by Wende Dikec
Nick looked at me like I’d just won the award for stupidest girl in town. Sort of a pointless question, I guess, but I wanted to hear his theory. I also wanted to keep the conversation on him. It was more comfortable that way.
He shrugged. “I have no idea. I can remember bits and pieces. I know my name is Nick, but I don’t know my last name. I know I used to hang out at The Zone, but I can’t remember the names of any of my friends or what they looked like. It’s all just...gone. More seems to disappear every day.”
He sank down onto my bed, despair settling around him like a heavy cloak. I sat next to him. I didn’t know how to help him, and that feeling brought me back to one of the darkest moments of my life.
“I had a little sister.” He looked up at me in surprise.
“I thought you were an only child.”
“Not always.” I took a deep breath and continued, “I’d just turned seven when Rose was born. The sweetest little girl ever. She had red hair, just like me.”
“Rose and Lily,” said Nick with a small, crooked smile. “Two flowers.”
“My mom is Iris.”
I felt sick to my stomach. This was harder to talk about than I’d thought, but I needed to share it because I understood despair. I’d known it intimately.
I gave him a sad little smile. “Rosie was gorgeous. Perfect.”
“What happened to her?”
“She was three months old and asleep in her crib. Mom asked me to check on her.” I started pleating the hem of my pajama shirt with my fingers. Melancholy Baby shimmered up at me in the dim light from my bedroom lamp. “She’d stopped breathing.”
“I’m sorry, Lily.”
“They call it crib death. My mother went through six miscarriages to have her, and Rosie was ours only three stinking months.” I let go of my shirt and turned to him. “It almost destroyed our family. My parents argued all the time. The only reason they stayed together is because of me.”
“You can’t blame yourself, Lily. None of this is your fault.”
“I know. But it’s my job to hold everything together. I know you and Zoe think I’m boring and controlled and spoiled, but I’m doing the best I can. It has to be like this or everything will fall apart.”
My lip began to tremble and my eyes welled with tears. My reaction took me by surprise. I hadn’t cried about this in a very long time.
Nick reached for me, like he wanted to take me in his arms and comfort me, but he stopped himself. He looked at his insubstantial hands in frustration. When he spoke, his voice was tight and controlled, and he chose his words carefully.
“You aren’t responsible for holding your family together. Don’t put that on yourself.”
I shook my head, my hair swinging against my cheeks. “I have no other choice. That’s why I don’t complain if they have to get away, especially around this time of year. Next week is the anniversary of Rosie’s death. It’s hard for them to face it.”
Nick tilted his head to one side. “It’s hard for you, too, but you never make waves, do you? You never cause problems. You never stand up for yourself. I feel so bad for you.”
I looked at him in shock. “You feel bad for me?”
“I might not remember much, but at least I know I actually lived. Sometime, somehow, I had a life. You, sweet Lily girl, are a hothouse flower. Everything in your life is controlled and regulated and safe. You’re stuck here, trapped in this beautiful place, this glass house, and you’re too scared even to try to experience life outside your own little world.”
“Scared?” I could feel my cheeks getting hot as my temper rose. I got up and stood by the window, trying to cool off. No amount of yoga breathing would calm me down now. I was pissed off.
Nick got up and followed me, a mistake. I shot him a look that could have killed him if he weren’t already dead. The blob darted into a corner. Even Nick looked a little nervous. “I didn’t mean it like that...”
I turned to him, hands down by my sides, clenched into little fists. If he had been solid matter, I might have punched him, manicure or not. It would have worth chipping a nail to smack him right now. I got right in his face, nose to nose, glaring at him, and he had the very poor sense to laugh at me.
“You aren’t very intimidating with that ribbon in your hair.”
