I So Don't Do Mysteries
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Heartfelt and Everlasting Thanks To
Chapter: 1
Chapter: 2
Chapter: 3
Chapter: 4
Chapter: 5
Chapter: 6
Chapter: 7
Chapter: 8
Chapter: 9
Chapter: 10
Chapter: 11
Chapter: 12
Chapter: 13
Chapter: 14
Chapter: 15
Chapter: 16
Chapter: 17
Chapter: 18
Chapter: 19
Chapter: 20
Chapter: 21
Chapter: 22
Chapter: 23
Chapter: 24
Chapter: 25
Chapter: 26
Chapter: 27
Chapter: 28
Chapter: 29
Chapter: 30
Chapter: 31
Chapter: 32
Chapter: 33
Chapter: 34
Chapter: 35
Chapter: 36
Chapter: 37
Chapter: 38
Chapter: 39
Chapter: 40
Chapter: 41
Chapter: 42
Chapter: 43
Chapter: 44
Chapter: 45
Copyright
In memory of my parents,
Stan and Eileen Cox,
who divided the world into
meat-and-potato and dessert books
HEARTFELT AND EVERLASTING THANKS TO
RACHEL VATER—the smartest, savviest, and most loyal agent in the whole entire universe. I’m thrilled (and still amazed) you picked me for your team.
WENDY LOGGIA—Editor Extra-Extra-Extraordinaire. Sherry and I are eternally grateful for your brilliance. And your thoroughness, enthusiasm, and humor. You so rock!
DENNY’S CHICKS—Kelly Hayes, Kathy Krevat, and Sandy Levin—the best critique group a girl could ever wish for. Seriously. I couldn’t have done it without you.
MTW—a unique online group of supersupportive girly-whirly writers with pots of noodles.
OTHER TERRIFIC PEOPLE—Detective Sergeant Joe Bulkowski, who knows lots of police stuff and is willing to share; the Unfamous Nieces, especially psychic babysitter Stef; Carlene Dater, for her critiques and coffee breaks; Judy Duarte, for her guidance and great advice; and Mr. Peter Magee, my phenomenally inspirational high school English teacher.
MY SISTERS—Susan Cox and Sheilagh Scott, who are always up for a l-o-n-g phone call and who know dangerously too much about me to be left off this list.
MY FAMILY—Stan, Stephen, Drew, and Claire—for believing even when it meant more fast food and less clean laundry. And especially to Mark, who’s always willing to calculate odds, drive kids, and discuss plot in the middle of the night. Thanks for putting up with me, guys.
Yikes.
I slam my hand down on the paper.
Sucking in a deep breath, I peek under my palm.
Yikes again.
A fat red F shimmers before my eyes, its wide arms swaying, mocking me, calling me lame names.
“How’d you do, Sherry?” the always-gets-an-A nerd behind me asks.
Scrunching my paper into a ball, I say, “Just peachy.” Then I stand and swing my backpack over my shoulder. “I know more about genetics than I could ever use in this lifetime.” Even with an F, I figure this is true.
Nerd asks, “What’d you get on the essay question?”
There was an essay question? It’s so time to blow this formaldehyde stink hole. I shuffle down the aisle, the backs of my flip-flops slap-slapping my heels. As I pass the wastepaper basket, I drop my test in.
Then I give a mighty shove to the heavy metal classroom door. With a groan, it swings open onto the breezeway and fresh Phoenix air.
Thud.
“Ow!” a male voice says.
Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound good.
I look behind the door.
Ack. Major tragedy. I just door-whacked Josh Morton, the coolest, cutest eighth grader at Saguaro Middle School. In Arizona. Quite possibly in the entire Southwest. I’ve only been nonstop crazy about Josh since September, when I spotted him in a very small Speedo at a water polo game.
Hunched over and leaning against the stucco wall, he’s holding a hand against his nose and groaning.
“I’m sorry, really sorry, really,” I babble. “I just flunked a test and was kind of taking out my frustration on the door.”
