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Planets and Moons

  The drive from Mrs. Greene’s house was quiet except for the huge burp from Ellis. I had given him my slice of red velvet cake, and, instead of taking it home for later, he had eaten it on the spot. I’m convinced my brother has a tapeworm.

  I pulled down the visor and peeked at Janie in the mirror. She was staring out the window with the same rotten-egg look on her face. There wasn’t much to see in Warrenville. Trees, pastures, cows, more trees, and maybe another car if you were lucky.

  Mama drove up to the house and parked in the garage. Ellis and I got out of the car, but Janie didn’t move a muscle. She continued to stare at the empty space in front of her.

  “Why she looking so weird?” Ellis asked.

  “Janie? Are you ready to come in?” Mama asked.

  My cousin slowly stepped out and looked around. She stared at our bikes and Daddy’s power tools. Hopefully she wasn’t getting any ideas of putting our things in her backpack. She probably didn’t even have that much room left.

  Ellis started to take Janie’s suitcase out of the trunk, but she quickly grabbed it from him. “Keep your hands off my stuff.”

  “I don’t want your raggedy suitcase,” he said.

  “Ellis, be nice. Janie is our guest,” Mama said.

  “She’s a hostile guest!” Ellis protested.

  “Excuse me?” Mama’s voice had a thread of warning. “What did I just say about being nice?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled.

  Janie smirked and followed Mama inside. She didn’t see Ellis making monster faces behind her back.

  Our house wasn’t as spotless as Mrs. Greene’s house. It wasn’t dirty, but you could tell people lived here. Mama’s law office papers were strewn across the kitchen table. Daddy’s empty coffee cup was still on the counter. In the den, Ellis had his latest model car project on top of old newspapers. My books were stacked high on the couch. An artifact of each person who lived here, a clue to our favorite things.

  Mama put her purse on the kitchen table. “Janie, you’ll be staying up in Sarah’s room. She’s got plenty of space.”

  My best friend, Jovita, had twin beds, so I’d thought I should get twin beds too for our sleepovers. It was better than my old pink canopy bed, which looked too much like a baby crib. But lately I wasn’t sure if I had a best friend anymore. Jovita and I hadn’t spoken since Yvonne Jones’s sixth-grade graduation party. Jovita had been invited. I had not. Everyone knew Yvonne hated me. Especially Jovita. So I was hurt when she went to the party without me. Right now she was in Stone Mountain, visiting her daddy for the entire month of June. Friendships were so confusing. I wished a best friend came with an instruction manual; then I would know exactly how to deal with Jovita. It would make everything so much easier.

  Now having twin beds was a good thing. I didn’t want to play footsie with my cousin at night.

  “I’ll take you up to my room,” I said.

  We walked through the den to the foyer. Janie stopped in front of the staircase and continued to look around, scoping. I would have to tell her this wouldn’t be tolerated. If Mama found out Janie took something from us, she would think I couldn’t handle the responsibility, and I would be Mrs. Greene’s personal butler again.

  Janie followed me up the stairs to my room. I took a deep breath before I opened the door. After sixth-grade graduation, I had decided to redecorate. Daddy helped me paint the walls a few weeks ago. I had picked a color called Liquid Blue because it reminded me of the ocean, and water meant life. At least that’s how life started on our planet. Mama picked out the floral comforters for my twin beds. I put up posters showcasing everything I liked best. Most of them were the planets of our solar system, including Pluto. I also had a poster of Saturn’s moons. Enceladus was my favorite moon because near its south pole, plumes of water shot into space and fell back down to the surface as snow.

  I had left the wall above my guest twin bed empty. I had been waiting for Jovita to pick out some of her favorite things to decorate it, but she hadn’t told me anything yet. Maybe her daddy didn’t like her talking on the phone? Maybe she was waiting for me to send another e-mail? I tried not to think about the other reason she hadn’t contacted me. It tied my stomach in knots. I wasn’t the type of girl who giggled about boys and got invited to parties. I was a girl who lived inside her head and read books about planets. I should have known a meteor event like getting invited to Yvonne’s party would make our friendship extinct.

