"What do you mean? What are you talking about?" Abby stopped playing the piano and clasped her hands together.
"You keep going back. You've traveled through time every day for three hundred years! Regular people don't do that, Abby." She remembered what Mrs. Wainwright had said about people having no choice—they just had to live their lives, day to day. "Listen, Abby. This is the way I can help you." And she searched for the right words to explain.
Abby had Willow's gift and so was magically saved from death. Moved ahead in time, given another chance to live—but with one magical ability. She could choose to return to the place where she died. She had the choice: to live in her new present, or to go back and be a ghost. "Do you see what I mean?" asked Miranda. "It's your choice. But you miss your family and William so much, you haven't been able to accept Willow's gift properly. And I bet that's why you've never grown up in all this time."
"Are you trying to say that all my problems are in my head?" Abby's voice came out a yelp. "That all this time, if I had wanted not to be a ghost, I just had to stop going back to the ruin?"
"Maybe wanting to go back is normal," Miranda mused. "But maybe actually going back is the problem. Everybody misses people who have died. But they just have to carry on with their own lives. In the present." She shook her dark curls. "I know, it sounds too simple. But I think it's right." She felt shivery with the excitement of her theory. The phoenix had been a gift of new life, but would never work properly unless Abby accepted the new and did not return to the old.
Abby fumbled in her back pocket and withdrew the statue. "So if I choose to live," she said very slowly, turning the figure over in her palm, "then that means I must never ever, ever go back to my own time again?"
Miranda remained silent.
"But that would be so hard." Abby shook her head. "You have no idea."
"Going back is hard on you, anyway."
"I hate being a ghost," Abby murmured.
"And here you're not a ghost, don't you see?" Miranda clenched her fists in frustration. "It's only in 1693 that you're a ghost. And you've haunted that ruin for years and years and years." She caught her breath. "Abby! Maybe that's why the vacant lot next to the Prindle House is said to be haunted. It's haunted by you!"
Abby closed her eyes.
"It's why the phoenix linked us up," Miranda said. "It isn't what we thought. I'm not supposed to change the past at all. But maybe I can help you change your future."
"But you can't keep me from going back," Abby objected. "I can be gone in a second."
"Willpower," said Miranda succinctly. "I can help you remember why you don't want to go back. Why you want to choose life. Come on, promise me now. Promise you will never, ever go back to the ruin again."
Abby sighed. "Oh, Mandy. Choosing life means going on and on and on. That isn't real, either. It isn't normal."
"But if you stop being a ghost at the ruin, I think you'll grow up at last."
"How?" Abby's voice rose eagerly.
Miranda smiled cagily, suddenly happy. "Just promise not to go back. Okay? For at least a week or two. Then we'll know."
"You mean we'll have to wait and see if I grow up, right? But that will take a long time—years and years. More than a few weeks."
Miranda's grin was true and friendly. "Just wait."
Chapter Eighteen
MIRANDA WATCHED ABBY carefully over the next week, but the two girls did not talk much. Abby threw herself into her piano playing—but now, surprisingly, Miranda found it did not bring on headaches anymore. The music poured through the house, music from many eras, telling Abby's story though she herself remained silent. When Abby stopped, Miranda got out her flute, badly neglected since Abby moved in, and practiced her pieces for the spring concert. One evening after dinner, while everyone was still in the big kitchen loading the dishwasher and wiping off countertops, Helen and Philip remarked on the calm.
"Or maybe it's not accurate to call it calm here," mused Helen, cocking her eyebrow at the girls. "Not calm, as in 'settled.'"
"More like 'the calm before the storm'?" Philip asked.
"Exactly," confirmed Helen. "Well, girls? What's going on? All this sweetness and light is making me nervous."
"I feel like we're waiting for something to happen," added Philip.
Miranda bit her lip and scrubbed the stove top extra hard. Abby shrugged her shoulders as she put containers of food in the refrigerator.
"Well, whatever it is," Philip said as he and Helen left the kitchen, cups of tea in hand, "I hope the weather holds."
