by Jeyn Roberts
Again Tatum looked at her and wondered how on earth they’d ever stayed friends. “You can buy me a super-great Christmas gift,” she finally said. It seemed easier to joke with her than to comment on her earlier behavior. And apparently it was the right thing to do because Claudette grinned widely.
“Deal. Something sparkly and sexy you can wear for New Year’s.”
It was in a Walmart where Claudette ended up peeing on a stick that ended the pregnancy fear. The results were blissfully negative. Claudette didn’t bother thanking Tatum for doing the embarrassing checkout. She didn’t apologize for Tatum’s nerves when the salesgirl had given her a look that suggested Tatum had to be some sort of slut for sneaking around in the middle of the night buying pregnancy tests.
No, Claudette was too relieved to think of anything else, and of course Tatum let it go. She allowed Claudette to jump for joy in the bathroom stall and hug her several times. They drove back home, and thankfully Tatum’s parents had gone to bed and never even noticed she’d missed curfew by an hour.
She lay in bed for a long time that night, trying to figure out what to do. What would happen if another pregnancy scare came up? What if Barry left Claudette? What if he decided it wasn’t worth the stress to continue sneaking around? Claudette’s behavior wasn’t normal. She might end up doing something crazy. How would Tatum deal with it? If she told an adult, would that help?
The decision didn’t come easily. But in the end Tatum figured she had to do something. She couldn’t sit back and watch her friend destroy herself.
A week later, everything changed.
* * *
Tatum drives past the site of the Christmas bonfire and nearly misses seeing the girl walking out of the woods. She slams on the brakes, hard enough to make the car’s tires slide to the right. With her hands on the wheel, Tatum exhales loudly.
She saw that. The girl.
Looking in the rearview mirror, Tatum scans the road behind her. The blacktop spreads out in quiet darkness. A red glow lights up the night as she keeps her foot on the brake pedal. She squints, trying to make out one shadow from another.
There. Movement.
She turns off the car and gets out.
Be careful. It could be a trap. You don’t know who’s been watching you this week. You’ve been here every damn night. Someone else might have noticed. And you still don’t really know which side Scott’s on. He could have told them all about your ghost story.
Tatum puts the voices in her mind on ignore. Keeping the driver-side door open, she stares out into the darkness. Slowly her eyes began to adjust, and the black shadows take on familiar forms.
It’s her. The girl with her flowing skirt and long brown hair. The moonlight catches her movements as she climbs out of the ditch. She carefully wipes some dirt off her skirt before stepping up onto the road.
“Molly.”
The girl smiles. No, that’s not quite right. Her face explodes in emotion. Relief. Surprise. Happiness. The sides of her lips quiver and turn upward. “Tatum.”
They both pause, looking at one another.
Tatum doesn’t know where to go from here. There are so many questions she wants to ask, but suddenly they all seem stupid. Molly stands a few feet away from her, looking real and solid, not ghostly at all. What if Tatum’s wrong about that? What if Molly is just some girl who happens to enjoy walking late at night along Frog Road? How dumb is Tatum going to appear if she starts going off like this is some sort of Halloween joke?
“I’m glad to see you again,” Molly finally says. “Can we get in your car? I’m freezing.”
Of course she is. Tatum looks at the girl’s thin blouse and sees the goose bumps rising on her skin. Can a ghost have goose bumps?
“Sure,” Tatum says.
They climb into the car. Molly doesn’t say anything while Tatum turns it back on and puts the heat on high. She puts her hands against the vents to enjoy the warm air. Her fingers are long and elegant, the nails shaped into perfect ovals. After a minute or two, she stops shivering.
The silence fills the car. Neither girl says anything. Tatum opens her mouth twice, but uncertainty makes her stop each time. She’s got to be wrong. Now that she’s looking right at Molly, she’s positive the girl has to be alive. She’s too real-looking.
Finally Molly breaks the silence. “How are you doing?”
