“I’m sorry,” Mr. Jackson said. “When you missed rehearsal the other day, I was concerned. And after what just happened, I think this is what’s best for everyone. I thought that if you spent enough time with the cast, you’d start to learn to trust the process. But—”
“I do trust the process!” Lena cried. “I did everything you told us to do!”
“You did it, but you didn’t really believe it.” He got to his feet. “I have to go check on Connie. If you want to try out for the high school play next year, that’s fine, but let’s let this one go, okay?”
Then he left her alone in the empty auditorium. She sat there, not moving, for what felt like an hour. Finally, the door creaked open, and Marcus tiptoed in.
“Are you okay?” he whispered, sitting down beside her.
“My fingers started glowing.”
“What?”
“I was about to catch Connie, like I was supposed to, and then my fingers started glowing for no reason. Mr. Jackson doesn’t understand. I couldn’t catch her. If I had, she’d be dead!”
Marcus stared at her. “But why would your fingers be glowing like that?” And then he seemed to understand. “My emotions did that?”
“And now I’m not in the play anymore.”
“He really kicked you out?” Marcus asked, his eyes widening. “But the play is in a week! What are they going to do?”
“I only have one line. Anyone can replace me.” Lena had convinced herself that her part was important, that she had to take it as seriously as if she were the lead. But the truth was, Mr. Jackson had probably already given someone else the part. “Why would you do that to me, Marcus?”
“What are you talking about?”
How could he not get it? “Whatever you were feeling, it got me kicked out of the play!”
“You’re the one who lied to me! And then you and Connie were laughing at me in front of my face. How do you want me to feel?” He was panting now, as if he’d run one of his sister’s track races.
“We weren’t laughing at you,” Lena said. “Connie was saying how cute you were and how lucky I am to—” But Marcus didn’t give her a chance to finish.
“The worst part is you’re so mad at your mom, but you can’t see that you’re exactly like her!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lena started to ask, but then her fingers were suddenly glowing again. “Stop it!” she cried, jumping back in her seat to be as far away from Marcus as possible. One touch and she could kill him.
“I’m not doing anything,” he said as his hand flared to life too. He got to his feet, staring at his red fingers. “I should go. It’s too dangerous for us to be in the same room right now.”
“Marcus, wait!” She couldn’t let him leave like this, not when they were both so mad. But he was already gone.
Chapter 24
As Marcus hurried away from the auditorium—and away from Lena—his hand gradually stopped glowing. He got to the lobby and sucked in a few breaths until the suffocating feeling in his chest finally faded.
At the bottom of the school’s front steps, he spotted Natalie waiting on a bench. Suddenly, he remembered what Eddie had said during his test of their powers. “Lena told Natalie that she doesn’t really like you.” The anger that was already brewing inside him flared in his chest at the sight of her.
“You!” he said, marching up to her. “What have you been saying to Lena?”
Her pale eyebrows scrunched in confusion. “What are you talking about? I’ve been trying to help.”
“Help with what?”
Natalie didn’t answer. Her eyes suddenly glazed over, and she stared straight ahead with a strange, vacant expression.
“Are you okay?” Marcus asked, but she didn’t move. He waved his hand in front of her face, but she only kept staring straight ahead. What was going on?
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the episode passed. Natalie sucked in a breath like she’d emerged from a long underwater dive.
“What happened?” Marcus asked, but Natalie wasn’t listening. She grabbed her green notebook from her pocket and started scribbling furiously. “Natalie, talk to me! Is everything all right?”
When she still didn’t respond, he snatched the notebook away from her. She shrieked as if he’d physically hurt her. “Give that back!”
“What are you always writing in here?” he asked, glancing at the open page. He only saw a few words, but they were enough to make his breath stop in his chest.
Lena and Marcus apart. Alice ruined by red.
“Why are you writing stuff about us?” Marcus flipped back and saw there were pages of scribbles, some so cramped that they were totally illegible. “What is all this?”
Natalie let out a defeated sigh. “It’s the future.”
“Is that supposed to explain things? What do you mean it’s the future?”
She snatched her notebook back and stuffed it in her pocket. “Forget it,” she said, but Marcus wasn’t going to let her go, not when he’d finally started to get something like the truth from her.
“Natalie, please,” he said, jumping in front of her. “If you know something, tell me. What do you mean it’s the future? Is the stuff in your notebook…?” He gasped. “Is it stuff that hasn’t happened yet?”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s kind of the definition of the future, isn’t it?”
“But how?”
She glanced around as if making sure they were alone. “You’re a matchmaker,” she said softly. “Well, I’m a seer. Like an oracle but without all that speaking in tongues and wearing ugly robes nonsense.”
Marcus probably shouldn’t have been surprised. If he could match people and Lena could guide souls into the afterlife, why couldn’t there be people who saw the future? But it seemed impossible! “I thought you were a soul collector like Lena.”
“What?” Natalie asked, looking momentarily confused. “Oh, yeah, I’m both.” She shrugged. “It’s rare to have more than one ability, I guess, but it happens.”
