“Exactly. It will be a blast!”
I deliberated for a moment. “Did you say the whole cross-country team?”
“Yes, Brent will be there.” My heart thudded uneasily, as I remembered how angry he’d seemed the night before. I bit my lip, deliberating before finally bending to slip on my shoes.
By the time we made it to the groves, there was a large group assembled. From the size of the crowd it looked like the other team members had brought friends along as well. Brent was easy to spot among our numbers and I forced myself to meet his gaze. Instead of furious, his brown eyes were warm and friendly as was his smile.
“I’m glad you made it,” he said as he strolled toward me. “I wanted to apologize if I scared you last night.” He cracked his knuckles. People were milling around us and Brent lowered his voice, “I was really worried. You don’t understand what you’re playing with.”
The game started before I could reply. It was raining heavily now and the dirt had become a thick mud. Bright flashes of lightning lit the sky, followed by loud rolls of angry thunder. Jody Lynn, captain of the girl’s cross-country team, was the first person to be “it,” and home base was the one avocado tree that looked like it had suffered some sort of fire damage. We all scattered. Scouting the area for a place to hide, I had the unsettling feeling I was being watched. I stopped in my tracks, looking around me, my shoes sinking in the wet earth, but didn’t see anyone but my classmates scurrying for places to hide. I hoisted my feet out of the muck and shook them, splattering mud all over my pants.
It didn’t take long to find a perfect hiding place in the leafy branches of a tree, allowing me to peek out without being seen, and I climbed up. Hugging the thin limb I was perched upon, I tried to ignore the prickly bark rubbing against my cheek. The pitterpatter of rain was oddly soothing, even if a few cold drops did manage to find a way inside my shirt, sliding down my back.
From my vantage point, I could see Jody Lynn coming and hear the giggles of people trying to get to home base. As Brent took off running, I watched Jody Lynn turn to follow him, giving me time to quietly slink down to the ground that was blanketed with brown leaves. I was poised, ready for the right moment to sprint when someone loudly screamed, “No!” Hand over heart, I jumped, twirling toward the shout, just as I was struck in the chest by something I couldn’t see.
It hurled me backward, forcing the air out of my lungs. Breaking through branches that tore at and scratched my skin, I crashed down onto a muddy, foot-trampled trail several feet from where I had been standing. I pushed my fingers into the moist dirt, lifting onto my elbows, rocks embedding into my skin when a blinding flash of lightning struck down out of the sky on the very spot I had been standing mere seconds before. The air gleamed for an instant on impact, illuminating a figure that disappeared with the light. If any breath had remained in my lungs, I would have screamed. The world around me started to fade as darkness enveloped me.
****
I woke up with a start. My body ached and my mind wanted to shy away from the fact that I had almost been struck and killed by lightning. My eyes tried to focus on an anxious Cherie, still soft around the edges, leaning over me. Steve and Brent flanked her shoulders.
“Are you okay?”
The world began to slide back into focus. I was on one of the couches in our dorm lobby.
“How did I get here?”
“Steve carried you while Brent ran to get help.”
A small group of people stood on the other side of the room looking over at me anxiously.
“The nurse is on her way.” Brent kneeled down beside me his hands behind his back. “What happened to you?”
“I tripped,” I lied. “Good thing I did or I would have been struck by lightning.” Every muscle in my body protested in pain and winced as I sat up; it felt like I had been the victim of a buffalo stampede. I closed my eyes and willed myself not to throw up.
“I think you should stay put until the nurse comes,” Brent urged, backing up as I teetered to my feet.
“I’m fine! I want to go lay down in my bed,” I argued, leaning heavily on Cherie. “If the nurse comes, she can come check me out in my room.” It was a good thing that Cherie was strong, because she did most of the work as we made our way to the elevators. I stood confidently, waving goodbye to a worried Brent as the doors closed. As soon as they slid shut, I leaned my forehead against the metal doors, feeling soothed by their coolness, and took a steadying breath. By the time we reached our floor, I was able to walk with only minor assistance from Cherie, although my sore muscles caused me to limp slightly.
I was encrusted with mud that flaked off in a trail as I went, like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs. Running my fingers through my hair, I found more mud and enough twigs to start a fire. My arms were not only caked in wet dirt, but were scratched and bruised, and the left side of my cheek felt tender. The reflection in my mirror was even worse than I had feared. I was a complete mess and in desperate need of a shower.
Cherie lingered in the doorway. “Did you really almost get hit by lightning?”
I slipped off my filthy shoes and sank into my desk chair, causing more flakes of dirt to rain around me. “Yeah.” I hesitated. “Something saved my life.”
That got Cherie’s full attention. “Something?”
My wet socks stuck to my feet as I pried them off. “Yeah, someone screamed, ‘no’ and then I was hit here.” I pointed toward my upper torso just below my collarbone, grimacing when my fingers brushed it. I swore in Portuguese, using phrases that would have made my grandfather proud, and unbuttoned my shirt, gasping as I discovered two red marks in the shapes of opened hands. They were bright crimson with welts along the edges and blisters forming in the middle.
