Sylvie and the Christmas Ghost Read online

  “Sorry, sunshine.” He pulled his sweater down to cover the white T-shirt he had on. “I completely forgot the kitchen guys were coming this morning. They’ve already shut off the water. Hope you got to your morning ablutions early.”

  “Umm... no?” And suddenly I had to pee worse than I’d ever had to go in my entire life. “How long is the water gonna be off?”

  “All day,” he said, guiding me down the staircase.

  “All day?” Oh great!

  “Good thing there’s an outhouse, eh?” Picking up my coat, he helped me on with it. While I slid my feet into my boots, he looked down and asked, “Sylvie, where’s your brace?”

  “Oh, I…” A huge rumble came from the kitchen, which distracted my father long enough for me to finish putting on my boots. “So, where’s this outhouse? I hope it’s not too gross.”

  He looked at the closed white door at the end of the long narrow hallway. “What are those guys doing?”

  “Dad, where is the outhouse? I hafta pee.”

  “Huh? Oh. Yeah. Come this way.”

  Ha! He’d forgotten all about my leg brace. My dad seemed totally distracted as he led me through the kitchen door. In the tumble-down kitchen, there were three brawny men and one brawny woman and they were all hard at work. The air was full of dust as they tore apart the cupboard where I’d seen the raccoon.

  “No, no, no,” my dad said to one of the men. “The range is staying put. It still works.”

  “Hold your horses, bub. It ain’t going nowhere,” the man replied. “Here—take a look at the blueprints. We gotta move it over here while we install the new…”

  “Dad!” Tugging at my father’s sweater, I stood on my toes and whispered, “I have to go to the bathroom.” I felt like I was four years old all over again.

  “Sorry, Sylvie.”

  It was like he’d forgotten I was standing right beside him. But he directed me out the kitchen door and into the backyard.

  “I’ve got a few things to discuss with the guys,” he said from the doorway.

  The woman worker cleared her throat.

  Dad corrected himself. “The guys and Shirlee. I’ll be out in a couple minutes, okay?”

  “Okay.” I turned around when he closed the door and looked at the wooden hut with the moon window. “Here goes nothing.”

  Holding my breath, I swung open the squeaky wooden door and launched myself inside. The hinge snapped back faster than I expected and almost caught my foot. I got in just in time for the door to smack me in the butt.

  It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, and that moment was truly terrifying. Were there cobwebs all over my face? Spiders crawling up my pant legs? The smell was overwhelming. For all I knew, there might be a dead moose in the corner. In the dark, you don’t know what’s out to get you and forget it’s all in your mind.

  Winter’s morning sun found its way through the cut-out in the door and the tiny spaces between the boards of the walls. Though the light was dim, at least I could faintly see the small space. Not that there was anything to see, really. In front of me there was a wooden bench with not one but two holes in it. Two holes, side by side! And they both had mint green horseshoe-shaped toilet seats on top of them, like someone from the 1950s wanted to spruce the place up.

  “This is so weird,” I said to nobody.

  Now, which green toilet seat should I go for? They both looked equally usable, which was strange for an outhouse. Wouldn’t you think a place like this would be long-abandoned? But this one looked like it saw action every day. Maybe the ghostbusters from the front lawn had made it their own.

  Anyway, my bladder was ready to burst. I just had to choose one and go for it. And I did. And, let me tell you, that toilet seat was cold as ice! I had to hover above it because it was just too freezing to make contact with.

  When I reached for the toilet paper I realized… wait… there was no toilet paper! The only thing around was somebody’s newspaper sitting beside me on the bench. That’s weird—the newspaper had pieces torn off of the pages. Torn off in sheets, it looked like. Wait… did people in this town use newspaper to wipe their bums?

  I don’t know what got into me, but I just started laughing. Suddenly everything about my dad’s falling-down house seemed so funny I couldn’t hold back. I probably wouldn’t have been laughing so hard if I didn’t have a bunch of tissues in my coat pocket, but still.

