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  Princess for a Week

  Betty Ren Wright

  Illustrations by Jacqueline Rogers

  For Shirley, Jane, Betty Ruth,

  Pat, Bunny, Joyce, Louise, and

  Janet, who have made me forever

  grateful to have been

  a Downer girl

  Contents

  1. Day One

  2. Night One

  3. Day Two

  4. Night Two

  5. Day Three

  6. Night Three

  7. Day Four

  8. Night Four

  9. Day Five

  10. Day Five (continued)

  11. Night Five

  12. Night Five (continued)

  13. Night Five (still continued)

  14. Day Six

  15. Day Six (continued)

  16. Day Seven

  1. Day One

  “It’s way too big, Roddy,” Jacob said. “It won’t fit.”

  Roddy Hall stared at the doghouse. The battered old wreck, tilted against the side of the wagon, looked as if it might fall apart at any moment. Still, he had to have it. Once he got it home, he’d figure out how to fix it.

  “All you have to do is hold the wagon steady for a sec,” he said. “I’ll slide the house up over the edge, and then we can sort of balance it.”

  Jacob rolled his eyes but did as he was told. Roddy shoved, grunted, and shoved again. Gradually the house moved upward. Then it crashed down across the wagon, sticking out on either side.

  “Beautiful!” Roddy puffed, picking up a board that had fallen off the roof. “You hold it in place, and I’ll pull the wagon.”

  They walked slowly up the gravel road from the riverbank where someone had dumped the doghouse. Roddy had noticed it two months ago, right after he and his mom moved to Hilltop Drive. For a few days he had wandered around alone, just looking at the many empty, run-down houses. His mom always said Hilltop was the right place to be because the rent was so low. She liked it, too, because the town was just eight miles from Gregg Army Base. His dad had left for Afghanistan from Gregg, and it was the place he would return to someday.

  “Make the best of it,” his mom had said. “You never know what’s waiting for you out there, little man.”

  Now he knew that the doghouse had been waiting, like a miracle, when he needed one. Maybe this would be a whole week of miracles. The doghouse today, and tomorrow or the day after a letter or an e-mail from his dad to say he would be home soon. Roddy pulled harder, just thinking about it.

  “You don’t even know for sure you’re getting a dog,” Jacob grumbled. “We might be doing all this work for nothing.”

  “I do know for sure.” Roddy corrected him. “I was there when my mom’s friend Linda called this morning. She shows dogs for rich people, and she’s taking one to a show in Philadelphia today. Her neighbor’s supposed to come in and look after things when Linda’s away, but the neighbor has the flu. So Linda needs someone to take care of her own dog, Princess, for a week. My mom said okay. And,” Roddy finished triumphantly, “the minute I heard that I remembered this doghouse.”

  “Still a lot of work for one week,” Jacob mumbled.

  Roddy didn’t argue. He’d wanted a dog for as long as he could remember. Now he had a week to prove to his mom that he was old enough to take care of one himself.

  “You taking that thing to the dump?”

  Both boys jumped. Neither one had noticed the girl coming toward them.

  “Want some help?” she asked coolly. “I don’t mind.”

  “No, thanks,” Roddy said.

  “Sure,” Jacob said.

  “I’ll push,” the girl announced, as if she hadn’t heard Roddy at all. She was skinny and brown, with a long, almost white braid and startling blue eyes. She wore a baggy T-shirt with SAVE THE PLANET EARTH printed on it.

  They started up the hill. Roddy pulled, the girl pushed, and Jacob kept both hands on the doghouse to keep it from slipping.

  “How far to the dump?” the girl demanded.

  Roddy pretended not to hear.

  “We’re going to Roddy’s house,” Jacob explained. “He’s getting a dog, and it’s going to need a house.”

  The girl snorted. “That poor dog will drown in the first rainstorm,” she said. “Look at the roof.”

  “The roof will be fine,” Roddy snapped. “I’ve got plans.”

