"Jimmy!" she said happily. Her name was Joyce, and she and Jimmy had been friends for some time. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine, Joyce," he replied. "I need to get a message to George. I need him to call me as soon as possible. Can you get that message to him right away?"
"I can try," Joyce said. Her voice suddenly filled with concern. "What's up?"
"I just need to tell him about something," Jimmy said. "It's homework related. He's supposed to be bringing me my work this afternoon and I need him to stop by the chemistry lab, too."
"You should be resting," Joyce said.
"I know, but you know me." Jimmy added a little laugh here, and he hoped he sounded convincing. Inside, his guts were churning.
"I can try to get this to him," Joyce said, "but I think he's in history class and they're in the middle of a test right now. I might have to wait until the class is over."
"Please," Jimmy pleaded. "If you can get that to him and get him to call me right away, that would really be fantastic. I, um, I have a doctor appointment in about ten minutes that I have to leave for. So the sooner he can call, the better."
"What's the rush?" Joyce said, now sounding just a bit irritated.
"Sorry to put you out, Joyce," Jimmy said, "but this is just very important. So if you can help, I'll really owe you one."
Joyce sighed, and when she spoke again she sounded friendlier. She was the type that appreciated it when someone else owed her a favor. "I'll take the message down right now, Jimmy."
"Thanks, Joyce," Jimmy said, trying to put as much enthusiasm in it as he could. If he could convince her that she was really doing him a major favor, she might be more eager. "I really appreciate it."
"No problem," she replied. "Listen, you go lay down until you have to leave for that doctor appointment. I don't want you to stay away from school any longer than necessary."
"I will," Jimmy said. All the while he was thinking, Just deliver the damn message.
Joyce finally ended the conversation. Jimmy hung up the phone and stood there in his kitchen. He did not want to go into the living room. The big window that overlooked the lawn felt too exposed. There was a back door that led directly into the back family room. That felt too exposed. His bedroom also faced the main road, which felt vulnerable. He had never realized just how open and exposed his house was. So he stood in the kitchen. At least he could duck down behind the sink if someone showed up in the backyard or get behind the island in the middle of the kitchen if someone kicked the door down. The thought that he was even thinking about such things sent more shivers up and down his spine.
Each second felt like days. Surely the entire planet had revolved around the sun before the phone finally rang. Jimmy lunged for it and put it to his ear.
"Hello?"
"What the hell, Jimmy?" It was George. He sounded irritated. Jimmy was batting a thousand in the irritation department today.
"Shut up, George, and listen. I have a ton to tell you."
He filled George in. George sat silently. Jimmy could hear the sounds of the school going on in the background. There were the sounds of people shouting and kids running, sneakers on laminated floors. There were lockers banging and slamming. Teenagers were anything but quiet, Jimmy mused.
"Jesus," George replied after he heard the entire tale. "What do you suggest I do?"
"Just be careful," Jimmy said. "Don't ask any more questions. Let's do the research behind the scenes. I'll work with Warren and Tabitha. They've been through this before."
George snorted. "Great, now my life is in danger because you're in love with an urban legend."
"Give me a break, George."
"Roger that. Look, I'll leave your homework behind the screen door at the front of your house. After that, I am heading home as fast as I can."
"Good plan," Jimmy confirmed.
George hung up, and Jimmy stood in the silence. He was smiling. He always felt better after talking with George, as cranky as the guy could be.
A horn sounded from outside.
Jimmy nearly jumped out of his shoes, but he hightailed it out the door. Tabitha was there in her car, waving from the driver's seat. Jimmy waved back. He felt better, but his eyes still scanned from left to right as he ran across the lawn toward the car. He kept waiting to hear gunfire.
It was probably the most awkward moment of Jimmy's life. He sat on the edge of the sofa in Warren and Tabitha's house and did his best not to squirm. However, he was pretty sure he was squirming. Across from him, on the leather loveseat, was his mother. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her face, as best as Jimmy could describe it, was pinched. Sitting next to Jimmy was Tabitha. Hovering behind Jimmy and Tabitha was Warren. Warren and Tabitha had just relayed the story, as much as they knew, to Jimmy's mother. Jimmy chimed in from time to time, but the icy stares he got in return from his mother ultimately silenced him.
