“It was, kind of.” I pushed out a smile. Alice retreated to the corner but watched intently.
“Listen, you’re obviously freaked out about the Harvest Queen thing. I”—her words spilled out in a rush—“I heard you talking to yourself. That’s not good. I’ll go to the principal with you. I’ll help you get out of it.”
“It’s not your fault,” I told her. I shot Alice a meaningful look. It was her fault. “Principal Bowman kind of scares me.”
“Me too, right? With that laser stare . . .” Lily and I left the bathroom together.
I felt bad for Alice. I truly did.
But I wasn’t going to risk my friendship with Lily to help a dead girl. Just because I could see and hear her didn’t mean I had to do what she wanted.
CHAPTER 11
I sat cross-legged on the wide porch that wrapped around the front of our house. It was still brutally hot. I hoped Dad would take me to the beach when he got home.
Lady Azura sat in an oversize wicker chair and flipped through the copy of People I’d just gotten her at the corner store. She sniffed, then mumbled something about “fools.” But that was all she said. Since Friday night, she hadn’t tried to talk to me about spirits or powers or any of it. She acted as if our midnight snack hadn’t even happened. She just had me get things at the store or dust the crystals that lined her glass shelves.
I arranged my binders and books in a semicircle around me. I’d start my homework on the left and work my way to the right. Blue math binder first. The Harvest Queen flyer from my locker fluttered to the floor as I opened it.
I traced the date with my finger.
Alice.
As hard as I tried, I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
It was unfair, her getting sick and all. She had wanted to win so badly.
Not your problem, that little voice in my head countered.
I bit my lip, unsure.
“A battle is brewing within you. A conflict between your inner and outer self,” Lady Azura commented.
I looked over at her. She held my gaze, then turned back to her magazine.
I examined the old flyer again. The thick paper. The faded ink. It spoke of a time long ago. A time I didn’t know.
Then it hit me. Lady Azura would know! She’d always lived in Stellamar. She was even Harvest Queen herself. Would she remember Alice? I tried to do the math. Lady Azura was older than Alice would have been if she’d lived, but still . . .
I could ask her about Alice. We didn’t have to speak about powers and connections with spirits and all that. I could pretend it was a school project. Some sort of research thing.
“Did you live here in 1952?” I held up the flyer.
Lady Azura placed the magazine in her lap. “Child, if you want me to see that, you better move yourself closer. I may be able to see into the future, but I can’t see the present without my glasses. And they’re inside.”
I stood and handed her the flyer. She squinted at it. “Harvest Festival.” She tilted her head. “Do you know I’ve only missed one in all my years? When my Diana was born. People said it was fitting that my daughter arrived on that very day. I called her my little queen. But I must say, they all blur together now.”
This was the first time I’d heard about a daughter. I’d never thought about Lady Azura having a family. About her being a mother. She didn’t talk about kids or a husband. I wondered where they were.
“What’s so interesting about this particular festival?” she asked, jolting me out of my thoughts.
“It was the year it was canceled. Some disease called polio, I think.”
“Of course.” She nodded. “A terrible time. So many children fell ill. My neighbor’s son spent the rest of his days in a wheelchair, his legs paralyzed by polio.”
“There was a girl named Alice who died. Alice”—I realized I didn’t know her last name—“something. I’m not sure, but she was around my age. She was running for Harvest Queen.”
Lady Azura’s usually bright eyes clouded over. She crossed her legs, then recrossed them. Her knobby knees poked up from beneath her long mauve skirt. “I know of Alice.”
“You do?”
“Why are you asking about Alice, Sara?”
“There’s this school project—”
“No, there isn’t,” she interrupted me calmly. Matter-of-fact.
Was I that bad a liar? Or could she sense when people didn’t tell the truth? Suddenly it didn’t matter. She wasn’t Lily. I didn’t have to pretend.
“Okay, it’s not that. I can see Alice.”
