The Ghost Backstage Read online

  School was done for the day.

  Kaz glided along the ceiling until he found Claire. She was by her locker, putting papers into her bag.

  Claire smiled at Kaz. She turned her back to all the kids in the hall and whispered to Kaz, “Did you find your mom?”

  Kaz shook his head. “I don’t think she’s here anymore,” he said glumly.

  “I’m sorry,” Claire said.

  Kaz held the ghost bead in his hand and gazed out the big cafetorium windows into the Outside. He’d been so close to finding his mom. So close.

  He didn’t dare go into the Outside to look for her. Who knew where the wind would carry him? It was bad enough that he’d lost his family. He didn’t want to lose Claire, too.

  Instead, Kaz drifted around the cafetorium and watched the kids who were working on the play. They had divided themselves into two groups: (1) performers and (2) backstage workers.

  Claire sat with the performers. They had pushed two big tables together and were reading their parts out loud. The backstage workers sat around another table and talked about the props they would need and the sets they would build and how they would build them.

  Mr. Hartshorn strolled back and forth between the two groups.

  “We need a sword,” said a boy in a red shirt. He was one of the backstage workers.

  “A sword?” A girl with a ponytail tilted her head at him. “What for?”

  “For Jack to fight the giant!” the boy replied. “Duh!”

  “We also need a house for Jack and his mom,” another girl said. She turned to Mr. Hartshorn. “Could we use that same house we used for Hansel and Gretel? I saw the pieces for it backstage.”

  “Sure, Kenya,” Mr. Hartshorn said. “We’ve used that house in several different plays. I’ll set it up onstage before our next rehearsal.”

  “We need a beanstalk, too,” said a boy with glasses. “It shouldn’t be hard to make one. We just need a pole. We can cut a bunch of leaves out of green construction paper and tape them to the pole. Then voilà! We have a beanstalk.”

  “Good idea, Ethan,” said Mr. Hartshorn. “Is anyone writing all this down?”

  “I can,” said the girl with the ponytail. She grabbed a notebook from under her chair.

  “Thanks, Gia,” said Mr. Hartshorn.

  “I’ll make the sword!” said the boy in the red shirt. “Write that down.”

  Gia rolled her eyes. “Noah is making a sword,” she said as she wrote.

  Just then, the square box above the stage crackled. A voice inside the box called out, “Mr. Hartshorn?”

  “Yes?” Mr. Hartshorn replied.

  Kaz swam up to the box.

  “Could you please come to the office?” the voice asked. “You’ve got a phone call.”

  Kaz tried to see inside the box. Is someone in there? Unfortunately, he couldn’t see inside. He sure wasn’t going to pass through the box to find out who or what was inside.

  “I’ll be right back,” Mr. Hartshorn told the kids as he walked around the maze of tables. But as he reached the door, he nearly ran into a girl who was coming into the cafetorium.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Amber,” Mr. Hartshorn said to the girl.

  It was the girl with the freckles that Kaz had seen in the storage room earlier that morning. The one who didn’t like working backstage.

  “I left something in the storage room this morning,” she said to Mr. Hartshorn. “Could you please unlock it?”

  “I have to take a phone call right now. I’ll give you my keys and you can unlock it,” Mr. Hartshorn said as he felt around his pockets. He frowned. “Where are my keys? Did I ever get them back from you this morning?”

  “Yes,” Amber said.

  “They’re over here! You left them on our table.” Noah waved a set of keys in the air.

  “Go get them from Noah,” Mr. Hartshorn told Amber as he left the cafetorium.

  Noah tossed the keys to Amber, and she headed for the stage. The performers returned to their scripts, and the backstage workers returned to their discussion about props.

  All of a sudden there was a scream backstage.

  Everyone turned.

  “Amber?” Gia called as she hopped to her feet. “Are you okay?”

  The kids raced across the cafetorium, up to the stage, and back behind the curtain. Kaz swam just above their heads.

  “Is that someone’s idea of a joke?” Amber pointed at the back wall of the storage room.

