“Sure, honeybunch,” Nana said soothingly. “Why don’t you hide it wherever you want? You don’t even have to tell me where it is. Just don’t throw it away, because it would hurt your dad’s feelings. But wait. Nana wants to tell you girls something. I want to teach you some tricks to get rid of your fear.”

  Jasmine groaned and laughed at the same time. “Ready for the superstitions?” she asked Lisa. They grinned at each other.

  “Okay,” Nana said. “To banish fear, here’s what you do. Snap your fingers five times next to each ear and say, ‘Be gone, fear!’ ”

  If only it were that easy, Jasmine thought. Nana has no idea.

  “And here’s another thing you can try,” Nana said. She really was trying to be helpful, Jasmine knew, so she listened quietly. “Sleep with a bar of soap under your pillow. It will wash the fear out of your mind while you sleep.”

  But as Nana looked at Jasmine, she realized nothing she was saying was helping. She looked sympathetic. “What would make you feel better right now, Jasmine?” she asked kindly.

  Jasmine knew right away. There was one thing that would truly help. “Can Lisa spend the night tonight, Nana?” Jasmine asked. She had a feeling Nana would say yes.

  “Of course. If Lisa’s parents say it’s okay,” Nana said right away. “And, if you two like, I can make my famous dumpling soup.” She usually made this on Sundays. Nana always put a dried apricot inside one of the dumplings. If you got the apricot in one of your dumplings, that was supposed to mean you’d have good luck for a week.

  But the truth was that Jasmine just didn’t want any more surprises—in a dumpling or anywhere else.

  “That’s okay, Nana,” Jasmine said. “Thanks, but I’m not really in the mood for dumpling soup.”

  “No problem,” Nana said. “How about if I make a fire? It sure is the perfect night for it.” She started putting logs into the fireplace. Now that sounded like a good idea to Jasmine. It was so nice to sit in front of the fire. Momo usually joined her, and tonight it would be her and Lisa, all warm and cozy.

  “Thanks, Nana,” Jasmine said. She really was starting to feel a little bit better. “Come on,” she said to Lisa, taking the two blankets and cushions off the couch. “Come sit in front of the fire.” Nana got the fire started quickly as the storm continued to whistle and wail outside. Then Nana left the girls alone again and went to fix dinner.

  “Well, then,” Jasmine said to Lisa. “Enough excitement for you?” She was being sarcastic, but she saw on Lisa’s face that she had actually been really freaked out as well. Jasmine had to admit: it made her feel a little better that Lisa got scared sometimes too.

  “Seriously, though,” Lisa said. Her face matched the word perfectly. “Why are you so petrified of that mask?”

  Jasmine sighed loudly. “You really want to know?”

  “Of course,” Lisa answered. Her face showed the excitement that she usually showed when talking about ghosts, but this time Jasmine thought she detected some nervousness in her expression too.

  “I hated the mask the first time I saw it,” Jasmine admitted to her best friend. “It creeped me out, and now I’ve even had nightmares about it.”

  Lisa nodded sympathetically. Jasmine finally felt that Lisa got it.

  “And then you did that horrible thing of scaring me in the basement,” Jasmine had to add. They hadn’t discussed it since the morning after it had happened.

  “I’m really sorry,” Lisa said quickly. “I was trying to be funny. But I totally get how it backfired.”

  Jasmine smiled as she stared at the fire. It was mesmerizing to watch the flames. She imagined tossing the mask right into them and watching it burn.

  “But you’re right about that mask,” Lisa went on. “It is creepy. So what happened? You broke it, then you threw it away?”

  “Yeah,” Jasmine confessed. “I smashed it with a hammer in the basement. Really hard!”

  Lisa looked impressed, and Jasmine felt strangely proud of herself. She remembered how good the hammer had felt in her hand as she brought it down on the wood again and again with all her might.

  “Then I put it in the garbage and covered it up with paper towels,” Jasmine said. “I thought it would be gone forever. But as you have seen, I will never be rid of it!” She gave a sad little laugh.

