The Ghost Backstage Read online

  FOR THE REAL

  MR. HARTSHORN

  THANK YOU FOR READING A SHY SIXTH-GRADER’S “NOVEL” ALL THOSE YEARS AGO AND MAKING HER BELIEVE SHE REALLY COULD BE AN AUTHOR WHEN SHE GREW UP—DHB

  N o author ever publishes a book all alone. I’d like to thank my agent, Sara Crowe, and everyone at Grosset & Dunlap for their support and all their hard work on my behalf.

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

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  Text copyright © 2014 by Dori Hillestad Butler. Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Aurore Damant. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-0-698-19311-6

  Version_1

  Contents

  DEDICATION

  COPYRIGHT

  GLOSSARY

  GHOST SKILLS

  OFF TO SCHOOL

  SEARCHING FOR A GHOST

  A WORD WITH “GHOST BOY”

  A GHOSTLY WARNING

  THE GHOST COMES BACK

  A SURPRISING NEW SKILL

  MORE TROUBLE BACKSTAGE

  CAUGHT IN THE ACT!

  ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

  EXPAND

  When ghosts make themselves larger

  GLOW

  What ghosts do so humans can see them

  HAUNT

  Where ghosts live

  PASS THROUGH

  When ghosts travel through walls, doors, and other solid objects

  SHRINK

  When ghosts make themselves smaller

  SKIZZY

  When ghosts feel sick to their stomachs

  SOLIDS

  What ghosts call humans, animals, and objects they can’t see through

  SPEW

  What comes out when ghosts throw up

  SWIM

  When ghosts move freely through the air

  WAIL

  What ghosts do so humans can hear them

  Cuckoo! . . . Cuckoo! . . . Cuckoo! . . . Cuckoo! . . .

  “Kaz!” Beckett said sharply. “Are you listening?”

  Kaz was listening. But he was listening to the cuckoo clock chiming in the library entryway. He was not listening to Beckett.

  “What’s the matter, boy?” Beckett asked as he floated around the craft room. “Why are you so distracted?”

  Kaz bit his bottom lip. “Claire’s late,” he said.

  Claire was a solid. She lived in an apartment above the library with her family. She could see ghosts like Kaz and Beckett when they weren’t glowing. And she could hear them when they weren’t wailing. No one knew why.

  More important, Claire was Kaz’s friend. Kaz and Claire hadn’t been able to spend much time together lately because Claire had started school last week. She didn’t get home until three twenty in the afternoon. Sometimes even three thirty. But now it was four o’clock. Claire had never been this late before.

  “What if something bad happened to her?” Kaz said.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Beckett said. “You should be happy she’s late. That gives you more time to practice your ghost skills.”

  Kaz groaned. Beckett had started working with Kaz on his ghost skills while Claire was at school. He said Kaz’s skills were an embarrassment to all ghosts.

  “No groaning!” Beckett barked. “Let’s get back to work. It takes a lot of concentration to pick up a solid object. You have to send all your energy to your hands as you reach for the object. Watch!” Beckett stared hard at the wall of books.

  Kaz watched as Beckett sloooowly pulled a red book from the shelf.

  “You can’t think about anything other than picking up the object,” Beckett said, his eyes still fixed on the book in his hands. “If you let your mind wander, the object will fall.”

  The book slipped through Beckett’s hands and hit the floor with a loud thud.

  Kaz’s ghost dog, Cosmo, yelped in surprise.

  “Now try to pick up that book,” Beckett told Kaz.

  Kaz wanted to learn to pick up solid objects. If he could master that one skill, it would be so much easier to play cards or board games with Claire, because then he’d be able to hold his own cards and move his own game pieces.

  Arms outstretched, Kaz kicked his feet and dove for the book. “Aaaah!” he screamed as his hands passed through it.

  “Don’t scream!” Beckett ordered. “Concentrate!”

  Kaz stared hard at the book, like he’d seen Beckett do. He clenched his teeth . . . and reached for the book.

  His hand passed through again.

  “You’re not concentrating,” Beckett said.

  “I am, too,” Kaz said as he gave his hand a shake. He hated the feel of solid objects passing through his body. “It’s just hard.”

  And Beckett wasn’t a very patient teacher. Not like Kaz’s mom or pops. Or his grandparents. Or even his big brother, Finn.

  Kaz sighed. He missed his family. He hadn’t seen them in so long. Not since the old schoolhouse, where they all used to live, was torn down and all the ghosts inside had blown their separate ways.

  “Try again,” Beckett said.

  Kaz was tired. He didn’t want to try again. But he tried one more time, anyway.

  Pick it up . . . pick it up . . . pick it up, he told his hands. He couldn’t possibly concentrate any harder than he was already concentrating.

  It was no use. His hands passed right through the book.

  “Aha!” came a voice from the doorway. “I thought I’d find you here.”

  Kaz whirled around. “Claire!” he cried with relief. “You’re home!” Maybe now he could take a break from his ghost skills.

  Claire set her bag on the table in the middle of the room and skipped over to Kaz and Beckett. Kaz loved the sound of Claire’s feet on the floor.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Claire said as she bent down to pet Cosmo. Her hand passed through Kaz’s ghost dog.

