Lily's Ghosts

by Laura Ruby

  Her mother’s eyes trailed her around the kitchen as Lily got herself juice, and made some toast. When she sat down to eat, her mother placed the coffee mug on the table and heaved a long sigh.

  “I see now why you wanted to stay up late last night,” she said. “Fine. But understand that I’ve been there and done that. You’ll get sick of it in about a week.” She got up and stalked from the room.

  Lily put her toast back on her plate. What would she get sick of? Vaz? Kissing? How about getting sick of her mother being a cryptic wacko?

  Lily, who suddenly didn’t feel like eating, threw away her toast and poured the juice down the sink, then stomped upstairs to brush her teeth and take a shower. It was only when she was squeezing paste onto to the toothbrush that she looked in the mirror and understood what her mother was talking about.

  Her hair was pink.

  Not just pink, but bright hot pink from root to tip, as if someone had leached out all the natural color first and dumped the dye on afterwards. She lifted a hank and gaped at the nearly florescent strands, shiny and artificial as doll’s hair. But why? Why would Max do this? What could it mean? Her eyes stung as she realized that it was the only thing about her looks that she had ever been even a little proud of, the reddish hair she’d gotten from her father. And now it was gone.

  Her mother paused at the door of the bathroom. “It looks terrible, in case you were wondering. But, hey, if that’s what you want…”

  Lily bit back the tears and scooped up her comb. “Yes, it’s what I want,” she said, yanking the comb through, wincing, wondering what Vaz would do when he saw it. “I think it looks great.”

  “Great!” her mother said, her bright tone as artificial as Lily’s hair. “But when you don’t want it anymore, don’t expect me to pay to get it fixed. It will have to grow out.”

  “Fine,” said Lily, furious at her mother, furious at Max, furious at the world. She threw the comb in the sink, where it spun around and around.

  * * *

  That afternoon, so tired of her mother’s disapproving looks, so antsy and out of sorts that she had even tried finishing Oliver Twist, Lily begged her mother to let her go to the beach.

  “I’m uncomfortable with the idea of you going without supervision,” her mother said, setting her mouth in a tight seam.

  “Mom. It’s a public beach. It’s twenty degrees outside. My hair is the color of bubble gum. Trust me when I say it will be me and the seagulls. What’s going to happen?”

  “I don’t know. And that’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Lily almost cried in frustration. “Are you going to keep me a prisoner the rest of my life?”

  Her mother had the nerve to look hurt. “You’re not a prisoner.”

  “You could have fooled me,” said Lily, throwing herself into a chair. “You let me drive a car when I was eleven years old. And now I can’t walk two blocks by myself without you freaking out. What’s wrong with this picture?”

  Her mother plucked at the folds of her skirt. “Do you want to know what I heard on the radio the morning we left Montclair? Just a few hours before Frank, I mean, The Geek asked us to go?”

  More riddles. Sometimes her mother talked like a character out of old Batman cartoons. So, Batman, do you want to know why I’ve kidnapped Robin and hung him upside down over a pit of snakes? “I have no idea what you heard on the radio.”

  Lily’s mother sat, removed her rings one by one, shook them like dice in her fist. “British researchers found out that money really can buy happiness.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not joking. They studied a large group of people for years, especially those people who came into a large inheritance or won the lottery. Wanna know how much happiness costs these days? About one point seven million dollars. Apparently one point seven million would put a smile on the face of the most miserable person on earth.” She shook her head sadly. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard it. It was like the world was conspiring to prove me wrong.”

  Lily had always worried that one day her mother would pass from kooky to totally nuts. “Mom, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You know now that my family, your family, has suffered a lot of tragedies. The money was the only thing that stayed constant. Unlike people, money won’t let you down, money won’t die. Money will save you!” She laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “So everyone was obsessed with it. My parents, my uncle, all of them. I wanted no part of it. I wanted love, not money. That’s why I ran away with your father.” She laughed again, a bray, a sob. “And we both know how that turned out. Your father thought I was too straight laced, too rigid. Me!”

