The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney

by Suzanne Harper

  “Sparrow?” Wren piped up. “Who are you talking to?”

  I sighed. “One of my spirit guides,” I admitted.

  This caused another stir of interest, resentment, surprise, and agitation among my family.

  “You have spirit guides?” Raven snapped. “Since when?”

  “And you said one of your spirit guides,” Wren said before I could respond.

  “Yeah, exactly how many do you have?” Linnet wanted to know.

  “Three,” I murmured with resignation as I watched the last of my secrets revealed to the world.

  “Three?” Lark sounded outraged. “How come you get three ghosts to help you out?”

  “I’m not sure ‘help’ is precisely the right word,” I said with a sharp look at Professor Trimble, who was actually smirking. “More like nag and bully until I’m driven to the edge of insanity.”

  “Well, we’re all born with certain gifts.” Professor Trimble shrugged modestly. “Although I’ve always done my best to develop what I was given—”

  My family kept babbling questions at me, but I suddenly felt that I couldn’t stand being around people for another second.

  “I need to be alone for a while,” I said. I pushed past my sisters only to find my way blocked by Fiona’s mother.

  “So, Sparrow, you put on quite a show tonight!” She gave a brittle laugh that didn’t sound very pleased. “But I wish you had told me about your . . . hidden talents earlier. I would have been better prepared. Still, that was an amazing performance.”

  “It wasn’t a show,” I said coldly. “I wasn’t performing.”

  “No, of course not.” She gave me a long, assessing look. “Now, may I ask you a few more questions, while the experience is fresh in your mind?”

  “Maybe later.” Maybe never, I thought as I sidestepped her, only to run smack-dab into Fiona.

  “Sparrow Delaney, I am so disgusted!”

  “I know, I know, I should have told you, I’m sorry, everything is completely my fault, now can I please go?” I said, trying in vain to move around her.

  But Fiona planted herself firmly in my way and went on, her voice getting louder with each word. “In fact I am more than disgusted! I am distraught! I am angry! I am absolutely speechless!”

  “Not noticeably,” I said sarcastically.

  And for once she was speechless. She stared at me for a few seconds, then said, in a remote voice, “Fine. I thought you were my friend, but I guess it’s better that I know the truth right now. I’ll see you around, Sparrow.” With great dignity, she walked away.

  I pushed myself through the rest of the crowd and ran off into the night.

  It was dark now and getting colder. I could see my breath in the air as I ran down the street. Nearly every house had wind chimes on the porch, and they were clanging wildly in the rising wind. As I got closer to the lake, I could smell autumn leaves, damp earth, grass. I even imagined I could smell the moonlight; it was clear and sweet.

  Finally I got to the lake, where I sat down on a log, panting. I stared out over the silvery water as my breathing slowed down. I hadn’t been thinking as I ran, and I didn’t intend to start thinking now. In fact, if I could have put off thinking about what had happened tonight for, oh, the rest of my life, I would have been quite happy—

  “Nice job. Thanks, Sparrow.”

  “Are you kidding? That was a disaster.” I didn’t need to turn my head to know that Luke was now sitting beside me. I could feel an icy chill down my right side; even compared with the cold night, it was freezing. “Your dad is furious, your mom doesn’t know what to believe, and Jack—”

  I stopped.

  “He can’t go on thinking that I’m rafting in Wyoming somewhere,” Luke said gently.

  “Why not? What would be the harm in letting him”—my voice wobbled—“letting him think that? Just for a little longer?”

  “The harm,” he said, “is that it’s not true.”

  “Oh, right. That.” I put my head in my hands.

  “I had hoped this would be easier, but—well, it wasn’t.” He sounded tired and disappointed, but when I turned to look at him, he managed a smile. “On to Plan B.”

  “Plan B?” I asked dangerously. “What Plan B?”

  “Sparrow,” he said, his voice stronger, “there’s always a Plan B. We just have to figure out what it is.” He seemed to have recovered his confidence remarkably quickly.

