The Ghosts of Now

by Joan Lowery Nixon

He turns, but his eyes are so dark I can’t attempt to read what’s behind them. “I didn’t want to tell you what happened to Jeremy Friday night, but—well, some of us think you ought to know, so you’ll leave Debbie alone. You’ve got her so upset she’s sick in bed.”

  “Now, wait a minute! It’s not my fault if Debbie’s sick!”

  He leans closer. “Do you want to hear what I’ve got to tell you or not?”

  It’s hard to stay calm. “Yes.”

  “Okay. Then listen. We had a party.”

  “Where?”

  “Just listen to me. I’ll tell you what I can.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “Some of us got together for a party, and don’t ask me who was there, because I won’t tell you. And don’t ask where it was, because I won’t tell that either.”

  I clamp my teeth together to keep from saying a word.

  “Anyhow, it was at this girl’s house, because her parents were out of town, and a lot of us had too much to drink, and somebody took Debbie’s car.”

  I can’t help it. “Who?”

  “We don’t know. There were some kids from another town at the party—word got around—and we think it was one of them.”

  “Jeremy was at the party too?”

  “Yes. Only he got real moody. He had some stuff to drink, and maybe he couldn’t handle it. In any case he’s not much fun at a party, or maybe you know that. He started talking about how life didn’t mean much to him, how it would be a lot easier if he were dead.”

  “No!”

  “I told you that you wouldn’t like the truth. Now you’ve got to hear it. Anyhow, Jeremy ran out of the door and down Avenue G toward Huckleberry, and I didn’t—”

  “Which direction on G?” He looks blank for a second, so I say, “South or north?”

  ‘What difference does that make?”

  “I need to know.”

  He frowns. “Okay. He was running toward the north, I suppose. Anyhow, if you’re through interrupting, I’ll tell you that I didn’t want to go after him, but I felt responsible, because I brought him to the party, so I did. He acted like he didn’t know what he was doing. And he ran right into the street. Didn’t even look. This car was coming fast down Huckleberry, toward Avenue G.”

  I interrupt. “From the dead end block of Huckleberry?”

  He scowls at me. “No. Of course not. The other direction. I guess the driver didn’t see him in time, because the car didn’t stop.”

  “Debbie’s car?”

  “No. I don’t know whose car it was. I heard that the guy who took Debbie’s car cracked it up against a tree. This was someone else, and I was so busy trying to find out if Jeremy was killed or not I didn’t pay attention to the driver or the license plate or anything.”

  “Are you the one who phoned me?”

  He shakes his head sorrowfully. “No. I just ran back to the house and called an ambulance.”

  “You should have stayed with him.”

  “I came back to check on him again. He was breathing all right. Look, some of those kids were pretty drunk. Some of them were stoned. We couldn’t take any extra chances. We turned out the lights and waited for the ambulance to show up. We knew they’d do anything for Jeremy that could be done.”

  “You were home when I called you.”

  “That’s right. Most of us got home as fast as we could manage.”

  “And you lied to me. You said you didn’t know where Jeremy was.”

  “I wasn’t thinking. I was scared. I didn’t know what else to do at the time.”

  “But you’re telling me this now.”

  “Because you’re pushing. A lot of kids could get hurt if you keep this up, Angie. Some of them might lose scholarships, or get kicked off the team.”

  “You think I believe that you care so much about them?” I glare at him with pure hatred.

  “We stick together,” he says. “We’ve known each other all our lives.”

  A bell over the front entrance clangs jarringly. Boyd shifts his weight to the balls of his feet as though he’s ready to leave, but I block his way. “One more question. What do you know about a watch?”

  His eyelids give the faintest flicker, but his gaze is steady. “I don’t know anything about a watch. Did Jeremy lose his watch? Is that what you mean?”

  When I don’t answer he puts a hand on my shoulder. “Angie, I don’t think you understand what I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s pretty obvious to me that Jeremy wanted to commit suicide.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “I don’t believe you!” But some of the lines of Jeremy’s lonely, desperate poetry bounce off the walls of my mind and send shudders down my backbone.

