Yesterday and Today

by Phoebe Rivers

  “Are you, like, mad?” he asked me. His eyes looked every which way, except at me.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a spirit hovering behind Mason. I’d pretty much grown used to seeing spirits at random times, so it didn’t startle me. Much. But it did catch my attention, and it probably looked to Mason like I was purposely ignoring him.

  “Um, Sara? Listen, I’m sorry,” he said, the words tumbling out of his mouth quickly. “I didn’t mean for our night to get all hijacked like that. . . .”

  He looked upset. He meant it. I decided I really wasn’t mad. Maybe I should be, but I wasn’t. “It’s fine. I just need to get home. But I’m not mad.”

  He looked relieved.

  “You go on back inside. I’ll see you soon.”

  I stepped away before there could be any awkwardness about him kissing me good-bye.

  I waited for him to go inside, and then I walked around to see if I could find the spirit I’d seen. I’d had the impression he had been waiting there for me. He was gone, but I remembered what he had looked like.

  A young man, or maybe he had been a teenager. It had been hard to tell. Dressed in old-fashioned clothes. Glowing dimly in the growing darkness. A stained, dirty work shirt. Pants tied at the waist with a rope. Heavy work boots. Long hair that flopped over one eye. A beret on his head.

  I had no idea who he was or why he was there, but as I walked home, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he had wanted to tell me something.

  Chapter 5

  I knocked quietly on Lily’s kitchen door so as not to wake her little sister, but Buddy, the Randazzos’ dog, started barking his head off like crazy.

  Lily opened the door quickly and shushed Buddy, who recognized me right away. He wagged his tail wildly and rammed his head into my legs so I would pet him, which I did.

  “Cammie’s asleep and the boys are upstairs watching a movie,” said Lily, dropping wearily into a chair. “Help yourself to anything you want.”

  Lily and I knew our way around each other’s kitchens like they were our own. “I’m good,” I said. I pulled up another chair and sat down next to her at the large, battered kitchen table. I loved Lily’s kitchen. Large, light, and airy, and almost always bustling with people. Mrs. Randazzo was an amazing cook, so it was usually full of the smells of home cooking.

  “So what’s going on?” I asked, getting right down to it. “What’s the big important thing you wanted to tell me about?”

  Lily’s usually smiling face clouded up. She plucked a paper napkin from the holder and began twisting off little pieces, rolling them distractedly between her fingers. “My parents had a big fight.”

  “Oh,” I said quietly. “That’s awful. Are you okay?” I couldn’t imagine Mr. and Mrs. Randazzo fighting. They always seemed to get along perfectly. I liked to think that’s how my mom and dad would be, if my mom was still alive.

  Lily shook her head. “Not like a really bad kind of fight. More like an argument. But it was about money. It wasn’t good. See, my dad wants to enter into kind of a sketchy business deal.”

  That brought to mind gangsters and briefcases filled with cash. I’d been watching too many detective shows on TV recently. “Like, something illegal?”

  “No,” Lily scoffed, and waved her hand as if the idea of her dad doing something illegal was silly. Which, of course, it was. “Sketchy according to my mom. You know that vacant lot at the end of Culver Street, way at the other end of the boardwalk?”

  “You mean that dirt field near the old railroad tracks?”

  “Yep. That one. Well, I guess this developer friend of my dad is in some financial trouble, so he offered to sell it to my dad for way cheap. And my dad wants to buy it and develop it into a little shopping area, with touristy stores and stuff. But my mom says it’s crazy. See, as long as our family has lived here, and you know that’s a very long time, no one has ever had success building on that spot.”

  “That’s odd,” I said. “Because you’d think it would be a great place for shops and stuff. It’s right at the end of the boardwalk, and there’s that really nice old inn just half a block toward the water.”

