Cold in Summer by Tracy Barrett

Author:Tracy Barrett
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781627796729
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

Ariadne stared at Mrs. Harrison. She saw that the woman’s eyes were filling with tears. Abruptly, Mrs. Harrison picked up her cloth and slapped it on the counter.

“We’re closed,” she announced.

“C-c-closed?” Ariadne stammered.

Mrs. Harrison didn’t answer but went to the door and firmly turned the sign around. “Go away,” she said hoarsely. Then she sat down at one of the round tables and rested her face on her hands.

Ariadne still stood at the counter, uncertain what to do, her ice cream melting down between her fingers. When she saw that Mrs. Harrison’s shoulders were shaking, she decided she’d better leave. But as she headed for the door, Mrs. Harrison said something.

“You can come up to me, but not down to me,” she murmured. “That’s what you said. And I tried—oh, May, I tried. But I couldn’t find you.” She rocked in her seat and gave a strangled sob.

“What?” Ariadne said. But Mrs. Harrison shook her head.

“Get out,” she said. “We’re closed.”

Ariadne let herself out the door and saw Mrs. Harrison reach up and turn the lock. She looked at the cone in her hand. Yuck, she thought. I can’t eat it now. She threw it into the garbage can on the corner and got back on her bike. Her legs were trembling, so she pedaled home slowly.

Now what? she thought. What am I supposed to do now?

She let herself into the house. Zephyr barreled out past her as she opened the door, and she stood in the hallway, gathering her thoughts.

No one was home but her dad. The MAN AT WORK—KEEP OUT sign hung crookedly on the closed study door. Fine. What could she say to him, anyway?

She threw herself on the big chair in the den, draping her legs over its arm, and went through the possibilities in her mind.

First: The other kids were playing a trick on her. No. She had to admit that that theory didn’t work. How could they know what she was doing her report on? And besides, they just didn’t seem like the type.

Second: She was going crazy. She turned that thought over slowly. She had heard that some kinds of mental illness started in your teens, and she would be thirteen in just two months. She saw someone that nobody else saw, and she heard voices. But if she was crazy, how did she see May Butler and hear her name before she ever read about her in that book? And anyway, her parents would have dragged her to a doctor if she had done anything weird, and she didn’t think you could be crazy enough to see and hear people that didn’t exist without acting at least a little strange in some other way.

Third: May Butler was a ghost. She had become a ghost in the nineteenth century, and she was still a ghost now. But that was ridiculous. There were no ghosts.

Or were there?

* * *

Ariadne was quiet at dinner, but no one noticed, of course. Hector was yammering about some

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