Audrey Claire - Libby Grace 01 - How to be a Ghost Read Free Page B

different denominations, and they vied for members all the time. I doubted either man could be stirred from their schemes to perform an exorcism on little old me.
    Afraid but determined, I set out into the night and rushed on foot the ten or so blocks to George’s Hardware store. With any luck, I would be back in my body by sunup.

Chapter Two
     
    When I reached the road outside my house, I ran and didn’t stop. I crossed to the opposite side of the street and passed Monica’s house. Monica had a green thumb unlike yours truly, so she had placed two huge terra-cotta planters on either side of her front door with colorful flora growing beautifully in them. The red flowers bloomed each spring and complemented my friend’s bright red shutters. I joked that her shutters could be seen from space, but Monica always said that’s just the way she liked it.
    Ian’s warnings played through my mind as I ran, and as I peered into the shadows, beneath cars, behind trees, everywhere since our little residential road held so few lights, I imagined the darkness reached out to me just waiting to swallow me whole. Fear crawled up my back, making me more vulnerable than I had ever been in my life. A few turns onto new roads led me down Memorial, the street where our pesky newspaper reporter Luis Riley lived. I had never had reason to be featured in the local paper, and I did not relish the idea of my debut tonight.
    I suppose I could have just run in a straight line through the walls of the houses between me and the hardware store, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I settled for cutting across lawns and phasing through fences. Could I describe what I did with that term? Phasing ?
    At last, I reached Main Street and paused. I thought to pant to catch my breath then realized I was not winded. However, I was tired, but this feeling—a sense of being drained—puzzled me.
    Main Street stretched before me, deserted and dark, all except for blazing lights illuminating the ground outside the hardware store. I drew closer and peered through the oversized window but couldn’t see much past the posters for sales, the hanging plants, which I found odd that George hadn’t brought inside after he closed the night before. Maybe he had already set them out for the morning.
    Along with the posters and plants, there was a display for electric grills, complete with a bald mannequin in an apron, and a lawn chair suspended from the ceiling. I couldn’t figure out the reasoning behind that so I moved toward the front door. With a quick glance up and down the street, I stepped forward through the door, and this time avoided landing facedown on the other side. I peered over my shoulder to find the locks undone. Still, the place lay in total silence. Where was George?
    “More importantly,” I whispered and crouched as I tiptoed toward an aisle, “where is my body?”
    I don’t know why I lowered my voice. Perhaps in case George showed up and had the shock of his life seeing a ghost in his store. I wasn’t worried he could banish me. George was the kind of man who had one thing on his mind most of the time, and that was his business. He loved the hardware store, and when he closed down at one in the afternoon for an hour to have lunch at Gatsky’s across the street, the town’s best restaurant, all anyone ever heard him talking about was the latest tool or the best way to fix a hole in the wall. That was another reason why I had gone to the hardware store. I knew George would give me advice on what tools I needed to fix my leak and maybe even offer to help. Now that I thought of it, I recalled speaking with him about my problem.
    I crept from one aisle to the next. George had secured quite a bit of space for the store, over five thousand square feet. Some speculated the mayor, George’s wife, had supplied him with the money, but George delighted in informing anyone who would listen how with planning and hard work, he was living the American dream as