  As I zipped up my pants and pulled down my coat, something caught my eye. I froze in position when a shadow passed in front of the outhouse. I saw it in the moon-shaped cut-out. It wasn’t a person. I know what it looks like when a person walks by. This was definitely a shadow, but it wasn’t dark and cloudy like a thunderstorm. It was light and bright like a sunny day. It scared me stiff.

  When I finally got up the courage to talk, I asked, “Who’s out there?”

  No answer.

  “Who’s out there?” I asked again. “I saw you pass by. Tell me who you are.”

  “I was just gearing up to knock,” a man’s voice said from outside. “Didn’t mean to put a fright in you.”

  Relief washed through me like a wave and the feeling came back to my fingers. When I opened the door, barbeque beard man turned around. He was standing a few feet away from the outhouse and facing the opposite direction. He had on a blue toque and a hockey coat that, as he turned, I saw had the word “coach” embroidered across the chest. The leather sleeves were white. Could that have caused the flash of light I’d seen?

  I must have really been staring at the man, because he said, “I weren’t peeping, if that’s what you think.”

  “No, I know.” I didn’t want him to feel bad. “I thought I saw something. Not you, I mean. I thought I saw something else.”

  He looked around the yard, then said, “I didn’t see nothing.”

  “My eyes must be playing tricks on me.”

  He stared at me kind of desperately, and that’s when I realized he was waiting to go to the bathroom. I got out of his way, and the second the outhouse door slammed behind him, he let ‘er rip! I covered my mouth so I wouldn’t laugh, but then I heard myself laughing anyway.

  Wait a minute… that wasn’t me laughing. Where was the laughter coming from?

  I looked to my left, to where the dead, snow-dusted grasses gave way to the treeline. That’s when I spotted a lush red cape, two white leather gloves, two black leather boots and a heap of golden ringlets.

  Happiness sprouted wings inside me and soared until I remembered what had happened the day before. Then that joy burned down until nothing was left but cinders. I walked toward Celeste, not because I wanted to, but mainly because the barbeque beard man’s stink had infiltrated the great outdoors. Anyway, I didn’t want him overhearing our conversation.

  “I told you to stay off my father’s property,” I said when I was near enough to whisper. “What are you doing here?”

  “Only, I thought we might speak about the kiss.”

  “Shhh!” I hissed. “Tell the whole world, why don’t you?”

  “Are you still upset about it?”

  “Yes, I am still upset about it,” I said, over-enunciating each word the way she did.

  “What did you find so upsetting, Sylvie? It was only a kiss.”

  She reached for my hand, but I swiped it away and hid it behind my back. “It wasn’t only a kiss. A kiss means something, especially when it’s a girl kissing another girl. Don’t play dumb with me. You might be from a small town, but you can’t be that stupid.”

  Grave concern shone in Celeste’s eyes. We’d only just met and already she cared for me enough that I was yelling at her and she wasn’t yelling back? She wasn’t running away? That’s what broke my anger down. That’s why I didn’t run away either.

  With a deep sigh, I leaned my shoulder against a tree and stared into the woods. “There’s this guy at school: Shawn Connolly. He asked me to the Christmas dance and I said no, so he told the whole class I was a lesbian. I
haven’t told anyone but you, so don’t go spreading it around. I didn’t even tell my big sister. I didn’t even tell my mom. But I guess there’s a lot of stuff I don’t tell my mom anymore.”

  When Celeste didn’t say anything, I turned to see what kind of look she had on her face. She was smiling. I didn’t expect that.

  “Cat got your tongue?” I asked.

  “Only, I wonder how you responded to such an allegation,” she said sweetly.

  “Allegation? It wasn’t an allegation. He spread a rumour about me. Didn’t even have the guts to say it to my face.”

  “How did the rumour find you?”

  “My friend Zachary told me. He said he wasn’t going to. He didn’t want to hurt my feelings. But the weird thing is that it didn’t hurt my feelings. It made me mad, but that’s different.”

  “Mad?” Celeste asked.