  The wagon began to move faster. Soon Roddy almost had to run to keep ahead of it. When he looked back he saw that Jacob was running, too. The girl was out of sight behind the wagon, but when she spoke again she wasn’t panting at all.

  “I’d never make a dog sleep in a doghouse,” she said. “I’d have it in my bedroom. Right on my bed.”

  What a pain she was! “Stop pushing,” Roddy growled. “This is where I live.”

  The girl’s head popped up from behind the doghouse. “You’re kidding!” she exclaimed. “You’re Roddy Hall? I didn’t know you were getting a dog. That’s great!”

  “The dog isn’t here yet,” Roddy told her. “She’s coming today.”

  “Princess,” Jacob added. “That’s her name.”

  The girl’s blue eyes narrowed. She looked at Jacob, then at Roddy. Then she looked down at the doghouse.

  “You are so not bright,” she said. “I’m Princess. Princess Thornberry. My stepmother Linda dropped me off an hour ago. And if you think I’m going to sleep in a broken-down doghouse, you’re crazy. Your mom said I get the bedroom with all the dinosaur posters.”

  Roddy blinked. “Now just wait,” he sputtered. “You’re not—you can’t—you’re not a dog.”

  “Smart kid,” the girl said. “You should be a detective.”

  Roddy was stunned. Whoever heard of a girl called Princess? “I don’t believe you,” he said faintly.

  “I do.” Jacob sighed. “I just knew we were doing all this work for nothing.” He poked Roddy with his elbow. “That’s your bedroom she’s talking about,” he said. “The bedroom with all the dinosaur posters. Maybe you’re the one who gets to sleep in the doghouse tonight.”

  2. Night One

  “It’s not my fault you misunderstood,” Roddy’s mother said in a low voice. She smoothed a blanket over the cot in the basement. “You should have asked me, little man. Her real name is Jane, but her father started calling her Princess when she was a baby, and the name stuck.”

  Roddy sat down on the cot with a thump. “Well, she’s not a princess to me,” he muttered. “Why does she have to sleep in my room?”

  “Because the family-room couch is lumpy,” his mom said calmly. “As you very well know. And I wouldn’t ask our guest—a sweet little girl—to sleep in the basement.” She reached across the cot and tousled his hair. “You have the camp lantern and your radio—you’ll be fine. It’s only for a week, Roddy. Have a good night now.”

  At the top of the stairs she turned off the light, and Roddy switched on the camp lantern. A pool of light sprang up around the cot, but the rest of the basement was full of hulking shadows. The furnace. The water heater. Piles of still-packed boxes. Across the room a faint light streamed in through the small window, making the washer and dryer gleam spookily.

  Roddy lay down and pulled the sheet and blanket up to his chin. He wondered if his dad slept on a cot like this one. When his father went to Afghanistan, at first he had been stationed in an abandoned hotel. He’d drawn a funny picture of the hotel in one of his letters. Then he had e-mailed to say he was being moved. Soo
n after that the messages had stopped.

  “I bet he’s in a palace now,” Roddy’s mom had joked. “He hasn’t written because he doesn’t want to make us jealous.” But when she said that her smile was kind of lopsided, and she kept reading the old letters over and over again, as if she were looking for something that wasn’t there.

  Roddy moved the lantern closer and switched it off. The basement was very dark. Princess! he thought disgustedly. Old Princess was probably propped up in his bed watching his television. He squirmed, remembering how eager she’d been to tell his mom about the doghouse.

  “He thought I was a dog!” she’d snickered, and his mom had chuckled, too—just a little, but still.… He pulled the blanket higher and tried to forget how much he’d wanted that dog. Even for a week.

  His dad wouldn’t have laughed.

  One minute he was sort of floating down Hilltop Drive, his feet not quite touching the road, and there was a beautiful golden retriever loping along beside him. The next minute he was sitting up straight on the cot, too scared to breathe. An odd sound had awakened him—a muffled thud, followed by a scuffling noise. He reached for the lantern, but before he could turn it on, someone ran by outside the moonlit window.

