The Ghost in Apartment 2R Read online

  ALSO BY DENIS MARKELL

  Click Here to Start

  The Game Masters of Garden Place

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Gordon Denis Markell

  Cover art copyright © 2019 by Marco Guadalupi

  Excerpt from Click Here to Start (A Novel) copyright © 2016 by Denis Markell

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Markell, Denis, author.

  Title: The ghost in apartment 2R / Denis Markell.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2019] | Summary: After discovering a ghost in his apartment, twelve-year-old Danny and his friends traverse Brooklyn’s diverse neighborhood together to learn the spirit’s origins and bring it to rest.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018042022 (print) | LCCN 2018048950 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-525-64572-6 (el) | ISBN 978-0-525-64571-9 (hc) | ISBN 978-0-525-64573-3 (glb)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Ghosts—Fiction. | Apartment houses—Fiction. | Family life—Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. | Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.M339453 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.M339453 Gho 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780525645726

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v5.4

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Denis Markell

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: The Great Injustice That Is Happening to Me

  Chapter 2: Life Is Not Fair (Like I Don’t Know That)

  Chapter 3: What’s So Special About Jake Going to the Bathroom?

  Chapter 4: Finish This Sentence: My Life Stinks Now Because…

  Chapter 5: One Big Melting Pot with Swedish Meatballs

  Chapter 6: My Helpful Friends Are No Help

  Chapter 7: Movie Magic

  Chapter 8: Richie the Numbers Runner and Other Mysteries

  Chapter 9: The Face in the Window

  Chapter 10: Steeped in Charm

  Chapter 11: Whispering Walls

  Chapter 12: Nat Is Not Impressed

  Chapter 13: Daan and Luuk

  Chapter 14: The Enchanted Hummus

  Chapter 15: Who’s There?

  Chapter 16: The Ultimate Malted Milk Ball

  Chapter 17: Thirty-seven Different Types of Olives

  Chapter 18: You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

  Chapter 19: Algebra and Coffee

  Chapter 20: The Story of Sidi-Nouman

  Chapter 21: Little Squirrel Bread

  Chapter 22: The Crucible of Armpit Smells

  Chapter 23: Facetime

  Chapter 24: The Phantom Giggler

  Chapter 25: The Ghost Boyfriend

  Chapter 26: Mrs. Sarah Delano Cabot and Her Daughter Alice

  Chapter 27: Nighty Night

  Chapter 28: Where Is My Little Boy?

  Chapter 29: Things That Go Moo in the Night

  Chapter 30: Oliver Onions?

  Chapter 31: Old Man Baublitz Tells a Tale

  Chapter 32: Who You Gonna Call?

  Chapter 33: Horror Stories

  Chapter 34: Going Down to Dumbo

  Chapter 35: Photo Finish

  Chapter 36: The Past Is Present

  Chapter 37: The Humming Bubbe

  Chapter 38: The Possession of Mrs. Naomi Feldstein

  Chapter 39: Dybbuk or Ibbur?

  Chapter 40: Asako and Tomoko

  Chapter 41: Click Here to Help

  Chapter 42: The Mustache Is Waxed Today

  Chapter 43: A Historical Trip

  Chapter 44: A Terrible Tragedy Occurs

  Chapter 45: Two Moms with a Single Thought

  Chapter 46: The Dynamic Duo Saves the Day

  Chapter 47: Who’s That Knocking on My Window?

  Chapter 48: A Little Goat Snowy and White

  Chapter 49: Sari’s Little Boy

  Chapter 50: Justice Is Mine

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Click Here to Start (A Novel)

  About the Author

  To Charlie Sahadi, patriarch of the Sahadi family and inspiration for Sammy Haddad, who has welcomed generations of customers of all races, religions, and backgrounds to his store with the warmth and humor that is the best of Brooklyn

  Okay, in the Grand Scheme of Things, as my favorite history teacher, Mr. Nordstrom, likes to say, maybe it’s not a great injustice.

  Or as my dad likes to remind me, “Do you know how many kids would kill to be in your situation?”

  Because this is really just about a closet.

  Which wouldn’t be such a big deal, except it’s where I sleep.

  So, yes, there are kids much worse off than I am, and I totally get that. But for a normal thirteen-year-old kid living in Brooklyn, what happened to me is, I think anyone would agree, a pretty big miscarriage of justice. Not like being enslaved, or made to feel like a second-class citizen or anything…Well, that’s not true. I do feel like a second-class citizen. At least in my family nest.

