“Where are you, Suzanne?”
Rhiannon sat down in the recliner chair next to the window. The spirit hadn’t been heard from since the shelf incident.
Too unsettled to read a book, Rhee got up and paced the room.
“I suppose I could go and search the storage barn for clues on who used to live here. Dad’s been cleaning it out, and Mom said he found some cool stuff.”
The gauze curtains at her window fluttered. Rhiannon glanced around hopefully. “Suzanne?”
Nothing. She stared at the drapes, but they didn’t budge. It must have been her imagination.
“Girl, you have got to get out of this house. You are talking to yourself and seeing things.”
She grabbed her black Doc Martens and quickly laced them up. She ran down the stairs two at a time, listening for her mom and dad. She didn’t want to tell them where she was going—in fact, she didn’t want to talk to them at all.
Ever.
The barn was open when she passed by, and she poked her head in the door. All clear.
“Hey, Betsy.” She scratched behind the cow’s ears. “I wish you could go with me to check out the outbuildings. I’m looking for treasure.”
Rhiannon felt a little silly talking about treasure, but what the heck. She was bored.
“So, are you ready to move into a new place? Dad’s getting the best of the barn thingies all ready for you. You can live like a queen.”
Betsy’s tail swished and her eyes closed.
“Are you lonely? Do we need to get you a king cow?”
Betsy cracked open one eye and chewed her cud while blowing hot air through her nostrils.
Rhiannon laughed. “I’ll take that as a no. Well, you’ll be happy, Betsy, that’s the important thing. And Mom will be happy, opening her store in here once everything has been fumigated. And Dad is already happy, pretending to be Farmer John. Which just leaves me. Unhappy. Why did we have to move?”
The sound of her dad’s riding mower close to the barn cut off her pity party.
She waved good-bye to the cow and ran to the outbuilding that was being used as a place to pile all the unwanted stuff.
Rhee paused outside the unpainted structure and eyed the padlock. Did she really want to paw through someone else’s junk?
“Yes,” she answered herself. She focused on the shiny new lock until she heard the click. Imagining the lock open made it happen for real.
She pushed open the squeaking door, then used her telepathy to switch on the light. Rhee had to work with what was available—in this case, it was a forty-watt bulb when a hundred watt was needed.
“Dang.” Craning her head back, she saw boxes as high as the ceiling tilting precariously to the side, defying gravity. Dust motes danced like bugs in front of her eyes, the smell was musty and…just plain old.
She could see where her dad had added to the previous stacks, right up close next to the door. The Godfreys needed to have a garage sale. Garage included.
Rhiannon made her way, carefully, through the trail that led to the back. The light didn’t shine very far and the shadows flickered and moved, which gave her the creeps.
“Where to start?” Rhee didn’t care for the way her voice echoed around her. In hind sight, it hadn’t been such a great idea staying up all night and watching Stephen King movies.
“Shake it off, Rhiannon. Movies are pretend. Ghosts aren’t scary.” Liar, liar, pants on fire. She forced herself to think about Suzanne. Where could she find the spirit’s secrets?
“The oldest stuff will be in the way back, of course. I mean, how old is the farmhouse? A hundred years? That’s a lot of junk.”
She heard a sound to her left and whirled. A box at the top of a stack teetered, then tottered, and Rhiannon held her breath. With a flick of her mind, she pictured the box safely balanced and exhaled. She should have been filled with relief, but she knew she wasn’t alone. Stop psyching yourself out! One too many horror movies, Rhee. Mind-numbing fear was just a heartbeat away. “Suzanne?”
There is nothing to be afraid of. Rhee carefully walked between the boxes, her steps slow. If she gave in to fear, she’d never find the answers she needed. She peeked around the box, looking for whatever made the noise. A falling leaf? The sound of the boxes settling? Nope. Two yellow eyes peered at her from a dark crevice. The eyes grew wider and she couldn’t stop a scream as the thing darted toward her.
“Ah!”
She tripped over her own feet and landed hard on her backside as a rat the size of a full grown cat scampered by her. It was close enough that she could see its whiskers twitch and its tail slide like a worm across the packed dirt floor.
Rhiannon exhaled, her temper rising as the scare wore off, leaving her to feel a little ridiculous. “Come back here, you dirty rodent!”
Didn’t rats carry the plague or something?