“Yeah?” He gives me a slight smile—well, more like a big grimace. Then, with a gorgeous shoulder, he gestures toward the door. “Science?”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “Like that’s even useful.”
“I hear you.” Behind his hand, Josh sniffs.
“You okay? Can I do anything?” I can’t believe I attacked Josh Morton with a door. I can’t believe I, a seventh grader, am finally talking to him. Nervously twirling a few strands of hair around my index finger, I add, “I feel horrible.”
“I’m okay.” He straightens, nodding. “I’m okay.”
I take a deep breath and inhale a chlorine + soap scent. I love, love, love it. I absolutely must have some of this Eau de Josh for my locker.
“Sherry, right?” He raises dark eyebrows over deep blue eyes.
“Yup, yup, yup.” I sound like the flags at the front of the school, fwapping in the wind against the pole.
“I’m Josh Morton.”
Believe me, I so know who you are. “Hi.”
I can’t come up with anything else to say, but at least I look good in my jeans and my new long-sleeved, open-neck T-shirt that perfectly matches my lavender eye shadow.
He removes his hand from his nose. Then he wrinkles it like an adorable little bunny sniffing the air for lettuce or carrots.
This is the closest I’ve ever stood to Josh and, therefore, the first time I notice the sprinkling of freckles across his nose. I squint. Yes, if connected carefully, they’d spell out my initials.
“Is something wrong?” He’s staring at me.
“Not at all.”
Last month’s Seventeen listed twenty suggestions for memorable first meetings with a potential boyfriend. Nowhere did they mention a brutal door-whacking encounter, but it seems to be working. I’ll write a letter to the editor so they can add it as method number twenty-one.
Suddenly Josh clamps a hand firmly over his nose. With his free hand, he hauls his backpack up from the sidewalk. “Gotta go.” Without even a glance at me, he’s off and running.
I watch his shaggy hair bounce against the collar of his black Death by Stereo T-shirt, which rides up to reveal the grooviest plaid boxers above sagging jeans. Sigh. There’s something about a guy who sags.
Then I see a dotted trail of blood in Josh’s wake. Oh no. I follow the spatters to the nurse’s office and stop outside the entrance. My stomach sinks like the Titanic.
I crushed the nose of the guy I’ve been crushing on for six months.
In my living room later that afternoon, I’m nestled in a beanbag chair, scarfing down a Hot Pocket. It’s a pretty peaceful moment, with my eight-year-old brother, Sam, gone for practice at the ball field and my dad still at work.
Then I hear the garage door open.
Seconds later, Dad strides in, shoulders back. He has a big smile on his face. “Sherry, we need to talk.”
Ack. What’s he doing home early? What do we need to talk about? He couldn’t know about the sucky science test. No way the online grades are already posted. And he wouldn’t be smiling.
Dad pops Céline Dion, his fave lame singer, in the CD player, then sits across from me in his La-Z-Boy.
He doesn’t answer right away, just keeps grinning wide like a frog.
“Dad! Dad! Are you okay?” Then it hits me. “You won the Powerball! You’re giving me a no-limit Visa card and a Corvette with a DVD player for when I can drive in three years. And you’ll finally pay for me to get highlights!”
“Sherry”—my name comes out all distorted because of his stretched-out froggy lips—“Paula and I are getting married. On Saturday.”
It’s like he dumped smelly swamp water over my head. And my Visa card, cool Corvette and foxy highlights.
“Saturday!” I screech. “As in the day after tomorrow? You said it would be this summer at the earliest.” And I’d been counting on him coming to his senses by then.
“I know, pumpkin. But, well, there’s an unbelievable Internet special for Hawaii,” Dad says, “and, like you, Paula has next week off for spring break. So we decided to move things up a bit. I’ll tell Sam tonight.”
I bury my head in my hands.
Paula, aka The Ruler, is a math teacher at school who really lives up to her nickname. She looks like a ruler—tall and skinny with ramrod-straight posture. And she’s a major control freak. I mean, she hands out detentions like candy, and don’t even try taking a cell phone into her class. Not to mention her annoying habit of constantly contacting the parents of struggling students. Which is how she hooked up with my dad.
