by Lois Ruby
“Nope.”
Well, that stings.
She sees me pout and tosses a University of California hoodie at me. “A present for you. I can’t wear this at Georgia. It would make me look disloyal.”
I breathe in Franny’s lemon shampoo scent in the hood. “Can we talk about Cady?”
She spins around. “If you want to.”
“She’s hard to read. When we’re alone, she’s really nice. But around you? Around Scooter? She’s a different person.”
“Overly possessive,” Franny murmurs.
“She seems to pop up out of nowhere. She’s started dressing just like me. Like she wants to be me. She says she used to go to our schools, but I’ve never seen her. It’s like she lives there in the trees or something, and won’t tell me where, or what her last name is. She does have lots of friends in the forest, though, and she’s promised to introduce me if I swear that I’m a true and honest friend.”
Franny shoves a pile onto the floor and sits next to me. “I’ve heard rumors, something about Moonlight Lake.”
“You’re saying Cady lives in the lake? Like the Loch Ness Monster? No way!”
“No, I’m not saying that, Hannah. Just … there’s something odd about that lake and what’s on the other side of it.”
“That’s where her friends live.”
Franny gets busy folding sweaters into a neat pile. “Some sisterly advice? Stay away from her friends.”
“Why should I? I’m practically a hermit. I’ve got nobody else to hang out with this summer. I got a postcard from Luisa. She was gushing with news about all the fun she’s having with her super-sophisticated camp friends from Atlanta. I guess we’re the country bumpkins up here in Dalton.” Yesterday, after I read the postcard twice, I crumpled it and sailed it into the yard from Vivienne’s studio. Dad’s studio.
“To be honest, Hannah, the girl creeps me out.”
“She needs me,” I reply, almost as a whimper. “Her friends are gone, her whole family’s gone, she’s all by herself. I don’t know how she survives.”
“Pathetic,” Franny mutters.
Should I tell her what Scooter said? “Scooter doesn’t like her, either, and what’s strange is that she hates him. Everybody loves Scooter. She thinks he fakes his asthma attacks. And get this, he says she deliberately caused him to have that major attack this week. Is that ridiculous, or what?”
“What did she do?”
“Nothing! Just asked him to smell some flowers.”
“Sometimes that’s all it takes with Scooter.” After a deep sigh, Franny says, “Hey, let’s go swimming this week, just girls.” Franny offers this vague promise, which I glom on to.
“Tomorrow?”
“Sorry, I work from eleven to seven tomorrow.” She’s sniffing socks, deciding whether to toss them into a laundry pile or into a give-away bag for Big Brothers/Big Sisters. “Look, Hannah, you’re the smartest kid in the family.”
“I am?” I ask, all wide-eyed modesty even though I always thought as much.
“You are. You’ll know the right thing to do about Cady, but just keep my advice in the back of your mind, okay?”
And then I blurt out the one thing I never meant to tell her. “I don’t want you to leave for college!”
She puts her arms around me and holds me close, and I dribble tears into her Rib Shack T-shirt. I’m in deep, so I might as well pour out the rest. “It hurts me every time you give us the daily countdown, like you can’t wait to escape from the family. From me.”
I feel her chin nod into my hair. “Can I tell you a secret?” she asks.
I pull away to listen.
She reaches for a nickel on her desk and flips it, slapping the Thomas Jefferson side on the back of my hand. “Heads, I can’t wait to leave home to start my new independent life.”
“Great, just what I wanted to hear.”
“But here’s the other side of the coin.” She tosses the coin again, and it takes three flips for it to land on the Monticello side. “Tails, I’m scared.”
Franny? My big sister, scared? “About what?”
She keeps flipping the nickel. “Heads, what if I’m homesick? Tails, what if my roommate smells? Tails again, what if I don’t make any new friends? Heads, what if I get in a class that’s too hard for me, Shakespeare, maybe, or chemistry, and I have no idea what the professor is talking about? Tails, what if I flunk out?”
And then she’s crying into my T-shirt. After a long time, when we’ve both run out of tears, I say, “Do you ever wonder why our house is called Nightshade? I know why. Want to hear a really sad story that Cady told me?”