When they were alone, Abby turned to Miranda. "I don't know why," she began with a tentative smile, "but it's been easier, somehow, living with you lately. I—I could get used to it."
Miranda knew that her answer could change the course of Abby's life. It was an awesome responsibility. "It's nice," she agreed carefully. "Now that we're not fighting every second."
Abby's pale face was as serious as Miranda's own. "You know, a lot of the bad stuff was my fault." She put away the last pot and leaned against the cupboard. "I wasn't giving anyone a chance. It's like you said. I've never been happy because I've always been so tied to the past. Lots of times I've stayed with nice families—or had good situations where I was welcome—but whenever I especially like a family or a place, I seem to get meaner than ever. Partly it's because I know I can't stay long, because I can't give them an explanation for why I never change or grow. And partly because I know I'll hurt them when I leave so suddenly. I find myself acting really rotten so that they'll want me to leave. It's easier to go," she said ruefully, "when no one wants you to stay."
"But I do understand why you don't grow. And I bet my parents will, too, when you tell them your story."
"I'm not telling them. And I don't want you to, either. Not yet, anyway." Abby wiped off the table with a damp sponge, then rinsed it out in the sink. "This is the longest time I've ever stayed away from the ruin, you know? I'm doing it for you. To test your theory." She wiped her hands on the dish towel and hung it neatly on the rack. "But I still don't see how you'll know whether I'm growing in only a couple weeks."
"But you promised me you'd wait. You promised!"
"I know, I know. I'm trying my hardest. But if your theory is wrong, and I can't grow up after all, do you think maybe—maybe I can still stay with your family a while? I guess then we'd have to tell your parents the truth—but I bet they'd never believe it."
"Face it, Abby, they'd have to believe you if you lived here for ten years and still looked exactly the same." Ten years? Do I really want her here that long?
"I guess you're right. Do you think they'd cover for me?"
"Cover for you?" asked Miranda, puzzled.
"Well, yes. They'd have to hide me from the rest of the people in Garnet, or else help me find a place to stay somewhere else. You'll be grown up, and there I'll be."
"I know they'd help you all they could." Miranda had a brief flash into a distant future when she herself was grown up and had children. She would bring her children here to visit their grandparents, and there would be Abby, still thirteen-pretending-to-be-fifteen, still with long, pale hair, blue jeans, a smirky smile, leafing through all her old photographs or pounding the piano keys ... unchanged. It was a dreadful thought, and she pushed the vision away. "I think you might be able to stay a while longer," was all she said. "I've been thinking about it."
***
Susannah took Miranda aside after their gym class later that week. "It seems like I never see you anymore since Abby moved in. Are you going crazy? I know I would be."
"Things are getting better." Miranda hesitated. She had not told her friend anything at all about Abby's real predicament, nor would she, though sometimes the secret was hard to hold in.
"It's really weird," Susannah continued. "Abby was such a disaster, but now she's being really friendly. Totally Jekyll and Hyde. How about coming over today after school, both of you? It'll give us a chance to catch up wit
h each other, and Nonny is still going on about how much Abby's picture in the newspaper looks like that girl she knew so many years ago. I think she'd get a kick out of meeting Abby. She's really tied to the past. Comes from being so old, I guess."
For a second Miranda felt confused. How can Sue know Abby's secret? Then she realized her friend was talking about Nonny. "Sounds fun," she said. "Let's ask Abby."
The three girls walked to Susannah's house together and headed straight for the kitchen. Nonny sat at the table, her arm in a cast resting on the tabletop as she tore lettuce leaves with her crooked fingers.
"Hiya, Nonny," said Susannah. She walked around the table and kissed her great-grandmother. "Put your glasses on and look who I've brought to see you."
The old woman fumbled for the glasses that dangled on a fine gold chain about her neck. She perched them on her nose and peered at Miranda. "Hello, Mandy, dear." Then she looked at Abby. "Oh, my, you're the girl from the newspaper photo!"
Abby stared back, spots of red staining her pale cheeks. "Hello, Mrs. Johnston."