  We live in what is referred to as a two-bedroom apartment, since there are two bedrooms.

  Which seems like a stupid detail but is actually a major part of this story.

  Because I have an older brother and a set of parents (one of each sex—I only mention this because my friend Kyle has two moms and I want to be fair), that means two bedrooms for four people.

  Now, in a typical family, I would share the bedroom with Jake (that’s my brother’s name), but since we’re six years apart, it was decided when I was a whining little kid that me being in there would be a distraction from Jake studying.

  And then he was a teenager, and then it was really important that he have his own room because, well, “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

  Well, I am older now, and a brand-new teenager myself, and nobody is saying I need to have my own room.

  Okay, I do have a room.

  Kind of.

  Once I was too old to stay in my parents’ room, they took the closet near the front door and turned it into a room.

  I mean, it’s a nice closet, as closets go, with a sliding door and shelves and room for a small futon. So that’s my room.

  And please do not make any Harry Potter jokes, because I’ve heard them all. I remember when I was in like first grade and friends would come over and think it was neat, because they would have normal rooms and mine was so different. Or they had normal families and shared a room with a sibling. �
��You’re so lucky!” they would say.

  Yeah, lucky me. Sleeping in a closet.

  You might think that this is the injustice I’m talking about, but honestly, I didn’t mind it, because of a promise my father and mother made to me when I got big enough to start complaining about the situation.

  The promise was that I would get Jake’s room right after he went to college. Which seemed totally fair. And Jake was cool with it, too. It’s our parents who made the decision that totally ruined my life and changed everything.

  Because in my moral universe a promise is a promise. Not something you can take back because it’s not convenient. My dad says that there’s a difference between “never” and “not right now,” but I think that’s garbage.

  Basically, what happened was that Jake got into Cornell University. Which is an amazing thing, and was his first-choice school, and he totally deserves to go. But Cornell, I found out, is unbelievably expensive. And we just don’t have that kind of money. Jake got a scholarship (I guess all that studying paid off), so I thought everything was fine, until the day after we dropped him off at school. It was late August, and I still couldn’t believe I was finally going to have a real room to myself. I was thinking about how weird it would be to not have Jake around, when my parents knocked on my closet door.

  I hear my dad clearing his throat. Then: “We need to talk to you.”

  I am willing to bet that in the life of any thirteen-year-old boy (and girl too, probably, but I wouldn’t know because I am not a girl), there are few words as chilling as “We need to talk to you” when it’s said by your parents.

  Immediately you start going down the checklist in your head of all the things you might have done (or not done):

  Okay, school hasn’t started, so it’s not about grades.

  And I haven’t shoplifted anything, or broken anything, or left the top of the peanut butter jar not screwed on so the next person who picks it up will drop it on the floor, making a mess (I ask you, who picks up a jar from the lid? Is that really my fault?).

  But from the expression on their faces, it’s not a “you did something wrong” situation, it’s a “we’ve got bad news” one.

  They usher me into the living room and sit me on the couch between them. This is bad. Somebody has died. Or they’re getting a divorce. My armpits are pretty drenched by now, and I don’t even know how bad it is.

  “First of all,” my dad says, “nobody’s died.”

  “And we’re not getting a divorce or anything,” my mom adds. “It’s nothing like that.”

  They hug me. Already with the hugging. Whatever it is, it is not going to be good.

  “So what’s the problem?” I ask.

  My mom is a social worker, and she has this way of talking. Like just now, when she says, “Well, it’s not really a problem if you look at it the right way….”

  At this point she stops talking and seems to take a great interest in a stain on the couch. “Um…” She doesn’t even look at my dad when she says, “Martin, please.”

  “Okay,” my dad begins. “You remember when your mom and Jake went on that tour of colleges?”

  “Sure,” I say. Mom and Jake took a bus through Massachusetts and Connecticut and upstate New York.

  “Do you know how we were able to afford that trip?”

  “Sure. It was going to cost too much money to stay in hotels, and then one of Jake’s friends’ moms told Mom about AirHotel. Where people rent out rooms and sometimes whole apartments to people visiting their city or town.”

  My mom jumps back in. “It was cool. And you know what? AirHotel is in Brooklyn too.”

  My mouth dries up. I can see where this conversation is going, and I really don’t like it.

  Dad quickly adds, “You know how expensive it’s going to be to send Jake to Cornell.”

  “But he has a scholarship!” I protest.

  “That’s a huge help,” Mom says. “But it doesn’t take care of everything. Plus it gets really cold up there, so he’s going to need a good parka.”

