Three
By the end of the day, I was ready to strangle him. He was mostly silent, but his presence disturbed my brain. I hadn’t had a spirit follow me that closely in months. It scared me, if I was being honest with myself, but I wasn’t going to show him that. Instead, I ignored him as much as I could, which was so much harder than it sounded. I only acknowledged him when I got in the car at the end of the day.
“So, now that you’ve followed me all day and gotten the full high school experience, will you finally tell me what you want?” I backed out of my space, turning on the radio.
Nothing you can give me.
“So why are you here?” Seriously, dude. WTH?
I like to follow pretty girls around and harass them.
Did he just call me pretty? I completely ignored the comment as a blush crawled up my face. I knew he was lying. Seven months ago, I might have been. Not anymore.
“You certainly lurk more than any other spirit has. I might use the word haunt. All the others just needed an ear so they could get something off their chest, or to get a message to someone who was still alive. Once they were done with me, they went... wherever it is they go.” I wasn’t sure what I believed about them. It seemed silly that there would be a place on Earth for spirits to hang out, but not another place for them to go. I tried not to think about it too much, but that was hard to do when you were being constantly reminded of it.
Death and I had an interesting relationship.
Back. They go back.
I kept glancing at the passenger seat, as if he was sitting in it. “What do you mean ‘back’?”
Back where they came from.
He was going to make me play Twenty Questions.
“And where did they come from?”
That is the greatest question of all. Men, and women, have spent centuries trying to answer it.
I was suddenly feeling uncomfortable, talking about something so intimate with a spirit I had just met.
“I’m sorry. I should have introduced myself. I’m Annabelle Alicia Blake.” I’d never told a spirit my full name before. I’d never wanted to.
I know.
How did he know? “Okay... Have you remembered your name?”
No.
He seemed to get bent out of shape when I asked him personal questions. “Well, if you’re going to hang around, I’d like to at least call you something. How about Jack?”
Jack?
“Yeah, you feel like a Jack to me.” I couldn’t say why I had to give him a name, but a name was an important thing.
Then I’m Jack.
“Well then, Jack, I guess it’s nice to meet you. I can’t really shake your hand.”
He didn’t answer.
I pulled into my driveway, which was empty. Dad must have gone to the gallery, and Mom was still at the hospital. Amy had gotten dropped off at a friend’s, so I had the house to myself. Sort of. His presence hummed in my brain, kind of like a fluorescent light, only more pleasant. Like a tickle. Maybe I could get used to it. Like white noise.
I made myself a snack of peanut butter and crackers and slouched over the counter to eat.
What are you eating?
“Peanut butter crackers. Did they have these when you were, ah, you know?” I also avoided the A word. Alive. That also tended to upset them. I still hadn’t felt him out enough to know if he’d be offended.
I do not remember, but my gut says no. They look good.
“They are,” I said, licking some off my fingers.
Since I’d become a vegetarian by choice, peanut butter had become my protein of choice. I could whip you up a mean chocolate chip cake with butter cream frosting or a chili that would knock your socks of. I had testimonials from both Felicity and Nora agreeing with me.
What are you thinking about? You look as if you’re concentrating.
“I wasn’t thinking about much, really. I think I’m going to make some cupcakes. You can watch if you like.” A peace offering for Amy. Something was up with her, and I was going to weasel it out of her. Cupcakes were a good start.
I started getting things together, banging around in the cupboards to find all the ingredients. He faded for a moment, but he hadn’t gone far.
I was instantly suspicious. “What are you doing?”
Looking at your house.
“Oh, well, go ahead.”
There really wasn’t anything I could say to stop him, and I didn’t mind. It gave me a chance to focus on baking. Our house wasn’t a mansion, but it wasn’t a shack either. It was very white-picket-fence-American-Dreamish. My mom kept it clean as part of her obsessive, controlling personality, but my father’s photographs were scattered everywhere.
The first thing I thought of when I thought of my house was warm. Finished in rich wood floors, reds and browns and rusts, it made you feel comfortable when you walked in the door. The furniture might not have matched exactly, but everything seemed to come together anyway. The kitchen was in the front of the house on the left, the living room on the right with the stairs in between. My parents; master suite was in the back on the first floor, along with my dad’s darkroom. Upstairs was my mom’s office, my room, Amy’s room and a guest room.
My neck prickled, telling me he was close again. I cracked another egg with one hand, tossing the shell fragments in my garbage bowl.
You have a lot of photographs.
“Yeah, my dad’s a photographer.” I pushed a strand of my hair out of the way of the batter bowl as I whisked the eggs.
“I wish you had hands, so you could help me.” He was silent. Maybe that was too forward a thing to say. Maybe I’d offended him with talking about his lack of arms.
I wish a lot of things.
There was a super-awkward pause. “I bet.”
I got back to my baking, and he stopped talking, To keep it less weird, I read the recipe out loud to him, and explained every step. It was sort of like doing a cooking show for an invisible audience.