"I can't tell you, child, how much you resemble a student I had once. Years ago—oh, decades ago now. You're the spitting image. My stars, it's like seeing a ghost."
Abby murmured a polite response. Susannah and Miranda left them alone while they collected the things needed for brownies: mixing bowl, spoons, milk, egg, chocolate, flour, sugar.... Miranda brought the ingredients to the table where Nonny was leaning toward Abby.
"It seems like only yesterday I was a young teacher," Nonny was saying. "And now here I am, older than the hills." She laughed merrily. "Time just flies, doesn't it?"
"Yes, it does." Abby nodded solemnly. "Whether you're having fun—or not."
Was time flying yet for Abby? Miranda, still holding the mixing bowl, looked at Abby with appraising eyes. If only her hunch were right...
They should know any day now.
"Any day now" turned out to be the very next day. Another snowy Saturday morning and Dan's happy voice in the kitchen brought a sleepy Miranda downstairs quickly. He was sitting with Abby and Helen at the kitchen table, eating stacks of pancakes.
"Mmm!" he greeted her, mouth full. "Lazybones don't git no pancakes."
"Can you believe this weather?" asked Abby. "This is unreal, all this snow. I don't remember a winter like this since—" She broke off, glancing at Helen. "Well, in years."
Miranda laughed. "Years and years and years, perhaps?"
Helen looked puzzled. She slipped a plate of warm pancakes onto the table at Miranda's place. "Well, you three can stay cozy and have fun. But it's business as usual for me. I wish babies took days off for snow." She kissed Miranda and Abby before shrugging on her coat and calling good-bye up the stairs to Philip.
After she left, the kitchen was enveloped in a deep calm. Dan picked up the newspaper and turned to the sports section. Abby carried the empty plates to the sink and began washing up. Miranda watched the heavy flakes fly past the window over the sink, and she thought for a moment she heard a bird's song faintly from the tree outside, but then all was still again. She felt the snow had been falling forever. Suddenly the silence was broken by a shriek from Abby as a steel knife she had cleaned and dried slipped out of her hands. It nicked her foot as it dropped to the floor.
"Oww, oww!" yelped Abby, hopping around the kitchen on her uninjured foot. "I'll never walk again!"
"Melodrama." Dan grinned, pulling her into the nearest chair. "Take your sock off and let's see if you're going to bleed to death."
"Don't stain the linoleum, whatever you do," teased Miranda. "Bloodstains are so hard to get out."
Abby glowered at them both, but stripped off her sock and held her foot up. The cut was no more than a scratch, and Miranda's eyes brushed over it, caught instead by a far more riveting sight.
"Look," she breathed, grabbing Abby's foot in both hands.
"Ouch!" protested Abby. "What are you doing?"
"Don't move the patient," cautioned Dan, crouching at her side. "She may go into shock."
"Oh, cut it out." Abby attempted to pull her foot from Miranda's grasp. "Lay off me, you two. I guess I'll recover after all."
"Look!"
Both Dan and Abby stared at Miranda, then down at Abby's foot.
"What is it?" asked Abby.
"Your foot, Abby. Look."
"That's just a scratch," said Dan. He stood up. "You'll live, won't you, poor girl?"
"No, Dan, look." Miranda pointed to Abby's toe, to the toe that had been bruised for three hundred years.
"Oh my God," murmured Abby. It sounded like a prayer.
"I don't get it." Dan stared at Abby's foot, perplexed. "What are you talking about? It's just an ordinary toe. A little knobbier than most, maybe, but—"
"But a toe," breathed Abby, "without a bruise."
Miranda's eyes locked with Abby's in wonderment. "You know what this means?"
"It means somehow I've changed." She leapt up and wrapped her arms around Miranda. "But I never change."
"How long now since you've been back to the ruin?"
"I don't get it," muttered Dan. "What are you talking about?"
"I told you. I had a theory that she had to stay in the present. She had to accept the gift of the phoenix in order to grow." Miranda examined Abby's toe again. "And I was right!"
