The Ghost of Whispering Willow. Amanda M. Thrasher

slid into the seat next to him and made sure that no one was listening. They weren’t. He pulled out a very crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Andy. “Here ya go,” he said, “Here’s my account for the log!”

      “Seriously,” Andy said, “That’s your version of notes, for real?”

      Stewart ignored the tone of Andy’s voice and asked if Andy had his notes, knowing full well that he did.

      Andy rolled his eyes and pulled out a black leather-lined journal, then flipped through the pages to his latest entry. “You know I do,” he said. “Unlike you, I log everything nice and neat in my log book!”

      Andy was being slightly sarcastic, but Stewart thought it best not to mention it. Andy was very serious about his notes. The details that he logged were crucial for their mission and Andy did a great job. Stewart thought he was overly sensitive about it, but thought that he should probably be a little nicer to him. He made a mental note: Be nicer to Andy!

      “Hey, what’s going on?” a familiar voice asked.

      The boys recognized the voice immediately. It was Maggie! She was nosy, with long auburn hair and green eyes, and was always giggling. Maggie wanted to know everything that everyone else was doing, and she always had stuff in her hair. Stewart often wondered why she was always putting puffy things in her hair. Andy swore that he had never noticed. Instinctively, the boys laid their notes down in their laps and concealed them with their hands, because Maggie was:

      1 A girl and

      2 She talked too much!

      “What’s up?” Andy said, hoping that she’d just walk on by.

      “Hey, Maggie,” managed Stewart, wondering why she was still standing there.

      Maggie continued down the aisle of the bus and sat down next to Kendall. Kendall had dark hair and dark eyes that were gentle and kind. She loved people and animals, and she always smiled. She was talking to Krista and Ally. Krista had blondish-brown hair and brown eyes. She always had a soccer ball in her hand. Next to her was Ally, the little redhead, who loved to laugh and play jokes. She loved soccer, too. The girls appeared uninterested in what the boys were talking about, but that wasn’t the case at all. The girls were very interested in what the boys were discussing; the only problem was that the boys didn’t know it!

      “What do you think that they’re talking about? It?” Kendall asked the girls. “They’re always acting so secretive.”

      The girls turned and stared at the boys. To their disgust, they were met with very unsightly images. Stewart was pulling his eyes down with his fingers while pressing his nose up with his thumb and sticking his tongue out to one side. Adding insult to injury, he was drooling at the same time.

      “Gross!” whined Maggie, “Grow up, Stewart, that’s so stupid!”

      Andy looked ridiculous, too. Cross-eyed and slumped over, his body bobbed up and down each time the bus hit a bump on the road; not once did he change the expression he wore on his face. Even when Stewart looked at him and cracked up, Andy didn’t laugh, not one time.

      The girls turned back around and started to talk amongst themselves again. Clothes appeared to be the topic, though Stewart wasn’t trying to terribly hard to listen to the details of what they were saying. Andy pulled out his notes and grabbed Stewart’s piece of paper. He tried to flatten it and smooth it out so he could read it. He wasn’t impressed with what he saw.

      “You know, I really wish you wouldn’t do this,” he said as Stewart looked on. “It’s such a pain trying to read your notes on wrinkled paper.”

      “Look, let’s get on with it; we’ll be at school soon,” Stewart replied, with a slight grin that played across his face.

      Andy checked his log. The boys met at 11:45 p.m., give or take forty-five seconds.

      Stewart shook his head. “Seriously?” Stewart asked.

      “Is that an actual question?” asked Andy. “Or are you being sarcastic?”

      “Seriously!” Stewart said again. This time, his voice was slightly elevated.

      “Okay, gotcha,” Andy continued. “Moving on, then, we arrived at the Whispering Willow Woods at exactly 12:05 a.m.,” he said, glancing at his log and grinning. “I specifically logged that, too!”

      Stewart knew it had been late, but he’d had no idea it was that late. A text message from Andy had alerted him. Time was all it had said. He hadn’t looked at the clock. He’d been too busy stuffing his bed, making sure the house was quiet and everyone was asleep.

      Andy glanced at Stewart’s notes. It’s late, it’s dark, going to the woods, hope I don’t get busted! He laid the piece of paper back down. “That’s it?” Andy said as he read Stewart’s notes. “That’s the best you could do?”

      “What?” Stewart said defensively. “It was late, it was dark, and I didn’t want to get busted. Besides, you’re the writer!”

      Andy did want to write and report stuff someday, although he wasn’t sure what kind of stuff. Besides, he had plenty of time to figure it out. Seventh grade, no worries, he thought.

      Stewart swore he’d work on his note-taking skills but suggested that they lower their voices so that the girls wouldn’t hear them.

      Andy lowered his voice. At 12:10 a.m. they’d set up the equipment after having left the mini DVR recorder in the usual spot. The EVR recorders were placed where they always left them, and Andy had even written out the words: electronic voice recorder. He continued to scan over his notes but stopped when he realized that Stewart was staring at him rather oddly. “What now?” Andy asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

      “I know what DVR and EVR recorders are,” Stewart said. “Why would you write that down?”

      Andy didn’t respond. He kept reading the notes that he compared to Stewart’s, noting that they matched. The temperature gauges, electrical gauges – all of them had been reset in the hope of capturing fresh data. They had both logged this independently. Suddenly, Andy said, “Knocked stuff over?” in disgust. “You knocked my stuff over?” He repeated the words that he had just read on the crumpled piece of scratch paper.

      Stewart snatched the piece of paper out of Andy’s hand and turned it over. “Read on. The equipment is fine. Look, it says so right here. Look right there!” He pointed to the next line for Andy to read. Picked it up and I think it still works was what Stewart had written down.

      Andy wasn’t convinced as he read it. “Not cool. I borrowed that equipment and I use the term borrowed lightly, Stewart, lightly!” Andy looked at his notes and scanned through the pages again.

      Once all of the equipment had been set up, they had hidden in the woods. The wind had picked up and the willow trees long branches were blowing back and forth, whipping in and out of each other, and from time to time actually wrapping around the trunks, as some of the branches were that long. A few times, the gusts had been so strong that they had freaked the boys out. They’d thought that maybe a storm was about to blow through, and they hadn’t prepared for one. The notes read that the DVR might or might not have picked something up, since something weird appeared to be happening by Camera Three. That was the data that the boys would check first. They had been hopeful that it had recorded something, but it hadn’t been the camera that they had wanted to use in the first place.

      Andy’s dad had always been very generous with his equipment, but he was away training and he had taken some of the stuff with him. The night-vision recorders and goggles had not been available, and they’d had to use their own older camera. It had been secured in a makeshift camera box. Luckily, the camera was waterproof, but nowhere near the quality of the water digital one that they were sometimes able to use. Andy had highlighted a sentence. Note to self: good camera not in use; backup camera is on site in the Willows!

      “Hey,