by Marilyn Kaye
At the video club she picked up movies that she wouldn’t have been allowed to see in a cinema. Not dirty stuff – just sophisticated films that were ‘restricted to over-eighteens’. She brought her goodies back to Margaret’s apartment and had a very enjoyable evening all by herself.
She told herself that on Sunday she’d do more ‘adult’ things, like go to a really fancy restaurant. Get a pedicure, or maybe have her legs waxed. Find a club where she could dance.
In the end, she spent all of Sunday doing what she did on Saturday night – eating junk food and watching movies. And totally enjoying herself. This was the kind of adult life she could handle.
On Monday morning she learned what Margaret did for a living. The phone woke her at seven a.m.
‘Miss Robinson, this is Eastside Elementary School. We have a teacher who just called in sick. Could you substitute today?’
Amanda wasn’t even tempted.‘Oh, I’m very sorry, but I’m sick myself. I’m about to have my tonsils out.’
She didn’t even have to lie! Because right now, at the hospital across town, someone who looked like Amanda Beeson – who was Amanda Beeson, physically at least – was being put to sleep before her operation.
Yes, it was a very pleasant weekend. But now she had to return to the present, and she looked at Ken across the table. His eyes were shut tightly, and he was gripping the hand of the young boy, Stevie.
‘I can’t seem to reach your father, Stevie,’ the medium said, ‘but I can feel him getting closer. We’ll try again tomorrow.’
Ken opened his eyes. He glanced at Margaret, but his eyes didn’t linger. He doesn’t have a clue, Amanda marvelled. Wait till he hears this is me!
Once again, she didn’t get the opportunity to tell him. When they rose from the table, Cassandra spoke to her.
‘I must have a word with you, Margaret,’ she said. ‘Could you stay back for a minute?’
‘OK,’ Amanda said. ‘I just need to—’ but by then, Ken was already out of the apartment. Stevie was gone too.
Cassandra waited until Dahlia had left and then she turned to Amanda. Her tone changed dramatically.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she asked shrilly. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
Amanda was startled. ‘Huh?’
‘Look at you! Nobody’s going to believe you’re a grieving daughter! And you didn’t behave today the way we practised. Do you want to blow this whole thing?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I brought you in on this to make it look like a real seance. You’re supposed to be looking for your dead mother and I’m pretending to talk to her for you. You were fine last week – why are you screwing up tonight?’
As she spoke, Cassandra tugged at the scarves that veiled her face.
‘I – I don’t know …’ Amanda sputtered, but she didn’t finish the sentence. She was suddenly speechless.
Because the last scarf had come off, releasing long, thick blonde hair, and Amanda recognized the face that had been hidden. The last time she’d seen that face, its owner had been hypnotizing Emily in an effort to learn the next week’s winning lottery numbers.
Cassandra the medium was Serena Hancock, the student teacher.
CHAPTER NINE
KEN HAD WANTED TO stay behind and talk to the medium, but Stevie looked so upset when he ran out that Ken had to go after him. On the street in front of the medium’s building, he could see disappointment written all over the younger boy’s face.
‘Are you OK?’ Ken asked.
‘Yeah … well, no, not really. I thought she would have made contact with my father by now.’
‘It’s not that easy,’ Ken said. ‘Sometimes the spirits of dead people are totally open to communicating. You don’t even have to look for them – they’re there. Others are harder to find. Your father might not even be aware that he can get a message to you.’
Stevie looked at him curiously. ‘How do you know so much about it?’
Ken couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘I’ve read a lot.’
Stevie stared at the ground. ‘My youngest sister, Dena, she keeps getting these rashes. My mother thinks she might be allergic to something, and she wants to take her to a doctor for tests. Only we can’t afford it. We don’t have any medical insurance. And my other sister, Cindy … she’s growing so fast, and now she’s complaining her shoes are too tight. Only there’s no money to buy her a new pair.’
Ken could see he was close to tears. ‘Listen … you know the public library, on Slater Street?’
‘Sure.’
