Ghost Girl Read Online Free Page B

in case you were wondering. And I’ll be living here at the schoolhouse. That door behind you leads right into my apartment.”
    I glanced over my shoulder at the door and nodded, pretending I didn’t already know her name, that I hadn’t been thinking about her moving into the schoolhouse for months.
    I was still standing there gazing into her wide brown eyes when another door beside us burst open and I heard Miss Vest let out a little gasp.
    â€œWhat on earth?” she yelped, and I followed her into what must have been the classroom. It looked like a lightning storm had hit. The electric lights were blinking on and off, and in every corner of the room there was some kind of commotion. Mrs. Woodard’s baby was squalling and the Woodard boys were playing chase around the desks and a few other kids were drawing on the chalkboard while their parents gossiped in the corner.
    Miss Vest hurried off. I saw her scoot across the room and catch little Alvin Hurt playing with the light switch. Like me, Alvin probably had never seen electric lights before except down at Taggart’s. For a minute I stood in the doorway, not knowing what to do. Then I noticed Dewey and his older sister, Ida, standing nearby with three of the newspaper people gathered around them. Dewey was answering questions, beaming like a cat in the sun. You could have heard him all the way outside, bragging about his new shotgun and how he didn’t really need to be at school, he had already taught himself to read.
    One of the reporters was a lady wearing lipstick red enough to flag a train. I saw her smile and give something to Ida—a black enamel vanity case. Ida squealed when the lady leaned over and showed her how to snap it open. “Oh, thank you, Miss Daniels!” she cried. “Look at that! It’s got a little mirror and rouge inside. Can I really keep it?”
    â€œSure you can, honey,” the lady said. Just then Ida looked up and caught me watching, but she didn’t even smile or say hello. She twirled around and ran off to show her compact to Luella Hudgins and some other girls talking in the corner.
    â€œCan I have your attention, please?” Miss Vest called from the front of the room. Through the crowd, I could see her standing by her desk, biting her lip as she waited for everyone to quiet down, but no one was listening. Dewey and the reporters went on grinning and talking. A few more kids and their parents filed in the door, and over by the woodstove Silas Hudgins spit a mouthful of tobacco juice into the coal bucket.
    Miss Vest made an impatient face. Then she grabbed a wooden-handled bell on her desk and shook it. At first nobody paid attention to that, either, but then she shook it again—this time hard enough to set everyone’s teeth to rattling. I almost laughed, thinking about Aunt Birdy and the bell at Taggart’s.
    The whole room got quiet as a graveyard. Even the Woodard baby stopped crying.
    â€œThank you,” Miss Vest said, looking a little embarrassed. She set the bell gently back on her desk. Then she said, “I’d like to welcome you all to the President’s Mountain School. We’ve all been waiting for this day for a very long time. . . .”
    Miss Vest spoke with her hands. I’d never seen anyone talk that way before, sweeping their arms back and forth through the air to make a point. But Miss Vest made it look natural, with her sparkly bracelet and her long, graceful fingers. I was watching so close I barely heard what she was saying until she stopped moving long enough to glance at her wristwatch.
    â€œIt’s after nine o’clock,” she said, finishing her speech. “So I’m afraid we’ll need to say goodbye to all our visitors and members of the press for now.”
    The Woodard brothers, Dewey and Ida, Luella, Alvin, and all the other kids started scrambling for the finest pick of desks. By the time I found a