Haint Misbehavin'

by Maureen Hardegree

  Not bad. Not good, but I could live with it.

  “And you’ll write a ten page paper on the dangers of going out alone at night in addition to the one you’re currently writing on underage drinking.”

  “You mean this paper?” Audrey said, sauntering down the stairs in her sleeveless granny nightgown and waving a stack of typed paper bound in plastic. “Imagine my surprise today when a padded envelope arrived in the mail for you.”

  “Hey, you can’t open my mail!” I shouted, but no one seemed to care that I’d been violated.

  “You didn’t,” Mom said, disappointment flavoring her words.

  “Oh, yeah, she did.” Audrey tossed the report onto the kitchen table in front of me.

  “I had hoped you hadn’t given in to the temptation,” Mom said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, confused and worried, very worried.

  “Well, when your father and I discovered you were missing tonight, we knew the only way you could contact anyone was through the computer. He tracked your activity, and we saw that you’d visited Paper Busters.”

  Guilt spread over me, thick and smooth, like peanut butter on a piece of white bread. There’s not much worse than disappointing your parents, except listening to the lecture on making better choices while your older sister is gloating even though her ugly butt should be in bed.

  “You spied on me?” I asked, incredulous that my own parents didn’t trust me. “What about my rights as an American citizen? And how about Audrey opening my mail?”

  Dad walked over to the kitchen table and picked up the underage drinking essay. He flipped through the contents. “I’ll be keeping this. Maybe you should stay home with Aunt Geneva while the rest of us go on vacation, Heather.”

  “No. Please, Dad. I only wanted the paper as an example of how to do it the right way. I have all my own research in a file. I can show you. I’ll finish both papers. And I’ll walk the dog. Anything but staying with Aunt Geneva.” I know, I’m violating one of the rules of parent negotiation—never admit what would hurt most because they’re bound to use it against you.

  Geneva cleared her throat. “Can we back up here? I mean, I understand that I’m only supposed to be here as moral support for Cath, who may I remind everyone, was hysterical and wanted to put out an Amber Alert, but I’m not exactly digging the whole staying with Aunt Geneva as punishment thing. I’m the cool aunt. How can I be a punishment?”

  “You are cool, but I really like the beach,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “And let’s not forget the whole ghost thing,” Dad said. “Maybe the girls are old enough now that they find it odd that a grown woman walks around saying she has a ghost friend.”

  Aunt Geneva narrowed her gaze at my father. “Lucky for you, I’m going to forgive you for that remark but only because I know you’re stressed. And might I add that I hardly think spending a couple of weeks with me, going to hip restaurants and coffee bars, plays, and concerts, and possibly the day spa for a massage, manicure and pedicure is really what anyone in their right mind would call punishment.”

  I dared to look at Aunt Geneva. She winked at me.

  “Thank you,” I mouthed.

  “I’ll think about it,” Dad said. With my paper, the only means I had to figuring out how to write a decent one, tucked under his arm, he walked to the sink and poured himself some water. He took two Advil, presumably for the headache that dealing with me and Aunt Geneva had given him. He checked the time on the stove and sighed. “I’ve got to get up in four hours.”

  I handed my mother my thawing bag of peas and limped toward the stairs. Mom went to the linen closet to get a pillow and blanket for Aunt Geneva to sack out on the couch.

  I could see why Amy wanted a different family. I knew I did. How would I convince Dad that I was trustworthy enough to go on vacation with the rest of the family? Tell him the truth about Amy? Yeah, right, like that would work. He’d put me in the same loony bin with Geneva. There had to be some other way.

  While Mom and Dad turned off the downstairs lights and Roquefort settled into her bed, I dragged my aching body up the stairs. My night had accomplished nothing other than burning off a ton of calories through aerobic exercise and ticking off my parents further. I was no closer to figuring out why Amy thought her family hated her and why she wasn’t with them in heaven. I was no closer to moving her to that highway to heaven.

  “What’s that on your face?” Audrey asked when I reached the top of the stairs. I really don’t think hate is too strong a verb for what I was feeling toward my sister. I mean she ratted on me. I, at least, would have let her get away with it and just blackmailed her.

