The New Newbridge Academy Read online

Hullie cleared his throat, bringing Noh back to reality. The stage disappeared from her mind, and Noh looked down to see that she had dropped the little six-leaf clover on the ground at her feet.

  “Go on,” Noh said. “What happened to Hubert? Did he do it?”

  Hullie chewed on his toothpick, clearly enjoying the suspense he was creating. “Hold your horses, girl, give me a moment. It’s a long story and I want to make sure I get all the details right.”

  Noh sighed. She hated waiting. If there was one thing she definitely needed more of, it was patience.

  “Now, then,” Hullie said, finally continuing the story. “The dedication ceremony went on for a zillion years—or at least, that’s what Hubert thought. The mayor droned on about how nice it was to have the New Newbridge Academy in the community, and the man who had given all the money to build the school got up and thanked the mayor and the community for being so nice themselves.

  “All the self-congratulating just made Hubert glad he’d come up with his plan in the first place. Finally, when Hubert was absolutely sure the mayor was going to go on another twenty zillion years, the mayor’s assistant suddenly got up and handed the mayor the biggest pair of gardening shears Hubert had ever seen.

  “Instantly Hubert was on the move. If he timed it just right—and luck was on his side—he would get to the stage right before the mayor snipped the ribbon. Hubert moved silently through the crowd, invisible to all the people he passed.”

  “Did he do it?!” Noh asked. She had been so caught up in the story that she had almost forgotten to breathe.

  Hullie shook his head sadly.

  “It made Hubert feel very special to be able to do all this right under everyone’s noses, and this feeling of ‘specialness’ was Hubert’s downfall. You see, just as Hubert was stepping up onto the lip of the stage, right before he could reach out and yank the ribbon out of the mayor’s grasp… something strange happened.

  “The ribbon that had just been quietly rippling in the breeze only moments before suddenly shot up into the air, twitching like a wild snake about to strike. The mayor, who didn’t know that Hubert was there, thrust his garden shears right at the rippling ribbon snake, lopping it cleanly in half. The crowd got to its feet and gave the mayor a standing ovation.”

  “Oh no!” Noh said, fear spreading through her body. Quickly she thrust her hand into her pocket and grasped the evil eye stone. Immediately she felt calmer.

  Noh swallowed hard and nodded. “I’m okay, Hullie. Go on.”

  Hullie sighed. “I’ll tell you what happened next, but I don’t think you’re going to like it very much.”

  Noh didn’t think she was going to like it very much either, but she knew from experience that most stories didn’t have a happy ending—no matter how much you wished they did.

  “Hubert sat down on the stage between the mayor and the crowd, but nobody saw him,” Hullie said quietly. “Nor did anyone see him when he crawled off the stage and across the lawn, cradling his arm to his chest as he tried not to look at where the garden shears had lopped off all four of the fingers on his right hand.”

  Hullie paused before continuing.

  “Hubert made it as far as the lake before he collapsed. Then he just sat there, not sure what to do to make the blood stop leaving his body. He knew he needed help, but he had been invisible for so long that he didn’t think he could make anyone see him… even if he wanted to.

  “The hours passed slowly, and Hubert got colder and colder until he stopped being able to feel anything at all. Because of this sad fact, he didn’t even notice when the last drop of blood left his body.”

  Detective Noh

  That’s a terrible story,” Noh said.

  No one deserved to die like that, she thought, alone and invisible. Hullie seemed to agree with her.

  “It is, but, alas, that’s the legend,” Hullie said, shaking his head. “They say that because luck felt so bad about what had happened to Hubert, it made the very spot where he died the luckiest place in the school.”

  Noh looked down at all the five-leaf (and six- and seven-leaf) clovers and felt that Hubert’s death was a very high price to pay for them.

  “It’s still a terrible story,” she said.

  Noh sat in silence, continuing to digest what she had just heard. Even though it was a sad story, it did give credence to all the strange things she had already encountered at the New Newbridge Academy.

  She knew there were ghosts inhabiting the school—a bunch of them, actually, but all that was just the tip of the iceberg. There was a whole lot more going on at this school than anybody realized. Well, maybe a couple of people knew what was what—like Hullie, for one—but everyone else mistakenly thought New Newbridge was just a regular old scholarly institution.

  “Hullie, have you seen the ghosts?” Noh asked suddenly.

  The older man shook his head and Noh sighed thoughtfully.

  “Now, wait a minute. I may not have seen anything, but I’ve been the groundskeeper here for more than twenty-five years, and, let me tell you, I’ve heard some pretty funny stuff,” Hullie said as he picked out a nice big seven-leaf clover and held it between his large fingers.

  This was just more confirmation that Noh was on the right track, that the evil eye stone had special powers. Because, unlike Hullie, she’d seen some pretty funny stuff in the past twenty-four hours—like ghosts disappearing forever and toothbrushes stuck in mirrors.

  “It’s mostly out in the West Wing, but there’s lots of strange things happening all over the school,” Hullie added, interrupting Noh’s thoughts of free-floating toothbrushes.

  “This school is special, isn’t it, Hullie,” Noh said softly. She wasn’t asking a question—she was making a statement because she already knew the school was special. The evil eye stone had shown her this truth. She just didn’t know why.

