The scene before me was both beautiful and kind of scary. It was like the park had been frozen in time. The only sounds I could hear were the creaking of tree branches and the distant cars that were passing the park entrance. I was deep into the park, past the fountain and nearly to the line of denser trees where I’d once seen Chris disappear into.

A cold chill raced up my spine and seemed to burst in my head like a fireworks display. Off to my left I heard what sounded like someone walking toward me, but I couldn’t see anyone. However, I didn’t stand there looking for long either. In reality, there was probably less than a second between the time I heard the sound, snapped my eyes left and then took off running as though my very life depended on me getting out of that park. And I didn’t stop running again until my school came into view and even then I walked at a very brisk pace. However, I had no idea that, in essence, I was jumping from the frying pan into the fire… so to speak.

The first day of school after returning from Canada, two things happened to me that I had no control over what-so-ever. I mean, it was like stepping in a big steaming pile of dog crap. It happened and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get all the crap off my shoe.

Things sort of happened like this. I was walking onto the school grounds when out of nowhere I was blindsided by… yep you guessed it, Bertha and the fabulously rotten Larry, BB, and Fish.

However, on that particular day I was actually glad to see them. Ever since I’d figured out, with the help of Joey and that dang horror movie, that Chris is a ghost, I really didn’t want to be alone. I had put two and two together and managed to deduce, that anytime I’d ever encountered the ghost of Chris, I had been alone. So, it seems logical that as long as I am not alone, if Chris is a real ghost, then he’s likely not going to show up. But then again if he does show up and others see him, then I will have proof that I am not the only one seeing him.

“What’s the matter with you?” Bertha asked me.

Having been gone as long as I had, my nasal passages had time to recover from the daily assault they normally endured whenever Bertha was around. For half-a-second I almost said something about her rank odor, but I managed to keep the words from escaping past my lips. Instead, I turned and looked back the way I came to be sure that there was no sign of Chris.

“Yo Alvin?” BB said while slugging me in the shoulder. It didn’t really hurt, but I rubbed my shoulder anyway.

“I-I-I’m cool.” I said, although it didn’t sound very convincing.

Fish kicked at a large clump of grey snow, “So where you been hiding?” he asked.

“Canada,” I answered.

“Whatever,” Bertha said and then bumping my arm with the side of her fist, she asked me in an odd manner, “So, anyone scooped you up yet?”

But before I could ask her what she meant, Fish interrupted with, “Wow, you were in another country?” I wasn’t sure if he was being serious or if he was mocking me.

Larry squeezed himself in between Bertha and me, “Did you fly there?”

“No, we drove. That’s why we were gone so long. We got snowed in.” I said.

Bertha repeated her question, “So, anyone scooped you up yet?”

“Scooped me up?” I asked, not having a clue what she was going on about.

“You know,” BB sang while bumping my gut with an elbow and wiggling his eyebrows knowingly.

I bumped him back, but much harder. He got the idea that I was getting tired of being hit and none of them touched me the rest of the morning.

“You sure you’re okay?” Bertha asked again, but this time I saw something in her eyes that I’d never seen before. It took me a full second to realize, that she was genuinely concerned about how I was acting.

“Um,” I said while stalling, “maybe we can talk about it later.” And to keep from having them continue to hound me about it, I quickly redirected the conversation back to the ‘scooped up’ question.

“So, what did you mean when you asked me if anyone had scooped me up?” I asked, trying to sound as though I was perfectly okay and that I wasn’t scared, that a ghost might be stalking me.