Then I’m sitting next to Mom on a bus-stop bench, short legs swinging in front of me. “It’s our big day, baby.” She smiles at me, but her eyes are shiny. “We’re finally going to get out and see the world.” She strokes my hair, which hurts a bit. I have stitches behind my ear, six, the doctor said, but I don’t know why. And it doesn’t matter, because I got a chocolate shake afterward; I’m still drinking it. Then Mom slumps over asleep toward me, her beautiful hair splayed over the duffel bag between us.
I’m lying on top of my quilt in bed, writing in a book, scribbling furiously.
Then I’m doing it again, only at my desk under the lamp.
It’s not a book, it’s one of those blank journals. The cover is blue and green, iridescent like an oil slick, the colors bleeding into each other. I open it.
I open it again.
Applause mixes with chlorine bouncing off the walls of the indoor pool as a young boy coughs out his lungs against my shoulder. “You’ll be okay,” I tell him, “it’s going to be okay . . .”
“H-E-L-L-O, Hello!” The crowd roars as we cheerleaders shake and shimmy behind a swirl of orange pom-poms. Next to me Carla wipes her glistening forehead. The punishing sun is making me feel light-headed, but it beats getting packed like cattle into the bleachers. The fate of Summer Falls High’s rank and file. I have to be the best. I have to stand out. Or I’m nothing. “Explode! Ignite! The Rays are dynamite!”
In his tuxedo jacket, Dan leans over me and ties a snow-white rose corsage to my arm. “Perfect rose for a perfect girl.” I beam up at him, basking in the glow of his love for me. And all I have to do to keep him is stay perfect. . . .
Then I’m breathless, lying on my side in a dark bedroom, lips locked bruisingly hard with someone else’s, our open mouths kissing hungrily. A soft blue light shines all around us. It’s Marshall’s light, his magic. I relax and lean into his warm sandalwood scent. I know I’m safe here. Desperate to be even closer to him I press my body against his and feel his response. I grab his hand and guide it under my tank top.
“Mmmmmm.” He pauses kissing me and murmurs into my neck. “What about jock-boy?”
“I don’t care. Please don’t talk about him, please just keep touching me.” I moan as his firm, warm hands cup my breasts over my bra, his fingers lightly squeezing the nipples. “Don’t stop, keep doing that.”
“Whatever you say.” His mouth claims mine again, tongue slowly licking my lower lip, then probing between them.
Then I’m opening the silver-blue-green journal again.
I’m staring at the inside cover. A blurry photo. Underneath with Sharpie someone’s written, Elyse, Remember this happened to you. And underlined that word, Remember.
Again, over and over, Remember this. The same shadow of a recollection, repeating, but it’s just a sliver. A tease. It always ends before I read the damn book; then it restarts. Brain torture, like a fever dream.
I can feel my hot, bare legs underneath me now, feel the scratchy carpet of Marshall’s bedroom and smell the burning wax. The baseball player’s still spinning his pointless rotations to a high-pitched robotic accompaniment. But I’ve slipped out of the trance.
Marshall’s curled in a fetal ball on the carpet, staring up at the flames. Even though his eyes are open, every once in a while he gasps, like he’s having a nightmare.
I come over and rub his back. Maybe he’s stuck having the same memory over and over too. Or maybe he’s just remembering something sad.
Huh.
All my memories were joyful. Pleasant. No flus, no breakups, not even one bad hair day. How could that be? No one’s happy every second.
Have I really had everything unhappy . . . wiped?
My fingertips survey the spot behind my ear, where the stitches were in my bus-stop memory. There’s a long scar.
My father in the memories, the olive-skinned man running behind me on the bike. He wasn’t Jeffry. Jeffry is not my father.
Where is that journal? If it was so damn important to me, why wouldn’t it be hidden in my stash with the money and California maps?
Because it’s more important. So important I take it with me everywhere. It’s not in my backpack. That leaves one place, and I don’t want to go alone.
I nudge his arm. “Wake up, Marsh.” But he doesn’t hear me.
