Ghost of Spirit Bear Read Free

tasting, and appreciating each mouthful before he swallowed. Kids around him stuffed food into their faces, arguing and complaining.
    “These hamburgers suck!” one girl grumbled.
    “So do the french fries,” another student added.
    Cole watched kids dump tray after tray of half-eaten food into the garbage can. He wondered how everybody would behave if they had almost starved on an island. What if they had been forced to eat vomit, insects, and mice just to stay alive, as he had? What if they, too, had touched the Spirit Bear?
    An assembly was called for the last period. Cole couldn’t find Peter, so he sat alone in the bleachers, ignoring the shouting and shoving. The teachers bunched together against the wall under the mural of the vicious bulldog mascot. They visited with one another and ignored the students.
    On the gym floor, a short, neatly dressed woman stepped up to the podium and tapped the microphone. “Okay, listen up everyone! I’m Ms. Kennedy, the new principal,” she said in a monotone, as if her voice were a recording.
    “Hey, witch, you listen up!” a student screamed back.
    The woman pulled the microphone closer. “Welcome! I’m Ms. Kennedy, your new principal. I’ve called this assembly to welcome you back to Minneapolis Central High, home of the proud Bulldogs. I appreciate your being here.”
    “What choice do we have?” another student shouted.
    The principal droned on over the shouting and laughter. When the assembly finally ended, Cole braced himself for more shoving. A student shouted, “The b— won’t last a week!”
    They were probably right, Cole thought. He spotted Peter leaving school through a side door and ran to catch up. “Hey, what did you think of the new principal?” he asked.
    “I th-th-think she’ll get munched for lunch.”
    Cole nodded his agreement. “How was your first day?”
    Peter stared at the sidewalk without answering.
    “Did more kids trash you?”
    Peter shrugged. “It’s no big deal. How ’bout you?”
    Cole pretended to be the announcer at a circus. “Come one, come all,” he shouted. “See the freak boy who was attacked by a bear!”
    Peter laughed and chimed in, “See the boy who got his head smashed and had to go to Alaska so he wouldn’t commit suicide.”
    Cole spoke bitterly. “We’re both in trouble when everybody figures out that fighting will send me to jail.”
    Peter wrinkled his forehead. “We have to think like we did on the island or we’ll both be back where we started. I wish we were soaking in the pond right now. We wouldn’t have all these problems.”
    “I’ll figure out something,” Cole said.
    “If you find a pond, maybe I can figure out how to carry ancestor rocks,” Peter said, looking at his watch. “Hey, I gotta get home.”
    Cole watched his friend limp away and then headed for home himself. His mother now worked as an office manager for a trucking company and wouldn’t get off work for a couple of hours, so Cole took his time.
    He had walked several blocks when he found himself passing Frazier’s grocery store. Suddenly an idea popped into his head. He used to shop at this store with his mother. Once she had asked the checkout person if they could buy a case of frozen hamburgers for a picnic she was planning with Dad. The man had led them back into a large walk-in freezer where they stored frozen goods. Cole remembered seeing his breath and shivering. That freezer would be cold like the stream.
    Cole hesitated, then walked inside and asked a tall woman working behind the meat counter, “Can I speak with the manager?”
    “I’m Betty. I manage the dairy and meat department,” the lady said, wiping her hands on a white apron. “Can I help you?”
    “I have a weird question.”
    “Well, maybe I have a weird answer.”
    “I was sent up to Alaska to stay on an island for a year.”
    “I read about you somewhere,” she said. “Didn’t you end up spending time with the boy you attacked?”
    Cole