  I opened my mouth to argue, but I was interrupted by the sound of a branch breaking with a loud crack. I jumped up and saw Jack standing in the shadows of a tall maple tree.

  He stepped toward me, into the moonlight, and I could see that he looked suspicious, wary . . . and scared.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  “Who do you think?” I said, exasperated. “How long have you been standing there?”

  He waved the question away, still staring intensely at the log where Luke was sitting. “How did you know all that stuff you said back there?” he asked abruptly.

  I was getting really, really, really tired of going over this. “Luke told me what to say.”

  He ran one hand through his dark hair as he glanced from the log to me and back to the log again. “Right.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “No, I don’t,” he said slowly. “Except that . . . well, Luke does do terrible impressions.” He bit his lip, looking troubled. “And he and Dad did have a big fight the night he left—”

  “None of which you told me,” I said. “And it wasn’t in any of the newspaper articles either. So how do you explain that?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head fiercely, as if trying to wake up from a dream. “But the idea that you can talk to ghosts . . . I’m sorry. It’s just so freaky.”

  “Right. Freaky.” I clenched my fists as a surge of hurt and anger flooded through me.

  Slowly and deliberately, clipping off each word, I recapped some of the things Luke had told me during our long conversations. “Luke’s favorite snack was a toasted chocolate sandwich. He loved to read about the decline and fall of ancient civilizations. He was always doodling, and he got in trouble in sixth grade for drawing in his textbooks. When you were eight, he warned you not to touch his comics, so you used to stand in front of the bookshelf and breathe on them instead. In third grade you camped out in the backyard, and Luke pretended to be Bigfoot and you screamed loud enough to wake up the neighbors. He went to last year’s home-coming dance with Beth Lowell and all he would tell me about that was that he had a, quote, really good time, end quote. His last hike was up Hunter’s Mountain, on a trail he never tried before. He asked me to get a map. He showed me where he fell.” I stopped, breathing hard.

  His face was pale in the moonlight. Then a cloud drifted across the moon, and he was in shadow again. Tree branches swayed in the wind, and a sudden shower of leaves fell all around us.

  Then the moon came out again, and Jack was staring at me. He looked sick.

  “Are you all right?”

  He swallowed a couple of times. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Now do you believe I’m telling the truth?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, but—”

  “But what?”

  He cleared his throat. “You’re saying that Luke is dead. But the first thing anyone thought was that he might have been hurt on a hike. And the park rangers never found him. They looked and looked.”

  “They weren’t looking in the right place.”

  “But I can’t believe . . . I can’t—” He stopped, then started over. “I can’t believe Luke is dead just because you say you’ve seen his ghost. I need real evidence. I mean, I’d have to actually see his body or something.”

  “No. Absolutely not. That is a completely insane idea.” Jack and I were squared off, glaring at each other. I waved a hand at the sky. “Have you noticed all that black up there? That’s called night, Jack.”

  “There’s a full moon.”

  “It’s cold.�
��

  “We’re wearing coats.”

  “We’ll get lost.”

  “You said”—Jack tilted his head to one side and looked at me through narrowed eyes—“you said that Luke told you to buy a trail map.”

  “He did!”

  He folded his arms, his chin jutting forward stubbornly. “If you’re telling the truth, you’d be willing to check it out.”

  That “if ” stung, and he knew it would. “All right,” I said, trying to ignore the thought of finding Luke’s body. “Tomorrow. I’ll go with you tomorrow.”

  “Tonight.” Jack gave me a challenging stare.

  “Why does it have to be tonight?”

  “Sparrow.” I had been so focused on my face-off with Jack that I had almost forgotten that Luke was still sitting on the log, listening to our argument.

  I looked over at him. “Go.” He glanced away, as if listening to someone, then nodded reassuringly to me. “Yes. Go. It will be okay. I promise.”

  “Really?”

  He smiled. “Trust me.”

  So I turned to Jack and said, “All right.”

