Hazy Bloom and the Mystery Next Door Page 4

  “Surprise!” she trilled, getting out of the car and opening my door.

  I looked around. “What are we doing here?”

  “Well, it turns out your school is planting a brand-new vegetable garden over the summer. And since you mentioned a love of gardening, I signed you up as a volunteer!”

  She what?

  “Isn’t it exciting!”

  I could not believe this. First, I come up empty finding a ghost, and now I had to spend time at school? In the summer? This was the worst! Then it got more worse.

  “Hazel Bloom? What a surprise!”

  Slowly, I turned around to see who it was, even though there was no mistaking that shrill, high-pitched voice.

  It was Mrs. Agnes.

  * * *

  It turned out Mrs. Agnes was an enthusiastic gardener, so when the school decided to plant a garden, she was the first one they called. She was thrilled that I was there to help, but also a little surprised because they hadn’t announced the garden yet. There was going to be an article about it in the newspaper tomorrow morning, she said, so it was strange that I even knew about it. But I knew how we knew.

  I turned to my aunt pointedly. “Yes, Aunt Jenna. How did we know about the garden?”

  “Oh, a little birdie told me,” Aunt Jenna said, cool as a cucumber.

  I was about to argue that the “birdie” was really a “tomorrow vision” and that this “garden” was really “a way for Aunt Jenna to force me to go to school in the summer and be miserable.” The point is, Mrs. Agnes interrupted my thoughts by giving me an ugly pair of work gloves and then shoving a rake in my hands.

  “Let’s get going! You’re in charge of arugula.”

  “Who’s Arugula?” I asked, glancing around.

  Mrs. Agnes burst into giggles. “It’s not a person—it’s an herb! And these seedlings aren’t going to plant themselves. Follow me!”

  Two hours later, I had decided this was the worst summer vacation ever since summer vacations began (which I believe was in the year 1829). And we were only five days in.

  12

  I dragged my feet into my house and flopped onto the couch facedown.

  “Why don’t you go relax in your room for a while before dinner?” Aunt Jenna asked.

  “Nnnnnnnn,” I replied, too tired to say an actual word. We had just gotten back from school, and I was in no mood to talk, much less move. My hands were blistered from using the rake to loosen the soil, my clothes were covered in dirt, I smelled like arugula, and I’m pretty sure a pebble had made its way into my underwear.

  “Was it even a little bit fun?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. I managed to push myself upright and told Aunt Jenna that it was incredibly cruel to torture a small child like me by sending her out into the hot sun to work in a garden for an entire day.

  “It was two hours.”

  “Well, it felt a lot longer,” I said stubbornly. And then Aunt Jenna told me it would seem shorter tomorrow.

  Tomorrow? I was going back?

  I flopped back down. I needed to call Elizabeth and share how badly my life was going.

  Of course that would mean standing up and walking to the phone. Luckily, at that very moment the phone rang and Aunt Jenna handed it to me.

  “Hi!” Elizabeth chirped.

  In spite of my exhaustion, I smiled. Do you see how in sync we are? Just when I was about to call her, she beat me to it!

  After describing her winged-monkey dance in great detail, she turned her attention to me—and the ghost investigation. “So?” she asked eagerly. “Did you see anything weird today?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Mrs. Agnes.”

  13

  It was two days later, and I’m sorry to report that my summer had not improved one bit. In fact, it was still as miserable as ever, because at the moment I was pushing a wheelbarrow filled with manure across the school lawn to fertilize the baby plants. In case you don’t know, manure is a nice name for dried-up cow poop, so you can imagine how un-nice it smelled.

  “Let’s go, Hazel! Quickly, please!” shouted Mrs. Agnes, who was clearly enjoying the fact that she could still boss me around outside school hours. I’d been volunteering in the garden for three days, but it felt like three years. I had moved on from arugula to tomato plants to kale, which rhymes with “wail,” which is exactly what I wanted to do at this very—

  “Hazel! Manure!”

  Well, those were two words I never expected to hear together.

