by Erica Waters
His eyes soften. “I know. But is this really the best way? Can’t you . . . I don’t know . . . ask some questions? Look for information—discreetly, I mean?”
“I’m not Veronica Mars, teen detective,” I say, crossing my arms.
“Even if you do raise Jim’s ghost and he tells you who did it, then what? Are you going to go to the cops and try to convince them a ghost told you Jesse’s not a killer?”
“Of course not,” I snap. “But it will be something more to go on. I can at least point them in the right direction. Give them another suspect.” And then I’ll know for sure, I think, but I don’t say that part.
Orlando sighs. “Just please don’t do this, Shady. I’m worried about you. I know you love your brother, but this doesn’t seem like the way to help him. Like, at all.”
The bell for our next class rings, and Orlando gets to his feet. He gives me one final, serious look. “I know you’ve lost a lot, and I can’t begin to understand that. But there’s a lot you haven’t lost. Maybe if you remember that, you can stop this before things get more out of control.” He doesn’t wait for me to answer before he strides away.
I’m watching Orlando lope down the hallway when Cedar bumps into me accidentally. “Hey,” he says, surprised. Then he follows my miserable gaze. “Is he mad at you?”
“Yep. Everybody’s mad at me.”
Orlando disappears around the corner, and Cedar puts his arm around me and pulls me forward. “I’m not mad at you. I’m not,” he insists when I give him a skeptical look. “I think we all just need some time. This is . . . wild.”
“But you don’t regret . . . you and me?”
Cedar looks at me with that sly smile of his. “Uh-uh. Girl kisses you like that, you’ll make allowances for a little bit of spookiness.”
I smack his arm and he laughs, but then his face turns serious again. “You think you’re going to be able to do it? Bring back Jim’s ghost, I mean?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure how I did what I did at Sarah’s house. And I probably need to find out more about the particulars of Jim’s murder. Like, which house it was in, which room.” I told Orlando I wasn’t a teen detective, but he was right that I needed to learn more. I’m just going to apply his advice a little differently than he intended.
“Well, Kenneth might be able to help, at least about the house, since he saw Jim that morning,” Cedar says.
“Kenneth was at the construction site? I don’t remember hearing that.”
Cedar glances at me, surprised. “His dad wanted to talk to him about what happened at the open mic night, I guess. Asked him to come by.”
“Oh, how’d you know that?”
“Kenneth texted me that morning saying he was going over there.” Cedar hesitates. “You didn’t know?”
I shake my head. “I think he said something to me about how he felt bad he spent his last night with his dad acting stupid. I assumed that was the last time he saw him. No one ever mentioned Kenneth being there that morning.”
I guess Orlando was right about asking around for more information. Kenneth might be able to help fill in some gaps for me. Unless maybe he doesn’t want me to know. Unless he’s hiding something. Because I’m pretty sure the police don’t know he was at the construction site the morning Jim died. Either that, or his stepdad asked them to keep quiet about it.
The memory of Kenneth staring at his hands like they didn’t belong to him that day at Little Spring floats through my mind, but I dismiss it. He’s a grieving son, that’s all. Maybe the police did know and already looked into it—it’s not like anyone’s been willing to tell me much of anything.
“Will you tell him to call me later?” I ask as I head toward my next class. With that new witness and more evidence against Jesse, I need any help I can get.
Seventeen
Having Cedar back on my side makes me feel a little less lost, but I want Sarah back too, even if it’s just as my friend and bandmate. With Jesse in ever more danger and the shadow man dogging my dreams and now my waking hours, I need to feel less alone in this world. I need people to keep me anchored here, to the living.
I tried to apologize when I saw Sarah in American history, but she wouldn’t even look at me. I can’t blame her. First, I threaten to go off and play with Cedar and Rose, then she catches me kissing Cedar, and then I bring back her mother’s ghost . . .
And it isn’t just that I raised her mom’s ghost—I exposed Sarah’s deepest vulnerability to a room full of people. I exposed her. That’s going to be hard to forgive, impossible to forget. She might never come out from behind her defensive walls again.
