Oh crap, morning is here already. I sit on the side of my bed getting dressed. Then run out the door to catch my school bus.
Whew, I barely made it. Today is the last day of school for the year, thank God. Sitting in my usual seat, I look around at my schoolmates, all of whom are still strangers.
My stop is the last one before we get to school. Today I’ll walk through all my classes, give back all my books, and clean out my locker. No parties to go to, no signing of yearbooks, and definitely no crying in the hallway. I’ve done all that. Then it will be time to go home.
I’ve been in this town for almost a year, it’s time to leave. I really miss home, all my friends, Grandma and Grandpa too. Maybe Mom will be back from Canada when we get home. I can’t wait to tell her all the cool stuff I have been up too. But first, California, I have to go to California and see the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco too.
We can do lots of ghost hunting on our way to California. It will be the adventure of a lifetime.
Dad has a pretty good job waiting for him in New Jersey. He says he’ll be working by the Delaware Bay at a government office. But if that doesn’t work out, his old boss in Maryland said he is welcome to come back there. Maryland is only three hours from home. At least I’ll be a lot closer to home than we are way out here.
New Jersey would be all right for a year or two, but I don’t want to stay in New Jersey for the rest of my life either. I’m not going to college in New Jersey, that’s for sure, anywhere but there.
My plan is either to live with Grandma in Florida or my uncle in California.
***
“Hey Dad, did you ever check out that recording of Neewa eating the pumpkin pies?”
“No, I forgot all about it.”
Dad asks, “What about the antlers, did you check them out?”
“Yeah, the antlers have nothing. I put the EMF meter on them and a few other meters too, but no readings at all, nothing. They’re packed in one of the boxes ready to go back East.”
Dad suggests, “I can queue up the ‘flying Neewa eating pumpkin pies’ tape. I have to download all those files onto my PC anyway. You want to help me?”
“Sure, let’s do it,” I answer enthusiastically.
In short order, Dad has everything set up. The camera and hot wire are already connected to the computer.
He sits in front of the PC. “Ok, click ‘download,’ now click ‘camera,’ ‘capture,’ ‘save’, okay, now ‘publish.’”
I wait till the entire file is finished.
“We got it.” The file is saved to the desktop.
“Dad, play it back,” anxious to see the tape, “hurry up.”
“Ok Christina watch this, I have some stuff to do.”
When Neewa tripped the motion detector the camera was lying on its side. In the frame is Neewa already on the countertop with the view flipped ninety degrees.
The video of Neewa shows her eating the pies all right, but only a partial view. I can see a portion of her ivory white fur in the foreground and part of one pumpkin pie. I cannot see her eating the other two pies though, but I can hear her.
As I continue watching the tape, Neewa sniffs the camera and licks the lens. She can hear the camera running.
Now I hear her swallowing the pieces of pie, gobbling them down. It’s almost like she is consuming a whole pumpkin pie at once. Next, the pie plate in view is being licked.
Another pie plate on the counter rattles around like a thunderstorm as she cleans that one off. Then plates hit the floor and Neewa jumps down to finish up the rest. The sound of her pawing and slapping down a plate and then licking it clean is woefully clear. I listen to the next pie plate being cleaned.
The kitchen window in the background was about the only other thing I could see. All the sounds of Neewa’s feast are recorded, right up until the camera shuts itself off. Turns out there are no pictures of Neewa levitating onto the three-foot high counter top. I’ll never prove that she flew. Still, I wonder how in the world did she get up there?