“You have to make sure not to mix it too much. Then the batter gets tough.” I didn’t know why I was babbling on, and I stopped, worried he was bored with me.
Keep going.
Maybe not.
I finished the cupcakes and was frosting them when my dad got home. I’d been chattering to Jack the whole time, but the minute I heard my dad’s Subaru, I shut up. Wow, I’d been talking for a really long time. I couldn’t remember when I’d last talked that much. And to a complete stranger, too. What was up with me?
“I’m sorry if I’m being rude, but I don’t want my dad to know I can hear you.”
I don’t mind.
I was about to respond when the door closed with a bang. I jumped, smearing frosting on the counter.
“Hey kiddo, how was school?” My dad came in and kissed my forehead and stuck his finger in the frosting bowl. I swatted it away and gave him a smile.
I looked more like him than my mom. I had his blondish hair, chin and nose. She’d given me her greenish-bluish-brownish eyes, which she like to call ‘hazel,’ and the rest of my face. I’d also inherited her lack of height. My skin had once been pale and relatively clear. I missed those days.
I caved and stuck my finger in the frosting bowl. “Fine. I got my grade back for my Hamlet paper. A-.”
“Good job. It’s lucky that you got your mother’s intelligence.”
“And your good looks,” I said, hugging him around the middle.
“My modesty and charm as well,” he said, laughing as he stuck his finger in the frosting bowl. I batted it away. Jack was still here, but he kept his mouth shut.
“You’re not supposed to be eating sugar. It’s not good for your heart.”
“What your mother doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Where’s Bug?”
“At Raven’s.”
“Uh oh.”
We shared a look. “Exactly.” Raven was Amy’s on-again off-again BFF. Right now they were on, but judging by how she’d acted this morning, I sensed an
off again.
“Well, good luck with that.” He winked at me, and went back to his darkroom.
I’d see him once more for dinner, but that would be about it, unless he ventured out to watch one of his nightly sitcoms. I loved him to pieces, but sometimes I felt like he escaped to his own world too much. I couldn’t count how many things he had missed because he was either working, or sometimes he forgot. My mother was the solid one, the one who carried around a day planner as if her every waking moment must be scheduled. I thought of myself as a happy medium between the two of them.
You look like him.
“Thank you. Um, if you don’t mind, I’m going to take a shower, and I’d appreciate it if you left me alone for that. I know I can’t stop you, but I’d like at least a moment of privacy.”
I’ll stay here.
“Don’t you have somewhere more interesting to be?”
No.
“Okay, here I go. Please don’t follow me.”
I didn’t know why the idea of him seeing me naked made me blush, but it did. Maybe it was because he called me pretty. Maybe it was because I didn’t want him to see my bare skin and the burn scars that still covered it from The Incident.
I’d been surprised a time or two when spirits showed up when I was indisposed, so I was wary now. There was nothing like having your privacy violated by someone who didn’t understand embarrassment.
True to his word, he faded when I went upstairs. I took a long time, conditioning my hair, which I had let grow out. It was time for a change, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it. It was a silly thing to do, but I locked my bedroom door when I went in to put on my pajamas. Seriously, if he wanted to see me, he could just go through the wall. But I hoped the locked door would send a signal. Keep out.
“You can come up now,” I said as I untangled my hair. He was there in a second, back so fast that I had to sit down.
“Geez, you scared me.”
Sorry.
He didn’t sound sorry at all. I could almost hear the smirk in his voice. Inwardly, I rolled my eyes. Amy must have been home because I could hear her from all the way upstairs. Not good.
Your sister is upset.
“Yeah, I can tell. She probably had a fight with Raven. Again.”
With Dad tucked away in his photocave, and Mom frazzled from work, it was up to me. And I had to make up for being a meanie.
“Hey Ames, what’s up?” Her eyes were distinctly red.
“Nothing,” she sniffed. Mom gave me a look as she unpacked her thirty-thousand pound briefcase. Sure, I’d play along. Jack hummed in the back of my mind. Listening.
“I’m gonna order pizza. What do you want on it?” She loved artichoke hearts, olives and green peppers. Such a strange child.
She shook her head and I leaned over to give her a hug. With that, she broke down. Mom grabbed some tissues from the bathroom and we all sat down in the living room on the couch.
“Raven said (sniff ) that (sniff ) I was (sniff) a dumbass!” She ended with a little wail. Oh, nine-year-old troubles.
“Why would she say that?” Mom put her arm around Amy, but let me do the talking.
“Because (sniff) I said I didn’t like (sniff) her earrings.” I patted her shoulder. Oh, tween drama.
“Ames, look at me.” Her face turned up, and I wiped the tears from her eyes. Mom looked on. She might have been good at nicknames, but she wasn’t good at taming Amy’s freak outs.
“Raven can be mean. I know she’s your friend, but friends don’t call each other morons. Okay? Why don’t you see if you can find a new friend?”
“Because Raven is my best friend.”
“I know Bug, but sometimes friends change.” She was too worked up to be offended at the nickname. “Okay?” She nodded and let me hug her again.
You’re good with her.