‘Well, I need a bunch of books for – for an English assignment,’ Ken said. ‘And I don’t have time to go there. If you could go for me, and check out the books, I’d pay you for your time.’
Stevie gazed up at him. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Here, I’ll give you a list.’ Ken dived into his backpack. He didn’t really have an assignment, but his English teacher had given everyone in the class a list of ‘suggested reading’ – not required – which meant nobody was going to read the books. But Stevie wouldn’t know that. He handed the list to the boy .
‘If you could get me, like, five of these and bring them to the seance tomorrow night, I could give you forty dollars.’ He’d been stashing portions of his allowance every week for the past month, trying to save up for an iPhone. There had to be at least forty dollars in his desk drawer. ‘Maybe more,’ he added.
‘Just to go to the library and check out books?’ Stevie asked.
‘Yeah. You’d be doing me a big favour. Like I said, I don’t have the time. It’s worth the money to me.’
Stevie’s eyes were shining. ‘Hey, thanks! See you tomorrow.’
Ken watched as he took off. Forty dollars, maybe fifty. That wouldn’t pay for new shoes and a visit to the doctor. And it wasn’t like Ken could provide money like that on a regular basis. Stevie and his family needed more. They needed that lottery ticket.
He was about to climb into bed that night when he remembered Jack’s latest request. Opening the drawer of his desk, he poked around through the junk he stashed in there and finally found the iPod Jack had left behind. So he’d have to talk to Lucy again. At least this time he could make it clear that he was only doing this for Jack and she’d realize that Ken wasn’t interested in her that way.
He went to sleep thinking about Stevie, and he was still thinking about him the next morning. By the end of the afternoon, when he entered the gifted class, he’d made a decision.
He wanted to talk about it, but he didn’t get the opportunity right away. Emily was practically bursting with news.
‘Tracey and I went to see Amanda at the hospital yesterday evening,’ she told Madame and the class.
‘How is she feeling?’ Madame asked.
‘The girl we saw is feeling OK,’ Emily said, ‘but it wasn’t Amanda.’
‘It was that fake-Amanda who takes over when the real Amanda is in someone else’s body,’ Tracey reported.
‘Are you sure?’ Madame asked.
Emily nodded vigorously. ‘She had that blank expression, like there weren’t any thoughts in her head. And she kept looking in a mirror and putting on lipgloss.’
‘And filing her nails,’ Tracey added.
‘Sounds exactly like the real Amanda to me,’ Jenna commented.
‘Nah, I could see the difference,’ Tracey said. ‘I had the real one in me, remember? I can’t explain it, but I could feel that it wasn’t really her.’
‘Does she know where the real Amanda is?’ Sarah asked.
Tracey shook her head. ‘No. I even tried asking her, but she just looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. It was definitely the robot-Amanda or the other-Amanda – whatever you want to call her.’
Jenna snorted. ‘That is so Amanda.’
‘What do you mean, Jenna?’ Madame asked.
‘She’ll do anything to get out of doing something she doesn’t want to do. She does a bodysnatch so she w
on’t have to go through the operation. She makes the other-Amanda have it instead.’
Ken agreed. ‘Yeah, she’s pretty selfish.’
Madame smiled slightly. ‘Oh, I don’t know if what she did was so terrible. Whatever takes over Amanda’s body when she’s not there – it’s not a real person. It’s like an impression of Amanda. I don’t believe it has any feelings.’
Jenna shrugged. ‘OK, maybe the fake Amanda doesn’t care if she has an operation. I don’t think the real Amanda cares whether fake Amanda feels it or not, as long as she doesn’t have to suffer.’
‘I think,’ Madame said slowly, ‘that you’re being a little hard on her, Jenna. But there’s something else about this situation that I find interesting. Sarah, do you know what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s getting easier for Amanda to snatch bodies. Last month she took over my body because she was afraid she’d be kidnapped. But when she took over Tracey, it wasn’t like that.’
Tracey nodded.‘She didn’t want to be me but she felt sorry for me, so the bodysnatch just happened. Why would she feel sorry for Sarah? She just wanted to get out of her own body so she picked Sarah’s.’
