Steinbeck’s Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page A

burglar.
    Travis stared at the figure in the window. The boy was concentrating. Reading, maybe, or writing. The rest of the house was completely dark inside. It didn’t make any sense that someone would still be there at night.
    The long, low whistle of a freight train broke the evening stillness. Travis looked east, past Oldtown. He could almost feel the train’s rumble.
    When he turned back to the Steinbeck House, the window was dark and the boy was gone.

    Sweating bullets and pumping at full speed, Travis blew through the stone- walled entrance to Bella Linda Terrace—beautiful, beautiful place, ha!—and tore down the streets. His head was filled with sentences he kept trying out—where he had been, why he hadn’t left a note, the seven different excuses why he was late, even the truth of it. The excuses and the truth all seemed lame to him. He wasn’t sure he’d believe any of them himself.
    No two doubts about it. He was in trouble.
    But from the far end of Harbor Mist Way, Travis could see that his house was dark. His parents weren’t even home yet.
    When his parents finally did get home, a little before ten, he was already in bed and reading the first pages of
The Pastures of Heaven
. Maybe this book held some clue to what he’d seen in the window of the Steinbeck House.

THREE
    A LL DAY FRIDAY AT SCHOOL TRAVIS STARED OUT THE WINDOW, BUT NO ONE SEEMED TO NOTICE. He couldn’t stop thinking about the library, how good it was to be back there, and he was amazed at how those books seemed to fall into his lap. It was weird to realize, too, that the library seemed more of a home to him than his old house—there was a new family in that house, it wasn’t his anymore. But the library still was.
    In Mrs. Lamy’s Spanish class, last period, Travis kept going back to the boy in the window at the Steinbeck House, for some reason the spookiest piece of yesterday’s puzzle. Whenever the image of the boy came to him—a teenager in suspenders in front of the window—Travis got the strange sensation that the answer was too easy to miss. But it was just some teenager in a window, and it wasn’t even that late at night—what was so weird about that?
    At one point he thought, Oh, I know, I’m in some scary book now, and that’s Steinbeck’s ghost calling to me. Out loud—he actually did this out loud, he couldn’t believe it—he made the spooky- movie ghost noise while everyone else was quietly studying irregular verbs, “Ooo- eee- ooo.” Everyone turned to look at him as if he’d farted. Just great. He’d never make more friends if he kept this up.

    That afternoon, Travis hung out at Hil’s again. After last night, it would be a relief to play video games, knock off a few badgers—the badgers always gave him the fits, he could never nail them. But over sodas and cookies in the kitchen, Travis surprised himself by asking Hil if he’d ever read
A Wrinkle in Time
. Hil had; it was one of his favorites, all- time.
    “Weird,” Hil said, and now he made the spooky-movie ghost noise, the exact same one, “Ooo- eee- ooo. I just started reading it again last night. Went to the mall with my mom and bought a new copy. It’s awesome.”
    So Travis dropped the word
Camazotz
on Hil and told him about Bella Linda Terrace being like Camazotz, and Hil totally got it. They talked about the name Bella Linda Terrace, and Travis showed him that it actually didn’t mean anything at all, and Hil got that, too.
    “The street names, dude,” Hil said. “Talk about weird. You live on Harbor Mist, right? You see a harbor, you see mist? No. And Grand Junction and Merrimack. Too weird. The streets should have names like Lettuce and Artichoke and Kale, all the stuff that grows around here. And this street? Serendipity. What does that mean?”
    “It means—” Travis said.
    “I know what it means, it’s like a coincidence or something. But what does it mean for a street name? You’re right, man, this place is weird. Now you