  I ran downstairs. Mom and Dad had already set out the cold cuts and bakery bread they’d bought that morning. Janine took out a big bowl of potato salad, which she and I had whipped up ourselves. I filled a bowl with Cape Cod potato chips, as an appetizer.

  Before long we were all sitting at the dining room table, grazing away.

  Well, except for Laura. “You don’t have, like, tuna salad or something?” she asked.

  “I’ll make some,” Mom said, leaping up.

  “Please, don’t fuss,” Mrs. Hatt said. Then she smiled sharply at Laura. “Honey, have cold cuts. You like them.”

  Laura rolled her eyes. “I did when I was eleven.”

  “No fuss at all!” Mom called from the kitchen.

  I had grown sick of sampling the potato salad while I was making it. But the bowl happened to be in front of Steve, who was sitting to my right. Suddenly those potatoes looked mighty tempting.

  “Mind if I take some?” I asked.

  Steve kind of grunted. As I reached over, I smiled at him.

  He caught my glance for a moment, then looked back down at his roast beef sandwich.

  “So …” Mr. Hatt said. “How are things in Stoneybrook?”

  “Property values are going up.” Dad let out a laugh. “If you fixed up your piece and sold it, I think you’d make a tidy profit!”

  “If someone would ever buy it,” Mrs. Hatt said wearily. “I think we should hire a demolition team. Who needs all the reminders —”

  Mr. Hatt suddenly dropped his fork on the floor. “Oh, sorry, I’ll get another.”

  “No, let me.” Dad sprang up and went into the kitchen.

  Mr. Hatt sat back in his seat. He shot his wife a strong Look.

  An extremely strong Look.

  “So, you still own the lighthouse property?” Janine asked.

  “Yes,” Mr. Hatt replied.

  “You’re kidding!” I blurted out.

  Mrs. Hatt laughed. “Hard to believe someone would just let it sit there and rot, huh?”

  “No,” I said. “I mean, yeah. I mean,
I guess I never thought anyone would, you know, want that place.”

  Duh. Stick the old Doc Martens right in your mouth, Claudia.

  “Actually, we hope to sell the land,” Mr. Hatt said. “Or fix it up and rent it. That’s one of the reasons we want to move back.”

  “He’s paying taxes on that land!” Dad shouted from the kitchen. “See, it’s sort of like Monopoly.”

  “First we have to see if the building is in good enough shape,” Mrs. Hatt said. “We drove by on the way here, and it doesn’t seem too sturdy.”

  “Sure it does,” Steve mumbled. “It’s cool.”

  (Aha! Two full sentences! Hope!)

  “I think it’s disgusting,” Laura said.

  Steve grinned. “I’m going to have a party there … after dark.”

  “He’s been saying that all week,” Caryn whispered to me.

  “Well, I wouldn’t go to it,” Laura said.

  “I wouldn’t invite you,” Steve retorted.

  “Kids,” Mr. Hatt scolded. “Nobody goes in there until we search it thoroughly.”

  “It’s been boarded up tight for years,” Steve said. “What do you expect to find? Dead bodies?”

  “Steven, stop that!” Mrs. Hatt snapped.

  I wasn’t sure, but I thought I saw her shiver.

  I, Claudia, am no fool. Something weird was going on. I could smell it. I knew it had to do with the lighthouse — and the Hatts were involved.

  Just who were we living with, anyway?

  “Don’t tell me,” Laura whispered. “You don’t know who that is, either. Right?”

  We were on our way out of last-period English. Laura gestured toward a blonde girl who was leaving the room in front of us. The girl was surrounded by three guys, all laughing at something she’d said.

  “Well, I know she’s on the cheerleading team,” I whispered back. “Her name’s Barbara or Bonnie or Bobbi or something. I’m sorry, Laura. Most of my friends are in eighth grade. I don’t know too many seventh-graders yet.”

  “Yeah, like one percent.”

  I couldn’t understand Laura. She was too shy to introduce herself to anybody. And yet the only people she wanted to meet were the super-popular kids. Plus, she was always so snippy with me — and I was trying very hard to be nice to her.

  You wouldn’t have believed her at lunchtime. She would not stop staring at the jock table, even though we were sitting at the opposite end of the cafeteria.