Crystal Frost 4

by Alicia Rades

  I bit my lower lip nervously. I didn’t want to be thrust into the middle of their relationship battles. I didn’t know what was going on in Derek’s head, but he had been acting unusual lately. Maybe he’d been thinking about breaking up with her for a while. Perhaps that joke about them having kids scared him.

  “Please,” Emma pleaded with puppy dog eyes. “Maybe if I know why he broke up with me, I can change. We can be together again.”

  A voice in my head was telling me I shouldn’t do it, that I shouldn’t get in the middle of this, but they were my best friends. I wanted to see them happy, to see them together.

  “Fine,” I agreed. “I’ll talk to Derek for you.”

  “Thank you, Crystal.”

  Chapter 10

  For the next few hours, Emma and I talked about her and Derek. Well, it was more like Emma talking and me adding in a few sounds where I could. Teddy didn’t bother us about dinner. I figured he sensed something emotional was going on here—and not just because he was intuitive.

  Emma wiped at her cheeks after her tears had dried. “I’m sorry. I’ve been going on and on about me and Derek. How are you?”

  “It’s okay, Emma,” I assured her. “You need to let it all out.”

  She took a deep breath before speaking. “I think I’ve said all I can right now. I just don’t want to talk about it anymore. Can we talk about something else to take my mind off it?”

  “Sure.”

  “How’s your ghost?”

  My heart sank. I’d hardly thought about the shadow ghost in the past two days, and it made me feel incredibly selfish. “I haven’t seen him.”

  “Oh? Do you think he found what he wanted?”

  I shrugged slowly while mulling over her question. “I have no idea what he wanted, and he never actually got to speak to me, so I don’t think so.” My best theory was that the surge of energy from the séance somehow slammed the door on our connection.

  “Maybe we should try contacting him again. Only this time, we should get your mom, Sophie, and Diane involved. I’m sure the energy will be stronger if we have more psychics there.”

  I pressed my lips together in thought. That was a good idea. I mean, I’d been saying there wasn’t anything I could do about the ghost and his problems, but Emma’s suggestion might actually work. At the very least, it would ease the guilt knotting in my stomach after not even trying to help him.

  “Yeah, I’ll mention it,” I finally said.

  Emma and I moved on to more trivial conversation. It seemed to cheer us both up, but eventually, she headed home.

  “What was that?” my mother questioned from the couch after I’d led Emma out the door. She turned the volume down on the TV. Dishes clinked around in the kitchen, where Teddy was washing them.

  I crossed the room to sit beside my mother, a somber expression fixed on my face. “Emma and Derek broke up.”

  My mother’s intake of breath was audible. “Oh, no. What happened?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Derek’s been acting strange lately.” I paused for a second. “He was acting weird even before they broke up. I wonder if something else is going on with him.”

  “Something at home, you mean?” my mom asked.

  I thought about it for a moment before answering. “I guess so.” That’s when I realized how truly self-absorbed I’d been lately. I hadn’t even realized that one of my best friends may need my help. Something was clearly bothering Derek, and even though he broke my best friend’s heart, he was still my friend. Surely he needed my comfort as much as Emma did.

  “I was wondering about him,” my mother said, her voice cutting through my thoughts.

  My brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  She shifted on the couch to sit up a little straighter. “Well, he came into the shop today after school. I didn’t ask him about it, but I thought it was weird that he wasn’t at volleyball practice.”

  “He did? What was he doing at the shop?”

  “Well, at first, he was just browsing through the costumes. I asked him if he needed some more costume ideas. He said he didn’t, but he did have questions about colleges. He wanted to know more about where I went, what I majored in, if I was part of any clubs, and all that.”

  “I don’t get it. Why would he care?”

  My mother shrugged. “It sounded like he was looking for advice on where to go. I know Emma’s dying to go to SMU. Maybe he was wondering if that’s where he should go, too.”

  “That can’t be why he broke up with Emma,” I said with certainty, only it made a bit of sense. If he was trying to convince himself to go to SMU but didn’t think he actually wanted to, maybe he broke up with her to ease the heartache of having to do it when we graduated. Except, they more than a year left together. “Why is he worrying about colleges now? We’re only juniors.”

  “Well, you and Emma went on the college campus tour. Maybe it scared him about his future.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed, pressing my lips together in thought. “I guess that means he doesn’t want to go to SMU. What’d you tell him about it?”

  “I said I loved it. I told him about how I had great professors and learned a lot, and that there were always fun things to do on campus. I told him how Sophie and I started The Sensitive Society and found Diane. We’ve been life-long friends ever since.”

  Intrigue got the better of me. “How’d you come up with that club anyway?”

  My mother smiled like she was happy I was interested. “It wasn’t a true club that the school endorsed or anything. It started my freshman year. I was in one of my first psychology lectures when I asked the professor about people with abilities—a sort of sixth sense. I asked if he, as a psychologist, believed in that sort of thing and if so, if there was a way to explain it with science. He told me to talk to him after class. You have no idea how excited I was to learn more about my abilities. Thankfully, my grandma had taught me a lot about how to use it, but I wanted to know more about why it happened in the first place. Unfortunately, my professor couldn’t give me an answer, and to this day, I still don’t have a clue how it works.”