Using all of her concentration she focused on the brownish gray fur of the quivering rat. Slowly, it slid her way and she turned it, raising it about a foot off the ground so they’d be eye to eye.
“Listen, pal. You got me. I coulda had a heart attack, and I’m only fourteen.”
The rat’s nose wiggled and its little eyes darted back and forth as it tried to get out of her psychic hold.
Rhiannon’s anger ebbed. “Okay, so maybe I scared you too. We can make a deal, all right? You stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours.”
The rat’s body became very still, as if it understood her perfectly. “Wouldn’t that be a riot? Being able to talk to animals? Well, I have enough problems, bud. You have no idea.”
She released her grip on the rodent, who, once free, took a minute to sit back on its haunches and stare at her with its beady, black eyes.
“Scoot!” Rhiannon said.
The rat took off.
“Well.” She stood, brushed her butt off with both hands and headed toward the door and the farmhouse.
It was obvious she just wasn’t cut out to be Indiana Jones.
Rhee was so focused on getting the heck out that it took a second before she noticed the stack of junk in front of her was swaying. One box fell to the left, and the other was falling to the right. In what seemed like slow motion, Rhiannon could only watch as the box came straight for her head—she was as powerless to move as the rat had been in her psychic grip.
I’ll be crushed to oblivion!
Rhee felt two hands in the small of her back push her out of the way and she skidded forward, landing on her hands and knees. She turned just in time to see the box crash and burst open like a ripe watermelon.
Home is where the heart is. Until the truth comes knocking.
Life on the Move
© 2008 Megan Reilly
Casey Smith and her dad move around a lot, so packing boxes, driving all night, and moving into a new apartment in a new town is nothing, well, new to her. While it’s weird that her dad is so restless, she’s never really minded before—after all, there’s nothing she can do about it.
But this time is different. This time they’ve moved to a place where she almost fits in. She’s even made some friends, including Ethan, a gorgeous guy who could turn out to be more than just a friend—if only she could be sure she’ll have time to really get to know him.
Just when her life is starting to have all kinds of possibilities, a knock comes on the door.
And everything Casey has ever known is turned upside down.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Life on the Move:
In movies and after-school specials, teachers always make the new student stand up and introduce themselves to the class. That’s never happened to me, not once. I can’t say I’m not glad.
Eventually it was time for lunch. I didn’t like lunch. I knew most kids would say it was their favorite class of the day, but I thought it was wasted time. Starve me and send me home thirty-five minutes early and I’d be happy. Anything not to have to face the politics of the cafeteria. Too bad it wasn’t an option.
This one had long tables with attached benches, arranged in rows that filled the room, and smelled like moldy bread. I didn’t have any lunch money, or any lunch either. So it really was wasted time. I picked an empty spot at the end of the table in the corner of the room and put my head down on the table. Maybe they’d think I was sleeping and no one would bother me. In any case, I wouldn’t have to look at them all, sitting there, laughing and eating and generally having a good time with their friends.
It didn’t work. About halfway through the period, I could feel eyes burning into my skull. I didn’t care for being watched, so I got up and walked out of the cafeteria. No one stopped me. I wandered the halls for several minutes until I found the bathroom and went inside. The floor was sticky, but I didn’t care. No one else was in there. I stepped into a stall and slammed the door, standing there where no one could look at me and wonder who the freak was and where she’d come from.
The bell rang. I didn’t want to go to class, but I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever. The muck on my shoes made a squelching noise against the tile floor in the halls, but there was too much noise for anyone to notice. One more, I thought. It was a promise to myself, a mantra I repeated over and over in my head while watching the minutes tick off on the big industrial clock on the wall. One more, one more, one more.
The bell rang. I found my next class in time not to be late, but that meant I had to linger in the doorway until all the seats were taken and I could figure out where to sit. No one looked at me too strangely. Must be the same kids from the other classes I had, although no one looked familiar. The bell rang and I was still standing near the door. The teacher, a small man with wire-rimmed glasses and gray hair, looked at me curiously. “New kid,” I said, ducking into a seat in the back.
He nodded. “Do you have a notebook?”
I pulled it out of my bag and removed the pen I’d stuck into its spiral.
“We’re writing in our journals today.” The teacher sat down at his desk after he gave the instruction and began to mark papers.