Chapter 26
MARSHALL
Eva pushes her tortoiseshell glasses on top of her long black hair and spins the hotel swivel chair to face me. “I think you’re finally ready.”
“Mom, I’ve been ready for years.”
“You’ve been impatient for years. Not the same.” She sounds amused. “Doing spellwork is not like reading about it. It’s serious. Sometimes dangerous.” I like those words: serious, dangerous. “We’ll start with a simple dream spell.” She pulls open the bottom desk drawer and snaps up three pillar candles, which she holds up to me.
I gasp at the sight of the black candle underneath. “Holy crap, Eva!”
She sighs. “Never been lit, I swear.” She fishes it out and shows me the unused wick.
“Why do you even have one? You said black magic trashes your soul.”
“It does. But there are scarier things than me in this world, Marshmallow, and if this was the only way to protect you and your father from them . . . I wouldn’t blink.” Gingerly, she sets it back in the drawer, then scoops up three brightly colored pillar candles. “You’ll start with these. Blue for healing. White for blessing—”
“Red for strength,” I finish, opening my hands eagerly, but my eyes linger on that sleek, shiny black candle. I want to reach for it, crush it around my fingers, light the wick and speak the unspeakable. I want to be like her, protecting, not like my father and me, being protected. “If you had to do black magic someday,” I say, “wouldn’t it be a stronger spell if I helped? If we both put energy into it?”
Eva’s mouth drops open and she laughs. “Such devious ambition. You take after me too much.” But she glances down at the drawer, suddenly thoughtful. “It’s true that together, we could—”
The hotel-room door swings open and Bill’s triumphant smile fills the doorway. “I found a tea shop with internet!”
Shaken from her trance, Eva launches herself from the chair, black hair flying, silver bangles jingling. “Perfect timing, my love!” She wraps her arms around Bill. “Sometimes I think you are the magician.”
“Wake up, Marsh.” Elyse’s voice is far away. “I need to talk to you. There’s something really wrong with my memories.”
What? I try to say the word, but I’m only thinking it.
The wrought-iron patio chair creaks beneath me as I shift my weight on the overstuffed, flowery cushion. I’m reading the X-Men comic I slipped inside my physics book, which isn’t really a physics book at all but a spell crafter with a book cover reading “First-Year Physics” and some cheesy clip art of an atom.
It’s annoying to read with sunglasses on, but it’s better than staying in my airless bedroom inside Preston House. The brown-haired lady who served Bill and Eva and me French toast that morning had claimed there’d be a “nice breeze” on the porch. I’d nodded, though I couldn’t understand why they didn’t just have AC like any normal hotel on the planet. Bill and Eva had told me Summer Falls would be weird.
From the corner of my vision I see a feather duster and turn to meet a pair of clear green eyes.
“Hey.” It’s the innkeeper’s daughter. I remember her from breakfast, though she came downstairs late and her father gave her crap about it. I figure I’ll remember her, or certain parts of her at least, all my life. Light blond hair swings down to the top of her tight cutoffs, highlighting the curve of her ass above her smooth, tan legs. “Good book?” she asks.
“It’s just for school,” I say automatically.
Her nose wrinkles. “Homeschool sounds so weird.” Yep, that’s more or less what I’ve come to expect from townies, people who stay in one place. But this girl doesn’t sound
judging, just intrigued. She leans closer, so close I can smell her hair. Peaches and cut grass. Despite the heat, there’s an energy to her. “Your mom seems nice,” she says, sounding confused, surprised. “She was asking me all these bizarre questions about the waterfall.”
“She’s doing research.” I reach for the handy, worn-out line. “My parents are journalists, writing an article about . . .” Fill-in-the-blank. “Tiny little towns,” I finish, pleased with myself for coming up with something that’s both plausible and a subtle dig. You’re insignificant, just a small-town girl, I don’t care what you think of me.
“That’s a new one.” She snorts. “Usually you wizard people just pretend to be tourists.”
My heartbeat speeds up. How does she know what we are? And what does she mean “usually”? How many occultists have stayed here—Eva always likes to know if there are other occultists around her; she doesn’t trust them. She doesn’t even trust the one she came here to do the job for. What would she think if she knew there were more in town?