  “I know, right? But see, I think the spot is jinxed. My mom definitely thinks so too, even though she didn’t use that actual word. Apparently people did try to build on it in the past, my mom says. But things just kept going wrong.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “Different stuff. One guy went bankrupt before he even started construction. Someone else built a restaurant, but it burned down before it even opened its doors. Someone else tried to just make it a parking lot, but weird stuff kept happening to the construction equipment, and the workers all quit.”

  “Why does your dad want it then?”

  “He just refuses to believe the superstitious stuff. You know how he is. But I heard them talking about how he’s dipped into our savings and we could lose a lot—a ton—of money if it doesn’t work out. He’s supposed to sign the contract in a few weeks and leave some massive deposit. I’m getting really nervous about it, Sar. What should I do?”

  I felt bad for Lily. But I had no clue what to say. Land deals and lawyers and developments and business transactions all sounded pretty grown-up to me. I didn’t want to give her bad advice.

  “I’m sure it will all work out,” I said, trying to sound encouraging. “I mean, your dad is really smart. I’m sure he wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t a good idea.”

  Judging from the look on Lily’s face, I had said the wrong thing.

  “But what about the jinx?” she demanded.

  I didn’t want to point out to her that we had no way of knowing if there really was a jinx or not. I needed to be supportive. “Can you tell me more about what you know about it?” I asked, thinking that if I kept her talking about it, I’d come up with something helpful to say.

  So Lily told me everything she knew again. She was really animated, and it was clear that the more she talked about it, the more she became convinced that this deal was going to result in disaster.

  I definitely wasn’t helping. When she was done, I still didn’t know what to say, so I repeated the same unhelpful thing I had said before, that I was sure everything would work out okay.

  “I guess I should get going,” I said a little while later.

  “I guess I should get the boys to bed anyway,” Lily said quietly. I had let her down and I knew it. I just didn’t know how to help.

  I left soon after that. I think we both felt bad about the way the evening had gone. I realized as I closed the door behind me that we hadn’t even talked about our crushes. I had no clue what was going on between Lily and Cal.

  It was definitely dark out now, but it was still before my curfew. The moon was out, so I could see my way, even between streetlamps. The wind had picked up, and dry leaves eddied and whirled across the sidewalk. I kept my eye out for the spirit of that young man I’d seen earlier, but sensed no one.

  As I walked to my house—just two doors down from Lily’s—I felt something near my collarbone. My hand went to my neck.

  It was my necklace.

  It was vibrating. Or, to be more specific, one of the crystals on it was vibrating.

  I pulled it out of the top of my shirt and stared down at it. It was just long enough for me to see the small crystals strung on it. They were crystals Lady Azura had given me. People complimented me on my necklace all the time. They really did look pretty strung together. I knew them by heart, and by their feel: ruby, aquamarine, hematite, opal, tourmaline, moldavite, diamond, quartz, and aragonite. Each one had a meaning, which Lady Azura had explained to me. And one of them was vibrating. It felt hot to the touch.

  It was the ruby.

  The ruby crystal was the first one Lady Azura had ever given me. At the time, she told me it would encourage love to bloom. She gave it to me and I had my first vision of Jayden. For weeks after that, I depended on the crystal to help me. And it turned out Jayden had liked me, too. I did
n’t think it was entirely because of the ruby crystal that Jayden had liked me back, but I believed it had helped.

  Was it trying to tell me something now, about Mason? Did it know that I was confused about Mason and it was trying to help again? Maybe my body gave off those vibes, and the ruby “sensed” them somehow. I would have to ask Lady Azura. In general terms, of course. As great as Lady Azura was, I wasn’t eager to start discussing the details of my love life with her.

  She was standing in the kitchen when I walked in a few minutes later, almost as if she’d been waiting for me.

  My great-grandmother was a tiny person. Maybe four inches shorter than I was. Reed thin. But for such a small person, she had a huge presence. I’d been in crowded rooms with her, and she somehow managed to command the attention of the room. Some people just do that. They give off energy. Your eye is just drawn to them.