  “You can put your stuff on that side of the room,” I said.

  “Okay, whatever.” Janie dropped her suitcase and backpack on the bed. “Who’s that woman?” she pointed to a poster hanging above my desk.

  “That’s Mae Jemison,” I said. “She was the first black woman to travel in space.”

  Janie rolled her eyes. I watched as she sat next to her suitcase and judged my room. She frowned at my posters. She sneered at my astronomy books. She shook her head sadly at my spaceship clock. Instead of upsetting me, I was happy none of my stuff sparked her interest. I didn’t have to worry about anything slipping into her pink backpack when she left.

  Janie pulled out her nail polish. “I’m almost out of my favorite shade, but I’m so deep in the country I can’t even get to a mall for a new bottle.”

  “We have a mall,” I protested. “Not in Warrenville, but we can drive to Alton. Mama can take us on Saturday if you want.”

  Janie ignored me and took out another bottle of nail polish.

  I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to keep this city girl entertained. We only had Town Square in the center of Warrenville and not much to see. Marigold Park featured a few benches and tables with a swing set and a basketball court. Loren’s Grocery was about as big as our two-car garage. We had a post office and a public library that was only open three days a week. Hawkins Hardware, Lucille’s Consignment Shop, and Dunbar’s Ice Cream Parlor were the other main attractions. Everything else was in Alton, a university town about twenty miles away.

  The only interesting place in Town Square was the Train Depot, but I wasn’t sure if I could take Janie there. Mrs. Whitney was the owner and had recently moved back to Warrenville after being away for a long time.

  Daddy told me that Mrs. Greene and Mrs. Whitney used to be friends once, but it was so long ago that no one remembered. My grandma now claimed Mrs. Whitney was a root witch. I didn’t dare ask Mrs. Greene any more about it because she would say I was minding grown folks business.

  I first met Mrs. Whitney at the post office when she told me every little detail about her deceased husbands. Mrs. Whitney had been widowed four times. She was now engaged to Sylvester Coolidge, my granddaddy’s business partner, which probably wasn’t good news for him, knowing all her other husbands were dead.

  “Sam was the nicest,” Mrs. Whitney had told me, “Rufus was the most handsome. Dooley was a true gentleman, but Lionel was the richest. I miss him the most. God bless his money.”

  She’d used Lionel Whitney’s money to buy and remodel the Train Depot. She opened it up for business earlier this summer, where she ran a history center and a gift shop.

  Maybe Janie wouldn’t mind staying in the house, watching TV, and going to church with us on Sundays. But I knew deep down Janie wouldn’t be satisfied. It was in her nature to want to explore and get into trouble. And I would have to make sure that didn’t happen, a two-week challenge since Janie and I didn’t have anything in common.

  It was going to be a long two weeks.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ghost Story

  Janie unpacked her clothes and put them in the top two drawers of my dresser. She didn’t take anything else out of her backpack. I was curious to know if the MLK church fan was her only snoop prize. So far I had just seen her nail polish collection. Jovita liked bold colors, the ones I was too shy to try. I stared at the bright yellow polish on Janie’s toes. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a pedicure. I wore sneakers, even though Mama said that I should
let my feet breathe every once in a while.

  Ellis appeared in the doorway. I frowned because he had Walter on his shoulder. Janie wasn’t paying attention. When he sat next to her on the bed, it only took her two seconds to yelp.

  My brother petted his bearded dragon. “Don’t be scared. Walter won’t bite you unless he thinks you have a cricket in your hand.”

  Walter blinked and darted out his tongue. “Get that thing away from me!” Janie screamed as she sprang from the bed.

  “Ellis, you shouldn’t have Walter in here,” I said.

  “Walter is a part of our family.”

  “Not everyone likes lizards. You know what Mama said about pushing Walter on people. Put him back in his terrarium.”

  Ellis pouted but got up and left.

  Janie scrunched up her face. “Nasty.”

  “It could have been worse,” I added. “He wanted a tarantula, but Mama told him no.”

