With my eyes closed, I opened the doors and was immediately overcome by the noise. It was a small restaurant, and everything was amplified by the picture-frame-covered walls.
When I opened my eyes, I couldn’t even see the tables anymore. It was like leaving the stadium after a Patriots game and getting caught in the middle of a million people taking half steps toward the exit, hoping not to get trampled by the crowd.
The difference was that I could tune out the ghosts at stadiums. At the restaurant it was so packed I couldn’t tell who was dead or alive. I motioned for my mom to pass me so I could follow her lead. Otherwise, I’d be running into people I thought were dead, and I’d be awkwardly scooting around and saying “Excuse me” to people I could walk right through.
But she wouldn’t go, because as soon as she walked by me with Ella, the baby began to scream one of those deep-from-the-gut, almost primal screams. The kind where you know something is really wrong.
“Ella!” my mom said. “What’s wrong, Ella-Bella? You were fine just a second ago.”
“It’s packed, Mom,” I said. “It’s packed, and it’s loud.”
My mom tilted her head and frowned, walking back outside as a high-pitched voice chirped from behind me.
“Um, we’re actually not packed at all,” the tiny hostess said from her stand as a man with a thick black mustache leaned over and tried to smell her. She didn’t mind, though, since he was dead. “We have plenty of available tables for your party if you’d like to sit.”
“I, uh, that’s not actually what I meant,” I said, fumbling for words, trying to catch the spirit’s eye over her shoulder so he’d know I could see him. “We actually have reservations for a birthday dinner.”
“Oh, are you with Renee O’Brien’s party?”
“Yeah, that’s my grandma,” I said, still focusing on the area just to the left of the hostess, where the man was now rubbing the girl’s shoulder with his hands. She frowned at me, but then I saw her shiver. She could sense the man’s presence but had no idea what was going on.
Luckily, Kristina turned her attention away from the colonel to realize what was happening, and she zapped him with her blue energy.
“It was just getting good!” he wailed as he faded into nothing.
“Ugh!” Kristina groaned.
“Follow me,” said the hostess, and once she turned her back, I grimaced at Kristina, who, along with the colonel, smiled encouragingly.
“I daresay you’ve got this under control, lad,” the colonel said. “At least you’re not charging onto a battlefield on a cold, wintry morning, knowing that it will soon be smeared with your blood, and the blood of all the fine gentlemen you’re leading.”
“You are not helping right now, Fleetwood,” I muttered as we passed a group of people I could only assume were alive. They turned and stared, and I raised my eyebrows at them awkwardly, not wanting to respond in case they were really dead. It would only make the people sitting at the next table feel uncomfortable.
“You’re right here,” the hostess said, sitting us down at the eight-seat table. We were the first ones to arrive, thankfully, so I took my seat at the end, and Jack sat right across from me. It was the sort of restaurant that put white paper on top of the tables to serve as both a tablecloth and a canvas for kids to draw on. The hostess set down crayons, and Jack went right to work.
As he was writing his name in awkward cursive letters, he leaned forward and whispered, “See anyone?”
“Yeah,” I whispered back. “Lots.”
He drew a sharp breath. “This isn’t going to be very fun.”
“Nope.”
My mom got to the table a few minutes later. She’d managed to calm Ella down, but the girl was fidgeting, and it was obvious that she was like a leaky gas pipe just one spark away from an explosion.
“There are my sweet grandchildren!” Grandma said, barreling through a group of ghosts.
“Grandma!” Jack said, throwing down his crayon and jumping up to hug her.
“Hi, Wacky Jacky,” she said. “Did you have a good day at school?”
“Yeah, I played four square today and only lost twice.”
“I’m so impressed!” She turned to me and hesitated for a moment, knowing exactly what I was thinking. “Sorry, Baylor, but she insisted.”
I got up and hugged her. “It’s all right. It’s just for a couple of hours. Honestly, Ella’s the one you’re going to have to worry about. She can see them everywhere.”