  I grumbled and gave the wheelbarrow a shove, the handles slipping out of my sweaty hands. This was so unfair. Elizabeth was having the time of her life at theater camp, Milo was having a ball (literally) at his soccer clinic, The Baby was having a swell time doing baby things, and Mom and Dad were running around in France. Meanwhile, I was toiling away at the school garden (which meant I was working hard, and had nothing to do with the bathroom, in case you were wondering).

  This would also be a good time to mention I had still found no evidence of the ghost next door. And it’s not like I hadn’t tried. For the last few nights, as soon as it got dark, I’d sit at my window, aim my binoculars toward the Thibodeauxs’ house, and search for signs of anything ghost-like. But other than the porch lights flickering, there was nothing … although I did hear the same horrible rattling sounds from time to time, even from my window. If only I could get concrete evidence, like a picture, or a video … or plant manure.

  Wait, what?

  “Manure, Hazel! Now, please!” Mrs. Agnes was shouting. Apparently, I’d gotten caught up in my thoughts and had stopped hauling the wheelbarrow.

  I wiped my hands on my shirt, grabbed the handles, and lifted the wheelbarrow back up with a grunt. And then, right as I started to push, I felt prickles and goose bumps. I was getting a tomorrow vision. And even though it wasn’t ideal to get a vision while pushing a wheelbarrow full of fertilizer, I was thrilled. Because this could be the vision I was waiting for. The vision that would help me prove there was a ghost next door.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and saw … a yellow, crinkly circle. Between you and me (and the manure), this was possibly the most boring vision I’d ever had, other than one about a carton of eggs (another long story involving a hill, some sassy fifth graders, and a lecture from Mrs. Agnes about the importance of science lab). The point is, by now I was taking so long, Mrs. Agnes came and took the wheelbarrow from me and began hauling it over herself. It was just as well. That cow-poop smell was making me gag.

  14

  I’d just finished taking a hot bath, where I had meant to focus on scrubbing off all the garden dirt but instead ended up composing a song about a mermaid named Arugula who ran off to Machu Picchu. I admit, my lyrics could have used some work, but overall it was a pretty good song. Also, I had decided the dirt plastered to my eyebrow would never come off and that there was really no use in trying.

  I put on my polka-dotted bathrobe (my new favorite item of clothing) and headed to the kitchen, where I was greeted with a very strange sight. Aunt Jenna was playing some weird song and dancing around the kitchen table. The Baby was doing the same, only with less dancing and more bumping into things and falling over. Milo was there, too, enjoying the entire spectacle.

  “Hellllllo, Ha-zyyyyyyy!” Aunt Jenna sang. “We’re dancing!”

  “I can see that.” I giggled. Then I wrinkled my nose. “What’s that smell?” I asked.

  “It’s bibimbap!” Aunt Jenna declared as if it were something I’d actually heard of before. I had not, but from the sound of it I assumed it was either an evil potion from a Disney movie or a disease of the toe.

  As it turned out, it was neither of those things. It was a Korean rice dish Aunt Jenna had made for dinner. We all sat down to eat, and although I was hesitant to try it at first, after one small bite I was hooked. It was delicious. Even The Baby liked it.

  Aunt Jenna told us how she learned to make bibimbap on a trip to South Korea, which led Milo to ask what the most popular
sport is there, and led me to ask if they ate arugula (answers: soccer, and yes). Then Aunt Jenna started teaching us Korean words and phrases she had learned, and that was a total hoot. I think my pronunciation was pretty good. Milo’s was terrible. And The Baby was still only saying “Doo-doo,” so he was way off. It was a pretty fun dinner experience, especially because it got my mind off the ghost. And manure.

  The next morning I didn’t have to go to the garden. Mrs. Agnes had said she wouldn’t need more help for a week or two, when there would be some weeding to do. After Milo took off to his friend’s house and I finished the maze on the other box of cereal, Aunt Jenna told me to get dressed because we were going to the playground.

  “And what about The Baby?” I demanded to know, troubled that she would consider leaving him here alone. For a moment, I imagined what The Baby would do if he had the entire house to himself (I believed it would include smearing the walls with applesauce and digging through the garbage with Mr. Cheese). Aunt Jenna laughed and said The Baby would be coming with us, which I agreed was a much better plan.