  “Go away.” I limped and, since I was starting to itch, thanks to the emotional trauma activating my skin, scratched my way to my room.

  “Seriously, you’ve got red marks on your face.”

  “Yeah, I know. I got scratched by some bushes.”

  “How?”

  “Knowing Roquefort you have to ask?”

  “When I walk the dog, I walk the dog. She doesn’t walk me.”

  “Girls!” Mom yelled from the front stairs. I could hear her trudging up the carpet and the flick of light switches being turned off in the dining room and living room.

  “You stink like dog. You need a shower,” Audrey added.

  I glared at her, then called over my shoulder, “I’m trying to get to bed, Mom. Audrey won’t let me.”

  “Heather, just ignore your sister. Not another word. Dad has to get up early in the morning.”

  “But she—”

  “I don’t care who started it, I’m ending it.” Mom reached the top of the stairs and pointed me toward my door at the end of the hall.

  Certain that I was the most unloved middle child in the entire world, I turned my back on Mom and the beeyotch. At least I could sleep on a comfortable bed. Well, I could have if Amy weren’t lying in my spot, on my bed. I slammed the door.

  “Heather!” Mom said in warning.

  “Sorry,” I called out, but I didn’t mean it.

  Amy remained in a reclined position.

  “Move,” I said, pulling the extra throw pillows out from under her head and tossing them on my dirty clothes pile on the floor.

  “What’re you being ornery with me for?” she asked, rising up from the bed but still lying in a prone position. “I told you not to go.”

  “I wouldn’t be in this predicament if it weren’t for you.”

  She flitted over to the dirty clothes pile and propped up the pillows like it was her bed. “I told you not to buy that school theme, too.”

  “Gee, thanks. I appreciate how you never say I told you so.”

  “Heather, you’ve got it wrong. I’m trying to help you. It’s what family does.”

  So she’d been listening to the lecture in the kitchen rather than stay outside with the grapevines like I told her to.

  “We love you no matter what, but we want you to make better choices,” Amy said, echoing my mother’s sentiments, which got on my last nerve.

  “How about you, Amy? Did your real family want you to make better choices? How come you don’t believe they love you no matter what? How come you believe mine do, and yours don’t?”

  Amy spun around the room faster than Roquefort when she’s excited. The curtains and her braids swung. Papers flew off my desk. The fan’s blades turned. Then she settled on the end of my bed and hung her head. “It’s not the same,” she said, her voice small and miserable. “I did something much worse than you did.”

  “Yeah, like what?”

  I expected ‘I cut the rope holding the bucket for the well,’ or ‘I dropped a pail of milk,’ or ‘I stole apples from the neighbor’s orchard.’

  Instead, she remained silent. The room grew frigid as she left her spot on the bed and hovered over to the window. She stared as if she could see out to the backyard through the closed blinds. It got so cold in the room I could almost see my breath. “Stop it.”

&nb
sp; She turned her gaze back to mine, and I felt the depth of her pain.

  “Stop,” I repeated, my voice wavering from the mourning I felt all the way to my soul.

  “You’ve been wanting to know, so I’ll tell you. I killed them.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  This killing Amy’d mentioned had to have been an accident. I mean, I’d know if my ghost were some sort of Lizzie Borden, right? And if her family hated her, they wouldn’t have buried her in the plot with them. Unless she’d killed them all, and someone else buried them. Their graves weren’t in a churchyard. Did that mean something?

  Unable to open my eyelids, I rolled onto my back and scratched my arms. Not good. Not good at all. My face and arms were unusually warm, too. And itchy. I must have developed some new allergy. I swear my life sucks. And if whatever was going on with my skin wasn’t bad enough, I realized I had to go back to the graveyard and the library’s special collection room to get to the bottom of Amy’s little pronouncement. Maybe find her obituary in the paper once I had the death dates of the family. But how and when could I? I was practically under house arrest and running out of time to write not one, but two papers.

