The Summer Experiment by Cathie Pelletier

she. You know, Sarah.”
    â€œWhat? Do not make me beg, Marilee!”
    â€œSarah told my mom and dad how tough it was for her as a kid when her parents went through a divorce. No one would even discuss it for years and years. Sarah says she wishes now she had thought of running away, that maybe then her parents would have been forced to talk to her about it.”
    â€œIf I live to be a hundred and ten,” I said, “I’ll never be more shocked than at this moment.”
    â€œOh, I bet you will,” Marilee laughed. “Knowing you .”
    I jumped back on the four-wheeler and Marilee slid on behind me.
    â€œI like Sarah,” I said.
    â€œSo do I,” said Marilee. “Well, sort of.”
    â€œAre you ready for some excitement?” I asked.
    â€œI’ve never been more ready in my whole life!”
    After we put our helmets on, I whirled the four-wheeler around and headed back toward the trail.
    â€œPeterson’s Mountain, here we come!”

11
    Calley’s Ghost
    The trees that grow on Peterson’s Mountain are mostly old growth and therefore towering and thick at the base. In many places, they block the sun from ever shining on the layer of needles and leaves that carpet the forest floor. No timber has been cut up there since Old Man Peterson and his sons felled trees with a crosscut saw and hauled them down the mountain with a team of horses. Most of the mountain now belongs to the state and is preserved from cutting.
    Sometimes, if you’re walking up to the top and you stop to listen, it’s as if the wind in the trees is whispering secrets to you. You might even hear ghostly music, what sounds like a lonesome fiddle playing. Before you think it’s a party going on in 1914, however, you might see that it’s one dead tree leaning on another and moving back and forth in the wind. Nature’s music. And you will remember that all the Petersons are dead and gone, their houses and barns disappearing into the earth.
    That doesn’t mean, of course, that there aren’t ghost fiddlers up there somewhere in that dense forest of pine and spruce. Or dogs that disappear into thin air as soon as they reach the gate to the old Peterson cemetery. It doesn’t mean that the mournful cry you hear through the pines at midnight is actually a screech owl, and not a dead ghost child weeping for its mother. Peterson’s Mountain has seen it all. And each man, woman, boy, or girl who goes up there has to decide for themselves what is of this Earth and what isn’t.
    The park rangers must have thrown more dead branches and boughs onto the brush pile over the past few days because it looked bigger and fatter than when I first saw it. A hippopotamus could have hidden there. I parked the four-wheeler out of sight behind it and Marilee jumped off. She was already a different girl, or so it seemed to me. I hoped she and Sarah would have a good relationship now. At least, Marilee seemed happier. And I figured there was more behind the happiness than having her prison sentence chopped in two.
    Johnny and Miranda would park their machines on either side of the picnic table that sat about twenty feet from the brush pile. At that distance, I’d look as real as any talented ghost can look.
    â€œHere’s the lamp,” I said, and handed it to Marilee. I looked at my watch. Six-forty. Time to get ready in case Johnny or Miranda arrived early. I took off my backpack and dropped it on the ground behind the brush pile. I pulled out the white nightgown and slipped it on over my clothes. Then Marilee helped smear the white pancake makeup onto my face.
    â€œHow do I look?” I asked.
    â€œLike someone named Calley who died in the year 1914,” said Marilee. “You’re freaking me out.”
    â€œThis is gonna be awesome,” I said. “Now go get in place behind your tree.” I watched as Marilee hurried over to the scraggly old pine that