by Apryl Baker
In walks Officer Dan and in street clothes no less. He was more cop-ish in his blues, but he looks so normal in regular jeans and a tee-shirt. What’s he up to? The bag he’s carrying is giving off heavenly aromas that has my mouth watering and distracts me. I’m starving. I eye his Starbucks cup with just a little envy. I can’t afford the darned things, but their caramel macchiato is my secret passion. It makes my taste buds understand the word lust. Ohmygosh, if that’s what he has, I am going to tackle him, wires and all.
Mrs. Olson comes in right behind him, looking worried. As startled as I am to see Officer Dan, I’m downright shocked to see Mrs. O. She’s wearing the same clothes she had on last night and I can’t stop the question from stumbling out. “Did you stay last night?”
“Of course I stayed, Mattie,” came her tired reply. “You were sick and needed me. I wasn’t leaving you here by yourself.”
Wow. No one has ever done that for me before. Mrs. Olson spent all night here with me? Because she thought I needed her? I felt so bad for yelling earlier.
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about Sally,” Mrs. O tells me. “I should have listened to you.”
Well duh, but I’m still feeling all warm and tingly from her caring enough to stay, so I keep my smart reply to myself.
“I’m sorry too,” I say instead. “I shouldn’t have accused you of being a bad parent.” There, I apologized.
A smile breaks out across her face and she smoothes hair away from my forehead. “That’s okay, Mattie. You were just worried. I forgive you. Now I have to call and check on the kids.” She turns to Officer Dan, the warning clear on her face. “Do not upset her.”
He nods and takes the same seat he’d been in last night. Breakfast rolls in on a cart and I make a face at the runny eggs and toast on my tray. The only salvageable item is the orange juice. I give him a nasty look when he bites into his steamy pastry. My stomach growls and I scowl. He laughs at me and takes a sip of that wonderful coffee.
“What, you decided to torture me today?” I snarl, eyeing his goodies with severe envy. He has yet to say a word. What’s he doing here anyway?
“Possibly.”
He says it so dead-pan. How do cops do that? Develop a voice with no emotion? It’s wrong, that’s what it is. And evil.
“Then you can just march yourself right back out of here.”
“I thought you might like to know what’s going on with Sally’s case.”
Well that is the one thing guaranteed to make me keep a zip tie on my notoriously smart mouth. I need to know what’s going on with Sally. He won’t meet my eyes and my small spark of hope plummets. They weren’t going to look for her, not really.
“Runaway, right?” I ask sourly. “She’s just another foster brat that ran away because she couldn’t appreciate what she had.”
He sighs heavily. It sounds odd coming from him. No one his age should know how to make that kind of sound.
“Yeah,” he nods. “That’s the official report. Your friend has a history of running away from her foster homes. The Olsons are her third one this year.”
“Well, thanks for nothing, Officer Dan.” My voice drips with sarcasm.
“You said last night…”
“I don’t remember what I said last night,” I cut him off. No way do I need him asking me questions that might make me look crazier than I already do. “The joy of drugs, ya know?” At least I hope it was drugs that made my lips loose.
“You said she was shot,” he continues stubbornly.
“Did I?”
“Why did you say that, Mattie?” His eyes burn into mine, daring me to lie to him. Which I happily do.
“No clue.”
“Since you have no clue, then I guess she’s gonna get classified as another bratty foster kid who ran away. Happens every day.” He stands and gathers his things.
Dang it. He called my bluff. “Wait. Did you check to see where Mr. Olson was?”
“I did this morning. He went into work a little after seven last night and left when your foster mother called him to stay with the kids so she could come to the hospital with you.”
He’d been gone before I left for the party. Well, there went that idea. “Did you look in her room?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Was her purse still there? The money she hides in a box under her clothes folded on the top shelf in her closet still safely hidden away? Did it look like she’d taken any clothes with her when she left? I’ll bet if you bother to look, the only thing that’ll be missing is her nightshirt.”
He frowns. “We gave it a once over.”