I keep seeing her shocked face in my mind, the open, defenseless look there. I’ve been wanting her to show her feelings for so long, but now that she has, it makes my chest ache. Knowing I put that expression on her face. Knowing I’m the cause of all her hurt. That was never what I wanted.
Whatever might have been happening between us, whatever relationship was growing up slow and sweet in its own time, has been hacked down like stalk of sugarcane. You can’t tape a stalk of severed sugarcane back together, can’t return it to its roots. It’s done and over with, and you’ve got to make it into something else. I at least have to try.
So after Mama gets home from work, I borrow the car and drive over to Sarah’s house. Her truck’s in the driveway, right next to her dad’s.
Sarah’s dad, Tom, answers the door, still in his oil-stained uniform from the auto repair shop he owns, with Trouble on his heels. She slips out the front door and circles me, barking and jumping, licking whatever body part she can reach. I squat down and try to hug her, but she’s too excited and knocks me over onto my butt.
Tom grabs her by her collar and pulls her back inside the house, beckoning me in. “Sarah’s in her room. Did she know you were coming over?”
“No,” I say, suddenly nervous. What has she told him?
“She’s been in a funk for a few days. You know anything about that?” Tom narrows his eyes.
“It’s my fault. She’s mad at me.”
“Well, go fix it then,” he says.
“Yes, sir.”
At the door to Sarah’s room, I take a deep breath and knock.
“Come in,” she says, so I turn the knob, my heart hammering in my chest.
Sarah’s sprawled on her bed with a math textbook open, writing in a notebook.
“Hi.”
She looks up quickly but doesn’t speak right away. “I thought you were my dad.”
“He let me in,” I say, just to fill the awkward silence, and Sarah looks back down at her book, not even trying to pretend she’s glad I’m here. I close the door behind me and slide down it to sit on the floor. I lean my head against the wood, trying to keep my eyes from the framed picture of Sarah’s mom by her bed. Trying not to think about the relief on her ghostly face when I let her go.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Sarah still won’t look at me. Her hair falls across her eyes, obscuring her expression.
“For everything. For your mom, for . . . Cedar.”
Sarah presses her lips together. I wish she’d open them instead, maybe yell at me a little bit. At least then I’d know for sure what she’s feeling.
“I didn’t know that would happen with your mom. I didn’t even think about it. I never would have brought my daddy’s fiddle here if I thought that were even a possibility. I swear.”
Sarah’s silent so long I think she’s not going to say anything. “It wasn’t just . . . practice? For Jim?”
“Oh my God, no. No. I wanted us all to play together. I thought your house would be a neutral place, away from ghosts. I forgot about your mom. I shouldn’t have forgotten.”
Sarah finally looks up, but her expression is unreadable. I catch her eyes and try to keep them on me. “I never meant for you to get hurt, Sarah. I swear. I should have been honest with you, but I didn’t know if you would believe me. If you would think I was cr
azy. And I was afraid you wouldn’t want to play with me anymore if you knew. I was wrong, and I’m sorry,” I say, tears rising to my eyes. “I put you in danger and I hurt you, and I hate myself for it.”
Sarah stares at me for a long time. “It’s okay,” she finally says. I venture a smile, and her eyes soften, one corner of her mouth turning up. I can see she doesn’t want things to be like this between us either.
“Thank you.” I want to ask her more, whether seeing her mom was all bad or if she was glad to speak to her, but I know Sarah’s not going to tell me anything anyway, not this soon. And I don’t deserve to hear it.
“About Cedar,” I say, but Sarah holds up her hand, her mouth turning to a hard line again.
“That’s your business.”
“Sarah, let me explain. It’s you I—”
“What’s there to explain?” she says, her voice tight, like she’s on the verge of tears too. “You like him, he likes you.”
“But—”
“Shady, I’ve got homework to do. Would you please go?”
I stare at her, but she won’t look at me, her eyes fastened firmly on her notebook, hair falling over her face again. She even starts writing.
