by Carol Snow
"Nobody around us is building anymore," my mother said, her voice tight.
"So Dad can get a different kind of job."
"It's not that easy," my mother said.
"People are still building at the beach," my father said. I pictured a sand castle.
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My mother said, "There's money at the beach."
I imagined a quarter gleaming in the sand.
And then I got it. "We're moving to Sandyland?"
"We can get back on our feet here," my mother said, her voice back to its usual steadiness.
"I can't just leave my friends and my school!" I shouted. "How can you do this to me?"
If my camera had captured this moment, I would have deleted the shot immediately. And then I would have backed up to the picture I wished I could have taken before my parents had said anything: of me coming in from a night out with my summer boyfriend, with no real care in the world.
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15.
When I woke up on Sunday , about two hours later than usual, my mother said, "Do you want me to make you coffee?"
I nodded. My brain was still fuzzy with sleep but not muddled enough to convince me that last night's conversation had been a dream.
The room was oddly quiet: the TV was off. "Where's Dad?"
"Working."
"On a Sunday?"
"Just till noon. It was some kind of emergency. They're paying him double."
The gurgling coffee filled the silence between us. "You want me to pour you some cereal?" she asked finally.
"No," I said. My mother was trying to play nice, but I wasn't going to let her. Okay, except for the coffee, which I really needed.
Once it was ready, I took a mug and my camera out to the patio and shut the sliding door behind me. I closed my eyes and tried to think of nothing.
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It didn't work. I thought about all of my friends from home. What would everyone say? How would I tell Lexie? And what about Rolf, who, according to Lexie, was so into me again? Not that I cared about Rolf anymore.
But there was Melissa Raffman and the newspaper--they still mattered. A lot. I remembered the day Melissa called to congratulate me. As soon as I got off the phone, I called Lexie, and we screamed and screamed because we were both on The Buzz staff, which meant our lives were going to be perfect.
My mother opened the slider. "We're going apartment hunting this afternoon."
I clutched my coffee mug. "Will we shoot to kill or just maim?"
She didn't think that was funny, and okay, maybe it wasn't, but you have to give a girl credit for trying.
"I'm going for a walk," she said. "If you go out, make sure you're back by noon." She closed the slider.
I reached for my camera and turned it on. I scrolled through the photographs until I reached the ones I'd taken of Lexie and her sisters on my last day in Amerige.
How could that life be gone if I could still see it glowing on the little screen? Larry had said that pixels capture energy. Didn't that mean that my world still existed, if only in a small way? I wished I could crawl into the camera, back into my old life.
Looking at the pictures made my chest hurt with sadness, so I flicked forward: nothing like a few ghosts to take your mind off of things. There was the old lady on the beach. There was the young man in the window.
The shots from the night before showed moonlit waves and shadowy sand--nothing strange or spooky. If there had been ghosts
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on the beach with Duncan and me, my camera hadn't seen them. For some reason, that made me feel even worse.
When I got to Psychic Photo, Duncan was sitting on the green bench outside the purple front door. When he saw me, he popped up and tucked his hair behind his ears. He was wearing the same thing he'd had on the first day I'd met him: long shorts and a black T-shirt. "Be careful," I said. "Some crazy-ass skateboarders hang out around here. They might run you down."
I almost hadn't come--but then I figured I could just as easily be miserable downtown as in my motel room. To my surprise, the misery drained away--at least temporarily--the moment Duncan flashed me a big smile.
God, he was cute--whatever his name was. I'd totally overreacted the night before.
"You just get here?" I asked.
He shook his head. "My dad was afraid that the guy in the window would sneak in during the night, so we stayed over."
There was a motorcycle parked in the space right in front of us.
"But there was no guy in the window," I insisted. As long as I could concentrate on ghosts, I didn't have to think about the rest of my life.
