“How long have you two been . . . ?” Megan said.
“What? We’re not. Nothing’s going on.”
“The way he was looking at you . . . that’s definitely something.”
“I guess Pepper thinks so too,” I couldn’t help saying.
“Pepper? She likes him, but he doesn’t seem to be into her.”
“She came to my locker and had a talk with me.”
“What did she say?”
I recalled the dejected look on Carter’s face, and Pepper’s words came back to me. Already I was bringing him down, hurting his feelings, leaving him on his own. “Nothing.”
“Right,” Megan said. “Because Pepper’s famous for saying nothing.”
I didn’t respond.
“Now tell me everything,” she said. “How long has the weird stuff been happening?”
“Since Tuesday night,” I said.
“And is it just your sister?”
Interesting question. Dad was safely tucked away in the hospital—well, perhaps “safely” wasn’t the right word. And Mom? Sure, she was distant and detached, but that was just Mom being Mom.
“Yeah, just Kasey,” I said.
“Now skip to the part about me.”
I’ll spare you the gory details, but it wasn’t long into my little story that Megan had to pull the car over to the side of the road so she could devote all of her attention to staring at me in indignant disbelief.
When I reached the part about Kasey showing up at school that morning, I hesitated. Megan was glaring at me so fiercely that I couldn’t concentrate.
“If I’d known this was going to happen, I never would have—”
She raised a finger in the air and closed her eyes. I took it as a very clear way of saying, Leave me alone for a minute or I will push you out of my car.
A few seconds and some deep breaths later, she spoke. “Okay, Alexis,” she began, “I’m not going to pretend I’m happy about being cast as an evil villain in your stupid little fairy tale.”
“Megan, I didn’t know—”
“Quiet,” she said. “Let’s just put the past behind us and not worry about it.” She exhaled. “For now.”
She put the car in drive and pulled back onto the road, shaking her head.
“Well . . . it’s convenient,” I said at last.
“What is?”
“If it had been about somebody who didn’t believe in ghosts . . .” I said, but I didn’t know how to finish. A sour, empty ache growled to life in my stomach. My arms felt weak, and I closed my eyes.
“So . . . what changed your mind? Why did you suddenly decide you needed my help?”
“Oh God,” I said. I hadn’t even talked about what had happened at the house, Kasey’s evil hoodoo.
So I told her. As the story went on, I felt more and more ridiculous. My thirteen-year-old sister cops an attitude and I run for cover.
I waited to hear what Megan would say.
“Tomorrow at midnight . . . What’s Friday? Is it an important date—her birthday or something?”
“No.”
She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “It’s cool that you kept her talking. You never know what she might have done otherwise.”
I hadn’t thought about it that way. The weak place in me felt a little stronger.
For the first time since we’d gotten in the car, I wondered where we were going. We were driving past the new developments where houses as big as museums were being constructed on lots so small that they hardly had space for a front or backyard. (Dad makes faces and calls them McMansions. Mom keeps quiet, which I assume means she wouldn’t mind living in one someday.)
“We’re going to my house,” Megan said. “I need to change out of my cheerleading clothes.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Listen. My grandmother might be home. If you say even a single word about this to her, I’ll be grounded until college.”
“All right,” I said, instantly certain that I would somehow slip up and ruin everything. Hi, nice to meet you! Your granddaughter and I are just going to mess with the Dark Side for a while. I love those flowers, are they violets? “She doesn’t believe in . . . it?”
“That’s the problem,” Megan said. “She does believe. Very much. So she tries to keep me away from it.”
“But she knows you’re interested, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How did you start believing in the first place?” Interest in the paranormal wasn’t really the “in” thing at Surrey High. It’s not the kind of thing you’d chat about during lunch.
Megan turned down the radio. “Do you believe in angels?”
Uh.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Does anyone?”
“Um, yeah, a lot of people do. And once you believe in good things, it’s not that hard to believe in . . . bad things.”
“So you believe in angels?”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I mean, not the harps and feathers kind. But I know something happens to good people when they die.” Her cheery tone thinned. “People like my mom.”
I was desperate to turn the conversation away from Megan’s mother, so I said, “How long have you lived with your grandmother?”
Which, as a changing-the-subject tactic, was a complete failure. It was just another way of calling attention to the fact that Megan’s mom was dead. Way to go, Alexis.
“Since I was two years old.” She glanced at me. “It’s okay, I can talk about her. My dad was never even in the picture. Somewhere out there is a man who has no idea he has a daughter. Although, from what Grandma says about him . . . he probably has more than one.”
And I thought my dad was absentee.
“I don’t even remember my mom,” she said. “Not really. Every once in a while I feel like I do, but then I think it’s probably just a Sesame Street flashback.”
“Do you have aunts and uncles?” I asked.
“Nope,” Megan said, shaking her head slowly. “Just me and Grandma.”
“I didn’t even know that,” I said, trying to figure out how you could be in school with someone for so long and not know such a huge thing about them.
“Well, it’s not like you ever tried to get to know me.”
Ouch. The sting of truth.
