Chapter 2 Puddledock Road Is Haunted!
“This whole Puddledock
Road place spooks me,” says Lily-Lou, my new best friend in sixth grade. “I purposely avoid this road. Everybody
does!”
“Well, that hurts my feelings, Lily-Lou,” I say to her. “If it spooks you out, why do
you come to my house every single day after school?” I ask, almost insulted. Newsflash: I’m just as spooked-out as Lily-Lou, but I don’t show it. It’s a sign of weakness!
“There’s
never anyone home at my house, that’s why,” admits Lily-Louise. Lily-Lou is my shadow. But she is opposite my
looks. I like that. I bet I tower over
her by a foot, well maybe just six inches! She’s a bit pudgy, too! My Mom used
to call me ‘string bean’ until I put a definite, complete stop to that nonsense
a few years ago. That kind of nickname could be very damaging to my psyche! I
can’t afford that! But everybody at school isn’t as nice as
Mom. Pudgy is a polite word for fat. “Lily-Lou
is horizontally-challenged,” Mom says.
Mom has more ways of expressing herself
than a thesaurus!
If you ask the kids in class, you’ll get an
earful. Kids can be cruel. I know that
for a fact. How? From experience, that’s how! Lily is large, but she has beautiful, red
hair and a million freckles on her face that dance around and re-arrange
themselves when she laughs, especially in the creases of her mouth. Plus, she’s
a great dresser. Everything
matches. She has bows and shoes, and
dresses that are so coordinated with shoes and matching purses, sometimes I
don’t know what to stare at first. But that still hasn’t gotten her any
friends. It’s awful to have no friends because of what you look like on the
outside. Lils is the most kind-hearted, funny, intelligent person I’ve probably
ever met in my life.
That’s just
what happens to me in every school I go to!
I’m really, really, and I emphasize again, really super smart, but on those days when I wear my clothes inside
out (yes, you heard that right), well, I don’t quite make the impression I
should. Newsflash: I could care less what anyone thinks of me. Well,
maybe a little. But just a very little.
Not so Lils.
She really tries hard to hang out with the popular kids, but they crush her every
time, with their cruel remarks and disgusting jokes about her weight. They
don’t use the word pudgy. It’s “pig-face,” and “blubber butt”, mostly. That
infuriates me. Newsflash: I never
tolerate that language. I got sent home for punching one of the boys in my
class in the nose for making fun of Lils. That’s how I first met Lils, when I
decked that kid and he went screaming for his mommy--to the teacher. Mom never
punished me. In fact, she told me how “noble” that was. I spent two weeks
without my phone though. Mom wasn’t that
sympathetic!
My
personality, Mom always says, is ‘larger than life’ -- outgoing, clever, problem solver, an easy ‘A’
student, and by the end of the year—poof-- I’ve got tons of friends. No matter
what school I’m in-- any particular year!
My so-called friends all promise to text me even though I change
schools. Newsflash: They never do!
I guess it’s true what they say: “Out of
sight; out of mind.” I haven’t heard
from any of them!
But I think
Lils is different. She’s my opposite.
That’s what
I like about her. She balances me off. I
bet it’s been years since I’ve laughed so much—until this year, that is. Lils is as funny as they come! She’s always googling jokes. She keeps a journal, where she actually
writes down all the jokes she finds funny, especially the ones that make me
laugh the most:
Joke #1:
Lils: What time do you go to the dentist?
Me: I don’t know.
Lils: At tooth-hurty!
Joke #2:
As told by
Lils:
Hi
honey. So I tried to make cookies for
the bake sale. But I burnt them.
That’s OK,
Mom. Try again, and double check the
ingredients.
Oh, Lils, I
already tried again…it turned out even worse.
Oh Mom… you
really suck at making things!
Well, I
suppose that’s true. I did make you!
Joke #3:
Why did the
class clown take a computer to her teacher?
Her mom told
her to bring an apple for her teacher!
Get the
picture? I’m hysterical, falling down
laughing. I never get tired of her
jokes.
I’m sure
Lils is one of those friends for life.
We really seem to click on the first day of sixth grade.
Lils isn’t
afraid of anything either. Between the two of us, we are like steel—strong, and
sturdy, and unbendable. Her Dad’s a cop
in town. And still he lets her come to
my house. With this caution:
“Be careful
on Puddledock Road. They say it’s
haunted there.” He smiles but not the way he usually does. Lils says her Dad gets the most calls about
strange things happening on Puddledock Road; really it’s a Cul-de-sac. Translated: Puddledock Road is not
a road that goes anywhere. It’s circular and you come back out the same way you
came into it.
Well, as I
was saying, Officer Sharp gets more calls for strange things happening than from
any other part of town, by far!
The strangest call came a while ago, when a neighbor said she heard
ghosts dragging chains behind them- on 13
Puddledock Road, the house at the very end of the cul-de-sac.
“That’s
insane,” said Officer Sharp, Lils’ Dad.
“No such thing as ghosts!”
But he
cautioned Lils and me to be careful
when walking on Puddledock Road. Newsflash: How else does he think I’m going to get
home?
“Be aware of
your surroundings,” said Officer Sharp, with a stern warning. He says he doesn’t believe in ghosts. But he sure doesn’t act like it! He acts like Puddledock Road is haunted! Newsflash: Lils’ Dad
spooks me out with that warning more than any ghost ever would!
Besides old
crooked-nosed Viola Viviano, and my Mom and me, at 9 Puddledock Road, there are
exactly three more houses on this dead-end street. That’s five all totaled! Three of them haven’t been lived in for at
least a dozen years. They’re all for
sale, but the signs have just about worn out.
