The Right Light

At dusk, we met in the abandoned boxcar that served as the headquarters for our junior detective agency so we could distribute the Pogo Mini Night Lanterns. The ghost of a gold prospector had spooked some spelunkers exploring the caves on Farmer Davis’s property, and we had plans to sneak over there and look for clues.

But first, we shared theories.

Billy thought it was those developers from the city who wanted to put a big sporting goods store where Farmer Davis’s fields currently sat. Erin believed the opposite; Farmer Davis himself donned the ghost suit to scare off investors who constantly badgered him to buy the land that had provided his family with their livelihood for generations. Connor had an even more ambitious hypothesis: it was Mayor Hayes herself trying to capture the kind of tourism dollars her father had seen during the crop circle scare when he himself held the same office.

And Baby Lou, our youngest member, thought it was a real ghost, the poor little sweetheart.

We’d all been arguing our cases for fifteen minutes before we realized Annie, the oldest among us and our de facto leader, had been uncharacteristically silent.

“Whatcha think, Annie?” Billy said. “The developers, the farmer, or the mayor?”

“Or a real ghost,” Baby Lou offered.

“Honestly, my mind is on other mysteries tonight, friends,” Annie said.

“Other mysteries?” Erin said.

Yeah,” said Annie. “Like the mystery of why exactly local law enforcement seems entirely incapable of handling these crimes involving elaborate costumes and straightforward motives, despite their ridiculous frequency in this town. Or the mystery we’ll be trying to solve the rest of our lives: what happened to the youth we so ignorantly took for granted and thus wasted trying to solve problems for adults who should be able to handle their own business?”

We all looked at each other confused. Finally, Connor asked outright: “What exactly are you saying, Annie?”

“I’m saying,” Annie said, “instead of going to some dreary cave, let’s put these versatile lanterns equipped with high-quality LEDs capable of 360-degree illumination towards some more reckless use than villain un-masking."

“Like what?” Billy asked.

"I don’t know. We could go to the park and stay up all night drinking too much soda and playing acoustic guitar. How does that sound?”

It sounded great. So that’s what we did. And we were happier for it.

Who’d the ghost turn out to be, you wonder? We don’t know. We never found out. And, in fact, there are still sightings of the spectral prospector to this day. Which means maybe Baby Lou was right after all.