  Cosmo wagged his tail and licked Claire. Claire’s cat, Thor, watched from the doorway. He didn’t look happy about Claire giving Cosmo attention.

  Claire didn’t notice her cat’s expression. “Guess what?” she said to Kaz and Beckett. “My school is putting on a play. They’re doing Jack and the Beanstalk. And guess what else?”

  Claire was almost bursting inside herself. “I got a part!” she squealed, jumping all around. “I get to play the mom.”

  “That’s great,” Kaz said. He liked plays. He and his brothers used to put on plays for their parents and grandparents back at the old schoolhouse. “Congratulations!”

  “Thanks.” Claire beamed.

  Beckett grunted.

  “What are you guys doing?” Claire asked.

  “I’m trying to teach Kaz how to pick up a soli
d object,” Beckett said. “But I give up. He’s not concentrating. And now that you’re home, he’s even less likely to concentrate.” Beckett stepped through the wall of books and disappeared into his secret room.

  Kaz had never seen Beckett’s secret room because . . . well, he wouldn’t say he couldn’t pass through walls. But he really, really didn’t like to.

  “I was concentrating!” Kaz called after Beckett.

  “Don’t worry about him,” Claire said as she picked up the book and returned it to the shelf. “You’ll learn how to pick up a solid object someday. I know you will.”

  Kaz wasn’t so sure.

  “I’ve got something else to tell you,” Claire said, with a funny twinkle in her eye.

  “What?” Kaz asked.

  Claire leaned toward Kaz. “I think there’s a ghost at my school.”

  “Really?” Kaz’s heart leaped. “Is it someone from my family?”

  Kaz and Claire had started a detective agency because Claire wanted to solve mysteries and Kaz wanted to find his family. So far they’d only found Cosmo. And that had been a lucky accident. They ran into him while trying to figure out who was haunting Mrs. Beesley’s attic.

  Claire unzipped her bag. “I don’t know,” she said as she pulled out one of her notebooks. She had several of them. One was for keeping track of clues when they solved mysteries. Another was for keeping track of all the ghosts she’d seen. Kaz was pretty sure this one was the ghost book.

  “I didn’t see the ghost,” Claire said as she opened her notebook. “This boy, Jonathan, saw it. He’s in the play, too. He plays Jack!”

  “What did he see?” Kaz asked.

  Claire read aloud from her notebook: “Tuesday, October tenth. Budd Elementary School. Jonathan Bixby, fourth-grader, claims to have seen a ghost float through the stage curtain and fly around our school cafetorium.”

  “Ghosts don’t fly,” Kaz said. “We swim.”

  Claire wrote that down.

  “What else did Jonathan say?” Kaz asked.

  “That was all.” Claire showed Kaz her notebook. “I didn’t actually talk to him myself. He left right after tryouts. Probably because no one believed him.”

  No one ever believed solids when they said they saw a ghost. Kaz didn’t understand why.

  “I think we should investigate,” Claire said. “You should come to school with me tomorrow and see if you can find the ghost.”

  “What? Really?” Kaz asked. He’d never thought about going to school with Claire.

  “Sure. Why not?” Claire said. “I can put you in my water bottle, like we did when we investigated Mrs. Beesley’s haunted attic. What do you say?”

  “I say, ‘yes!’” Kaz exclaimed. Going to school with Claire would mean:

  (1) A day off from his lessons with Beckett

  (2) Extra time with Claire

  (3) Maybe finding his family!

  Kaz could hardly wait until tomorrow!

  No,” Beckett said the next morning while he and Kaz drifted around Claire’s bedroom. Claire was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth. “You can’t go traipsing off to school with that solid girl when you have your own lessons to work on right here.”

  “My lessons are coming along fine,” Kaz said.

  “Are they?” Beckett raised an eyebrow. “Can you glow? Can you wail? Can you pass through a solid object or even hold one in your hand? These skills don’t develop by themselves, Kaz. You have to practice them.”

  “I know,” Kaz said. “And I will practice.”

  “When?” Beckett asked.

  “Later,” Kaz said.

  Claire skipped back into her room. “Are you ready to go, Kaz?” She twisted the top off her water bottle and held it out to him.

  Beckett folded his arms across his chest.

  “I have to go to school with Claire,” Kaz told Beckett. “We have a case to solve. That case could help me find my family.” Not that he needed Beckett’s permission. Beckett wasn’t his parent. He wasn’t even Kaz’s grandparent.

  “Fine. Go.” Beckett waved his hand. “We will work on those skills later!”

  “Sure,” Kaz said. He shrank down . . . down . . . down until he was small enough to fit inside Claire’s water bottle. Claire twisted the bottle closed, grabbed her bag, and thundered down the stairs.

  “Bye, Grandma,” she called as she reached for the door.

  “Have a good day, dear,” Grandma Karen said as she walked into the entryway. Claire’s grandma was the librarian there. She was a lot like Kaz’s grandma, except she had a pink stripe in her hair. And she wasn’t a ghost.

