59 - The Haunted School Read online

  “What if I lit up the room with yellow light from the other world? Do you think the color—the yellow light—would wash away the gray?”

  “You already tried it—outside,” Ben reminded me.

  “But that was outside,” I replied. “What if I light it near the wall? Do you think the bright color will make the gray wall fade away so that we can escape to the other side, the side of color?”

  They stared back at me, their eyes locked on the lighter in my hand.

  I didn’t wait for their reply.

  “I’m going to try it,” I announced.

  I raised the plastic lighter high.

  Their eyes followed the lighter as I raised it high.

  “Good luck,” Ben whispered. “Good luck to us all.”

  I clicked the lighter.

  Clicked it again.

  Clicked it.

  Clicked it hard.

  It wouldn’t light.

  27

  I slammed the lighter onto the desktop.

  “It’s out!” I wailed. “I used it up. It’s out of fluid.”

  “No—” Ben cried. “Try it again, Tommy. Please—give it one more try.”

  I groaned and picked up the lighter. My hand was trembling. My throat suddenly felt so dry.

  It seemed like such a good idea. If only I could get it to flame.

  “Here goes,” I murmured, raising the lighter again. “One more try.”

  My palm slippery from sweat, I nearly dropped the lighter again. I tightened my grip on it. Raised my thumb.

  Clicked it.

  Clicked it again, harder.

  And the flame shot up.

  “Yesssss!” Ben cried.

  But his happy cry faded quickly.

  The flame leaping up from the lighter was gray.

  Everyone groaned.

  I stared at the gray flame, dancing on top of the gray lighter. Held tight in my gray fist. “It’s no use,” I choked out.

  I clicked off the flame and shoved the lighter back into my pocket. I turned to Ben. “Sorry,” I muttered glumly. “I tried.”

  Ben nodded, swallowing hard.

  I gasped. “Ben—your face! Your cheeks!”

  “Gray?” he asked softly.

  I nodded. “Your nose is all that’s left,” I told him. “Your nose has the only color.”

  “Yours too,” he reported.

  The five gray kids stood in silence across the room. Seth shook his head sadly.

  What could they say?

  This had already happened to them. They had lived in a black-and-white world for fifty years.

  And now Ben and I were doomed to be part of that cold, gloomy world.

  I rubbed my nose. How long would it keep its color? I wondered.

  How long until I became one of them?

  My eyes wandered to the elevator. If only Ben and I had taken the stairs to the art room. If only…

  Too late to think about that now.

  I stared hard at the elevator doors. Once again, I silently ordered them to open.

  I let out a startled cry when I heard a loud, rumbling sound.

  Everyone jumped up. Alert. Listening.

  The rumble grew to a roar. “What’s happening?” Ben cried.

  “The elevator!” Eloise gasped, pointing.

  We all hurried across the room. We were just a few feet away—when the elevator doors slid open.

  We all stepped up to see who was inside.

  “Greta!” I cried.

  28

  No. Not Greta.

  To my shock, Thalia stood in the elevator doorway.

  She peered out tensely. Her blond hair gleamed in the elevator light. Her blue dress sparkled brightly. The color almost hurt my eyes.

  A red-lipped smile spread over her face. “I found you! I did it!” she cried happily.

  She came running out of the elevator. With a happy cry, she threw her arms around Mary and hugged her tight. Then she hugged Eloise and Seth, Mona and Eddie.

  Happy cries rang out from everyone.

  “Thalia—you came back!”

  “Are you okay?”

  “We’ve been waiting for you!”

  “Whoa—wait—the elevator!” I cried. “Don’t let it go!”

  I made a frantic dive.

  Too late.

  The doors slid shut.

  I crashed into them and bounced off. “Nooooo!” I let out a long, frantic wail. “Nooooooo! The elevator! The elevator!” I banged on the doors with both fists.

  I spun around to face Thalia.

  She gasped and raised a hand to her mouth. “Oh—I’m so sorry!” she cried. Her blue eyes grew wide. “I—I was so happy to see my friends, I forgot!”

  “But—but—” I sputtered.

  Trembling, I slumped against the wall. Our one chance to escape. Too late… too late…

  The five gray kids circled around Thalia, hugging her, laughing, asking her a thousand questions.

  “We missed you so much!” Eloise cried. “We waited for you to come back and rescue us.”

  “I missed you guys too,” Thalia told them. “I tried to come back. But I couldn’t find the way. I didn’t know how to get back here—until tonight.”

  She turned to Ben and me. “I escaped a few weeks ago,” she explained. “Just before school started. I went over to your world, the real world. But I had to disguise myself.”

  “You mean—” I started.

  “The makeup,” Thalia continued. “The makeup and the lipstick. I had to keep putting that stuff on all the time. To cover up my gray skin. I—”

  “But your eyes—” I interrupted. “They’re blue.”

  “Contact lenses,” she explained. She let out a long sigh. “It was so hard, so much work. I had to be so careful. I had to apply coat after coat of makeup and lipstick. I couldn’t let anyone know.

  “Kids made fun of me,” Thalia sighed. “But that wasn’t the worst part. I wanted to stay in the world of color and brightness. But I was a fake. A phony, covering up with makeup. I no longer belonged there. I belonged here in Grayworld.”