She looked at Ella, and her jaw dropped upon seeing her granddaughter squirming in her seat, her head twisting around every few seconds as she looked at all the passing spirits.
“Oh my . . . ,” she said. “Maybe I should have tried a little harder to make my dear sister change her mind.”
Speak of the devil, Aunt Hilda crossed through the group of ghosts she would never believe I could see, gently led by Grandpa By (his longtime nickname since being cruelly christened Byron O’Brien).
I was the first one she saw, and if she was already annoyed with me, it wasn’t apparent.
“Baylor, come help your ancient auntie get into her chair, will ya?” she said.
I grabbed on to her other arm and pulled the chair out for her. She plopped into it, reaching up to grab my neck and pull me down for a kiss. “It’s good to see ya, kid. Can you believe this broad is eighty-eight?”
“You don’t look a day over one hundred, Aunt Hilda,” I said.
She threw her head back, clutching the half-heart necklace she always wore, the laughter croaking out of her mouth like an ad campaign against smoking, and said, “You slay me. Jacky boy, come here and give me a kiss.”
As Jack clambered up from his seat again, Grandpa By pulled me aside and said, “You doing okay?”
I nodded. “They’re everywhere. And they’re loud. Ella sees them too.”
“I told Renee not to come here. I said to her, ‘Renee, you remember what happened last time we went to an Italian joint?’ And she says to me—get this—she says, ‘Yeah, By, but Hilda’s eighty-eight years old, how many more chances is she gonna have to eat some Italian food?’” He threw his hands up. “If tonight goes poorly, let me tell you, it’s gonna be her last time, I’ll say that much. I’ll say that much.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “And you with the hospital visit this week, and the weird appearances from things I don’t like to imagine too much, and the bad Halloween experience. How could it not go poorly?”
I shook my head. “You’re reading my mind, Grandpa.”
“Don’t say that, kid,” he said. “With you it could come true. I’ll tell you, it’s going to be a fiasco. But the lady is eighty-eight, and we’re here, so we will deal with it, grandson, we will deal with it as all O’Brien men do. I know your last name is that Bosco nonsense, but I like to pretend it’s O’Brien sometimes, you know?”
My dad arrived shortly after, and dinner finally got under way.
Right from the start everything went wrong. A ghost pretending to be the waiter came right up to me, introduced himself as Charlie, and asked what I’d like to drink.
“Uh, do you have hot chocolate?” I said, looking up at him and not realizing anything was wrong. “I’m sort of cold.”
“Oh my word, he’s already starting it,” Aunt Hilda groaned. I looked at her and then looked back at the ghost, who was now lit up with blue and fading away. Kristina had zapped him, but the damage was already done.
“Oh, ha, ha, I was just, uh, practicing my Italian for when the waiter comes, Aunt Hilda,” I said. “You didn’t give me a chance to finish.”
Everyone at the table was staring at me expectantly.
“Make something up,” Kristina whispered. “Just say some gibberish, she’ll never know.”
“Fl-flomargo deechay en la . . . en la dulce,” I said, doing my best Mario and Luigi impression. My mom put her hand up to her forehead and shut her eyes, while my dad laughed silently behind his napkin. “Encardo la noche de dudo
! Bravo!”
A brutal moment of silence passed, until finally Grandpa spoke up.
“Well, that was just amazing,” he said sincerely. “I didn’t know you’ve been learning Italian.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking down, my cheeks probably the color of the tomato sauce I’d be eating soon. “Getting pretty good at it.”
“I bet,” he said, his lips threatening to smile.
I shook my head and glared at Kristina, who said, “Sorry! I wasn’t paying attention.”
After that she and Colonel Fleetwood stood guard around my seat, making sure no other spirits could goof with me.
I stayed mostly silent for dinner, only giving short answers whenever someone asked me a question. I stole a blue crayon from Jack and kept drawing the shape of a candle flame, over and over again, until I realized I had created what sort of looked like a massive thunderstorm, the blue flames doubling as raindrops. I chuckled to myself as my food came out, and for that moment I felt pretty good about my spaghetti and meatballs.