“Alice caused this town a lot of pain.” Lady Azura rubbed her thin hands together. She didn’t seem concerned that I could see Alice.
“How?”
“Alice Emerson brought polio to Stellamar.” Anger laced her voice. For a moment neither of us spoke, listening to the sound of young kids calling to one another down the street. They sounded like Lily’s brothers.
“Really?” I recalled Alice’s tearstained face. She didn’t look like someone who would have wanted to make a bunch of kids sick.
“Alice was the first, people said. She went to school with symptoms. She infected the others. She was the spark that started the fire.” Lady Azura adjusted her legs again.
“But maybe she didn’t know that she was sick.”
“Maybe,” Lady Azura agreed. She paused to consider what I’d said, and it was clear she was pained by the memory of that time. After a few moments, she spoke again. “When children die, people are angry. They lash out. We pointed our fingers at Alice, although by then the poor girl’s body was buried in the old cemetery behind your school. Alice’s parents were forced to move. The family were outcasts.”
“That’s not fair,” I protested.
Lady Azura stared off into the distance. “I suppose you are right. But all those parents were looking for an answer to explain their children’s deaths. Right or wrong, they blamed Alice and got their answer.”
Everyone hated Alice. Was she guilty of getting kids sick? If she was, I didn’t want to talk to her again.
“What does Alice want?” Lady Azura asked.
“Want?”
“They always want something.”
I told her about the locker presents from Alice, how she’d distracted the principal, and the conversation in the bathroom. “But I’m not doing it.”
“She came to you, Sara. To you.” Lady Azura leaned forward. “She needs you.”
“So what?”
“You are special. You have abilities that others do not. You also have the ability to end unhappiness and suffering. To allow these tortured souls to move on. And that is the greater ability.”
“Move on from what?”
“Alice is trapped, like so many spirits are. She is stuck, endlessly wandering the halls of middle school. Victory as Harvest Queen may be the key to release.” Lady Azura stood. “You can unlock her door.”
“I can’t, even if I wanted to,” I protested.
“You need confidence.” She pulled a shiny white cord out from under her billowy ivory blouse. Three long crystals hung from the cord. She removed a beautiful bluish-green-colored one. “This is aquamarine. The stone of courage.” She pressed it into my palm. “You must first face your fears. Then you can do great things.”
“But I still have that ruby crystal,” I protested. I’d stopped bringing it to school. I’d even stopped sleeping with it. I feared it was backfiring, somehow causing that angry spirit to appear between me and Jayden. I’d buried it deep in my sock drawer. “I don’t think this one will—”
“There is great courage within you, Sara. I can feel it. You are stronger than you know.” Lady Azura opened the front door with no explanation of where she was going. “Keep both gemstones. Activate that courage. Then you will be able to do what is right.”
I stared at the crystal in my hand long after she left.
“Can I help you?” Esther leaned on the main office counter, sorting
field trip permission forms into piles.
“Principal Bowman wants to see me.” I produced the note that had been sent to my social studies class.
Esther pointed to the door behind her without looking up from her sorting. “Go on.”
I should’ve brought Lily, I thought, as I walked tentatively toward the office. But I didn’t know what class she was in now or how I could get her out.
“Come, sit,” Principal Bowman said, her attention on her computer screen. “I wanted to revisit our conversation.” She scrolled down the page, her eyes moving from left to right. “I realized last night—I always realize these things at three in the morning—that you may not be aware of the assembly,” she said, glancing up at me.
“The assembly?”
“There is a schoolwide assembly this week for the candidates to announce their proposed community service project.”
“Community service project?” I couldn’t stop parroting her.
“Harvest Queen is not a beauty contest. It’s about being a model for your peers and giving back to the community. The winner will lead the school in the community service project that she campaigns with. That’s what’s important.”
“I see.” That made the whole queen thing less shallow, but it didn’t change my mind. “I still don’t—”
The temperature in the office dropped. The chill washed over me, causing me to shudder. The sudden cold forced me to lick my already chapped lips.