I want to tell her I have feelings for her, explain how much I want to be with her, but the confession lodges in my chest.
“I didn’t expect it to happen. He wasn’t the one I . . . God, if you would just . . . if you would just open up a little,” I say, suddenly angry. “That’s why Cedar and I are . . . at least he didn’t just disappear after he kissed me.”
Sarah acts like she doesn’t even hear me, but her hand tightens on the pencil.
“Fine,” I say, knowing even as my voice rises that I have no right to be mad at her now. I came here to apologize, but now I’m as furious as she’s been for the last week. “I’ll leave you alone since that’s apparently the way you like to be.”
I open the door and slam it closed, and then bolt from the house before Tom can see the tears running down my face.
I snatch up Daddy’s fiddle and head into the woods before Mama even knows I’m home. Raising Sarah’s mom was a mistake and a setback, but there’s still Jesse to think of, still this fiddle to master. I won’t try to raise Jim until I know I can do it right.
In the bluish hues of twilight, surrounded by the whispering pines, I play through all the songs I know so well I don’t have to think about them. The music that pours out sounds like every feeling in my body I can’t put into words. All the anger and the hurt and the fear. I feel so lonely, so weighed down.
If Daddy were here . . .
But if Daddy were here, I wouldn’t need helping. Jesse wouldn’t be in jail right now, and I wouldn’t even have this fiddle. Daddy would still be playing it, filling the woods with his songs, waking all the ghosts. Maybe now that I’m older he’d trust me with the fiddle’s secrets. Maybe he’d teach me to play it, just the way he taught me to play my ordinary one.
The memory of his fingers guiding mine across the strings cuts through me. Some girls have memories of dancing with their daddies, their little feet on top of their fathers’ as they whirl. But my memories are of playing the fiddle with my fingers beneath Daddy’s, his hand guiding my arm to draw the bow across the strings.
I transition into the easiest, simplest song, the first I ever learned—“You Are My Sunshine.” Most people only know the chorus, but Daddy taught me every verse. I whisper the words to myself as I play.
The other night, dear
As I lay sleeping
I dreamed I held you in my arms
A voice behind me sings the next words.
But when I awoke, dear
I was mistaken
And then I hung my head and I cried
I drop the fiddle and the bow as I spin to see who’s there. I was thinking of Daddy while I played, but it’s not him. Instead, a woman stands behind me, her face lined more with regret than age. “Who are—” I start to say, but she’s fading. I scramble for my fiddle and start to play again, but it’s too late. By the time I start the song again, she has disappeared back into the pines.
“No, no, come back,” I call. “Please, come back. Let me help you.” But she’s gone now, and no matter how long I play, she doesn’t reappear.
But a slow, sure knowing fills me. I know now how this fiddle works. I finally understand how it brings the ghosts across the veil. It doesn’t have anything to do with luck or skill or the songs I choose to play.
I know now why Daddy looked so stricken when he played, why he was always getting lost in the darkness.
This instrument runs on grief and regret and rage; it only works if its player gives herself over to grief, lets it fill her like the music, every nook, every cranny of her soul. The same reason the ghosts are chained to this world, unable to pass on, is why Daddy’s fiddle can raise them. Grief is what binds the living and the dead.
He couldn’t have taught me to play this fiddle even if he’d wanted to. Only his death could teach me.
Eighteen
I tiptoe up the trailer’s aluminum steps and gently turn the doorknob. It doesn’t budge.
“Shit,” I whisper. It’s past midnight, so Mama must have thought I was already in bed and locked the door. I’m locked out of my own house.
I knock, preparing myself for a proper tongue-lashing.
Feet thunder to the door and then someone fumbles the lock, and the door swings open. Mama is a dark silhouette against the bright lamp behind her. “Where the hell have you been?”
She lets me into the trailer, glaring at me all the way.
“I’m so sorry, Mama. I was in the woods, practicing—”
She gasps. “Is that—what is that you’re carrying?”