Cherie didn’t speak for a moment. “Wow. Well, someone was out there with you.” I expected an admission like that to make her giddy, but instead she looked pale and terrified.
Chapter 7
The news of Phil Lawson’s suicide the next morning shook the entire campus. It was only the beginning of his junior year, but according to the note left next to an empty bottle of pills, the pressure had been too much.
I had never talked to him, but I knew him as a basketball star and top student in our grade. Still, the loss of him impacted me strongly. Maybe because it reminded me how someone you loved could be there one minute and then gone the next. I wouldn’t see him hanging out with his friends in the outdoor pavilion or dribbling a basketball in the gym. He was gone and his family and friends would never see him again. I wondered if he had a little sister who worshipped her older brother the way I had mine.
At lunch that afternoon, Cherie’s worried eyes kept glancing to the spot where my red marks had been, even though they had faded already. She twirled a strand of her blonde hair, her blue eyes calculating. “It wasn’t the curse,” she told me, trying to sound reassuring. “If it were, it should have happened the first week of school . . . or at the end of last year. There is no curse.”
Steve stormed toward our table. The salt and pepper shakers toppled over and my napkin drifted to the floor at the force of his orange tray banging down on the table.
“Bad mood?” I asked dryly.
His usually cheerful eyes were pure steel as he answered, “Something like that.”
“What’s wrong?” Cherie asked, her spoon pausing over her pudding.
“Just a big blow up with Brent— he is currently packing up his stuff and switching rooms, he got the RA’s permission and everything.” Steve combed his fingers through his dirty blonde hair.
“Must have been some fight.”
“Yeah.” He held his breath, cheeks puffed out before letting the air out. “I knew better than to try to talk to Brent about the suicide, but I pushed him until he snapped.”
The table next to us was crowded with Phil’s buddies, all of them grim-faced and red-eyed. “Were he and Phil close?” I asked, trying to keep my voice down.
“No, but con
sidering the circumstances . . .” Steve trailed off with a shrug. Steve’s eyes focused on me. “He didn’t tell you about his brother, Neal, did he?”
“That his brother died?”
Steve looked down at his sandwich. “Not just died— he was the last suicide, the last victim of the curse.”
Cherie dropped her spoon. “Neal was his brother?”
“I had no idea,” I said. The apple in my mouth now tasted like sand. “He must be really hurting.” My eyes were suddenly misty. The grief from my own brother’s death washed over me. I imagined that being compounded by knowing he had killed himself. Phil’s suicide had to have reinjured a poorly healed wound. “I’ve got to talk to him.”
My hands and toes tingled as I jumped up fast and then I was caught up in a rush of cold air as my spirit separated from my body, without my wanting it to.
The entire cafeteria paused, the noises hushed, the movement stilled. The world was like a photograph. Travis was throwing a handful of popcorn at Audrey who was studying from a book. Cherie and Steve were both looking toward me, mouths open as if about to speak.
Even though every human thing was frozen, birds still fluttered in the sky, clouds rolled by, smells of citrus and flowers were carried in the gentle wind moving through me from the open windows. The sun was beating down on me through the skylights, its warmth heated the chill my spirit felt without the protection of its human flesh.
Something blue flickered on the edge of vision and I spun around as it glided toward me with purpose.
A beautiful voice, vaguely familiar, came from the light. “Yara,” it called. My heart in my body boomed, and my knees turned to oatmeal as my spirit reconnected. Shivering, I fell, knees smacking the stiff carpet with a thud as the voice asked, “Did you get my message?”
****
It wasn’t until later that night that I found Brent, swimming laps, his strokes a little less smooth than usual. The smell of the chlorinated room made my palms start to sweat. I wiped them on my skirt as I slipped off my flats, and sat on the edge of the water, dangling my feet in.
The day had been trying. The brief run in with the ghost was troubling but it was added to by other nuisances: I had spilled my soda at dinner, felt like I was being followed once, and found I couldn’t find the taro root powder Brent had given me. I was kicking my legs in the water when Brent finally noticed me and swam over.
He gave me a hesitant smile. “If Steve sent you . . .”
“He didn’t.”
Brent lifted his elbows onto the concrete. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“No problem.”
“Really?” Brent hoisted himself out of the water, his wet hair splattering me with small droplets. My eyes followed the water trailing down his muscled chest.
I looked away. “Yeah.”
“Thanks— I think you’re the only person I’ve spoken to today who hasn’t assumed Phil’s suicide was overly traumatic for me.” He seemed to be sincere but he had to be lying.
I decided not to tell him I was worried about that too. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay, but I’m not going to push, Brent.”
“I’m fine.” Brent got a strange look in his eyes. “Thank you for checking on me. You’re pretty swell.”
I swallowed a laugh. “Gee, thanks.”
Brent leaned in close and I knew he was going to kiss me. His lips were so close they moistened mine with the excess pool water still clinging to his face, his breath warming my mouth. My eyes fluttered closed before he pulled back quickly and grimaced. I briefly regretted the onions on my hamburger at dinner— then a gust of wind brushed past us and something whacked me on the head, scratching my cheek as it fell.
“Ow,” I complained lifting the potted palm tree that normally stood in the corner from off my head. The magic of the moment shattered, I stood and righted the plant while rubbing my head.
