by Tifani Clark
CHAPTER 3
Dad said that Grandma’s Café and Bakery already existed when he was a kid growing up in Marion, Massachusetts. Of course, back then “Grandma” was actually alive and running the joint. The café had changed hands many times over the years, but it was still a favorite local hangout. After placing my order I chose a table in the back where I could spread out and not be in the way. There were a few families finishing up lunch and a couple of older classmen from my school polishing off burgers at the counter. I didn’t recall their names, but I’d seen them around many times before.
When my order number was called I meandered through the maze of tables and booths to claim my food. As I turned away from the counter, the bell above the door signaling someone entering chimed. Instinctively, I looked up and again found myself staring at Aphrodite. At that point I was determined to find out her real name so that I didn’t slip and call her by the imaginary name I’d given her. I didn’t have to wait long for my opportunity.
After scanning the restaurant, her eyes stopped on me and she headed straight for where I stood at the counter. “Hi,” she said upon arrival.
I turned to make sure there wasn’t someone behind me she was greeting before I quizzically responded, “Uhh . . . Hi?”
“I’ve never been here before. What do you recommend?” she asked with a sunny grin.
“Everything’s great,” I mumbled.
“Your milkshake looks delicious. What flavor is it?”
I looked down at my tray. Apparently the pink color wasn’t a dead giveaway.
“It’s strawberry,” I answered. “And you are?”
“Oh. Sorry. I’m Sophia. I’ve seen you around. I think we go to the same school. You always have a lot of books with you.”
The words coming from Aphrodite’s mouth sounded rehearsed. I stared at her for a minute, trying to figure out why she was talking to me, before I responded.
“Yeah. I’ve seen you, too. There is only one high school in the area so I guess it’s not surprising.” I didn’t count the snobs at the prep school across town.
“Do you mind if I sit with you?”
I finally caught on to what I assumed was her motive for talking to me. I’d dealt with the blonde-cheerleader-type before.
“Look,” I said. “I’m flattered that you think because I carry a lot of books that I’m smart and that I want to do everyone’s homework, but I don’t. I know it’s the end of the year and that you’ve probably been told you won’t graduate unless you finish a bajillion assignments before next week, but that isn’t my problem.” The whole thing bubbled out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop it. Again, I wasn’t in the world’s best frame of mind.
The look on Sophia’s face was one of confusion and then it quickly changed from realization to pure enjoyment. She laughed, a beautiful, lyrical laugh. Of course her laugh is perfect, too.
“I think you’ve misunderstood me. I do want a favor, but it doesn’t involve school work.” Sophia paused, trying to put something into words. She looked up and proclaimed, “I think you might be my soul saver.”
My face burned red as I began to back away from her, slipping over my words as I muttered, “Umm . . . I . . . uh . . . think you got the wrong impression from me. I didn’t know I gave off that kind of vibe, but I’m not really into those weird super hero role-playing games.”
Sophia looked stunned and then burst out laughing. “That’s not what it means. Believe me. I don’t know how to explain it, but I just feel drawn to you. I think maybe you can help me. Can we sit down so that I can try to explain it to you?”
“Sure—I guess. I have a table in the back.” My face color returned to its normal shade, but I was still apprehensive. I sat down and dug into my burger and fries while I waited for Sophia to join me with a shake of her own.
“Sooo . . . you think I’m your soul saver. What exactly is that supposed to mean?” I asked rudely. Geesh, what is my problem?
“Sometimes people have predicaments that they can’t necessarily fix on their own. They need a little push from someone else. That someone else is called a soul saver. I didn’t think I had one, but then a few weeks ago I saw you and your dad on the subway in New York and I felt compelled to follow you. I’ve been watching you and the feeling hasn’t gone away so I decided it was time to talk to you.”
Dad and I had been in New York a few weekends ago. He was speaking at an educator’s conference so I tagged along and hung out at a second-hand bookstore until he was finished with his work commitments. He surprised me and took me to a Broadway show afterwards.