  “Well, yeah. Wouldn’t you be mad? I mean, just because I say I don’t want to go to the dance with a guy doesn’t automatically make me… you know.” I’d always found that word hard to say. Lesbian. It sounded so final. “Just because I’ve never wanted to go to any dance with any guy doesn’t automatically mean I want to go with a girl. I don’t want to go out with anyone. So what? Why does Shawn Connolly think it’s any of his business, anyway?”

  “The male of the species is awfully intrusive,” Celeste agreed.

  “Intrusive, yeah. I like that word. Who does he think he is, intruding into my life and telling people made-up stuff about me?”

  “Did you make any attempt to set the record straight?” Celeste asked, without even laughing at the pun.

  “I’m not gonna go around to every kid in school and be all like, ‘Hi, I’m Sylvie and I’m not a lesbian.’ Because that would be like saying there’s something wrong with being that way. If I was, I mean. If it were true.”

  I thought back to when Zachary told me about the rumour. I’d felt exactly the way I was feeling as I explained it to Celeste: confused and nauseous and dizzy, like my insides were tied in knots, and my tongue too.

  “Oh, who even cares?” I said. “What difference does it make what people say about me?”

  Celeste turned to watch the barbeque beard man leaving the outhouse. He waved his hand in front of his face like he couldn’t take any more of his own stink. As he walked by, we remained quiet so he wouldn’t look over. We were hidden in the trees enough that he probably couldn’t have seen us anyway, but I guess we really didn’t want to be spotted.

  When the bearded man had gone around the side of the house, I said, “You know what? Why would anyone believe Shawn anyway? He thinks girls pee out of our butts.”

  Letting out a giggle, Celeste covered her mouth with her gloved fingers. “Say that again?”

  “Shawn told the guys in our class he didn’t get why it’s such a big deal for a guy to be gay. He said doing it with a girl or a boy was same thing.”

  Celeste raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “None of the guys understood either. Then someone asked Shawn where he thought girls peed from, and he said we peed from our butts. He thought all we had was a butt and the front of us was just flat like a Barbie doll. That’s what my friend Zachary told me.”

  Celeste clapped her hands, like she’d never heard anything so funny in all her life. “Did your friend Zachary correct the boy’s mistake?”

  I shook my head. “Nobody did. Shawn probably still thinks that.”

  We both cracked up, until the crunch of frozen grass rang out behind my back. Celeste suddenly looked stricken. She spun around and ran into the woods.

  Before I could call out after her, my dad said, “What’s all this laughter about? You know there’s no laughing allowed around Christmastime.”

  His stupid dad-jokes always made me smile, even if they were totally lame. “I was just telling my friend Celeste a story about school.”

  My dad looked around, smiling, but furrowing his brow. “Your imaginary friend Celeste?”

  “No.” I rolled my eyes. “She ran away when she heard you coming.”

  “Where do you know this girl from?”

  I felt a blush coming on when I remembered why I hadn’t told my dad about her before. “I met her yesterday when you were at the old people’s home. She was in the crowd of your biggest fans out front.”

  “Right.” He smirked, and it made me sort of proud that he was amused by my jokes. “So your friends are afraid of me, huh? Maybe they think I’m the ghost that’s haunting my house.”

  As my dad led me around the far side of the house where the driveway was, I said, “I still don’t know why you didn’t tell me the real reason all those people are out there. You really thought it would make me scared?”

  He shrugged.

  “I’m not a little kid, you know.”

  Putting his arm around my shoulder, he led me up the gravel driveway. “I hope you’re not too grown up for chocolate chip pancakes at Darla’s Griddle.”

  “Never!” My mouth gushed with saliva just thinking about them. “Remember the time we all came up here and you took Graham and Naomi to visit Great-Aunt Esther while Doug and I went to Darla’s Griddle with Mom? Alley wasn’t born yet. We got chocolate chip pancakes that time too.”

  “I remember you telling me all about it.”

  I was impressed that my father remembered something so inconsequential.

  “Your mother thought an old age home wasn’t the best place for you younger kids. You’d been scared the times we took you before. You had bad dreams.”

  “I know.” Just the thought of those ghouls with their bony fingers sent a shiver down my spine. “Old people are gross.”

