by Molly Ringle
Love you!
Mom
God. Mom, being a high school teacher, could not let it rest. I knew I should breathe easier now that she had nailed down rec letters from two of my former teachers, but right now I wanted to smash my cell phone with a baseball bat.
I sent her a reply, deleting the remarks in parentheses before hitting “send.”
Hi Mom,
Yes, I got the application stuff for OSU (a.k.a. Cow Dung U) and U of O (a.k.a. U of Bong Smoke), and yes, I submitted both online. Thanks for getting the letters from Wei and Breckridge.
As to Marylhurst, I’m not sure it’s a good fit for me (nor am I sure Tony is a good fit for me, which is why I played Tickle My Knickers with a Scottish bartender), but I’m thinking of Lewis and Clark, which is close by it (and which I have no chance of getting into).
Just for variety, how about UC Berkeley? Warm weather sounds good. (And I have even less chance of getting in there. Still, Mom, aren’t you impressed with my ambitious choice?)
Got to go. Amber’s feeling bummed out and needs some company (to remind her that Edinburgh gravestones do not necessarily know the future). Say hi to her mom for us (and mention that we’re doing our absolute best to keep supernatural forces from killing Amber).
Love,
Eva
No one back home, except Tony, knew about the date on the tombstone. Amber’s mom and the rest of our parents were well aware of her ghost-hunting hobby, but she preferred not to worry them with its latest results. Telling her mom about meeting her dad had gone badly enough; her mom had ranted about what a thoughtless jerk he’d always been, and insinuated that Amber had inherited that trait by not telling her about this Finding Dad plan earlier.
Shannon, Laurence, and I did our best to illuminate the bright side of that for her: namely, if her mom was right, and her dad was just a thoughtless jerk, then Amber needn’t stress herself out over anything he said. We also emphasized, daily and almost hourly, that we didn’t think anything was going to happen on February 19.
Our reassurance apparently didn’t help.
Amber spent every night that week in Laurence’s room, waking up every few hours with a shriek and a flailing of limbs. Lights had to come on, her goose bumps had to be smoothed, and Laurence had to lose more sleep and endure more crying than a new father. To let him get some of that sleep back, I took over many of the daylight hours with her. I didn’t ask Shannon to share the load, since I felt bad stealing any of her limited remaining time with Thomas.
But Amber still did not sleep with Laurence--she confessed this regretfully. After a few days she even told me, “I’m beginning to think February nineteenth is the day I’ll finally get him drunk and into the sack. Happy birthday, sweetie.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I’m telling you, it’s nothing. You were just projecting your feelings for him. It’s like a reflection of what’s important to you. ‘Amber! Don’t forget his birthday!’”
But she couldn’t calm down, because ghosts now plagued her every day.
“I see them in places I never used to,” she said a week before Christmas, sharing coffee with me in the hostel kitchen. “At work. Here. On the streets. I feel the symptoms half the time I’m awake.”
“What kind of things do you see here?” I asked, unsettled despite my skepticism.
“A woman carrying an oil lamp up those stairs in our hall. She walked right through the wall at the top. A man in the basement, loading logs into a wood stove that isn’t there.” She smirked, shaking her head. The bright kitchen lights brought out the dark shadows around her eyes. “Now I’m seeing dead furniture, too.”
We promised to stay within inches of her for the entire day of February nineteenth, midnight to midnight. Several times we promised this. If you die, we die.
“Of course, I don’t think anyone’s going to die,” I grumped to Gil on the phone one evening while clipping my toenails on the bed.
“Sounds a bit loony,” he commiserated. I heard a beep. “Och, hang on. Another call. Ah, it’s Shelly. I’d better take it in case it’s about work. Bye!”
Nice. I stowed my phone and the nail clippers, put my socks back on, and stomped up and down all four floors of the hostel in search of my friends. Shannon was out, and when I peeked into Laurence’s room I found him asleep on his sofa. Amber sprawled across his bed, also asleep, a fashion magazine lying open on her chest. This was how they had been spending the nights, apparently: fully clothed and in separate beds, but not for lack of trying on Amber’s part.
