Nora by Constance C. Greene

“he’s a mess. I’m glad I’m not a genius.”
    â€œMe, too,” I said.
    When we got to Barbara’s house, I tiptoed around, worried I might bump into Barbara’s brother. I was both afraid to see him and longing to see him.
    Sort of the same way I felt about seeing my mother’s ghost.
    Ever since I’d said that about Mother hanging around the house, I’ve been a nervous wreck. I think about ghosts, dream about ghosts, and even though I don’t really believe in them, I can’t get them out of my mind.
    I never did see Barbara’s brother that day. I heard music coming from behind his locked door, though. Barbara said he kept his door locked at all times. Her mother left food on a tray outside his room, she said, and when he felt like eating, he unlocked his door and snatched the tray inside. I made several trips to the bathroom while at Barbara’s and each trip I checked the floor outside the brother’s room, hoping to see an empty plate covered with bones, maybe, but there was nothing.
    Mother, I wish you were here, I thought. I need you. There are lots of things I want to say to you. Questions I would like to ask. I knew it wouldn’t do any good to wish for these things, but still I did. When we were little, Patsy and I thought if you wished hard enough for something, you’d get it. Sometimes I wish I was young and innocent again.
    I would like to discuss the possibility of ghosts with my father, but I know I won’t. Baba would be better. She already believes in ghosts. My father is a very practical man, the most practical of men. He would definitely not believe. I think it would only make him sad if I suggested Mother was there, in our house, checking out The Tooth’s undies.
    And if he knew what Patsy and I had done with them, he really would be pissed.

Eleven
    On monday after school, Chuck Whipple drove up on his three-speed bike.
    â€œPatsy’s not here,” I told him. “She’s at the orthodontist. She’ll be back around four-thirty.”
    â€œThat’s okay,” Chuck said.
    The oven timer beeped loudly, so I told him, “Come on in, if you want. I’ve got something burning in the oven.”
    Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Roberta and her mother driving by. A pale face pressed against the car window, a pale hand waved at me.
    Chuck followed me out to the kitchen and watched while I took out the cookies, just in time.
    â€œSmells good,” he said.
    â€œI always make cookies on Monday,” I said. Actually, I make cookies whenever I’m depressed. And sometimes when I’m not. The smell of things baking always cheers me up, makes me think of the days when our house almost always smelled good when Patsy and I got home from school. Our mother timed her baking so stuff would still be warm when we got there.
    If I ever have kids, I’m doing the same. Or if I turn out to be a world-famous anything and I have to go around the world on business, my husband will stay home to take care of the kids. I’ll tell him he has to learn how to make cakes and cookies and maybe even bread. I think it’d be neat to be married to a man who bakes bread.
    â€œHow come you have a three-speed?” I asked Chuck. My cookies today were in the shape of Christmas trees, my favorite. Sometimes I decorated the trees with red and green sprinkles, sometimes I gave them raisins for eyes, the way you do to gingerbread men. Or ladies. And even if trees don’t have eyes, so what. They’re my cookies. I can do what I want.
    â€œIt’s an Iowa bike,” Chuck said. “We don’t have hills out there. It’s flat all the way. Nothing but rows and rows of corn.”
    He seemed to me, at that moment, as exotic a creature as if he’d come straight from Mars. Or California.
    I offered him a cookie.
    â€œHow come Christmas trees when it’s October?” he said.
    I shrugged. “I