“Fine,” Tatum says. She stares at Molly’s skin. It’s so real. Shouldn’t it be more shimmery or something? She’s seen all those images on the Internet. The ghosts seem to glow. They don’t usually appear so…solid.
“Your friends. Are they still giving you trouble?”
“Ex-friends. How do you know that?”
Molly shrugs. “I just know things. You should start driving. That’s the way it has to work. If you don’t drive, I don’t know what might happen. Stupid rules, aren’t they?”
“So it’s true, then.” Tatum puts the car in gear and they start moving.
“What do you mean?”
“You. You’re a…” There go those pesky words again, dying before Tatum can get them out.
“Yes,” Molly says. “I’m a ghost.”
She certainly doesn’t have problems saying it.
“You’re not afraid?”
“No,” Tatum says. “Why? Should I be?”
“Not of me,” Molly says. “Never me. All I do is a disappearing act. Aside from freaking people out, I’m quite harmless. And you seem to be handling this well, so I guess there’s no fear of you losing your mind.”
Tatum can’t help herself. She reaches out and touches Molly’s arm. Her fingers don’t slip through air or pass through nothingness like one might expect when greeting a specter. No, Molly’s skin is soft and cool. Very, very real. It’s like touching her mother or even herself.
“You don’t feel like one.”
“What are ghosts supposed to feel like?”
Molly’s got her there. “I don’t know. Not solid. Isn’t that how they show ghosts in the movies? But you feel real. I mean, like a person.”
“So you’d feel more comfortable if you were able to stick your hand through my body?”
Tatum grins. “Yeah, no.”
“That’s a relief to hear.” Molly puts her hands against the heating vent again. “That feels so good. It’s cold tonight. I was afraid I might be stuck on the road for a long time. Cars don’t always come right away. I once got stuck outside in a rainstorm for half an hour. When the car finally showed up, I looked like a wet dog. I remember the guy who picked me up. He had wandering hands. I hate it when they do that.”
Tatum pulls her arm back instantly and Molly laughs.
“You can touch me,” she says. “I don’t mind. I’m really happy it was you. I’ve been thinking about you so much. But I’ve never gone back to the same person before. I thought I was too late with my warning.”
Tatum barely hears her words. “How? I mean, how did you die?” she asks.
Molly shrugs. She’s still smiling. “Does it really matter? I’m more interested in you. I’m here to help.”
“I don’t need help,” Tatum says, frowning in confusion.
“But my warning. I see things. I saw you. You’re in trouble.”
“I’m fine. Nothing wrong.” Tatum wants nothing more but to direct the conversation away from herself. She doesn’t want to spend the few minutes they have discussing the queen bitch Claudette and the living hell her life has become. “I want to know about you. What happened? Why are you haunting Frog Road? Have you been doing this a long time? Is it a curse? Something you need to do? I can help. If you give me enough information, I can find your body and put you to rest.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Molly says.
“Ghosts haunt places because they have unfinished business,” Tatum says. “I’ve been reading all about it. I can help. You have to tell me your story. How did you die? Is that too personal? Can you even tell me? Or does something prevent you? Oh God. D
o you relive your death?”
Molly laughs, and the sound silences Tatum.
“That’s a lot of questions. I’m more worried about you.”
“This isn’t about me.” The conversation isn’t going the way Tatum wants it to go. Tatum has an actual ghost in her car! The very thing that will make her forget all her problems.
“You’re in trouble, Tatum. You need help yourself. Someone’s planning to hurt you.”
“They can’t hurt me any more than they already have,” Tatum says. Her fingers drum impatiently on the steering wheel. How much time do they have before Molly poofs? Molly said it herself—they need to keep driving. How long before she disappears? A mile? Two? Tatum needs to keep this conversation on track. “How did you die?”
“I was murdered.”
“So is that it? Do I need to find your killer? Is he still alive? Or she?”
