Beth and Brenda glanced at each other and nodded.
“Then I think we can go,” Brenda said. “I don’t want to dwell on that day anymore.”
Beth reached out and clasped her hand. “It’s over. Come on. Let’s go to the park.”
The Birch Street Badasses disappeared.
Everything was quiet and still and…normal.
Well, normal except for the haze of smoke that was starting to burn my eyes a little.
“Are they gone?” Coach Frucile asked.
I nodded. “We did it. No more haunted locker room.”
Not gonna lie—I felt pretty freakin’ proud of myself for handling the situation the way I did. Okay, so Coach Frucile helped. A little.
I had exactly three seconds to reflect on my victory before the fire alarm started shrieking, and the emergency sprinklers overhead switched on, drenching us and putting out what was left of the smudge sticks. The smoke began to dissipate, but there’d still be a lot about that moment to explain away to the authorities.
“You go,” Coach Frucile said, as though she’d read my mind. “I’ll take care of this.”
I ran to retrieve my bag from her office, and tried not to let it get too wet from the sprinklers on my way out.
“Hey!” I called from the main doorway.
Coach Frucile was heading to her office, presumably to call the front office about the “malfunctioning” alarm.
“What?”
“That thing you said before? The office aide position? I’m totally taking you up on that.”
“Fair enough!”
Oh, awesome. Not only had I just cleared out my first serious haunting, but I’d also found a legit way to get out of gym class.
The fire alarm shut off as I squelched into the hall, shoving my wet hair out of my face. It wasn’t until then that I remembered Tim. He’d been out here this whole time, but there was no sign of him now. I headed to the nearest exit to look for him.
He was waiting outside, on one of the covered walkways, and he looked even paler than usual. When he saw me, he ran up and hugged me so violently that the impact knocked the sunglasses right off his head.
“Omigod! You’re okay!”
“Yeah. And now you’re all wet.”
“I don’t care. I was so freaking out when the fire alarm went off! What happened? Your face is bleeding!”
“Just a scratch. No big deal.” I couldn’t imagine what I looked like—soaked through and wild-eyed with blood on my face, probably. “I’ll tell you the whole story, but let’s go somewhere I can dry off first. Maybe we can get up on the roof.”
“Okay, but…” He paused, looking even more worried. “First I have something to tell you. Don’t get mad, okay?” He handed back my cell, an expression of apology on his face.
“Oh God, Tim, you didn’t.” I checked the phone’s record of outgoing calls.
“I said I was freaking out, okay? I peeked in but I didn’t see you anywhere, and it was like you disappeared, and then the alarm went off, and I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You actually called my dad? What did you tell him?”
“Um, kind of…everything.”
I stared at him in dismay. Then I looked up and saw Dad rushing through the central courtyard, a panicked expression on his face. He spotted me, and his expression turned to relief, followed by total anger.
Oh crap.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
like a dead body you can’t bear to bury
We drove home in silence, dropping Tim off on the way. Tim, who was always begging to be allowed to ride in the hearse, didn’t even grouse about the fact that Dad arrived in his little sedan instead. The look on Dad’s face made it clear he wasn’t in the mood to put up with complaints.
At home, Dad told me to dry off, change my clothes, and wash my face. I blotted tenderly at the cut on my cheek; it was barely a scratch, but now that I was slightly removed from the situation, I couldn’t think about the fact that a ghost had drawn my blood without shivering a little. Then I met Dad back in the kitchen. Dad wasn’t usually much of a lecturer, but I could tell today would be an exception.
Tim had totally spilled the beans. He was so freaked out when the fire alarm went off that he had called Dad and started babbling about ghosts and hell gates and satanic rituals. He let it slip that I’d found Mom’s equipment, and he said I’d gone missing during an investigation.
I always figured Dad would be pissed if he found out what I was doing. What I didn’t realize was that it would also terrify him.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Dad paced over the faded linoleum in the tiny kitchen while I watched from a stool at the breakfast bar.
“Dad, just going near that room every morning was driving me nuts! Someone had to do something. I told you how much I hated gym!”
He ran his hands back through his mussed hair. It had always been black like mine, but now I realized how much gray had appeared at his temples. “I thought you were afraid of volleyballs, not of poltergeists in the showers!”
“I was with Coach Frucile, and I was careful!”
“You put yourself in danger, Violet! Why didn’t you come to me about this? Why didn’t you tell me?”
I glared. “You never want to hear about ghost stuff anymore. You just ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist.”
He stroked a hand over his beard, something he always did when he was anxious. “I would’ve tried to help you.”
“You would’ve told me to stay away from it and ignore it. It’s what you do!”
“It’s safer that way!”
“I can’t stay totally safe for the rest of my life, Dad. Sometimes I’m going to have to take risks.”
“You think I don’t realize that, now that I have ghosts flinging trays at me in the embalming room? None of that happened until you came back here full-time, and the longer you’re around, the worse it gets.”
As soon as he said it, his mouth clamped shut like he thought he could trap his words inside. But it was too late. I steeled myself, refusing to cry while he backtracked.