  “Well, at least once you hide it, you don’t have to look at it anymore,” Lisa said. She was trying to say something helpful, Jasmine knew. But all Jasmine could think of was where she could hide that mask. It had to be somewhere outside of the house.

  “Look, Jas,” Lisa said. “There’s really nothing to be afraid of. Even if the mask did have special powers, they’re supposed to be good ones, right?” But something in her voice let Jasmine know that she was trying to convince herself of this “fact” too.

  “You know what?” Jasmine said. She didn’t want to answer Lisa’s question. “I want to hide that mask right now like Nana said I could. I don’t want to wait one minute longer.”

  “Okay,” Lisa said patiently. “I’ll help you, but where should we hide it?”

  They both thought about it.

  And once Jasmine got the idea, she knew it was a good one. “The tree house,” she said.

  “Wow, I almost forgot about your tree house,” Lisa said. “We haven’t hung out there in forever. We used to hang out in there all the time, remember?”

  Jasmine’s dad had built the tree house when she was a little girl. She’d “helped” him by handing him nails, which at the time seemed like an important job, but now she realized her dad had just been trying to make her feel helpful and involved. She’d loved the tree house as a child, spending lots of time there by herself reading or hanging out with Lisa and other friends. They’d pretend they were grown-ups, and that it was their actual house. But as Jasmine got older, she’d stopped going into the tree house as much. In the past year she hadn’t gone inside at all. So it was the perfect place to hide something she never wanted to see again.

  “Yeah,” Jasmine said. She looked outside. The storm had stopped, and the sun was starting to shine for the last few minutes of daylight. She already had her shoes on, and the mask in her hand, ready to go. She couldn’t get it out of the house fast enough!

  Lisa put her shoes on quickly too, sensing how important this mission was to Jasmine. Jasmine opened the back door.

  The girls ran across the yard and climbed carefully up the wooden ladder, which was not easy for Jasmine to do while holding the mask with one hand. But as soon as they entered the tree house, which had a very good roof, they sat down and breathed a sigh of relief. Jasmine felt better already. They looked around. Everything was exactly as they remembered it. There were still four plastic chairs in there, and a wooden table her dad had built. There were still a few posters of animals on the walls. They were a little weathered. But it really was a great tree house. And Jasmine appreciated it more than she ever had before, because it was going to be the mask’s new home. Now it could protect the squirrels and the birds and leave Jasmine alone!

  Jasmine and Lisa sat on the chairs, catching their breaths. Jasmine put the mask down, and it sat on the floor between them.

  “You know what? Let’s get out of here,” Jasmine said. “It’s cold, and I want to get back in front of the fire and warm up. And leave this creepy thing here, of course.”

  Lisa smiled and stood up, then stepped carefully down the ladder. And Jasmine followed her, leaving that mask where it belonged.

  Jasmine and Lisa kicked off their wet, muddy shoes and got right back under their blankets in front of the fire. It was just as cozy as it had been five minutes before. Jasmine felt relief that the mask was no longer in the house, but as the minutes ticked by, she felt herself getting annoyed about the mask. She was no longer as freaked out, just mad.

  “What’s the matter?” Lisa asked.

  “The totally annoying thing about the mask is my dad,” Jasmine said. “He brought it back from his trip like it was some wonderful gift. Whenever he brings me back a present, I feel like he’s trying to make up for never being around. Like, he just gets to go off and do whatever he wants, and if he brings me back a really cool present, everything’s okay. Well, it’s not.”

  The familiar anger filled Jasmine’s chest. She took a deep breath. She was getting all worked up again. “Okay. New subject, please!” She forced herself to laugh. “Like, what are we doing for the Mardi Gras parade?” It was coming up that weekend, and they usually went together.

  “Well, we’re definitely wearing the masks we made,” Lisa answered.

  “Stop saying masks!” Jasmine sincerely meant it, but they both laughed.

  “Sorry,” Lisa said quickly. “Well, you know how Jordan lives on the parade route, and she’s going to have her party again this year?”

