Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost by Karen Karbo Read Free Book Online

His gaze shifted to me, where it stuck too long. I’m sure it wasn’t my imagination. He was wondering about me, somehow.
    I felt my head start to sweat. How could I have lost track of the time? What was Robotective Huntington staring at? And what about the grocery? Was it arson or not?
    â€œWhat’s wrong with you?” Angus persisted.
    â€œI was supposed to be home right now. And my mom goes totally insane if somebody makes her late. She thinks people do it to her on purpose, just to see her gocrazy. It’s times like these I am so glad she doesn’t live with us anymore.”
    â€œNo, I mean what’s wrong that you’re going to the doctor?”
    â€œIt’s the brain doctor.”
    â€œJust a checkup then?” he asked.
    â€œYou’re awfully nosy,” I said. We’d reached the bus stop. Of course, there was no bus in sight. I sighed and checked the time on my cell phone.
    â€œYou’re not taking the bus, are you?”
    â€œHow’d you think I got here? Unlike you, I didn’t just materialize from a mist.”
    â€œMaterialize from a mist?” Angus’s voice flew up like every other boy I knew. I guess that meant he wasn’t a four-hundred-year-old vampire after all.
    â€œAren’t you hot in that trench coat?” I asked again. Angus was starting to get on my nerves. I pulled out my phone and checked the time again. I was so dead. I was so not going to be home in a few minutes.
    â€œWhy don’t you take my scooter?” Angus said. His brown-black eyes snapped with something I couldn’t read. For no reason on earth, he patted me on the head.
    Angus’s Go-Ped had an orange-and-black deck and an electric motor in the back. It looked like a regular scooter, but you didn’t need to push it to make it go. It went eighteen miles an hour and got me home in about ten minutes, the wind whipping my mass of bed-headhair around behind me. The breeze felt so good. Never had I looked like such a geek, riding the streets of Portland in my turquoise Chuck Taylor high-tops and jean skirt. Lucky for me, Portland is the alternative-transportation capital of the nation—aside from all the bicycles and mopeds, there’s a guy in our neighborhood who has a pair of miniature horses that pull him around in a cart. No one bats an eye.

4
    Even though I was now a one-of-a-kind freak with uncommon self-esteem, I was not immune to total stupidity. I was so desperate to get home, I had borrowed Angus’s Go-Ped without stopping to think how I would explain it. I could say I borrowed it from Chelsea, but there was not a drop of pink or purple anywhere on it, so no one would believe me. Plus, I’d already lied enough for one day. My brother Morgan was a Buddhist and said lying ruined your karma. I hoped karma ran along the same principles as tooth decay—it took a lot more than one Tropical Starburst to ruin your teeth. My plan was to zoom up the driveway and straight into the garage, in the hopes no one would see me. I’d figure out how to get the scooter back to Angus later.
    But when I finally reached our house, Mark Clark and Mrs. Dagnitz were standing in the middle of thedriveway, waiting beside Mrs. Dagnitz’s white SUV. Even though it was brain-cooking hot outside. Even though they were both wearing slacks. If they were surprised to see me speed up on an electric scooter, they didn’t let on. Mark Clark had the straight-lipped, big-eyed look he gets when something has disturbed his world. Mrs. Dagnitz, on the other hand, was smiling the biggest tooth-whitened smile you can imagine. I had not seen such an enormous life-affirming smile since the first day of kindergarten, when our teacher, Mrs. Yerby, who also rescued cats with terminal diseases, welcomed us to our new school.
    I smiled back. I thought it would be good to pretend that Mrs. Dagnitz’s fake smile was a real smile. “Hey there!” I hopped off