I shudder to think she’ll actually be part of my family. She already has too much influence over my dad. Which means she already has too much influence over my life. Basically, The Ruler loves rules. Rules about how many minutes I should read each evening, which TV shows I can watch, how much screen time I get, how much phone time I get, who I can hang out with, when I can get a MySpace. It’s frustrating and nauseating and wrong.
And now full-on stepmotherhood is only two days away.
Dad’s droning on and on about wedding plans and Internet specials and Hawaii and San Diego and me.
Say what? I lift my head and tune back in to discover he wants to banish me to my great-aunt Margaret’s in San Diego, while he and The Ruler hit Kauai’s beaches.
I stand. “I’m not going to San Diego.” I zap him with a don’t-mess-with-me look. “I have plans for spring break, important plans, plans that were planned eons ago.”
“Sherry—”
“You are not ruining my life. I”—and I jab my thumb into my chest—“can do that all on my own.”
You know how you have a private place where you go when you just can’t take the world anymore? A place where you can shove an entire Fruit Roll-Up in your mouth all at once without embarrassment? A place where you expect to be totally alone? My place is the ornamental pear tree in our backyard. My mom planted it when I was born.
So here I am, at dusk, lying on my stomach on a bumpy branch, staring down at a turtle-shaped sandbox and crying my eyes out. I can’t believe Dad is getting remarried. On Saturday. To The Ruler. My life is totally ruined.
My spring break is totally ruined too. My spring-break plans have been in place for months: spend time with my girlfriends, shop at the mall, eat junk food, and sleep till noon. Very important stuff.
And even more important is my BBSRP (Brilliant But Simple Romance Plan), which goes like this: I spend time at Video World; Josh and I hook up; I wow him with my video-game skills, my conversation, my clothes, my makeup; he falls for me; he’s a great kisser; we become one of those hip middle school couples everyone admires. Finally, he asks me to the Eighth Grade Graduation Dance, and I pick out the perfect dress from Sequins, an ultracool store in the mall.
Although, after this morning’s door incident, the plan may need some tweaking.
Naturally, my bratty little brother gets to stay in Phoenix with Grandma Baldwin, who always says she can only handle one of us at a time. And it’s never me. Like I’m trouble? Puh-leeze.
My grandmother seriously needs to learn about forgiveness. And a sprinkling of Prozac on her scrambled Egg Beaters wouldn’t hurt either. So I was involved in a little incident with her darling parakeet? It happened way in the past.
When I was ten, Grandpa Baldwin had a humongous heart attack, causing him to drive off the highway and smash into a giant saguaro cactus. Grandpa, a nonbeliever when it came to a low-fat diet and seat belts, died immediately upon impact, but Grandma, safely buckled, was totally unharmed. Right after the crash, a bazillion birds rose up from the surrounding cacti and thorny trees, screeching and flapping their wings. Like a big, noisy bird blanket, they covered the car. Grandma sat statue still, positive Grandpa’s spirit was choosing one of the whacked-out birds as its new home. Can you say crazy? She also believes in ghosts and aura combing.
Since then, Grandma’s backyard has been crammed with bird feeders and birdhouses. Also, she used to own an annoying pet parakeet named Soul. They’d chill together in the kitchen for cozy chats about the afterlife. The last time I slept over at Grandma’s, Soul followed me to the bathroom, where he began pecking on the window. Anyone could see he wanted out for a little fly. Unfortunately, Soul chose to hang with the neighbor’s cat, and the rest is a messy story of feathers and guts on Grandma’s driveway. And, for the record, I still say it was a complete coincidence that all this took place after Grandma sent me to bed early for mouthing off.
Anyway, my BBSRP will never, ever become reality if I’m exiled to San Diego. Arms wrapped around the tree branch, I cry till I run out of tears, hiccup a little, then get mad. I sit up, cross my arms and lean against the trunk. Then I swear. Every cussword I’ve ever heard flies out of my mouth. Great release. I highly recommend it—except, make sure you’re truly alone.