  Thalia sighed again. “But I couldn’t find the way back. Then tonight, you and Ben didn’t return to the gym. I went searching for you. I found the hole in the boarded-up wall. And I found the elevator. And it brought me here, to my friends.”

  “Welcome back,” Mary said, putting a gray arm around the shoulders of Thalia’s dress. The color on the dress had already started to fade.

  “You’re right. This is where you belong,” Seth told her.

  “When you escaped, we thought about you all the time,” Mona added. “We wondered how you were doing. And we wondered if you would come back for us.”

  “You don’t want to go there,” Thalia replied. “And I don’t want to go back. We don’t belong there. We cannot live there. I don’t want to pretend anymore. I just want to stay here with you and be myself.”

  She pulled a makeup kit and a tube of lipstick from her bag and tossed it down on a desktop. “No more makeup. No more lipstick. No more pretending.”

  “But what about us?” Ben cried. “Tommy and I have only a minute or two more before we’re totally gray!”

  “Aren’t you going to help us escape from here?” I pleaded. “Aren’t you going to help us get back?”

  Thalia shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry, guys.”

  29

  I swallowed hard, thinking about home. My dad. My new mom. My dog.

  I’ll never see them again, I realized.

  I’ll never see color again. Never see blue ocean waves or a red, setting sun.

  “I’m sorry, guys,” Thalia repeated. “Sorry I didn’t explain this to you right away.”

  “Explain what?” I cried.

  “I think I can get you back to the other side,” she said.

  She picked up her lipstick tube. “This is how I escaped a few weeks ago,” she said. “This lipstick tube was buried in my bag for fifty years. I’d forgotten all ab
out it.”

  She unscrewed the cap and showed us the bright red lipstick. “I found it a few weeks ago. When I opened it, it was still red!” Thalia exclaimed. “It was some kind of miracle. Maybe because it had been closed up. It still had its color.”

  Thalia moved to the wall. “I was so excited to see the color red after fifty years,” she explained. “I started drawing on the wall with it. And to my shock, wherever I spread the lipstick, it made a hole in the wall!”

  “That’s amazing!” Eddie cried.

  The others excitedly agreed.

  “The lipstick burned right through the wall,” Thalia continued. “I—I was so shocked, I didn’t know what to do. I drew a window on the wall. And I climbed through it. I escaped. That’s how I did it.”

  She raised the lipstick tube to the gray wall. “I tried to come back for you guys,” she told her friends. “But the hole closed up as soon as I went through it.”

  She frowned. “I drew a lipstick window on the wall on the other side. But in the real world, lipstick is only lipstick. It didn’t work. I couldn’t get back to you. I had no way of finding you, no way to return here.”

  I glanced at Ben. To my horror, he had turned completely gray. Except… except for the tip of his nose.

  “Thalia—hurry!” I begged. “Draw a window for Ben and me! Please—we don’t have any time left!”

  Without another word, she turned to the wall.

  Her hand moved quickly, outlining a red window. Filling it in.

  “Hurry! Please, hurry!” I pleaded, staring as she frantically rubbed the red lipstick over the wall.

  Would it work?

  30

  As soon as she finished the window, I grabbed Ben. I shoved him through the hole. “Come on!” I cried. “We can do it!”

  “Good-bye, Ben. Good-bye, Tommy,” the others called.

  Halfway through the wall, I turned back to them. “Come with us!” I cried. “Hurry! You can come with us!”

  “No, we can’t,” Seth called sadly.

  “Thalia is right. We’d hate it. We belong here now,” Mary said.

  “Don’t forget me!” Thalia called. Her voice broke with sadness. She turned away.

  I turned too. Turned to the other world, our world. Ben and I stepped through the wall. And found ourselves back in school.

  I heard music booming down the hall. Kids shouting and laughing.

  The dance!

  We were back at the dance.

  With a gleeful shout, I shoved open the door to the boys’ room. Ben and I dove inside. Ran up to the mirror.

  Gaped at ourselves.

  Our colorful selves.

  All red and blue and pink and yellow. All in color! So many colors!

  We slapped each other high fives. And tossed back our heads and screamed out our happiness. Screamed and screamed.

  We were back. Back to normal. Back in the world.

  Back at the dance.

  We banged open the boys’ room door. Burst into the hall.

  And ran into Mrs. Borden.

  “There you are!” she cried. “I’ve been looking all over for you two!”

  She grabbed each of us by the hand and began tugging us down the hall.

  “Mrs. Borden—we have to tell you—” I started.

  “Later,” she interrupted. She pushed us into the gym. “We’ve all been waiting for you. You’ve held everyone up.”

  “But—you don’t understand!” I sputtered.

  “You want to be in the photo—don’t you?” Mrs. Borden demanded. Kids were lined up in front of the bleachers. She shoved Ben and me into the front row.

  “We want everyone who worked on the dance in the photo,” Mrs. Borden declared.

  She turned to the photographer behind his camera. “Okay, Mr. Chameleon,” she called. “You can take the shot now!”

  “Mr. who?” I cried. “No! Wait! Wait!”

  FLASH.

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