  First things first, though. I tried to pry open my eyes again, but it was like the lids were glued shut. I probed the flesh around my swollen, crusty eyes. Okay, I’d dealt with the swollen thing before, but crusty was different. My situation was a little worse than I thought.

  I probed further, past the eyes to my nose and cheeks where my fingertips encountered raised blisters and a warm sticky fluid. I screamed.

  Let me just say, if someone in your family screams really loud, you shouldn’t take your time finding out why. Even if that someone is a bit dramatic on occasion.

  I raised my voice higher. “Someone! Anyone! Help!”

  Eventually, after what seemed like twenty minutes to a super itchy person who might just be dying of some dreaded oozing disease, someone padded into my room. I couldn’t tell who, but I could hear the person breathing.

  “What’s up?”

  No whining. Not quick on the uptake. Must be Claire.

  “Oh, my, God, Heather!” Her voice and she, I assumed, moved closer. Her call for my mother was in the hysteria range. “Mo-om!”

  Okay, this was bad. Probably one of my worst allergic reactions yet.

  “Are there hives?” I wasn’t sure because, hello, I couldn’t see. All I could do was scratch.

  “Um, I . . . I don’t know what it is. But it’s bad, really bad.”

  Mom entered the room and walked over to me, tennis shoes squeaking on the hard wood floor. “Oh, Heather!”

  I couldn’t remember the last time I changed my sheets. Maybe it was a severe dust mite allergy from not changing the sheets or was it food-related? What had I eaten yesterday? Teriyaki chicken, saffron rice, salad with Italian dressing. No dessert. Water. Couldn’t have been the food. Maybe it was some plant in the woods or in that briar patch that dumb dog dragged me into. Or the vines on the gravestone that I pulled up by the roots.

  “Claire, get me a couple washcloths, wet them with cold water,” Mom said. “It looks like poison ivy. Every time you get this, it’s worse. Can you breathe okay, sweetheart?”

  “Yeah,” I answered still unable to see. Knowing it was poison ivy made me itch even more. Even the space between my fingers itched.

  “Don’t scratch!” I thought I heard Amy say, so I figured she was here watching all the action. Had Aunt Gen left? What if she came up here and sensed Amy?

  I tried to think of something other than the urge to run my fingernails over the skin of my face and arms. The left side of my body was much colder than the right, so I assumed Amy had landed there.

  “Let me see your legs,” Mom said with a sigh.

  I kicked my comforter off.

  She lifted my pajama legs. “Good. Looks like the jeans you wore last night protected you. And your ankle’s back to normal. Stand up for me. Let me check your back.”

  “What she needs is a mixture of buttermilk and baking soda,” said Grandma MacCormack, who was home for once. I think she was standing somewhere around the vicinity of my dresser. I had no clue when she’d come in my room because, yes, I still couldn’t see.

  “Serves her right,” said Audrey.

  “Who asked you?” I countered, turning toward her snotty voice.

  She snorted. “Looks like karma bit you in the butt.”

  “If karma was biting last night, all that would be left of you is bones! Now, get out!” I yelled in her general direction and added a couple of swats, missing of course, because, yes, I couldn’t see where to aim.

  “You look hideous,” Audrey added.

  I flailed my arms toward her again, unable to make contact.

  I must have gotten close because she screamed. “Don’t get those oozy arms near me!”

  “Audrey, that’s it. I’ve had it with your behavior,” Mom weighed in. “You’re writing that paper on sibling rivalry. If you don’t, you’re staying home with Aunt Geneva, too.”

  “Why is everyone so down on me?” Geneva’s throaty voice rang from the hall.

  No, not her. What if she saw Amy? My itching intensified. I reached up to scratch my nose and my hands were blocked.

  Grandma, who smelled like Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion cologne, her favorite, helped me lay back down on the bed. She must be getting ready to go to her book club or to her volunteer job at St. Mark’s. “You know, it doesn’t seem like it now, but it could be worse, Heather. Your Aunt Geneva got poison ivy once from climbing up a tree. She was wearing a dress, and it was all up her thighs. She had a difficult time going to the potty.”