  My dad shoots her a look. “This isn’t about the parka, Maureen. Please.”

  “I was just saying—”

  “What are you just saying?” I ask, knowing perfectly well what they are just saying, but I want to force them to actually just say it.

  “This is something we want to try. It might not work out, but it could help bring in some really needed extra money,” my dad says.

  Okay, nobody else wants to say it out loud. “What you’re saying is you want to rent out Jake’s room instead of giving it to me like you promised.”

  I am very proud of myself that I got all that out without yelling.

  My mom puts her arms around me, which only makes it worse. My world is completely ruined. “We don’t want to, sweetheart. We have to.”

  “Hopefully, it’s temporary,” my dad says. “I have that grant money coming, and then I can finish the film and—”

  “That’s going to take forever!” I moan.

  My mother stiffens. “That’s not nice, Danny.”

  My dad bites his lip. It was a low blow. He’s been trying to finish his film for four years now. He didn’t exactly see himself working as a freelance video editor when he finished film school all those years ago.

  I turn to him. “I’m so sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean it. It’s just that a promise is a promise, and you promised me. I’ve waited years and years. Now I’ll NEVER get my room!”

  Okay, this time I can’t get the whole sentence out without yelling.

  I stomp off into my closet and try to slam the sliding door.

  “You know, there are kids who have it a whole lot worse than you,” my dad calls out.

  “Not now, Marty,” my mom says, and even though I can’t see her, I’m sure she’s rolling her eyes.

  I don’t think it’s just the room I was mad about. The thing is, this whole past year has kind of been all about:

  Jake studying for his tests.

  Jake going on trips with Mom, which started this whole mess.

  Jake writing his college application essay, with “help” from Dad, who basically read a whole bunch of books like How to Write the Perfect College Essay.

  Jake hogging the PlayStation. And Mom saying, “Honey, Jake is working very hard. He needs his time to relax.”

  “So why can’t he play with me?” I’d ask again and again.

  “Because he likes playing with his friends online,” Mom said, as if she knew what she was talking about. All she was doing was repeating what Jake told her when she asked him why he wouldn’t play with his little brother.

  Then he takes the PlayStation with him to college.

  I thought it was a Hanukkah present for both of us when we got it, but I guess I was wrong. And he got a new laptop from our grandparents because he’ll “need it for college.”

  I got a gift card for our local bookstore. Yay.

  I don’t want to give the impression that Jake is a jerk, because he isn’t. He’s a great guy. And he’s really nice to me, usually. I love my brother, but I was definitely super psyched for my Actual Not-a-Closet Bedroom moment.

  So after we dropped Jake off at college I was ready to be the center of attention for once in my life—and now my parents pull this on me. Did they expect I’d just go, “Hey! That’s great! No problem! I’ll just live in my little closet and totally forget you promised me I’d get that room! And hey, no hard feelings about all the money going toward Jake’s education, because clearly I’m not as smart and so what’s the point of saving up to help me go to college?”

  I should mention that in all honesty, I actually did say that to my folks. Perhaps with a tone that was slightly sarcastic. But I don’t think it warranted them acting like I was some sort of ungrateful dirtbag.

  “Just
ask your brother,” my dad said, laughing. “He was so mad when we had you. All we talked about was ‘the baby.’ ”

  I was ready for this. “I happen to have overheard you on the phone with Uncle Arthur when you said how different it was with ‘the second child,’ Mom. You said you kept a journal every day for Jake, writing down everything he did, but by the time I came around you barely wrote anything.”

  Mom takes a deep breath. “It wasn’t because we love him more…it was just that I was going for my master’s when you were born and didn’t have time….”

  “And what’s your excuse, Dad?” I said. “You took like a hundred videos of Jake as a baby, eating, puking, going to the bathroom…and like four of me, usually with Jake holding me.”

  “I’m not going to get into an argument about us loving your brother more,” my dad says evenly. “It’s ridiculous. You just need time to adjust to the new reality.”

  There’s nothing new about this reality. They just love my brother more.

  So now instead of everything revolving around Jake, it’s all about AirHotel and making the room perfect to attract guests. My mom spends every night looking at other listings in our neighborhood, seeing which ones are getting the most views and which months seem to have the most bookings. Of course, the holidays are very popular, and summertime. Since we don’t have air-conditioning, there’s a whole discussion about getting a small air conditioner, but it’s decided that they’ll hold off until the spring, when they should know if people are actually going to stay with us.