Mind If I Read Your Mind? Read online

  To the woman I share Ghost Buddy’s imagination

  with, Lin Oliver, the best partner in the galaxy.

  And to Stacey always. —H.W.

  For Henry, who has made creating our nineteen

  books together pure joy! —L.O.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Preview

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  Billy Broccoli hung on to the mane of the horse as it hurtled wildly across the Sahara desert. A tribe of bearded nomads atop snorting, spitting camels galloped so closely behind him that he could feel the lead camel’s hot breath on his neck. The leader of the pack, raising a double-edged sword that glistened in the blazing sun, shouted for him to stop, but Billy refused. As Billy held on to his white stallion for dear life, he saw a desert dust storm swirling toward him. He reached up to cover his face, but it was too late. The hot blast of air shot into his ear and traveled from one side of his head to the other. It felt like his brain was on fire, and he let loose a piercing scream.

  “I give up!” he shouted. “You can have the treasure map. Just stop the hot air. I can’t stand it anymore!”

  He jumped from the saddle, flew through the air, and landed with a thud on … the carpet of his bedroom floor!

  Billy stood up and looked around. He rubbed his eyes, trying to determine where he was. He saw no sand, no camels, no tribe of bearded nomads chasing him. Only Hoover Porterhouse, the ghost who shared Billy’s room, floating above him and clutching his sides with laughter.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Billy snapped, not sharing his ghostly roommate’s amusement.

  “I was bored waiting for you to wake up,” the Hoove answered, “so I blew in your ear. Hey, it worked. Look, you’re up.”

  “I was in the middle of a dream and now I’ll never know how it ends.”

  “Well, I can tell you this. You were snorting like a camel and it was pretty disgusting. I had to put an end to it, for your own reputation.”

  “What kind of reputation? There’s no one here but me and you.”

  “The Hoove’s Rule Number Sixteen, Billy Boy. You always got to keep yourself sharp because you never know who’s looking.”

  No sooner were those words out of the Hoove’s mouth when a pebble struck the glass of Billy’s bedroom window. Billy looked outside to see his neighbor and fellow classmate Rod Brownstone standing in the yard between their houses, holding what looked like a small version of a satellite dish. The big oaf was spying again.

  Billy flung open his window and shouted, “What do you think you’re doing pointing that metal thing at my room, Brownstone?”

  “This metal thing, for your information, is the latest technology in extreme home voice recovery,” Brownstone shouted back.

  “In other words, you’re spying on me.”

  “I’m protecting you, Broccoli. I got a report on my neighborhood scanner that wild animal sounds were heard coming from your bedroom.”

  “I told you that snorting thing you were doing was out of control,” the Hoove said, floating over to Billy and leaning a transparent arm on his shoulder. “Even so, that doesn’t give this doofus the right to invade my bedroom.”

  “My bedroom,” Billy answered, whispering out of the side of his mouth so Rod Brownstone’s device would not pick up the conversation.

  “Do I have to remind you again that I was here first?” the Hoove asked.

  It had only been three weeks since Billy’s new blended family had moved into the old Spanish-style house on Fairview Street and Billy had made the life-altering realization that his bedroom was haunted by Hoover Porterhouse III, a fourteen-year-old ghost who’d been dead for ninety-nine years. Billy still hadn’t gotten his head entirely around the situation. He felt that having his own personal ghost was not only creepy but unfair. Just because Hoover had been the original occupant of this room, Billy was now trapped with him. The Hoove couldn’t leave the property until he proved to the Higher-Ups, whoever they were, that he could be a helpful and caring ghost. And who was he assigned to? Billy Broccoli, a flexible kind of guy, who was willing to accept a lot of changes. But being stuck with a ghost with major attitude was a lot to ask.

  The Hoove didn’t like Rod Brownstone spying any more than Billy did. He glided out the window into the yard and circled Brownstone, who was as muscular and buff as Billy was small and scrawny. Rod had a beefy hand on the earphones attached to his voice recovery device, holding them tightly to his head to listen for sounds that were none of his business.

