room,' she said as she carried her up the porch steps.
'My doll carriage,' Louisa gasped between coughs. 'I left it in the garden.'
Til bring it in later, after you're in bed.' Aunt Viola opened the door, and Kristi and I watched her carry Louisa into the house. Then the door shut, and they were gone.
Alone in the dusk, Kristi and I stared at each other. 'Why didn't Aunt Viola see us?' Kristi asked.
'I told you before,' I said. 'We're the ghosts here.'
'But Louisa sees us,' Kristi said.
'Maybe it's because Snowball brings us to her.' I looked down at the cat, and he looked at me. Then he walked away toward the hedge. By the light of the moon, I saw his shadow, but when I looked at Kristi, I realized she had no shadow and neither did I.
'Come on, Kristi,' I said. 'It's time to go back.' Taking her hand, I followed Snowball through the hedge.
***
As we stumbled into my yard, the world spun like a carousel. With the sun in my eyes almost blinding me, I heard Mom's typewriter, Max barking, a motorcycle sweeping past, and Mrs. Smith's vacuum cleaner. The steps to our apartment cast a sharp shadow on the side of the house, and the leaves rustled in Kristi's tree.
Feeling a little weak and wobbly, I sank down on the grass beside Kristi.
'Well?' I asked her. 'Do you believe me now?'
For a few seconds Kristi just sat there. She was breathing fast, and she was almost as pale as Louisa. 'Oh, Ashley,' she whispered, 'it was all true what you said. I didn't think it would be.'
Then, turning her head, Kristi looked back through the hedge. 'It's just a field again,' she said.
I nodded. 'See the big thicket of pokeberries under the elm tree? That's where the house used to be. The foundation's still there.'
'I wonder what happened to the house. And to Louisa.' Kristi stared at me. 'She's sick, isn't she?'
'She told me she has consumption.'
'Is that a bad disease? Is it contagious?'
'It was then,' I said, 'when Louisa was little.'
'But there's a cure, right?'
'Now there is.'
But back in those days?' Kristi asked. 'People didn't die of ... consumption, did they?'
'Don't worn about it, Kristi,' I said. 'What we have to do is' get Anna Maria away from Miss Cooper.'
Kristi sighed and hid her face in her hands. 'I wish I hadn't told. I'd give anything to go back to yesterday and make it different.'
'It's too late to change it now.' I stood up and brushed the dirt off the seat of my shorts. 'But maybe we can try.'
'Where are you going?' Kristi asked.
'To see Miss Cooper.'
'It won't do any good. You'll just get in trouble again,' Kristi said, but I didn't pay any attention to her. I was still afraid Miss Cooper might evict Mom and me, but I had to get Anna Maria. I'd keep my promise to Louisa no matter what happened.
Summoning all the courage I had, I marched around the corner of the house and found Miss Cooper sitting on her front porch, reading the newspaper.
When she saw Kristi and me, she frowned. Grabbing her cane, she levered herself out of her rocking chair.
'You girls get out of here,' she said. 'You've got no business in this part of the yard.'
Kristi started edging away toward the safety of her tree house, but I stood my ground. 'Miss Cooper,' I said, 'please give Anna Maria back to me. I have to have her.'
Miss Cooper clutched her cane tightly, and for a few seconds we stood still, eye to eye. Finally she swallowed hard and said, 'Yesterday you spoke a lot of nonsense about Louisa.' Her voice trembled. 'How did you know her name?'
'There was a note in the box you buried. It said, 'Louisa Perkins, please forgive me, I am sorry. Your friend Carrie.'' I held my breath and waited for Miss Cooper to say something. When she didn't, I added, 'That's how I know you're Carrie.'
'Louisa,' she said slowly and her mouth worked around the name as if she hadn't spoken it for a very long time. 'Yes, I forgot about the note.'
Turning away from me, Miss Cooper gazed across her lawn at the field where Louisa's house had once stood.
'Louisa Perkins,' the old woman murmured as if she'd forgotten my existence. 'She lived next door, but the house is gone now. It burned down about twenty years ago.'
'What happened to Louisa?' I asked.
'Oh,' Miss Cooper said, 'she died when she was eight or nine.'
The words fell from her lips like stones, and it took me a second or two to realize what she'd said. I clutched Kristi's arm, but we didn't look at each other. We just stood there on the lawn while the birds sang around us as if nothing had happened.
Miss Cooper picked up her newspaper and fanned herself with it. 'Children died all the time in those days,' she muttered.
I stared at Miss Cooper's wrinkled face and red-rimmed eyes. Here she was, an old woman, talking about Louisa's short life as if it hadn't mattered at all. Didn't she feel bad about living so much longer?
Then Kristi's voice cut through the hot summer air. 'Louisa still wants her doll,' she said, 'and you better give it to her!'
The old woman looked at us then. 'Go on home,' she said, her voice rising, 'both of you.'
She yanked open the door, but before she went into the house, she added, 'I don't know what you're up to, but don't come pestering me again about that doll!'
I ran up the porch steps after her and rapped on the long window beside the closed door. 'Give me the doll,' I cried. 'She doesn't belong to you!'
The house was silent. Pressing my face against the glass, I tried to see inside, but the lace curtain stretched over the window blocked my view.
Angrily I pushed the doorbell and let it ring till it sounded like someone screaming. 'Give me Anna Maria!' I yelled. 'Give her to me!'
I kicked the door hard, and then, frightened, I turned and ran. With Kristi behind me, I scrambled up the ladder to the tree house.
Chapter 15
How Can We Save Louisa?
'THAT OLD WITCH! I hate her!' Kristi cried. Then she buried her face in her hands and wept. 'Why did Louisa have to die?' she sobbed. 'Why couldn't she have gotten well?'
'If anybody had to die,' I said, 'it should have been Miss Cooper, not Louisa.'
It was a terrible thing to say, but it was true. The world was so unfair when it came to dying. The best people, the ones you loved the most, died and other people, mean and nasty, lived and went right on being mean and nasty all their lives. Louisa and Daddy - why them and not Miss Cooper?
Fighting back tears, I watched a butterfly come to rest on a hollyhock below me. It fanned its wings, and the sun shone right through them, making them glow. Then a breeze swayed the flower, and the butterfly drifted away.
'If we could give Anna Maria back to Louisa,' I said, 'maybe she wouldn't die. Maybe we could change what happened.'
Kristi's face lit up with hope. 'Do you mean we could save her life?'
'Suppose she's getting weaker because she's so sad about losing her doll? If we made her happy, she'd get stronger and maybe she'd get well.'