  A pair of creepy-looking eyes had been drawn onto the back wall in some strange, bright, whitish-blue substance. Below the eyes were the words: BEWARE. I’M HERE. AND I’M WATCHING. Many of the letters appeared to drip down the wall.

  “Who’s here?” Claire asked. “Who’s watching?”

  “A ghoooooost!” Noah said.

  Amber elbowed him. “Did you do this?” she asked.

  “Me?” Noah laughed. “When would I have?”

  “Just now,” Amber said. “Mr. Hartshorn’s keys were lying on the table. Right by you.”

  “I’ve been here talking about props this whole time,” Noah said. “What about you, Amber? You’re the one who was late. Mr. Hartshorn’s keys were sitting right there. Anyone could’ve put them there, including you! Plus, you can get paint at your dad’s paint store. You probably don’t even have to pay for it.”

  “I gave Mr. Hartshorn his keys back this morning,” Amber said. “I was late because I had safety patrol. Ask anyone. I was outside until, like, five minutes ago. And just because my dad owns a paint store doesn’t prove anything. Are you sure that’s even paint on the wall?”

  Ethan touched the B in the word Beware. “Whatever it is, it’s still wet.” He held out his smudged finger for everyone to see. “It feels like slime. Glow-in-the-dark slime.”

  “Hey, let’s see if it really does glow in the dark,” Noah said. He flipped the light switch and the room went dark.

  “Aaaaahhhh!” several kids shrieked as the dripping words and creepy eyes glowed bright.

  “Turn the light on! Turn the light on!” someone cried.

  Claire flipped the switch and the light came back on.

  “You know what I think it is?” Noah asked.

  “What?” several kids asked at the same time.

  “GHOST BLOOD!” Noah cried as he lunged at Jonathan. “I think Ghost Boy’s ghost wrote that message in ghost blood!”

  Jonathan shrank back.

  “Ewww!” squealed one of the girls.

  “It does kind of look like ghost blood,” Gia said in a small voice.

  Claire studied the message on the wall.

  “There’s no such thing as ghost blood,” Kaz told her. But he had to admit the creepy eyes and the drippy words were the same color as ghosts when they glowed.

  “Has your ghost been back, Ghost Boy?” Ethan asked Jonathan.

  “Wooooooooooo!” Several kids raised their hands and pretended to be ghosts. Others laughed.

  Jonathan’s face grew red.

  “What’s going on?” Mr. Hartshorn came up behind them. “Why are you all backstage?” His jaw tightened as he read the ghostly message. “Who wrote that?” he asked, glancing at each student.

  Silence.

  Mr. Hartshorn frowned. “Well, if no one is going to admit responsibility, I think you can all go get some cleaning supplies from the janitor’s closet and clean it up.”

  “All of us?” Ethan said. “We all have to clean it up even though we didn’t do it?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Hartshorn said. “Rehearsal is over for today.”

  So, did you bring home any more lost ghosts?” Beckett asked as he met Kaz and Claire in the library entryway. Claire twisted the top off the bottle, and Kaz swam out and expanded to his normal size.

  Kaz’s ghost dog and Claire�
��s solid cat scampered over to greet them.

  Claire gave Thor’s ears a quick scratch.

  “No,” Kaz said glumly. He rubbed Cosmo’s belly.

  “We need to talk about this case,” Claire said as she headed for the craft room. Kaz, Beckett, and Cosmo followed.

  Claire sat down at the table. “I don’t know about you, Kaz, but I think Jonathan saw a real ghost.”

  Kaz agreed.

  “And I think the ghost he saw was probably your mom,” Claire said.

  Kaz agreed with that, too.

  “But you searched the whole school and you didn’t find her,” Claire went on.

  “That’s because she’s not there anymore,” Kaz said.

  “Well, that’s what I thought . . . until we saw that message after school,” Claire said.

  “My mom didn’t write that message,” Kaz said. His mom would never draw creepy eyes on a wall or write a scary message.

  “What message?” Beckett asked.