  “Let’s see how your little machine likes this,” the Hoove said to Rod, who of course couldn’t hear or see him. Only Billy could. The Hoove reached into the back of the dish and pulled out a red wire and connected it to a yellow wire. When the two wires met, screeching static blasted out of the device and shot directly into Rod’s earphones.

  “Eeooowww!” he screamed, pulling off the earphones. “Eeeeeoooooooowwww!”

  Billy couldn’t stop himself from laughing. It was just what the big snoop deserved.

  “Nice work,” he shouted to the Hoove. “That got his attention.”

  Brownstone stopped screaming and stared at Billy.

  “Who you talking to, Cheese Sauce?” he asked suspiciously. “We’re the only two guys here.”

  “Who you calling not here?” the Hoove said. “I’ll show you I’m here!” He grabbed Rod’s earphones from his hand and wrapped them around his knee. “Just try to explain that.”

  Rod stared down at the earphones on his leg. This was not the first unusual thing that had happened to him while spying on the Broccoli-Fielding household. There had been other weird occurrences … a desk that vibrated on its own, a poster that spun on the wall, floating objects that seemed to come out of nowhere. Frankly, the whole place gave him the creeps. Rod decided to get out of there.

  “You’re strange, Broccoli,” he called out. “I don’t like what I see around here. And I’m telling you right now, you’re officially under extreme surveillance.”

  “Extreme surveil all you want,” Billy shouted. “You’re not going to see or hear anything.”

  “But you’re sure going to feel something,” the Hoove added.

  With a gleeful ghostly laugh, he flipped into his Swoosh mode, zoomed ahead of Rod, and pushed a flowerpot in his path. Rod instantly tripped over it and fell to the ground, ending up on his behind and with a daffodil up his nose. He got up, shot Billy a nasty look, and scurried off like a frightened bunny. It was not a good exit for a guy who prided himself on his secret spy skills.

  The Hoove floated back into the bedroom where he and Billy exchanged a satisfied high five. But there was no time to gloat.

  “Billy, honey, I’m leaving,” Mrs. Broccoli-Fielding called out, sticking her head into Billy’s room. “If you want a lift to school, you’d better get ready fast.”

  Billy’s mother was the principal of Moorepark Middle School. Billy had transferred there three weeks before, when they moved into the house with his new stepfather, Bennett Fielding, and his daughter, Breeze. The last thing Billy wanted was to pull up in front of the school in the principal’s car. No eleven-year-old in his right mind would consider that a good way to make new friends.

  “Thanks anywa
y, Mom. I’ll walk. Don’t worry, I’ll be on time.”

  As a person who understood the psychology of middle schoolers, Mrs. Broccoli-Fielding didn’t insist. Instead, she just smiled at her son, reminded him that there was an English muffin staying warm in the toaster, and left.

  “Good decision, Billy Boy,” the Hoove said, snatching the T-shirt Billy had just pulled from his drawer. “First of all, I can’t let you wear this. Hoove’s Rule Number Three Hundred Forty. No T-shirts with pictures of panda bears. Especially ones with fuzzy noses.”

  “You have a rule for that?”

  “I didn’t, but I do now. Just made it up.”

  The Hoove went to Billy’s drawer and pulled out a brown and blue striped shirt with no nose on it. “Second of all,” he went on, “walking to school is good. Gives the ladies the impression that you’re an independent kind of guy.”

  “What ladies?”

  “Billy Boy, sometimes I think you are hopeless. I was referring to the ladies at school. Now put this shirt on, and let’s get moving. I could use some exercise myself.”

  “And I could use you to stay home,” Billy answered, picking up his hairbrush, then deciding his hair was just fine the way it was. The Hoove had only recently discovered that Moorepark Middle School sat within the boundaries of his family’s former ranch, which meant he could go there as much as he liked. Billy thought he was there way too much.

