The Curse on Spectacle Key, page 8
Connie and I both yelped.
“Who set off your windup car?” Connie whispered.
I picked up the car, turned it around, and popped off the cover to the batteries. No batteries. My hands shook as I showed it to Connie. “Nobody,” I said, and chucked the car back into the closet.
“And we know what Bernard can do,” Connie said, eyeing the doll suspiciously.
Downstairs, I heard Papi let loose a string of curses aimed at the water heater. Mom answered with a few colorful words of her own.
“Then there’s that,” I said with a sigh.
Connie looked thoughtful. “Mama Z said we were meant to help one another. Perhaps that’s why I left the dark place where I was and came here. To help you figure out the problem with Spectacle Key.”
“And maybe I can help you not be invisible anymore,” I said.
“Partners, then,” Connie said, extending her hand. I shook it, and it felt like we’d taken a step toward a plan, even though we didn’t really have one yet.
My eyes fell on the bookcase, full of books in which all kinds of inexplicable things happened—monsters, ghosts, curses. Beside the bookcase, in the duffel bag on the floor, was Pop-Pop’s chemistry set. The scientist and the story lover in me felt like they were at war in my brain. It was like I’d stepped into a horror story, one where science didn’t have the answers. But that couldn’t be right. It just wasn’t possible!
Spectacle Key had me really messed up.
I started thinking how weird it was that my first real friend was possibly a ghost. Living or . . . not living, I liked spending time with Connie, even if everything about her situation was strange and getting spookier by the minute.
Connie flopped onto my bed and stretched out like a starfish. When her fingers brushed the pages of the proof I’d been working on, she sat up and asked, “What’s this?”
“A proof. It’s like an argument on the page that a scientist has with himself. I mean, other people can read it, too. But it’s a way of arranging your thoughts about something that’s hard to understand.”
“Oh. Like my invisibility. And Spectacle Key’s mysteries.”
“Let’s list everything we know,” I said, tearing a fresh page out of the notebook I kept on my nightstand. I wrote:
Problems with Spectacle Key
My friend Connie is invisible and we don’t know why.
Connie read over my shoulder. “I’m a problem?”
“No,” I said quickly. “But your invisibility is, right?”
“Yes, it very much is a problem. My bad memory is a problem, too, Frank.”
I add Connie’s amnesia to the list.
Connie can’t remember anything except walking in a stream once.
“That’s good,” Connie said. “You should write something about your parents being so cross with one another all the time.”
I jotted down:
Mom and Papi can’t stop fighting about everything.
“How about the weather? It’s bonkers here,” I said.
Connie nodded, then snapped her fingers. “Don’t forget about Snuffles!”
“Snuffles?” I asked.
“Mm-hmm. ‘The other one’ that Mama Z mentioned. Whoever they are, they sniffled all the way to Spectacle Key. Must have caught a cold.”
I could already tell that Connie was the kind of person who worried about others. A possibly evil spirit had chased us. Who else would care if it was feeling under the weather? It made me like her even more. I penciled in:
Snuffles. Evil? Or a disembodied cold?
“There’s also the sweet smell. I’ve noticed that for a while now,” I said. “And the messages with my name misspelled.”
“And don’t forget Bernard,” Connie said, shivering all over.
I wrote:
A sweet smell is in the air. Why?
Who is leaving the “Farnk” notes?
Bernard, the (probably) Haunted Doll
Connie and I reread the list. “That’s everything,” Connie said, and started unlacing her boots. She pulled them off, and they fell to the floor with clear thuds. I wondered if my parents, bickering faintly downstairs, could hear them, too.
“Yep, I guess we listed everything,” I lied. Connie’s boots had reminded me: she’d said her birthday was in 1921, over a hundred years ago. If Connie wasn’t a time traveler, and she wasn’t a ghost, then what was she?
If Connie had traveled through time, and had somehow forgotten how or why she’d done it, that meant there was a family back in the past waiting for her. Missing her.
But if Connie was a ghost, it meant she’d died, probably long ago considering her clothes and everything she didn’t recognize around her. She’d almost panicked when Mama Z mentioned the possibility that she might be a spirit. Maybe Mama Z had lied. Maybe Connie really was a ghost, and Mama Z had only spared her feelings.