“Don’t be so shocked,” the girl says. “Look, I need you to do something for me, something from that book that you’re pretending is a physics book.”
“You looked in it?”
“My mom had me make your bed,” she explains, “and straighten up all your stuff.”
“Oh!” I’m still stunned that she looked in my book. “Wow, that was you? Um, thanks for making my bed.”
“My parents made me,” she repeats.
If her goal was to embarrass me, it worked. My cheeks are scorching. There’s something intimate about making someone’s bed, touching their pillow, their sheets . . . It has never occurred to me that a hotel bed-maker would open up my book and see it wasn’t what it pretended to be. Partly because it’s disguised with the most boring cover in the world. But also partly because, well, it never occurred to me that any hotel bed-maker would have enough intellectual curiosity to open a book, period. And now I feel like an ass for that assumption.
“Usually the magic people don’t show up till June or July,” she explains. “I’m glad. Most of them aren’t as nice as your mom.” She looks away. “Can you do me a favor and not tell your parents or anyone I asked you?”
I nod, though it’s annoyingly hard to keep a secret from Eva and Bill; they’re my parents, but since we travel together they’re also my best friends by default. Pretty much my only friends.
“Can you do the protection spell on me from that book, make me safe from the ghosts? Like you are.”
I tilt my head from side to side as if considering. What she’s asking for is impossible—even my mother couldn’t do it for my father. But the sight of this girl asking me for help is so intoxicating I can’t make myself say no.
She groans. “Forget it, I mean if it’s beyond your level—”
“It’s not that,” I say with a derisive snort and shrug. “Actually the problem is you. A protection spell like that would only work if you were an occultist yourself, so . . . .”
“Maybe I could learn magic.” She still sounds hopeful.
“It runs in families. You’re born to it or you’re not. Sorry,” I add.
“Got it.” Her face has closed up somehow. The pleading look has been replaced by barely concealed anger. Anger, at me? “Cute teddy bear, by the way,” she says, meanly. “Does he have a name?”
“Um, Doctor Bear.” My comic slips out of my book, and I can feel myself shrinking under her glare of judgment. She lives in a haunted town; I’m just an arrogant ass whose mother thought it would be interesting to see the hauntings. She asked me for help, and I basically told her it was her fault I couldn’t do anything.
Eva steps out onto the patio. “How’s the homework going?” She leans in to whisper in my ear, “Family meeting in our suite.”
I leap to my feet, eager to put some distance between me and my shame. Still, as we walk away Eva’s small hand feels oppressively heavy on my shoulder, and I can feel the girl’s curious eyes follow us into the house.
My parents sit together on the overstuffed chair, Eva on Bill’s lap. Just in case I’d forgotten that in this family it’s always two against one.
“So,” Eva prompts me, “what do you think is wrong with this town, Marsh?”
I shrug. “There are ghosts.” Homeschool sucks because no matter where on the globe you are, you’re still at school.
“Tell me more.” She’s leaning forward, raising her eyebrows a little. She expects me to say something smart, to follow in her footsteps so she can beam with pride, but I’m pissed that she’s quizzing me instead of telling me what the hell’s going on around me.
“People seem kind of whacked-out and spacey,” I say. “But I kind of like it here. At least it’s better than Paris.”
Both my parents seem to find this hilarious. They laugh so hard they snort and clutch each other’s arms as if for support. “Better than Paris!” Great, I just know it’s going to be a catchphrase between them from now on. They have a lot of catchphrases, a whole language built for two.
“I know you can do better,” Eva says, and sighs.
“It’s this damn heat.” Bill fans himself with the magic book. “Melts your brain.”
“Bill, even you can tell it’s more than that.” Eva sighs indulgently and takes the book out of his hand. “I should think it would be obvious. Some occultist has rigged up a brilliant loop here. The town is tied to the place of power. Specifically, by souls tethered to the place of power who suck the life force of the townspeople and feed the energy back into the town itself.”
“But the townspeople are still alive,” I point out.