“Wait . . . are you stalking me?” I asked in horror as Sophia’s words sunk in. “That is really creepy.” Apparently I’d found the source of my so-called anxiety.
“Listen. I’m going to tell you something and you’re going to flip out, but you can’t. Okay? I mean, you really need to just hear me out. It’s hard for normal people to understand all of this.”
“Understand what?” I was getting frustrated.
Sophia leaned in over our trays and whispered seriously, “I’m a ghost.”
It was my turn to burst out laughing. “A ghost? That’s the best excuse for stalking that you can come up with? Come on, tell me something believable. How about ‘I’m a princess from the planet Jupiter,’ or how about ‘I raise pink elephants in my garden.’”
Sophia just sat there without smiling. “Are you through?”
I thought about it. I couldn’t think of any more good comebacks so I told her she could continue.
“Believe me, when I was alive I thought that ghost stories were strictly to scare little kids . . . and then I became one.”
“And when exactly was this?” I asked.
“When was what?”
“When did you become a ghost?”
“After I died.”
I rolled my eyes. “When were you living?”
“Oh. I was born in 1870. On Halloween, actually. Pretty funny that I became a ghost, isn’t it? Of course, back then people didn’t celebrate Halloween like they do now. I certainly never did anything for it.”
“So if you were born in 1870, when did you die?”
“In 1888, a few days after my 18th birthday.”
“Okay, but if you’re a ghost, why can I see you?” I asked skeptically.
“Have you ever heard the saying that behind every myth or legend there’s some truth? Well, that is true, but legends rarely have all the facts straight.”
Sophia reached across the table and rested the palm of her hand on my face. My body tensed. I wasn’t a fan of being touched by people I didn’t know.
“Is something supposed to be happening?” I asked as I pulled my face away.
“I was trying to show you that even though I’m a ghost you can still feel me.”
“Oh wow. That’s impressive,” I mocked, “but I have news for you. I could feel any one of the other people in this restaurant right now. That doesn’t prove anything. Look, I’m not sure why you decided to follow me, but this is all just a little weird, don’t you think? You should probably be careful what you walk around blabbing to people or you’re going to end up in an institution. I need to leave.” I grabbed my tray and stood to go, but Sophia reached out one of her perfectly formed hands and gently laid it on my arm.
“Please,” she pleaded softly, a desperate look in her bright eyes. “That’s why more ghosts aren’t known. We don’t like to be rejected. Everyone threatens to put us in institutions—as if they could actually hold us there. Very few people really believe in ghosts and even fewer take the time to actually listen. I know it sounds dramatic and cliché, but you really are my only hope. I’ve been waiting around for more than a hundred and twenty years to find my soul saver and I don’t want to lose the only chance I might have. Is there somewhere we can go where I can prove to you that I am what I say I am? Somewhere that is void of people? If you still don’t believe me, I promise I’ll stop following you and you’ll never see me ag
ain.”
I sighed. “Fine, but I can only talk for a few minutes. I have plans later.”
She looked at me doubtfully. “No you don’t. Tonight is the school prom and no one asked you. Your dad is working all weekend and the only plans you have involve those library books you just stuffed in your bag.”
Wow. That was blunt. Most people who knew me even a little could probably figure out that I didn’t date much. It wasn’t for lack of desire; it just all boiled down to supply and demand. Why date the friend when they could date Camille? I had guy friends, but that’s all they were . . . friends. When we were in elementary school I often played sports with the boys at recess. Sometimes I was even better than they were at whatever game we were playing. I think they still thought of me as one of them even though many years had passed and I hadn’t played baseball or soccer in years. I’d been on exactly two dates in my life. One with a nephew of one of Dad’s coworkers whom he owed a favor. The kid was so vain that he spent the entire date talking about himself. The other date was when Camille set me up with a friend of the guy she was dating. Again, I was the sidekick. He was weird and kept picking at the bottoms of his shoes and then chewing on his nails. It was really gross.
