The Ghost of Gruesome High by Larry Parr

in charge of this meeting. I had all the power. He was a lot more afraid of me than I was of him.  
    I know this might sound really stupid, but this was the very first time in my whole life I’d ever felt that way when I was talking to an adult. Especially a teacher! It felt great! I liked being in charge! I loved having the upper hand! I didn’t want to do or say anything that would give the power back to Mr. Greenwald. “Why don’t you tell me?” I said, folding my arms and looking him square in the eye. A little voice inside my head said: “Wow! That was great! That was the perfect thing to say!”
    Mr. Greenwald looked uncomfortable and got up from the corner of his desk. He quickly sat in the chair next to mine. We were now on the same level. He looked into my eyes and I could see he was troubled. “That was you last night, wasn’t it?”
    I decided to play this for all it was worth. The feeling of power this situation had given me was going straight to my head! I was feeling pretty invincible! “Was it?” I asked, keeping my gaze firmly on his eyes.
    Now he really started to squirm. He broke eye contact with me. On some level I knew I had just won the first round in some strange, undeclared contest. My feeling of invulnerability was soaring!
    He sighed and looked very tired. He took his glasses off and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Suddenly I was beginning to feel sorry for him. “Look, we’re not going to get anywhere if we keep playing this cat and mouse game, and I’m really worried you’re going to get hurt.”
    “Get hurt?” I asked, genuinely curious.
    He got up out of the chair and began to pace back and forth in front of me, as if he was very nervous. “Yes, hurt. I’m not totally sure yet who all is involved in this ghost business, but I have an idea, and these people don’t want anyone messing around in all this. They have a lot to lose and they’re not above hurting people to stop them. I want you and your friends to stop trying to find the ghost.”
    “Who is it?” I asked. “And why are they pretending there’s a ghost at the school?”  
    “I can’t answer all your questions yet, but I guess I’d better tell you as much as I know, though there isn’t really all that much to tell. ” He sat back down on the corner of his desk and look his glasses off. He didn’t look at me, instead he seemed to be looking at a spot in the distance, somewhere over my head. “The whole thing started about ten years ago. There was a big robbery of a coin store downtown. Thompson Coin and Jewelry. Whoever robbed the place knew exactly what they were doing. They got away with close to half a million dollars in coins, mostly old gold coins.”
    Despite my resolution not to give away anything and to keep the upper hand I couldn’t help but look up at the mention of gold coins. “Gold coins?” I asked. “Like twenty dollar gold pieces?”
    He looked at me very deeply. “Yeah. How did you know that?”
    I knew I had just made a big mistake. Now he was asking the questions. I mentally kicked myself! When would I ever learn to just keep my mouth shut. I hoped maybe I could salvage the situation. “I’ll explain later. Go on with your story.”
    He put his glasses back on and looked at me again over the tops of the lenses. Then he stood and began to pace around the room. “Where was I? Oh yeah, the robbery. The thief, or thieves, got away with gold coins and gold jewelry worth more than half a million dollars ten years ago. Today they’d be worth well over three million. To this day only a couple of coins have ever been recovered.”
    I thought about Mr. Bell’s twenty dollar gold piece, but this time I did keep my mouth shut. Mr. Greenwald was looking at me as if he hoped I would say something. When I didn’t he gave a tiny shrug of his shoulders and continued. “There was one policeman back then who had an idea who had taken the coins, but he was never able to prove it. He