  I push them away and take a step closer to Boyd, my face almost against his, but he doesn’t flinch. “There’s something else you’re not telling me. I think you put a man’s wristwatch in Jeremy’s desk. It was stolen in a robbery, and you have to be the one who put it there. I don’t know why you did that. So tell me!”

  “Where is the watch?”

  “Back where it belongs.”

  “What are we talking about then? A watch that doesn’t exist?”

  “I found it in Jeremy’s desk drawer.”

  He smiles. “But now you can’t prove there was a watch, can you?”

  “I—I guess not.”

  He sidles away from the pillar, moving back. “I told you what you wanted to know. What’s the matter with you, Angie? Why dream up a lot of other junk?”

  Suddenly he looks upward, to someone beyond me, and a strange look flickers across his face so rapidly that I can’t read it.

  A voice interrupts my thoughts. “Angie,” Del says. “I saw you out here.” He puts an arm across my shoulders. “How you doin’, Boyd?” he asks.

  Boyd says something, which is drowned out by the clanging of the bell, and hurries back into the building.

  The hot breezes swirl little eddies of dust across the steps and against my legs. I rub my arms, feeling the sun and the grit on my skin. But I’m cold, and I shiver.

  “Angie?” Del asks. “Are you okay?”

  I can’t answer, and he turns me so that I’m facing him. “Did Boyd say something that got you upset?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it now.”

  “Sure,” he says. “But you’ve got to go to class. I’ll walk you there.”

  He propels me inside the door, and somehow I get through the rest of the afternoon. As I leave my last class I find Del standing in the hallway outside the door, waiting for me.

  “I’ll give you a ride home,” he says, taking my arm.

  “Thanks, but I can walk.” I try to pull away, but he holds fast.

  “Nope. Something’s bothering you, and I’d like to know what.”

  “It’s my problem, not yours.” He waits, and I add, “I mean you know the way I feel about Debbie, and if you’re dating her—”

  “Oh,” he says. “What Candy said about last night.”

  A couple of people, hurrying in the opposite direction, elbow against me, pushing me into Del. I stumble, but Del steadies me. With an arm around my shoulders he moves me through the hall, down the steps, and out to his pickup truck in the school parking lot.

  He leans down, and his face is very close to mine. “I’ve known Debbie since we were in kindergarten,” he says. “And we dated for a while. It didn’t work out, but in a way we’re still friends.”

  “It’s none of my business,” I stammer.

  “Yes it is. It’s because of you that last night she called and asked me to come over. She wanted me to tell you to leave her alone. I said I already had. I told her you were kinda stubborn.”

  His slow smile gets to me. Without any pretense I say, “When I heard that you were at Debbie’s last night I was jealous.”

  Del doesn’t answer. He just takes my shoulders, pulls me toward him, and kisses me. It’s a light kiss, a quick kiss, one that kids moving their nearby cars out of the lot wouldn�
��t even notice. But it shakes me.

  “Now,” Del says, “I’ll take you home.”

  Something has been growing in my mind like a little fungus in one of those time-lapse films they show in science classes, and as I climb into the car I say, “Del, could you take me to the place where—you know—Huckleberry Street and Avenue G?”

  Without asking any questions he simply says, “Let’s go.”

  On the way to our destination I fill him in on what Boyd told me about the party.

  “I can’t believe what he said about Jeremy deliberately running out in front of a car,” I tell him.

  “Could be Jeremy didn’t know what he was doing if he had too much to drink,” Del says. “He’s under age. It may have been the first time he had any hard liquor. It could have hit him pretty hard.”

  “But there’s something that’s bothering me.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  Del eases his pickup over to the curb on Avenue G, and I just sit there, staring at the intersection. According to what Boyd told me, Jeremy ran into the street at Avenue G, going north; and the car was coming down Huckleberry from the west.

