Shadowland

by Meg Cabot

“I can’t,” he said. “Susannah. Don’t go. This woman—this girl, Heather. She isn’t like other spirits you might have known in the past. She’s filled with hate. She’ll kill you if she can.”

  I smiled at him encouragingly. “Then it’s up to me to get rid of her, right? Come on. Unlock the door now.”

  He hesitated. For a second, I thought he was going to do it. But he didn’t, in the end. He just stood there, looking uncomfortable…but firm.

  “Suit yourself,” I said, and walked around him, straight across the room to the bay window. I put a foot onto the seat Andy had made, and easily lifted the screen in the middle window. I had one leg over the sill when I felt his hand go around my wrist.

  I turned to look at him. I couldn’t see his face since the light from my bedside lamp was behind him, but I could hear his voice well enough and the soft pleading in it.

  “Susannah,” he said.

  And that was all. Just my name.

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t, sort of. I mean, I could—it wasn’t like there was a lump in my throat, or anything. I just…I don’t know.

  Instead, I looked down at his hand, which was really big and kind of brown, even against the black leather of my jacket. He had a heck of a grip for a dead guy. Even for a live guy. He saw my gaze drop, and looked where I was looking, and saw his hand holding tight around my wrist.

  He let go of me as if my skin had suddenly started to blister or something. I finished climbing out the window. When I had successfully maneuvered my way across the porch roof and down to the ground, I turned to look up at my bedroom window.

  But he was gone of course.

  Chapter

  Ten

  It was a cool, clear night. The moon was full. Standing in my front yard, I could see it hanging over the sea like a lightbulb—not a hundred watter, like the sun, but maybe one of those twenty-five dealies you put in those swivel-neck desk lamps. The Pacific, looking smooth as glass from this distance, was black, except for a narrow band of reflected light from the moon, which was white as paper.

  I could see in the moonlight the red dome of the Mission’s church. But just because I could see the Mission, didn’t mean the Mission was nearby. It was a good two miles away. In my pocket were the keys to the Rambler, which I’d snitched a half hour earlier. The metal was warm from the heat of my body. The Rambler, which was turquoise in daylight, looked gray as it sat in the shadow of the driveway.

  Hey, I know I don’t have a license. But if Dopey can do it…

  Okay. So I chickened out. Look, isn’t it better I chose not to drive? I mean, not knowing how and all. Not that I don’t know how. Of course I know how to drive. I just haven’t had a whole lot of practice, having lived all my life in the public transportation capital of the world….

  Oh, never mind. I turned around and started heading for the garage. There had to be a bike around somewhere. Three boys, right? There had to be at least one bike.

  I found one. It was a boy’s bike, of course, with that stupid bar, and a really hard, really skinny seat. But it seemed to work all right. At least the tires weren’t flat.

  Then I thought, Okay, girl dressed in black, riding a bike on the streets after midnight, what do I need?

  I didn’t think I was going to find any reflective tape, but I thought maybe a bike helmet might do the trick. There was one hanging on a peg on the side of the garage. I put down the hood of my sweatshirt, and fastened the thing on. Oh, yeah. Stylish and safety conscious, that’s me.

  And then I was off, rolling down the driveway—okay, gravel is not the easiest stuff to ride a bike on, especially going downhill. And the whole way turned out to be downhill since the house looking out over the bay, was perched on the side of this mountainy kind of thing. Going downhill was certainly better than going uphill—there was no way I was ever going to be able to ride back up this thing; I had a pretty good idea I’d be doing some pushing on my way home—but going downhill was pretty harrowing. I mean, the hill was so steep, the way so twisty, and the night air so cold, that I rode with my heart in my throat practically the whole time, tears streaming down the sides of my cheeks because of the wind. And those potholes—

  God! Did that stupid seat hurt when I hit a pothole.

  But the hill wasn’t the worst of it. When I got down the hill I hit an intersection. This was much scarier than the hill because even though it was after midnight, there were cars there. One of them honked at me. But it wasn’t my fault. I was going so fast, because of the hill and all, that if I’d stopped I’d probably have gone right over the handlebars. So I kept on going, narrowly avoiding getting hit by a pickup, and then, I don’t know how, I was pulling into the school parking lot.