  “‘Special’ is the word.” Hullie laughed. “I guess it’s just one of those big mysteries you have to go and solve for yourself.”

  “A mystery… ,” Noh whispered under her breath. That’s exactly what it was: a mystery that had Noh’s name written all over it. It would be her summer project. She would solve the mystery of the New Newbridge Academy, and her good luck charm would help!

  “Thanks, Hullie!” Noh said as she got up and started walking back toward the school, taking the widest steps her legs would make.

  “Thanks for what?” Hullie said quizzically.

  But Noh was too busy thinking about solving mysteries to reply.

  The Something Big

  The nasty thing that does not wish to be named would like you to know that once upon a time—because it has no real recollection of time or space—it ate something big. It doesn’t want you to know what that something big is right now, but it would like to stress the fact that the something big was, well… big.

  Really, really, really, really, REALLY BIG.

  Into the Light

  Henry was gone.

  Trina had looked everywhere, and he was absolutely nowhere to be found. She knew she was probably overreacting, that Henry had to be somewhere on the school grounds, but since Henry never went anywhere under normal circumstances, it did seem a bit strange that he hadn’t been in his room in the West Wing when she went looking for him earlier.

  And on top of all that, she hadn’t seen Thomas, either. She didn’t want to think about what two missing ghosts might mean.

  She had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach—the kind of feeling that, when you were alive, made you want to go lie down so you wouldn’t throw up your lunch. Her tummy felt all bubbly and syrupy inside, like she was a soda can someone had shaken so hard, it was about to burst.

  Trina loved adjectives. She could make the juiciest sentences with them, sentences all about how uncomfortable her tummy felt—or really about anything she was feeling. She had even won a number of Juicy Sentence Awards in school before she had died. Her parents had been so proud of her that they’d hung the awards i
n the living room so that everyone who came to visit could get an eyeful of them.

  Nelly—who was of the “less is more” school of thought—always made a sour face when Trina launched into her juicy sentences. She said that Trina used too many words. To prove her point, Nelly always tried to use one sentence to describe something that would take Trina three whole pages of notebook paper to explain.

  This never bothered Trina, but to make Nelly happy, she took to saying her juicy sentences to herself, using as many similes and metaphors as she could in her head so that no one ever knew she was the queen of juicy sentences at all.

  Juicy sentences aside, she really did have a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. And it wouldn’t go away, no matter how much she reassured herself that Henry was perfectly fine, wherever he was. She just didn’t believe her own words.

  Unable to keep her worries to herself, Trina went looking for Nelly. She found her friend outside, crouched down in front of a large bayberry bush.

  “What’re you doing?” Trina said as she plopped down beside Nelly and looked over her shoulder.

  “Watching ants,” Nelly replied, her eyes trained on the snaking line of worker ants, each insect weighted down with a piece of white bread–looking stuff.

  “Asbestos again?” Trina asked curiously, forgetting all about Henry’s absence for the moment.

  “No, something from the cafeteria, probably,” Nelly answered. She hadn’t looked up at Trina once, but she did scratch her arm three times, Trina noted.

  “I guess it does look like bread. They seem to really like the stuff,” Trina said, but all Nelly did was shrug. They sat there, staring at the ever-lengthening line of ants for a long time until Trina remembered why she had gone looking for Nelly in the first place.

  “Henry’s gone!” she shrieked suddenly. “And so is Thomas.”

  This made Nelly look up from her ants and blink twice, like she’d just seen something that had blinded her.

  “They’re gone and I think something terrible has happened to them—something really bad. I can feel it in the pit of my stomach, like it’s a soda can about to burst,” Trina finished, glad that she’d told someone else because now her tummy felt slightly better.

  “Did you look all over the building?” Nelly asked.

  Trina nodded. “I looked everywhere!”

  And she really had. When she couldn’t find Henry in his room, she’d looked in every corner, every dark spot, every secret place in the West Wing. She’d been dead awhile, so she knew all those places like the back of her hand. She couldn’t find a trace of either boy—although she had seen the dark-haired teacher again skulking around outside the West Wing. He didn’t have any of the asbestos-bread-fluff with him, but there was still something kind of suspicious about him lurking around the burned-out old building.

  “What about the rest of the school grounds?” Nelly asked after Trina had stopped talking.

  “Well, um… ,” Trina stammered. It was the first time in decades that Trina remembered being at a loss for words.

  “Yes… ?” Nelly said, encouraging Trina to continue.

  “I don’t really like to leave the West Wing,” Trina said sheepishly.

  “You’re outside now,” Nelly said, looking around at their surroundings.

  Trina blushed an even deeper shade of red.

  “Yeah, but you’re with me.”

  She hated to admit this to her friend—because it made her look like the biggest baby in the whole world—but the truth was that Trina was deathly afraid of being alone outside of the West Wing.

  When she’d first died, she’d been entirely carefree, unafraid of anything, but as time had gone on, she’d started to develop the feeling that if she spent too much time away from the West Wing, she’d become one of those ghosts that… disappeared.