  “Sylvie,” my dad said with a firm voice. “You said yourself you’re not a little kid. It was one thing when you were four years old, but if you want to be treated with respect you need to show some maturity.”

  I couldn’t believe my dad thought I was being immature! But I didn’t want to rehash the same disagreement we’d had the day before, so I looked out across the sea of townsfolk assembled outside the house. Celeste stood just inside the treeline. I smiled when I saw her, but she stepped back and disappeared into the woods.

  There were no sidewalks on my father’s street, so on our way for pancakes we were forced to walk on the road. He probably asked me sixty times how my leg was holding up. I was perfectly fine. Still, I looked forward to settling into one of the red vinyl booths at Darla’s Grill. Well, until I saw who was waiting there to meet us.

  “Sylvie! So good to see you again.” Amy the Architect moved closer to the window so my dad could sit beside her on the bench. “How was your first night in your dad’s new house?”

  “Fine, I guess. My mattress is weird and they turned off the water this morning. I think I stink.”

  “You smell fine,” my dad said. “Sit yourself down and have a look at the menu.”

  I sat across from Amy and my father, but I didn’t look at the menu. I didn’t need to. “I’m getting the chocolate chip pancakes.”

  “You can have anything you want,” Amy said. “My treat.”

  My dad said, “Amy…”

  Amy said, “Jonathan…”

  The waitress came over and asked, “Have you decided what you’d like to order?”

  She looked about my age, and that made me wonder if I should start looking for a job. When she smiled, I noticed she had red and green elastics around her shiny metal braces. Holiday colours. If this girl found a job, how much trouble could I have?

  My dad ordered for everyone, and I wondered how he knew what Amy wanted. She didn’t correct him, so he must have guessed right. All she added was, “Orange juice all around.”

  “We don’t need orange juice if we’re getting coffee,” my dad said to her.

  “We can have both,” she replied.

  “Can I have coffee?” I cut in.

  Amy and my dad both looked at me like they’d forgotten I existed. Then my dad said, “Sylv
ie, you’re way too young for coffee.”

  “My friend Zachary drinks coffee all the time,” I said.

  “Zachary’s too young too.”

  Amy the Architect looked at Braces the Waitress and said, “Three coffees and three orange juices, please.”

  The waitress took off before we could make any more changes to our order. My dad turned to Amy like he wanted to be mad at her, but she beamed at him and he smiled back, shaking his head. “You could get away with murder.”

  “I bet you think I’m too young to get a job,” I said.

  My dad turned his attention back to me. “Why? Did you get a job you didn’t tell me about?”

  “No.”

  “Digging ditches?” he asked, then he sang, “At the carwash?”

  I shook my head, trying not to laugh. “You’re so lame.”

  “What kind of job would you like?” Amy asked.

  “Any job. My friend Zachary has a paper route, just with the local free paper. He doesn’t actually get any money for delivering it, but he earns one cent for every grocery flyer he inserts in everybody’s papers.”

  “Isn’t that interesting?” Amy said, even though it really wasn’t interesting at all.

  “I help him sometimes after school. Not for money, just because.”

  “That’s nice of you,” Amy chimed in.

  It wasn’t her attention I wanted. I looked at my dad and asked, “What kind of job do you think I should get?”

  “Pizza delivery man,” he said.

  “Dad! I’m not even old enough to drive.”

  “You could train attack dogs.”

  “I’m allergic to dogs—especially attack ones!”

  Then he said, “Maybe you could be an architect like Amy.”

  I caught her gazing at me expectantly and, I don’t know why, but it bugged me. So I said, “Architect is a stupid job. I would never want to do that in a million years.”

  Amy’s shoulders fell and Dad’s brow furrowed. “Sylvie, what a rude thing to say.”

  “It’s fine. It’s fine.” Amy the Architect touched the back of my father’s hand just lightly with her fingertips. “Jonathan, really. Sylvie has her own opinions. There’s nothing wrong with that. Sylvie, tell me what kind of a career would excite you. What do you want to do when you’re finished school?”