She waits until she’s sure Grandma’s asleep, like the night she got Estelle, and then slips out of bed and pulls on clothes.
“Are you going to bring back more ghosts?” Estelle asks, poking her head out of Shelly’s closet. “Really?”
“I’m not bringing anyone back,” Shelly says, checking to see that she’s still got the tape. She’s annoyed at Estelle for assuming that’s what she’s doing and for sounding so judgmental about it. “I could if I wanted to, though.”
She leaves her room and the house, locking the door behind her, and sets out into the cold night. Shelly can see her breath in the air as she walks down the street as fast as she can, heading toward the cemetery. It’s no less scary the second time around, but when she gets to the graveyard she relaxes. When she’s surrounded by the dead, she’s safe, even if the moon is the only light she has to guide her. She has more in common with them than she does with most of the living.
Shelly picks her way over to Joseph’s grave. He’s not there, but she digs the tape out of her pocket and sets it down. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I was rude.”
Joseph is there, suddenly, closer than she expected, like maybe he was waiting for someone to visit.
“You were,” he says, taking the tape from the ground and examining it. He pops open his Walkman and slides the cassette inside. A song starts playing from his headphones as soon as he snaps it shut, a mournful woman singing about a happy house. “Good choice, Little Shell. Apology accepted.” He looks up at her. “Should you be out at this hour?”
“I’m not a baby,” Shelly says. “I wanted to see you. I wanted to say sorry.”
Joseph hums along to the song, his voice mingling with the singer’s. “I do like this apology,” he says. “I like this song. You ever heard Siouxsie and the Banshees before?”
Shelly shakes her head. “It just looked like your kind of tape. It reminded me of—you know, the one you gave me.”
“The Cure,” says Joseph. “Similar hair. Sit, Little Shell. Listen to some music.”
Shelly sits because it would be impolite not to and because she’s not looking forward to her walk home. She huddles up in her coat and listens to the sad, twanging music coming from Joseph’s headphones. It’s a lot like the tape he gave her. Not the same, but something about the guitar and singing reminds Shelly of the sad dance-party song her mother sung along to that last time in the car.
“My mom liked your tape,” she says, when the first song finishes. “She liked music, too. She was always trying to find good stuff in the thrift store and then Grandma would steal her tapes and bring them to you.”
“I think I would have liked her. Your mom,” Joseph says. “I like you and Old Lady. Sounds like she’d be cool, too. Especially if she knew her music. Bet we would’ve been friends.”
Shelly hasn’t gotten to listen to music much since her mom died and this is . . . nice. It’s cold and being out at night is scary, but this isn’t so bad. Talking about her mom with Joseph doesn’t hurt as much as Shelly would have guessed.
She smiles at Joseph. “Mom said you seemed committed to your theme,” she says. “She didn’t like ghosts much, though.”
Joseph laughs. “I guess I am committed. Except the music came before the ghost thing. I didn’t mean for this to happen. Was she not like you and Old Lady?”
“She was like us.” Shelly thinks back to her mom, complaining about ghost lessons and Grandma. She looks down at her hands. “I think ghosts made her sad.”
“We’re dead,” Joseph says. “Makes sense. I mean, talk about commitment—we lived our lives and now we’re just here, waiting, hanging out even though nobody ever notices or talks to us. It is sad, don’t you think?”
Shelly thinks about the way she’s treated by people at school—by everyone. Her heart clenches. “Yeah,” she says. “It’s a little sad. I’m here, though. I notice you.”
Joseph smiles. The translucent skin around his black eyes crinkles up. “And I appreciate your company, Little Shell.”
The tape is 40 minutes long. Shelly knows because she stays and listens to the whole thing before she heads back home in the dark.
18
Shelly does her best to hide the ghosts from Grandma. She keeps burying them in her dresser when she’s not home. She tucks them into her hair and her clothing when she walks into the house, so she can carry them down the hall without being stopped. Her room slowly fills up.
Most nights Grandma makes dinner and they eat together while Grandma tries to talk to Shelly.