Nightshade is empty. Everyone’s at Trick’s game. The old-house sounds that are usually hidden by family bustle now hit me. Floorboards creak and the fridge hums, cycling on and off. The air conditioning drones like a waterfall off in the distance. Curtains flutter in the A/C breeze, and a magnet sown into the hem of a drape clicks against the wall. A tree limb scraping across the living room window sounds like a brush swishing a drumhead. Every sound is amped up, and I’m trembling like an old lady.
Why am I so spooked? What’s different about this summer?
Cady.
I wander around Nightshade imagining Vivienne touching walls, counting steps, feeling her way through the house. Upstairs in Dad’s studio, I perch on his desk and picture Vivienne standing at the window. She’s wearing a long, purple shift, her pinafore apron and tall black shoes splattered with paints of a dozen colors. She’s gazing off at the distant mountains, painting what she sees, what she doesn’t see with her unfocused eyes swimming in their sockets, desperately searching for vision.
I feel her. It’s not just imagination. She’s here, in the shadows of this room. I’m not the fake Ghost of Nightshade. She’s the real one. I jump off the desk, hit the light switch, and flood the studio with brightness. The spooky feeling poofs away so I can think my way through this stuff. It’s what I do best, usually.
A car door slams, and my family comes pouring out of the SUV in all its noisy hullabaloo. The circus is back in town, but for a change I’m glad to have them home. I scamper down the stairs to blend into the crowd and hear Mom’s worried voice above all the others.
“Scooter, I’m not happy with the way your chest sounds tonight. I want you to take a long shower. Let the steam unclog your lungs, and then it’s off to bed. Three pillows tonight. I’ll get your meds, and Dad and I will be up to tuck you in.”
There’s less and less time between Scooter’s asthma attacks these days, which scares me. He’s had asthma most of his life, but it’s never been as bad as it’s been this summer. What’s different about this summer?
Cady.
In the morning, Scooter’s eyes are red-rimmed and he looks skinny and limp. Mom gives him a searching look as she plunks a bowl of Cheerios and sliced strawberries in front of each of us. Dad’s already upstairs working in his studio. Vivienne’s studio. Gracie manages to get Cheerios in her hair and in one ear, and milk is splattered on the table like paint. Vivienne, the blind painter, would be proud. Shake it off, Hannah!
Mom’s sitting on a high stool in her Hawaiian muumuu and pink fuzzy slippers, her work uniform, when Gracie spills her whole bowl of Cheerios everywhere.
“Gracie, not again!” Mom cries.
Trick bolts from the table, his practice uniform splattered with milk, Franny grabs her backpack and dashes off to work, and that leaves Scooter and me looking glumly into our soggy cereal while Mom mops up the milk and Gracie caterwauls like a hyena. Typical day at Nightshade. Sara and Luisa would love this.
After breakfast, I’m escaping to my favorite place, the attic, where I can burrow and think about all the peculiar things that have been happening that I have no control over. I like having control.
But first I need supplies. I tug on the jammed kitchen junk drawer. When it finally jerks open, nails and bolts and batteries and wrenches fly all over the kitchen, and I rescue a screwdriver and a
lock-pick tool from the pile on the floor, plus a can of oil. Today I’m opening the mysterious heirloom trunk in the attic if it kills me.
The trunk sure doesn’t give itself up easily. I’m like a professional safe-cracker, poking away at the lock until finally, success! In fact, the whole lock comes off in my hand, but the trunk has been closed so long that the wood has swollen, and I have to pry it open with the flat blade of a screwdriver. Slivers of warped wood clump on the floor as the top creaks open and I’m smacked with a sharp, chemical smell from white mothballs, like big blobs of hail, scattered inside to protect against insects.
How disappointing! Dad was right—all that’s inside is heavy bolts of old cloth. One’s flocked with Christmassy colors, another’s got blue cornflowers on a yellow background. A third is a Tartan plaid wool flecked with little holes despite the mothballs. I stack a dozen of the bolts into a tower on the floor beside me, and it’s a good thing I bothered to take them all out, because underneath the last one is a fragrant cedar lift-out tray, and under that, treasure!