  She really hoped something nice happened to you after you disappeared. The ghosts that had gone into the light hadn’t seemed scared, but she knew in her heart that she wasn’t ready for whatever lay ahead. All she wanted to do was stay at New Newbridge as long as she possibly could.

  And if sticking close to home helped make that happen, well, she was just gonna stick as close to home as possible.

  Nelly made a sour face and turned back to the ants. She didn’t have much use for fears and phobias and definitely didn’t think that encouraging Trina’s would be a good idea.

  “I’m sure they’re both around here somewhere,” she said finally, her eyes scanning the line of ants for any sign of the queen. She had a feeling that the queen of this busy ant kingdom had to be pretty smart because her worker ants moved with such precision and dedication that it was almost like they were in the military.

  “Maybe,” Trina said, sensing that she would get no further help on the subject from her friend.

  Or maybe not, she thought.

  She rather hoped she wasn’t right.

  Catherine Alexander

  Whenever Noh had a problem that she didn’t know the answer to, she would ask her dad for help. When he didn’t know the answer, he would direct Noh to the only place in the whole world that did have all the answers to everything: the library.

  Noh loved the library in her town. It was bigger than the fire station but smaller than the grocery store. It was made of warm brown brick, and it always seemed to be inviting you inside when you looked at it.

  She had spent many a rainy day ensconced in one of the large, overstuffed armchairs that littered the science section, reading up on weird diseases and perusing whatever fiction tome had happened to catch her fancy when she wandered through the literature section. She had made her way through all the Anne of Green Gables books and every Jane Austen novel she could find while sitting in those overstuffed armchairs. Just thinking about their lopsided gray cushions put a smile on her face.

  So that’s how Noh found herself standing in front of the giant, carved wooden doors that led into the inner sanctum of New Newbridge’s library. If she knew anything at all, it was that somewhere inside the library waited her best chance at cracking the mystery.

  Noh pushed open the door with a loud creeeak that almost gave her a heart attack. She felt like she was in one of those scary black-and-white monster movies her dad liked to watch late at night when he thought she was asleep—except this was real life, not TV.

  The space was much bigger than she’d imagined—three ominous-looking rooms in total—and chock-full of dusty old books that looked like no one had touched them in a thousand years. She closed the door behind her with another loud creeeak, but this time she was prepared for the sound, so it didn’t make her heart do somersaults again.

  The library seemed empty, with a fine layer of dust on everything.

  “Hello… ?” Noh called out, even though under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have made any sounds louder than a whisper in a library.

  No one answered her. Not even the squeak of a mouse or the crunch of a shoe sounded in the emptiness. Noh took this as a sign that it was okay to enter. Her thoughts were that if someone wanted the place to be off-limits, then they’d have locked the doors.

  Noh tiptoed across the front entryway, her shoes making little squeak-squeak noises as they moved across the dark blue marbled floor. Noh thought that there had to be some kind of pattern built into the marble, but the slabs of dark blue and green were so squiggly and strange that she just couldn’t make out their code. She wondered if she were to climb the large circular staircase that stood against the back wall up to the second floor, if she would be able to see whatever picture the marble spelled out.

  Taking the rickety wrought-iron stairs two at a time, Noh made it to the second-floor landing in less than ten seconds. She walked over to the balustrade and looked down.

  What Noh saw made her head hurt and her eyes swim. It was a great big mishmash of color that would have been at home in the middle of an abstract painting, but seemed very wrong for the floor of a school library. Noh put her hand to her head and
leaned against the railing. She felt like she was going to be sick right then and there.

  “What are you doing?!” called a shrill voice from the first floor.

  Noh squinted down at the circulation desk, and sitting squarely behind the counter was the largest woman she had ever laid eyes on. The woman was wearing a bright blue and green muumuu that matched the colors of the floor, making her seem to almost blend in with the pattern. Noh supposed that that was why she hadn’t noticed the woman in the first place. Although it did seem strange to Noh that the woman hadn’t said a word when she’d first called out her “hello.”

  Noh’s head cleared and she was able to stand up straight again. All the dizziness seemed to have disappeared at the woman’s words.

  “I was just looking for a book,” Noh said, even though that wasn’t the complete and utter truth. “And then I wanted to see what the floor looked like from up here, so I climbed up the stairs.”

  “And how did the floor look from up there?” the woman said, cocking an eyebrow with curiosity.

  Noh swallowed hard.

  “Like an abstract painting.”

  The woman nodded, then said, “Are you sure about that?”

  Noh almost rolled her eyes with frustration. She may have been a kid, but she wasn’t blind.

  “Why don’t you take another look?” the woman said before Noh could say another word.

  Noh didn’t want to look at the floor. In fact, she would’ve rather eaten a tub of live cockroaches than look at the floor again, but she also didn’t want to seem like she was a scaredy-cat, either.

  “Okay,” Noh replied, and gulped hard. She took a deep breath and looked down at the floor.

  “That’s not right!” Noh said loudly. “It wasn’t like that before.”

  What Noh saw now when she looked at the floor was wall-to-wall ugly beige marble. There was no dark blue or dark green anywhere and definitely no pattern that made your brain spin inside your head.