Duncan nodded. "I know. And I said to my dad, 'No way do I want to sleep someplace haunted,' but he was all, 'I have to protect Rose.'" He rolled his eyes. "Sometimes I think my dad needs to be protected from Rose, but--whatever."
Inside the shop, Rose and Larry sat behind the counter, Rose sipping out of a chunky ceramic mug and Larry fiddling with some big electronic thing. They were such opposites, the tough biker
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and the wispy psychic, but they seemed to go together somehow--like each one alone was too extreme but together they balanced each other and made a normal couple.
Okay, maybe "normal" is an overstatement.
"Any luck?" Duncan asked Larry, pointing to the electronics.
Larry shook his head.
"It's a Wii," Duncan told me. "Got it at a yard sale for ten bucks. Smokin' deal."
"Not if it doesn't work," I said.
"Larry will get it working." I'd never heard someone call his father by his first name.
"You want a cup of green tea, Madison?" Rose asked. "Larry can make you some."
"Urn, no thanks."
Larry put down his screwdriver and wiped his hands on his jeans. "You got the camera?"
I handed it to him. He slipped out the memory chip and stuck it in the photo printer. Even though the initial shock had worn off, it still freaked me out to see the man's face looming in the window, lit up on the big screen.
"You sure you don't recognize him?" Larry asked Rose without taking his eyes off the man's face.
"Positive."
"I'm going to print this out," he said. "Give it to the police." His mouth in a hard line, he punched some instructions into the machine.
"There's nothing the police can do," I said. "He wasn't there when I took the picture."
Larry didn't respond, but Rose said, "I believe you," and Duncan
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hooked his pinky around mine and murmured, "Me, too."
It wasn't until the photo had printed and I could see the shot without the computer screen's brightness that I noticed it.
"The man is shining," I said. "Like he's lit from within or something. Just like the old woman." A chill washed over me. I squeezed Duncan's pinky with my own.
"It's just a ray of sun," Larry said.
"It was overcast that day," I insisted.
"The sun could have come out for a minute," Larry countered.
"But it didn't. And anyway, if the sun hit him, there'd be shadows."
Before I could worry about how ridiculous the question might sound, I blurted, "Rose, what does a ghost look like?"
She gazed into the distance with her enormous pale eyes, utterly unsurprised by the question. "Like nothing."
"Huh?"
"A ghost doesn't have a body. You don't see it--you feel it. Like an energy field or a gust of cold air." I shuddered.
"You said something about an old woman?" Rose asked, her voice calm and soothing. I'd bet anything it was the same tone she used with her clients.
"She was the first one to show up in my camera," I said. "In a shot down by the rocks. And I'm positive there was no one there."
"And she was shining as well?" Rose asked.
"This isn't about an old woman!" Larry burst out. "Or about lighting! Don't you get it, Rosie? Some sicko is spying on you. We've got to deal with it!"
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Larry looked
at Rose with such intensity: love mixed with sadness mixed with fear. Rose, meanwhile, just raised her eyebrows and sipped the tea that Larry had fixed for her. No wonder Larry was threatening to leave town. It couldn't be easy for him to be around her.
"The old woman's on the same memory chip, right?" Duncan asked.
At the printer, I zipped through my shots until I reached the picture.
"My first ghost," I said, trying to sound funny (and failing completely).
Rose put her tea on the counter and crossed the room to the printer. She leaned forward to get a better look. "That's not a ghost."
"Because she has a body?"
She shook her head. "Because I know her. She's one of my clients."
It took a moment for that to sink in. Something drained out of me, and I felt...disappointed? First I'd lost my house. Now I'd lost my superpower.
"I could have sworn I was alone," I whispered.
"Francine can be real quiet when she wants to be," Rose said. "Plus, she's pretty sick, so she can't move very fast."
Wait a minute. "Francine?"
"Yes, Francine Lunardi. We do our sessions at her house because it's hard for her to get around. I'm surprised she went all the way to the beach."
