The Golden Ghost (2 page)

“Right!” her father said. The bell over the door jangled as the door fell closed.

Todd began sweeping, though there wasn’t much on the walk except more gravelly dust.

Delsie stayed where she was. She rubbed Bug’s other ear, and he groaned some more. How she wished she could have a dog of her own! Any kind of dog would do. Even one named Bug!

Maybe she could get a dog without any fur, if there was such a thing. If a dog didn’t have any fur, would it still make her father sneeze?

Delsie didn’t much mind being an only child. She didn’t have to put up with teasing, except for her dad’s. She didn’t have to share her bedroom. She didn’t have to watch her birthday cake disappear before she’d had seconds. Todd had to do all those things.

But while being an only child was okay, being a dogless one wasn’t.

There seemed to be hardly a moment in Delsie’s life when she wasn’t longing for a dog. She missed having one most when she was waiting to fall asleep at night.

That was when she pretended her dog was there, snuggled in close beside her. She even slept on the very edge of her bed to
make sure her dog had enough room. (It would be a girl dog, she’d decided.)

Delsie gave Bug a hard squeeze. He said
“Ooomph,”
and squirmed away. The street was empty, but still she looped her hand through his leash to keep him close.

Billows of dust rose from Todd’s sweeping. Delsie got up to move out of the way with Bug.

“Is that all you’re going to do?” she asked. “Sweep my dad’s walk?”

“Do you have a better idea?” Todd said.

That was the problem, though, and Todd knew it. She was out of ideas.

She scrambled through her brain for something. “We could check out the ghost houses,” she said after a thorough search. She didn’t know where that idea had come from. Had it been lurking in a dark corner?

Todd stopped sweeping. He studied her, his eyes narrowed. “Are you serious?” he asked.

She hadn’t been. Not really. But the look on Todd’s face made her suddenly determined.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m serious. Why not?”

She waited for him to tell her it was a dumb idea.

The truth was she knew it was dumb. Every kid in town had been told not to hang around the empty old houses by the mill.

But Todd surprised her. “Okay.” He took one last swish at the walk and leaned the broom against the storefront. “The ghost houses it is,” he said. “Let’s go.”

It had been her idea. What could Delsie do but follow?

s Delsie pedaled behind Todd’s bike toward the edge of town, she had plenty of time for regrets.

People were always telling her that she let her imagination run away with her. Even Todd said that sometimes, and he was her best friend. Here she’d gone and proven the point again. Who wanted to check out ghost houses, anyway?

They weren’t really ghost houses, of course. That was just what the kids called them. They were houses that had been built for the long-ago workers at the cement mill.

Now they stood staring at one another across an empty street, as silent and dusty as the abandoned mill. No one lived in them now. No one had lived in them for a long time.

The kids in town liked to say that ghosts lived there … if what ghosts did could be called living. Boys were always daring one another to check them out.

Why hadn’t she suggested going back to Todd’s house instead? They could have run through the sprinkler. Or they could have made popcorn and watched one of Todd’s mom’s old movies.

What was wrong with imagining ordinary things like that?

Todd had pulled ahead. Delsie sighed and pumped harder. At least the mill wasn’t very far.

They bumped across the rusty railroad tracks that led to the old mill. Beyond the tracks Todd stopped in the long grass beside the road. He stepped off his bike.

Delsie jumped off her bike next to him. She pulled off her helmet and wiped her sweaty cheek against her sleeve. Then she looked back at the old mill looming above them.

A smokestack rammed itself against the blue of the sky. There was a bank of silos, too, and some old buildings. All of it was the dirty white of old cement dust. All of it was silent and empty.

The houses were strung along a red-gravel street in the shadow of the mill.

They looked pretty much alike. They were square and small and as empty as the mill.

The street was deserted, too. Patches of scraggly grass sprouted here and there in the gravel.

Just standing in the middle of all that emptiness made Delsie’s arms prickle into goose bumps.

She gave herself a shake.

What was the harm, anyway? The only thing they were doing was checking out a bunch of old houses. She might have a good imagination, but she didn’t believe in ghosts.

At least she didn’t think she did.

Still, she said, “It’s not so hot anymore. Maybe we should just keep riding instead.”

It was true that the day seemed cooler now. In fact, here, beneath the mill, an odd chill touched the air.

Todd gave her arm a poke. “Aw, come on,” he said. “It was your idea. You’re not going to chicken out, are you?”

Delsie thought of turning the moment into a joke. All she’d have to do was flap her elbows and squawk like a chicken. What stopped her was the thing Todd always said about her. That she wasn’t like
other
girls.

By that he meant she wasn’t prissy, worried about getting her clothes dirty … scared.

So she said instead, “Of course I’m not chicken.” Then she added, “Which one should we check out first?”

“That one.” Todd nodded in the direction of the nearest house.

They dropped their bikes in the grass, and Todd moved out ahead of her. He jumped up the steps onto a rickety porch. He reached for the doorknob.

It rattled in his hand, but the door didn’t open.

“Shoot!” Todd said.

Delsie was careful not to let her relief show. If all the houses were locked, they couldn’t go in, could they?

She stepped up onto the porch and
pressed her nose against the front window. It was so dark inside she couldn’t make out much.

What had she expected? Ghosts didn’t need to turn on lights to see.

The house next door was locked, too. The front windows on this one had been broken and were boarded up, so they went around to the side.

They peered through a small window into what seemed to be a bathroom.

Would ghosts need a bathroom?
Delsie wondered.

“You see that ghost on the toilet?” Todd asked, as if he could read her mind. Actually, sometimes she thought he
could
read her mind.

“No, only the werewolf in the bathtub,” she said.

He gave her arm a poke again, a little harder than he needed to.

Delsie rubbed the spot, but she didn’t say anything.

The next house was locked … and the next and the next.

This wasn’t so bad. Two more houses and they would be at the end of the street. After that they could cross over and do the other side, stare into the windows, stare into the empty dark. Then they could go home.

What was so scary about that?

When they were back at school on Tuesday, they could brag about checking out the ghost houses. The boys would be impressed. Some of the girls probably would be, too.

The prissy girls would say it was a dumb thing to do. But they would be impressed anyway.

Delsie ran ahead of Todd to the next house. She bounded up onto the porch and reached for the doorknob. Two people could play this game! She’d rattle the locked door, and then she’d say, “Shoot!”

The doorknob felt smooth in her hand. The metal was cool. And it turned easily.

It turned and the door swung open.

Delsie sucked in her breath.

She looked at Todd. His face had gone pale beneath his sandy hair and his scattering of summer freckles.

“Well,” he said. Then he didn’t say anything more.

She waited.

“I guess this is it,” he said finally. “Come on.”

And he stepped ahead of her through the open door.

elsie stood on the porch for a long moment, waiting for Todd to come back. Who did he think he was, anyway—Goldilocks? You didn’t just barge into a stranger’s house like that.