Light as a Feather

by Zoe Aarsen

  She’d stopped short of saying that identical twins split from the same egg. Because I’d been raised Catholic, I was well aware of the argument within the church of whether or not twins share a soul, since Catholics believed that souls were formed at the moment of conception. If there was truth to this, then half of my soul, Jennie’s half, was dead. This logic scared the crap out of me, but it also suggested that every identical twin who had ever died before their twin could expect to suddenly become a portal for messages from the afterlife. That was ridiculous, but out of all the explanations for why Olivia had been haunting my room and why the Ouija board worked best for me, that seemed to me like the most probable.

  Trey cleared his throat, suggesting to Mischa that she should pipe down.

  “My sister’s been dead a long time,” I said, “and I’ve never had any mix-ups with ghosts before this year. We bought the board hoping to be able to communicate with her, but so far, no Jennie.”

  But Mischa’s question gnawed away at me for the rest of the evening. Why did spirits connecting with us through the Ouija board always seem to want to communicate exclusively with me?

  That night, I lay in Trey’s bed staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep. Why hadn’t Jennie ever reached out to me? If it hadn’t been too complicated or strenuous a thing for Olivia to manage, then why hadn’t Jennie been able to figure out how to make contact?

  CHAPTER 15

  ON TUESDAY MORNING, WHEN SCHOOL resumed after Columbus Day, Mr. Dean shook my hand and told me with sincerity that my rake sale had been a huge success and was a shining example of precisely the kind of ingenuity for which he’d spent twenty-one years of his career waiting. The glow of his compliment faded before I even took my seat. I was woefully unprepared for the impending midterms, and knew it. Not even the promise of a ski adventure in January was enough to corral my thoughts during classes, when I was supposed to be paying attention. Every kid in school seemed to be buzzing with a little extra energy that week; on Friday, the annual Winnebago Days carnival would open on the western outskirts of town near the lake and seniors would prowl through the crowd, marking freshmen with red lipstick Fs on their foreheads as an act of high school initiation. The carnival brought with it each year a small, strange crime wave, and the roar of rock music blasted from the carnival’s janky rides, which would carry over the flat land of our town for miles. Every year, I could hear Def Leppard jams from a distance as I tried to sleep in my own bedroom. My mother was not a fan of Winnebago Days, claiming that it was little more than three-day plague of riffraff and litter upon our town each year.

  “What if we break her legs?” Mischa wondered aloud during gym on the track as we walked our laps, wearing our fall jackets over our gym uniforms. Our eyes followed Violet on the other side of the track as she ran, with Tracy struggling to keep up with her.

  “Violet’s legs? What would that accomplish?”

  “Not Violet’s legs,” Mischa corrected me. “Candace’s.”

  I stopped walking on the track and shook my head in disbelief. “What are you talking about? Are you proposing we just hit Candace with baseball bats? Why would we break her legs?”

  Mischa shrugged. “Well, if she has casts on her legs, then she won’t be able to go in water. Maybe we can’t prevent her from going to Hawaii, but we can do something to keep her from swimming.”

  I resumed walking, noticing Coach Stirling keeping an eye on us where she paced, carrying her clipboard, close to the double doors leading to the gym. “You have lost your mind. I don’t want to get thrown out of school, or worse, go to jail.”

  “Well, we have to do something!” Mischa exclaimed. “She’s leaving on Saturday!”

  Glumly, I mulled over our options and couldn’t think of a single action plan that seemed like it might prevent Candace from boarding her flight. “Mr. Cotton isn’t going to cancel his expensive vacation plans because a couple of hysterical teenage girls ask him to.”

  “Of course not! God! I’m not stupid,” she snapped. “But maybe we can convince her to refuse to go.” She raised her hand to her eyes to block out the sun as she surveyed the boys, who were kicking soccer balls around on the football field. “And by we, I mean someone she might actually listen to.” Isaac Johnston was among the boys doing soccer drills. He’d been sidestepping Candace since her freak-out at the homecoming dance. In my opinion, there was even less of a chance that Isaac would help us save Candace’s life than of us convincing Mr. Cotton to cancel the trip. But I knew better than to discourage Mischa once she put her mind to something.