  The Mission looked a lot different at night than it did during the day. For one thing, during the day the parking lot was always full, packed with cars belonging to teachers, students, and tourists visiting the church. The lot was empty now, not a single car, and so quiet that you could hear, way off in the distance, the sound of waves hitting Carmel Beach.

  The other thing was that, for tourist reasons, I guess, they had set up these spotlights to shine on certain parts of the building, like the dome—it was all lit up—and the front of the church, with its huge arched entranceway. The back of the building, where I pulled up, was pretty dark. Which suited me fine, actually. I hid the bike behind a Dumpster, leaving the helmet dangling from one of the handles, and went up to a window. The Mission was built like a bazillion years ago, back when they didn’t have air-conditioning or central heating, so to keep cool in summer and warm in winter, people built their houses really thick. That meant that all the windows in the Mission were set back about a foot into the adobe, with another foot sticking out into the room behind them.

  I climbed up onto one of these built-in window seats, looking around first to make sure no one saw me. But there wasn’t anybody around except a couple of raccoons that were rooting around the Dumpster for some of the lunch leftovers. Then I cupped my hands over my face, to cut out the light of the moon, and peered inside.

  It was Mr. Walden’s classroom. With the moonlight flooding into it, I could see his handwriting on the chalkboard, and the big poster of Bob Dylan, his favorite poet, on the wall.

  It only took me a second to punch out the glass in one of the old-fashioned iron panes, reach in, and unlatch the window. The hard part about breaking a window isn’t the breaking part, or even the reaching in part. It’s getting your hand out again that always causes cuts. I had on my best ghost-busting gloves, thick black ones with rubbery stuff on the knuckles, but I’ve had my sleeve get caught before, and gotten my arm all scratched up.

  That didn’t happen this time. Plus, the window opened out, instead of up, swinging forward just enough to let a girl like me inside. Occasionally, I’ve broken in to places that turned out to have alarms—resulting in an uncomfortable ride for me in the back of a car belonging to one of New York’s finest—but the Mission hadn’t gotten that high-tech with their security system yet. In fact, their security system seemed to consist of locking the doors and windows, and hoping for the best.

  Which certainly suited me fine.

  Once I was inside Mr. Walden’s room, I closed the window behind me. No sense alerting anybody who might happen to be manning the perimeter—as if. It was easy to maneuver between the desks, since the moon was so bright. And once I got the door open and stepped out into the breezeway, I found I didn’t need my flashlight, either. The courtyard was flooded with light. I guess the Mission must stay open pretty late for the tourists because there were these big yellow floodlights hidden in the breezeway’s eaves, and pointed at various objects of interest: the tallest of the palm trees, the one with the biggest hibiscus bush at its base; the fountain, which was on even though the place was closed; and of course the statue of Father Serra, with one light shining on his bronze head and another on the heads of the Native American women at his feet.

  Geesh. It was a good thing Fa
ther Serra was good and dead. I had a feeling that statue would have completely embarrassed him.

  The breezeway was empty, as was the courtyard. No one was around. All I could hear was the gentle splash of the water in the fountain and the chirping of crickets hidden in the garden. It was a sort of restful place, actually, which was surprising. I mean, none of my other schools had ever struck me as restful. At least, this one did, until this hard voice behind me went, “What are you doing here?”

  I spun around, and there she was. Just leaning up against her locker—excuse me, my locker—and glaring at me, her arms folded across her chest. She was wearing a pair of charcoal-colored slacks—nice ones—and a gray cashmere sweater set. She had an add-a-pearl necklace around her neck, one pearl for every Christmas and birthday she’d been alive, given to her, no doubt, by a set of doting grandparents. On her feet were a pair of shiny black loafers. Her hair, as shiny as her shoes in the yellow light from the floodlamps, looked smooth and golden. She really was a beautiful girl.