  “Someone wrote, ‘Beware. I’m here. And I’m watching’ on a wall at my school,” Claire said. “We don’t know who wrote it. It could’ve been a ghost.”

  “It wasn’t a ghost,” Kaz said.

  Claire unzipped her bag and pulled out her clues notebook. “Let’s write down everything we know about this case,” she said. “The things we know for sure. Maybe that’ll give us a clue about who could have written it.”

  Kaz and Beckett hovered above Claire as she wrote:

  1. Jonathan saw a ghost in the cafetorium yesterday.

  2. Kaz found a bead that belongs to his mom. He found it close to where Jonathan saw the ghost yesterday.

  “You found a bead that belongs to your mother?” Beckett asked.

  “Yes.” Kaz reached into his pocket and pulled out the ghost bead.

  “How do you know it’s your mother’s?” Beckett reached for the bead, but Kaz held tight to it.

  “I just do,” Kaz said, slipping the bead back inside his pocket. He knew his mom’s necklace when he saw it.

  Claire kept writing:

  3. Someone drew two eyes and wrote “Beware. I’m here. And I’m watching” in—

  Claire raised her head. “We don’t know what they wrote it with. Maybe paint. But maybe ghost blood.”

  “Ghost blood!” Beckett sniffed. “There’s no such thing as ghost blood.”

  “That’s what I told her,” Kaz said. “But it did kind of glow. You know, like ghosts do.”

  Claire added:

  —something. We don’t know what they wrote it in.

  Then she moved on to number four. “We’re pretty sure the storage room was locked,” she said out loud as she wrote.

  “But Mr. Hartshorn’s keys were on the table,” Kaz said. “A girl named Amber thought that a boy named Noah took them and wrote the message. And Noah thought Amber did it.”

  Claire set down her pencil and leaned back against her chair. “Anyone could have taken Mr. Hartshorn’s keys and written that message. Or . . . a ghost could’ve passed through the wall or the door and written it.”

  Kaz didn’t think a ghost had done it, but he didn’t want to argue with Claire.

  “You should come to school with me again tomorrow and look for more clues,” Claire told Kaz.

  “No,” Beckett said, shaking his head. “Absolutely not. Kaz already had a day off from his ghost skills. He can’t take another day off.”

  “You know what, Beckett?” Claire said, her hands on her hips. “You’re not the boss of Kaz. If he wants to come to school with me, he can!”

  “That’s right,” Kaz said. He decided he would go to school with Claire again tomorrow. He would try to figure out who wrote that message on the storage-room wall. Maybe he’d even find more beads from his mom’s necklace.

  The next day, while Claire was in class, Kaz searched her school for clues. And for beads.

  He didn’t find any clues or beads.

  After school, he watched Claire’s rehearsal again. Today, the red curtain was open and there was a small house in the middle of the stage. Jack’s house. Kaz floated all around it. He was surprised to see the back was completely open.

  The performers walked around on the stage and read from their scripts. Mr. Hartshorn stopped them often and told them where to stand and what to do.

  “Scene four,” Mr. Hartshorn called. “Jonathan, I want you to enter stage right. Claire, you enter stage left.”

  Kaz watched as Jonathan and Claire walked onto the stage from opposite directions.

  “Let’s start with your line, Claire,” Mr. Hartshorn said.

  “Jack—” Claire began. Her forehead wrinkled and she glanced over her shoulder. “What’s that noise?”

  “That’s not your line.” A girl with red hair squinted at the script in her hand.

  “I know,” Claire said. “I’m asking for real. What’s that noise? Don’t you hear it? It sounds like music.”

  Everyone stopped talking and listened. It did sound like music. Piano music. It came from somewhere backstage.

  Claire went behind the stage and followed the sound of the music. Everyone else, including Mr. Hartshorn and Kaz, followed her.

  Claire stopped suddenly. There, in the far back corner, stood a tall piano. The keys on the piano were moving. All by themselves.

  “No one is playing that piano,” Ethan said.

  “Uh-huh,” Jonathan said, wide-eyed. “A GHOST is playing it!”

  Kaz didn’t see any ghosts.