Glad I had Jack’s approval. I wondered if he had a little sister and what had happened to his family. Mom came over and gave both of us hugs.
“My independent girls. Sometimes I wonder if you even need me.”
Amy and I protested that we did need her, but part of me thought she was right. It wasn’t that my parents didn’t love me or anything like that. But there was something between us that we couldn’t seem to get around. I could say it was the whole spirit-thing, but it was more than that. Some deep level of understanding we didn’t have for each other. I hoped one day that could change, but I wasn’t going to hold out for it.
Jack stayed with me while I called in a large cheese pizza with artichoke hearts and olives and green peppers and extra cheesy breadsticks. He stayed with me when I went to pick up the pizza. He stayed with me as I set the table and talked to my mother about her day. He listened to her rant about nurses with superiority complexes and surgeons with God complexes and my dad talked about the concept for his latest group of photographs, flowers growing in front of tombstones. Life in the midst of death. He listened to Amy talk about her science fair project on ants.
All the while, Jack kept talking, responding to them as if he was sitting in the chair next to me. It was completely and utterly distracting. Everyone kept giving me weird looks. My face must have been twitching from all the crazy going on in my head. Amy seemed to have calmed down and even scarfed down three slices. I didn’t know where she put it, but it must have gone somewhere.
Jack’s observations were wry and interesting and sometimes funny. I had to stop myself from snort-laughing at something only I could hear. He got a kick out of that, because he kept doing it. He also called me pretty again, which caused me to drop my knife on the floor, and my face to flame up like a campfire coated with gasoline.
He stayed when I went up to finish my homework, only putting in his two cents on my calc and bio homework. I did my best to ignore him and carry on, but he was persistent.
Finally, I called it a night and went to bed. He stayed with me as I brushed my teeth and washed my face and all of those other things. I read for a while and half-considered reading aloud to him, but I figured he could just see over my shoulder if he was interested.
What are you reading?
“A book about zombies,” I said, licking my finger to turn the page.
Zombies?
“Yeah, zombies. You know, Night of the Living Dead and brains and all that?”
I am not very familiar with zombies.
How could you not know about zombies?
“You’d better get familiar because the zombie apocalypse is coming.”
And that would be...
“For real? Come on, I would have thought you’d have inside information on that, being in touch with other forces and all that.”
I have not heard of this apocalypse you speak of.
“That’s good to know. I guess.” I couldn’t help but be a tiny bit disappointed. I went back to my book for a few minutes and then turned off the light.
But I couldn’t sleep.
I folded my hands behind my bed and stared at the ceiling. There was a dent where I’d hit my head jumping on the bed with Nora seven years ago.
“Jack?” I hoped he would answer to the name I had given him.
Yes.
“Do you remember what happened when you died?” I took a risk saying the D word.
I don’t remember much. I often hear that it’s like going through a tunnel toward a light. I guess that would be the best way to describe it.
“How old were you... are you?”
I am ageless. But in years of my last life.... How old are you?
“Seventeen.”
Something like that.
“Oh.” I didn’t know why I suddenly felt sad, and shy.
Do I bother you?
He’d asked me the same thing earlier today, and the answer was yes. But it was like he’d had a personality change and had become this kinda cool guy.
“Sometimes. I mean, I only met you yesterday.” Somehow it felt like yesterday was years ago. Weird.
Time has
no meaning here.
“What?” I’d never heard that before.
The things I did know about the spirit world were pretty limited to what they could tell me. Firstly, you kept only vital information with you. Your name, where you died, how you died, your family, etc.
Second, you only hung out in the human world if you had some reason. You had a message to deliver, something you’d left undone, something you needed to take care of. Once that was done, they went on to wherever they went.
Third, that while I couldn’t see them, some had the power to move objects when they wanted to, including a frying pan full of bacon.
When you are no longer controlled by the world of the living, you can slip in and out of time.
“So you could go anywhere in history, and you chose to hang out with me?” I found that impossible to believe.
I have seen the world. Now I am visiting with you.
The way he said it made my skin tingle.
I laughed a little. “You’re going to get bored fast.” He could throw a rock and hit a more interesting person than me.
I doubt that.
“What could possibly be interesting about me?” I pushed my hair away from my face. It wasn’t golden blond or platinum. It was what they called dishwater. I didn’t have a million friends or a great voice or awesome grades. I wasn’t interesting or mysterious or sexy. I was damaged goods, both inside and outside.
I’d like to find out.
I sat up and looked around. “Where are you, right now?”
Sitting on the edge of the bed. By your left foot.
I reached out, trying to feel some substance, something that would tell me he was there. Nothing. I lay back down and pulled the covers over myself.
“Are you going to watch me sleep?”
Perhaps.
I snorted. “That’s a little creepy, you know? It kind of freaks me out.”
Then I will leave you. Good-bye.
“Are you coming back?” My voice sounded weak and timid in my ears.
Yes.
“Okay. Well... see you later. I mean, talk to you later.”
Beautiful Dangerous Love- Teen Sampler Page 46