  It’s like the answer to an impossible question on a pop quiz suddenly coming into your head, or a puzzle with the pieces showing up in the right place. I open the door on my side of the truck and jump out, running to the spot. I hear Del following me.

  “Angie? What are you doing?”

  Now I’m sure. “Boyd was lying to me. If the accident had happened the way he said it did, Jeremy would have run across the street here and have been hit by the car from this side. Wouldn’t he?”

  “I guess.”

  “Then his injuries would have been on his left side. But it was his right side that was hurt so badly.”

  Del frowns as he thinks. Finally he says, “Maybe. But what if Jeremy suddenly saw the car coming and turned around? Lots of things could have happened.”

  “That’s not the way Boyd told the story.”

  “He probably wasn’t too sure what he was doing either. Look, these parties happen, Angie. Jeremy shouldn’t have been there, but that’s after the fact now. Why don’t we go to the hospital and see how he’s coming along? That makes more sense to me than standin’ here tryin’ to play detective with all the odds against you.”

  “My brother didn’t want to kill himself.”

  Del is talking to me, but I tune him out, because my mind is being tugged in another direction. I raise my head and stare down Huckleberry to the end of the street. There’s just a glimpse of yellow brick set back from the street behind the ragged curtain of overgrown, untended shrubbery, only a portion of the house that is overshadowed by its nearer, more tidy neighbors. The Andrews place.

  In my mind I am walking up the front steps toward the draped windows that are like hooded eyes. But the eyes are opening, and there are mouths with lips moving, stretching, twisting, contorting! Screams no one wants to hear! The ghosts of now!

  Del grips my shoulders. “Angie? What’s the matter?”

  Like an echo I hear the whimpering sounds that have been coming from my mouth.

  I lean against Del, shaking, shivering, trying to steady myself. “I’m sorry. Something frightened me.”

  He pats my back clumsily. I can hear his heart thumping, and I put one hand against his chest, as though I can soothe the heart back into its normal rhythm. “It’s that Andrews place,” I mumble. “The ghosts—”

  I can’t finish the sentence, but it doesn’t matter, because Del twists to look in that direction and says, “You can hardly see the old house from here. You just let your imagination go crazy.”

  “I’m sorry, Del. I didn’t mean to scare you.” I back off and take a couple of deep breaths to steady myself.

  “You didn’t scare me. I just didn’t know what was happening to you.”

  “Could you drop me off at the hospital? I want to see Jeremy.”

  “I’ll come in with you.”

  “No. Not yet. I’d rather be alone with Jeremy until I get things sorted out.”

  “How will you get home later?”

  “Mom might be there at the hospital, or I can call Dad for a ride on his way home from the office.”

  He tilts his head, shoving back his hat, and studies me. “You’re sure you’re all right now, Angie?”

  I try to smile. “I’m sure.”

  “Okay,” he says, takes my hand, and leads me back to his truck.

  Del doesn’t ask any more questions, and I’m glad, because I don’t want to tell him the rest—the part about the watch. Maybe because it’s too much of a puzzle, and I can’t figure it out.

  The door to Jeremy’s room is closed, and I open it slowly, quietly, disappointed when I poke my head inside and find that Mom isn’t there.

  The gray-haired woman in the chair by the bed smiles at me without missing a stitch, her knitting needles tickety-tacking at a great rate.

  “How are you, Mrs. Clark?” I ask automatically.

  “I’m Mrs. Burrows,” she answers. “Mrs. Clark’s not on duty tonight.”

  Someone has taken the second chair away, and Mrs. Burrows is as settled on hers as a fat little robin on her nest. So I put my books on the little table by the wall and stand at the foot of Jeremy’s bed.

  “If you want to leave for a while, I’ll stay with him,” I tell Mrs. Burrows.

  “That’s sweet of you, dear, but I’d better stay on duty.”

  “I can take care of Jeremy.”

  “But it’s my job.” She smiles. “There’s really nowhere I’d want to go. I’m settled in and comfortable, thank you all the same.”

  I can either leave or try to pretend Mrs. Burrows isn’t there. I choose the latter. It’s important to talk to Jeremy.