“Please . . . please . . . I need your help.”
Alice. Standing alongside my chair. Reaching out for me.
“Esther, did you just turn on the air?” Principal Bowman shouted out the open door.
“I need this, Sara. They think . . .” She began to sob.
Esther yelled back. No air was turned on.
“I may have been the first one to get sick, but it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t ask to get sick.” Tears glittered on Alice’s shimmering face.
“Weird,” Principal Bowman muttered. She began to button her thin sweater. “So, Sara, you’ve made up your mind?”
Alice rested her hand on my shoulder. I couldn’t feel her actual touch. Instead I was overcome with sadness. Sadness so deep and so confusing, my body trembled. Everything around me slowed as her grief and yearning crawled deep inside me.
“Did you know that no one has ever laid flowers on my grave? I’m hated,” she said between the tears. “I need to be more than the Girl Who Caused the Epidemic. I need to be Harvest Queen.”
I blinked hard. Alice’s tears were becoming my tears. I could feel her pain, her need to prove that she was more than the cause of others’ misery.
My hand found the aquamarine tucked into my jeans pocket, and I spoke before I could think. I spoke for Alice.
“I changed my mind,” I told Principal Bowman. “I’m going to run for Harvest Queen.”
CHAPTER 12
Everyone was confused.
Especially Lily.
I don’t blame her. I sounded crazy. I told her on our walk home that I was going through with it. I mean, she’d caught me yesterday alone in the bathroom yelling that I refused to be Harvest Queen. So I told her Principal Bowman convinced me to do it.
It wasn’t a lie. She did.
Kind of.
Lily dropped her backpack on the curb and narrowed her eyes. “Are you doing this to be with the popular eighth-grade girls, or to prove some point that Avery’s babbling about, or did you really get bullied into it?”
“I don’t care about any other girls. I just moved here, so I have no idea what Avery’s deal is. This thing just started happening and wouldn’t go away, and now I’m in it.” I hoped she wouldn’t be angry or disgusted with me. “Okay?”
“Okay. I don’t really get it, but okay,” she said, her mood changing right before my eyes. Her cheeks turned rosier, and her eyes widened. “If you’re doing it, then let’s really do it.”
“What?”
Lily grabbed her backpack, pulled out her phone, and started furiously texting. “Campaign meeting at my house this afternoon. I’ll invite Avery and Marlee. Maybe Tamara and Nisha, and maybe even Miranda.” She smiled at me, her fingers still tapping. “If you’re in it, let’s win it!”
I smiled back at her. I was glad Lily was there to help me. I was glad that she didn’t judge me like the girls in my old school.
I wished I could tell her about Alice.
I told Lady Azura.
“Now what do I do?” I asked, as she lit the many candles around her fortune-telling room.
The rare client was due soon.
“Do? When I won, I recall making a beautiful poster. And a speech. Yes, I wrote a speech. I can’t recall about what.” She produced a can of cinnamon room spray and began spritzing.
“Not that regular stuff. I mean, like, supernatural or with that other sense you said I have. How do I use that to win? To help Alice?”
“You don’t.”
“What? But I thought—I mean, I thought I could do something, or you could show me how . . .” The fluttering in my stomach started again. I never thought she wouldn’t help. She was the one who’d told me to do this.
She produced a cloth and rubbed the crystal ball. “Sara, I don’t have a magic wand. I don’t have the ability to fix elections or change the way people think. Maybe you do, but I doubt it.”
“What do I do about Alice?” My voice had gotten squeaky again. “How do I win Harvest Queen?”
“You are already helping Alice. Remember, you made a choice, not her. It may be her desire, but it is your will. As for winning—” The front doorbell chimed.
“Mrs. McHugh is here.” Lady Azura headed toward the foyer. She rested her hand on the doorknob. “As for winning, I personally like a catchy slogan.” She opened the door, letting Mrs. McHugh in and me out. “I know! Maybe something that rhymes with Sara?”
