Chris Grabenstein - The Crossroads

“I knew you were a ghost!” Zack said. “Not at first, but I sort of figured it out.”

Davy looked down at his arms and curled his fingers. “Don’t feel like no ghost, though. Can you see through me?”

“Nope.”

“Dang. I always figured you could see through ’em, you know?”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“When I learned what was going on, I volunteered to come on back. Be a boy again. See what I could do to set things right.”

“Why’d you pick me to help you?”

“You were the only one brave enough. Adults? Most can’t even see ghosts and those that can just get scared.”

“It’s true,” Judy said. “We do.”

The distant bell tolled more deeply.

“Davy?”

“Yeah, pardner?”

“We were really friends, though, right? You weren’t just pretending to make me help you with the stump?”

“Zack, I’ll tell you true: You were the best buddy any feller could ever hope to have. Weren’t no pretending on my part about that. No, sir. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Davy waved, turned, and walked down the hill to the highway. He wouldn’t be riding on the bus with the others because he had not been one of its original passengers.

Instead, he headed for the crossroads, where he disappeared into the darkness between strobes from the blinking stoplight overhead.

The bus vanished, too. The cornfield was dark and empty again.

It was really over.

Everybody had moved on.

“Wow,” said Zack. “How cool.” Then he turned to Judy and smiled. “Thanks, Mom. Thanks for everything!”

Judy smiled, too, even though she felt like crying: That was the first time Zack had ever called her Mom.

She sure hoped it wouldn’t be the last.

Thank You

To J.J., who is my Judy.

To R. Schuyler Hooke and everyone at Random House.

To Eric Myers, my agent, who found Zack and Judy such a wonderful home.

To Meredith Sue Willis and her fiction writing class at NYU, where I first workshopped this idea.

To librarians everywhere. They are the real Jeanette Emersons, who help us find the knowledge we need.

To Tiger Lilly, who is my Curiosity Cat.

CHRIS GRABENSTEIN is the Anthony Award–winning author of the adult titles Tilt-a-Whirl, Mad Mouse, and Whack A Mole. Apparently, he spends far too much time at amusement parks. Here’s a tip learned the hard way: Never eat six hot dogs prior to riding a roller coaster. He used to write TV and radio commercials and has written for the Muppets.

Chris was born in Buffalo, New York, and moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, when he was ten. After college, he moved to New York City with six suitcases and a typewriter to become an actor and a writer. For five years, he did improvisational comedy in a Greenwich Village theater with some of the city’s funniest performers, including this one guy named Bruce Willis.

Currently, Chris and his wife, J.J., live in New York City with three cats and a dog named Fred, who starred in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on Broadway. You can visit Chris (and Fred) at www.ChrisGrabenstein.com.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2008 by Chris Grabenstein

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Grabenstein, Chris.

The crossroads / Chris Grabenstein.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: When eleven-year-old Zack Jennings moves to Connecticut with his father and new stepmother, they must deal with the ghosts left behind by a terrible accident, as well as another kind of ghost from Zack’s past.

[1. Ghosts—Fiction. 2. Stepmothers—Fiction. 3. Guilt—Fiction. 4. Traffic accidents—Fiction. 5. Moving, Household—Fiction. 6. Family life—Connecticut—Fiction. 7. Connecticut—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.G7487Cro 2008 [Fic]—dc22 2007024803

Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

eISBN: 978-0-375-84968-8

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