“I’ll be right here, a few feet away, if you need anything,” he had reportedly said to her, “but you’ve got to take this like a grown-up and be able to sleep alone. Besides, I kick in my sleep. You don’t want that, do you?”
He hadn’t kicked when I slept on the sofa with him in October.
I closed his door quietly, walked down the corridor, and found myself smiling at the memory. How cozy and warm it had been, how kind of him to grant me a request he wouldn’t even grant the beautiful Amber.
A stitch of jealousy caught my breath. It was me he should favor, not her. I might not be as smart as Laurence, but I could discuss his favorite subjects a whole lot better than Amber could, and IQ was what he valued in people. And how selfish of him was it to remove himself to Massachusetts after this vacation, and abandon me in Oregon without a sane confidante? I wouldn’t put it past Amber to follow him there, either.
Thoroughly unhappy now, I retreated to the kitchen, picked up a newspaper, and tried to learn about Scottish-English political relations.
Sometime later, Amber poked her head into the room. “Eva? Hey. Shannon’s here. She’s really upset. Thomas left for England tonight.”
“That was tonight?” I shoved aside the paper and jumped up. “Oh, no.”
Amber led me up the stairs to the fourth floor. “Yeah. She’s always so stable. I don’t think I’ve seen her cry since she was about seven.”
“Not about boys,” I said. “God, I should have been there for her...”
“Nah, better you weren’t. I’m sure they wanted to be alone.”
We entered Laurence’s room. Shannon sat curled in Laurence’s lap, clutching a tissue and sniffling. Keeping both arms around her, he smiled at us. “Nobody can say I don’t take care of my girls.”
“I’m sorry for being like this, Laurence,” she sobbed.
“It’s okay, Shan. I don’t mind the mascara stains.”
I sat beside Laurence on the sofa. Amber plunked down on his other side.
Shannon peeked at me. “Guys? Would it be so awful if I didn’t spend Christmas here?”
“Here?” I said. “Of course not. Why would you spend it here? You should go down to him.”
“He said they have a spare room,” she said. “And that I could stay through winter break. But I didn’t think I should leave you guys.”
“Don’t worry about us,” I protested, though my heart sank at the thought of Shannon’s warmth vanishing over the southern horizon. “Seriously, Shannon, you can’t take care of everyone. Go to him.”
“But now, with...” Shannon glanced at Amber with puffy, reddened eyes. “Your thing, and all.”
Amber batted the idea away with her iridescent green fingernails. “Forget my thing. I’d feel ten times worse if you stayed here because of me, when you ought to be with your guy.”
“I shouldn’t get any more attached to him. I’ll just have to go home in March.” She retreated to weeping on Laurence’s shirt.
“Not necessarily,” Laurence said. “If you get a good job, they can arrange everything with Immigration.”
“But I live in Wild Rose,” she sobbed. “My family’s there. And they don’t even know about him.”
“Honey, you’d be miserable in Wild Rose now, and you know it,” said Amber. “Go see your boy.”
“What will I tell my parents?”
“That you’re a legal adult,” Laurence said, “and you’ll miss them, but you don�
��t need their permission.”
“It’s not about permission.” She wiped her eyes, and dropped the tissue into the heap of balled-up ones at her feet. “They need me. I’d be letting them down.”
“Look, they knew you’d be here for the next three months anyway, right?” I said. “So go down to England. Tell them you took a different job. And then mention that you’re seeing someone.”
“Exactly,” said Laurence. “No point wasting the rest of your time here, even if you do go home afterward.”
“We’ll miss you, Shannon,” Amber said, “but we want you to be happy. Go. Don’t be a freaking martyr.”
“Are you sure? Will everyone forgive me?”
“It’s not like you’re running off with a junkie you met under a park bench,” Laurence said. “He’s a university student who’s inviting you to stay at his parents’ house in jolly old England, where they do have telephones. So you’ll be able to call your siblings and remind them to obey the law, just like before.”