"It's been twelve days," Abby told them, her voice shrill with excitement. "No—wait, maybe thirteen? Going on two weeks." Right then and there, Abby undid the button on her jeans, unzipped them and stepped out, flinging them onto a kitchen chair.
Dan gaped at her. "What are you—?"
But Miranda knew, and leaned over to peer at Abby's thigh.
"Oh, Mandy, Mandy, look. Is it really true?" asked Abby, her voice trembling.
And to Miranda's eyes it did seem that the narrow scarlet burn had faded and grown smaller. The skin around the edges was light pink now, not angry red, as if new skin were trying to grow. She nodded. "It's true."
Abby sank wordlessly into a chair.
Miranda handed her back the blue jeans. "You're growing now," she said matter-of-factly. "Changing and growing, just like everybody else." She struggled to keep her voice under control, but she wanted to yell it to the treetops, scattering the snow. Her theory had been right. Abby could live.
Dan collapsed into a chair. "This is amazing. What happens now?"
Abby shrugged, still staring at her bruiseless toe and healing burn. But Miranda spoke confidently. "Now comes the hard part. If it's staying in the present that lets you grow, you have to be sure never, ever to go back. No one else gets to escape to another time when the present is bad news. Why should you? If you want to be real, you have to stick around and deal with it."
"Simple as that, huh?" muttered Dan.
Miranda shook her head, eyes on Abby. "Probably the hardest thing you will ever have to do." She placed a hand on Abby's knee. "But it might be worth it in the end."
"When is the end?" Abby's voice was a whisper.
"Well—"
"When I die, right?"
Miranda was silent. Choosing life meant choosing death, but at least a death not by her own hand. Life and death—each was a part of the other, part of a cycle that no one could avoid. And yet the phoenix had given Abby the chance to choose. She could be a ghost and exist on and on forever—or she could be a real person and grow and change and, yes, eventually die, just like every other person in the world. But choosing would not be easy, even so. What would I choose? Miranda asked herself and was surprised when she could not answer that question right away.
But Abby had had a much longer time to dwell on the meaning of eternal existence. She raised her head and smiled at Miranda and Dan, and Miranda saw tears in the corners of her eyes. "It is simple, after all," Abby murmured. "Even if it does mean I can never go back. I'll go crazy if I have to be stuck for even one more second. I want to grow up. I want to become an old lady—I want to become wise!" She grinned at them trem
ulously through her tears and brushed her pale hair back over her shoulders. "And when I do die—," she hesitated. "When I'm very old and die at last, maybe then I'll see my family again—and William, too."
"Probably you will," said Miranda softly. "Probably they will have been waiting."
Dan went home for lunch, promising to return in the late afternoon. Miranda and Abby donned their boots and skidded down the hill into town. While Miranda had a flute lesson with Mrs. Wainwright, Abby trudged purposefully through the drifts around the common to the stationery store on Main Street. When she returned at the end of Miranda's lesson, she carried a bulky plastic bag.
"Nice to see you again," said Mrs. Wainwright, shaking Abby's thin hand. She turned Abby's hand over in her own. "You have strong fingers, my dear. Do you play the piano?"
"A bit," Abby admitted.
"Does she ever," said Miranda. "She's played for many years."
Mrs. Wainwright looked at Abby appraisingly. "Are you interested in auditioning to play in the spring concert? We have room on the program for one more performer."
Abby started to shake her head, then stopped. A hesitant smile broke across her face. "Yes, I'd like to," she said. "Very much."
"Then let's set up a time for you to come play for me after school, and we'll see what we can do." Mrs. Wainwright went to get her calendar.
"It's been so long since I've felt like throwing myself into things," Abby whispered to Miranda as they waited for the music teacher. "I've almost forgotten how to say yes to something."
After arrangements had been made for Abby's audition, the two girls headed back up the hill. Abby opened her plastic bag to show Miranda her purchase: two large photograph albums bought with the allowance Philip and Helen gave her. "It's time to start filing some things away, I think," she said, and when they arrived at the house she set straight to work. She spent the rest of the afternoon organizing her old pictures into the pages.
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