  “Woooooooooooo!” said Noah, pretending to be a ghost. “Beware! I’m heeere and I’m waaaatching.”

  Claire scowled at Noah, then moved closer to Jonathan. “Do you really see a ghost over there, Jonathan?” she asked.

  “No,” Jonathan admitted. “But I saw one in here the other day.”

  Several kids snickered.

  “I did,” Jonathan insisted. He moved to the back of the crowd.

  “There’s no ghost,” Mr. Hartshorn said as he strode over to the piano. “This is a player piano. It plays music by itself.” He felt around on the side of the piano, and the music stopped. “See? I just turned it off. Now I’d like to know who turned it on.”

  The kids all looked at one another. Nobody said a word.

  “No one?” Mr. Hartshorn asked.

  “I didn’t even know it was a player piano,” Amber mumbled.

  “Neither did I,” Noah said.

  “Maybe we really do have a ghost in our school,” Ethan said with a shrug.

  “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Mr. Hartshorn said.

  Kaz hated it when solids said that. It was like saying there’s no such thing as solids.

  The kids slowly drifted back to their places on the stage. But before they could pick up where they’d left off, a bright light shined onto the stage from the little room at the back of the cafetorium.

  Some kids squinted. Others put their hands up to block the light.

  “Who turned on that spotlight?” Mr. Hartshorn asked as he jumped down from the stage and marched to the back of the cafetorium. “Is someone messing around in the control room?”

  Mr. Hartshorn reached for the doorknob, but the door was locked.

  Mr. Hartshorn unlocked the control-room door and stepped inside. Kaz peeked in behind him. He didn’t see anyone, ghost or solid, in there.

  Mr. Hartshorn switched off the spotlight, then peered under the counter and behind the door. He even opened the closet at the back of the control room. He stood there for a long time, which seemed strange because the closet was obviously empty.

  “There’s no one in the control room,” Mr. Hartshorn said when he returned to the cafetorium. “The door was locked. And this time I had my keys with me. So how did that spotlight come on? I know it didn’t turn on by itself.�
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  Nobody offered any ideas.

  Mr. Hartshorn sighed. “Fine. Let’s get back to work. I don’t want any more funny business!”

  Claire and Jonathan returned to their places onstage. Other kids sat down on the floor in front of the stage and on the steps. And the kids who were working on props went back to painting leaves and cutting them out.

  Noah grabbed the sword he’d cut out of cardboard and swung it around. “If there’s a ghost at our school, I’ll find it and stab it with my magic sword!”

  Kaz shivered.

  “No stabbing,” Mr. Hartshorn said. “And no more talk about ghosts.”

  “Aww,” Noah whined.

  Kaz didn’t like Noah very much. He didn’t like the way Noah teased Jonathan, but he really didn’t like what Noah said about finding “the ghost” and stabbing it. Kaz knew Noah couldn’t see him, but he decided to stay as far away from Noah as he could.

  That night, Claire did her homework in the craft room while Kaz practiced his ghost skills with Beckett.

  “Can a ghost turn on a player piano or a spotlight?” Claire asked the ghosts.

  “Of course,” Beckett replied. “It’s just a matter of moving a solid object. Show her, Kaz. Go over there and turn off that table lamp.”

  “I can’t!” Kaz moaned. And Beckett knew he couldn’t.

  “Try,” Beckett insisted.

  Kaz floated over the table. He stared hard at the lamp.

  “Come on, Kaz,” Claire cheered him on. “You can do it.”

  Kaz held his breath, clenched his teeth, and sent all his energy to his finger as he reached for the switch. His finger passed through the base of the lamp. “See?” he said.

  “Again,” Beckett ordered. “Try it again.”

  Kaz sighed. He squeezed the ghost bead inside his pocket for luck, then reached for the switch again.

  And once again, his finger passed through the lamp.

  “Concentrate!” Beckett said.

  “I am!” Kaz cried. He was concentrating so hard that the lamp blurred in front of him. He touched his finger to the switch one more time, but this time something amazing happened.