“Are you worried he’d feel left out?” she asked.
Gully pressed his lips together, the way he did when he was analyzing something. “I don’t know.” His voice cracked. “I always knew everything about him, but I’ve never been apart from him for this long, so I don’t know what he would want me to do anymore.”
Emmaline touched his shoulder, carefully.
After a while, Gully closed his eyes, and tears squeezed out.
“What do you want, then?” she asked softly.
His reply, when it came after a long pause, was so quiet that it was almost lost in the wind. “I just want my brother.”
Emmaline knew that she couldn’t cry, although she wanted to. One of them had to hold it together.
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay, Gully. We don’t have to go in. We can go to my house if you want.”
“I don’t want to be near the machine,” he said.
“I haven’t had a chance to tell you. I’ve convinced my father to turn it off. I’m not even sure it still works, since it’s the first time we’ve unplugged it. It’s covered up with old blankets now.”
He looked at her and rubbed his tears with the red scarf. “Really?” His thoughtful expression returned. “But that means you won’t be able to see your mother’s ghost anymore.”
“I don’t need to.” Emmaline shook her head. “The time I had with her makes me who I am. So she’s alive as long as I’m alive. You told me that.”
He almost smiled then. “Do you think I was right about that?”
“You’re always right,” Emmaline said.
“Maybe not always.”
“When it’s important, you are.”
That time, he did smile. He hadn’t even planned to, but Emmaline brought it out of him. “I’d like to go inside,” he said.
After they’d ordered their drinks, it was quiet for a long time. But the silence was comfortable. Gully had a lot to think about, and so did Emmaline.
Their cups were nearly empty when Gully spoke. “When you went missing, I thought something happened to you,” he said. “I can’t lose you, too.”
A ray of afternoon sun lit up Emmaline’s eyes, making them bright and brilliant. “You’ll never lose me,” she said.
There was fear in his expression. “Nobody can make that promise.”
“I can.” She raised her chin. “You know everything about everything, but I know this.”
She reached for the skeleton key tucked under her shirt. She unclasped its chain and stood to fit it around Gully’s neck.
Gully curled his fingers around it. “You want to give me your mother’s necklace?”
“I’m letting you borrow it, for as long as you need,” she said. “My mother told me that when her house got demolished, it felt like watching a castle falling down. She didn’t think the world would ever feel right again. But then time passed, and she went to school in a new city, and she got a new house, and she met my father and had me.” It was magic, Emmaline thought, how many memories a single tiny key could hold.
Gully held the key up in his palm. It was smooth and brass, almost glowing in the afternoon sun.
“Maybe all of life is like that,” he said. “Buildings getting demolished, and people finding new places to live.”
Emmaline sat across from him again. It was strange, Gully without Oliver. She suspected it would be a long time before she stopped waiting for Oliver to come running through the door. It was very much like carrying a key to a door that no longer existed.
She held her hand out across the table, and Gully took it without hesitation. There was plenty that she wanted to say to him, but when thoughts were big, words felt too small.
Her father had been right, she realized. Even without saying a word, she and Gully knew what they meant to each other. They always had.
After their cups had been emptied, Emmaline said, “There’s something I want to show you.”
Emmaline led them to the door, and for once, Gully was the one who followed.
After the warmth of the café, the air felt that much colder. Gully unwound one of his scarves—the green one—and draped it over Emmaline’s shoulders.
She smiled. “Thank you.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence, Gully counting the seconds between cracks in the sidewalk. He didn’t ask where Emmaline was taking them; he didn’t seem to care. A world without Oliver in it was aimless; there were just steps and buildings and thoughts that flew up and up and up until they disappeared in the sky.
But when the church came into view, Gully tensed. He stopped walking.
The tower clock was just beginning the first of its chimes to mark the hour.
Emmaline stopped walking, too. “It’s okay,” she said. “We aren’t going to go in there.”
They often passed the church on their way to the park, or to the small theater that charged half price for sweets on the third Sunday of each month. Gully had always admired it. The tall arched windows, the bright glass, the clock chimes that were loud and angry and cheerful all at the same time. But now when he looked at the wide stone steps, he saw his brother’s casket being carried up by pallbearers, and his mother going weak at the knees on the way in, and again on the way out.