“How are you?” she asks.
Shelly shrugs and pokes her pasta with a fork. “Fine,” she says.
Grandma lets her get away with it.
“I have a job tomorrow,” she says, instead of pushing Shelly for more details about her day. “I thought you might like to come with me.”
Shelly looks up, surprised. “Really?” she asks. “What kind of job? Is it interesting?”
Grandma smiles. “A family keeps finding things knocked over in their apartment. They say they have a poltergeist, so it’s probably a bird.”
Sometimes, birds crash into the windows of tall buildings and their spirits pass through the glass without their bodies. Birds can be destructive because they flap around trying to get free and throw things about.
It’s not interesting work at all. Another animal. Shelly wants to tell Grandma that she’s gotten good at people, that she has a room full of them to prove she can do bigger things.
“Birds are boring,” she says, instead. “They just squawk until you catch them and put them outside. They give me a headache.”
“Birds are a good way to make a living,” Grandma says. “Birds will always crash into buildings.”
“I guess I’ll come.” Shelly looks down at her pasta again. It’s boring work, but at least she’ll get to go again. “Do you think there are a lot of chicken ghosts on farms?”
• • •
The bird family is nice—it’s two women with a little girl. They offer Grandma and Shelly lemonade when they arrive and walk them to the living room of their high-rise apartment.
“I thought it was just Maria throwing her toys around at first,” one of the women says, as she shows them the cracked glass in picture frames that were knocked off the wall. “Hannah or I would put them away on the shelf and then they’d be scattered everywhere when we got in.”
Hannah nods. “When we found the pictures all knocked off the wall, we knew Maria wasn’t just trying to get out of trouble. She’s only four. She can’t reach them.”
“Besides,” says Hannah’s wife, “two days ago we were watching TV and something knocked it over.”
The bird is sitting on the top of a bookshelf. Its feathers are ruffled up and it looks about as disgruntled as a bird can look. Grandma hands Shelly her lemonade and takes down her hair.
“Don’t you worry,” she says. “We’ll see to your poltergeist problem.”
Birds aren’t like people. They’re harder to catch because they fly around and you can’t talk to them and convince them it’s time to move on. Then you need to find someplace to release them. Grandma creeps toward the bookshelf, clucking her tongue at the bird like it’s a shy cat. It hops back, away from her, wary, and Grandma stills and coos at it again.
Shelly wonders what they look like to the women who hired them—and to all the other clients who’ve seen her and Grandma hopping around chasing phantoms. Weird, probably, but they get stuff done. She and Grandma always earn their weirdness.
Shelly puts the lemonade down on the coffee table and picks up a throw pillow from the couch. She moves around the edges of the room, past Hannah and her wife, who look worried. She waits until she’s sure the bird is entirely focused on Grandma, and then she whacks it with the pillow off the shelf and into Grandma’s waiting grasp.
Grandma
bundles her hair up around the bird and holds it there until she’s sure it’s caught. She straightens up and smiles at Shelly. “Good job.”
Hannah, in the doorway, looks a little confused. “Was that you catching it?” she asks. “You’re done? I thought there’d be more to ghost hunting.”
“We caught it,” Grandma says. “We’ll take it with us when we go.”
“If it’s really gone after this, it’s two hundred dollars well spent,” says Hannah’s wife. “I’ll get my wallet.”
• • •
Shelly kind of wants to keep the bird. None of the ghosts she has hidden in her room are birds.
“We’ll let it out at the park,” Grandma says. The bird is still disgruntled but too wound up in her hair to escape. “It can fly around without hurting anything until it gets tired and decides to move on.”
“We could take it home and feed it,” Shelly says. “We have lots of milk.”
“It’s just a bird, Shelly,” Grandma says. “If it wasn’t for people sticking tall buildings everywhere, it wouldn’t be here at all. When I was a girl you never saw as many bird ghosts around as you do now. Everything was lower to the ground then. It wasn’t nearly as confusing for them.”
“Just because it’s a bird it doesn’t matter?”