Shannon brushed her tears away and smiled.
The next day she phoned Thomas and told him the good news. Before nightfall she had a coach ticket in her hand, and by the end of the following day she was gone.
Amber and I both had to work, so Laurence saw her off at the station.
“Thank you for being so nice to her,” I said to him, when I got back that day and found him at the front desk.
“She’s a sweet thing,” he said. “Don’t like to see her upset.”
“I know, but...well, not everyone would have been so nice.” I pulled away from the desk. “Thanks,” I repeated, and dashed upstairs.
Laurence had always been charitable toward my cousin Shannon, but to see him soothe her tears and carry her luggage to the train station pushed him up a few more notches in my esteem. He was coming dangerously close to overtaking Gil as my second-favorite guy (assuming Tony was still first), and how could I not blush in his presence when I realized that?
He’s Amber’s, I thought, as I jogged up the stairs. Don’t think of him like that, he’s not yours, he couldn’t even like you. He’s Amber’s.
Chapter Thirty-Two: Christmas Shopping with Gil
Gil and I didn’t meet again until Christmas Eve, for a last-minute shopping trip. I had already mailed gifts to my parents and Tony, and to Shannon in England, but I still needed something for Amber, and Gil needed something for everyone.
Then of course there was each other: should Gil and I exchange gifts? I still had no interest in saying, “Bring me to your room and I’ll give you your present,” nor had he tried to get any of that lately. Other than kissing, we’d done nothing intimate since the first and only occasion.
In my coat pocket I carried a small gift wrapped in green tissue paper, which I would give to him--but only if he gave me anything. Central Edinburgh teemed with shops that sold tartans, kilts, clan pins, sporrans, and all the other fixings of the Highlander outfit, including the skean-dhu, the knife a man was supposed to tuck into his sock. I had purchased one with the Leslie clan beastie wrought on the hilt. With its blade you could conceivably slice a banana if you leaned hard enough.
All over the city, through the crowded shops, Gil talked about being back at the recording studio. The number of times he said “Shelly” must have been in the hundreds. I lost count after about thirty. Keeping track was obviously going to be a larger job than one woman could handle.
To add insult to injury, he was shopping for all of his coworkers, including her. I bought a slinky turtleneck sweater for Amber and then had to carry it in a bag for several miles while he leafed through every item in every store. He finally decided that for Shelly he’d get silver bracelets with the name of an obscure band engraved on them, curled among rose designs. She was the last on his list.
“Save the best for last,” I said, in an even surlier mood than most Christmas shoppers.
“Aye, well, she did do a great deal to find me and get me re-hired.” He tucked the little parcel into one of his shopping bags.
We stood a block from the Royal Mile, up on the hill. The setting sun streamed between buildings and blinded me while I waited for him to arrange his purchases. Passers-by on the sidewalk kept bumping me, though I pressed up against the wall. My feet were sore and cold, I was hungry, and I was five thousand miles away from home on Christmas Eve with only a drafty, ugly hostel to go back to. I pitied Gil for being nearby at that moment.
“I don’t think you’ve been completely honest with me,” I told him. The boldness of what I intended to say brought warmth back to my face.
“How’s that?” He held one glove in his teeth while rearranging tissue paper in a bag.
“About Shelly. I can see how it is.”
He straightened up and wriggled his hand back into his glove. “What’s that mean, then?”
“I don’t know if you can hear yourself, but you love talking about her. And it’s obvious she likes you too.”
He scowled and hefted his bags. We started walking again. “No, she doesn’t. Not like that. She’s a bit out of my league, you know.”
“Oh, then, good thing you have me. A Jenny any-whore from the working class.”
“That’s not how it was meant.” He glowered up at the gold tinsel wrapped around a streetlight pole.
“You know, I’ve been here long enough to understand that you Brits still have class conflicts, but even so, I don’t think she sees you as some kind of servant or untouchable.”