I suddenly felt very cold. "Francine Lunardi died," I croaked. "Delilah was supposed to tell you."
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Rose began to blink. "Delilah doesn't even know her." Her voice sounded tense, not airy-fairy-psychic at all.
"Delilah talked to some lady at the thrift store yesterday. Mrs. Voorhees? She said that Mrs. Lunardi died on Friday."
Rose's huge eyes grew even wider. She covered her mouth.
Duncan touched the screen. "So she is a ghost. Which means the guy is, too."
"There's no such things as ghosts!"
We all turned to face Larry, still stationed by the printer, fists clenched, the cross in his ear swinging back and forth like a pendulum.
Rose began to say, "Just because you can't see or touch something doesn't mean that--
Larry cut her off. "When did you take that picture of Mrs. Lunardi, Madison?"
My mind whirred until I came up with the answer. "A week ago. Sunday."
And then I got it: I'd taken the picture five days before Mrs. Lunardi died. She wasn't a ghost, after all.
Either I was completely insane, or there was another explanation.
"You want to go for a walk?" Duncan asked me outside the purple door. "We can go back to that spot by the rocks and take pictures or...whatever."
The thought of "whatever" made me smile. Maybe living in Sandyland wouldn't be so awful. Maybe it would even be...okay.
"I'd like that," I said. "But I have to do something with my parents." He didn't have to know about the apartment hunting.
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Not yet. I was still getting used to the idea.
"So you and your parents are pretty tight?" he asked.
I snorted. "Hardly. We each kind of do our own thing." I shrugged. "It works out okay." Except for when it doesn't.
"That's cool," he said.
"You and your father seem close."
"I guess." He bit his lip. I really liked that little chip in his tooth. "But we're like buddies, you know? Like, he'll go out on the boat for a couple of days, and it's cool. Or, I'll stay out all night, and he doesn't care. So--I guess I'm lucky. You know, because I can do pretty much whatever I want. Larry's a cool guy. We get along."
"I always wished I had a sister," I said. "Or maybe even a brother. Just--someone besides me."
He glanced at Psychic Photo's front door. "Yeah--me, too. Hangin' with Leo and Delilah, it almost feels like we're related. And...it's nice." Something passed over his face--thoughts about leaving Sandyland, maybe?
He took both of my hands in his and looked straight at me, his eyes like sea glass. "Can I see you tonight?"
I moved toward him. "I think that can be arranged."
We held each other's gaze, and he might have kissed me if a married couple in matching red polo shirts hadn't completely ruined the moment by making us move so they could get to the door. (As he looked at the shop's sign, the man remarked, "Do you think we'll have to tell them we want some photos printed or will they just know ?")
I gave Duncan's hands one last squeeze. "Nine o'clock?"
"Meet you here."
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16.
My parents got all gussied up to look at apartments: a button-down shirt for my dad, a flowered summer dress for my mom. They shouldn't have bothered. If Home Suite Home was craptacular, then the apartments we saw were suckerific. I didn't take any pictures. If there were ghosts in these places, they were sure to be mean ones.
Apartment #1 (a.k.a. "The Carbon Monoxide Special") was right down the road from Home Suite Home--if you can call a six-lane highway a road. There was no tiny hill between it and the highway, though, no oxygen-producing grass to filter the fumes.
"It's quieter in the winter," the apartment manager shouted, pulling down a squeaky window, "when it's all closed up."
"Why can't we just rent something near the beach?" I asked as we drove to the next place. That would make it easier to get out for moonlit strolls with Duncan.
"For the same reason we have to live here in the first place," my mother said.
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Apartment #2 (code word: "Cave") was in an okay-ish neighborhood of squatty houses and patchy lawns. My mother said the houses on that street cost almost a million dollars because they were on the ocean side of the highway, but I think she was making that up. The neighborhood didn't look beachy at all. It looked like it could be in Amerige, like it could be anywhere.