‘But we don’t know that for sure,’ Madame pointed out. ‘The only person who knows is Amanda. Ken, do you have an opinion about this?’
‘No,’ Ken said quickly. As far as he knew the others weren’t aware that Amanda had taken over his body for a while, and he wanted to keep it that way. But in the back of his mind he’d always wondered – why had Amanda done that? Had she felt sorry for him?
‘What does it matter anyway?’ he asked.
Madame replied, ‘It matters because we need to be aware of what we can and cannot do, so that we can rely on each other in the future.’
Ken grimaced. She was going to start talking about the dangers they faced again. And he had something more important to tell them.
‘I’ve found a way I could use my gift to help someone,’ he announced.
‘How’s that, Ken?’ Madame asked.
He told them about Stevie, his dead father, the missing lottery ticket, and the plight of Stevie’s family.‘I’m thinking … if I work with the medium, if we put our heads together, maybe we can reach Stevie’s father and find out where the lottery ticket is.’
Madame frowned. ‘Ken, we’ve talked about this before and I thought I’d made myself clear. You cannot tell anyone about your gift.’
‘But why not? OK, I can understand why most of you have to keep your gifts secret, but bad guys have never been interested in me! Nobody’s tried to get me to help rob a bank or anything like that. My gift doesn’t have any value for criminals. Why can’t I use it to help someone?’
‘What about the rest of us?’ Charles protested. ‘If you tell the world about what you can do, it could lead people to this class. We could all be in danger.’
‘Charles is right, Ken,’ Madame declared.‘Revealing your gift can have serious consequences. If you can help Stevie without giving anything away, that’s all right. But you can’t tell Stevie or this medium what you can do.’
Ken slumped in his seat. He wasn’t going to continue arguing this. If he could help Stevie on his own he would do it, no matter what Madame said. Would he be putting the whole class at risk? Maybe Madame was exaggerating.
But what did it matter anyway? He had no idea how to contact Stevie’s father. He’d never contacted anyone. They came to him.
That appeared to be the case with live people too. He’d completely forgotten about Lucy and Jack and the iPod, but when he left the gifted class, he found her waiting for him outside.
‘I always wondered what goes on in that class,’ she said. ‘Do all of you talk to dead people?’
‘No. Look, I’ve got something for you.’
She beamed. ‘Really?’
He reached in his backpack and pulled out the iPod. ‘It’s from Jack. He told me to give it to you.’
‘Oh. Well, tell him thank you.’
‘Sure. I ’ll see you around.’
‘Ken!’
‘What?’
‘I did what you told me to do.’
‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.
‘I told Simon I didn’t want to go out with him.’
‘Oh. OK, good. I’m sure you’ll find someone else to hang out with.’
She smiled coyly. ‘I think I already have. Can we go to the basketball game tonight?’
Damn. ‘Uh, gee, I can’t go to the game, Lucy, I’ve got plans tonight. Bye.’
At least he didn’t have to lie this time. There was no way he was going to miss the evening’s seance.
When he arrived that evening Stevie was already there, and he presented Ken with a stack of books he’d checked out from the public library. Ken handed over forty-seven dollars, all the money he’d found in his dresser drawer. Stevie was thrilled.
‘You know, Ken, I can do stuff like this for you every day,’ he said eagerly.
Ken forced a smile, and nodded. ‘Yeah, we ’ll see.’ He could always make up errands to run. But where would he find the money to pay Stevie for them?
Crazy Dahlia was there, and Margaret. Ken absent-mindedly noticed that she didn’t look quite as good as she had the day before. Not as bad as she’d looked the first time he saw her though. Her hair was kind of messy, and she had on those big brown glasses again. But she wasn’t as pasty-pale.
Just as Cassandra called them to the table, there was a knock on the door.
‘Well, it seems we have another participant tonight,’ the medium said.
‘I’ll get the door,’ Dahlia offered.
Ken, Cassandra and the others took their seats at the table. A moment later, Dahlia returned with the new person. Ken choked.