“Lousy timing,” Brent said, his eyes surveying the room.
My lips twitched in a grin. “Yeah, stupid wind.” I considered sitting down beside him again, but Brent had already slipped back into the water.
“I better finish these laps. Coach has been on me, saying swimming should be my priority, not cross-country.”
I nodded, letting him know I understood. I leaned against the glass walls of the pool house, letting my fingers stroke a leaf of the kiss-preventing plant when the temperature around me plunged drastically. Glancing at Brent, I checked to see if he had noticed the sudden chill, but his swimming rhythm hadn’t changed.
I knew a ghost was near. My hands felt suddenly frostbitten, my teeth chattered, and the glass nearest me fogged. Sweat trickled down my neck and my lungs felt like they were caught in a trash compactor.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to stop the panic curdling my stomach. Except for scaring the crap out of me, the last time I had seen the ghost it had only tried to relay a message to me; before that it had saved me from the lightning. My pulse picked up when I also remembered it had attacked me and Brent. My ghost seemed to have conflicting agendas. One moment it was trying to kill me and the next it was saving me. It didn’t make any sense to me. I bit my lip as I thought back to Vovó’s teachings. She had always said there were several kinds of spirits: some meant to hurt us, others were trying to communicate with us, a few were confused and could become violent, and some just messed with people because they were bored.
I mulled over the idea of it being a confused ghost, but that didn’t seem to fit. The encounter in my room was different from the one in the shower— well, except the scaring me part. There had even been a distinct smell in each case. What had attacked me had been the dark mist, smelling of chlorine, and what I had seen recently had seemed lighter, with an almost alluring scent. My nose immediately started sniffing for the chlorinated smell and it was faintly there, but no more than it had been when I first walked into the room. Warring with the chemical smell was another scent, one that felt like a hug from an old friend.
An idea formed in my mind, one so obvious that I deserved a smack to my head for not thinking it sooner. There were two ghosts. There had been more than a few tragic deaths here; it would stand to reason there could be more than one spirit haunting the place.
The first ghost seemed threatening, out to hurt me, but the second seemed more complex. I remembered the words I had heard this afternoon asking if I had received the messages. Maybe the second spirit was simply trying to communicate with me. It had told me not to trust Brent, but I wasn’t going to follow that blindly. Vovó had mentioned that bored ghosts weren’t above lying or toying with people’s emotions to amuse themselves.
I gnawed on the inside of my cheek deciding what to do. Maybe if I opened a line of dialogue with the ghost and listened to what it had to say, it would leave me alone or move on.
“W-What do you want?” I stuttered, wrapping my arms around myself. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but nothing happened. I stomped my feet, rubbing my hands together and blowing on them.
Something smacked the glass beside me, startling me. A large handprint shaped in the moisture on the window, and letters slowly formed beside it.
Warn you
All my joints felt rubbery, as I gasped out, “Warn me about what?”
Danger
“What’s dangerous? Who’s in danger?” I whispered, clasping my fingers together, my shoulder slick against the moist glass.
Not Me
What did that mean? Was the ghost telling me I was in danger? Or was the ghost letting me know he wasn’t dangerous? I rubbed my head; maybe I needed to ask better questions. Before I could ask another one, the glass and the temperature instantly reverted to the way they had been. The pounding of feet on the floor behind me drew my eyes to a wet Brent who was hurrying over.
“I thought you left,” he said stopping close to me, the dripping water creating a puddle at his feet.
“I was going to.” I cast a nervous glance over my shoulder, still uneasy about having a co
nversation with a ghost. “I better get back. I’m behind on my Bio homework,” I explained, spinning to leave.
He reached out but pulled short of touching me, retracting his hand quickly, a strange gleam in his eye. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I gulped before answering. “I’m good.”
I flashed him a big smile as I retreated from the pool house.
****
On the way back to my dorm my thoughts were befuddled. I wished my Vovó wasn’t in another country; I could really use her guidance. I was starting to regret not having spent much time gleaning information from her the way Cherie had over the years. That’s when I realized that even though I didn’t have Vovó, I had Cherie and her surplus of knowledge, and not only would she believe me, she also knew Pendrell’s paranormal history.
When I burst into my room I found Cherie laying on her bed, her feet in the air, studying. She took one look at me and rose to her knees knowing I had something big to tell her.
Suddenly nervous, I gulped, dropping onto my bed before revealing my two ghosts theory. I brought her up to speed on everything: the mist, the footprints, the steamy bathroom, being followed, not being able to control my astral projection, and finally my conversation with the ghost. The only thing I held back was Brent’s ability to astral project; that was his secret, not mine. Cherie’s eyes grew wide taking in every detail, the rosy color in her cheeks fading.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this earlier?”
Hanging my head in shame, I admitted, “I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me.”
Cherie’s voice was quiet. “Why would you think that?”
“My whole life people thought Vovó was crazy. I know you wanted to believe in all of this . . . but wanting to believe and actually believing it are two different things.” I clutched my pillow to my chest as I asked the important question. “Do you believe me?”
“Every single word.” Cherie reached out and ruffled my hair.
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