  Her mother put her rings back on. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Maybe your father was right and it’s in my genes. Maybe my family was onto something. It’s a crazy world.” She looked around the shop, her expression saying that evidence of the craziness was apparent in the beach-glass lamps and bikini earrings. “I think about all those times you told me that you were worried about money and that maybe I should be, too, and I think you were right.” She looked pointedly at Lily’s hair.

  An alarm bell clanged in Lily’s head. “No, I wasn’t. I was wrong. Totally wrong. I was just a snotty kid.”

  “Even with the hair, you’re a wonderful kid.”

  Lily didn’t want to be wonderful and didn’t want to be right. She had never seen her mother look so lost and uncertain, and it scared her in a way that no ghost could have scared her. No matter what crazy, crackpot scheme her mother cooked up, she had always seemed hopeful, sure the future would be better. Now Lily felt as if the ground were shifting, turning everything upside down. And what was worse, Lily was the one who had set the ground in motion.

  “I just want to do the right thing,” her mother said. “I hope I’m not too late.”

  Lily wriggled in her chair, too confused to find the words for the horrible feeling welling up inside her. She couldn’t stand to look at her mother’s twisted, cracked-egg face for another second. Nothing about this was normal. Not Arden Crabtree normal.

  “In less than a week I’ll be back in school and I’ll have tons of structure and supervision and homework and everything else,” Lily said. “But now I’m going to the beach. I’ll see you back at the house.”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. She got up, put on her coat, and walked — practically ran — out, pulling her ski cap low over her head and tucking all her hair into it. She expected her mother would follow, but she didn’t.

  As Lily marched away from the store, she couldn’t help but notice that cold and lifeless Cape May was shaking itself out of its winter coma. A few people now studded the streets and restaurants, and bills and signs announcing a family roller skating party and murder mystery dinner theater plastered many store windows. Lily wondered if her mother’s new, more responsible parental persona included roller-skating, or if she would now think roller skating was too dangerous. The thought wasn’t even a bit funny.

  Lily reached the promenade and hopped down the steps to Congress Beach. She didn’t feel like sitting at the beach, but she did anyway, beginning a new sand house, all the while keeping an eye on the boardwalk for Bailey Burton. Scratching and digging and packing the sand until her hands were red claws and the sun began its daily drift to the west, she erased thoughts of her mother’s strange speech at the gift shop, her own flaming pink head. She gave the elaborate sand house one last once-over, straightening the stones she had used to line the front walkway, and then stood.

  That’s when she saw Vaz strolling down the boardwalk. Arm in arm with Kami.

  * * *

  “You won’t believe what I saw,” said the balding man with the jelly belly, panting as he fell onto the beach blanket. “A kid with his hands on fire. Both hands.”

  “You did watch were you were walking, didn’t you?” the woman asked, smoothing the skirt of her polka-dotted bathing suit. “You didn’t knock over that little girl’s sand c
astle again?”

  “Did you hear what I said? A kid’s hands were on fire!”

  “Yes, I heard you. And I think you’ve had too much sun. You may not think sand castles are important, but that girl worked very hard.”

  The man grunted, wriggling his large body down next to hers. “Why are you always nagging me? For your information, I didn’t knock over the kid’s castle, all right?”

  The woman yanked the skirt of her bathing suit out from under the man’s rump. “Then why is she hiding behind that dune like that? Why does she look so upset?”

  “How the heck should I know? Maybe she’s a crybaby.”

  The woman shook her head, the rubber flowers on her bathing cap fluttering like many multicolored wings. “You’re as cold as ice. Sometimes I wonder if you even have a drop of blood in your veins.”

  The man frowned, scratching at his blue legs. “Sometimes I wonder about that, too. Hey, did you see the guy in the feathered hat? I think he’s got some sort of sword.”

  “You’re not even listening to me.”

  The man picked up a shell and pitched it at the water. “Why bother? You always say the same thing.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “That boy called again.”