  “Is your ghost friend in there?” Grandma Karen peered into the water bottle that hung from Claire’s shoulder.

  Claire’s grandma couldn’t see Kaz, but she knew all about him. And, she knew that Claire could see ghosts when they weren’t glowing.

  Grandma Karen used to see ghosts, too, when she was Claire’s age, but she couldn’t see them anymore. Grandma Karen also knew that Claire was trying to help Kaz find his family.

  Claire’s parents didn’t know any of that. They were detectives, but they weren’t around very often because they had big cases of their own to solve. None of their cases involved ghosts. They didn’t believe in ghosts.

  “We’ve got a case to solve at school,” Claire told her grandma. “Someone saw a ghost there, so we want to see if it’s someone in Kaz’s family.”

  “How exciting,” Grandma Karen said. She talked above Kaz’s head. “I hope you find your family, Kaz.”

  Claire lifted her bottle so Kaz could see her grandma better.

  “Me too,” said Kaz, even though he knew Grandma Karen couldn’t hear him.

  Claire’s school was bigger than the old schoolhouse. Noisier, too! Kaz had to put his hands over his ears to block out all the footsteps, voices, and banging doors.

  Claire stopped in front of a wall of metal doors and set Kaz’s water bottle on the floor so she could take off her jacket.

  “Aaaah!” Kaz yelled as a bunch of giant FEET rushed toward him. “Pick me up, Claire! PICK ME UP!” He covered his head with his hands.

  “Why? What’s the matter?” Claire grabbed the bottle.

  The boy next to Claire gave her a funny look.

  Kaz knew he had to be careful about talking to Claire in front of other solids. If she answered him, other solids would wonder who she was talking to. They would think she was weird.

  But Kaz couldn’t help himself. “All those feet,” he said, peeking out between his fingers. “I’m afraid someone will step on me or kick me down the hall.”

  Claire lowered her voice. “Okay, I’ll put you inside my locker.” She moved Kaz’s bottle to the floor of her open locker. “Better?”

  “Yes. Much better,” Kaz said.

  Claire hung her jacket on a hook way above Kaz, then picked up the bottle again. “Okay,” she said cheerfully, as she twisted the cap off. “Time to go find a ghost.”

  Kaz huddled at the bottom of the bottle. “I think I’ll stay here,” he said.

  “Inside the bottle? You’ll never find the ghost in there,” Claire said.

  Kaz didn’t care. Claire’s school was too noisy. Too bright. And too crowded. Kaz knew that if he came out of the bottle, all those solids would walk right through him. He hated it when solids walked through him.

  “Remember, that ghost could be someone in your family,” Claire said.

  Kaz moaned. He did want to find his family.

  “I’ll take you to our cafetorium.” Claire slammed the metal door closed and Kaz jumped. “It’ll be quieter there. Plus, that’s where Jonathan saw the ghost yesterday, so that’s a good place to start looking.”

  “What’s a cafetorium?” Kaz asked. He’d heard her use that word before, but he didn’t understand wh
at it was.

  “It’s where we eat lunch, have assemblies, and do our plays,” Claire said. “We’ve got a big stage in there and everything.”

  Kaz could only imagine.

  Claire carried Kaz into a large room with a bunch of tables and chairs. It was quieter there than it had been in that hallway.

  One wall of the cafetorium had stairs leading up to what looked like another room. A large red curtain covered most of that room. That was probably the stage. There were two solids talking near the stage. One was a grown-up, the other was about Claire and Kaz’s age.

  “Is that Jonathan?” Kaz tilted his head toward the younger solid.

  “No, I think that boy’s name is Andy,” Claire said in a low voice. “He’s a sixth-grader. He’s going to do lights and sound for our play.”

  Do what with the lights and the sound? Kaz wondered.

  “The guy with the beard is Mr. Hartshorn,” Claire went on. “He teaches fifth grade. He’s also our director.”

  Mr. Hartshorn was doing all the talking. Andy just nodded a lot.

  Rrrring! Rrrring! A loud bell sounded above their heads.

  “Why is that bell ringing?” Kaz asked, holding his hands to his ears. “And why is it so LOUD?”

  “Because it’s time for me to go to class,” Claire told Kaz. “Now, do you really want to stay in that bottle all day? Or do you want to go look for ghosts?”

  Kaz knew he shouldn’t be such a scaredy-ghost. He’d come to school with Claire to search for his family.

  Kaz swallowed hard. “I’ll look for ghosts,” he said bravely, as he swam out of the bottle.

  “Good,” Claire said. “I’ll be in room 125 if you need me.”

  Do we get to use special effects in this play?” Andy asked Mr. Hartshorn as Kaz hovered nearby.

  “Special effects?” Mr. Hartshorn scratched his chin.

  “Yeah. Like smoke or trapdoors,” Andy said. He shivered as Kaz drifted closer.

  Mr. Hartshorn smiled. “No. We’re just doing lights and sound. We don’t need a trapdoor in Jack and the Beanstalk. I don’t think many of the kids in this play even know we have a trapdoor in the stage. And I’d like to keep it that way. For safety reasons.”