And if Connie was a ghost, then what or who was Snuffles? Were they a ghost, too?
I could have thought about these questions all day, going round and round in my head and getting nowhere, but Mom’s voice shook me out of it.
“Frankie! Come down quick, mister! There’s a surprise for you!” she shouted.
Ugh, no more surprises, I thought. But when I got to the bottom of the stairs, with Connie and Mary Shelley right behind me, I changed my mind.
“Pop-Pop!” I shouted, and jumped off the final step with a big leap.
“Sonny boy!” Pop-Pop said in return. He always called me “sonny boy,” and sometimes, he called my mom his “sonny girl,” which always made her laugh. “I’m hankering for some seafood,” Pop-Pop said, rubbing his big belly. He was wearing a University of Miami T-shirt like he always did, khaki shorts, socks pulled halfway up his calves, and white sneakers. Pop-Pop’s wispy blond hair barely covered his head. I was thrilled to see him. He was the only grandparent I had. Mom’s mother, my grandma Eleanor, had died before I was born, and Papi’s parents had passed away in Cuba a long time ago, too. I was always a little jealous of kids who had all four of their grandparents around. They didn’t know how lucky they were.
I felt a tug on my sleeve and Connie started whispering, “I’m having a memory, Frank! Of my own grandaddy! He was very short but very strong, and he smoked a pipe! Your pop-pop takes after him.”
“That’s great, Connie!” I said, glad that another memory had come to her.
“What’s great?” Pop-Pop asked.
Mom interrupted. “Daddy, Frankie is talking to his imaginary friend.”
I could feel my cheeks burning. Behind me, Connie grumbled.
Pop-Pop’s eyebrows rose. “Is that so? Well, your momma had an imaginary friend, too, and so did I.”
“What?” I asked, surprised. Pop-Pop was a scientist! He’d never believe in imaginary people!
“Can we talk about it over lunch?” Papi asked, motioning to the front door. His stomach grumbled loudly in support.
We piled into the van—Mom, Papi, Pop-Pop, Connie, and me. Pop-Pop had his cell phone out and was shouting directions at Papi.
“It’s one road, Jim. North and south. We can’t get lost,” Papi was saying, but Pop-Pop ignored him.
Meanwhile, Connie had scrambled up to the front of the car, having slipped right out of her seat belt. She was leaning on the dashboard between Papi and Pop-Pop, her palms flat on the front windshield. I wanted to tell her that was way not safe, but I didn’t want the “imaginary friend” conversation to start up again.
“There it is, boy-o!” Pop-Pop shouted, pointing at a restaurant with a glittery sign that read The Spotted Whale All-You-Can-Eat Buffet. “Take a louie!” which was what Pop-Pop always said when he meant, “Go left.” A giant gray whale covered in sequin polka dots seemed to swim over the restaurant roof. Its back was faded from the sunlight, but it was still pretty impressive.
I waited for Connie while my family walked ahead of me.
“Your automobile goes so fast!” she said, her eyes big and shiny.
“They do in my time,” I said under my breath.
“What was that?” Connie asked.
“Nothing. Let’s eat. I’m starving.” Connie shrugged, letting my comment go.
At some point, I would have to tell her that I thought she actually was a ghost, but I didn’t know how to break it to her. It was the only explanation for what was going on. Connie was invisible, she ate but her food didn’t really get eaten, she said she was born over a hundred years ago, and her memory of her life was almost entirely gone. Mama Z must have been lying to us. Connie Friday was a ghost. I’d bet anything.
I’d just have to find a way to tell her . . . gently.
Then we’d figure out why she’d come back. Ghosts always returned with a mission, didn’t they? At least, that was always the case with the spirits in my books and comics. It usually had to do with their death. Sometimes, they came back for revenge. But Connie didn’t seem the vengeful type.
I watched as Connie skipped into the restaurant, slipping in right behind Pop-Pop. I followed her. She paused to look at everything—the red vinyl booths, the long buffet tables, the waitstaff in their crisp black aprons, and the bubbling, brightly lit jukebox in one corner. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was open. What had Connie come back for, anyway? A tour of the twenty-first century? There had to be something else, something I was missing.