“My, aren’t you the top of the class, Officer Dan.” That earns me a glare. “I’m just sixteen and not a cop and even I know to do more than just peek.”
The glare turns even hotter. Not my fault he goofed up.
“Alright, smartass, how did you know she was missing?”
Oh, not nice turning the tables there. Sneaky and lippy. “I already told you…”
“Yeah, I know,” he cuts me off. “You just had a feeling.” He put a bit of his own sarcasm on the word. “That’s not gonna cut it, Mattie. If you want me to help you, you have to be straight with me.”
I glare back. “How old are you, anyway? You can’t be much older than me.”
He laughs. “I’m old enough to be a cop.”
“Now who’s not being straight with me?”
“I’m twenty,” he says, a twinkle back in his eyes. “I’m working as a cop while I get my degree in forensic science at UNC.”
“Forensic science and you didn’t give Sally’s room more than a look?” I laugh harshly which earns me yet another look meant to quell me into silence. He so does not know me.
“Look, I’m trying to help you, but I can’t if you don’t stop being a brat yourself and tell me the truth. If you really want to help Sally, then you’ll stop acting like a two year old in time-out.”
Now that’s uncalled for, but it does shut me up for a minute.
“Why?” I ask. “She’s already been written off, so why do you care?”
“Because I believe you, Mattie.” He sits back down. “When we saw you last night, you were scared, more scared than I’ve ever seen anyone. I don’t know why, but I think it has something to do with Sally.”
I stay quiet. Officer Dan is going to make a good cop. Terrified out of my mind summed up what I felt last night.
“Look, I get you don’t trust anyone. I’m not sure I would either if I grew up in foster care, but you have to trust someone sometime. I want to help you, but you have to give me a little leap of faith here. Tell me why you think she was shot.”
“Trust you?” I snort. “You come in here dressed all normal and what, I’m just supposed to bond with you? Trust is earned, Officer Dan, and I don’t know you.”
He frowns. “I don’t know what to tell you, Mattie, except that I’m the only person willing to listen to you, to believe you. You have to trust somebody sometime.”
I sigh. He’s right, I don’t trust people. Why should I? No one ever did me any favors. The earnest light shining out of this big old puppy-dog eyes of his makes me pause. I almost feel like I can trust him. The big question is do I tell him? Will it make him stop believing something’s wrong and chalk Sally up to the mass of runaways instead? I don’t know.
“You won’t believe me,” I say at last.
“Why won’t I believe you?”
“Because it’s crazy.” I see dead people… yup, crazy doesn’t even begin to describe what he’ll think.
“Why don’t you try me and find out? It can’t hurt. She’s already been reported as a potential runaway. Nothing you say can hurt Sally right now, it can only help her.”
Well, he did have a point there. All he’d do is go away thinking I need to be locked up in the nut house.
“Okay, Officer Dan, I’ll tell you.” I swallow thickly, not sure why I’m telling him anything. My tongue seems to get loose around him and I do
n’t understand it, but I’m willing to try if it means helping Sally. Like he said, I have to trust somebody sometime and why not a person in a position to help me? Here goes.
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
Chapter Seven
He stares at me for the longest time. My question seems to erase all that police training of his. I can see the struggle in his eyes. He can’t quite figure out if I’m pulling his leg or not. His face shows a mix of surprise and wariness. Now he knows he’s dealing with a chick with a few loose screws, or so he thinks. I knew this wasn’t a good idea.
“Forget it,” I mumble and try to duck my head. I shouldn’t have said anything. Why I did is beyond me. It was all that trust talk. For some obscure reason, his eyes make me trust him. The warmth and honesty in them is hazardous for those of us keeping secrets.
“Ghosts?” he asks.
“Never mind.”
“Don’t get all sullen and pouty.”
“I’m not!” I deny. Well, I am, but I’m not fessing up to it. “I just changed my mind is all.”
“Yeah, you are being pouty,” he argues. “Why do you want to know if I believe in ghosts?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Do you have to fight me on every little thing?”
“We’re not fighting.”