  Although it was nearly ten, she was still fully dressed. Flowing silk skirt, a dark pink blouse, and a scarf tied around her head, covering her dyed mahogany-colored hair. Ropes of necklaces. Dramatic red lipstick. And I could smell her perfume from across the kitchen.

  “Sara, I’m so glad you’re home,” she said.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked anxiously. She seemed distressed. “Is my dad okay?”

  “He’s fine. Your father hasn’t returned from his dinner party yet,” she reassured me. “I am glad you’re home because I need your help with something.”

  I set down my bag and pulled off my jacket. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s the spirit upstairs in the pink bedroom. She’s been terribly upset tonight.”

  “Wait, so you actually heard her?” I asked Lady Azura, unable to hide my disbelief. Lady Azura was, as my dad put it, “hard of hearing.” She could hear you when you talked to her, and she could hear the television or the phone, but her hearing wasn’t as keen as that of a young person. And I knew for a fact that she couldn’t always hear the spirits who were right in front of her, let alone the ones on the second floor.

  Lady Azura gave me a look before she responded that told me she didn’t like to be reminded of her hearing problems. “No, Sara, I cannot actually hear her. But I can sense her. I can sense there is a troubled energy coming from that part of the house, and I believe it to be coming from her.”

  So that explained it.

  “Will you speak with her?” asked my great-grandmother. “As you know, I have such trouble climbing all those steep stairs. And you and she seem to have a connection. I would like for you to check in on her.”

  “Of course I will,” I promised. “Why do you think she’s started in again all of a sudden?”

  Lady Azura shrugged her narrow shoulders. “I sense a disturbance in the atmosphere of some sort,” she said. “But as yet I can’t identify it. Possibly that’s contributing.”

  Chapter 6

  When I got to the top of the stairs, I didn’t hear any loud sobbing, but there was definitely the sound of faint moaning and crying coming from the pink bedroom. I knocked quietly on the door, which was partially ajar, and slipped inside.

  I felt a tickling at my collarbone. My ruby crystal. It was vibrating again. Maybe it was a sign that I should use it now, somehow. Although I had no idea how a crystal intended to make love bloom could help me now, with this heartbroken spirit.

  The room was dark except for a thin, silvery light coming in through the window. The wind outside was seeping through the window jamb, and the draperies danced and rippled a little. I could see the silhouette of the spirit, rocking back and forth in her chair, her back to the door. Her features were in shadow, but I could see a light glowing around her. I moved across the room and sat down quietly on the seat cushion in the window and waited, not sure what to say or how to start.

  “The very worst thing that can happen,” she said softly, “is for a mother to lose a child.” Her voice was thin and tremulous. She didn’t really seem to be speaking to me directly. I had the feeling it almost didn’t matter if I was there or not. But I responded anyway.

  “I don’t have a child, so I don’t know,” I said. “But I think you must be right.” I considered saying that maybe the second worst thing is for a child to lose her mother too soon. Like I had. But I didn’t say that. Because somehow it didn’t seem right to say it. I couldn’t think what to say instead, though. So I just sat there and waited for her to speak. To tell me why she was so upset about this again, after she seemed to have found peace.

  But she didn’t say anything else. She just buried her pale face in her ghostly hands and sobbed quietly, her black hair tumbling forward, her shoulders shaking.

  I shifted uncomfortably. I had to come up with something. In books I had read about how people would say “there, there” to console someone. I’d never in my life said it before, but I tried it now.

  “There, there,” I said, immediately feeling dumb. But it seemed to help a little. At least, her sobs grew quieter. “You will see him again. Your boy. I’ve seen you together. You told me his name. Angus.”

  I realized what was probably happening. Lady Azura had told me that spirits sometimes exist in cycles. They can be in one cycle for a long time, and then suddenly the next day they are in a new cycle, and they have no memory of what happened in the last cycle. It was like having mini lifetimes over and over again. It had happened with the sailor spirit in the blue bedroom, though his cycles seemed to be very short. One week he was an old man who remembered my mom, and the next week he was a young man with no memory of her at all, because he had only known her as the spirit of an older man.

