The Tracks by Sally Royer-Derr (little readers TXT) 📕

I studied the cheaply carpeted floor, looking for a section that appeared different than the rest. None that I saw. Then the ceiling. Just a large piece of painted white drywall hanging above me. Nothing unusual.

I left his room and went into mine. Flopping on the bed, I squeezed my eyes shut, resisting the urge to walk down to the tracks. Part of me wanted to run there and find Tommy. I wanted to feel his hand intertwined with mine. I wanted to hear him talk and his slow, smooth laugh.

The other part of me was terrified. If Tommy was a ghost, why was he here? To hurt me? That didn’t make any sense. I had to know more about him. And why he was here.

But I did know about him. I knew him. How he swung his head to get his longish hair out of his eyes. The way he focused on things with intensity I’d never seen in anybody. His gentleness when I’d talked about Dad and being stuck in a town I hated. Our discussion about God had been in my mind on the bike ride home. He was so adamant about His existence. Could he have met Him in Heaven?

I flicked on my CD player, knocking the Katy Perry CD case, which sat on my nightstand, on the floor behind my bed. I crawled off the mattress and reached to retrieve it. I couldn’t get it. Flipping the quilt, I peered underneath. The CD had slid right along the wall, dead center of my bed frame. I lay on my stomach and stretched my hand back toward the wall, snatching the CD up. The wood-paneled wall behind it caught my attention. Part of the paneling was missing, leaving a hole just big enough for my hand to fit through.

I dug inside, searching. My fingers touched something smooth and lumpy. I squeezed it, and it oozed warm goo on my hand.

Was it blood?

Or something from beyond?

***

I jerked my hand from the small hole, cutting it along the edge of the paneling in the process. Crimson blood gushed from the jagged cut, alongside an unknown brown substance that had settled itself on my hand.

I screamed and ran down the hall to the bathroom. I flicked the faucet on full blast. I washed away the blob of reddish-brown occupying my hand. I turned the handle off and snatched a Band-Aid from under the sink. The padded bandage now hid my throbbing cut.

I marched out to the kitchen and searched through the drawers for the salad tongs I knew we owned. I was going to find out what was in my wall. But I sure wasn’t going to touch it again. Finally, I found them lying next to the salad spinner we never used. Salad tongs. Salad spinner. Made sense they’d be next to each other, I guessed.

Tongs in hand, I raced back to my bedroom. Lying on my stomach again, I reached with the tongs and grabbed whatever was hiding behind the wall. Slowly, I pulled it out, not sure of what I might find. I dropped it on my bedroom floor. I stared at it. A half-eaten bag of plain M & M’s. Melted M & M’s.

I sank down on the floor, grateful my discovery wasn’t something disgusting as I had originally thought. I knew now I’d found what I’d been looking for earlier. Tommy had put that candy in there. Plain M & M’s were his favorite.

I stayed sitting on the floor for a moment, listening to the steady tick of my bedside clock. It was just last week when Tommy and I lay on the creek bank sharing a bag of plain M & M’s. I’d brought peanut, too, since I liked both, but he said plain was the only kind he ate. One of those perfect summer afternoons had loomed around us. The air hot but not humid. A soft breeze rippling through the canopy of trees standing tall above us. The steady rhythm of the creek water lending its calmness to the scene. A day somewhat seemingly without a beginning or an end. You know how people said ‘living in the moment’ to describe an attitude toward life? This was more a ‘living in the moment’ state of being.

I’d made a mental note that this was his favorite candy. I was sweet like that. If someone I cared about liked a particular kind of food, I liked to surprise them with it sometimes. And I cared about Tommy a whole lot.

But he was dead. How could I care about someone I never knew? At least when he was alive. And how could a dead boy lie on the creek bank beside me? How could he eat candy and talk to me about the meaning of life? The same shiver I felt in the library shimmied through my body. How could I see him? Talk to him? Feel him next to me?

Dad used to watch those ghost hunter shows sometimes. More like a joke, but he did acknowledge there was the possibility. I did not. Ghosts didn’t make any sense to me. You were either alive or you were dead. There was no middle ground. At least in my opinion. And the ghost shows were so ridiculous. People sitting around for hours with cameras and lights to catch an image in a mirror or a flash of light through a room. Probably created by one of the crew members who were sick of waiting for some dumb ghost to appear.

But I didn’t ever remember seeing a show where a person became friends with a ghost. The image of a ghost was just that flash of light or a strange image. Or a goofy Halloween costume. Something you might look at, or laugh at, but certainly nothing you would talk to or feel next to you. Or develop