In the dancing sunlight, I nearly drop a silver-framed wedding photo sliding out of tissue paper that’s yellowed and stiff. Handwritten in pencil on the back of the photo are the words, Lieutenant Cecil and Moira Flynn, wedding day, August 29, 1945.
My great-grandparents. The groom, Dad’s grandfather, is perched on a high stool behind the bride. Cecil looks dashing in a World War II uniform, narrow-waisted, three gold buttons down the front, a bunch of medals on the shoulder, and a cap low on his forehead. His eyes are unfocused, gazing off to the left as if he wished he were anywhere except in this picture. Maybe he wants to be back on the battlefield, or he’s wondering if he has married the right woman.
Oh, but the bride! Moira’s white dress is simple, with two rows of seed pearls at the cuffs and hem. A matching veil crowns her dark hair, and pointed white satiny shoes peek out of the bottom of the dress. At her throat is a single string of pearls. White fingerless gloves clutch flowers that look more like a Christmas wreath than a wedding bouquet. She’s seated slightly below the groom, her elbow possessively flung across his knee, and the look on her face is pure triumph, as if to say, I’ve finally landed this handsome soldier, and I’m not going to let him go.
I pull the photo to my heart. Cecil and Moira. I never met them. Framed in silver, they’re both strangers to me, and at the same time, curiously familiar from another photo in one of our family albums. In that picture they’re both old and bent. Cecil leans on a cane, stern and squinting at the flash of the camera. Moira is grinning mischievously, one foot up on a low tree stump. She must have been a real pistol, my great-grandmother!
What else is in the trunk? Here’s their wedding wreath, wrapped in a yellowed linen tea towel. The dry flowers crumble as I unwrap them. There’s a plate with a gold rim, monogrammed C F M for Cecil and Moira Flynn, with the date of their wedding. And below that, a long, skinny blue velvet box. I open it carefully, and there they are, Moira’s wedding pearls. Ooh, there’s a note under the pearls. It’s creased with age and crackles as I unfold it. It’s dated August 29, 1995, their fiftieth anniversary.
As I have occupied the loathsome position of middle child in my family of nine boisterous brothers and sisters, I bequeath these, my wedding pearls, to the middle child of my only grandson, Joseph Flynn. If Joseph’s middle child be a boy, then brave little man, my prayer is that these pearls will grace the neck of your bride someday. If Joseph’s middle child be a girl, however, praise the Lord for the gift of a strong young woman. My dear, please wear these pearls, whether or not you choose to marry. In either case, they are given with my abiding love.
Your Great-grandmother, Moira
With tears blurring my vision, I hold the pearls to my throat and model them in the reflection of the window. They’re a little snug—Moira must have had a doll-sized neck. I snap the clasp and tug to make sure it’s fastened.
Something brushes my neck, like cool fingers, sending shivers through me from head to toe. Suddenly the pearls clatter to the floor. I wheel around to see who touched my neck. No one’s there, but the pearls were fastened tight, and I didn’t just drop them. Someone else did! At least the string’s not broken. I squat to pick the necklace up, and that’s when I see a slow moving shadow, its hands flat on the rough wood, as if it’s feeling its way along the wall.
As a blind person would. And then it vanishes.
Should I tell Cady about Vivienne’s ghost? I’m not sure, and first I’ve got to slam her with the hurtful things she’s done to my family. I pinwheel around at a slight noise in the cabin, and there she is. She’s done one of her instant-girl appearances, but I’m getting used to them, so I start right in.
“You can’t treat my family like you do.”
Cady looks puzzled, then gets where I’m coming from. “I know, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned anything you told me about Franny leaving for college. Forgive me?”
“No! I’m mad! You’ve said a lot of mean things to Scooter, too, and you triggered his asthma attack. That’s unforgivable!”
“Flowers, they were just flowers,” she protests. “Anyway, he fakes that allergy thing just to get sympathy.”
“Cady! He ended up in the hospital for two days!”
“And he kept you from coming back like you promised.”