  Jasmine knew that. Jordan had invited her, she remembered, but with everything going on, she’d completely forgotten about it. She remembered how much fun Jordan’s party had been last year. About ten kids had been invited. They had stood on the second-floor balcony and watched the crazy parade go by. The bright colors, the outrageous costumes, the inventive floats—they were unbelievable. All the kids wore tons of purple, gold, and green beads. They also painted one another’s faces with purple, gold, and green face paint, and ate so much king cake that Jasmine thought she would explode.

  Of course, lots of marchers in the parade wore masks. Remembering how colorful and fun all the masks were, Jasmine had a moment of envy of all the partiers’ clueless fun. Imagine if they had a real mask to deal with! she thought.

  But her thoughts were interrupted by Nana approaching them with a smile and two plates—a fireside dinner. What a special treat.

  “Thanks, Nana,” Jasmine said as she reached up and took her plate. Lasagna!

  “Thanks, Nana,” Lisa said too as Nana handed her a plate. It’s sweet how Lisa calls her Nana too, Jasmine thought. It made Jasmine feel like they were all family.

  “The storm passed by so quickly. One minute there was thunder and lightning, and now the sky is clear as a bell,” Nana said as Jasmine stuck her fork into the lasagna and lifted the first bite high off her plate, the cheese stretching about two feet long. They all laughed.

  “Works for me,” Lisa said. “I really don’t like thunder and lightning.”

  Jasmine felt sort of good hearing that Lisa didn’t like storms. I guess everyone is afraid of something, she thought.

  Jasmine was pleasantly surprised. It had turned out to be kind of a great night. The mask felt faraway in the tree house. Soon after they filled their bellies with lasagna, Jasmine and Lisa fell sound asleep, curled up on the rug right in front of the fire. Just like happy cats.

  But the wind rattling the window next to the fireplace woke up Jasmine soon after. She looked over at Lisa, who was fast asleep, the dimming, flickering firelight giving her face a pretty orange glow.

  It’s just the wind, Jasmine had to remind herself. She looked at the flames in the fireplace. They were always soothing. Maybe they would calm her down.

  But then . . . Rattle, rattle, rattle. The sound just would not stop, and it was so loud that Jasmine knew she would have trouble going back to sleep. You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay, she said to herself.

  Her eyes moved to the rattling window.

  And there it was.

  The mask! That wooden face! As if it were a person outside in the damp, cold night, looking in.

  And even though the mask had just holes for eyes, it looked to Jasmine as if the eyes were looking straight into her soul.

  CHAPTER 13

  Jasmine sat straight up. The tall grandfather clock next to the couch said it was 4:25. It was the third time in a row that she’d woken up from a nightmare at that exact same time.

  I can’t take this anymore, Jasmine thought. She put her face in her hands. I can’t take these nightmares. It felt like her brain was rattling around in her skull, trying to find a way out of her head.

  But it wasn’t her brain that was rattling. It was the window, just like in her nightmare. Jasmine looked around and wrapped her arms around herself in a big hug to check that she was really in her body. To check that this wasn’t still part of the nightmare. It wasn’t, she was sure of it. Again, she looked over at Lisa. And again, Lisa was peacefully asleep.

  You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay. Jasmine kept her eyes on the fire to calm herself down. The flames were as short as her fingers, and tiny embers glowed at the bottom like baby fireflies. Jasmine took a deep breath. She listened carefully for the rattling sound but didn’t hear it anymore. She just heard the sound of glass breaking, as if someone had dropped a mug on a hard floor.

  And then. Whoosh. Buzz. Screech. Whoosh! Buzz! Screech!

  All Jasmine knew was that something was buzzing and flapping so loudly that it seemed like there was nothing else in the whole world except those noises. She screamed. It sounded to her like her scream was coming from someone else. It was super-high-pitched, nothing at all like any noise she had ever made, not even when Lisa had scared her in the basement and not even when the mask had been delivered to her door earlier that day. Lisa woke up with a jolt and immediately joined Jasmine in screaming, not even knowing why.

  For the second time that evening, Nana ran into the room looking alarmed. But this time the girls did not stop screaming. They kept their eyes closed and their hands over their ears, as if to block out the world. They pulled their blankets over their heads.