  As night settled in, Janie lay on her bed and read a celebrity gossip magazine. Aunt Gina had brought a whole stack of them from Chicago. Glossy covers with headlines of movie stars battling heartbreak and backstabbers. Janie read them, mesmerized, preparing for her next life as a celebrity daughter.

  I sat at my desk and wondered if I should go downstairs to Mama’s office and check my e-mail. Maybe Jovita had finally replied to my message. She would be back in town for the Heritage Festival in mid-July, which was the same weekend as her birthday. We usually planned her party together, but since we hadn’t talked, I had no idea what she was going to do. Bubbles filtered up in my stomach, and I tried to swallow my doubts.

  Ellis eventually came back into my bedroom. He had changed into his nightclothes and smelled of mint toothpaste.

  “What do you want now?” I asked him.

  “I’m trying to be nice to our guest.”

  Janie yawned and turned a page in her magazine. “You’re not doing such a good job. Where’s the chocolate on my pillow? Where’s my fluffy bathrobe? Where’s my room service?”

  “This ain’t no hotel,” Ellis replied.

  “I’m bored,” Janie said. “Entertain me.”

  Ellis sat on my bed with his signature grin. I knew where this was going. “You wanna hear a ghost story?”

  My brother’s best friend, Jasper Johnson, was a big influence on him. Jasper was the big brother Ellis had always wanted. I didn’t take it personally. Jasper was twelve like me, and at one time I thought we could trade thoughts about astronomy. I always sparked his interest when I talked about radio telescopes and aliens but then quickly lost it when I went into the mineral composition of planets. So when he came to the house, I usually left him alone to play video games with Ellis.

  Jasper had recently become obsessed with ghosts, ever since he started working for Mrs. Whitney. She had told him one of the reasons she came back to Warrenville was to rid the town of restless spirits. Of course he shared this with Ellis. Nowadays, it was only a matter of time before my little brother would bring up Creek Church.

  “Don’t go spreading lies,” I said.

  “Janie, do you want to hear a Warrenville ghost story?”

  Janie dropped her magazine. Ellis had gotten her attention. “Yes.”

  Ellis rubbed his hands together and grinned. “Creek Church is this old place out in the woods.”

  “None of this is true,” I added.

  “Let him tell the ghost story,” Janie said. “Unless you’re scared of having nightmares.”

  “You know better, Ellis,” I said. “You’re just going to scare yourself. You already sleep with two night-lights.”

  “I ain’t afraid of the dark!”

  Ellis was ten and the baby of the family, so he tried hard to be brave, but I wasn’t going to participate in my brother’s shenanigans. He didn’t need the ghost story to be true; he just needed it to be spooky. If anyone was going to have nightmares, then it would be him.

  “You know the place where we went to church today? That’s not the original location. They had to move it because the old church was haunted.”

  “They moved to a new church because the Klan burned the old church down,” I corrected him.

  Missionary Creek Baptist Church was on the east side of Warrenville, not far from Mrs. Greene’s house. We attended most Sundays, and sometimes Mama dropped us off alone if she was working hard on a case. At least she didn’t make us go to Sunday school anymore. The teachers complained because I asked too many questions. The original location—the one Ellis was hawking as haunted—was on the other side of town.

  “Oh, Creek Church is haunted,” Ellis said. “When they tried to rebuild the old church, strange things would happen. One time, it rained dead birds. They fell straight out of the sky. And the bricks they laid turned to dust. Another time, blood seeped up from the ground. Flooding everywhere! After that, the police kept getting calls of weird lights coming from the woods at night. In the end, grown folks said haints wanted the place for themselves, so they left it alone.”

  “What are haints?” Janie asked.

  “Restless ghosts,” he said.

  Grown folks in Warrenville loved stories about haints. I didn’t believe any of them. I knew it was just a way to keep kids in the house at night. The only streetlights were in Town Square so when night fell, it was pitch black.

  “Where’s this place?” Janie asked.

  “At the end of Linnard Run,” Ellis said. “Not too far from my friend Jasper’s house. He’s the one who told me all about Creek Church.”

  “It’s an old forgotten dirt road,” I said.