“Boo!” I heard behind me at the same time that a pair of hands grabbed my shoulders.
I shouted and turned around, my heart beating a million miles an hour, only to be faced with a red-haired kid my age, wearing a mask in the shape of a stingray.
“It’s me, Lucas, remember?” Lucas said, pulling the stingray mask off. “The servers give masks to all the kids. I wanted a shark but all they’ve got left are these ones. Hey, wanna play in the arcade?”
“No thanks,” I told Lucas, and rushed off to join my family at a big table with bench seats. I didn’t trust that kid. And even though it looked more and more like I was dealing with something supernatural on Spectacle Key, I still wasn’t completely convinced that Lucas wasn’t trying to prank me.
Back at our table, Pop-Pop had already put on a plastic bib with a cartoon lobster on it and a server was going around filling cups of water. “For you, sweetheart,” the server said, and dropped a stingray mask on the table. I looked across the restaurant, where Lucas was giving me a thumbs-up. I pushed the mask to the center of the table.
“So where’s your imaginary pal sitting?” Pop-Pop asked.
I groaned. Not this again. “Over there,” I said. Connie waved at Pop-Pop, but he didn’t see her, of course.
“What’s his name, then?” Pop-Pop asked. Papi was watching with narrowed eyes. I knew he didn’t like this one bit. Meanwhile, Mom was smiling an Isn’t my son adorable? smile at me.
“Connie. Her name is Connie,” I said.
Pop-Pop tried to hide a smile. “Is she old or young?”
“She’s a kid like me, Pop-Pop,” I said, sinking down lower in my seat. Did the earth ever really swallow people up? Because right now I hoped it would gulp me down.
Pop-Pop tipped an imaginary hat at her and said, “Nice to make your acquaintance, young lady.” Then he pointed a fork at my mom. “This one here had a young gentleman as her imaginary friend, if I recall. I had one, too. He broke my toys and pencils and such. Naughty boy,” Pop-Pop said very seriously. “What is your friend like?”
“I’m delightful. But confused, sir,” Connie answered Pop-Pop.
“She’s delightfully confused. All the time,” I said.
That’s when Papi slammed his hands on the table and shouted, “DOES NOBODY THINK THIS IS WEIRD? AT ALL? IS IT A KEYS THING BECAUSE YA NO PUEDO CON ESTAS LOCURAS!”
It felt like half the restaurant stopped to stare at us. Even Lucas and his mother, Emily Shiverton, and everyone at their table craned their necks to look. But they only looked for a moment before Ms. Shiverton rose and headed our way. Three other people joined her—two white women wearing matching pink blouses, and a Black man in a bow tie.
“Look what you did,” my mom whispered angrily. “You’ve sicced HAUNT on us just when we were going to have a nice dinner with Daddy.” Mom turned around and with a huge smile on her face said, “Emilyyyyy, so nice to see you. Have you tried the scallops?”
“Joooooyce,” Ms. Shiverton said. “Allow me to introduce three of HAUNT’s founding members—Minnie and Winnie Watson, twins as you can see, and Mark McPhee. We were just going over your case.”
“Our case?” Papi asked.
Mr. McPhee cleared his throat. “Yes. The legality of the occupation permit for the Spectacle Key lighthouse is in question.”
Papi got to his feet. “There’s no question. We occupy it. Punto y aparte.”
“‘Punto y aparte’ means And that’s that!” I translated for Pop-Pop.
“The question is not whether you live there. It’s whether you should,” one of the twins trilled.
“A historical building such as your own requires thoughtful caretakers,” chimed in the other twin.
“Listen, Emily. We all know you put in an offer to buy the lighthouse at the same time we did. But we had the higher bid. That’s how the real estate cookie crumbles sometimes,” Mom said in the kind of voice that meant business.
“Your case is before the mayor,” Ms. Shiverton added, completely unbothered by what my mom had said.
Now it was Mom’s turn to stand up. “What mayor? Spectacle Key doesn’t have a mayor!”