“I knew my killer,” Molly says. She reaches out and picks up a gas receipt from the cup holder. She studies it in the dark. “Wow,” she says more to herself than Tatum. “Julian used to earn less than that in a week.”
“You knew the person who murdered you?”
“Yes, he was Julian’s friend. Walter. He was my friend too. Never thought in a million years he’d ever hurt me. He used to play guitar for us in the evenings. He had a beautiful voice. Funny, I trusted him completely. He was like a father to me.” It isn’t hard to hear the bitterness in Molly’s voice. She places her hands in her lap and stares at her fingers. They still look cold. On her left hand is a silver ring with a tiny diamond. An engagement ring? Tatum can’t tell.
“Does Walter have a last name? I could track him down.”
“They caught him. If he’s still alive, he’s probably still in jail. He bragged to me that I wasn’t his first. He’d probably been killing for years. He knew what he was doing. That’s why he was good at it.”
So that can’t be it. Tatum mentally crosses Find killer off her list. But maybe that’s not quite true. Maybe Walter escaped prison or was paroled. It could still be Tatum’s job to find him. And then what? Find a way to send him back to jail? Kill him herself? An eye for an eye?
“You’re in danger, Tatum,” Molly says. She reaches over and presses her fingers against Tatum’s arm. “Listen to me. There’s not a lot of time left. I’ll Fade again and I can’t do that unless I know for sure you’re going to be safe. Someone is plotting to hurt you. I saw it. A group of others. You know these people. They used to be your friends. And the things I see, I think they come true.”
“I’m fine, honest,” Tatum says. She briefly thinks of Claudette and then brushes the thought away. Claudette may be a bitch, but she wouldn’t ever hurt Tatum. Stealing her clothes is about as low as she’d stoop. Even Graham and Levi with their nasty comments wouldn’t actually do anything physical. She’s known these people her entire life. She’d know if they were into killing puppies or torturing grandmothers on weekends.
It’s Molly who needs help.
“What about your body?” Tatum asks.
“What about it?”
“If you’re buried in a field, I can dig it up and put your soul at rest.”
Molly shakes her head. “You’ve been reading too many books. What I do, what I am—there’s no way to stop it. I’m not the only ghost out there. If it were that simple to put me at rest, as you say, I’d like to think it would have happened to at least one of us.”
“So you’re in some sort of purgatory?”
“You could call it that.”
“What’s it like?”
“It’s not important,” Molly says. She turns around in her seat, and Tatum can see the pleading look in her eyes. She looks terrified. Why? Ghosts have nothing to fear. They’re already dead.
“It’s important to me,” Tatum finally says. She glances at the road and sees that they’ve come to the end. She can see the town-limits sign not too far off in the distance.
“You. We need to talk about you.”
But whatever conversation Molly wants, it’s not going to happen. Already she’s beginning to turn transparent. Tatum reaches out to touch her again, and this time her fingers slide through Molly’s body. Nothing but cold air where her arm is supposed to be. Molly leans forward to get Tatum’s attention just before she completely disappears.
“Help yourself,” Molly says.
And then she’s gone.
Tatum pulls the car over for the second time that night. She sits in the car for a while, letting the hot air build up inside until it feels like she’s in a sauna.
The excitement spills over her, making it hard to think about anything except Molly. She’s real. A ghost. How cool is that? There are thousands of people out there trying to prove spirits exist. There are entire television shows and people with silly degrees who use expensive equipment to try and find proof. She’s seen these shows. Mostly they just run around in the dark and talk about how cold certain areas are. They pull out fancy machines and claim they’re recording the voices of the dead. To Tatum, it sounds like static. Molly’s voice is perfectly normal.
Tatum knows the truth.
Of course, she can’t exactly scream it from the rooftops. People didn’t believe her about Claudette; they certainly wouldn’t believe her about Molly.
Not that it matters. Who cares?
Molly is her secret.