  “So, what’d he say to you after class?” I asked.

  “He said he knew of this girl on campus who had been interested in doing some research on extrasensory perception. She was an upperclassman in the psychology department, and he thought I might be interested in talking to her.”

  “What’d you find out?”

  The expression that crossed her face told me she had her own little secret. “Well, I learned that there were more people with abilities than just me and my grandma.”

  “So, the girl you met was psychic, too?”

  Her eyes brightened. “She was Sophie.”

  A smile broke out across my face. My mother had never told me this story in so much detail before. All I knew was that she’d met her business partners in college and they formed this group called The Sensitive Society.

  “After we discovered what each other could do—that I could see bits of the future and find things and that she could read and influence people’s emotions—we became interested in meeting other psychics. So we put posters up for our ‘club.’ That’s when we met Diane.”

  “And she was majoring in business,” I confirmed. “She was the brains behind you opening your shop.”

  My mother smiled like she was glad I remembered. “Exactly.” In the next moment, her face fell like she was remembering something terrible. Her gaze dropped to her hands in her lap. “Unfortunately, Diane was the only person who understood what our group was about. Other people defiled our posters and wrote things like ‘witches’ on them.”

  I gasped. “Oh, my gosh. Did anyone hurt you guys?”

  My mother’s gaze flew to mine, and then she relaxed. “Thankfully, no, but they weren’t very nice about it, especially the people who found out we were the ones in the club. We took the posters down and mostly kept quiet. People eventually seemed to forget about it.”


  “So, you three were the only members?” I asked curiously.

  She nodded. “Well,” she changed her mind. “I guess Sophie’s sister, Theresa, tried to be a part of it, but she never had the gift. She left the group shortly after we started it.” My mother swallowed and looked past me across the room. It was like there was more to that part of the story that she wasn’t going to share with me.

  I didn’t manage to get a second to focus on it when I realized something. “Wait. Theresa, Sophie’s sister. That’s Justine’s mom, right?”

  She nodded.

  “I remember Justine saying her mom went to SMU, too. So, you guys were all there at the same time?”

  “Theresa was in my class, but she dropped out halfway through when she met Justine’s dad and got pregnant.”

  That made sense since Justine was two years older than me and my mom had me just out of college.

  “So, if Sophie was older than you, did you start the business when she graduated or when you did?”

  “It was an ongoing process after Sophie graduated. I would travel the hour drive from here to SMU. I wasn’t a huge part of the business in the first few years, especially since your dad was trying to get me to go on dates every Friday night.”

  I smiled at the thought of my dad courting my mom. I only wish I had gotten the chance to know him better. At least I remembered him well enough to know I loved him.

  “Anyway,” my mom said, steering the conversation back on course. “I hope Derek figures everything out.”

  “Me, too.”

  My mother patted my knee before standing. I watched her take a few steps and noticed a limp to her gait.

  “Mom,” I stopped her.

  She turned back toward me.

  “What happened?”

  She looked down at her foot like she’d just noticed the ache in it for the first time. “Oh, it’s not a big deal. At the shop earlier, a crystal ball fell from one of the top display shelves, and it smashed a couple of my toes. It’s no big deal.”

  “No big deal?” I asked breathlessly. “Mom, you could have broken toes. One of those things could have crushed your skull! You have to be more careful in the shop, especially with the baby.” I rose from my seat and crossed over to her to caress her belly.

  “Oh, stop fussing,” she said, casually shooing me away. “I didn’t break anything. I almost caught the ball, so I slowed it down. I think I’ll go take a hot bath to soothe it.”

  “Okay,” I said, but at the last second, I remembered that Emma requested I ask her about a séance. If I had any chance at helping the ghost, it was with my mom and her friends. “Oh, Mom?”

  She paused and turned back to me.

  I rested on the arm of the couch. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry, but I saw this ghost last week.”

  She twisted her lips at me like she was disappointed I didn’t tell her.

  “I don’t know what he wants, though. Emma suggested we hold a séance to contact him.” I didn’t tell her that we’d tried one on our own because I knew it would make me sound irresponsible.

  “I guess we can do that,” she finally said. “You have a game tomorrow night, so why don’t we try Wednesday night after we close the shop?”

  I nodded. “Thanks.”

  I retreated into my bedroom, where I texted Derek.

  You around?

  He didn’t text back. I wasn’t sure if that was because he was honestly busy or if he just sensed I wanted to talk about Emma and he didn’t want to talk to me.

  Eventually, I crawled into bed that night after whispering to my father, asking him to help me find strength to help out the shadow ghost and help Derek through whatever trials he was currently facing.

  Chapter 11

  I wanted to find Derek and talk to him on Tuesday, but I didn’t get a chance to before the final bell to first period rang. It was no surprise that he hadn’t shown up before the warning bell since he usually didn’t, but I unfortunately didn’t have any classes with him until after lunch this semester. I wished I could text him as the morning announcements read over the loudspeaker, but I was never one to sneak my phone into class, so I didn’t have it on me.

