59 - The Haunted School (9 page)

She turned to Ben and me. “I escaped a few weeks ago,” she explained. “Just
before school started. I went over to your world, the real world. But I had to
disguise myself.”

“You mean—” I started.

“The makeup,” Thalia continued. “The makeup and the lipstick. I had to keep
putting that stuff on all the time. To cover up my gray skin. I—”

“But your eyes—” I interrupted. “They’re blue.”

“Contact lenses,” she explained. She let out a long sigh. “It was so hard, so
much work. I had to be so careful. I had to apply coat after coat of makeup and
lipstick. I couldn’t let anyone know.

“Kids made fun of me,” Thalia sighed. “But that wasn’t the worst part. I
wanted to stay in the world of color and brightness. But I was a fake. A phony,
covering up with makeup. I no longer belonged there. I belonged here in
Grayworld.”

Thalia sighed again. “But I couldn’t find the way back. Then tonight, you and
Ben didn’t return to the gym. I went searching for you. I found the hole in the
boarded-up wall. And I found the elevator. And it brought me here, to my
friends.”

“Welcome back,” Mary said, putting a gray arm around the shoulders of
Thalia’s dress. The color on the dress had already started to fade.

“You’re right. This is where you belong,” Seth told her.

“When you escaped, we thought about you all the time,” Mona added. “We
wondered how you were doing. And we wondered if you would come back for us.”

“You don’t want to go there,” Thalia replied. “And I don’t want to go back.
We don’t belong there. We cannot live there. I don’t want to pretend anymore. I
just want to stay here with you and be myself.”

She pulled a makeup kit and a tube of lipstick from her bag and tossed it
down on a desktop. “No more makeup. No more lipstick. No more pretending.”

“But what about
us
?” Ben cried. “Tommy and I have only a minute or two
more before we’re totally gray!”

“Aren’t you going to help us escape from here?” I pleaded. “Aren’t you going
to help us get back?”

Thalia shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry, guys.”

I swallowed hard, thinking about home. My dad. My new mom. My dog.

I’ll never see them again, I realized.

I’ll never see
color
again. Never see blue ocean waves or a red,
setting sun.

“I’m sorry, guys,” Thalia repeated. “Sorry I didn’t explain this to you right
away.”

“Explain what?” I cried.

“I think I can get you back to the other side,” she said.

She picked up her lipstick tube. “This is how I escaped a few weeks ago,” she
said. “This lipstick tube was buried in my bag for fifty years. I’d forgotten
all about it.”

She unscrewed the cap and showed us the bright red lipstick. “I found it a
few weeks ago. When I opened it, it was still red!” Thalia exclaimed. “It was
some kind of miracle. Maybe because it had been closed up. It still had its color.”

Thalia moved to the wall. “I was so excited to see the color red after fifty
years,” she explained. “I started drawing on the wall with it. And to my shock,
wherever I spread the lipstick, it made a hole in the wall!”

“That’s amazing!” Eddie cried.

The others excitedly agreed.

“The lipstick burned right through the wall,” Thalia continued. “I—I was so
shocked, I didn’t know what to do. I drew a window on the wall. And I climbed
through it. I escaped. That’s how I did it.”

She raised the lipstick tube to the gray wall. “I tried to come back for you
guys,” she told her friends. “But the hole closed up as soon as I went through
it.”

She frowned. “I drew a lipstick window on the wall on the other side. But in
the real world, lipstick is only lipstick. It didn’t work. I couldn’t get back
to you. I had no way of finding you, no way to return here.”

I glanced at Ben. To my horror, he had turned completely gray. Except…
except for the tip of his nose.

“Thalia—hurry!” I begged. “Draw a window for Ben and me! Please—we don’t
have any time left!”

Without another word, she turned to the wall.

Her hand moved quickly, outlining a red window. Filling it in.

“Hurry! Please, hurry!” I pleaded, staring as she frantically rubbed the red
lipstick over the wall.

Would it work?

As soon as she finished the window, I grabbed Ben. I shoved him through the
hole. “Come on!” I cried. “We can do it!”

“Good-bye, Ben. Good-bye, Tommy,” the others called.

Halfway through the wall, I turned back to them. “Come with us!” I cried.
“Hurry! You can come with us!”

“No, we can’t,” Seth called sadly.

“Thalia is right. We’d hate it. We belong here now,” Mary said.

“Don’t forget me!” Thalia called. Her voice broke with sadness. She turned
away.

I turned too. Turned to the other world,
our
world. Ben and I stepped
through the wall. And found ourselves back in school.

I heard music booming down the hall. Kids shouting and laughing.

The dance!

We were back at the dance.

With a gleeful shout, I shoved open the door to the boys’ room. Ben and I
dove inside. Ran up to the mirror.

Gaped at ourselves.

Our colorful selves.

All red and blue and pink and yellow. All in color! So many colors!

We slapped each other high fives. And tossed back our heads and screamed out
our happiness. Screamed and screamed.

We were back. Back to normal. Back in the world.

Back at the dance.

We banged open the boys’ room door. Burst into the hall.

And ran into Mrs. Borden.

“
There
you are!” she cried. “I’ve been looking all over for you two!”

She grabbed each of us by the hand and began tugging us down the hall.

“Mrs. Borden—we have to tell you—” I started.

“Later,” she interrupted. She pushed us into the gym. “We’ve all been waiting
for you. You’ve held everyone up.”

“But—you don’t
understand
!” I sputtered.

“You want to be in the photo—don’t you?” Mrs. Borden demanded. Kids were
lined up in front of the bleachers. She shoved Ben and me into the front row.

“We want everyone who worked on the dance in the photo,” Mrs. Borden
declared.

She turned to the photographer behind his camera. “Okay, Mr. Chameleon,” she
called. “You can take the shot now!”

“Mr.
who
?” I cried. “No! Wait!
Wait
!”

FLASH.

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