“All I mean is that you need to know you can come to me if you’re having trouble, no matter what kind of trouble it is.”
“I bet,” I muttered, staring at the scuffed floor.
“Also,” he said, “I’m not happy that you went behind my back and snooped through my things.”
“They weren’t your things. They were Mom’s, and she’d want me to have them.”
“She sure as hell wouldn’t want you putting yourself in danger over something like this. There were reasons she never went on investigations alone, Violet. It’s not safe.”
“She told me it was!”
“She lied, Violet.”
I thought back to that conversation I’d had with Mom about Sabrina Brightstar.
“Yeah, well, she also told me sometimes people have reasons for lying, and it’s easier to cut them some slack when you know why they did it.”
“That may be so, but it doesn’t change the fact that you put yourself in danger. Thank goodness your coach was there. That was just good luck. Your mother wouldn’t want you doing this. She never knew what she might encounter during an investigation, and she was smart enough not to risk finding out on her own.”
“What, so now I’m stupid?”
“No, of course not.” Dad’s tone went all weary and exasperated. “But you don’t have any experience with this kind of thing.”
“Because nobody will help me!”
“Is that why you’ve been talking to Sabrina Brightstar?”
“What? How’d you know about that?”
“Tim mentioned it.”
Oh, for Pete’s sake. Tim really had spilled everything.
“No, that’s not why. And I haven’t been ‘talking’ to her, Dad. I wanted to know if she could tell me anything about Mom, so I tracked her down and e-mailed her once. That’s it. I didn’t answer her because I didn’t like what she had to s
ay.”
“About me?”
“Yeah.” It was kind of hard to look at him just then, so I concentrated on the speckles in the gray Formica countertop. “All I wanted was to learn about Mom. Because you won’t tell me anything. Not about her, not about that night.” I finally glanced up. “You’ve been keeping Mom’s stuff in a coffin. Will you think about that for a minute? You can’t bear to look at any of it, but you can’t bear to toss it, either, so you lock it up like a dead body you can’t bear to bury. You’ve never let go of her.”
“How could I?” he asked. “Your mom was the love of my life. How could I ever let her go?”
Dad sat next to me at the breakfast bar. His face was lined and tired; I had never seen him look so old, and it scared me.
“She wouldn’t want you to live like this.”
“But she’s not here to say so. Don’t you understand, Violet, everything we did—every one of those investigations—they were all for her. It was her passion, and I got pulled in because she was my passion. Before then, I’d been content thinking nothing existed beyond this world and the solid things in it. I didn’t believe in an afterlife. I thought the idea of ghosts was complete nonsense. Then your mom came along and made me question that, and I went along with what she wanted because I loved her. If I’d held back, if I’d been more honest about how skeptical I was, maybe I could’ve dissuaded her from all those investigations. From starting the team. If I’d done that, we wouldn’t have gone to Riley Island that night, and—”
“You can’t do that to yourself,” I said, giving his arm a squeeze.
“I do that to myself every single day. And when I see you getting involved in the same thing…”
“You’re afraid I’ll get hurt, too.”
“Or worse. And there’s another reason I’ve never wanted to talk about this stuff.”
I already knew. I’d guessed long ago.
“If I just pretend you don’t have these abilities, I don’t have to think about the fact that you might be able to see her.” He looked miserable. “Knowing she was around but not being able to see her or feel her or talk to her…I couldn’t do it.”
“She’s not here, Dad. I’ve never seen her. She probably moved on a long time ago.”
He made a weird, strangled kind of sniffling noise. It was one of those noises you never want to hear, not from your dad.
We sat in silence for a few moments. Then I found my words again.
“Why’d she lie to me?”
“She didn’t want you to grow up afraid. She thought that if she told you ghosts were harmless you’d feel safe. I didn’t agree with her decision, but she insisted on it. You were so little. She always said she’d explain when you were older. She thought she could protect you from anything bad until then. She thought there’d be time.”
“And you didn’t think this was something I should’ve been told at some point?” I asked, staring at him. I mean, holy crap. I’d been strolling around without a care all this time, sure that the things I saw and sensed couldn’t possibly hurt me.
“You want the truth?”
“It would be nice, yeah.” A little late, maybe, but nice all the same.
“I hoped you’d grow out of the whole thing. I thought all the time you spent with your aunt Thelma would encourage that.”
“Yeah, well, she wasn’t exactly ghost-friendly. But how could you think I’d just snap out of it, like it’s a bad habit or something? Seeing ghosts isn’t exactly the same thing as biting my nails.”
“I know that now. But you almost never mentioned it, so I thought maybe I was right.”
“I never mentioned it because you didn’t want to hear about it. Neither did Aunt Thelma. No one wanted to hear about it, so I learned to keep it to myself. And now…now I don’t know what to think, Dad. There’s so much I don’t know. You won’t even talk about that night.”
He sighed, rubbing a hand over his eyes like he had a headache. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” I said.
“All right. The investigation was a wreck. The storm, the lightning…The conditions threw off my readings, and your mom wasn’t having any luck getting in touch with James or Abigail Riley. Bryan lasted all of five minutes before he went skulking back to the car, and Sabrina went off by herself in one direction while your mom and I went in the other. We agreed to meet in twenty minutes in the upstairs hall, near the staircase.