I pulled it off my head and threw it to the floor, never breaking eye contact with him. “I’m not a coward. Would a coward be able to sit by her mother’s side at the hospital as she nearly bled to death from a miscarriage? Would a coward be able to call 911 and hold her dead baby sister until the ambulance arrived because her mother couldn’t do it? Would a coward be able to die, come back to life, get stalked by a herd of ghosts and not miss a single day of school? Would a coward be able to deal with you on a daily basis without going completely insane? I don’t think so, Nick-who-doesn’t-even-know-his-last-name. I’m not a fragile flower. I’m not Lily White, or Lily Fair, or Lily the Vestal Virgin. I’m Tiger Lily. I have claws and teeth and I’m stronger than I look.”
Nick’s eyes widened in surprise, and then he started clapping slowly. “Bravo. I knew you had it in you.”
I rolled my eyes. “You did not.”
He looked at my hair, falling into my eyes since I was now ribbonless. “With hair like that, there had to be fire somewhere inside you. I wondered when it would come out.”
He reached up, like he wanted to brush it out of my face, but his fingers moved through my hair without even disturbing a tendril. He cursed softly before folding his arms across his chest.
I took a deep breath, and gave both Nick and the blob an apologetic look. “I have a temper.”
Nick grinned. “You have spunk, Tiger Lily. You may just save us yet.” And in spite of how angry he made me, when he said ‘us’ it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I was a lost cause.
“Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.”
Confucius, 551-479 BC
Chapter Eight
The next morning, I got a wake-up call from my mother. She was not pleased.
“I heard you had friends over last night.” Her voice echoed oddly and I heard a splashing sound in the distance. She was in the therapeutic mineral bath. Already. That did not bode well.
“My friend, Zoe, came over after dinner. We worked on a school project together.”
I rubbed my eyes. I hadn’t slept well. Nick had disappeared just before I went to bed, but I’d woken up several times throughout the night, looking for him. The blob never left. It played in my room all night. Every time I opened my eyes, it thought it was party time and started bouncing on my bed. Not conducive to good sleep.
“Mrs. Jenson from across the street said there was a motorcycle and a juvenile delinquent involved.”
“Well, Zoe does ride a motorcycle, but she isn’t a delinquent.” Or at least I didn’t think Zoe was a delinquent. I couldn’t be entirely sure.
“Were you on that bike, Lily Anne Madison?”
“Of course not. Zoe came over after...play practice. They had a dress rehearsal last night and she still wore her costume. It was hilarious.” I made a feeble attempt at laughter, but my mom was not fooled.
“What about the white powder Clarice found all over the dining room?”
I rolled my eyes. “Is this about what happened at school yesterday? For the last and final time, I am not on drugs.”
After a very long pause, during which I understood my mother knew nothing about what had happened in school yesterday, I realized I couldn’t tell her the truth about anything anymore. I saw ghosts, hung out with a Goth medium, had plans to go to prom with a clairvoyant, and felt some serious attraction to a very hot corpse with dreamy brown eyes and lots of tattoos. I’d bet Nick even had a leather jacket somewhere in the land of the living. My mom would have loved hearing that.
It took a lot of explaining on my part, but I finally convinced her that I was not experimenting with drugs. I hated needles, couldn’t swallow a pill, and ha
d never been able to handle anything stronger than children’s liquid cough syrup. Those facts proved pivotal in my defense.
“I’ll be home in exactly one week. Until then, I expect you to be on your best behavior, young lady.” The anniversary of Rosie’s death was in five days. She usually gave herself an additional two days to pull herself completely back together. I could understand that. I needed the time too.
“I always am,” I said, and hung up the phone.
“Liar, liar, pants on fire.” Nick sprawled on the bed next to me, his head on my pillow. I screeched and pulled the covers up to my chin.
“What are you doing?”
I tried smoothing my hair, a complete mess, and felt relieved Nick couldn’t smell my morning breath. Or at least I hoped he couldn’t. I covered my mouth with my hand.
“Why are you here?”
“I was bored, so I watched you sleep. You snored a little.”
I gasped. “I did not.”
He grinned at me. “And drooled. A lot.”
I wiped my chin self-consciously as he teased me. I was about to yell at him for invading my privacy when I heard a tap on the door.