I almost snickered. Journals were almost the same as pop quizzes, representing that the teacher had no plan and no clue what to do and maybe a hangover, but they had to keep the kids busy and quite for an hour. I flipped my notebook open and uncapped my pen, pressing it between my lips. I started making lines on the page, not writing. I didn’t have anything to say, and teachers never made kids turn in journals, anyway. It was busy work, plain and simple.
I glanced around at the other kids in the classroom. They all wrote diligently. It made me frown and wonder what kind of weirdo classroom I’d wandered into. I fought the temptation to pull out my schedule card and check to see if they’d mistakenly put me into the smart kid class.
The kid across the aisle from me looked up. Maybe having felt me looking, or maybe looking for the right word. He met my eyes and I felt something like a jolt. I was too used to not being looked at. Being invisible, day in and day out. He smiled. He had sandy hair and freckles and blue eyes like something from a painting. I tried to smile back, but my lips wouldn’t work. He looked away.
Better that way. I started to shade in the lines I’d drawn on the page. If I pressed hard with the ballpoint and filled in every hint of white space, the color was almost precisely the same shade as the eyes of the boy across the aisle. For some reason this encouraged me and I kept coloring.
A loud noise from the front of the classroom startled me. The teacher had whipped shut his own spiral notebook. Maybe he hadn’t been catching up on his grading. A teacher who kept journals with his students? That was a new one. Must be a frustrated novelist. What could be better than to write all day and get paid for teaching? It probably worked out pretty well.
I didn’t get it, though. Only half an hour had gone by, leaving us about twenty minutes before the final bell rang and we were free again at last. My confusion didn’t last long, though, because the teacher’s eyes searched the room as he asked, “Who will read for us today?”
I tried to scrunch down in my seat. I hadn’t anticipated this. A teacher who made kids read their journals out in class? It didn’t make any sense. Except, no wonder those kids had all been writing. If they didn’t, they were bound to be randomly called upon and humiliated in front of the entire class. The threat of humiliation is a huge motivator of high school students no matter where you are.
Of course the teacher nodded to me. “What’s your name?” he asked, as though he should already know it.
“Casey,” I said, and he marked it down in his grade book. “Smith,” I added.
He nodded. “Why don’t you start us out? Read us something from what you’ve written.”
“She had her hand up.” I pointed out a brunette wearing a blue sweater and sitting in the front row. The teacher shook his head. Yeah, I hadn’t thought it would work. He must know I hadn’t written anything, because I didn’t know how it worked, and now I was going to get to be his example. Like the kids weren’t already laughing at me without his help. I sighed and picked up my notebook, holding it up for the class to see. Someone snickered and my chest tightened. The teacher cleared his throat, and there was silence again.
“I had a bit of writer’s block today,” I said. I could feel my face getting hot. “So I was thinking about the color blue.”
“What were you thinking about it?”
Man, this guy did not give up. “Um, I was thinking about all the things that are blue. Like the sky, and blueberries, and ballpoint pen ink, and those slushy drinks from 7-11, and eyes.” I looked down at my desk as I said this. Making it up as I went along.
“Eyes,” the teacher seized upon.
Couldn’t he see his work was done? I was embarrassed. Move on. “Yeah, you know. Blue eyes. How they’re all different shades, some light enough to freak you out, others dark blue like a starless sky at midnight.”
“Starless skies,” the teacher said. “Interesting.” He crossed his arms, and I could tell he was done with me. I dropped my notebook back onto the surface of my desk and melted against the back of my seat. “Theresa,” the teacher said, and I stopped paying attention as some girl in the front with brown hair started reading in a pretentious voice, like she thought she was so interesting.
The kid across the aisle was looking at me again. I guess he knew his eyes were blue. I gave him a wry little smile and shrugged my shoulders, then averted my eyes. A couple more boring essays went by and I kept scratching pictures in my notebook, not paying attention. Until the kid across the aisle raised his hand, volunteering to read from his journal.
“Ethan,” the teacher said, acknowledging him. So he had a name. With his attention directed elsewhere, I took the opportunity to study him. All the other kids were doing it.
“A stranger here,” he began in a clear voice, and my heart sank like the core of a nuclear reactor after a containment breach. My eyes focused on the surface of my desk, swirled as it was with caramel colored lines, simulating wood when it was plastic. “Mystery. Enigma. What does the future hold? The present, the past, the familiar, the lost.”
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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The Ankh of Isis: The Library of Athena, Book 2 Page 22