Emmaline looped her arm around his. “This way,” she said, and began leading him across the street. They used the crosswalk, but Gully didn’t count the spaces between the white painted lines. He counted the bell chimes.
Across the street from the church, there was a bank. It was closed, the lights off and the blinds drawn over the windows. Emmaline began walking down the alleyway beside the bank.
“Where are we going?” Gully asked.
She looked over her shoulder, and her eyes were bright and playful. “It’s better if I show you. Come on.”
There was a fire escape on the side of the bank, and Emmaline climbed on top of a stack of wooden crates to pull down the ladder.
“Be careful,” Gully said.
“It’s safe,” Emmaline promised, and held out a hand to help him up.
This was the sort of mischief Oliver would have loved—scaling a fire escape—and maybe that’s why Gully went along with it.
The wind was sharper at the top of the bank, and the air was much colder.
Gully dug his hands into his coat pockets for warmth. “Emmy,” he finally said, “what are we doing up here?”
She led him to the edge of the roof. From here, they had a perfect view of the church across the street. It didn’t frighten Gully as much from where he stood now. It seemed smaller. Less menacing.
“My father has been reading the paper a lot more these days, before he goes to work,” Emmaline said. “He leaves it on the table, and sometimes I read it, too. That’s how I heard.”
“Heard what?” Gully asked.
Emmaline nudged him with her shoulder. “Just wait.”
Despite the chill in the air, the sun was shining. Light glinted off the face of the church clock and the patches of ice on the sidewalks.
It was several minutes before the heavy oak doors of the church opened, and then the quiet afternoon was filled with the sound of laughter and cheers.
A bride and groom emerged, followed by a crowd of colorful dresses and matching brown suits.
“A wedding?” Gully said.
“Yes.” Emmaline leaned her arms forward against the ledge that framed the roof. She nodded to the woman in the white gown that puddled at her feet, rippling like water as she walked. “That’s Granville’s granddaughter.”
“Granville,” Gully echoed. “The ghost of your neighbors’ brother.”
Emmaline nodded, smiling. “I suppose she’s inherited the money Granville was hiding. So, something good did come from that machine. Not what my father intended, maybe, but still. It’s something.”
“It’s something,” Gully echoed. His brows knit in thought. “I know that Oliver was right when he said it could be used to help people. I’ve
always known that. But—”
Gully hesitated, and Emmaline inched closer, until her shoulder was pressed against his. “I know,” she said. “It’s for the best that it stay unplugged.”
Together they watched the wedding procession disperse. Granville’s granddaughter and her new husband climbed into the backseat of a sleek black limousine. The engine growled to life, and then they were on their way to start their lives together.
Emmaline rested her cheeks to her fists. “I hope they’ll be happy,” she said.
Gully rested his head on her shoulder, and she looped her arm around him. There was a time, not very long ago, when they both would have been startled by this sort of closeness, but now it was not only practical—it was important. Everything drifted out of reach one day. Everything could be taken away in a heartbeat. And if someone was still close enough to hold on to, then you should hold on.
Together, they watched the limousine drive farther down the road, until it was out of sight.
EPILOGUE
In the years that followed, Emmaline’s house would become filled with many sounds. But the humming of the ghost machine was not one of them. There was the ticking of clocks, and the phone ringing, and eventually, though it took a while, lots and lots of laughter.
There were long conversations, the whistling of teakettles.
Emmaline’s father lived to be very old. He saw Emmaline grow up, and attend college, and become an illustrator for children. He walked her down the aisle at her wedding, and he held each of his grandchildren right after they were born.
The house was filled with the giggling of children again when Emmaline brought them to visit, and new life, because life always got bigger and bigger with time. There were new things to cry about, and new things to laugh about, and new games to learn, and new songs to sing.
The ghost machine stayed in the basement, covered up by blankets, surrounded by boxes of decorations and old toys and clothes. When the children asked about the strange shape in the shadows, Emmaline would say, “Oh, that old thing? It’s haunted. Best to leave it alone.”
When her father was very old and he knew that it was his time, he gave Emmaline the house and everything inside of it. He told her that whatever she did with the machine now was up to her. He said, “You don’t need to worry about me, Emmy. I’ll be with your mother.”
Often, Emmaline wondered if the machine still worked. In those years she said more good-byes, some much harder than others. Gully wondered, too, and sometimes they talked about it, but there was always life to focus on, something happy to draw them back into the world of the living.