Stomping my foot on the branch, I let loose a particularly offensive string of words.
“Sherlock Holmes Baldwin!” a voice says.
I freeze. Despite the eighty-degree weather, goose bumps pop up all over my arms and legs. Slowly, slowly, I look around for the owner of that familiar voice. Nobody.
“I did not raise you to use that kind of language.”
“Mom?” I squeak. I catch a faint whiff of coffee, my supercop mother’s favorite beverage. This can’t be happening.
“Mom?”
Silence.
“Mom?” It can’t be her. Can it?
“Just a minute.” The voice is impatient. “I’m having trouble landing.”
This is weird. Mega weird. And mega freaky-deaky.
Because my mother? She was killed in the line of duty a year and a half ago.
I must be losing my mind. I start freaking out, inhaling humongous amounts of air. Palm over my pounding heart, I force myself to breathe evenly. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
The smell of coffee is suddenly stronger, like when someone’s using the grinding-machine thingie at the grocery store. The branch above me dips and bounces.
“Mom?” I whip my head up. “Is it really you?”
“Yes, it is,” she says, “even though you can’t see me.”
A Play-Doh-ish lump sticks in my throat. That voice—I never thought I’d hear it again.
We sit there, both of us sniffling. At least, I sit there. For all I know, my invisible mom’s standing on her head.
I swallow hard. “I miss you.”
“Me too, pumpkin.” It comes out all strangled.
Tears start rolling down my cheeks. With the back of my hand, I wipe them away. I croak out a nonword.
Right at this hugely emotional moment, a cactus wren loops by, then lands by the wide date palm in the middle of our yard. It swipes at its little dark eyes with a tattered old wing. Bizarre. Is it crying along with us?
“Crazy, isn’t it?” Mom says. “All those years I made fun of Grandma, and it turns out she was right.”
This time I croak out a sort-of word. “Huh?”
“About ghosts existing. That’s what I am.”
This is majorly not sinking in for me. Like in the summer, when the sun bakes
the ground so hard and dry, it can’t absorb water? Well, my brain’s not absorbing this big-time-strange situation.
“Can I touch you?” I ask, hushed.
There’s a whoosh, and my branch jostles. The smell of coffee is right beside me. I pat the air but don’t feel anything. “I wish I could see you.” I pause. “Unless you’re all, you know, with the bullet hole and stuff.”
“We’re restored to how we looked thirty minutes before our death. I just look like myself. I still need a haircut. Remember, I canceled my appointment?”
And I do remember. “Because of your migraine.” I swallow. “This is way weird.”
“I had choices,” she says. “I could either cross over right away or go to the Academy of Spirits or choose an animal form. I chose the Academy so I could keep an eye on you and Sam.”
“Wow.” I’m shocked out of my shock. Mom picked us? Shut up. She was so . . . not maternal when alive. So not there for us. She practically lived at the Phoenix Police Department. And when she was home, it was all friction and “I’m very disappointed in you, Sherry.”
True, I always have lousy report cards. True, I hate trying new things, so I panic and fail. True, I’ve had several royal screwups. Like, once when I was baking a cake, I overfilled the mold with batter and started an oven fire. Another time, I was in charge of Sam at the beach, and I totally lost him, to the point the lifeguards had to make loudspeaker announcements, then dive in for a search. Turned out my brother had wandered off to the playground. Not to mention the gazillion times I lost keys, library books, and school assignments.
Basically, my overachiever, superambitious, workaholic mother and me are polar opposites. I spent my life looking for her attention. She spent her life looking for the next promotion. And then came the drug bust that killed her.
But now? Maybe this very strange, very freaky situation is a chance for us to get it together.
“You’ve been watching me and Sam?” I say.
The branch sways. I can totally imagine her in her fave position, legs crossed with her top foot wiggling and jiggling.
“Only from a distance so far. I can tell you’re both taller.”