“Lily, are you all right?” It was Clarice. “I heard you scream.”
“Uh...hi, Clarice. I was just talking to my mom on the phone and I got excited.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “You are the worst liar ever.” I shot him a dirty look but couldn’t exactly respond with the housekeeper hovering at my door.
Clarice didn’t seem convinced. “Breakfast is ready. You’re running late.”
I made Nick leave while I showered and dressed. Usually I liked to take my time and pick out the perfect outfit, but today I rushed through it, afraid Nick might pop back in before I was dressed. Bad enough having the blob fly around the room while I ran around in my panties, I couldn’t handle it if Nick saw me too.
I dressed in a simple floral dress with a matching cardigan and flats. I pulled my hair back with a ribbon and tied the bow behind my ear. I put the diamond studs Mother had gotten me for Christmas in my ears, slid the sparkly tennis bracelet Father had given me for Valentine’s Day on my wrist, and stared at myself in the mirror a moment. I looked quite different from Zoe and Nick, but I liked myself just fine. I didn’t have to be edgy to be cool.
Nick followed me to the dining room table and watched as I sat down to eat. Clarice was nowhere to be seen, but she’d left a lovely warm breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast. Nick eyed my bacon with longing, so I held up a piece.
“Want some?”
He stared at me, shaking his head. “Now that’s just cruel.”
“Sorry,” I said, before shoving the bacon in my mouth.
Nick watched the bacon disappear with a mournful expression on his face.
“Yummy,” I said, with a grin.
He smiled back at me. “How do you manage to still look all ladylike and prissy while shoving a slab of greasy bacon in your mouth?”
I licked my lips and then each of my fingers in turn, and in an instant the gently teasing expression on his face changed. He stared at my mouth now the same way he’d stared at the bacon only seconds before. Suddenly, it was sort of hard to breathe normally. I knew very well that if he’d been in solid form, he’d be kissing me right now.
I waited for him to say something, but he just shook his head and ran a hand through his dark hair. His hands, although bigger than mine, weren’t beefy. They were elegant, with long, tapered fingers. Every movement somehow seemed graceful. Mesmerizing. He looked like a pianist, but I doubted that very much. Nick didn’t seem like a piano player. He seemed like someone who would join a biker gang.
“Not a slab of bacon. A slice.” I delicately dabbed the corners of my mouth with napkin.
“Forgive me, your highness.” He gave me a little bow, and I had to purse my lips to keep from smiling. If he had been alive, I would have had trouble staying away from him, and he definitely seemed like just the kind of trouble nice girls should stay away from. But I was just kidding myself. Nick never would have noticed a girl like me.
“You’re forgiven.” I kept my voice really low as Clarice banged around in the kitchen. The last thing I needed was a report to my parents that I’d started talking to myself. They would come home immediately, and I’d be hanging out with Dr. Carter and a team of psychiatrists instead of finding a way to get rid of my ghost problem.
Nick didn’t comment when I pulled out my bottle of sanitizer. Today I used Honeysuckle Berry. Sweet and refreshing. I shook a glob onto my hands and rubbed them together, almost daring him to say something. He didn’t take the bait.
“So, what’s on the agenda today?” he asked.
I twisted a lock of hair in my fingers. “I’m going to ask Zoe to come over tonight, preferably without the motorcycle. I don’t need another call from the neighborhood watch Nazis to my parents. I’ll have to talk to Josh too.”
“Josh?”
“My clairvoyant prom date. The boy who saved me from drowning.”
Nick’s face darkened. “The one you talked about in the cafeteria with your friends?”
The subject of Josh bothered Nick, and it looked a whole lot like jealousy. For some reason that made me extremely happy.
“I saw him yesterday and asked him to prom.”
Nick seemed hurt, but I couldn’t deal with ghostly emotions at the moment. I had bigger problems, and I needed to focus on my real-life potential boyfriend instead of worrying about feelings I had for someone who didn’t actually exist in solid form.
“I also have to go to Mr. Wan’s right after school to see if he can give me any other advice.”