The members of HAUNT all started to laugh. “Of course it does,” Ms. Shiverton said. Then she and the others returned to their table.
Mom and Papi sat down in slow motion and started murmuring about lawyers.
Pop-Pop nudged me in the ribs. “Let’s go fill up our plates before they change their minds about eating here. These licorice sticks won’t carry me through the day,” he said, pointing to the candy bulge in his shirt pocket. Mom always kept caramels in her purse. That day, I had a lollipop in my left pocket. The sweet tooth ran in the family.
“An excellent idea!” Connie said, running to the buffet. She loaded her plate with crab claws, salad, hunks of mahi-mahi, steaming mussels, and even a few California rolls. “I don’t know what this is, but it smells so good!” she chattered. Nobody else noticed her as she walked back to the table with a heaping plate of food.
I worried that somebody might see a plate floating in midair, but somehow, Connie managed to zigzag between hungry customers and waiters rushing about without being noticed. I wondered if the things she touched went invisible, too. We’d have to run an experiment later. At one point, a busboy backed into her, sending her plate crashing down.
Connie stomped her foot in frustration and went back to the buffet for more, while the busboy cursed under his breath and picked up the mess.
Pop-Pop and I made our selections, too. Mine was all coconut shrimp and Pop-Pop’s was all crab legs.
“Pop-Pop,” I asked as we looked at the dessert options at the end of the buffet table, “back when you were a scientist, did—”
“I’m still one, sonny boy. Always will be,” he said, tapping his temple with his free hand.
“Right,” I said. “Which is why I’m wondering: What do you do if you can’t believe your own eyes and ears?”
Pop-Pop stopped and thought for a moment. He squinted into the distance, as if the answer was far away, over by the emergency exits or something. I loved watching Pop-Pop think. It was like his brain went into download mode as he searched for an answer.
“First off,” he said at last, “make sure you’ve eliminated all the possibilities for the unbelievable thing.”
“Got it. Did that. Mostly,” I said.
“Then go to the source. Where were you when the unbelievable thing first happened? Try to re-create the moment!” Pop-Pop said, swinging a crab leg for emphasis. A waiter looked at him with a scowl. “All experiments need to be run several times in order to verify the results.”
Go to the source? That meant returning to the abandoned house where I’d first met Connie!
“Interesting,” I said. “What else?”
Pop-Pop laughed. “Sonny boy, at that point if you find that you’re still dealing with something unbelievable, well then, you’d better start believing it.”
Chapter 13
Video Games and Not-So-Funny Pranks
When we returned to the table, Mom and Papi were very quiet.
“Aren’t y’all going to eat?” Pop-Pop asked, setting his plate down.
Connie’s face was shiny with butter and she was leaning back and rubbing her stomach with her eyes closed. Her food, however, appeared untouched.
Mom noticed it and started picking at some shrimp. “Who brought the extra plate?” she asked. “Here, eat up,” she said, and pushed the plate toward Papi.
“I don’t have much of an appetite now.”
“No appetite?” Pop-Pop asked, then shoved fried squid from Connie’s plate into his mouth.
“Who can blame me? We might have to leave Spectacle Key,” Papi moaned. Mom nodded sadly. Even though she seemed to hate Spectacle Key, she didn’t want Papi’s dream to crash and burn.
At that, Connie opened her eyes and sat upright. “Tell them you can’t, Frank! You can’t leave me on the island by myself!” She sprang to her feet and ran off.
“Excuse me,” I said. Mom and Papi were so down in the dumps they didn’t even notice me going. I chased Connie all the way to the arcade, where she stopped in front of a video game called Hurricane Hero. Lucas was playing. He was sitting on a bench with a seat belt strapped around his chest and lap. His hands were on a wheel, and the screen showed him driving a big bus with monster-truck wheels on it! The bus flew down a rainy road, while wind seemed to batter the town around it. Every so often, a character would stand at the side of the road calling for help, and Lucas would have to pump the brake to let them on. Then off he went again, speeding down highways, dodging falling trees and sudden tornadoes. The bench Lucas sat on rumbled and bounced, which was why he needed the seat belt.