  A robber! he thought. A guy who knew his dad had shipped out and thought it would be easy to break in.

  He felt around in the dark for his shoes and tiptoed up the stairs. The door at the top opened into the little back hall. Roddy stood very still, his heart thumping like a drum inside his chest. Then he slid his fingers across the opposite wall, until he found his baseball bat propped in the corner. He hoisted it to his shoulder and unlocked the door.

  The world outside wasn’t as dark as the basement had been. Roddy tiptoed to the front of the house and peeked around the corner. No one on the front porch. No one moving at all. He began to feel a little braver.

  I would have smacked him if I’d caught him, he’d tell Jacob tomorrow. Even if he’d been a great big guy, I would have knocked him out. If that happened there might be a picture in the paper of this kid protecting his house and his mother. They could send the picture to Afghanistan … his dad would be proud.

  Something hit him on the head and rolled out onto the street. Roddy’s hands turned clammy. He squinted and saw that it was an apple—one of the small green ones that dotted the tree in front of his house.

  “You are just weird,” said a voice from the tree. “Who else plays baseball in the middle of the night?”

  The girl—Princess—was high in the tree, straddling a branch, her legs swinging. Like she couldn’t fall if she tried, Roddy thought. He hated high places himself.

  “You’re supposed to be in bed,” he said in a growly whisper. “My mom would be really mad if she knew you sneaked out.”

  “That’s why I was very quiet,” Princess said. “So I wouldn’t disturb her.”

  “Well, I heard you,” Roddy said. “I thought someone was trying to break into our house.”

  “And you were going to hit him with the bat?” She sounded as if he’d said something funny, but she didn’t actually laugh. “Come on up here,” she said. “You can see everything.”

  “What’s there to see?” Roddy demanded. “It’s the middle of the night!” He felt really stupid, standing there in his pj’s, holding a baseball bat and talking to a tree. “You’d better get back in the house before you break your neck.”

  “No way,” Princess said.

  Roddy scowled. He couldn’t make her come down, and he was pretty sure his mom wouldn’t want him to leave her outside. He was still trying to decide what to do, when Princess said, “Hey!” and stopped swinging her legs. “There’s a car coming down the hill. With no headlights! How strange is that?”

  Pretty strange, Roddy admitted to himself. He moved closer to the tree trunk and peered around it at the hulking, almost silent car. It moved slowly. When it turned in at the driveway two houses farther up the hill on the other side of the street, his heart gave a nasty little lurch. He knew all about that house, because Jacob had told him. It was haunted.

  “With no lights,” Princess repeated. “We have to sneak up there and see what’s going on.”

  “Not a chance,” Roddy said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Who cares what they’re doing?”

  He had hardly gotten the words out when Princess came shinnying down the tree like a monkey.

  “That really could be a burglar,” she whispered. “Why else would they be so quiet and not have any lights?” She grabbed Roddy’s arm and pulled. “Don’t be scared, Roddy. I thought that was why you came outside with a baseball bat—to catch a burglar.”

  Roddy gritted his teeth. He wished he’d fallen asleep the minute his mom turned out the light. He wished he’d never come outside. He wished—more than anything—that Princess had turned out to be a dog.

  3. Day Two

  “So then what happened?” Jacob demanded. “Hurry up, man!”

  They were sitting on the ground behind the garage, out of sight of the house and any nosy girl visitor who might be wandering around.

  “Nothing happened,” Roddy told him. “My mom switched on the light in the kitchen—she gets up to get a glass of milk if she can’t sleep—and I said that meant she might be wandering around for hours. I said she’d probably check on Princess, and when she saw that empty bed …” He grinned, remembering how quickly Princess had given up the idea of investigating the car. “But she’s going to want to go poking around that house later,” he went on. “I could tell. And she’s going to want us to go with her.”

  “Us?” Jacob repeated. “What do you mean, us? I told you that house is haunted. I’m not going anywhere near it.”