"This is the most insane thing I have ever heard," his mother said at last. "I mean, really. This is the most insane thing I have ever heard."
She focused on Jimmy.
"You vandalized a man's car!"
Jimmy opened his mouth in surprise. "But Mom! He had a gun and was going to shoot me."
His mother waved a hand in the air. "Oh, nonsense. You were excited and hyper. He was driving fast, saw you panic and drive off the road, and came down to help. You imagined the gun."
"Did I imagine the shot I heard, or the tree exploding in front of me?" Jimmy asked. "Did I imagine what he said?"
His mother opened her mouth to argue. Then she closed her mouth. She tried once more, but nothing came out. She closed her mouth and looked down at her hands.
"And you, Tabitha," she said after a while, "you are feeding his delusions, right?"
"I don't think they're delusions, Mrs. Parker," Tabitha said quietly. "I think that Jimmy has stumbled onto something very real here."
"He's talking to a ghost," Jimmy's mom said doubtfully. "He has regular telepathic conversations with a ghost? You expect me to believe that that's real? You expect me to believe that my son has stumbled onto a vast conspiracy that may involve most of the powerful men in town?"
Tabitha sighed. "Yes."
Jimmy's mother said, "This is insane."
"Did you grow up here in Knorr?" Warren said. He had been sipping more of his tea and been very quiet for a time.
"Pardon?"
"Have you lived here your entire life?" Warren repeated.
"Yes."
"And you attended the local high school? Was it in the sixties?"
"Yes."
Warren nodded. "Did you know a girl named Sapphire?"
Jimmy's mother suddenly looked offended. "What are you implying? Are you implying I'm somehow part of this insane conspiracy theory you've concocted?"
Warren shook his head. "Not at all. We'd just like to find out someone who's known her. Did you know anyone by that name?"
Jimmy's mom sighed. "Yes. Well, that is to say I knew of her."
Jimmy's mouth opened to the point that he was certain his chin must be on his chest. "You never said a thing when I told you about her. How many girls named Sapphire could there be, Mom?"
His mother looked offended again. "How could you expect me to believe that the Sapphire you were going on and on about would be the same one I knew in high school? What logical, sane person actually thinks, ‘Oh, yeah, my son must be dating the ghost of a girl I knew fifty years ago!’"
"Do you know what happened to her?" Warren said, cutting through the defensiveness and indignation.
Jimmy's mother got quiet for a bit. Then she sighed.
"I didn't know her well. I knew about her. She was fairly popular. She was also a troublemaker. She was very strong-willed and always causing problems. It was like you saw later in the sixties and seventies when girls started burning their bras and protesting. She was just doing it years before it was everywhere."
She paused.
"I just know that she was there for
about two years. I know that several boys were interested in her, but she never seemed interested in them."
"Did she date Jesse?" Jimmy asked.
She shrugged. "They showed up at a dance together. I was there, but I have no idea what happened. I just know she was there with Jesse and there was some kind of altercation between Jesse and Sapphire and Devlin and some of the other football players. Then they were kicked out. After that, I heard that Sapphire and her family had moved away."
She shrugged. Her face was red when she realized that all eyes were staring at her, boring into her.
"Is that all?" Jimmy asked.
"Don't you take that tone with me, young man," she said. "People moved away a lot. They still do. It was a different time, Jimmy. Kids didn't vanish the way they do now. Kids didn't shoot up schools like they do now. Yes, the Boogeyman thing had happened, but we were all older by then and it didn't seem like something that affected teenagers. You know what it's like. When you're that age, you can't see past your own nose."
"Yes," Tabitha said. "Yes, I understand. I don't blame you. You were just there and people were telling you what they wanted everyone to believe."
Jimmy's mother nodded. She was still red, blushing, embarrassed.