  “Hi, Jeremy,” I say. “It’s me—Angie.”

  Mrs. Burrows’s smile twists into a grimace of sympathy. “Dear, he can’t hear you.”

  “He can hear me.”

  “But he’s unconscious. It’s as though he’s sleeping. Sleeping people can’t hear what’s said to them.”

  “Sometimes they can. There’s such a thing as sleep learning. People play tapes to listen to while they’re asleep.”

  The needles never stop. “I hadn’t heard of that, dear.”

  “Jeremy,” I say, ignoring her, “I love you.”

  Mrs. Burrows sighs. “You’re such a nice little family. It’s obvious that you and your brother are very close to each other.”

  I squeeze my eyelids tightly shut, trying to blot out the burning tears that push against them. A few escape down my cheeks, and I angrily rub them away with the back of one hand.

  The door opens and a voice behind me says, “May I come in?”

  I turn to see a man with thin white hair, his shoulders rounded. His hand that curls around the door is gnarled with large, blue veins.

  “My name is Gerald Clary,” he says. “I don’t want to bother you. I just came by to see how the boy is doing.”

  His sudden presence has wiped out my tears. I sniffle away the last of them and nod. “Please come in. I’m Angie Dupree, and this is my brother, Jeremy.”

  He nods and bobs, even at Mrs. Burrows, whose name I’ve forgotten. “You’re Mrs. Dupree?” he says.

  “No,” she says. “Doris Burrows,” and she gives him her broad smile.

  “I’ve called the hospital a number of times, but they don’t want to tell anybody anything; so I thought I’d come by.”

  “That’s very nice of you,” I say.

  He ducks his chin to peer over the bottom part of his bifocals, examining Jeremy. “That was terrible,” he murmurs. “Just terrible. Is he sedated?”

  “I don’t think so,” I answer, as Mrs. Burrows—authority in her voice now—says, “No. He’s still unconscious, but his vital signs are good.”

  What does that mean? I want to shout. But I quietly wait until Mr. Clary asks, “Is the doctor hopeful about the boy?”
<
br />   “Yes,” I answer. “We just have to wait.”

  “My wife stayed with him until the ambulance got there,” he says. Then he adds, “We didn’t know who he was, who else to get in touch with. The ambulance driver said he didn’t have any identification, and he was all alone.”

  I turn to stare at him. “You mean you were there when the car hit Jeremy?”

  “Not exactly,” he says. “I guess I didn’t explain. My wife and I heard a squeal of brakes. We were still watching TV, and I ran outside, and there he was”—he waves a hand toward Jeremy—“lying there in the street. The car that hit him was nearly a block away, and I couldn’t give the police any information about it at all.”

  His face is puckered, and the little grooves around the corners of his mouth turn down in concern. “My wife ran out and put a blanket on the boy,” he says. “And I’m the one who called the ambulance.”

  “So you were there just a few minutes after the accident happened.”

  Mr. Clary nods. “More like a few seconds. I can still move pretty fast.”

  “Was there anyone else on the street?”

  “No one,” he says. “What with the street lights and a good-sized moon, I would have seen anyone who was on the block. The only one out there besides my wife and me was whoever was driving that car.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I thank Mr. Clary for his kindness to Jeremy. My mind is working on two levels at once. I know I’m saying all the right things in response to what Mr. Clary is telling me, but at the same time I’m picking my way through jagged edges of lies that snag my thoughts, holding me back from finding the truth.

  Finally he leaves, and I hurry to the man at the admittance desk.

  “Could I ask you a question?”

  He looks up and smiles. “Hey, sis, I remember you. How’s everything going with your brother?”

  “He seems to be the same. Please. I need to find out something.”

  “Sure, sis,” he says. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Someone called an ambulance for my brother. Would you have a record of that?”

  “Not us. The police.”

  “Thanks.” I go back to Jeremy’s room and use his phone. Mrs. Burrows watches me closely, but I try to forget she’s there. It doesn’t matter.