  “Angus.” She whispered the name in a low, hoarse voice. Her crying stopped abruptly. Her head jerked up. She stared at me with her deep eyes. They were like dark pools with no bottom.

  “How say you?” she asked.

  I realized she didn’t even know who I was anymore. “How, uh, say I? I say me because—” I stopped. Tried again. “I am saying so because I’ve seen you with him. You see, these things just kind of come in cycles. You can usually see him, in the other cycle, but now you’re in this cycle where you can’t see him for some reason. But I’m not sure why.” I wasn’t explaining this right. I took a breath and tried again. “For a long time you couldn’t see him and that made you sad, like you are now. But then you figured out what you needed to do, and you were reunited with him. He’s usually with you, and that makes you happy. But there’s some weird pressure thing happening in the atmosphere, and I think that’s what’s keeping you and Angus apart right now. I’m pretty sure.” And I was pretty sure about it. I had no way of knowing it for certain, yet I felt strongly I was right.

  “You have given me hope,” she said, her voice now level, without any tremble. “Thank you.”

  She seemed to recover. Stopped crying. Just sat there rocking back and forth, back and forth.

  I stole quietly out of the room. I went downstairs to report to Lady Azura, but she’d gone to bed. I saw my father’s jacket on the hook, and, in the dim light outside, that his truck was parked near the shed. He must have returned while I’d been upstairs. The lights were out and the doors locked, so I headed upstairs.

  I tapped on his door, then opened it. His light was on.

  “Hey, kiddo,” he said, emerging from his bathroom in his pj’s, with a towel around his neck. He looked tired. “Have fun tonight?”

  “Yeah, it was so-so,” I said. “You?”

  He grinned. “Just like I predicted, the Flanagans parked me next to a recently divorced woman. Very nice. But all she talked about was her ex-husband, so it wasn’t a love connection. But they served really delicious seafood stew, so the night wasn’t a total wash.”

  I smiled. Gave him a hug. Said good night.

  It was very late when I finally climbed into my bed. Eager as I was to keep reading the diary, I didn’t feel like my mind was alert enough to pay attention to every detail, and I didn’t want to miss anything. I decided to wait until the next morning to continue reading
.

  I turned out my light, and the silvery moonlight bathed the room. I fell asleep to the sound of the wind howling outside.

  Chapter 7

  I woke up before nine the next morning, Sunday. Immediately I pulled the diary out from its hiding place. The floor was chilly under my bare feet. I climbed back under the covers to read it.

  The first few entries were each about a page long. Then they shortened up to just a couple of sentences each day. That made sense. When you begin a diary or journal, you often have high hopes for yourself and your ability to keep the writing going. But still. It was impressive how long she’d kept it up. She had to have maintained it for at least a year, I thought. The writing was loopy and girlish, with the occasional i dotted with a heart.

  August 19, 1984

  School starts in two weeks, and I can’t wait. I have grown half an inch since the last time I measured myself about three weeks ago!!! Mom just announced she has to go away again. She leaves in two days. I’m happy that she loves her work so much, but it stinks how much she has to go away. This time, though, my grandmother is coming to my house to stay, rather than me going to her. That’s good. I won’t have to worry about dealing with you-know-what.

  August 20

  Last night Julie told me that she thinks Eric likes me. More later. Mom calling. I think my grandmother has just arrived.

  August 21

  Mom left this morning. I think it will be fun having Lady Azura stay with me. She brought a big stash of cookies and candy, which is awesome because my mom doesn’t usually let us have a lot of sweets in the house. I told Lady Azura that, and she said that a little bit of sugar never hurt anyone. I don’t know how she and my mom are related. They are so different!

  I wonder sometimes if my mom ever saw or heard anything growing up in that house. Ghosts. Spirits. Whatever you want to call them. I know I can’t ask my mom about it because she’d freak. Am I crazy, Diary? Should I talk to Julie about this, or will she think I’m a psycho?