Even though I didn’t like video games, this one was pretty cool.
“Who set off your windup car?” Connie whispered.
I picked up the car, turned it around, and popped off the cover to the batteries. No batteries. My hands shook as I showed it to Connie. “Nobody,” I said, and chucked the car back into the closet.
“And we know what Bernard can do,” Connie said, eyeing the doll suspiciously.
Downstairs, I heard Papi let loose a string of curses aimed at the water heater. Mom answered with a few colorful words of her own.
“Then there’s that,” I said with a sigh.
Connie looked thoughtful. “Mama Z said we were meant to help one another. Perhaps that’s why I left the dark place where I was and came here. To help you figure out the problem with Spectacle Key.”
“And maybe I can help you not be invisible anymore,” I said.
“Partners, then,” Connie said, extending her hand. I shook it, and it felt like we’d taken a step toward a plan, even though we didn’t really have one yet.
My eyes fell on the bookcase, full of books in which all kinds of inexplicable things happened—monsters, ghosts, curses. Beside the bookcase, in the duffel bag on the floor, was Pop-Pop’s chemistry set. The scientist and the story lover in me felt like they were at war in my brain. It was like I’d stepped into a horror story, one where science didn’t have the answers. But that couldn’t be right. It just wasn’t possible!
Spectacle Key had me really messed up.
I started thinking how weird it was that my first real friend was possibly a ghost. Living or . . . not living, I liked spending time with Connie, even if everything about her situation was strange and getting spookier by the minute.
Connie flopped onto my bed and stretched out like a starfish. When her fingers brushed the pages of the proof I’d been working on, she sat up and asked, “What’s this?”
“A proof. It’s like an argument on the page that a scientist has with himself. I mean, other people can read it, too. But it’s a way of arranging your thoughts about something that’s hard to understand.”
“Oh. Like my invisibility. And Spectacle Key’s mysteries.”
“Let’s list everything we know,” I said, tearing a fresh page out of the notebook I kept on my nightstand. I wrote:
Problems with Spectacle Key
My friend Connie is invisible and we don’t know why.
Connie read over my shoulder. “I’m a problem?”
“No,” I said quickly. “But your invisibility is, right?”
“Yes, it very much is a problem. My bad memory is a problem, too, Frank.”
I add Connie’s amnesia to the list.
Connie can’t remember anything except walking in a stream once.
“That’s good,” Connie said. “You should write something about your parents being so cross with one another all the time.”
I jotted down:
Mom and Papi can’t stop fighting about everything.
“How about the weather? It’s bonkers here,” I said.
Connie nodded, then snapped her fingers. “Don’t forget about Snuffles!”
“Snuffles?” I asked.
“Mm-hmm. ‘The other one’ that Mama Z mentioned. Whoever they are, they sniffled all the way to Spectacle Key. Must have caught a cold.”
I could already tell that Connie was the kind of person who worried about others. A possibly evil spirit had chased us. Who else would care if it was feeling under the weather? It made me like her even more. I penciled in:
Snuffles. Evil? Or a disembodied cold?
“There’s also the sweet smell. I’ve noticed that for a while now,” I said. “And the messages with my name misspelled.”
“And don’t forget Bernard,” Connie said, shivering all over.
I wrote:
A sweet smell is in the air. Why?
Who is leaving the “Farnk” notes?
Bernard, the (probably) Haunted Doll
Connie and I reread the list. “That’s everything,” Connie said, and started unlacing her boots. She pulled them off, and they fell to the floor with clear thuds. I wondered if my parents, bickering faintly downstairs, could hear them, too.
“Yep, I guess we listed everything,” I lied. Connie’s boots had reminded me: she’d said her birthday was in 1921, over a hundred years ago. If Connie wasn’t a time traveler, and she wasn’t a ghost, then what was she?
If Connie had traveled through time, and had somehow forgotten how or why she’d done it, that meant there was a family back in the past waiting for her. Missing her.
But if Connie was a ghost, it meant she’d died, probably long ago considering her clothes and everything she didn’t recognize around her. She’d almost panicked when Mama Z mentioned the possibility that she might be a spirit. Maybe Mama Z had lied. Maybe Connie really was a ghost, and Mama Z had only spared her feelings.