“Really?” He sounds so skeptical, it makes me laugh.
“Trust me, Officer Dan, when we fight, you’ll know it.”
He sighs. “Mattie, what do ghosts have to do with Sally?”
It’s my turn to sigh. “I told you that you wouldn’t believe me.”
“How can I not believe you when you haven’t told me anything?” he almost shouts. His face resembles a small thundercloud. I shouldn’t exasperate him. Not that I blame him for his impatience. I have that effect on almost everyone.
“Answer the question, then. Do you believe in ghosts?”
“No,” he says. “I don’t believe in them, but I’m guessing you do?”
“I wish I didn’t.” I pick at my breakfast. “I see them.”
“You see… ghosts?”
Poor Officer Dan. He’s torn between expressions of disbelief and anger. He thinks I’m making all this up. I only wish things could be that simple.
“Yeah, I have since I was little, since my mom…”
“Your mom?”
I shut my mouth before I say anything else. What is it about this guy that makes me say way more than I ever intend to? Now, he’s gonna go try to dig through my files. Oh crap. Might as well tell him. He’ll find out anyway; he has that same resourcefulness I have. I can tell because he didn’t just write off Sally. That says a lot, especially to me.
“When I was little, my mom tried to kill me and then she killed herself. I lived, she died and then I woke up to start seeing dead people.” I say it all in a rush and then wait for his reaction.
He opens his mouth, and then closes it. I can sympathize; after all, who really knows what to say to that? It’s what I expect. There’s not much that can be said.
“So… you see ghosts?”
Smart guy. He goes with the dead people instead of a murdering mother. I take a deep breath, only now realizing how shaky I am. It’s not every day I open up to people about my ability, let alone to a complete stranger. Will he laugh? If he does, I swear, I’ll beat him bloody.
“Yup, dead people.” I sit up a little more in the bed and focus on the runny eggs instead of on Officer Dan. It’s easier if I don’t look at him. I don’t know why, but it’s important to me that he believes me. Sally needs him to believe, but so do I. It’s those danged eyes of his. “Since I was five,” I continue. “I woke up after… after everything and the first thing I saw was an old man. He was shuffling around, looking lost until he saw me and figured out I could see him. I couldn’t talk, I had tubes down my throat, but he kept yelling for me to help him. None of the nurses or doctors paid him any attention when he tried to talk to them. Someone else came in, a woman, who told him no one could hear him, that he was dead. Then she took him somewhere.”
“You must have been pretty scared,” Dan offers.
My eyes shoot up to his. He isn’t making fun of me or telling me I’m crazy. Granted, I can’t figure out what he’s thinking as his cop face is firmly back in place. Not a lot I can do about that. “Yeah,” I whisper, remembering that awful day. Not my finest hour. I was scared, alone, and wanting my mommy. I still wake up like that every day, minus the mommy part.
“I’m sorry,” Dan says softly.
“Yeah, well,” I shrug and blink back tears. I need to get him out of here fast. He’s not good for my defense system. “That’s how I got introduced to the world of the spooks.”
“So do you see them all the time or just sometimes?”
“They pop up randomly. Sometimes I bump into them, and sometimes they find me.”
“What do they want?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I ignore them. If I do, then they usually go away.”
“Why do you ignore them?”
“Do I really look like I want to be Ghost Girl? No one else can see them and if I talk to them, it looks like I’m talking to myself. I don’t want to talk to them either. I’ve ignored them for as far back as I can remember. If it wasn’t for Sally, I wouldn’t be talking to them now.”
“So a ghost told you Sally was shot?”
“No,” I sigh. “Sally did.”
He frowns. “Are you telling me that Sally’s ghost told you she was shot?”
“You don’t believe me.” I slouch as best I can in the bed and yank the blankets up, pouting. I should have known better than to trust him, but those eyes of his tricked me.
“I think you believe it,” he sighs.
“But you don’t.”
“Look, Mattie…”
“No,” I cut him off. “I shouldn’t have told you. Will you leave now?” I sniff. Am I really crying? I haven’t cried since I was nine when my foster dad flushed Mr. Goldfish down the toilet because I back-talked him.