  At the playground, The Baby headed straight for the sandbox, where I helped him make a sandcastle that was quite impressive until he started to eat it. (You can’t say Mom didn’t warn us.) After the swings, the twisty slide, and the swings again, I ran over to the spinny seat that goes around and around so fast you feel dizzy for weeks, or at least several seconds. In between my spins, I saw a car pull up to the park and then a mother and father helping a toddler out from a car seat. The mother started unloading food from the car and bringing it over to the playground pavilion. I assumed they were setting up for a birthday party. I had been to lots of birthday parties at the park and had fond memories of them all, except for the time my neighbor Jarrod had a piñata and I accidentally whacked the cake off the table with the piñata stick. But other than that, very fond memories.

  The party guests started to arrive in the form of about five thousand toddlers, so I hopped off the spinny seat (whoa … so dizzy…) and headed across the playground, because if you thought one baby was a handful, wait until you experienced millions of them all in one spot.

  I found Aunt Jenna and The Baby by the turtle slide.

  “Hiya, Hazy!” Aunt Jenna said. “We were just going to the seesaw.”

  But The Baby didn’t seem interested in the seesaw or any other playground equipment, because he was now pointing and squealing and jumping up and down in delight. Then he darted away.

  “Sweetie, stop!” Aunt Jenna yelled, and we ran after him.

  Naturally, he didn’t stop, and soon he was blending in with the gazillion other toddlers and we couldn’t see him at all. I’d lost The Baby once before (in my own house—it’s a long story involving a loft bed and Bubble Wrap), but never in a park, which was obviously much bigger. This was bad news.

  Then Aunt Jenna spotted him. “There he is! At the birthday party!”

  We ran over to The Baby, and I could now see what he was after. Tied to the back of a chair was a bunch of brightly colored birthday balloons with smiley faces on them. The Baby was grabbing at them like his little toddler life depended on it.

  Aunt Jenna stepped in to gently guide The Baby away. “No, honey, not for you. Say ‘Bye-bye, balloons,’” she told him, which immediately triggered a ginormous toddler tantrum.

  Aunt Jenna tried to calm him down, but it only got worse. He wanted those balloons, and honestly, I could understand why. After all, a baby is to a balloon like a bee is to honey, or Elizabeth is to anyone who agrees to watch her tap-dance. The point being, whatever Aunt Jenna was doing wasn’t working because The Baby was still screeching his baby head off. And it was giving me a headache. So I did what any normal big sister might do in this situation. I started singing “The Hokey Pokey” to distract him.

  “You put your right hand in, you put your right hand out, you put your right hand in, and you shake it all about!”

  At first, The Baby just stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. But then, he gave a tiny little smile. And when I spun in a circle and sang, “That’s what it’s all about,” he flat-out started guffawing. Some of the other little kids wandered over with their parents, and before I knew it I was leading an entire group of toddlers in “The Hokey Pokey” right in the middle of the playground. It was kind of fun, and by the fourth round I was really getting into it, adding dance moves and flinging my arms in every direction. Then I spun around a little too fast and fell into one of the moms holding a plate with a piece of birthday cake, getting myself covered in frosting. Seriously, what was it with this park and cake?

  15

  It turned out, the nice parents of the birthday child ended up giving The Baby a smiley-face balloon, so my Hokey Pokey shtick was kind of for nothing. But The Baby was thrilled—so thrilled he wouldn’t let go of the balloon when we got home. Aunt Jenna attempted to tie the string to a chair, but The Baby kept figuring out how to untie it, which I considered very impressive and also a little bit creepy. I mean, what else could he do that we didn’t know about?

  After a while, Aunt Jenna gave up tying the balloon to anything, so there was basically a giant smiley-face balloon bobbing around the house. Personally, I was just glad it wasn’t singing “The Hokey Pokey.” That song had been stuck in my head for hours.