“After about fifteen minutes, your mom decided the night was a bust, and she and I went to wait by the staircase. I…I wish I knew exactly what happened next. I was standing near your mom, less than two feet away. A flash of lightning blinded me for a second, and then I heard these…thumps going down the staircase. If I’d been paying better attention, maybe…I don’t know.
“That’s it, kiddo. I don’t know what kind of revelation you were hoping for. Your mom fell. It was all very fast. I don’t even think she had time to realize she’d fallen before she died. Sabrina saw everything from down the hall, but the lightning probably disoriented her. She thought she saw someone push your mother, and I was the only one close enough to do so.
“We called 911. The police talked to me, and to Sabrina. You know what she told them.”
“So you’re sure Mom just tripped?”
“Of course.”
“How do you know a ghost didn’t push her? I mean, I didn’t have much time to learn about this stuff from her, and now you’re telling me some of what she did teach me was wrong anyway. I just…” My voice gave out, and I couldn’t explain anymore. I needed to be alone; I needed to think. I stalked to my room and slammed the door.
Great. The room was freezing, and Buster was merrily tossing a few stuffed animals around the room. Stupid oblivious pseudo-poltergeist. A stuffed pig bounced off my arm; Buster gave a playful scream and pulled my hair.
“GET OUT!” I yelled. “JUST GET THE HELL OUT!”
With a startled, hurt whine, Buster left, taking the cold with him.
It wasn’t fair. I was questioning everything I thought I knew about ghosts, everything Mom had ever told me. Dad didn’t want me doing anything on my own, but he wasn’t offering to help me investigate, either.
I needed Mom. I needed to talk to her. I deserved that much.
I thought about the house on Riley Island. I couldn’t help thinking that some of the answers I needed were in that house. Would I find the ghost of James Riley, Jr.? An echo of the night Mom died? Either way, maybe I’d be able to use what I’d learned from the locker-room investigation to help put the mystery of Mom’s death to rest.
A little online research told me that psychic echoes are often strongest on the anniversary of the inciting occurrence. The Logan Street investigation had taken place on December second, which was only two weeks away. I’d have to work quickly if I was going to find a way to get to Riley Island and finish Mom’s investigation.
And I was more determined than ever to do both.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
the skeptical emerson bean
Because Coach Frucile truly loved gym, I was kind of nervous she’d change her mind and insist my physical fitness was more important than keeping her word about that student aide position. Just because we’d temporarily been allies didn’t mean we were suddenly best friends forever.
Still, I hoped she’d make good on her promise, so I wore my normal uniform instead of my gym clothes to school the next morning. She took a long look at the scratch on my face, shook her head a little, and told me to report to the main office. Fifteen years’ worth of school sports records—boring things like participant medical records and release forms—were being held there in a storage room, messily boxed and waiting to be scanned, digitized, and electronically filed. The job promised to be tedious, but after yesterday, I more than welcomed a little boredom. I was ready to file those papers until my fingers fell off.
The secretary showed me to a storage room full of boxes. Each box was full of old files and pap
ers; it all seemed like a terrific fire hazard. There was a desk in one corner with a computer and a scanner; a tall boy stood nearby, painstakingly positioning a sheet of paper on the scanning bed.
“We’ve had another student aide working in here for a few weeks,” the secretary said. “He’ll show you what needs to be done.” She looked toward the tall boy. “Emerson?”
“Just a minute, Ms. Aspen,” the boy said.
Ms. Aspen—I’d always just thought of her as the unfriendly secretary; I’d never considered that she might actually have a name—gestured toward me.
“You’ve got help,” she told Emerson. “Show Violet what to do.” Then she left us to our filing.
When Emerson was satisfied the paper was absolutely straight, he closed the scanner and clicked something on the computer. Then he walked over, nearly tripping on a pile of papers on the way, and stuck out his hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Emerson Bean.”
Emerson Bean…Of course! The guy whose name I’d erased on the guidance sign-up sheet the first day of school. He wasn’t exactly puffing a pipe in his study, but the name still fit. Emerson Bean was the biggest geek I’d ever seen. Rectangular glasses balanced crookedly on his nose; his straight dark hair was slicked back from his large forehead; his regulation khakis had neat, straight creases running down the front of each leg. And now he was offering his hand like I was supposed to shake it. Does anyone under the age of twenty actually do that?
Whatever. I could be polite, especially since I’d apparently be spending first period with this guy through January.
I shook his hand. “Violet Addison.”
At first he smiled. Then his eyes widened, and he blurted, “Oh! Spookygirl!” A blush spread over his lightly freckled cheeks, and he started to stammer. “I—What I meant was–”
“My reputation precedes me,” I muttered. The void was apparently spreading my funeral home connection and my drawing class behavior far and wide. “Don’t worry about it.”
Emerson Bean cleared his throat. “Not that I believe in any of that, of course.”
Spookygirl: Paranormal Investigator Page 14