“That’s what you take from this conversation?” Deep breaths. Don’t throw pinecones at her! “You’ve got a lot to learn about friendship.”
Her face is totally elastic, changing expressions in an eye blink. Now she looks as sad as a clown, her hands dragging both cheeks and her lips toward her chin, which mooshes her words. “I don’t know what gets into me. I’m crazy-jealous.”
Scooter was right. “Jealous of what?”
“People who take you away from me. We’re friends. Friends belong together.”
“Being friends doesn’t mean we own each other. That I can’t have other people in my life.” I’m trying to simmer down, which is hard because I’m thinking about Sara and Luisa. I know in my heart that they’re closer to each other than they are to me. It’s like we’re not triplets; we’re a set of twins and one extra sister. Twinkies come two to a package; we’re a package and a half. I know how Cady feels. “Where are your other friends, the honest and true ones you’ve told me about? We should get together.”
Things are clicking in her brain; I see that in her eyes that flit here and there, until she says, “My friends are away for a few weeks, same as Sara and Luisa.”
“Okay, but what about your family? They can be friends, too.” A busy corner of my brain is saying, Brothers and sisters don’t make up for friends. Siblings are there in the scenery of your life, the JVs, not the varsity team. But I brush that thought away. Scooter’s my best friend in the world. So I ask Cady, “Don’t you have brothers and sisters to hang out with?”
“I do. Did. I’m the middle one. The rest are … gone.”
“You’re an orphan!”
“You could say that I’m pretty much on my own.”
I’m a total softie, like my dad, and I dissolve into a puddle of sympathy on the rough cabin floor. “You can be part of my family. Come to Nightshade.”
She tilts her head, tempted.
“Guess what—there’s an official Ghost of Nightshade!”
“What?” Her shoulders snap up and she’s blinking like crazy, as if there’s an eyelash stuck in one eye.
Everyone likes a good scare, so I lay it on thicker. “Other than Scooter, I haven’t told another living soul about this, Cady, and don’t think I’m nuts, promise?”
Quick nods, more rapid eye-blinks urging me on.
“The other day I was up in the attic, and I cracked into this old trunk, a family heirloom. Found my great-grandmother’s pearls. They’re gorgeous, so naturally I had to try them on, who wouldn’t? I made sure they were fastened tight. Then something totally spine-chilling happened.”
She’s listening intently, no more bl
inkity-blink; her eyes are drilling into mine. It’s certainly how I’d feel if she told me her house was haunted. It’s like a dream come true.
“I can’t explain this: someone touched my neck with cold fingers, and next thing I knew, the pearls went crashing to the floor.”
“No!”
“That’s not all. Ready for this? I saw a shadow of an actual person sliding slowly across the wall.” One more step and I’ve hooked her: “It could be Vivienne’s ghost.”
Cady’s shaking like Scooter when he has a fever. This is delicious!
“Come home with me, see for yourself. Meet the rest of my family. You already know Scooter and Franny. They’ll forgive you. Just don’t bring any wild flowers. And Gracie adores you because you gave her M&Ms. You’ll like Trick—all my friends have big crushes on him. My parents are great, too. Get this, they have a movie and lunch date every Friday. We’re utterly, boringly normal. Come to Nightshade for dinner tonight. You’ll see, and then we can hang out up in the attic.”
She’s stopped shaking. Her shoulders sag and she seems to close up inside them. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” Now I’m insulted that she’s turning down my heartfelt invitation.
“I just can’t.”
“Tonight? Or ever?”
She looks away, her faded blue eyes unreadable.
“Next weekend, then?”
“Maybe,” she says, unconvincingly.
She won’t come, I know it now, but why? Is she too jealous? Embarrassed to face Franny and Scooter? Spooked by family love?
Or is she afraid of the Ghost of Nightshade?
Nana Fiona is on our doorstep. We never know when she’s going to show up. When she gets the whim, she hops in her 1984 Studebaker, which she bought on eBay, and drives from Poughkeepsie, New York, to Dalton, but she doesn’t dare come more than twice a year. More than that, and Mom would go nuts. All of us would, except me.