Anderson leaned forward in his desk. "Like Mr. Snyder and the frog," he said, eyes going wide.
"Possibly," Romy said, turning her computer so that we could all see it. There was a little folder on the desktop titled MARY EVANS, and Romy clicked on it. "Okay, so it's been common knowledge that Mary has haunted this place ever since she died."
"Forever condemned to high school," Dex said with a little shudder. "That would make me homicidal, too."
Romy didn't lift her eyes from the screen, but she frowned. "Why is she homicidal, though? I mean, over a hundred years, and up until a few months ago, the only ghostly activity was an occasional locker door opening, or things disappearing and showing up someplace weird." Clicking on an icon, Romy pulled up a document with EVIDENCE typed in bold letters on the top. Several bullet points were listed below, including things like LOCKERS and CHALK.
When I asked what that meant, Romy closed the document, saying, "About ten years ago, an entire history class saw a piece of chalk float in midair for thirty seconds. But that's it."
Now I frowned. That did seem like quite a leap from floating chalk to dismembering frogs. It was really rare for a ghost to have that kind of control over its surroundings. If this was Mary Evans's doing, the sooner I got rid of her, the better.
Next to me, Anderson tapped a pencil against his braces. "If Mary left that doll for Beth, that kind of blows our whole teacher theory out of the water." He glanced over at me, cheeks reddening slightly. "We figured she went after Mr. Snyder because he was, you know, a teacher, and it was a teacher who, um...who, like-"
Sighing, Dex turned in his seat and propped his feet up on the desk next to him. "Got her in the family way."
As far as theories went, it wasn't a bad one, and I nodded. But Anderson was right: Why Beth now?
"Is there any connection between Beth and Mr. Snyder?" I asked, trying to look innocent. "Any reason the same thing that was after him would go after her?"
Romy sat on a desk, pulling her knees up and staring into space. "Nothing I can think of. Beth didn't even have biology this semester."
Silence fell over the trailer, the only sound Anderson's tapping at his teeth and the occasional car going by. Then Dex dropped his feet to the floor and proclaimed, "Look, I'm just going to say what everyone is thinking. Maybe history is repeating itself here. Maybe Beth and Mr. Snyder had a thing, like Mary and Mr. Gross Teacher."
Romy, Anderson, and I screwed up our faces at that, but I had to admit, it was a solid idea, and it did point even more to Mary Evans's being the actual culprit. And all I needed to know to make this place ghost-free was the "who."
Romy had clicked on something else now, a picture. It showed several people all dressed in clothes from the turn of the twentieth century. They were standing on a big lawn, and a few of the boys were holding tennis rackets. In the back, there was a girl with light hair and big eyes, a red circle drawn around her face. "That's Mary," Romy said, tapping the screen.
Dex leaned over my desk to get a better look, and I caught a whiff of some nice, woodsy scent. "She was pretty," he observed. "If I were her, I'd be chilling out in heaven, hitting on hot dead guys. Not hanging around here accosting chemistry teachers."
"She feels tied to this place," Anderson said, pointing his pencil at the laptop. "Until she gets some kind of justice, she's always going to hang around here."
It was very hard to bite my tongue on that, but I managed. Just like the rumors surrounding vampires, there's all kinds of wrong information about ghosts. If Mary Evans was stuck in this place, all the justice in the world wouldn't make her leave. She'd keep hanging around until someone put her to rest.
Romy shut down the computer. "So I'm thinking seance?"
My head shot up. "Wait, what?"
"We can contact Mary Evans through a seance," Anderson said. He nodded to the corner of the room, where a Ouija board, still in its box, sat on one of the desks. "See if we can talk to her, figure out if she's here. Maybe this weekend?"
Crap. I didn't know who invented Ouija boards, but whoever that guy was, he was a jerk. This place already had one dangerous spirit floating around; it didn't need something else called forth from a Ouija board.
"Are you guys sure that's the best idea? I mean, Ouija boards don't work, right?"
Anderson looked like I'd just insulted his grand-mother. "Of course they work. I mean, we've never tried one before, but on TV-"
"On TV, EMP readers work," Dex threw in. "And in reality, yours just has a lot of blinky lights."
"I've only had it for a few weeks, so we don't really know what the blinky lights do yet," Anderson replied, and Dex raised his hands in surrender.
"Boys." Romy sighed with a weariness that told me this wasn't the first time she'd stopped their squabbling. "Anderson's EMP reader is awesome and a very valuable tool for this club. And so is that Ouija board. So. As soon as I can find a free night when I don't have to babysit my brothers, we are going to get our seance on."
Dex snorted. "So will be doing the seance next summer, then?" To me, he added, "Romy is forever babysitting her little monsters."
He said it so easily, but most Prodigium I knew hate the term "monster." They find it offensive, and would never use it in casual conversation. Once again, I wondered just what the heck Dex was.
Sighing, he sat up and thumped his feet to the ground. "I for one cannot wait to hear the thrilling story behind why Mary Evans decided to upgrade from opening locker doors to attempted murder."
Romy ignored him and held up her hand for a high five. "So, Izzy Brannick, are you ready for your first experience with the paranormal?"
I slapped her palm, not sure whether I should laugh or cry. "As I'll ever be."
CHAPTER 13
"I don't think Everton really loves her."
"Of course he does," I told Torin around a mouthful of SpaghettiOs. "I mean, he gave up his dream of sailing across the world so that he could take her to prom. That has to mean something."
It was Friday night, and Torin and I were sitting in my room-well, I was. He was chilling in the mirror as usual, waiting for Mom to get home. When I'd come in from school, there'd been a note saying she'd be back later and I should fend for myself as far as dinner went. Hence the SpaghettiOs.