  Knowing there was nothing I could do for Derek until lunch, I set my mind on my other problem: the shadow ghost. I attempted to formulate theories in my mind as to who he was and what he wanted from me, but I came up completely blank. I replayed everything I remembered about him in my mind, how I noticed him on the SMU campus, how I saw him on the bus, and how he had been in my house afterward. I thought back to the séance Emma, Derek, and I held and how I saw his figure in the middle of our circle before the energy exploded in the room. None of it gave me a single clue as to what he could possibly want.

  In fourth period, something finally clicked. I had first seen him on the SMU campus, and then it was like he’d been following me since, like he knew I could see him and was trying to get my attention. Could it be that he was a student, or maybe a professor, and had been wandering the campus before noticing me? It was the best theory I had. Actually, it was the only theory I had. I should have made the connection sooner. I made a mental note to research deaths at SMU over the past few years to see if there was any clue as to who this guy was. I gave up with formulating any further theories as soon as the bell after fifth hour rang. Now it was time to talk to Derek.

  I spotted him in the hall near his locker. “Derek,” I called. When he didn’t look up or acknowledge me, I called again as I approached him. Finally, he noticed me. I couldn’t read the expression on his face. “Are you okay?” I asked once I stopped next to his locker. “I tried to text you last night, but you didn’t reply.”

  He opened his locker and shoved his textbook inside. “I—uh—was asleep.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “About what?” His eyes met mine before he slammed his locker, which was the only way to get it to shut with all the crap spilling out of it. He wasn’t exactly one for keeping his locker clean.

  “You can’t pretend that nothing happened between you and Emma. Clearly, you need a friend right now. Do you want to talk?”

  Derek simply stared at me without answering, and I wasn’t sure if that meant yes or no.

  “Oh, right,” I finally realized. “You guys probably don’t want to sit by each other at lunch.” I bit my lip in thought, searching for a solution. “We could go off campus to talk.”

  Derek’s eyes lit up slightly before regressing to normal. “Where would we go? Could we stop by your mom’s shop and pick up some chocolates?”

  I had to admit, that did sound good. Chocolates were part of what kept my mom’s shop, Divination, going when it wasn’t Halloween season.

  “After we pick up some lunch,” I agreed. “We can walk down to the gas station and grab some sandwiches or something.”

  I wanted to go tell Emma that I wouldn’t be around for lunch, but I suspected there’d be tension if Derek followed me to the lunchroom. Instead, I stopped by my locker to ditch my textbook. I picked up my phone while there and texted Emma on our way out of the school.

  Oh, she texted back. Will you talk to him for me?

  Yes, I told her.

  “So,” I started as we emerged from the school into the October air. I tucked a long blond strand of hair that had escaped in the breeze behind my ear. “Are you ready to talk about what happened between you and Emma?”

  Derek sighed like he didn’t really want to talk about it. “She’s just annoying.”

  My gaze flew to his face, but he showed almost no emotion. How could he say that about her? Okay, I guess I could see it on some level, but she was our best friend. You get over a person’s annoying tendencies after being friends with them as long as Derek, Emma, and I had been a group. But maybe it was different actually dating her.

  “Derek, she doesn’t understand why you broke up with her. Was it that comment she made a few days ago about having kids? You know that was just a
joke, right?”

  Derek glanced at me quickly. “Yeah, it was that.”

  Except I could tell that wasn’t the whole story, like he was saying it just to get me to stop asking. “Okay, so that bothered you, but it has to be more than that. Was it about college?”

  “What do you mean?” He didn’t tear his gaze from the sidewalk in front of him this time.

  “I mean, you know you and Emma probably won’t end up at the same school, and you’re trying to break things off before you two completely fall so hard that you can’t follow your own dreams.”

  “What would make you say that?” he asked, his tone so even that he almost didn’t sound like himself.

  “My mom said you came in to talk to her about colleges.”

  I noticed a slight change in Derek’s pace. “I guess you caught me.”

  I knew it! Even without my sixth sense, I was still a good detective. A sense of pride washed over me, but I quickly shooed the emotion away because I knew Derek still needed to talk to me.

  “Derek,” I tried to reason, “you and Emma have almost two years left to spend together. Why give up those two years just because you might not be together in college?”

  He didn’t speak for a long time. “I can’t explain it.”

  I could tell he wasn’t going to let me push it, but I tried to get him to talk anyway. “Nothing else is going on at home?” I asked with worry in my tone.

  “What? No.” This time, Derek did look at me. “It’s just the college thing.”

  “Don’t you want to talk about it?”

  “No, actually, I don’t,” he told me in a clipped tone.

  Luckily for him, we reached the gas station just then. I picked up a turkey sandwich, and Derek grabbed some chips and a burger. He didn’t have money on him, so I paid for his lunch with a bit of babysitting cash I had with me. We didn’t talk much as we made our way to Divination. We simply chewed on our food. At this point, I didn’t know what else to say.