Then I just had to ruin everything by going for the cheese.
I picked up the little jar of Parmesan cheese sitting in the middle of the table, unaware as usual that there was a memory attached to it. I was sucked into a vision of a man arguing with his wife at our same table. The vision was just a split second, but once it ended, I gasped and dropped the jar of cheese, causing it to plume all over my shirt and the table.
“I’m sorry,” I said, still breathing heavily, “I’m sorry, I’m so clumsy.”
Grandma noticed right away that something was wrong. I’d bet money that my face was as white as the ruined Parmesan.
“Baylor, why don’t you get cleaned up in the bathroom,” she said helpfully.
Except the second I stood up, I realized it wasn’t helpful at all. Navigating through a minefield would have been easier than navigating through all the people in the restaurant. I shot a look at Kristina, and she nodded, leading the way for me.
Kristina made sure the ghosts didn’t disturb me while I was sitting with our family, but as far as they were concerned, I was fair game while walking to the bathroom.
“Finally, you’re up!” a twentysomething shouted at me excitedly. “I need you to tell my mom that I didn’t kill myself! It was an accident, through and through. Look at me, I’m too good-looking to have wanted to die that young.”
I glared at him, and he smirked. “What, are you a mute now? I know you can speak English, and some really bad fake Italian, too. Go tell her, she’s right there.” He pointed to his right at a woman with short black hair.
I shook my head and tried to communicate with my eyes, but it didn’t work.
“You can’t leave me here,” he said, his voice faltering. “I’m not comfortable going to the Beyond until I know that she knows that.”
Kristina and I exchanged glances. I was given this gift for this exact reason, but at the same time I was only five feet from my table, and if Aunt Hilda overheard me, she was going to say that I ruined her birthday by parading around the restaurant and that I couldn’t even give her one special night.
Kristina bit her lip, clearly thinking the exact same thing.
Finally Colonel Fleetwood stepped in. “Perhaps you could use your energy to direct your mother toward the back of the establishment, so they could engage in a conversation in private?”
The ghost looked at him, then back at me.
“Are you kidding me with this guy?” he asked. “Really?”
I didn’t respond, but he shrugged. “Whatever.” And then he turned to his mom, bent over, and whispered in her ear. Midconversation, as her friends watched in confusion, the woman got up from the table and nearly ran to the bathrooms at the back of the restaurant, down a narrow hallway. I followed her path, listening to her son describe the sordid details of his death while sidestepping all the dead people, and cornered her before she went inside.
“Ma’am!” I hissed. “Ma’am, stop!”
She turned around. “Are you talking to me?”
“My name is Baylor Bosco, and I can communicate with people who have crossed over,” I said. “Listen, Terri, what I’m going to say won’t be easy to hear, but you need to hear it. Chad didn’t kill himself. He needs you to know that it was an accident, that he would never have taken all those pills if he’d known it was going to kill him.”
She recoiled in shock, then looked around the hallway and clutched the walls. Her mouth was moving, but no sound came out. Her hands shot to her chest and she stared at me in panic.
“Oh man, this is bad,” Chad said.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.
“She’s having an asthma attack,” he said. “You need to go get her inhaler from her purse.”
My eyes bulged out. “What? No! I can’t just go rummage through her purse!”
“Just say you found her back here like this and you saw where she got up from!” Kristina said.
“Oh my God,” I said, turning around and sprinting to her table the same way I’d just come. An old woman was walking toward the bathroom, and I ran right for her, thinking I’d pass through her just fine.
It was like a rhino colliding with a bowling pin. The whole restaurant went silent as we tumbled to the floor, our limbs flying in every direction.