“Because it’s a bird we should take it to a park with lots of trees and other birds and let it go free,” Grandma says. “Ghosts like it aren’t meant to stay forever. Most of the time it’s better to let ghosts fade. You know that.”
“Sometimes ghosts deserve to do their haunting. Some things need haunting.”
“True,” Grandma agrees. She’s the one who taught Shelly that. “But those ghosts will let you know. You know that, too. Those ghosts know where they are. They know what they’re about. You know the dead, Shelly. Most ghosts don’t realize what’s happened to them. They just need a hand getting to where they’re going.”
Shelly thinks most ghosts are pretty stupid.
They walk to the park and Shelly watches Grandma let the bird out of her hair. She watches the bird take off, straight up into the sky, and keeps watching until she loses sight of it in the clouds. Grandma keeps her eyes on Shelly.
19
Shelly’s still thinking about the bird at school the next day. Thinking about things other than class is a lot easier than paying attention, especially when she knows the other kids are whispering about her behind her back. It’s easier to ignore them. Then she can pretend she doesn’t care. The living change all the time. They switch sides and opinions, get older, taller, decide to dye their hair, or move to new houses. The dead are better. They stay the same.
If Shelly were a ghost, she’d want to be a poltergeist. She’d want to throw her weight around and spook everyone who didn’t think ghosts were real. She’d want to have fun with it. She can picture the confused look on Lucas’s face if a ghost threw an eraser at him.
She gets where Estelle’s coming from.
The bell goes for recess and Shelly pushes her chair back. Recess is just more daydreaming time for her now. It’s sitting on the steps and pretending to read a terrible parapsychology book while she eats her snack. She’d almost rather sit through class with no breaks at all.
Before Shelly can stand, Isabel grabs her arm. Shelly nearly jumps.
“Hey,” Isabel says. “Do you want . . . I know you like to read during recess, but my mom made cookies. Do you want one?”
Shelly gives Isabel and her hand a surprised look. “Cookies?”
“Yeah,” says Isabel. “They’re oatmeal chocolate chip. She used to put walnuts in them, but I told her some people at school are allergic to nuts and she can’t put them in my lunch if she’s going to put nuts in them and she doesn’t anymore so . . .” She shrugs. “They’re better now. They’re good. Do you want to try?”
Shelly likes nuts, but Isabel is being nice. Isabel is the only one at school who’ll talk to Shelly the way she used to. And today there’s no ghost talk, no dead mom talk, just a cookie.
It reminds her of visiting with Joseph, only Isabel’s playing Shelly’s part, bringing her an offering to try to make friends.
Shelly keeps her opinions on walnuts to herself and smiles at Isabel, feeling a little lighter for the first time in a long time. “That sounds good. Maybe we could play a game, too. If you want.”
Isabel smiles back. “I’d love to.”
• • •
When Shelly gets home from school, Grandma is waiting for her, covered in ghosts. Shelly’s whole body goes cold, like someone dumped a bucket of ice water over her head. Grandma looks angry.
Shelly’s mind races. She doesn’t know how Grandma found the ghosts. Maybe Estelle got tired of sharing Shelly’s room with other spirits. Maybe Grandma was putting laundry away. Maybe she finally let herself feel the way death was piling up in her house and followed it to the source.
It doesn’t really matter how she found them. What matters is that Shelly’s good mood is about to be ruined. Grandma says, “Shelly, we need to talk.”
Grandma’s voice is stern. She’s holding herself stiffly, like it’s taking a lot of energy to keep so many ghosts in one place.
Shelly thinks about denying the ghosts for a moment, but there’s no point lying now—Grandma has them. She went into Shelly’s room and dug them out of her dresser and filled the kitchen with them. Looking at Grandma through the hazy veil of ghosts surrounding both of them, it’s hard for Shelly to believe she fit so many into her tiny room.
She can’t tell if Grandma has let some of the ghosts go already or not. She sees Estelle and Diya—and Gavin and the cat—but the kitchen is packed to the brim with spirits.