The Cave was at the end of a cul-de-sac, part of a beat-up blue house that backed up to a hill. The apartment had a side door and a tiny window--and that was it. The rest of it was buried in the slope. Inside it was quiet and cool. Actually, it was kind of cold--and it was over eighty degrees outside. It felt like we were in a tomb.
What would this place be like in January? When my dad (he'd shaved!) asked about fire safety, the homeowner, a grizzled old man who looked about a hundred miserable years old, said there was a door that led to the main house, "But I keep it locked at all times."
Next!
We ended our "Beautiful Homes of Sandyland" tour at a complex called Valley View Apartments. I spent the entire time there trying to pick a more descriptive name. The Pit? The Hole? The Place Where Ugly People Come to Die?
The apartments weren't so much in a valley as they were in an enormous ditch. It made The Cave seem cheery in comparison: at least there you got sunlight in the yard. At Valley View it, would always be night. It was like December in Sweden or Alaska or one of those other northern places where the sun doesn't shine. Swear to God: it was after one o'clock when we saw the place, and the sun hadn't risen over the hill yet.
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On the plus side, I wouldn't want to see this place brightly lit. Even in darkness it looked dirty, worn down, and just plain sad. There were two long, brown buildings that faced each other over a central parking lot. There were no patios or balconies, just straight concrete walkways, both upstairs and down, with a row of front doors. A couple of the doors had fake-flower wreaths or cutesy welcome signs on them, which made them seem even more pathetic, somehow. The complex was filled with fat adults and skinny children, all walking with their shoulders hunched forward, their mouths turned down. Televisions blared behind every door.
I thought, I would rather die than live here.
Following the apartment manager to "a nice corner unit," we smelled something nasty, and then we saw it: a pile of pinkish beige vomit right in the middle of the walkway. The manager walked around it. My mother stopped dead and grabbed my arm, as if pulling me back from a speeding car.
"I'll get someone to clean that up," said the manager, a cigarette-stained woman with yellow hair and gray teeth and a frightening set of boobs that threatened to spill out of a sparkly turquoise tank top.
"We're finished here," my mother said, her voice hoarse. And then she turned and pulled me to the car, my father following.
We climbed into the Escalade, which looked completely out of place in the lot of junk cars. And then my mother burst into tears. She cried and cried till she almost couldn't breathe, her sharp shoulders hunching forward just like the people who lived at Valley View.
She was still crying by the time we pulled into the lot at Home
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Suite Home--which, I gotta tell you, was looking like a five-star resort at this point--but she was breathing a little more normally and cleaning herself up with a worn tissue. I should have felt sorry for her, I guess, but all I could think about was the vomit.
After my father parked the car, my mother stayed in her seat. He came around, opened her door, and helped her out.
I didn't even notice Duncan until I practically tripped over him. He was crouched on the concrete outside our door, writing a note. When he saw me, he grabbed the note, along with a bouquet of wildflowers that had been resting on the ground, and scrambled to his feet.
"Hi." His eyes looked especially green in the sunlight. The bleached tips of his hair sprouted from beneath his backward baseball cap.
"Hi," I said. You'd think I'd be worried about what my parents would think of Duncan, but right now I was just mortified to be seen with them, my father supporting my teary-eyed mother's arm like she was out on a day pass from the mental hospital.
"I didn't think you were here," he said, holding up the note.
"I wasn't." I took the slip of paper.
"Oh."
My parents scurried past him with barely a hello. At least my mother wasn't actively crying at this point. "We were just running some errands," I lied. He nodded and handed me the bouquet.
"These are for me?" I said. (All together now: "No, duh!") There were wild daisies and Queen Anne's lace and some purple flowers I didn't recognize.
"They grow on the hill behind my apartment," he said. "They
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looked really pretty, so I just, like, thought of you."
"Thanks." A funny feeling spread through my chest. "They might have bugs," he said.
"Oh!" I held the flowers farther away from my face and then looked at him. "There's something different about you."