“But are they, really, fully alive?” For the first time ever her soft voice strikes me as condescending. “Life force comes in many flavors. You’ve heard of undead souls who eat blood or brains. Others eat sheer energy or light or even—as in this case—certain thoughts.”
“Thoughts?” The idea terrifies me, of someone rummaging around in my head for a snack. Unconsciously my hand has drifted to the top of my chest, to the ink eye. I’m safe, I remind myself.
I swallow. “So how do you fix a place like this?”
Eva’s small forehead wrinkles, and I can tell she’s already given the question a lot of thought. Obsessive thought, knowing her. “If only I could figure out how to claim the place of power for myself,” she says. “I’d retrain the ghosts to eat greenhouse gases. Or garbage. And instead of putting that energy toward a town, I’d turn it into clean power. Think how we could change the world.”
“Your mom is brilliant,” Bill says, stroking her hair.
“But wait, how would that help the people in this town?” Don’t you give a shit about them? “They’d never get their memories back.”
Eva gives a rueful chuckle. “I’m sorry, Marsh, but look around you.”
“Zombieville,” Bill agrees, grimacing. “It’s too late for these poor people.”
I think about the innkeeper’s daughter, Elyse, the angry spark in her eyes. The way she shocked me by knowing things she shouldn’t have known. And it’s the first time I can remember my parents being wrong.
—
“Wow, you were really far gone,” Elyse says. I’m back in the room with her. She’s blown out the candle and closed the music box.
“Why did you stop it?”
“Because it wasn’t working right.”
“It worked perfectly for me. I already remembered my parents, meeting you . . . all kinds of stuff.”
“Really?” She leans closer, her expression turning wistful. “I’m happy for you, Marsh. But for me . . . there was a glitch or something.”
“How could there be a glitch for you and not me?”
“I don’t know. It felt like I was watching a movie—”
“Right.” I nod. It was like that for me too.
“—only some scenes had bits cut out of them, like someone fast forwarded parts of my life. And other scenes would repeat, like they were badly edite
d. After a while it felt like I was seeing the same thing over and over, from different angles and with different backgrounds. It was all just a jumble.”
“Huh.” My heart’s sinking at her words, but I don’t want to give away the depth of my concern for her. I knew her mind had been messed with, like everyone’s in Summer Falls, but I’d been hoping against hope that the spell would work on her anyway. But it didn’t; her memory’s still Swiss cheese. What’s Plan B?
“We have to go to school. Now.” Her voice is intense, certain. “I need to get something out of my locker.”
—
On the way to school we pass downtown, bustling with people. The red-haired homeless woman’s sitting on the library steps today, barefoot as usual, her patched brown dress draping between her knees.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to her ever since she told me to run from the ghost yesterday,” Elyse says. “I think she used to work at Frieda’s, at the candy counter. Gave me free candy when I was little.”
I shake my head. “She doesn’t look old enough for that. Maybe it was someone else who looked like her.”
“No. She called me ‘girl.’ I know it was her.”
We quickly walk the rest of the way to school. She stands in front of her locker, takes a deep breath, puts her fingers on the combo lock, and twists right, left, right. It opens.
Inside the locker door, a magnetized mirror with a pink plastic frame catches my sleepless face. On the shelves textbooks are neatly arranged, spines aligned. And on the metal bottom, behind a cosmetics bag, behind a box of tampons, is a journal with a green and blue cover. Elyse dives for it, grabs it, opens it.
Someone’s taped a photo to the inside cover. A little girl with a gap-toothed smile and lion-colored braids all the way to her elbows. Gripping her right hand is Liz, younger, without crow’s-feet. On the left is an olive-skinned young guy not much taller than Liz, with green eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. In red Sharpie it says, Dear Elyse. Remember this happened to you.
The first few pages are crayon drawings, clearly made by a child: a monster with jagged teeth, a rain cloud with spindly arms reaching out. But the Sharpie hand has crossed these out and written in large letters across the fold, Read this book from cover to cover, every time you see it. And, You’re not crazy. The ghosts are real.
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