“So when you freeze like that, you see what’s going to happen?”
She nodded. “Most of the time I’m only out for a minute, but sometimes it’s like I’m sleepwalking. I’ll wake up and not know how I got somewhere. Or I don’t remember being there at all. Like the hockey game.”
“So you were there!”
“I guess. If you hadn’t asked me about it, I wouldn’t have known, although I could tell I had a vision that day because there was new stuff written in my notebook. It’s…” She looked at her feet. “It’s kind of scary not remembering part of your day, but it comes with the territory.”
“And just now you saw that the play was going to get ‘ruined by red’ and that Lena and I are going to break up?” Yesterday, he would have said that was insane, but after everything that had happened between them today, maybe his relationship wasn’t as solid as he’d thought. But that future couldn’t happen. Lena was his match. Even if things were rough right now, he couldn’t imagine life without her.
“Half the time I don’t even know what the stuff I write down means,” Natalie said, but he could tell she was only saying that to make him feel better.
“But the future isn’t fixed, right?” Marcus asked, thinking back to all the time travel movies he’d seen. “We can keep it from happening, can’t we?”
Natalie only gave him a pitying look and said, “I’m sorry, Marcus. The future is meant to happen for a reason. There’s nothing you can do.”
Chapter 25
When her dad came home from work that night, Lena was curled up on the couch, watching out the window as the squirrel busied herself gathering seeds that Lena had sprinkled for her. She wondered if the squirrel missed Professor when he wasn’t there, or if she only remembered that she had a dog husband when he was right in front of her face.
/> “What’s wrong, Chipmunk?” her dad asked.
“It was a long day.”
That, at least, was the truth. She couldn’t believe everything that had happened in the span of twenty-four hours. Was her dad the only person who was still even speaking to her?
“The good news is you don’t have to worry about finishing that costume,” she added. Then she burst into tears.
Her dad rushed over, clearly panicked at the rare sight of her crying. “What happened?” he asked, hugging her tight.
She tried to explain to him about Connie breaking her wrist, but there was so much of the story that she couldn’t tell him. The bottom line was the same though. She was out of the play, and there was nothing she could do to change that.
When the tears finally stopped flowing, Lena felt exhausted but a little lighter. “I’m okay now,” she said.
“You know what will make you feel better?” Her dad ruffled the top of her hair. “Physical activity. Come help me make dinner. It’ll release some endorphins and improve your mood.”
Lena got to her feet and followed him into the kitchen, her body moving like it was on autopilot. As she started peeling potatoes, her mind was still churning. “Dad, when Mom was still around, did she ever do anything besides her job?” She couldn’t imagine how her mom had kept her soul collecting secret from her dad for so long without him getting suspicious.
He thought for a minute. “Her nursing job kept her pretty busy. That’s one reason she stopped doing community theater. But she was part of a quilting club at the library that met on the weekends and sometimes in the evenings. They seemed to have a pretty erratic schedule.”
Lena nodded to herself. The quilting club must have been her mom’s cover for when she’d had to go on assignments. When she’d had to go collect souls.
How could her mom have had a secret identity without Lena knowing? Granted, as far as Lena could tell, her dad had no idea about her secret life either. Would he feel as betrayed as she did if he suddenly found out about it? No, she couldn’t think about that, not on top of everything else.
When she went to throw away the potato peels, she found her dad’s dating chart in the recycling bin. “Um, Dad?” she said. “Does this mean you and Viv had a good date last night?”
A goofy grin spread across her dad’s face. “It was great! In some ways, she’s exactly how I remember her, but she’s much less serious these days. She quit her job as a lawyer and is trying out a career in comedy writing. It’s a huge risk, but it seems to be paying off so far. She says she was inspired by her mentor, Watts. And she said you knew him?”
Lena coughed. “Oh, sort of. I went to his shop a couple of times.” That wasn’t exactly a lie, but she quickly changed the subject. “I bet Aunt Teresa’s thrilled about you and Viv.”
Her dad laughed. “She claims she always knew we’d make a good couple.”
Lena realized that her dad hadn’t seemed this happy—genuinely happy—in a long time. Maybe they were a good match.
“Do you think you could marry Viv someday?” If this was supposed to be his love match, maybe it was better if Lena was prepared.
“Oh, Chipmunk,” he said. “She’s not going to replace your mom. You never have to worry about that.”
“I know, Dad. That’s not what—”
She was interrupted by the doorbell. Her dad went to answer it, whistling happily to himself. If it was Viv, not able to keep herself away because of the love voodoo flowing through her veins, Lena was going to have to hide in her room for the rest of the night.
But it wasn’t Viv.
“Jessica!” she heard her dad say. “Lena didn’t tell me you were still in town!”
Lena swallowed. She’d been trying to think of a way to tell her dad about Arizona, but nothing had seemed right. She really hoped her mom didn’t bring it up now, especially since it didn’t matter anyway. There was no way Lena was going to give her mom another chance.