"If I had ever suspected that anything bad had happened to her," she said, "I would have told someone."
She shrugged again. Jimmy was feeling even more uncomfortable.
"It's OK, Mom," Jimmy said. "But do you remember who was involved at the dance? Could you name names?"
She shook her head and looked at Jimmy with a kind of pleading that broke his heart. "Jimmy, it was so long ago. You know how I am. And it was no big thing then. Everyone just thought she had moved away. People got in fights sometimes. I remember Jesse and I remember Devlin, but I don't really remember who else was there. I don't even remember who took me to that dance. It wasn't your father."
She blushed even deeper crimson.
"I remember that there was a bit of a fight," she continued. "I was on the other side of the dance floor with my date. I have no idea what it was about, Jimmy. You have to believe me. I had no idea that anything bad had happened. Kids got into fights. Kids got drunk and tried to bring booze into the dance. I was having a good time. I didn't hang out with Sapphire or the those boys, and I only had a couple of classes with Jesse."
Jimmy looked to his right and Tabitha was nodding, as well. What else was there to say? Jimmy's mother was sitting there looking at each of them, but lingering the longest on Jimmy. There was a sadness in her eyes, and a kind of pleading.
"It's OK, Mom," Jimmy said. "I don't know what you could have done that would have made a difference. We still don't even know what happened. It could have been an accident, for all we know."
"But Devlin Little is not someone to mess around with," Tabitha said. "He's a prominent businessman here in Knorr. He runs the local Republican Party. He's respected by a lot of people, and there's been talk that he should run for a local senate seat."
"And his kid is the captain of the football team," Warren added. "He couldn't be more in a position of power in a town like Knorr if he were mayor. Hell, given the boundaries a mayor has to have, he's more powerful."
"Then why would he risk it all by shooting Jimmy?" his mother asked.
"Why not?" Warren replied. "A guy with that kind of power, that kind of respect, could get away with anything. Not only would everyone just believe him if he said he had no idea what happened, or that Jimmy had had an accident or been shot in a hunting accident, but he'd have the lawyers and the pull to make the whole incident go away."
"Just like he tried to do with Sapphire, apparently," Jimmy added.
Warren sighed and sipped his tea. Tabitha shifted nervously in her seat.
"I think you and Jimmy should stay here with us," she said. "We have plenty of room and we can make sure that you get to work and Jimmy gets to school and back home safely. Meanwhile, Warren, Jimmy, and I will continue digging. Jimmy can help when he can, and we can spend more of our day researching."
There was silence for a while. Then Jimmy's mother shook her head.
"I don't like it," she said. "I don't want to be away from my home. If Jimmy says Devlin did this, then we should go to the sheriff."
Warren cleared his throat and shook his head. "Like we just said, if we don't have rock-solid evidence, he just lawyers up and walks. Then he's even more dangerous."
"Hard to get more dangerous than pursuing my son into the woods with a shotgun! And what's to stop him from coming here and shooting this place up?"
"We have security," Warren replied. "We have the motion detector lights and a state-of-the-art alarm system. No one can get in here without us knowing about it. It even runs on a back-up circuit that has a generator, so if someone wants to try and cut the power, it still works. Plus, I have a gun and I know how to use it. So does Tabitha."
Jimmy and his mother both looked at Tabitha at the same time, surprised. Tabitha had always seemed like such a pacifist. Tabitha's eyes glittered over the top of her glasses.
"A girl has to be able to protect herself," she said. "Look, it's safer here than at your house."
"My son is not a detective," Jimmy's mother said. "And what about our house?"
"Well, come on, now," Warren said. "You grounded the boy and he still managed to get out, and it's obvious he's in too deep now. I don't think that just saying no is going to solve anything. We can pretend otherwise, or we can deal with the fact that we're involved in this thing now, whatever it is. And I can drive by your house on a daily basis if you want. Hell, I'll even mow the lawn and stuff. Heck, maybe a scandal where people think I'm cheating on Tabitha is just the distraction we need to dig further into this weird mystery."