And if Connie was a ghost, then what or who was Snuffles? Were they a ghost, too?
I could have thought about these questions all day, going round and round in my head and getting nowhere, but Mom’s voice shook me out of it.
“Frankie! Come down quick, mister! There’s a surprise for you!” she shouted.
Ugh, no more surprises, I thought. But when I got to the bottom of the stairs, with Connie and Mary Shelley right behind me, I changed my mind.
“Pop-Pop!” I shouted, and jumped off the final step with a big leap.
“Sonny boy!” Pop-Pop said in return. He always called me “sonny boy,” and sometimes, he called my mom his “sonny girl,” which always made her laugh. “I’m hankering for some seafood,” Pop-Pop said, rubbing his big belly. He was wearing a University of Miami T-shirt like he always did, khaki shorts, socks pulled halfway up his calves, and white sneakers. Pop-Pop’s wispy blond hair barely covered his head. I was thrilled to see him. He was the only grandparent I had. Mom’s mother, my grandma Eleanor, had died before I was born, and Papi’s parents had passed away in Cuba a long time ago, too. I was always a little jealous of kids who had all four of their grandparents around. They didn’t know how lucky they were.
I felt a tug on my sleeve and Connie started whispering, “I’m having a memory, Frank! Of my own grandaddy! He was very short but very strong, and he smoked a pipe! Your pop-pop takes after him.”
“That’s great, Connie!” I said, glad that another memory had come to her.
“What’s great?” Pop-Pop asked.
Mom interrupted. “Daddy, Frankie is talking to his imaginary friend.”
I could feel my cheeks burning. Behind me, Connie grumbled.
Pop-Pop’s eyebrows rose. “Is that so? Well, your momma had an imaginary friend, too, and so did I.”
“What?” I asked, surprised. Pop-Pop was a scientist! He’d never believe in imaginary people!
“Can we talk about it over lunch?” Papi asked, motioning to the front door. His stomach grumbled loudly in support.
We piled into the van—Mom, Papi, Pop-Pop, Connie, and me. Pop-Pop had his cell phone out and was shouting directions at Papi.
“It’s one road, Jim. North and south. We can’t get lost,” Papi was saying, but Pop-Pop ignored him.
Meanwhile, Connie had scrambled up to the front of the car, having slipped right out of her seat belt. She was leaning on the dashboard between Papi and Pop-Pop, her palms flat on the front windshield. I wanted to tell her that was way not safe, but I didn’t want the “imaginary friend” conversation to start up again.
“There it is, boy-o!” Pop-Pop shouted, pointing at a restaurant with a glittery sign that read The Spotted Whale All-You-Can-Eat Buffet. “Take a louie!” which was what Pop-Pop always said when he meant, “Go left.” A giant gray whale covered in sequin polka dots seemed to swim over the restaurant roof. Its back was faded from the sunlight, but it was still pretty impressive.
I waited for Connie while my family walked ahead of me.
“Your automobile goes so fast!” she said, her eyes big and shiny.
“They do in my time,” I said under my breath.
“What was that?” Connie asked.
“Nothing. Let’s eat. I’m starving.” Connie shrugged, letting my comment go.
At some point, I would have to tell her that I thought she actually was a ghost, but I didn’t know how to break it to her. It was the only explanation for what was going on. Connie was invisible, she ate but her food didn’t really get eaten, she said she was born over a hundred years ago, and her memory of her life was almost entirely gone. Mama Z must have been lying to us. Connie Friday was a ghost. I’d bet anything.
I’d just have to find a way to tell her . . . gently.
Then we’d figure out why she’d come back. Ghosts always returned with a mission, didn’t they? At least, that was always the case with the spirits in my books and comics. It usually had to do with their death. Sometimes, they came back for revenge. But Connie didn’t seem the vengeful type.
I watched as Connie skipped into the restaurant, slipping in right behind Pop-Pop. I followed her. She paused to look at everything—the red vinyl booths, the long buffet tables, the waitstaff in their crisp black aprons, and the bubbling, brightly lit jukebox in one corner. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was open. What had Connie come back for, anyway? A tour of the twenty-first century? There had to be something else, something I was missing.