  After gym class, Coach Stirling barked at me as she passed me in the locker room, “Brady! Stop by my office after you’ve changed. I need to have a word with you.”

  I couldn’t even guess what it was that the coach wanted to discuss with me; I had never shown much athletic aptitude, and I did my best to avoid her attention.

  “Hi,” I said, knocking lightly on the door frame of her office, where she sat at her desk, watching ESPN coverage of the WNBA online. She turned at the sound of my voice and closed her laptop.

  “McKenna. What is going on here?”

  She sounded concerned, and I wasn’t sure what exactly gave her reason to believe there was anything going on with me at all. “I’m not sure what you mean, Coach,” I said innocently. “There’s nothing going on with me.”

  She had summoned me to her office to express concern about my weight loss and issued me a hall pass to check in with Nurse Lindvall. Because I didn’t want to be hauled off to a mental institution like Candace, I couldn’t explain to the nurse that I was eating plenty but probably looked haggard from the stress of dodging evil spirits and dreading the gruesome death of a close friend in the very near future. I didn’t have to wonder what had sparked Coach Stirling’s sudden concern; I was sure that Violet had approached her claiming to be worried about my waning health. Making faculty and staff at Willow High School doubt my mental stability (just like they doubted Candace’s) was a fantastic way to ensure that they would never take seriously any accusations I made about Violet.

  Nurse Lindvall asked me to return every Friday morning before homeroom for the rest of the fall semester to weigh in. I had to hand it to Violet for being a strategic mastermind; she’d found a way to turn the bags under my eyes into her own advantage. When we passed in the hallway she smiled knowingly at me, confirming my assumption that she was responsible for Coach Stirling’s unnecessary intervention.

  As the week progressed, I began having terrible dreams about beaches and Hawaii. It was impossible to know if it was Olivia inspiring the dreams, or if my own subconscious was working overtime as Mischa and I finalized the details of our scheme to keep Candace from going to Hawaii. When I would open my eyes in the morning and roll over to look through my window toward Trey’s house, often I would see him already awake, standing there, checking on me. A ukulele tune that I was pretty sure I had never heard before in my life other than in my Hawaiian dreams began playing on repeat in my head constantly. It blasted through my brain, roared between my temples, destroying any chance I had of concentrating on the days of review in preparation for our midterms, and at an even louder volume on Friday, when I sat in front of computer screens in my classrooms, staring slack-jawed at the tests I could not complete.

  During my Spanish midterm, I felt the weight of a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see my teacher, Mrs. Gomez, studying my screen. Forty minutes of class had passed, and I had only filled in responses to the first five questions on the test. “Is everything all right, McKenna?” she asked me quietly so as not to disturb the other students, hard at work on their midterms.

  “I have a headache,” I managed to sputter through the ukulele chords in my head, which were blurring my vision and making my ears ring.

  “Nurse’s office,” Mrs. Gomez commanded.

  So I found myself back in Nurse Lindvall’s office for the second time that week, outstretched uncomfortably on the cot, trying to drown out
the imaginary music in my head with ibuprofen while I stared at the white ceiling above. While I could barely focus on anything, I felt the nebulous sensation of having failed my midterms closing in on me. Failure and falling semester grades would be a concern for the following week, after Winnebago Days, after Candace boarded her flight with her father and half brothers bound for Hawaii. I could worry about my grade point average after Candace arrived back to her mom’s house in Willow safely. I made no mention of my performance on my midterms to my mother after school, not wanting to give her even more reasons to worry about me.