“Your manicurist?”
“My manicurist with a really cool book of ancient Chinese secrets.”
“Can I come, too?”
“The more the merrier.” I looked up at the ceiling. The blob frolicked on the light fixture. “And I have to take a quiz in calculus, which I will fail, since you distracted me so badly yesterday I missed all the information.”
“Sorry.” Nick actually looked sheepish.
I got my backpack together and walked over to the door. Nick followed, standing close to me. My head barely hit his shoulder. I was pretty tall, but I had to look up to talk to him. His eyes were glued to my face, and suddenly I felt really hot, and sure I blushed from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. When he spoke, his voice sounded even deeper and huskier than usual.
“I thought watching you eat bacon was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. But to see you blush like that, Lily...” He bit his lip and gave me an extremely naughty grin as he shook his head.
If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought Nick was flirting with me. I gaped at him the way my goldfish did when I dropped the bowl and he lay flopping around on the floor. Not sexy. I’d never been sexy. Nick was sexy, and also delusional. And dead.
Clarice saved me from future embarrassment by shouting that I’d be late if I didn’t stop dawdling. She was right. Nick not only messed with my head, he messed with my schedule too. When I turned back to give Mr. Tall-Dead-and-Flirty a piece of my mind, he’d already gone.
I didn’t see him again until study hall as I frantically crammed for my calculus quiz. I couldn’t understand any of it. I was doomed.
“Can I help?” he whispered and bit back a smile when I jumped. He sat next to me at a table in the corner of the library. Thank goodness no one else was around. I shot a quick glance around the room. The only person within hearing distance was the librarian, the elderly Miss Mary Cook, well past her retirement age and nearly deaf.
“It’s hopeless,” I whispered back to him.
“Nothing is hopeless,” he said with a saucy wink. Together we went over what I had to know for the quiz. He explained it in a clear way, making it simple and easy to understand. He got frustrated a few times when he wanted to pick up a pencil to write out a problem for me and couldn’t, but other than that, it was kind of fun. I’d never thought of math a
s fun before.
“Why doesn’t my teacher explain it like this?”
Nick shrugged. “This is just how I see it. No reason to make it so complicated.”
“You should be a teacher, Nick.” I wished I could have taken back those words as soon as I said them because Nick looked so crestfallen. “I’m sorry...” I began, but he stopped me.
“Good luck on your quiz, princess,” he said, and vanished.
I passed my calculus quiz, and my drug test. Maura and Jess still looked at me oddly, but I slowly began to convince them I felt fine. In truth, I was losing it. If they only knew that every time we spoke a happy little ghost bounced on their shoulders, they would have lost it themselves.
Josh agreed to meet me after school. I told him I had a favor to ask, but didn’t specify. It would be hard to explain to him via text message that I needed to find out if he had the supernatural skills to help me get rid of some ghosts. This required a face-to-face conversation. I needed to do it in person.
When I got into my Audi to drive to Lake Eugene to meet Josh, Nick popped into the front passenger seat. The blob looked happy to see him. It flew over to him and landed on his chest like a seat belt.
“Miss me?” He gave me a cheeky grin.
I frowned at him. “You weren’t gone long enough for me to miss you,” I lied. “I passed my calculus quiz, by the way.”
“Good news.”
He looked out the window as we drove through town. I knew he was trying to see something he recognized, but he just seemed lost. Right at that moment, I wanted to help Nick more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. I just didn’t know how to do it. I decided to try to cheer him up.
“And the drug test confirmed I’m not a user. Yay for me.” I grinned and him, and he smiled back at me, but his eyes were still sad.
“Where are we going?”
“I have to meet Josh to ask him for help. Can you poof away or do whatever it is you do to disappear? I’d like to do this on my own.”
He refused to poof. His expression had gone from despondent to stubborn in less than a second. Trying to cheer him up had failed, but at least I distracted him by annoying him. He followed me out of the car and down to the lake with a scowl on his face. His expression darkened even more when he saw Josh.