“So, bottom line. If she suspects that I’m trying to have anything to do with ghosts or spirits, she’ll ship me off to boarding school and I’ll end up in a convent.”
“If she’s so strict about it, why are you doing it?”
“I’m sorry, Alexis,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were the only person on the planet allowed to think for yourself.” Then she shrugged again and cocked her head to one side. “Besides that your little sister seems to be fixated on me? I have my reasons.”
WE RODE IN SILENCE until we reached a large beige house with lots of clean white trim. Megan pulled into the driveway next to an enormous silver BMW.
“She’s home . . .” Megan said, staring at the front door the way a gladiator might watch the gate the lions come running out of. “You’ll have to distract her while I get some things from my room.”
Inside, Megan led me down a hallway that spilled out into a huge, sunny living room. To our left was a spacious kitchen, where a woman in her sixties stood at the counter, leafing through a pile of mail.
“Megan,” the woman said, looking up at us in surprise. “What are you doing home? Don’t you have practice?” Her gaze lingered on my hair, but she didn’t say anything.
“Yes,” Megan said, which wasn’t technically a lie. “Just changing and grabbing a few things for the float. Grandma, this is Alexis. Alexis, this is my grandmother, Mrs. Wiley.”
Mrs. Wiley, indeed. This was not the grandmother I’d been preparing myself for. Instead of a sweet, frumpy housedress, she wore a sleek burgundy suit that I instinctively knew was more expensive than about five of my mother’s suits put together.
“I’ll be right back,” Megan
said, giving me a pointed look and dashing up the stairs.
Mrs. Wiley gave me the once-over.
“Are you on the squad?” she asked. She reminded me of the stepmother in Cinderella, except not mean—just cool, reserved. I could see where Megan got it.
“Um, no,” I said.
Ergh, lie! Lie, you idiot.
Mrs. Wiley waited for an explanation, her salon-groomed eyebrows pressing closer together. I felt like a piece of art being studied at a museum—or more likely, in Mrs. Wiley’s case, a small company about to be gobbled up by a huge corporation.
I groped in the back of my mind for something to say. “I’m doing a photo shoot for the school newspaper.”
“Ah, a photographer,” she said. I waited for a suspicious reaction, but she didn’t seem interested in providing one. I could have died of relief.
“I dabble,” I said, mentally willing her not to ask me about the school paper. I didn’t even know if they had photographers. When I looked at her to see how she would reply to this, her eyes weren’t on me. They were fixed on the window over the sink—or rather, somewhere in the distance.
“Megan’s mother was a photographer,” she said. “A good one. She used to win contests.” Then a tremor seemed to move through her body, and she looked down at the mail on the counter.
“I didn’t know that,” I said. It was the only thing I could think of to say.
“Do you want to study photojournalism in college?”
Back to the photography. “Not really,” I said. “My stuff is more . . . artistic. But not pretentious,” I added quickly.
“I do dislike pretension,” Mrs. Wiley mused, tearing open an envelope. “I wish Megan would take up an interest in something like photography.”
“She’s a really good cheerleader; she could probably even get a scholarship.”
Grandma tut-tutted under her breath. “And spend college funneling beer and dating football players. It’s not the scholarship . . . I just wish she would use her mind instead of her muscles.”
I was surprised to feel the urge to defend Megan spring up inside me. I didn’t even know what I would say, except that I’d seen her countless times walking around school with her eyes glued to her black cheerleading notebook. As much as I disliked the whole idea of shaking pom-poms and hopping around in short skirts, it didn’t seem fair to say that Megan wasn’t good, or that she didn’t work hard at it. That thought took a second to settle in, and I brushed it away before I had time to feel like a huge hypocrite for everything I’d ever thought or said about Megan.
The kitchen was mercifully quiet for a minute or two. I gazed around the room, trying to look mesmerized by the iron candelabra on the counter, but just when I was feeling confident that the hard part of my job was over, Mrs. Wiley spoke again.
“Are you going to the dance Friday night?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, immediately regretting it. If I had just given her a simple “no” and acted dejected, she would have left the subject alone.
“Do you have a date?”
“I guess that’s kind of what it is,” I answered.
“What does your dress look like?”
My dress?
I tried to picture a dress in my head, but all I could think of was the pastel Easter dresses Kasey and I had worn as little girls. Somehow, baby blue with puffy sleeves and chicks embroidered on the front didn’t seem to cut it for Homecoming.
“I guess I don’t have one yet,” I said.
“It’s getting late,” Mrs. Wiley said, sounding a little concerned. Then she perked up. “You should borrow something of Megan’s.”
“I don’t think her clothes would fit me.”
“Yes they would,” she said, giving me a decisive up-and-down glance. “You’re the same size. You’re taller than she is, but that shouldn’t matter.”
She smiled kindly and went back to the mail. I felt a slow flush spread up the sides of my face. No way could she think someone like me would even be friends with Megan, much less fit into her clothes. I was so . . . so different. Megan was perfect, and I was . . . not perfect. Megan was skinny and fit, and I was . . . well, I was plenty skinny, but since I didn’t work for it, it didn’t seem possible that we could wear the same size anything.