  Chapter 26

  Jack stood behind the garage, peering dubiously into our backyard. “Are those, um, graves?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Wait here.”

  I eased the back door open. I knew Raven was in her bedroom—I had seen her through the window as I walked across the lawn—and the bathroom pipes were gurgling, meaning that Oriole had settled into the bathroom.

  I could hear Grandma Bee, my mother, Wren, and Dove in the parlor, rearranging chairs in preparation for the next reading and talking in low tones. I was halfway across the kitchen when the sound of Wren’s worried voice asking a question floated toward me. I couldn’t hear her words, but my mother must have been closer to the door because I clearly heard her say,

  “Sparrow needs some time to absorb everything that has happened, that’s all. . . .”

  I felt a pang of guilt and hesitated mid-step. Then a sudden crash from the dining room (Lark and Linnet, practicing their juggling act) spurred me on. I climbed the stairs, carefully avoiding the creaky steps, and slipped into my room.

  I grabbed the trail map and gloves, then rummaged through my closet. After a few minutes of excavation (oh, so that’s where my old paint set went), I found a flashlight. As I was about to leave, I had one last thought and went to my desk to scrawl a quick note. Then I headed downstairs, my heart thumping.

  I closed the back door softly and ran across the lawn to Jack.

  “This way,” I whispered as I led him in the side door of the garage. “Let’s move it down the block before we start it.” I got in the front seat of my family’s car, a rusty 1978 station wagon with a cracked windshield and upholstery that smelled like a combination of cat, spilled soda, and incense, with a faint overlay of skunk. I moved the gearshift to neutral and waved at Jack. He started pushing as I steered.

  Once we were on the street, I braked and let Jack get in the driver’s seat. I saw him sniff the air and surreptitiously wipe his hand on his pants (the steering wheel was always a little sticky), but he didn’t make any comment.

  “Are you sure it’s okay for you to drive?” I asked.

  “I have my learner’s permit,” he said absently as he examined all the controls. The windshield wipers started moving with a horrific screech.

  “Shit!” Jack jumped, then quickly turned them off with an embarrassed sideways glance at me.

  “Don’t you have to have an adult in the car, though?” I persisted. “Legally, I mean? If all you have is a learner’s permit?”

  “Sparrow,” he said, “we’re stealing a car.”

  “True,” I said faintly.

  He held out his hand to me. “Keys?”

  “Lost,” I said. “We hot-wire it.”

  “Every morning?”

  “Yep.” I reached under the dashboard, located the ignition wires, and handed them over.

  Several seconds ticked by as he stared blankly at them. I waited, enjoying the moment, then took the wires and crossed the ends. The motor started up immediately.

  “Thanks,” Jack said. He cleared his throat and added, “That was actually somewhat impressive.”

  I grinned in the dark as he accelerated down the street.

  For the first twenty minutes, I felt bold and reckless. As we drove down toward Zoar Valley, however, the sky got cloudier, and the wind blew harder, and the night got colder. My spirits sank. What in the world were we doing?

  Just then Jack reached over to fiddle with the dashboard controls, and the car veered toward the other lane.

  “Watch it!” I yelled.

  “I am!” He jerked the steering wheel, and we were back in our own lane. “Don’t worry!”

  “We could have been killed!” I said, which was, of course, both obvious and completely unhelpful. “What were you trying to do anyway?”

  “I was trying to get some heat going!”

  “Forget it.” I didn’t bother to twiddle with the dials. “The heater’s broken.”

  “Great.” He glared out the windshield. “How old is this thing anyway?”

  I felt called upon to defend the honor of the family car. “At least it’s running.”

  “Barely.”

  I sat in silence and stared out the window at the black mass of trees lining the road, thinking dark thoughts about boys who talked people into stealing cars and then complained about the condition of said cars. We drove on for half an hour without talking. Finally, Jack pulled over into a small parking lot.

  He looked at my map, then pointed toward a group of trees that looked exactly like every other group of trees we had passed. “The trailhead’s over there.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure!”

  “Okay, just checking.”