When Emmaline and Gully were very old, and the house was filled with moving boxes, they talked about it again. The house had become too big and too dusty. It was time for a new family to live there and fill it with their own lives. But there was still the matter of what to do with the machine.
“It seems a shame to destroy it,” Gully said.
“It’s been so long, I don’t even know if it works,” Emmaline said.
“We could try it.”
“Really? Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“I could never be sure, when it came to that thing. But then I suppose that’s the point.”
They talked about it for hours. They talked about it for days. And not just with words, but with glances, and with silence, too.
Eventually, the last of the boxes were packed. All the pictures were put away. Their children were grown and living in their own houses, with children and grandchildren of their own, and there was nothing left to talk about. In the morning, the machine would be loaded onto a van and carted off to the dump. This would be for the best—on that they had agreed.
“I say let’s,” Gully said. “Just once, before it’s gone forever.”
Emmaline smiled. “I was hoping you would say that.”
They knew exactly which box to open with the scissors. They knew exactly which thing they’d feed the machine. They’d never had to say a word about it. They were each holding an end of Oliver’s red scarf as they descended the basement steps.
They moved slowly. Their bones were tired, and they couldn’t run the way they once had. But they weren’t in any hurry.
Gully pulled the blankets from the machine, while Emmaline was the one to plug it back into the wall.
The machine’s purple light flickered like a dying bulb, and then gradually gave off steadier, brighter rays.
For a long while, Emmaline and Gully stood together, watching the thing.
“It’s been so long,” Gully finally said. “Do you think he’d recognize me?”
Emmaline rested her head on his shoulder. “Of course,” she answered. “I see him sometimes when I look at you.”
“Even now?”
“Even now.”
They looked at the scarf in their hands.
“We don’t have to, if you’re having second thoughts,” Emmaline said.
Gully took a deep breath. Over a lifetime, he had learned to speak about Oliver often, making him a part of their daily lives, the way he’d speak about the weather or what he’d had for breakfast. He’d told their children about him. He kept pictures in frames. But the thought of the boy he’d lost hurt him. Still. Always.
“One last hello,” he said. “I’m ready for one last hello.”
They held the red scarf up to the mouth of the machine. They let go at the same time, and it fluttered and swirled and disappeared as it fell.
Nothing happened.
And then, the machine started to rattle.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As ever, thank you to my family for their overwhelming support and love. Especially my little cousins, who are always asking me what I’m working on next.
Thank you to the greatest humans I have ever met: Beth Revis, Aprilynne Pike, Laini Taylor, Randi Oomens, Sabaa Tahir, all of whom always come up with something encouraging and clever to say during the times I’ve thought I was beyond encouragement. Thank you to my readers, for listening to my stories.
Thank you to my agent, Barbara Poelle; I ran out of clever ways to say thank you several years ago, and yet she still sticks by me. Thank you to the amazing team at Bloomsbury, from my editor, Cat Onder, to marketing and publicity, to the art department. Thank you to Marcos Calo, who created a cover more beautiful and true to Emmaline’s story than I could have imagined. Words will never be able to convey my gratitude.
Copyright © 2017 by Lauren DeStefano
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
First published in the United States of America in June 2017 by Bloomsbury Children’s Books
www.bloomsbury.com
Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 1385 Broadway, New York, New York 10018
Bloomsbury books may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at [email protected]
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: DeStefano, Lauren, author.
Title: The girl with the ghost machine / by Lauren DeStefano.
Description: New York : Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2017.
Summary: Neglected by her father, who spends all of his time building a ghost machine to bring her mother back from the dead, twelve-year-old Emmaline decides that the only way to bring her father back will be to make the ghost machine work, or destroy it forever.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016044512 (print) • LCCN 2017011490 (e-book)
ISBN 978-1-68119-444-8 (hardcover) • ISBN 978-1-68119-445-5 (e-book)
Subjects: | CY
AC: Grief—Fiction. | Fathers and daughters—Fiction. | Dead—Fiction. | Ghosts—Fiction. | Inventions—Fiction. | Science fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic. | JUVENILE NONFICTION / Social Issues / Death & Dying. | JUVENILE FICTION / Science Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.D47 Gi 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.D47 (e-book) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016044512
The Girl With the Ghost Machine Page 10