  It wasn’t until it was almost nighttime that I realized yesterday’s vision hadn’t come true yet. Had I missed seeing something at the park? On the way home? I knew there was a reason for every tomorrow vision, so it was important that I figure it out before “tomorrow” ended, which was technically “today” because I’d had the vision “yesterday.” The point is, I was now running all over my house looking for a crinkly yellow circle.

  I started in my room, then made my way to Milo’s room, my parents’ room, and then The Baby’s room, where I found a bunch of stuff I hadn’t seen in the longest time—books, balls, marbles, cards, and an old teddy bear I had named Aisha.

  An hour later, I was sitting on the floor in my room reading Green Eggs and Ham to Aisha while bouncing a ball, playing solitaire, and trying to do a magic trick with a marble. I’d found every last thing I could ever imagine. But a crinkly yellow circle? No dice (although I did also find some dice).

  I decided to give up on my vision for now. I got up, went over to the window, and picked up my binoculars to look for any new signs of the ghost. Right away, I saw something suspicious.

  The window shutters on the front of the Thibodeauxs’ house were now open. That was weird because they had been closed before, which was why I’d had to climb up on the ledge.

  I kept my binoculars fixed at the window, waiting to see if something else would happen. And then something did. A shadow passed in front of it. I gulped, afraid of what I’d see next. But I couldn’t look away.

  That’s when a one-hundred-percent ghostlike figure appeared in the window.

  I screamed at the top of my lungs, threw down my binoculars, and hightailed it out of my room as fast as humanly possible. I ran down the hallway to the living room, looking for anyone who could protect me. But everyone must already have gone to bed because the living room lights were out and no one was there.

  Except for a big round thing bobbing toward me.

  I screamed and lunged at it, punching it like crazy. When my fists stopped hitting the thing and were just swiping at the air instead, I ran to flip on the light. That’s when I saw what I had just attacked. It was The Baby’s smiley-face balloon. Which I had just destroyed and was now a big, deflated, wrinkled yellow heap on the floor.

  A crinkly yellow circle, you might say.

  16

  “Can you believe it? I actually saw the ghost!” It was Sunday afternoon, and Elizabeth and I were sitting in my bedroom on the floor.

  “No, I cahnt!” Elizabeth replied in a British accent. She had been doing this all week, and although she’s pretty good at it, I can’t for the life of me understand why she’d need a British accent to play a dancing winged monke
y in The Wizard of Oz, which takes place in Kansas—or in Oz, at least the monkey part, but then again, since it all turns out to be Dorothy’s dream, it does technically take place in Kansas. The point is, I was just happy I had Elizabeth’s undivided attention.

  “Some … wheeeeeeeere over the rainbow…” she started singing.

  Or maybe I didn’t.

  “Elizabeth!” I yelled.

  She stopped.

  I went on to tell her about my horrifying experience of seeing the actual ghost next door.

  She began asking questions. “How big was the ghost?”

  “Very big.”

  “Was it moving around or still?”

  “Moving around.”

  She paused. “Do you think he would like my accent?”

  “The ghost?” Seriously? I told her it was possible, but we’d never know for sure because I wasn’t going near the Thibodeauxs’ house ever again, or until I was eighty-eight, whichever came first. But Elizabeth had other ideas.

  “Hazy Bloom, you have to go back!”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are sooo close to solving the mystery! Don’t you see? Now we know there really is a ghost!”

  “Which means…”

  “Which means…” She narrowed her eyes all mischievous-like. “Now we can get rid of it, once and for all.” As much the idea creeped me out, I knew she was right. It was time to get rid of the ghost.

  That night, Elizabeth and I made a Ghost Plan. First, we mapped out a secret route to the Thibodeauxs’ house so no one would see us. Then we made a Ghost Kit consisting of flashlights, jackets (ghosts make things cold), a disposable camera (to capture our daring mission on film), a foam sword from an old Halloween costume (for protection), and granola bars (in case we needed a snack break). Then we constructed our very own Ghost Detector from an old walkie-talkie, a golf ball, and a magnet shaped like a pineapple. Finally, Elizabeth performed a British rendition of “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead,” which had nothing to do with the ghost but did, strangely, ease my anxiety.