‘Jenna!’
‘Hi, Ken,’ Jenna said in an artificially bright voice. She turned to the others.‘Ken is in my class at school. He was telling us about the seance, and it sounded so interesting, I just had to come.’
She must have followed him, Ken realized. And he didn’t believe a word she’d just said. Jenna was not the kind of person who would believe in mediums and seances.
He couldn’t see Cassandra’s veiled face, but he could tell by her tone that she wasn’t thrilled with this new addition to their group.
‘My dear, a seance isn’t for everyone. Do you have an open mind? Are you willing to connect with the spirit world? Will you be able to receive the spirits?’
‘Actually, I was thinking I’d just watch this time,’ Jenna said.
The medium shook her head.‘I’m afraid that’s not possible. You can’t simply observe a seance. Your mere presence could ruin the event. You could distract and interrupt the mood and frighten off any spirit who wishes to address someone.’
‘Then I’ll join the group and participate in the seance,’ Jenna said.
‘No, I cannot allow that,’ Cassandra declared. ‘I’m sorry, my dear, but I can feel that you are a non-believer. Please leave now.’
When Jenna didn’t move, the medium did. She came around the table and faced Jenna.
‘This is my apartment, my home. If you do not leave, I will call the police.’
Jenna gave up and went to the door. Cassandra waited until she was out of the apartment before returning to the table and beginning.
‘Join us, spirits, in our quest to find answers …’
Thank goodness there was nothing for Dahlia that evening, but Margaret’s mother returned.
‘Your mother wants to know how you’re feeling, Margaret.’
‘I’m sad,’ Margaret said. ‘I miss you very much, Mama. I think about you all the time.’
It was pretty much the same thing she’d said last Friday, but Ken thought there was something different this time. Maybe it was her tone – she didn’t sound like she was going to burst into tears. In fact her voice was almost wooden, like she’d memorized and rehearsed these lines.
‘Your mother wants you to stay busy,
Margaret,’ the medium told her. ‘That’s the only way to get over your grief. She suggests that you find an interesting club to join. Birdwatching, perhaps.’
‘Birdwatching?’ Margaret exclaimed. ‘Ick! Are you for real?’
Cassandra’s voice was steely. ‘This is your mother addressing you, Margaret.’
‘Oh, right,’ Margaret said. ‘Sorry, Mom, I’ll think about it.’
‘Your mother’s leaving us now, Margaret.’
‘Don’t leave, Mama!’ Margaret cried out. ‘Stay here, please. I’m begging you, don’t go away, I’m so lonely and sad, I need you . . .’
Cassandra almost sounded impatient. ‘She can’t stay, Margaret. She’ll be back tomorrow. Now let’s try to call another spirit to us. Let us all be very quiet and concentrate very hard.’
Ken began a silent chant. Mr Fisher, Mr Fisher, Mr Fisher, Mr Fisher . . .
‘A spirit approaches,’ Cassandra intoned. ‘It is a man. He is calling a name. I’m having difficulty hearing him . . . Oh spirit, please, speak louder . . . Mr Fisher, is that you?’
‘Dad?’ Stevie cried out.
‘Shh,’ the medium murmured. ‘Again, spirit, again, who do you wish to contact?’ She drew in her breath. ‘Your son? Your son . . . Stevie?’
Holding Stevie’s hand, Ken could feel the boy’s grip tighten.
‘Do you have something you want to say to Stevie? Do you have a message for him?’
Ken couldn’t breathe. Or maybe he was just feeling the tension in the boy sitting next to him.
‘What is the message? Oh spirit, I cannot hear you! Your voice . . . it’s too faint! Repeat! Repeat!’
And then Cassandra sighed. ‘He’s gone.’
‘Oh, no!’ Stevie cried out. ‘Dad, come back!’
‘I’m sorry, Stevie. It wasn’t a good connection. But don’t despair! We’ve made contact. He’ll come back. Maybe I’m just not strong enough. If only there was another medium here, someone else who is also sensitive to the spirit world. Perhaps together we could forge a pathway.’