  Lovely image.

  “Thanks so much for sharing, Mom,” Aunt Geneva said from somewhere near the closet.

  “You’re welcome, sweetheart.” Yes, I think Claire gets her cluelessness from Grandma. “I’m going to make up that paste for you, Heather. No scratching, or you’ll scar for life,” she added before she left, which really isn’t a thing a girl who finally has Drew Blanton noticing her and possibly liking her as more than friends really wants to hear.

  “That’s just an old wives’ tale,” Aunt Geneva said, her voice now close to my bed. She must have a mug of coffee because I smelled it. “You go ahead and scratch as much as you want.”

  “Speaking of wanting, that coffee smells good. I think I’d feel a whole lot better if I had a Starbuck’s frappachino.”

  Did anyone offer to drive there to get me one? No.

  “You know what?” Mom said to no one in particular, “I don’t think we have any buttermilk.” She walked over to the doorway and yelled, “Mom, you’ll have to use regular milk! The baking soda is either in the cabinet on the left side of the stove or in the refrigerator!”

  “How about some oatmeal?” Grandma called back up the stairs.

  I started envisioning the coating they’d put on me. It wasn’t an attractive vision. But if my arms and face stopped itching, I’d wear it almost gladly.

  “I’ll go ask at the Beckman’s,” Claire offered, which meant two possible things. If Claire was willing to run to the neighbor’s, I must look really bad. Or Claire wanted to take the opportunity to ask the Beckman’s if their cute grandson was going to come for a visit this summer, putting her own interests ahead of her severely compromised sister. And yes, she’s supposed to be the nice one.

  Grandma huffed up the stairs, her signature scent preceding her as she re-entered my room. “Here’s the paste. I used sweet milk instead so it’s not as thick.” She snapped her fingers. “Wait a minute, I just remembered this other remedy I read about in one of my magazines. A banana peel helps with the itching. I know we have those.”

  Add banana peels to the oatmeal pasty, swollen, scabby vision playing in my head.

  I started trying to pry at least one of my eyelids open and managed to see this silver thing in my face. I focused on it, too late realizing the silver thing was Audrey’s phone and she’d been t
aking pictures of me.

  “I can’t wait to show these to Drew,” she said. “He’s going to howl.”

  After a trip to the emergency room for prednisone, I was pretty much confined upstairs the rest of the day, which was a good thing because I might just kill Audrey if only I could figure out how to do it with my feet. The doctor warned Mom that the medicine might make me irritable and nervous. Like I could be any more irritable.

  I couldn’t use my hands at all. They were covered in a shriveled concoction of cracked baking soda, milk and oatmeal. Grandma figured all three would defeat the oozing red sores covering my face and arms from the elbows down. The banana peels, thank goodness, were forgotten.

  Of course Mom, who always believes Audrey, assured me that my pain-in-the-butt sister was only teasing me, that she would never do anything so cruel as to show Drew the pictures. I didn’t have that kind of blind faith in Audrey’s goodness. If she hadn’t shown him the pictures she took of me this morning, it was only because she’d figured it would put her on the outs with her oh-so-important friends, who might choose not to associate with her if I added scarred and ugly to my already less-than-stellar, weirdo reputation.

  The absolute worst thing about being covered in poison ivy and being on restriction was the boredom. All I could do was stare at the ceiling fan and listen to the activity or lack thereof downstairs.

  I heard Dad come in, the usual ‘Hi, dear. How was your day?’ from Mom. Then Dad’s mumble turned angry. What’s this? I couldn’t be the one in trouble this time. It had to be Audrey.

  I wasn’t missing this! I eased off my bed and scooted over to the door, leaving a trail of dried oatmeal paste behind me on the hardwood and shag rug. Leaning against the doorjamb, I listened.

  “I’m telling you I felt something in Heather’s room,” Aunt Geneva said, her voice was in the anger range, too.

  “Something?” Dad asked. “Something other than misery at being caught sneaking out of the house at night? Something other than the mess and the dust bunnies living under her bed?”