There was a knock at the door and Jake pokes his head in. He gives Officer Dan a once over and then frowns.
“Hey,” he says. “I dropped by to check on you this morning after you freaked out last night, but Mr. Olson said you were in the hospital. Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?”
“Sorry,” I mumble. “I just really, really needed to get home. I didn’t mean to make you miss the party.”
“I don’t care about the party, Matts.” Then Jake gives me that knee-melty smile. “If you were sick you should have said something and I would’ve brought you home sooner.”
I smile back at him. He is so unlike anyone I’ve ever dated – like he seems to really care about me. He doesn’t push, doesn’t ask me to do things I’m not comfortable with and is genuinely nice. Not the guy I typically attract.
He holds up a bag… ohmygosh… do I smell something good? “I thought you might want something to eat besides hospital food. I grabbed you a cinnamon roll on the way in. I had my appendix out last year in this place. I remember that the food was bland and tasted like sandpaper.”
I give Officer Dan a meaningful glare that says: See, Jake brings me food. Evil Dan on the other hand, brought food to eat in front of me and never offered to share, the torturer. The smell wafting from the bag Jake sets on my bedside table is making me drool.
“I’m Jake Owens,” Jake tells Dan. “You are?”
“I’m Officer Dan Richards,” Dan replied. “One of Mattie’s foster sisters disappeared last night and I’m doing a follow up interview with her.”
“Oh.” Jake looks at me uncertainly.
“Officer Dan was just leaving,” I say pointedly. I’m still smarting from him not believing me.
“Mattie,” Officer Dan looks directly into my eyes. “It’s not that I don’t want to believe you, it’s just that, well…”
I give him the smile I’m known for, the one that says ‘Back the hell off and s
tay the hell away from me.’ “Good-bye, Officer Dan.”
“If you had some proof, Mattie, it would be different…”
Proof that I can see ghosts? I want to laugh out loud. How can I give him proof when only I can see them? “Well, fudgepops…”
“Fudgepops?” Both Jake and Officer Dan ask in unison and I turn scarlet. Why did I say that out loud? I try not to cuss. It’s one of the things I picked up in the one-and-only church I’ve been to in my life. The Sunday school teacher pounded it into our head and I guess it just stuck. Fudgepops is my substitute for a curse word. Childish, I know and I’m not sure how it became the substitute word, but there it is.
“Never mind that,” I snap at them, embarrassed. I think I know how to give Officer Dan his proof. Mary. The ghost who’d been here before. He could check her out and see I was telling the truth. “My friend Mary was on her way to see her boyfriend Jimmy. She took her bike to his house, but it rained and she had an accident. Talk to her if you want proof.”
I hope Officer Dan is smart enough to figure out what I’m trying to tell him. No way am I talking about ghosts in front of Jake. Whoa… now, look how Dan reacted. Uh-uh, not gonna happen in this lifetime.
“Is Mary a g–”
“Good friend! Yes!” I nearly shout, cutting him off before he can say the word. Geez, you’d think he’d know not to blurt stuff like that. I mean seriously, he’s a cop!
Officer Dan regards me silently for a minute, then understanding dawns on his face and he nods. “I’ll do that, Mattie. Jake, nice to meet you. Don’t keep her too long. She’s tired.”
“Jake?” I grouch. “You’re the one who’s been harassing me for the last hour, Officer Dan.”
“Get some rest, Mattie.” Dan stands and gives Jake a nod before leaving.
“Sounds like you’ve had quite a night,” Jake slides into the chair Officer Dan just vacated.
“Yeah,” I nod and yawn. I am tired, but glad Jake came by. I was worried last night he’d dump me after my crazy behavior.
“What happened?”
“Sally turned up missing and I demanded they call the cops.” Okay, so I fudge the truth just a little. I don’t need Jake thinking I’m crazy, too. “I got a really nasty migraine and passed out. Mrs. Olson freaked and brought me to the hospital.”