“It’s just my fiddle,” I say, tucking it under my arm so she can’t see it. Why isn’t she yelling at me for waking her up?
“Oh. For a second I thought—I thought . . . Never mind, Shady. I got some upsetting news today, that’s all.” She rubs her face tiredly, her hand trembling. Then she takes a few steps back and sits down heavily in the recliner.
“What is it? Is it Jesse?” I ask, panic rising up my throat. Is there even more evidence? Another witness?
Mama nods. “He’s all right, but he was in a fight today. His lawyer said he got jumped by a couple of other boys.” Her voice cracks on the last word.
Relief and worry flood me at the same time. “I’m sure he’s all right, Mama,” I say, dropping to my knees beside her chair. “Jesse can hold his own in a fight. I’ve seen him.”
“But there were two of them—and who knows what kind of boys they are, what they’ve done,” she says, her voice wavering.
“He’ll be all right. He’ll be fine.”
“But I can’t . . . I can’t even call to check on him,” she says, her voice breaking into an anguished sob. “I can’t help him or do anything for him.”
“It’s all right,” I say, rubbing her back. “It’s all right.” But my mind is spinning off into horrible directions, imaging what could happen to Jesse in a place like that. Something worse than a fight.
“He seems so tough, I know, but he can’t go to prison. He won’t make it there—his heart’s too tender. He’s too young.”
“I know, Mama,” I say. But there’s something I can do for Jesse, even if she can’t.
I can find out once and for all whether or not he killed Jim. Daddy said to wait until I was ready—well, I know now how the fiddle works, so I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Once I talk to Kenneth and learn what I can about the house where Jim died, there won’t be any reason left to wait.
But my stepbrother doesn’t call or answer my texts, and the next day at school he seems to disappear every time I catch sight of him. He’s avoiding me. Did Cedar mention I was looking for him and scare him off? Is he upset about my plans to raise Jim, or is there some other reason?
Finally, at the end of the school day, I spot him across the parking lot. He’s surroun
ded by a group of his dip-chewing, truck-driving friends. They’re sitting on tailgates and lounging against the sides of other people’s cars. When I call Kenneth’s name, the boys whistle and say things I’m glad I can’t quite hear, but the open, friendly look on Kenneth’s face disappears.
“Shut up,” he says, shoving one of the boys half-heartedly as he makes his way toward me.
“Hey, Shady. What’s up?” he says, darting a look back at his friends.
“I missed my bus, and I was hoping you could give me a ride home,” I lie.
Surprise flits across his face, followed by something like fear. “I think Cedar’s around here somewhere. You could text him.”
“Well, I also wanted to talk to you. Please,” I say.
“About my dad?” Kenneth looks down at his feet.
I hesitate, afraid to say the wrong thing. “Yeah. I wanted to know how you feel about . . . what happened the other night. What I’m planning to do.”
“I haven’t wrapped my head around it yet, I guess,” Kenneth says to his boots. “But I don’t think you should do something like that. It’s not right.”
“You could help me if you want to,” I say. “You could see him, talk to him again.”
Kenneth’s head shoots up, terror on his face. “What? No, no way.”
I put my hand on his arm, but he steps back like I burned him. Is he actually afraid of me? “Please. I need your help. I just want to get Jesse out of jail.”
“I have to go home,” Kenneth says, glancing around for help. Like I’m going to beat him up. Like he needs to be rescued from a girl half his size. “I’m not going to help you with this. I’ve been trying to be nice to you about Jesse, but now you’re taking it too far. I’m—I’m leaving now.”
“Hang on, please. I wanted to ask you a question about that day—at the construction site, since you were there with Jim.”
Kenneth startles and his face bleeds white as my meaning sinks in. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I thought it was strange I never heard about Kenneth being at the construction site, but now that he’s acting so shifty about it . . . maybe he really did hide it from me on purpose. And if Jesse and Kenneth were both with Jim that morning, why wasn’t Kenneth ever a suspect? Why’s my brother sitting in jail while Kenneth’s walking around free?