  Too bad she had blown her head off.

  “Heather,” I said, pushing the hood of my sweatshirt down. “Hi. I’m sorry to bother you”—it always helps at least to start out polite—“but I really think we need to talk, you and I.”

  Heather didn’t move. Well, that’s not true. Her eyes narrowed. They were pale eyes, gray, I think, though it was hard to tell, in spite of the floodlamps. The long eyelashes—dark with mascara—were tastefully ringed in charcoal liner.

  “Talk?” Heather echoed. “Oh, yeah. Like I really want to talk to you. I know about you, Susie.”

  I winced. I couldn’t help it. “It’s Suze,” I said.

  “Whatever. I know what you’re doing here.”

  “Well, good,” I said. “Then I don’t have to explain. You want to go sit down, so we can talk?”

  “Talk? Why would I want to talk to you? What do you think I am, stupid? God, you think you’re so sly. You think you can just move right in, don’t you?”

  I blinked at her. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Into my place.” She straightened and stepped away from the locker, and walked toward the courtyard as if she were admiring the fountain. “You,” she said, tossing me a look over her shoulder. “The new girl. The new girl who thinks she can just slip right into the place I left behind. You’ve already got my locker. You’re on your way to stealing my best friend. I know Kelly called you and asked you to her stupid party. And now you think you can steal my boyfriend.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “He’s not your boyfriend, Heather, remember? He broke up with you. That’s why you’re dead. You blew your brains out in front of his mother.”

  Heather’s eyes widened. “Shut up,” she said.

  “You blew your brains out in front of his mother because you were too stupid to realize that no boy—not even Bryce Martinson—is worth dying for.” I strolled past her, out onto one of the gravel pathways between the garden beds. I didn’t want to admit it, not even to myself, but it was making me a little nervous, standing under the breezeway after what had happened to Bryce. “Boy, you must have been mad when you realized what you’d done. Killed yourself. And over something so stupid. Because of a guy.”

  “Shut up!” This time she didn’t just say it. She screamed it, so loud that she had to ball her hands up into fists at her sides, close her eyes, and hunch up her shoulders to do it. The scream was so loud, my ears were ringing afterward. But no one came running from the rectory, where I saw a few lights on. The mourning doves that I’d heard cooing in the eaves of the breezeway hadn’t uttered a peep since Heather had shown up, and the crickets had cut short their midnight serenade.

  People can’t hear ghosts—well, most people, anyway—but the same can’t be said for animals and even insects. They are hyperalert to the presence of the paranormal. Max, the Ackermans’ dog, won’t go near my room thanks to Jesse.

  “It’s no use your screaming like that,” I said. “No one but me can hear it.”

  “I’ll scream all I want,” she shrieked. And then she proceeded to do so.

  Yawning, I went and sat down on one of the wooden benches by Father Serra’s statue. There was a plaque, I noticed, at the statue’s base. I could read it easily with the help of the floodlamps and the moon.

  THE VENERABLE FATHER JUNIPERO SERRA, the plaque read, 1713–1784. HIS RIGHTEOUS WAYS AND SELF-ABNEGATION WERE A LESSON TO ALL WHO KNEW HIM AND RECEIVED HIS TEACHINGS.

  Huh. I was going to have to look up self-abnegation in the dictionary when I got home. I wondered if it was the same as self-flagellation, something for which Serra had also been known.

  “Are you listening to me?” Heather screamed.

  I looked at her. “Do you know what the word abnegation means?” I asked.

  She stopped screaming and just stared at me. Then she strode forward, her face a mask of livid rage.

  “Listen to me, you bitch,” she said, stopping when she stood a foot away from me. “I want you gone, do you understand? I want you out of this school. That is my locker. Kelly Prescott is my best friend. And Bryce Martinson is my boyfriend! You get out, you go back to where you came from. Everything was just fine before you got here—”

  I had to interrupt. “I’m sorry, Heather, but everything was not just fine before I got here. You know how I know that? Because you’re dead. Okay? You are dead. Dead people don’t have lockers, or best friends, or boyfriends. You know why? Because they’re dead.”