“Boo!” I heard behind me at the same time that a pair of hands grabbed my shoulders.
I shouted and turned around, my heart beating a million miles an hour, only to be faced with a red-haired kid my age, wearing a mask in the shape of a stingray.
“It’s me, Lucas, remember?” Lucas said, pulling the stingray mask off. “The servers give masks to all the kids. I wanted a shark but all they’ve got left are these ones. Hey, wanna play in the arcade?”
“No thanks,” I told Lucas, and rushed off to join my family at a big table with bench seats. I didn’t trust that kid. And even though it looked more and more like I was dealing with something supernatural on Spectacle Key, I still wasn’t completely convinced that Lucas wasn’t trying to prank me.
Back at our table, Pop-Pop had already put on a plastic bib with a cartoon lobster on it and a server was going around filling cups of water. “For you, sweetheart,” the server said, and dropped a stingray mask on the table. I looked across the restaurant, where Lucas was giving me a thumbs-up. I pushed the mask to the center of the table.
“So where’s your imaginary pal sitting?” Pop-Pop asked.
I groaned. Not this again. “Over there,” I said. Connie waved at Pop-Pop, but he didn’t see her, of course.
“What’s his name, then?” Pop-Pop asked. Papi was watching with narrowed eyes. I knew he didn’t like this one bit. Meanwhile, Mom was smiling an Isn’t my son adorable? smile at me.
“Connie. Her name is Connie,” I said.
Pop-Pop tried to hide a smile. “Is she old or young?”
“She’s a kid like me, Pop-Pop,” I said, sinking down lower in my seat. Did the earth ever really swallow people up? Because right now I hoped it would gulp me down.
Pop-Pop tipped an imaginary hat at her and said, “Nice to make your acquaintance, young lady.” Then he pointed a fork at my mom. “This one here had a young gentleman as her imaginary friend, if I recall. I had one, too. He broke my toys and pencils and such. Naughty boy,” Pop-Pop said very seriously. “What is your friend like?”
“I’m delightful. But confused, sir,” Connie answered Pop-Pop.
“She’s delightfully confused. All the time,” I said.
That’s when Papi slammed his hands on the table and shouted, “DOES NOBODY THINK THIS IS WEIRD? AT ALL? IS IT A KEYS THING BECAUSE YA NO PUEDO CON ESTAS LOCURAS!”
It felt like half the restaurant stopped to stare at us. Even Lucas and his mother, Emily Shiverton, and everyone at their table craned their necks to look. But they only looked for a moment before Ms. Shiverton rose and headed our way. Three other people joined her—two white women wearing matching pink blouses, and a Black man in a bow tie.
“Look what you did,” my mom whispered angrily. “You’ve sicced HAUNT on us just when we were going to have a nice dinner with Daddy.” Mom turned around and with a huge smile on her face said, “Emilyyyyy, so nice to see you. Have you tried the scallops?”
“Joooooyce,” Ms. Shiverton said. “Allow me to introduce three of HAUNT’s founding members—Minnie and Winnie Watson, twins as you can see, and Mark McPhee. We were just going over your case.”
“Our case?” Papi asked.
Mr. McPhee cleared his throat. “Yes. The legality of the occupation permit for the Spectacle Key lighthouse is in question.”
Papi got to his feet. “There’s no question. We occupy it. Punto y aparte.”
“‘Punto y aparte’ means And that’s that!” I translated for Pop-Pop.
“The question is not whether you live there. It’s whether you should,” one of the twins trilled.
“A historical building such as your own requires thoughtful caretakers,” chimed in the other twin.
“Listen, Emily. We all know you put in an offer to buy the lighthouse at the same time we did. But we had the higher bid. That’s how the real estate cookie crumbles sometimes,” Mom said in the kind of voice that meant business.
“Your case is before the mayor,” Ms. Shiverton added, completely unbothered by what my mom had said.
Now it was Mom’s turn to stand up. “What mayor? Spectacle Key doesn’t have a mayor!”