  That night, I walked through the Winnebago Days carnival with Trey, our arms entwined. The roars coming from the Tilt-a-Whirl, the blasting music, and the smell of kettle corn were sensory overload, and I appreciated all of it for distracting me from my fears. “I think, for safety’s sake, we might be wise to avoid all rides,” Trey told me as we both stood in front of the rickety-looking Ferris wheel, hesitating before stepping into the line to buy tickets. We saw Violet climbing into a passenger car with Pete. She was wearing tight bright red jeans and a white leather jacket that looked new, her long dark hair hanging straight down her back. Jeff and Melissa climbed in after them to share the ride, and a tattooed carnie closed the door to the car behind them before the Ferris wheel rotated slightly so that the next passengers could board. They looked like the perfect group of popular high school friends, without a care in the world. Of everyone watching them in line, only Trey and I knew that a complicated murder had brought them together.

  In a town as small as Willow, it was a surefire bet you would encounter just about every single resident at some point during an event as big as Winnebago Days. We saw Principal Nylander at one of the game stands, trying to toss a quarter into a glass jar to win his daughter a stuffed lion. We saw and ignored Tracy and Michael making out at a table near the grill where hot dogs and hamburgers could be ordered, and Coach Highland and his wife and young children swaying to the music near the stage that had been set up for a performance by Norwegian Wood, a local Beatles cover band.

  Several times we passed by the small booth that I had arranged as part of the junior class fund-raising effort, where Hailey West and Paul Freeman were drawing caricatures of people for a small fee to put toward their ski trip costs. I knew I should have been very pleased to see Hailey and Paul so busy with customers, but my Student Government obligations seemed like too much to handle that weekend. I was grateful that the booth was too tiny for me to stand by and oversee operations. Near a table where the PTA was selling tickets to a raffle, for which the prizes included hand-sewn quilts and salon services from the local beauty parlor, I saw Henry Richmond staring straight up at the Ferris wheel, watching Pete and Violet flirt and giggle against the night sky. I could only imagine what was running through his head, observing his dead sister’s beloved boyfriend moving on to a new romantic prospect barely a month after Olivia’s grave had been dug. I wasn’t sure if Trey saw what I saw, or that I wanted him to if he didn’t, but the expression of hurt on Henry’s face affected me like a slap across the cheek.

  “Do you want me to win you a mirror with a painting of Elvis on it?” Trey offered jokingly as we passed a game stand where fancy mirrors could be won by throwing darts at balloons. We were both in quiet, sullen funks, and I adored him for trying to lift my mood.

  “Nah,” I refused, “that would just be one more fragile thing in my room for ghosts to break.”

  Trey pulled me closer to him with the arm that hung around my shoulders and kissed my forehead. “You know, there’s a chance that Olivia’s death was a freak coincidence, and Candace will be home next weekend, safe and sound.”

  I wanted to believe him—I did. But he had been in that car with Olivia. He had heard her last words.

  “I know you don’t really believe that,” I replied, squeezing his hand.

  When we stood in line for cotton candy and Violet tapped me on the shoulder from behind to say hello, I felt an irresistible urge to confront her. If not for Candace’s sake, then for Henry’s.

  “This carnival is so much fun!” she gurgled. Pete, next to her, smiled his classic handsome smile.

  It took me a second to remember that Violet was a big-city girl, and she’d probably never been to a small-town traveling carnival before in her whole life. “Enjoy it; it’s the only thing that happens here all year,” I muttered. I hadn’t really been inclined to go that night, but Winnebago Days was unavoidable, and I had to check in on the booth at least once each day.

  “Have you guys gone on the Ferris wheel yet? It’s amazing! You can see the lights in Ortonville from up there!”

  I tried to force a smile. I had managed to be civil, sometimes even friendly, with Violet in the week since homecoming. “We may go on later. I am a little afraid of the rides at this carnival. Every year at least one breaks down and there’s some kind of crisis.”

  Violet looked to Pete to confirm, and he shrugged in agreement. She swatted him playfully and said, “Pete! You didn’t say a word about that when we got on the Ferris wheel!”

  “It’s mostly safe!” he insisted.

  We stepped up to the man selling cotton candy and Trey opened his wallet to buy us each a puffy light blue ball of sugar.

  Violet’s delight with the carnival was unnerving me, making me want to scream at her that she had no right to be enjoying herself, having so much fun, so soon after Olivia’s death, and with Candace on her way to a setting that matched her own prophesied death. “You know, Candace is going to Hawaii tomorrow with her dad,” I casually mentioned, my eyes boring into Violet’s.