“Dear Lord!” my dad yelled, running over to help us as a few others from random tables did the same.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I said, overwhelmed by all the people around me, confused that no one was speaking and that the only thing I could hear was a loud man singing about pizza pies and amore. “There’s a woman by the bathroom! She collapsed and needs her inhaler!”
A man turned, peeked around the corner to see the other woman on the floor, and yelled at the top of his lungs, “He’s right! That woman needs an inhaler!”
As my dad pulled me up from the ground to brush me off and examine the cut on my elbow, another man ran toward the bathroom, presumably with the inhaler in his hands.
I honestly didn’t think things could get worse, until they did.
The woman I had stampeded over wasn’t responding, so they had to call 911. Then a couple of patrons got into an argument about whether I ran into her on purpose, with one of them swearing I had been looking right at her and had known exactly what I was doing, and the other saying that I had panicked trying to help the woman who was having an asthma attack and simply hadn’t seen her.
Once Terri recovered from her asthma attack, she started spouting off that I had caused her attack by telling her I could talk to dead people and that I’d told her that her son didn’t commit suicide. She wasn’t saying it in an accusatory way, though. Rather, she was thrilled, saying she had heard of me before and wondered if she’d ever get the chance to meet me.
This revelation caused nearly all the ghosts and patrons in the restaurant to talk at once, and all I could do was stare as the people and sounds blurred together into one, while a couple of paramedics worked on the still-unconscious lady on the ground.
Moments away from passing out, I looked at Kristina, who pointed to the table next to her and said, “Spread the light.” I looked at the candle for a second, forgetting what it could do for me, and then I stumbled over, picked it up, and imagined the white light surrounding me. Suddenly my mind cleared.
Feeling rejuvenated, I stood on a chair and shouted, “Everyone, shut up!”
For the next ten minutes I acted as the conductor of a symphony of healing messages, one after the other, pointing at person after person and delivering messages rapid-fire.
“You,” I said, pointing at a woman in a purple dress, “your husband says buy the green house, not the blue one.”
“But I like the blue one more!”
“You,” I said, pointing at the man with extra-large ears, “your brother says thank you for taking care of his children after he died.”
He nodded, a strong blush blazing across his face.
“You,” I said to
the man with too much hair gel, “your mother says lay off the hair gel.”
“But it’s in style!”
“You,” I said to the teenage girl who had been weeping for the last few minutes, “your father says you won’t believe this is really him, and that the only way you’ll believe it is if he brings up the giraffe tattoo you got on your back in memory of him, and he wants you to know that he hates it, and that if you get another one, he’s not going to be able to rest in peace.”
And so on and so forth until everyone in the restaurant was stunned into silence.
Everyone except for one person.
“He’s a fraud,” Aunt Hilda croaked from her seat, refusing to look at me and studying her necklace with great interest. “He’s nothing more than a parasite feeding off your sadness. He made it all up, you fools.”
Everyone looked at her for a few seconds, no one saying a word. Then the weeping girl walked over, lifted up the back of her shirt to reveal a tattoo of a giraffe with the word “Dad” scrawled between the spots, and silently walked away.
TIP
13
Even ghosts can lose their tempers.
THE AFTERMATH OF THE DINNER wasn’t pretty. Even though nearly everyone in the restaurant was satisfied with their messages, and the woman whom I’d plowed to the ground woke up and got a message from her husband, and a journalist showed up to write an article about the event, my mom was still mortified.
“You turned her birthday into a sideshow for your gift, Baylor,” my mom ranted on the drive home. “Aunt Hilda will always look back on her eighty-eighth birthday and remember your . . . your . . . shenanigans.”
“Shenanigans?” I said incredulously. “It’s not like I stood on the table naked and danced, Mom. You’re the one who forced me to go to that Italian restaurant, so if you didn’t want that to happen, we shouldn’t have gone there in the first place.”
“Never in my wildest dreams,” she said, side-eyeing me while keeping her face forward, “did I imagine you would hijack an entire restaurant and do a group healing session.”
A Guide to the Other Side Page 9