  Lily felt like throwing up. “So?”

  Her mother stood in the doorway of Lily’s room. “I just wanted to let you know, that’s all.”

  “Thanks,” said Lily. She had the silver pendant in her fingers, turned it over and over and over. Her pink hair was wet and fingers pruned from the hour and a half she had spent soaking in the bathtub.

  Her mother crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the doorjamb. “I never said that you couldn’t talk to the kid ever again.”

  “I know.”

  “He can come over when I’m home. You guys can watch TV.” She laughed a little. “He’ll probably think your hair is cool.”

  Lily shrugged. The whole thing was so stupid and crazy it was almost funny. Flower-child mom catches daughter kissing boy, turns into soccer mom! Boy turns out to be a two-timing “teen!” Girl doesn’t date again until she’s thirty-five! Ghosts feel neglected and misunderstood!

  “Did something happen?”

  “No,” said Lily.

  “Anything you want to talk about?”

  Lily kept her face neutral. “No.”

  Her mother hovered in the doorway, wearing her awful watery expression of uncertainty and concern. “Well, if you want to talk about it, I’ll be downstairs.”

  Lily slipped the pendant around her neck. “Sure.”

  Her mother’s footsteps faded and Lily lay back down. She clutched the necklace hard enough to tattoo the image into her palm. She had been stupid again, more stupid than she had ever been. From now on, she would only believe in what she could see, taste, hear, smell and touch. No, not even that much. She would only believe in what she could prove. What she could hold in her hands and know was real. A rock. A cat. An ant. These noises and clues and hints and visions and everything else were nothing. You couldn’t take a picture of a ghost. You couldn’t slice a kiss and put it on a slide.

  She rolled over onto her side. So, she would go to school. She was smart; she could do school, she’d done it before, whatever color her hair was. She’d ace math and science, and in English she’d take their dumb essay tests and she’d write exactly what they wanted her to: “In Oliver Twist, Nancy is a sympathetic character because….” But inside she would know. It’s just a little dream, a bit of fluff, a fantasy. These people don’t exist. They’re like imaginary friends that little kids have so that they don’t feel so afraid and alone.

  They are ghosts talking to ghosts.

  Heart

  Lola flopped down on the bed next to Steffie’s mom, crossing and uncrossing her arms in annoyance.

  The Siamese cat gathered itself in a little loaf on the dresser top, its blue eyes shining rebuke through the dark of the room.

  “Oh, what are you looking at?” Lola snapped. The Siamese yawned, and Lola looked away.

  The cat mewled and Lola gave it a half-hearted raspberry. The whole plan was going down the toilet, she had to admit. OK, had gone down the toilet. And now it was time to face the facts:

  Fact One: Steffie was actually wearing all the pink-splotched clothes like she didn’t have a dime to replace them. No tears, no satisfying tantrums, just pulled on the pink splotched socks and the pink splotched T-shirt and pink jeans and got on with her day as if everyone walked around looking like a strawberry sundae.

  Fact Two: The girl had no life. No cheerleading tryouts for Lola to ruin, no play auditions, no tests, no chance for a public humiliation. The geek didn’t even belong to the science club!

  Fact Three: the hair! Lola’d had to wait until The Walking Zippo left so that she could get to work, quietly working Screamin’ Sally’s Punk Rock Pink through each strand of Steffie’s hair, and what does Steffie do when she sees herself looking like Dyeing Disaster Barbie? Nothing! No mondo sessions at the salon, no boxes of Clairol all over the bathroom. She stuffs the hair into a hat, puts on a brave face. It was like Steffie knew she deserved to be punished for what she’d done, and she was just trying to be dignified about it.

  All this could only mean one thing.

  It wasn’t Steffie.