Mascara? Sahara? French Riviera? Christina Aguilera?
Nothing good rhymes with Sara, I realized as I walked down to Lily’s house.
I didn’t have a slogan. I didn’t have a community service idea, even though Avery had already texted me a list of lame possibilities. And I certainly didn’t have a speech. How was I ever going to get up in front of everyone and give a speech? Suddenly I hated Alice.
“A postcard from my aunt. She’s in San Antonio.” Mrs. Randazzo stood by their mailbox at the end of their circular driveway. She held up a postcard of an armadillo in a cowboy hat.
“Funny picture.” I really liked Lily’s mom. She looked like Lily, except grown up. I liked how she talked to me like I was her niece or even her daughter. At mealtimes, she just set another place for me. No questions asked.
“Aunt Lorena always had a wacky sense of humor. Not like Aunt Fran. Now that was a bitter woman.”
I didn’t get it at first. Maybe because Lily had more relatives than our town had people. Then I remembered Fran. Fran who made the banana bread. I pushed the toe of my sneaker into the white pebbles covering their driveway. “Really?” I said softly.
“But she did know about the tomatoes, I hear.” Mrs. Randazzo gathered her mail, and turned to me and smiled. “I made the chocolate cake today. With tomatoes.”
“I didn’t mean for—”
“You’ll try it inside. Very moist.” She placed a hand on my arm and gave the smallest squeeze. “Exactly like my mother’s.”
I didn’t know what to say. Did she suspect? “A lucky guess,” I mumbled.
“Luck is a beautiful thing. Lady Azura has a way with luck. She once told my fortune years ago. I thought it was silly at the time. Then, recently, when certain things happened that I believed were luck, I remembered what she said, and I wonder if it wasn’t fate.”
“She told my fortune too,” I confessed. “She said I’d meet this cute boy at school.”
“Did you?”
“I did. But it’s not working out right.”
“Why not?” Mrs. Randazzo had a way of listening as if every
word you said mattered to her.
“I thought he liked me back. It seemed that way, but then . . .” I’d gotten this far and didn’t know where to go. How to explain the spirit? “It’s like he gets pushed away.”
“Maybe he is intimidated by you, Sara. People often put up walls between themselves and what scares them,” Mrs. Randazzo explained, as we walked up to and into the house. “Give it time. Emotional walls do crumble.”
There was no chance Spirit Boy was crumbling. His wall was built of iron, steel, and whatever force he had to keep me and Jayden far from each other.
“What are you guys talking about?” Lily called. She, Tamara, Avery, and Marlee were already gathered around markers and paper on her kitchen table. Lily’s aunt Angela was there too, watching Lily’s four-year-old sister and her two kids coloring on the floor in a corner. Miranda hadn’t shown, but that didn’t surprise me. Helping me probably wasn’t high on her list of fun things to do.
“Talking about boys,” Mrs. Randazzo said in a singsong voice.
A flurry of excited chatter about the boys and the upcoming dance followed. No one was going with a date. That would be too weird. But they were hoping that the boys would actually get on the dance floor. And dance. With them.
“Luke likes Sara,” Tamara announced.
“I think Sara likes Jayden Mendes,” Lily said knowingly.
“I used to, but not anymore,” I replied softly. What was the point? I was scared what Spirit Boy would do to me if I went near Jayden at the dance.
“Mendes?” Aunt Angela asked. I wasn’t sure if she was Lily’s mom’s sister, or her dad’s, or if she was related at all. Sometimes Lily called her parents’ close friends aunt and uncle too. “The Mendes family lives on our street.”
“What are they like?” Lily asked, always curious.
“They moved in last year. Just the one boy, as far as I can tell. They seem nice enough, except there’s something, well, off, about them.”
“Off?” Lily’s mom asked, concerned.
“They just seem sad. The parents. It’s weird, right?” Angela twirled her long, dark hair. “They never said anything about it. But it’s like they carry it with them.”
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