  Heather looked as if she was about to start screaming again, but I headed her off at the pass. I said, smoothly and evenly, “Now, I know you made a mistake. You made a horrible, terrible mistake—”

  “I’m not the one who made the mistake,” Heather said flatly. “Bryce made the mistake. Bryce is the one who broke up with me.”

  I said, “Yeah, well, that wasn’t the mistake I was talking about. I was talking about you shooting yourself because a stupid boy broke up with—”

  “If you think he’s so stupid,” Heather said with a sneer, “why are you going out with him on Saturday? That’s right. I heard him ask you out. The rat. He probably wasn’t faithful a day the whole time we were going out.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s just great. All the more reason for you to kill yourself over him.”

  There were tears, sparkling like those rhinestones you buy and glue to your fingernails, gathered beneath her lashes. “I loved him,” she breathed. “If I couldn’t have him, I didn’t want to live.”

  “And now that you’re dead,” I said tiredly, “you figure he ought to join you, right?”

  “I don’t like it here,” she said softly. “No one can see me. Just you and F-Father Dominic. I get so lonely….”

  “Right. That’s understandable. But Heather, even if you do manage to kill him, he probably isn’t going to like you for it much.”

  “I can make him like me,” Heather said confidently. “After all, it’ll just be me and him. He’ll have to like me.”

  I shook my head. “No, Heather. It doesn’t work that way.”

  She stared at me. “What do you mean?”

  “If you kill Bryce, there’s no guarantee he’ll end up here with you. What happens to people after they die—well, I’m not sure, but I think it’s different for everyone. If you kill Bryce, he’ll go to wherever it is he’s supposed to go. Heaven, hell, his next life—I don’t know for sure. But I do know he won’t end up here with you. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “But—” Heather looked furious. “But that isn’t fair!”

  “Lots of things aren’t fair, Heather. It isn’t fair, for example, that you have to suffer for all eternity for a mistake that you made in the heat of a moment. I’m sure if you’d known what it was like to be dead, you never would have killed yourself. But, Heather, it doesn’t have to be this way.”

  She stared down at me. The tears were frozen there, like little tiny shards of ice. “It doesn’t?”

  “No. It doesn’t.”


  “You mean…you mean I can go back?”

  I nodded. “You can. You can start over.”

  She sniffled. “How?”

  I said, “All you have to do is make up your mind to do it.”

  A scowl passed over her pretty face. “But I already made up my mind that that’s what I want. All I’ve wanted since it…since it happened…was to get my life back.”

  I shook my head. “No, Heather,” I said. “You misunderstand me. You can never have your life—your old life—back. But you can start a new one. That’s got to be better than this, than being here all by yourself forever, storming around in a rage, hurting people—”

  She shouted, “You said I could get my life back!”

  I realized, all in a flash, that I’d lost her. “I didn’t mean your old life. I just meant a life—”

  But it was too late. She was freaking.

  I understood now why Bryce’s parents had sent him to Antigua. I wished I were there—anywhere, really, if it would get me out of the way of this girl’s wrath.

  “You told me,” Heather screamed, “you told me I could get my life back! You lied to me!”

  “Heather, I didn’t lie. I just meant that your life—well, your life is over. Heather, you ended it yourself. I know that sucks, but hey, you should have thought of that—”

  She cut me off with an unearthly—well, of course—wail. “I won’t let you,” she shrieked. “I won’t let you take over my life!”

  “Heather, I told you, I’m not trying to. I have my own life. I don’t need yours—”

  With the crickets and the birds silent, the sound of the water burbling in the fountain a few yards away had been the only noise in the courtyard—with the exception of Heather’s screaming, that is. But the water sounded strange, suddenly. It was making a funny popping noise. I looked toward it, and saw that steam was rising from its surface. I wouldn’t have thought that was so strange—it was cold out, and the water temperature might have been warmer than the air around it—if I hadn’t seen a great big bubble burst suddenly on the water’s surface.