Free Danger at the Fair by Peg Kehret

be from. What mattered was that Corey needed help, and he needed it now.
    Trying to act calm, Ellen returned to her parents and said, “Something strange happened and I want to tell you about it.”
    Mr. and Mrs. Streater, alerted by the tone of Ellen’s voice that this was no ordinary discussion, stopped what they were doing and paid close attention.
    Ellen started at the beginning, and told every detail of her time with The Great Sybil. When she got to the part whereThe Great Sybil asked if she had recently lost a loved one, Mrs. Streater said, “Oh, Ellen.”
    Mr. Streater said, “What hogwash! I’m surprised you would take such nonsense seriously.”
    “I thought the message might be from Grandpa,” Ellen said, “so when I got home, I tried talking to him. I asked him to let me know if he was sending a message. I thought, if Grandpa’s spirit is here, he could give me some sign.”
    Mr. Streater stood up and began pacing back and forth while Ellen continued.
    “As soon as I asked for a sign,” Ellen said, “Prince came over and put up his paw to shake hands. Grandpa taught him that trick. I didn’t say, ‘shake,’ or give Prince any signal; he just did it on his own.”
    “Now, Ellen . . .” Mr. Streater began but Ellen continued to talk.
    “Then I came downstairs and we had veggie lasagna for dinner, Grandpa’s recipe. And when I looked around for something to read, I picked up the
Earth Watch
magazine that Grandpa gave me a subscription to and it seems like those could all be signs that Grandpa sent the messages.” She didn’t mention the elephant. It was the last gift Grandpa gave her and perhaps the most important sign of all but she didn’t want to talk about it.
    “Those were not signs from Grandpa,” Mr. Streater said firmly. “They are only proof that a person lives on in the memory of his loved ones because of what that person did when he was alive. Grandpa will always be a part of your life and you’ll think of him every time Prince shakes hands or you eat veggie lasagna or read your magazine or go to the zoo or do any number of other things that you and Grandpa didtogether.” He put his hands on Ellen’s shoulders and looked directly into her eyes. “They are memories,” he said, “Not supernatural signs.”
    “But what about the messages?” Ellen said. “The first one might have been some trick that The Great Sybil did but the second one came when I was alone in my room.”
    “What second one?” Mr. Streater said.
    “After dinner, I tried to contact the spirits, the way The Great Sybil did. I was worried about Corey and I asked the spirits to let me know if Corey needs help.”
    “And?” Mr. Streater said.
    “And it happened again. The pencil moved by itself. It wrote, URGENT .”
    She held out the piece of paper and Mr. Streater looked at it. As he slowly sat down, he said, “I don’t know what is going on here, but I don’t like it one bit.”
    The telephone rang and Mrs. Streater answered.
    “Hello?” she said. “He isn’t here. Is this Nicholas? Where are you? Isn’t Corey with you? Let me speak to your mother, please.”
    As Ellen listened to her mother’s side of the conversation, her stomach began to turn flip-flops.
    After she hung up, Mrs. Streater said, “Nicholas got sick and Julia brought him home. Corey stayed at the fair.”
    “What?” Mr. Streater jumped to his feet. “She left Corey there by himself?”
    Mrs. Streater’s voice, when she answered, sounded brittle, as if it would shatter into tiny pieces at any moment. “She thought Corey was with Ellen. She left him where they were showing the sheep and she said she knew you saw him, Ellen, and Corey promised to stay with you.”
    “I
did
see him,” Ellen said. “But I saw Mrs. Warren and Nicholas, too. I didn’t know they were going to leave without Corey.”
    “No one is blaming you. It was a misunderstanding.”
    “How long ago did they leave him?” Mr. Streater asked.
    Mrs.