  We walked over to a weathered sign with an arrow pointing straight ahead. I peered into the underbrush, trying to figure out where, exactly, the arrow was suggesting we go.

  “There.” Jack pointed again.

  Now I could see a slight break in the underbrush that could have been a path of some sort. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.” A few snowflakes drifted lazily through the air and landed on my sleeve. “It’s starting to snow.”

  He glanced at the sky, then shrugged. “Just a few flakes.” He turned on his flashlight. “Scared?”

  “Of course not.” I raised my chin defiantly and started toward the trail. Then I heard a rustle from the trees and stopped. “Are there bears out here?”

  “Yep. And wolves and cougars, too. But they’re scared of people, so they won’t bother us.” He paused, then added, “Probably.”

  “Oh, well, that’s all right then,” I said airily.

  I had taken three more steps when he called after me, “Watch out for snakes.”

  A branch lying on the ground instantly became a rattlesnake. I jumped back, bumping into Jack, who swore under his breath and laughed at the same time.

  “Why don’t you lead the way?” I suggested sweetly. So Jack walked to the trailhead, pushed some branches out of the way, and disappeared into the forest, vanishing as quickly and completely as any ghost.

  After a heartbeat’s hesitation, I followed.

  We walked for fifteen minutes in silence. The woods were full of sounds: Mysterious rustlings in the bushes. Wind sighing in the trees. The far-off rushing of a stream. Thankfully, nothing that sounded like bears, at least so far.

  Gradually the trail started to twist up the side of the mountain. I found myself thinking less about snakes and more about putting one foot in front of the other. The edges of the trail were starting to whiten with snow.

  I squinted up at the sky. “I think the weather’s getting worse.”

  “No, it’s not.” Jack kept walking, the beam from his flashlight moving back and forth across the trail.

  “Jack!” I stopped. He kept going for a few paces, then turned around and stared at me in e
xasperation.

  “What?”

  I took the flashlight from him and pointed it at the ground. “That’s snow. We’ve been walking for almost an hour, and it’s getting colder by the minute. I think we should turn back.”

  Instead of answering, he held out his hand for the flashlight. I gave it to him, and he studied the map, muttering to himself. “Okay, we’re right here, and the trail curves around here—”

  “Did you hear what I just said?” I yelled.

  “Yes, I heard!” Jack yelled back. “I’m ignoring you! Got it?”

  I took a deep breath, held it, let it out. Count, Sparrow, I reminded myself. Three, five, seven. Okay. Now I felt calmer—

  “Are you a complete idiot?” Well, so much for mindful breathing. “This is crazy! We both could die, just like Luke!”

  There was a long, long silence as Jack stared at me. Finally he said, “Look. We’ve been hiking for almost an hour. So if we turn around”—he made a U-turn signal with his finger; I never knew that a simple hand gesture could be so sarcastic—“we’ll have to hike another hour to get back to the trailhead. We might as well keep going.”

  He gave me a hard look. “Of course, you can go back if you want to. By yourself.”

  Now it was my turn to be silent. Finally I said, “I think we’d better stick together.”

  “Whatever.” He turned his attention back to the map, clearly indifferent to whether I chose to stay or go.

  Where was Luke? I thought miserably. He’d said everything would be fine. He’d said to trust him. And now here we were, alone on a mountain in freezing weather, on a dark night, following a trail we didn’t know, hoping to find . . .

  No. I refused to think about that.

  What did a body look like after lying outdoors for a year? Jack said there were bears and cougars and wolves around here. Even if he was making that up to scare me, there were other, smaller animals. Foxes. Raccoons. Buzzards. Not to mention all kinds of bugs.

  Ivory bones lying at the bottom of a cliff, the skull grinning up at the sky . . . I shuddered.

  “Okay, it looks like the trail divides up ahead,” Jack said. “You marked the left fork. So that’s the way we should go?”

  “Yes,” I said shortly. If Luke had gone to the right, he might have been fine. He might have still been alive.