Gil smirked. “Come watch her at work sometime.”
“Does she have a boyfriend already? Is that it? Is she taken?”
“No, she’s not taken. Believe it or not, I don’t make a habit of this sort of thing.”
Golly. A personal stab. In shock, I fell a step behind him for a second. Then I caught up and spat, “Listen, you say the word and I’ll get out of your way. I wasn’t doing this for my health, you know.”
He looked at me, exasperated. “And what were you doing it for? To give the poor Scot a taste of American arse? Keep the sorry sod from pitching himself in front of a train?”
“I thought you were enjoying it.”
“Aye, and I thought you were!”
“I was.” We stopped in front of a ten-foot-square park. “Until I began to see I’m not the most important girl in your life.”
“And was I ever the most important lad in yours? You’ve had your Tony ever since I met you, and not once have you said you’d like to leave him. I’d have been right stupid to think you would.”
“But at least I tell you how I feel.” Which wasn’t exactly true, but never mind. “You still won’t admit how you feel about Shelly.”
He closed his mouth and looked down. “Even if I did feel anything,” he finally said, “I swear she is not interested in me. She has no reason to be.”
“So since I’m interested in you, I guess that makes me an idiot.”
He snorted, but he looked exhausted, not angry. “Oh, are you really so interested? Is that why you’ve not wanted to do anything since the one time?”
The heat in my face intensified, shame now rather than annoyance. “I’m conflicted. I admit that. But I was hoping you could be patient.”
“Would it really be patience? It’s appearing more like waiting for something that will never happen.”
“I’m just not sure yet. I’m sorry.”
“Aye, I’m not sure either. That’s the trouble with us, isn’t it?”
We stood in silence a minute, the cold wind ruffling our coats.
“One thing I’m sure of is that Christmas Eve stresses me out,” I said, and offered him a bleak smile.
He nodded. “I should go home and get these wrapped.”
“Same here.”
Then, apparently unable to act aloof anymore, he broke out with, “Look, I do still hope to see you while you’re here. It’s only, I don’t want to run around behind backs anymore. We’re both of us better people than that.”
“Oh. Fin
e.” I was hurt and stunned--or rather, I thought I should be. But this was exactly what I had been expecting to hear for weeks; and now, having brought it on myself, I could hardly argue. I stared at the pavement. “That’s true. We’re better people than that.”
“Well, we gave it a fair chance, like you wanted, didn’t we?”
“I guess.”
“Aye. That’s all I’m saying.” A rustle of bags indicated Gil was checking the time on his cell phone. “I’ve got to catch my bus. I’ll call you after the holidays. Give it a few days, perhaps.”
“Okay.” I stood still, awkward and aimless.
He retreated a step, then paused, and with a sigh, thrust a CD into my hand. “I was going to give you this. You might as well have it. They were recording last week, as I said. It’s outtakes and demos and the like. Ought to be very rare in the future.”
I turned it over to see, with great chagrin, the name of one of my favorite bands. “Thank you. I...I don’t know what to say.” I looked up. “I’m sorry I’ve been like this. I just wanted to know the truth. I was jealous.”
“Yes, I know. But you’re right. Unfortunately you’re right about it all.” He took up his parcels and nodded to me. “Merry Christmas.”
He trudged off, leaving me squeezing a tissue-wrapped skean-dhu in my coat pocket.
Chapter Thirty-Three: Nobody’s
“Why didn’t you give it to him?” Laurence leaned over the front counter to examine the little knife.
“How could I? He’s here telling me, A: I’m right, he does like Shelly Davis; and B: I’m an ungrateful wench who doesn’t deserve a gift. Looks a little pathetic at that point to hand him one, don’t you think?” I slumped against the counter and hid my face.
“Then can I have it?” Laurence asked, still interested in the skean-dhu.
“It doesn’t cut anything. It’s about as lethal as a spoon.”
“I can sharpen it. This is his family crest? What is that, a griffin?”
“I don’t know. Possibly.”