“Come on in!” her dad added. It was strange to hear him being so cheerful around her mom. Usually when Lena’s mom came to visit around the holidays, her dad was all business with a hint of sadness underneath. Maybe now that he had Viv, he didn’t care about the past as much.
“I’m returning the dog,” her mom said. “We had a great time at the park, and Professor was completely ignoring the squirrels! He wouldn’t even look at them. I guess you finally trained him to leave them alone.” She laughed lightly. “Is Lena home? I was thinking I might take her out for some ice cream.”
Lena hovered uncertainly by the microwave. Was food her mom’s solution to everything? She didn’t want to see her mom, but she also couldn’t ignore her forever. Finally, Lena took a deep breath and went out to face her.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” her dad said as if he could sense the tension between them. Then he scurried into the living room.
Lena stood and waited for her mom to talk. She definitely wasn’t going to be the first one to say anything. Besides, she didn’t know what to say.
She expected her mom to start trying to explain again or to apologize, but instead she said in a low voice, “Do you want another shot at catching that lost soul?”
“Absolutely,” Lena couldn’t help saying. She’d spent a good ten minutes locked in the bathroom this afternoon because Watts had decided it would be hilarious to jam the lock with actual jam. Strawberry. She didn’t know how many more of his pranks she could take.
“Good,” her mom said. “Then grab your jacket and let’s go.”
• • •
After fifteen minutes in the car with her mom, Lena couldn’t stand the silence anymore.
“Where are we going?” she asked when they turned onto the highway. She’d assured her dad that their “ice cream date” wouldn’t keep her out too late.
“Eddie said you tried Watts’s store and apartment but that his soul got away,” her mom said, her eyes on the road. “That probably means his soul is drawn more strongly to a different place. If you catch him there, he’s less likely to run off. I figure we’ll try the house where he grew up.”
“But Viv told me that he left home when he was still in high school. Would his soul really go back there?”
“You never know where people feel safest.” She adjusted the rearview mirror. “Who’s Viv?”
Lena hesitated. She couldn’t get the words “Dad’s new girlfriend” out of her mouth, so instead she said, “One of his comedy students.”
“That’s right. Eddie told me he used to do stand-up. If his childhood home doesn’t work out, we can try some of the clubs where he performed.”
Lena couldn’t help cringing at the word “we.” She wasn’t sure she wanted anything to do with her mom right now, but she also couldn’t help marveling at how much she was already learning from her about tracking down souls.
When they got to the tiny house where Watts grew up, Lena knew right away that his soul wasn’t here. It was the most cheerless place she’d ever seen. The walls were sagging, the shutters were barely hanging on, and the roof looked like it might cave in at any second. There was a faded “For Sale” sign out front, as if someone had put the house on the market years ago and then forgotten all about it.
Lena and her mom peered in through the windows for a few minutes, but the place was obviously deserted. Even though it looked like a haunted house, there were no ghosts here.
“Doesn’t smell like popcorn,” her mom finally said before heading back to the car.
“Popcorn?” Lena echoed, even though she was still trying to give her mom the cold shoulder.
“I know how it sounds, but I’ve found that when I’m tracking a runaway soul, if I smell buttered popcorn, that usually means I’m near the soul’s happy place.” She laughed. “That’s what I call the spot where the soul is at its most comfortable.”
Lena d
idn’t answer. It sounded beyond strange, almost like the kind of thing her mom would make up to try to make her smile. But Lena wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction.
“So tell me about this boyfriend of yours,” her mom said after they’d gotten back in the car.
“Nothing to tell,” Lena said. That was one topic she definitely didn’t want to discuss, especially with her mom. “Why did you come into town now anyway?” she asked instead. “Why not wait until Christmas?”
“I wasn’t planning on being here, but then I talked to Eddie last week for the first time in years, and he told me about you. I couldn’t believe it. My little Lena had become a soul collector just like me! I had to come see it for myself.”
“So the only reason you came back was because you found out I’m like you? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have cared about seeing me?”
“Of course not!” her mom said. “I think about you all the time, Lena. Even if I’m not here, that doesn’t mean—”
But Lena didn’t want to hear it. She wanted the truth. “How could you not tell me that you were a soul collector? I can understand keeping it from Dad. He wouldn’t understand about souls and stuff. But me?”
“Do you really think you would have understood? You were always my little girl, but in some ways you’re very much like your father, only accepting things that you can see with your own eyes.”
Lena started to object, but she had to admit her mom was right. If she hadn’t spent the past few months collecting souls, she would have never believed such a thing was possible. Even with all of that, she still hadn’t wanted to believe that matchmakers existed. It was only after she’d had Marcus’s powers for a few days that she had finally accepted his job as a real thing.
“So when did you become a soul collector?” Lena asked.
Her mom sighed, like it took effort to think back that far. “I was in college studying to be a nurse, and the two jobs seemed to go together. I could help those who were sick, and when they were dying, I could help them by easing their souls into the After. I met Eddie on one of the first collections I ever did. He was a new matchmaker and also learning the ropes, so we became friends.”
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