  She jumped off the bed and went to the closet, pulled out all the shoes, and began to tie them together in a long footwear chain. It was his fault. The Human Torch. Firefly. Phantom of the Opera. If he hadn’t interfered and made her so mad, maybe she wouldn’t have worked so hard to get revenge. A few splotched clothes, a few moans and rattling, some freaky Sunset Boulevard makeup, that would have been it. No real harm done. Now this poor, pathetic geeky girl — whoever she was — had pink hair and pink clothes and sticky shoes and no more foxy boyfriend to suck face with, while the real Steffie was free to keep stealing other people’s roles whenever and wherever she wanted.

  So uncool. Lola threaded the laces between her teeth and pulled to tighten the knots.

  The blonde woman rolled over in her sleep, mumbling, “Spaghetti would be nice.”

  Lola agreed. Spaghetti. And cake. Lola ached for cake. A great big frosty cake with pink roses that said, Congratulations to our biggest star! in green icing.

  But there would be no cake. Yet.

  She got up and crept downstairs, trying to be quiet for once. Lola looked up at the chandelier and shook her head. Funky things going on in this place. Way too funky, if you asked her. A new feeling rose up in her, something she’d never experienced before: guilt. The firefly guy was bad news for sure. Maybe she should stay and try to help the little geeky girl (or at least pluck her eyebrows a bit, sheesh.)

  “What about heart?” she muttered. “Doesn’t everybody need heart?”

  Nah! What was she thinking? That wasn’t even Lola’s song! The girl would be okay, right? Pink hair was kinda cool, especially if you were one of those new-wavers, and who knew? Maybe she could start a trend. And there were plenty more of fish in the sea, guywise.

  It was time for Lola to give it up and hit the beach before there was trouble.

  “So long Human Torch!” she sang, unaware that her voice sounded like the moan of a sick dog, the creak of an old door. “So long pathetic geeky loser girl!”

  “Think pink!”

  The Lily Song

  The Lily song goes like this: “Lilylilylilylilylilylilylilylily,” sung faster and faster until you can’t say it one more time. This is Lily’s favorite song. This is the song Lily’s father is singing.

  Lily is just five, clutching her favorite toy, a large plastic fish that she won’t go anywhere without. It is three in the morning, and her mother would be upset to know that she is awake, but it is her secret. Hers and her father’s.

  Every Friday Lily wakes up in the middle of the night to wait for her father to come home from the club where he plays the guitar. She huddles on the couch with Chucklehead — the fish — and waits, the shad
ows making monsters on the walls. But she waits anyway, and she isn’t frightened, okay, she’s not that frightened, because her father never makes her wait too long before he turns the key in the door and throws it open, his guitar rising like a black moon behind him.

  “Time for bed, Chucklehead,” says her father, what he always says, after he has played the Lily song five or ten times in a row.

  “One more?”

  Lily’s father reaches out and puts a large warm hand on her head. “You’ll be sleepy in the morning. You don’t want to snooze in your cereal, do you?”

  Lily giggles. “No. But I’m not that tired. Can you tell me a story?”

  “It’s too late and I don’t want your mom to get mad. Besides, don’t you get enough stories in school?”

  “I don’t like school, Daddy. It’s boring. The teacher doesn’t tell stories good as you.”

  “She just needs a little more practice, sweetheart. Give her a chance.”

  Lily thinks about this for a minute. Her new teacher, Ms. Seaply, was young and pretty and very nervous. She cried once when the kids in her class refused to stop making crazy faces during naptime. Lily felt sorry for her and pretended to be asleep to make her feel better.

  “OK, I’ll give her a chance. But I don’t think it will do any good.”

  “Probably not.” Her father laughs and scoops her up, nuzzling her neck and making her giggle. He carries her to her bed. “Taco time!” he says, and bundles her up in her blankets.

  “Chuckle, too,” she says, and her father tacos the fish with an afghan.

  “You’re getting a little old for Mr. Chuckle, aren’t you?” he says.

  “That’s what Mommy always says,” says Lily. “But I’m not.”

  “There will come a day you won’t need him anymore,” says her father.

  “Yes, but I’ll still like him,” says Lily.

  “You could change your mind,” says her father. “People change their minds all the time.”