  “These haint things live at this Creek Church place?” Janie asked. “Have you been there?”

  Ellis’s eyes opened wide in shock. “I ain’t about that life. I don’t want to get the curse.”

  “Curse? What curse?” Janie asked.

  “Mrs. Whitney warned Jasper never to take anything from Creek Church. Doesn’t matter what it is. A leaf off a tree, a pinecone, a rock. Doesn’t matter. A haint will follow you to your house and cause trouble until you bring back what you took.”

  “How do you know that’s true?” she asked.

  “It’s not true Janie,” I said. “Ghosts don’t exist.”

  Mama came into my bedroom wearing her floral silk robe. She had taken off her makeup and put her hair up in a top knot.

  “It’s getting late,” she said. “You should all get to bed. Especially you, Ellis. It’s way past your bedtime.”

  Ellis hugged Mama tight, and she kissed him on the top of his head before he left for his bedroom.

  Mama sat on Janie’s bed and touched her braids. “You’re good and settled?”

  “Yes, Aunt Delilah,” Janie said.

  Mama looked at me. “Any plans tomorrow?”

  I automatically went to my usual plans of keeping Ellis entertained with his model car projects and reading my books, learning more about Saturn’s moons. That wasn’t going to fly with Janie here.

  “What if I take Janie to Town Square?”

  Mama tilted her head and thought for a moment. “Make sure you let Mrs. Taylor know when you leave.”

  “Aunt Delilah, do you think I could call my mom now?” Janie asked.

  “Not yet, honey. She’s still in the air, and when she lands in California, it’ll be too late here. Let’s try tomorrow, okay?”

  Janie’s face cracked in disappointment.

  When Mama left, Janie slid her backpack under the bed. She got out a nightgown from her suitcase, and I took out my pajamas. Awkward silence filled the space between us.

  “There’s an ice cream parlor in Town Square. What’s your favorite kind?” I asked her.

  She ignored me and grabbed her toothbrush. Just before leaving my room, she turned to face me. “I hate ice cream,” Janie said. “Just like this place.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Good Hostess

  The next morning the smell of Daddy’s coffee and the sound of Mama’s voice filtered up to my room
. I usually got up easily, but this morning my eyes stuck closed, and my body wouldn’t let go of sleep. Getting Janie settled had sapped all of my energy. When I finally pulled my legs out of my warm bed and walked downstairs, my parents had finished breakfast.

  “We missed your company this morning,” Mama said.

  Daddy sat at the kitchen table drinking his coffee. I usually sipped alongside him, although he liked his coffee black, and I filled my mug with sugar and cream. As a little girl, I had believed he was an undercover superhero like Clark Kent, there to save me from anything. Now that I was older, I learned there were some things Daddy couldn’t do. He couldn’t rescue me from the faint panic floating in my chest about my friendship with Jovita. He couldn’t make her call or e-mail me. He couldn’t prevent Janie from causing trouble and putting snoop prizes in her pink backpack.

  I sat at the kitchen table, and Mama kissed the top of my hair puff. “I know you’ll be a good hostess for Janie during her stay.”

  Daddy drained the rest of his coffee. “You’re taking Janie to Town Square today?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was also thinking we could stop at the Train Depot and visit Mrs. Whitney.”

  My parents exchanged looks. Daddy got up to rinse out his coffee mug. “Don’t let Mrs. Whitney start filling your head with any of her tall tales. Your grandma wouldn’t approve.”

  “That woman never approves of anything,” Mama said.

  Daddy chuckled. “That may be true, but you know how she feels about Mrs. Whitney.”

  “Why don’t they like each other?” I asked them.

  “Well, currently she wants to have a séance in Marigold Park,” Daddy said. “The festival board wasn’t happy.”

  “What’s a séance?” I asked.

  Mama gave Daddy a weary look and placed her hands on my shoulders. “Mrs. Whitney just wants to help the community find closure with their loved ones who have passed on. She’s eccentric, but she means well.”

  “The festival board disagrees,” Daddy said. “They denied her booth. That woman is causing more trouble than it’s worth.”