The house at
the very end of the cul-de-sac is the
one that scares me the most. It’s different from the rest. It’s totally creepy! I’ve even taken pictures
of it and texted them to my ‘make believe’ friends from last year. You
remember, the ones who never text me back?
Maybe, I shouldn’t scare them. Newsflash:
I don’t care though. I hope they’re freaked out! They aren’t real friends if
they don’t keep in touch.
So, every
once in a while, I still take a creepy photo of that house on 13 Puddledock
Road, the one at the end of the cul-de-sac, and I text it to them. I know it
gets to them. Their Moms have texted my Mom telling me to stop.
Newsflash: No, I won’t!
Sometimes, I
take a selfie with the house behind me. But always in the daytime. Nighttime scares even me.
The house at
13 Puddledock Road is a giant two-story Victorian house. It overwhelms the
other houses on the street with its size. Look up old, creepy Victorian houses,
if you don’t believe me. You might just find the one I’m staring at right now! Its peeling so badly, it almost looks like
it’s bleeding. Newsflash: No, I’m just kidding. But its dark, gray
peeling paint screams, ‘paint me’. Nobody seems to care.
And it’s boarded up. I mean not one window or door is opened. There’s heavy wooden planks screwed into the
sills of the doors and windows. Even the
basement windows, set into that old
stone foundation, are boarded up soundly.
There’s a
large blood red detached barn. Yes, that part of the house is blood red, and
peeling! It looks newer than the spooky mansion but sure doesn’t go with it. Someone’s
got awful taste, I mumble. By now, I’m actually talking to myself-- out
loud. Sometimes that helps me think better, I mean people think I’m a genius
anyway. What’s a little talking out loud, right? The padlock’s all rusty and
the roof of the barn is wavy and
overgrown by green mold. The property is completely surrounded by thick pine woods. It looks to me as if each tree were planted
to deliberately keep this mansion a secret from the rest of the world. Translated:
I must be going mad or something.
Want to know
the really,
really, really spooky part? The
front porch sags exactly in the middle, forming a smile, an evil smile! When I
take a selfie, I sit right in the middle of the sagging porch and smile as if I
don’t care the house is creepy. Newsflash: I don’t!
Here’s the
crazy part. The houses all have a direct
view of the scummy pond, but this house
doesn’t even have a little view of the pond. I even asked Mom about it. The sagging front
porch is large with a broken porch swing that’s rusted, one side up, the other,
half down, dragging its rusty chains on the rotted floor boards of the porch. That’s
probably why everyone thinks it’s haunted. The large rusted swing chain makes a
screeching, high-pitched sound whenever the wind blows, even the slightest
breeze. That’s cool! That’s definitely scaring the neighbors on the other
streets. When it’s really windy, it sounds like a thousand crazed hyenas
screeching their dying brains out. That’s what I don’t get. Neither does Lils.
“Mind your
own beeswax,” (that’s old people talk for business), says Mom. “If they wanted you to see inside, they’d fix
up the old swing and un-board the windows.”
“Strangely
enough though, I thought I saw someone hanging around the old house the other
day, sitting on the porch steps,” said Mom. When I pressed Mom for more
information, I got that circular stuff, “Mind your own beeswax, Veronica Danger Powers. Mom only uses my whole entire name when
she’s totally frustrated with me. Danger may be your middle name, but I
don’t want you getting any funny ideas! Stay out of trouble, do you hear me?”
I really, really, really hope it wasn’t me
she saw. Translated: I think I’m
safe, because she’s blind as a bat without her glasses on. And that’s exactly where I was sitting,
taking my selfie, for my last year’s friends that never text me.
By the way,
I take after Mom in the “four-eye” department. It really does hurt when the
kids at all my schools called me “four-eyes” for real. I talk to Mom every year
about getting contacts, but all she’ll say is, “It will make you a stronger
person, having to deal with adversity.” Adversity is a fancy way of saying
“trouble”. I’m still pressing her for contact lenses. That could be one less
thing for kids to make fun of. I’m wearing her down though. Newsflash: I’m going to win this
one! By seventh grade I’ll be two eyes again, not “four eyes”. Although I have to admit that it makes me
look as super-brilliant as I really am!
“Yes, Mom,” I say half-heartedly, crossing my
fingers behind my back.
“Did you
hear your Mom,” asks Lily-Lou? “Wake up, VDP!
I don’t think you heard a word she said. You day-dreaming again? I think
she’s worried. I can have my Dad come with us to take a look at that creepy
place,” says Lils to make me feel better.
“That’s not
an option,” I tell her. “Officer Sharp,
your Dad, would tell us in that official police voice: ‘Don’t you realize that it’s a crime to
trespass on private property?’ I’m sure he’s had it with people complaining. But
Lils, I know something’s wrong with that house. It’s my intuition, my sixth
sense. I feel it in my bones.”
“You don’t
believe in ghosts, do you, VDP?” Newsflash:
I have to tell you right now, Lils is the only one that can pull off that VDP
stuff with me. Everyone else calls me Veronica but her. Lils says using my
initials makes me sound important. I’ll go along with that.
“Of course not! I don’t believe in ghosts,
not even for one minute!” I shout at
Lils in a loud, squeaky voice, so
unlike me!
I say to
myself, as if I were talking to another person, like I was someone else: Veronica Danger Powers knows better. She knows there are ghosts. She hasn’t told a soul. She’s seen them
before. She knows, somehow, she will see
them again. I am the one I’m talking about. It sounds
even scarier than I imagined!
I look at
Lils. At that moment I now know that the
lie I just told Lils is not working.
Lils is scared. And deep-down I sense
something awful is about to happen.
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