  Roddy scooped up a handful of pebbles and tossed them across the alley. He thought about the car moving without headlights down the hill.

  “How do you know it’s haunted?” he asked, although he already knew the answer.

  “My great-uncle Ringwald told me,” Jacob said. “And he knows about stuff like that. He’s seen lots of ghosts. He’s talked to ’em. He really knows.”

  Roddy leaned back against the garage and groaned. He didn’t want to hear this.

  “Ask him yourself, if you don’t believe me,” Jacob said, sounding annoyed. “Let’s go ask him right now.” He stood up, and Roddy got up, too, because he didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t want Jacob to be mad at him.

  They walked slowly up the alley to Jacob’s house at the top of the hill. Jacob opened the rickety gate and led the way around the garage into the narrow backyard. It was a nice yard. Pink and red hollyhocks teetered along one fence, leaning against one another for support. In front of them, vegetables grew in neat rows. Roddy hadn’t been in Jacob’s backyard often—they usually played at the foot of the hill along the stream—but he liked it there. This was the kind of yard he wanted if he and his folks ever settled down to stay in one place.

  A picnic table stood close to the house, and on the table was what looked like a huge heap of old clothes.

  “There he is,” Jacob said in a low voice. “He always takes a nap out here after breakfast. My mom says it gives her time to straighten up his room.”

  “We’d better not bother him,” Roddy said quickly. “I’ll ask about the house some other time.”

  The pile of clothes shifted on the table, and Uncle Ring’s huge bearded face rose to look at them. He didn’t speak, just watched as they crossed the yard. Then he swung his feet over the side of the table and nodded.

  “What are you fellas up to today?” he rumbled. “And who’s your friend?”

  “You know Roddy, Uncle Ring,” Jacob said. “The new kid down the block. He’s been here before.”

  “’Course I know him,” Uncle Ring said gruffly. “I know everybody around here. I didn’t mean him. Who’s that long drink of water back by the gate?”

  Both boys whirled around. No one was there.

  “There’s nobody—” Roddy said, but Jacob interrup
ted.

  “What’s he look like, Uncle Ring?”

  Uncle Ring didn’t seem surprised by the question. He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “Fine lookin’ fella,” he said finally. “Army uniform, looks like.” He paused. “He’s going now. Guess he just stopped by to say hello. Can you think who he was?”

  Roddy could hardly breathe. “No!” he gasped. “I don’t know any ghosts.”

  Uncle Ring looked startled. “Well now, I never said he was a ghost, did I? That wasn’t a ghost at all. Sometimes people travel in their thoughts, and if you have my kind of eyes you can see ’em. Happens all the time.”

  “Roddy’s dad is in the army,” Jacob said, looking uneasy. “He’s overseas.”

  “Well, there you are.” Uncle Ring leaned back on the table, supporting his huge bulk on one elbow. “That proves what I said. Your dad’s thinkin’ about home all the time, and right now he was just checkin’ up to make sure you’re okay.” He yawned. “Guess I’ll sleep a little longer, if you don’t want anything special.”

  “Roddy wants to ask you something,” Jacob said hurriedly. “About that house across the street. It’s haunted, isn’t it? You said it was.”

  “You bet your lucky penny it’s haunted,” Uncle Ring said sleepily. He lay back and closed his eyes. “There’s been a ghost in that old place for forty years.”

  “But somebody lives there,” Roddy said. “I saw his car last night.”

  “People move in and stay a little while and move right out again,” Uncle Ring said. “Don’t blame ’em a bit. There’s ghosts and then there’s ghosts—good ones and bad ones. That place has the worst kind—mean as poison.…” The sentence trailed off, ending in a snore so loud that the boys jumped.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Roddy said. He headed back to the gate and looked both ways before stepping out into the alley.

  “So what do you think?” Jacob asked when he’d caught up. “Uncle Ring sure knows about ghosts and haunted houses, right?”