“What could be keeping Megan?” she asked. “Why don’t you run up to her room? First door on the right at the top of the stairs.”
“Okay,” I said, hoping my relief wasn’t too apparent. Mrs. Wiley was nice, but if she pressed for any more information—a simple question about earrings or footwear—I would blow the whole operation.
I bolted up the stairs and knocked on the first door on the right.
Megan opened it and looked at me in surprise.
“What about my grandmother?” she asked.
“It was her idea,” I whispered.
I slid through the door and Megan eased it shut again behind me. Then she walked over to the bed and got down on her hands and knees, digging around behind the dust ruffle.
“Do you need help?” I asked.
“No,” she said, her voice muffled. “I’m almost done.”
I leaned against the door, part of me still shocked that I was standing in Megan Wiley’s bedroom. I can’t say what I was expecting, but her bedroom didn’t look like a stereotypical cheerleader’s room. There was some evidence that a pom-pom pusher lived there, but it was minimal—mostly confined to one shelf of the bookcase.
The rest of her stuff was just an eclectic mix of books and knickknacks. It was kind of cluttered, but not in the way that drives me crazy, like Kasey’s room—it was clutter with a purpose, like one of those expensive designer furniture stores in the mall. It made me think of a professor’s study, only instead of maps and journals, there were embroidered pillows and polished stone sculptures.
I noticed a black-and-white photo in a silver frame hanging on the wall near the closet. It was of a very young Megan and younger Mrs. Wiley sitting on a flat rock in front of a lake. “Did your mom take that?” I asked.
Megan pulled her head out from underneath the bed and stared at me. “What are you talking about?”
I pointed to the picture. “That photograph.”
Megan stared at the photo for a moment. “Why—? I doubt it. It’s just something I’ve always had.” She took a step toward it, looking at the image—her own tiny face staring seriously at the camera, and Mrs. Wiley, smiling and elegant in her picnic dress.
It was almost like Megan had never really looked at it before.
“I like it,” I said. “It’s really good.”
“But . . . why would you ask that?” she said, looking back at me. “If my mother took it?”
“Because your . . .” I didn’t know what to say. “Because your grandmother said your mom was a photographer.”
The corners of Megan’s eyes crinkled. “She told you that?”
I nodded cautiously. Maybe Megan considered these little pieces of information private, secret.
But she didn’t seem angry, just puzzled. “She told you something about my mother. Something she never told me.” Her voice was calm, but kind of too calm—the way a person talks when they’re in shock. She pulled the frame off the wall, then placed it upside down on the bed and pried the metal clips off. Lifting the backing away, she gently picked up the photo by its edges.
I stayed where I was. I’d done plenty already.
She breathed out softly. “Come look,” she said, wonder in her voice.
I went to her side, and she pointed to a corner of the photo that had been hidden by the mat. Someone had signed it faintly in pencil, with a first initial and their last name.
“Shara Wiley,” Megan said.
“Is that . . . ?” I studied the next word.
“Mom,” Megan said. She shook her head and kind of sank onto the bed.
“Wow,” I said.
Megan set the photo down carefully on the frame and turned to me. “My grandmother adopted me a
fter the accident. She never talks about my mom. Never.” She glanced back at the photo. “They didn’t get along well, and they weren’t speaking when Mom died. I guess it was horrible for her.”
“I’m sorry . . .” I said. I couldn’t finish the thought.
I leaned in closer to look at the image. It was really a nice shot, not too posed or phony, the way a lot of people’s family portraits look. And Megan was a cute kid, with one eyebrow raised skeptically.
“Hey,” I said, noticing the bracelet hanging off her chubby toddler arm. It was one of those hearts that looks like it’s been cut in half. “I have a charm like that.”
Megan reached to her neck and pulled a gold chain out from under the sweatshirt she’d put on, revealing the dangling charm. “I still wear it,” she said. “I think these things were pretty popular.”
“It’s really cool that your mom took this,” I said, marveling that I’d never even thought to take a picture of my family.
“Thanks,” Megan said, delicately replacing the photo in the frame. I could tell by the tightness in her voice how meaningful this was for her. “I guess there’s time for this later. Right now we have more pressing issues.”
“I’m really sorry,” I repeated.
Megan ignored my apology. “Grandma said she was a photographer?”
I nodded. “A good one. Award-winning, your grandma said.”
“Wow,” Megan said. And then her eyes lost their focus and she stared off in the distance. She hung the picture back in its corner and looked at it one last time. Then she glanced at me. “You’re into photography, right? Maybe sometime you could show me . . .”
Her voice trailed off.
“Are you kidding?” I said. “Of course.”
And I meant it. I mean, I totally owed it to her, but more than that . . . I just got this subtle vibe from Megan that I didn’t get from anybody else. That if I showed her my photos, she would understand. She would get them. The idea of having an intelligent conversation about photography was as oddly irresistible as the thought of listening to Carter insult my house with all his fancy architectural terms. Megan sighed. “I guess we’re ready to go,” she said.
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