  The Hoove handed him back the hairbrush.

  “Don’t even think about leaving this room with that rat’s nest you have going on up there.”

  “I know, I know,” Billy said. “The Hoove’s Rule Number … Number, I forget. ‘Your hair is your crown. Keep it polished at all times.’”

  “Or in your case, plastered down.”

  Billy checked the clock and saw that he only had fifteen minutes to brush his teeth, grab the muffin, leave the house, race to school, and get into his seat in Mr. Wallwetter’s first-period English class. Billy was someone who did not like to get into trouble, so he sped into triple time, moving faster than he had ever moved in his life. He raced out the door, down the sidewalk, and made it to the front steps of the school with two minutes to spare. The Hoove, who rarely took no for an answer, followed him, doing somersaults through the air. As Billy reached the top step of the front entrance, he popped the last bite of muffin into his mouth and turned around so quickly he almost made himself light-headed.

  “You can go now, Hoove,” he said.

  “Hey, how did you even know I was here? I was quiet as a mouse taking a snooze.”

  “I can smell you, remember?” Billy answered. “You smell like a carton of orange juice.”

  “Well, excuse me, mister. I don’t believe I’ve ever criticized the way you smell. But now that you’ve raised the subject, let me just say that we’re not talking orchids.”

  “I was just pointing out that I can smell when you’re nearby.”

  “I’m going to take that as a compliment,” said a voice next to Billy. He turned to see that Ruby Baker was standing next to him on the steps, with a smile as big as all of California. “I used my vanilla bean body lotion this morning.”

  Billy was not the kind of guy who would tell a girl that she smelled good. He didn’t have any smooth moves like that. So he gulped and tried to come up with something to say to Ruby to cover his embarrassment.

  “Vanilla is my favorite ice cream flavor,” he stammered. “So I meant that in a very good way.”

  The Hoove gave Billy a big thumbs-up. It was the first time he had seen him talk to a girl without seeming like he was going to pass out from fear.

  “Now tell her she smells like a banana split. With cherries on top.”

  Billy shook his head and gave the Hoove a get-out-of-here look.

  “I’m telling you, it works,” the Hoove insisted. “I once told Emma Ortiz she smelled like a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie, and she followed me around for months.”

  “Come on, let’s walk to class together,” Ruby said to Billy.

  “You mean just the two of us?”

  Ruby got a puzzled look on her face. “Who else is here?”

  “Oh, you’re right. No one.” Then, looking in the Hoove’s direction, he repeated, “No one but the two of us will be going to class now.”

  “Oh, so now I’m no one,” the Hoove said. “Boy, if that doesn’t fry my boots. You go out of your way to help a guy, get rid of snoopy intruders, make sure his hair doesn’t look like a swamp, walk him to school in safety, and then in an instant, poof, I’m reduced to an invisible nothing. A grain of sand. What a ghost has to endure for mortals!”

  Billy pretended he didn’t hear the Hoove’s rant and instead just headed up the stairs with Ruby, trying to think of something else to say. Mr. Wallwetter’s class was on the second floor at the end of the hall, so he was going to have to fill the distance with some kind of conversation. To his relief, Ruby started talking about her three-mile run the day before, and Billy was happy just to nod.

  The Hoove was offended to be brushed off like that, and in his anger, he stomped over to the flagpole in front of the school and kicked it. Had he been a live human, he would have hurt his foot, but being a ghost, his foot went right through the pole. Suddenly, a gust of wind blew so hard that the ropes on the flagpole twisted into a knot. A bolt of lightning, seemingly out of nowhere, struck the grass and carved out the word NO in giant capital letters. The Higher-Ups were not happy with Hoover.

  “Oh, come on, you guys, give me a break!” the Hoove said, looking skyward. “I was insulted. Can’t a ghost let off a little steam?”