Tatum now has more information. She’s got the name of Molly’s killer. Walter. And Julian. She mentioned the name Julian. That is helpful, but probably still not enough for her to uncover all the details she needs. What she needs is Molly’s last name. Why didn’t she think to ask?
She does a U-turn in the middle of Frog Road and heads back home. Sunday night she will head down to the coffee shop, and hopefully Scott will have talked to his grandmother.
Scott Bremer. She smiles at the thought. Is he just being nice to her, or does he actually want to help? Scott doesn’t talk to Claudette; heck, he even straight-out turned her down when he first moved to town. Tatum doesn’t think she’s ever seen him at a house party or with Graham and his lackeys. Is it possible that Scott doesn’t even know about all the crap that’s become Tatum’s life?
Not likely.
But maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he’s heard everything and still wants to be her friend. He wouldn’t have gone out of his way to be nice to her if he planned on brushing her off.
Sunday night. She can’t wait.
MOLLY
“Dammit!”
I storm up and down the beach, kicking at pebbles, my bare feet barely making a mark on the sand. I’ve left my sandals somewhere back by the log, yanking them off in a fit of rage.
That girl. Tatum.
Parker and Mary sit on the log, watching me tromp back and forth. Both of them know better than to tell me to calm down. I can see it in Parker’s eyes: he desperately wants me to stop. He can’t understand why I’m getting so worked up by this. And I don’t know the right words to make him care.
“How can anyone be that stupid? I practically hand her a warning on a silver platter, and she just shrugs it off? If someone had come up to me and warned me about Walter, I would have at least taken it into consideration. But no, she’s got to get all weird about me being a ghost. Instead of worrying about herself, she’s determined to put me to rest.”
“That’s the living for you,” Mary says. “Bunch of gigglemugs if you ask me. Lucky you, though. They do tours in London where they found me body. You’d think at least one of those wankers would try and save my soul.”
“How do you even know that?” Parker asks.
“I’ve seen it, I’ll have you know,” Mary says. “Got to scare the whole lot of ’em. Bloody idiots pulled out their cameras. I’ll tell you, cats got better sense. At least they hiss and run away. Humans are dumb. They see danger and go rushing straight into it. They want the things that bump under their beds.”
“That’s not always true,” Parker says. “I never went looking for troubl
e.”
“That’s ’cause you’re boring, love,” Mary says. “You never took a chance in your life, and now you’re here. Even your afterlife is boring.”
“Better than the alternative,” he says mysteriously.
I let them bicker. My feet have sunk down into the sand. I remember being on the beach as a child. I used to stand right in the shallow water and wiggle my toes until they were covered. The moist sand was grainy and cushy against my skin. It made a wet sucking noise when I freed myself. Perfect for a hot day. Looking down at my ankles, I shimmy back and forth, trying to bury my feet and regain the sensation. But nothing happens. No wet sand squishing between my toes. No cool pressure against my skin. Not a single feeling. The lack of sensation only frustrates me. I shake myself free and continue to pace.
“You can’t force someone to listen to you,” Mary says after watching me go up and down the beach three times. “She’s fascinated by you. Can’t blame her. Appearing out of nowhere, all magical and ghostly. I’m surprised she ain’t asked for your autograph.”
“She wants to save me,” I say with a snort. “Me.” My voice is rising again, and I can’t help it. I’m starting to get an audience. I can feel their eyes on my body. This is the sort of thing that never happens here. Loudness. Free speech. Reacting. Freaking out. All of this is unwanted. The invisible line we never cross.
“Did you explain that it’s all nonsense? Fabrications?” Parker leans back, a soft smile on his face. Now I can’t tell if he’s being sincere or sarcastic.
“What do you think?” I snap. I turn toward the group, sitting in their eternal seats, and see several pairs of eyes turn away. So typical of them. Needing to mind their own business, sucked up in their own stupid afterlife. Heaven forbid they have to actually do or feel something. I can tell what they’re thinking: Why won’t she just sit down? Stop making the living important. Be quiet and still. This is our afterlife too.