  Violet raised an eyebrow, but without acknowledging that she understood what I was insinuating, she replied, “I heard. I have to admit, I’m a little jealous. It’s getting cold early this year. I wouldn’t mind a week in the tropics.”

  I glared at her, shaking my head. Mischa had been right. She was simply coldhearted. Her ambivalence about Candace’s life ignited a wild rage within me, something that I had been suppressing up until that point either out of a naïve hope that Violet really hadn’t had a hand in Olivia’s death, or out of fear of her power. But in confronting her in that line, I noticed that Violet couldn’t bring herself to make eye contact with Trey. I wondered again if she had known it would be Trey driving the car in which Olivia would die, and why she hadn’t warned him. Or why she hadn’t mentioned him to the rest of us when she had told Olivia’s story.

  Trey and I agreed to walk over to Bobby’s for milkshakes with Erica, Kelly, and Cheryl before walking back home. They were all in especially giggly moods, presumably because a guy who was a senior was in their midst. Trey was noticeably friendlier with them than he had been with Mischa, and for that I was truly appreciative.

  The next morning Mischa pulled into my driveway at six, before the sun was even up, just as we’d planned. We didn’t know when Candace’s plane was departing, so we figured we needed to intercept her as early as possible, and I didn’t want my mom to give me the third degree about going to a friend’s house at such an odd hour. Technically, I assured myself, I wasn’t sneaking out without permission since it was morning and not night.

  With a sour sense of dread in my gut, Mischa and I drove straight to the Johnstons’ house. Isaac was sitting on his front stoop just as he’d promised us he would be, although he made it clear when he climbed into the back seat of Mischa’s little Volkswagen GTI that he was not thrilled to be helping us.

  “This is so stupid,” he grumbled. “You guys do realize that Candace is insane, don’t you? Like, nuttier than squirrel shi—”

  “That’s disgusting and insensitive to mentally ill people,” I interrupted him.

  “Oh, well then. I guess I should apologize to both of you, because you’re obviously as out of your minds as she is,” Isaac snapped.

  Mischa reached over her shoulder from the driver’s seat and handed him a jewelry box. “Here. Don’t lose this, or my mom will disown me.”

 
Isaac rolled his eyes at her and cracked the box open to take a peek at the small diamond ring it contained. “I can’t believe you talked me into this.” Exasperated, Mischa backed out of his driveway. “You don’t actually have to marry her! You just have to profess your love for her and propose like you mean it. It’s a matter of life and death. Just take our word for it.”

  “Let’s just do this already. I want to go back to bed,” Isaac muttered, leaning back and fastening his seat belt.

  I had my doubts that our plan was going to be successful too, but I remained quiet as we drove to Candace’s house. All week at school, Mischa and I had been trying to convince her that it wasn’t safe to go to Hawaii, but we were up against the mood stabilizer she was taking in addition to the nearly daily counseling she was receiving. Her psychiatrist had convinced her that facing her fear of water was the healthiest way to overcome her obsession with Olivia’s death, and nothing we’d said to convince her that we shared her belief that Violet had killed Olivia made its way through her dazed optimism.

  Having Isaac ask her to elope with him—as extreme and desperate a measure as it was—was the only tactic Mischa and I had come up with that might work. After all, we didn’t need Candace to actually marry him. We just needed her to get into Mischa’s car with us so that we could whisk her away for a few hours—long enough to make her miss her flight and inspire her parents to put her back in the hospital. It was a cruel plan, and if we pulled it off, I knew I’d feel guilty for the consequences. But at least Violet’s prediction for Candace wouldn’t come true. We’d be buying ourselves more time to decipher what Violet had done to us.

  “One more time. Candace comes outside the house, you tell her you love her and want to marry her so that you can have a legal say in all her mental health treatment,” Mischa said, laying out the plan again for Isaac’s benefit. “We tell her we’re driving to a wedding chapel in Wisconsin Dells, she gets in the car, and we take off.”