there, my mom says, but when she got older she was so poor she had to make the upstairs into an apartment. Nobody lives in it for long, though.'
'Why? Because Miss Cooper's so grouchy?'
Kristi put a piece of grass in her mouth and chewed on it. 'That's part of the reason,' she said after a while.
I watched her for a few seconds, waiting for her to go on. 'What's the other reason?' I asked.
'I don't know if I should tell you.' As Kristi spoke, she glanced at the garden, then looked away. The shadows were getting longer now, and the tangled underbrush looked dark and mysterious. 'You might get scared and want to move away.'
I leaned toward Kristi, my face inches from hers. 'I won't be scared.'
'Well, it's the garden,' she said slowly. 'Some people think it's haunted.'
'A
Kristi frowned and her lower Up crept out. I could tell she was annoyed at not being taken seriously. 'You wait,' she muttered. 'When you see the cat and hear the crying, you won't laugh.'
I stared at her. 'What cat?'
'A white one. He meows and meows and then he disappears into the garden. You hear him mostly at night. And only in the summer.'
Before I could tell Kristi I'd just seen a white cat, a teenaged boy stepped out on the porch next door. 'Hey, Kristi,' he called. 'Get over here. It's dinnertime.'
'That's my brother Brian, the creep,' Kristi said. 'I have to go. I'll see you tomorrow. Okay?'
She ran through the gap in the hedge, but paused once to call back, 'If you hear anybody crying tonight, just remember I told you so.' Then she was up her steps and gone, letting the screen door bang shut behind her.
Chapter 3
The White Cat
LEFT ALONE, I ran up the steps and into the empty apartment. Coaxing Oscar into my lap, I stared out the window at the garden. I had seen a white cat, I was sure I had, but he was even bit as real as Oscar. I'd felt his nose, my fingertips had brushed his fur, I'd heard him meow. He couldn't have been a ghost.
But where had he gone? How had he just disappeared? Little goose bumps chased themselves up and down my neck as I tried to convince myself that Kristi was teasing me. She'd watched me go into the garden, she'd probably seen the white cat, and she'd wanted to scare me with ghost stories. That's all there was to it.
***
By the time Mom came home, I was thinking more about pizza than the garden or the white cat. When I heard her car in the driveway, I leaned over the porch railing to watch her balancing the pizza box and a couple of cans of soda.
'Do you need any help?' I called.
Mom shook her head, but I ran down to meet her anyway and took the sodas. The pizza smelled so wonderful I could almost taste the gooey, melted cheese and the hot tomato sauce.
Making ourselves comfortable on the steps, we divided the pizza. The sun had sunk behind the mountains, but the sky was still pink and the shadow of the garden stretched halfway across the lawn. The first star hung just below the moon. Crickets chirped from their hiding places, and a mockingbird sang a long, lovely serenade from the tree in Kristi's yard.
'Baltimore was like an oven,' Mom said after we'd eaten enough pizza to take the edge off our appetites. 'I was caught right in the middle of rush hour, and the traffic was awful.'
'They don't have rush hour here,' I told her. 'Not enough people.'
'Not enough rush either,' Mom said. 'Just peace and quiet.'
I chewed my last piece of pizza and wondered if I should tell Mom what I'd learned from Kristi. I opened my mouth, but when I started talking I told her about meeting Kristi instead. Why ruin a beautiful evening talking about ghosts?
'Maybe you'll make friends with Kristi's mother,' I said.
'I didn't come here to make friends, sweetie,' Mom said. 'I have to finish my dissertation so I can get a job teaching. The money Daddy left won't last forever.'
I nodded, but I didn't agree with her. Like me, Mom had been sad for too long. She needed somebody to cheer her up, to make her happy again. I wanted her to smile and laugh and joke the way she used to before Daddy got sick.
I didn't say anything, though; I just leaned against her and felt the comfort of her arm circling me and drawing me close.
***
It wasn't till I'd gotten into bed and turned out the light that I thought about the garden and Kristi's ghost story. The moon shone in my window and slanted across my bed, and a night breeze brought the smell of roses and honeysuckle into the room. Outside, leaves rustled, but I didn't hear anything else. No sobbing, no strange cat meowing - just the sound of Mom's fingers hitting the keys of her typewriter. Feeling sure Kristi had been teasing me, I drifted off to sleep.
Much later I woke up. The house was silent, and Oscar was crouched on the windowsill at the foot of my bed. His body was tense, his ears cocked forward, and his tail lashed back and forth furiously. As I sat up, I heard him growl softly, not at me but at something outside.
Cautiously, I peeked out the window. At first I saw nothing but the moonlight whitening the grass and blackening the shadows. Then something moved near the garden, and Oscar growled again.
It was the white cat. He was creeping along the edge of a shadow, but while I watched, he paused and looked up at my window. The moonlight reflected in his eyes, making them two silver disks. When he meowed softly, Oscar lunged against the screen, tearing at the wire with his claws and growling.
' Grabbing my cat, I pulled him away from the window, but he writhed free and disappeared under the bed, still growling. As Oscar vanished, I looked fearfully outside. The white cat was gone, but the scraggly bushes moved with the breeze and the shadows they cast swayed on the grass. The sweet smell of roses filled my room, and I shivered as a gust of wind blew over me.
Before I could crawl under the covers, I heard something in the darkness. It wasn't the breeze in the leaves or a cat meowing or a night bird calling; it was unmistakably the sound of a child crying.
Truly afraid, I pulled the blanket over my head and fought against a strong urge to run to my mother's room and the safety of her bed. As if he sensed my feelings, Oscar came out from his hiding place. Purring in my ear, he curled up on my pillow, and the two of us finally fell asleep together.
Chapter 4
In Trouble
IN THE MORNING, I asked Mom if she'd heard any strange noises during the night.
She smiled and shook her head. 'I was up till two typing,' she said, 'and when I hit the bed, I slept like the proverbial log, Ash.'
As Mom paused to sip her coffee, her eyes scanned my face. 'People often hear strange noises when they sleep in a new place,' she said. 'It's perfectly natural.'
'But it sounded like a child crying,' I told her, 'all by itself somewhere outside.'
Mom put down her empty cup. 'Maybe one of our neighbors has a baby, Ash.'
'I saw a cat, too, staring at the house. Oscar was scared of him. He growled and hid under the bed.'
Mom looked puzzled. 'There's nothing unusual about seeing a cat in the yard. Or in Oscar being scared of him. Oscar's afraid of his own shadow.'
Then she reached out and closed her hand over mine. Giving me a squeeze, she said, 'How about helping me put up the curtains and pictures?'
Instead of telling Mom what Kristi had told me, I silently finished my cereal. In the morning sunlight, the
