The poor little ghost could hear the water churning. He could see the steam, so he knew that the water was very hot. He was not sure that he could survive if he touched the sizzling hot water. When he was about 5 inches above the hot water, he knew that the end was near. But wait, I am getting ahead of myself . . .

Let me start this story by introducing you to Newie. When I was younger, Newie was the most important thing in the world to me. When I was two, my grandmother and I made him. Newie is a ghost, made from a small piece of cloth, a wad of cotton and a few rubber bands.   I named him “Newie” because he was new. At that time, there was one other ghost besides Newie. In total, my grandmother and me made 22 different ghosts, but Newie was always my favorite.

When I was about five, Newie and I were playing in a pillow fort that we had built. Then I got called to lunch, and that is when that madness struck. I finished eating and went into the living room. I saw a pillowcase missing, so I asked my dad about it. He told me that he put it in the laundry and I did not think much of it. I went to try to find Newie to watch TV with me, but I could not find him.

I kept looking, but Newie was nowhere to be found. I became worried when an hour passed with no signs of  Newie. At two hours, I asked my dad for help.  My dad and I were looking in every cranny of the house for him. We did this until bedtime, but we still didn’t find him. I didn’t like sleeping without Newie, but it looked like tonight I would have to.

When I woke up, finding Newie was the first thought I had. Where was he?

Meanwhile, Newie was sitting in a pillowcase in the laundry basket.  Occasionally, he felt a thump on his head. My dad was putting more laundry in the basket. To Newie,  it felt like getting pelted with feathers.

We continued searching on and off all day. That day, I was determined to find Newie. And Newie wanted to find me. But since he couldn’t move or speak, he could not help us find him. Every time I entered a new room, I looked around for Newie.  

At the end of the day, I knew that I would be sleeping without Newie again. I remembered that it was hard to fall asleep the previous night. I asked my mom if she had any ideas of where Newie could be? She said that she had an idea that we could try in the morning, and that is all that I remember from that night.

The next morning, I woke up to my dad scrummaging through the trash. I asked him, “What are you doing?” He said, “Your mother thinks that maybe Newie ended up in the trash, but he isn’t in here.”

We did not do much searching that day because we could not think of any other places to look. I imagined that Newie was getting worried, because he had been in the basket for three days.

That afternoon, I called my mom to tell her that her idea didn’t work. I searched many places over and over, going into every nook and cranny in the house. Still, there was no sign of Newie.

I went to bed that night, wondering if I would ever see Newie again? Newie probably wondered if he would ever see me again.

Newie woke up late to the sound of footsteps leading to the washing machine “stomp stomp stomp”. In the pillowcase, Newie was in a motionless panic. He felt my dad’s hand with every shirt that my dad grabbed out of that basket. He knew that he had a good chance to be found, if my dad checked the pillowcase before putting it into the machine. But then he started to worry that my dad wouldn’t check. If so, Newie was in for a scalding bath that he might not survive.

The pillowcase was picked up and swung back and forth in the air. Newie started to descend into the pit of watery doom. But as the steam started to reach Newie, he suddenly felt a strong hand around his neck. Newie started to panic, but then he was flying through the air at high speeds. He looked up and saw that he was coming straight into my arms. I caught him and it was pure joy from there.

All night I played with Newie. We stayed up watching TV and playing games. Then, when I went to bed, I had the best sleep that I had had in a long time. And from then on, I never left Newie near a pillowcase again.