Tabitha turned and punched Warren in the stomach. Warren pretended to double over in pain. Then they both laughed. Jimmy smiled. It was hard not to like them, even if they were a little weird.
Jimmy's mother sighed and shook her head. "I just don't know."
"Come on, Mom," Jimmy said, getting irritated now. "Just for a week. Let's give it a week. Let's see what we can find and maybe, just maybe, we can do something to help someone."
His mother cocked her head to the side. "Who? Who are we going to help, Jimmy? If people are getting shot at, or this whole thing gets exposed, who are we helping?"
"We’re helping Sapphire," Jimmy said. "Somewhere out there is her family. And something is causing her to remain here and become an urban legend, coming up to the road every so often as a way to reach out for help. Can you imagine what that must be like? She’s lost and alone in some dark place, and she can't move on until someone figures out what happened to her. Her parents must have moved on, unable to take it after a while. They have probably spent all of these years hoping that she was at peace. Wouldn't you want that if it were me? What if you found out that I wasn't at peace? Wouldn't you want someone to help? Wouldn't you want me to move on? Sapphire can't. She told me. And somehow, for some reason, she can connect with me. It's out of our hands, Mom. It's like I've been chosen. I'm the one who can help her. I'm the one who can expose this, and she's been waiting and searching for me for fifty years."
Jimmy had often heard the expression about silence being deafening, but he had never really understood it until that moment. His mother, Tabitha, and Warren were all silent, and his mother had her mouth open. They sat that way for a moment, and then his mother closed her mouth with a click.
"If you put it that way," she said, "it's hard to say no, Jimmy."
She shifted in her seat again and looked at Warren and Tabitha. She stared hard at Warren, and then shifted her gaze to Tabitha.
"One week," she said. "One week, and then we either go to the sheriff or we go home, or both. And if anything else happens to Jimmy, God help either of you."
Jimmy smiled.
After they made the trip back to the house Jimmy and Tabitha sat on the sofa. His mother had fretted and yelled and scowled the
entire time that they packed up their clothes and grabbed other personal items. Jimmy made sure to grab his laptop. It was old and second-hand, but it worked well enough, and you just never know when you might need to get on the Internet. After the turmoil at the house, they had piled into the car and headed back to Tabitha and Warren's. For a while they had sat around watching television. The atmosphere was, at best, icy. When Jimmy's mother had decided to head up to her bedroom, Tabitha had bid her goodnight and then asked Jimmy to stay behind and chat with her. It was now late evening, heading on nine o'clock. Jimmy was tired, but his body was also vibrating with excitement.
"We need to chat about something, Jimmy," Tabitha said.
Jimmy nodded to show that he was in agreement with that.
"You say that you and Sapphire can chat via some kind of telepathy or something, right?"
Jimmy nodded again.
"I think it's time I met her," Tabitha said.
Jimmy frowned. "I'm not sure she'll talk to you. I mean, look how long she was here as an urban legend, just hitchhiking, dancing with guys, and then vanishing. Something about those other guys wasn't right, until I came along. If I introduce other people to this, I don't know what will happen."
Tabitha spent the entire time nodding while he spoke, and she held up both her hands when he finished.
"I know all of that, Jimmy," she said. "I figured that was all that you would bring up, and all of that is perfectly valid. I still think you should try. You can try contacting her right here and just ask her. Maybe if she knows that we're trying to help, it will make a difference. We're in an area that no one could imagine – uncharted territory. I have no idea what the rules are, but I kind of get the feeling that the rules are flexible, to say the least."
Jimmy thought about that last sentence and it all made sense. Whenever Tabitha spoke, it always seemed to make sense. She had a way of looking at things that Jimmy just did not have.
"I'll try," he said at last.
"Is there anything special you need to do?” Tabitha asked. “Can I stay here, or do you need to be alone?"
Jimmy shrugged. "I've never done it with someone else in the room, so I have no idea. I'll try."
Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance Page 16