The members of HAUNT all started to laugh. “Of course it does,” Ms. Shiverton said. Then she and the others returned to their table.
Mom and Papi sat down in slow motion and started murmuring about lawyers.
Pop-Pop nudged me in the ribs. “Let’s go fill up our plates before they change their minds about eating here. These licorice sticks won’t carry me through the day,” he said, pointing to the candy bulge in his shirt pocket. Mom always kept caramels in her purse. That day, I had a lollipop in my left pocket. The sweet tooth ran in the family.
“An excellent idea!” Connie said, running to the buffet. She loaded her plate with crab claws, salad, hunks of mahi-mahi, steaming mussels, and even a few California rolls. “I don’t know what this is, but it smells so good!” she chattered. Nobody else noticed her as she walked back to the table with a heaping plate of food.
I worried that somebody might see a plate floating in midair, but somehow, Connie managed to zigzag between hungry customers and waiters rushing about without being noticed. I wondered if the things she touched went invisible, too. We’d have to run an experiment later. At one point, a busboy backed into her, sending her plate crashing down.
Connie stomped her foot in frustration and went back to the buffet for more, while the busboy cursed under his breath and picked up the mess.
Pop-Pop and I made our selections, too. Mine was all coconut shrimp and Pop-Pop’s was all crab legs.
“Pop-Pop,” I asked as we looked at the dessert options at the end of the buffet table, “back when you were a scientist, did—”
“I’m still one, sonny boy. Always will be,” he said, tapping his temple with his free hand.
“Right,” I said. “Which is why I’m wondering: What do you do if you can’t believe your own eyes and ears?”
Pop-Pop stopped and thought for a moment. He squinted into the distance, as if the answer was far away, over by the emergency exits or something. I loved watching Pop-Pop think. It was like his brain went into download mode as he searched for an answer.
“First off,” he said at last, “make sure you’ve eliminated all the possibilities for the unbelievable thing.”
“Got it. Did that. Mostly,” I said.
“Then go to the source. Where were you when the unbelievable thing first happened? Try to re-create the moment!” Pop-Pop said, swinging a crab leg for emphasis. A waiter looked at him with a scowl. “All experiments need to be run several times in order to verify the results.”
Go to the source? That meant returning to the abandoned house where I’d first met Connie!
“Interesting,” I said. “What else?”
Pop-Pop laughed. “Sonny boy, at that point if you find that you’re still dealing with something unbelievable, well then, you’d better start believing it.”
Chapter 13
Video Games and Not-So-Funny Pranks
When we returned to the table, Mom and Papi were very quiet.
“Aren’t y’all going to eat?” Pop-Pop asked, setting his plate down.
Connie’s face was shiny with butter and she was leaning back and rubbing her stomach with her eyes closed. Her food, however, appeared untouched.
Mom noticed it and started picking at some shrimp. “Who brought the extra plate?” she asked. “Here, eat up,” she said, and pushed the plate toward Papi.
“I don’t have much of an appetite now.”
“No appetite?” Pop-Pop asked, then shoved fried squid from Connie’s plate into his mouth.
“Who can blame me? We might have to leave Spectacle Key,” Papi moaned. Mom nodded sadly. Even though she seemed to hate Spectacle Key, she didn’t want Papi’s dream to crash and burn.
At that, Connie opened her eyes and sat upright. “Tell them you can’t, Frank! You can’t leave me on the island by myself!” She sprang to her feet and ran off.
“Excuse me,” I said. Mom and Papi were so down in the dumps they didn’t even notice me going. I chased Connie all the way to the arcade, where she stopped in front of a video game called Hurricane Hero. Lucas was playing. He was sitting on a bench with a seat belt strapped around his chest and lap. His hands were on a wheel, and the screen showed him driving a big bus with monster-truck wheels on it! The bus flew down a rainy road, while wind seemed to batter the town around it. Every so often, a character would stand at the side of the road calling for help, and Lucas would have to pump the brake to let them on. Then off he went again, speeding down highways, dodging falling trees and sudden tornadoes. The bench Lucas sat on rumbled and bounced, which was why he needed the seat belt.
Even though I didn’t like video games, this one was pretty cool.