  A sudden clap of thunder gave the Hoove his answer.

  “Okay, okay. I hear you. You don’t have to yell,” he said. “I’m trying to improve, and I swear I’ll be more patient with the kid. Although, let me tell you, he pushes me to the limit. And might I add, his hair offends me.”

  Another angry clap of thunder sounded.

  “Fine, I’ll take care of him. I’ll be sweet as homemade chocolate swirl ice cream with whipped cream and a cherry on top.”

  The ropes on the flagpole unraveled, the NO in the grass faded, and the knot disappeared. A long beautiful musical note that sounded like it came from a silver flute filled the air.

  “Thanks for giving me another chance,” the Hoove said. “I send you gobs of appreciation.”

  Had anyone been around to observe these strange events, they would have thought they were going a little ding-dong. Yet for the Hoove, there was nothing ding-dong about it. He regularly received messages from the Higher-Ups, who monitored his progress. Every so often, he got a ghostly report card, and he only had until the end of the year to pass all his required classes. He had passed Personal Grooming, Haunting Skills, and Invisibility, but he had failed Helping Others and Responsibility for the past ninety-nine years. If he didn’t pass this year, he would be grounded for eternity and would never be able to leave the boundaries of the original ranchero where he’d lived and died. That meant he’d never be able to realize his dream of visiting all the baseball parks in America. And that was unacceptable.

  The Hoove decided to calm himself down by visiting the school cafeteria. Although he hadn’t had a real meal in ninety-nine years, he still loved the smell of meat loaf and brown gravy. He breathed it in, and the rich aroma seemed to soothe his anger.

  Billy and Ruby hurried down the main corridor and arrived in Mr. Wallwetter’s class just as the bell rang and Mr. Wallwetter began to speak. He wasn’t one to start class even a second late.

  “I have an exciting announcement today,” he shouted over the bell. “Today marks the first day of the SOC.”

  Billy panicked. He looked down at his feet and realized that in his rush to get to school, he had forgotten to put on his socks. How was he going to explain that to Mr. Wallwetter, who seemed overly excited about socks? Fortunately for Billy, Mr. Wallwetter was referring to a different kind of sock.

  “Every year, our school sponso
rs an important competition we call the Speak Out Challenge, known to those of us who love it as the S.O.C., or as we call it, SOC.”

  When Billy heard that the K was missing, the perspiration of fear behind his knees dried up immediately. However, he did make a mental note never to forget his socks again.

  “Each one of you will give a public address on this year’s topic,” Mr. Wallwetter explained,

  “and the three best speakers from each sixth-grade class will participate in the finals to be held in the auditorium next Monday. I am proud to say my class has won the finals three years in a row. I am counting on it again this year.”

  Mr. Wallwetter was a thin man with a pencil mustache above his even thinner lips. He wore a black suit to school every day, and a tie so thin it could almost be called a shoelace. As he described the Speak Out Challenge to the class, his mustache started to sweat, which gave the appearance that his nose was running. Watching him work himself up into such a frenzied state about the competition made Billy shift uneasily in his seat. Everyone in the class felt the pressure, even Rod Brownstone.

  “What are we supposed to speak out about?” Rod blurted. “Because I have a lot to say about law enforcement, especially the need to follow jaywalking rules exactly as they are written.”

  “That sounds like a noble pursuit,” Mr. Wallwetter said, “but unfortunately it does not fit into this year’s topic, which is Demonstrate Something Special You Can Do. Each of you is to give a speech while demonstrating something you love to do or can do very well. Now, who has a special skill they can demonstrate?”

  Taylor Burnett, a shy boy who rarely spoke up, raised his hand tentatively.

  “I can catch a Frisbee with my mouth,” he said.

  “What are you, a dog?” Rod guffawed. He laughed so loud he didn’t notice that no one else was laughing. The kids liked Taylor and no one but Rod wanted to make fun of him.