  And it was a good thing they did. An unrecognizable and very large insect was flying frantically around the room screeching as Jasmine and Lisa both huddled and cowered, crying, under their blankets.

  The screen must have been open a bit, and the insect had gotten stuck between the screen and the pane. That was what the rattling had been all about. The insect had been beating itself against the window, trying to escape, and had eventually broken the pane—that was the sound of breaking glass Jasmine had heard—and flown right into the room.

  The bug landed on the coffee table in front of the couch. The room was silent; there was no more screeching or buzzing or whooshing. Jasmine and Lisa somehow gathered the courage to peek out from under the covers. Nana had closed the screen and turned on the overhead light. Jasmine couldn’t believe what she saw.

  The horrifying insect had a red body and wings like a moth, but they were enormous—each one the size of a sheet of notebook paper. Its body, the size of a banana, was red and hard. It looked like it would crunch loudly if you stepped on it, which Jasmine really wanted to do, even though it would probably be disgusting. She raised her foot bravely, ready to stomp, then realized she was barefoot.

  “No, honeybunch, we’re not going to kill it.” Nana stopped Jasmine. “Nana’s going to humanely capture it and put it outside where it belongs. Just because we haven’t seen any bug like this before, and just because it’s big, and okay, I admit, a little scary-looking, doesn’t mean we should kill it.”

  “What does humanely mean?” Lisa asked curiously, as if she were sitting in Ms. Berger’s English class. As if this was a perfectly normal moment. Jasmine was still unable to speak.

  “Well, what word do you hear in humane?” Nana asked Lisa, as if she were a teacher.

  “Human!” Lisa exclaimed.

  “That’s right,” Nana said. She seemed pleased that Lisa was following along. “It’s human, but with an e at the end. You can think of the e as standing for ‘extra,’ like the extra-good qualities of being human. Everything that is excellent about people, like being gentle and treating every living creature with respect, even if it doesn’t serve our purposes. Especially if it can’t take care of itself. Like this bug here. It’s trapped, basically.”

  Lisa nodded intently. The bug stayed completely still.

  “Hello!” Jasmine said loudly. “Can the vocabulary lesson please be over until we get this—thing—out of here?” What were they thinking, talking about vocabulary words? Were they for real?

  “Hold your horses,” Nana said gently. She went into Jasmine’s dad’s office and quickly came back with a piece of printer paper. “Here,” she said. “We’ll slide it onto this paper and then put the paper on the porch.” The insect remained completely motionless. “Oh, look, the poor thing is scared.”

  “That poor thing tried to kill me!” Jasmine exclaimed.

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” Nana said. “And think of the cats and dogs in the animal shelter. This bug is an animal, just like them. All living things should be treated with respect.”

  That actually made good sense to Jasmine. Then the insect’s buggy, yellow eyes looked right at her. Jasmine and the insect seemed to be locked in a stare. Jasmine thought of the expression “His eyes bugged out of his head.” Now she understood it perfectly.

  She got a closer look. The insect had sharp, curvy fangs. Its antennae were long. Too long.

  Nana used her foot—luckily, she was wearing slippers—to push the insect onto the paper. Then she carefully picked it up. The weight of the insect made the thin sheet of paper sag. Nana carried it to the back door.

  “Open this door for Nana, girls,” Nana said. “Unless you want your visitor to spend the night!” She seemed to think this was funny. Jasmine followed Nana and opened the door as quickly as she could. As if it knew it was outside again, the insect flew off the piece of paper. Jasmine couldn’t be sure, but it looked like it was headed for the tree house.

  After the girls and Nana had finished cleaning up the broken glass, it was time to go back to sleep.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” Jasmine said quickly to Lisa. “We can sleep in my room instead of down here.”

  “I don’t have my sleeping bag,” Lisa reminded her.

  “You can fit in my bed with me,” Jasmine replied.

  In Jasmine’s room the girls huddled close in the dark. They tried to calm themselves down by staring at the glowing constellations on the ceiling.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9