The kitchen is so full it makes Shelly feel like she’s drowning from the weight of the dead. It’s a heavy feeling in her chest that reminds her of why she started collecting in the first place. She was helping them, protecting them. She was gathering up company that noticed her when nobody else would—Grandma included.
“Those are mine!” she snaps. “You had no right going through my things!”
“I told you that you had too many of us,” Estelle says, from behind Grandma’s shoulder. “You should have listened.”
“They aren’t yours,” Grandma says. Her hair is writhing with ghosts. “They belong to themselves and they don’t belong here.”
“I invited them here and they want to stay,” Shelly says. “I can’t tell them anything about where they’re going next so why would I make them go? They’re happy here!”
Diya and her wide white eyes look bewildered. “Oh, this is . . . I didn’t mean . . . I think I’d like to go.”
Shelly thinks Estelle was right, not liking Diya.
“You’ve got to let the dead move on when it’s their time. The living and the dead both need that.” Grandma reaches for Shelly’s shoulder and Shelly flinches. Grandma pauses then drops her hand. “I know I told you that you needed to know how to care for the dead, but you’ve got to take care of yourself, too. You can’t surround yourself with the dead all the time. You’re still alive, Shelly.”
Shelly scowls. Grandma is the one who breaks her own rules now. She’s a hypocrite. “You’re always with the dead.”
“No, Shelly,” Grandma says, her voice all soft and full of pity “I’m always with you.”
All of Shelly’s anger rises to the surface. “That’s not true!” she says. “You leave me behind when you go on jobs. You’re so busy worrying about money and rent you didn’t even notice me hiding ghosts. You didn’t go looking for them, and you didn’t—” Her chest heaves. “You didn’t go looking for Mom. You just left her.”
Nothing is the same as the way it was before her mom died and Shelly hates it. She just wants her mom to come back and be her mother again. The dead don’t change, but the living do, and Shelly’s sick of it.
She tu
rns on her heel and runs out of the house.
• • •
Shelly goes to the cemetery. She has her bus pass and doesn’t know where else to go. Her ghosts are gone and her mother is dead and she’s maybe not coming back after all. The cemetery is the only place she might find the answers that nobody else will give her.
She spends the bus ride with her hands clenched in her lap and her face hot with anger, thinking about Grandma clearing out her room. Her ponytail feels like a live wire on top of her head, buzzing with possibility and hanging too close to her neck.
When she reaches the cemetery, she storms up to Joseph’s grave. He’s sitting and murmuring to himself in French as a soothing female voice plays from his headphones. “Where is she?” Shelly demands. “Where’s my mom?”
Joseph looks up with his black eyes and frowns. “Your mom’s not here, Little Shell. I promised I’d tell you if she were.”
“No,” Shelly says. “This is where she’s buried. This is where she’d be.”
“Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you’re a ghost,” Joseph says. “Look at all these graves, and still—just me.”
“Why?” Shelly demands. “Why you and not her? If a bird can be a ghost, why not her? Where did she go? Where does anyone go?”
Joseph looks terribly, terribly sad for a dead teenager who talks through a Walkman. “I don’t know,” he says. “This place is all I know. I’ve always been here.”
“You were alive before,” Shelly says. “You’re not even that old. You have a tape player.”
“This is all I remember,” Joseph says. “This place, which is mine, and watching over the graves for Old Lady and now you. Did you bring me any more tapes?”
Shelly’s hands curl into fists at her sides. “Why would I bring you a tape when you’re no good to me?”
Joseph tilts his head. “Je me souviens,” he says. “I thought we were friends now. Why do I have to be useful?”
“If we’re friends, you shouldn’t need a bribe to answer my questions.” Shelly’s voice is shaking. Her whole body is shaking. Everything is coming apart around her, and all she wants is her mom. “If we’re really friends, tell me what I need to do to find my mom. Tell me what you did that she didn’t do! Tell me why she didn’t want to stay for me! Tell me why some people become ghosts and some people leave. Tell me why you’re still here, Joseph!”
The Ghost Collector Page 10