“Alright.” I gave in. “I know a place where we won’t be seen. Come on.”
As we exited the building I wondered if I’d made a huge mistake. I felt for my cell phone in the pocket of my jacket. Dad had given me pepper spray to carry, but that was safely zipped away in an inside pouch of my backpack. If Sophia turned on me, I didn’t think I’d be able to get it out fast enough. Like I mentioned before, I was pretty tough, but Sophia was a good three or four inches taller than me, and obviously a little psychotic. I wouldn’t have gone with her except I thought that it might be a way to pull myself out of the doldrums. I had hoped for adventure. Besides, odd as it may sound, I felt strangely drawn to her, too.
I took Sophia to a favorite spot of mine by the Sippican River. There’s a small grove of sycamores that I used to hide in while I lost myself in a book. I went there often during the warm summer months.
I led Sophia underneath the branches of the tall trees to my “secret hideout.” Inside the cluster of trees the ground was still moist from melted winter snow, the air musty and damp. The branches of the trees shaded the area from the view of outsiders and made it an ideal place to pass a few hours on a long summer day. I removed my backpack and sat on it so that I wouldn’t have a muddy butt when I stood up. Sophia looked around expectantly and then awkwardly sat on her hands.
After taking a deep breath and exhaling it loudly she plunged forward with the story she’d started back at Grandma’s Café.
“Jamie, I know this is odd and it’s a lot to take in, but I really want you to hear me out. I’m thinking the only way to convince you is to just show you. I’ve never shown anyone that I was a ghost before so don’t freak out, okay?”
I didn’t respond.
She stood up again, breathed in and out a couple of times, and said in a sing-song voice, “Now you see me . . .”
With her words she vanished before my eyes and the world around me was completely silent, except for the sound of my heart that pounded so hard it threatened to burst through my chest. I sat motionless, not knowing what to do, until I heard a whisper in my ear, “ . . . now you don’t.”
I cried out and half jumped, half rolled across the ground turning my head in every direction trying desperately to see where Sophia had gone. A ghostly cry of pain and misery erupted from the branches above me. It encircled the entire grove of trees, echoing in all directions. As quickly as the cry had begun, it ended, followed by the soft laugh I recognized as Sophia’s. I looked up to see her perched on the edge of a tree branch twenty feet off the ground, swinging her legs just as she’d been doing while sitting on the counter the day I saw her in the girls’ restroom at school.
“How did you do that?” I yelled up at her.
“Do I really need to say it again?” she yelled back.
I sat in stunned silence as she let go of the branch and floated down to where I was sprawled across the muddy ground.
Is this really happening to me? I didn’t know if I believed in ghosts or not. It was something I’d never given much thought to. My friends and I would tell ghost stories to scare each other—okay, it was usually Camille we were trying to scare—at slumber parties back in junior high, but it had never occurred to me that I might actually meet one.
“So if I can see and feel you, can everyone else? Or is that just a privilege for me since I’m supposedly your . . . your . . . ”
“Soul saver.”
“Right, your soul saver.” I really hoped I hadn’t made a giant fool of myself in front of everyone back at the restaurant. The last thing I needed was for people to think that I talked to myself.
“Don’t worry. Everyone sees me as you do. Well, except other ghosts, that is.”
“Other ghosts can’t see you?”
“Oh, they can definitely see me, and I can see them, but I see them as if they are surrounded by an aura. A ghost can’t hide their true identity from other ghosts.”
“I thought ghosts are supposed to be invisible and hide in attics rattling chains and moaning?”
“We can do that, but most of us choose not to. We’re left on the earth when we die because we have unfinished business. We refer to the process of finishing our business as extrication. When we finish up whatever we need to, we move on. Just don’t ask me where we go next, because I have failed to ever get that far. Some ghosts remain on the earth for a very short time while others are here for hundreds of years. Have you ever heard of little kids insisting that their dead grandma came to say good-bye when they were sleeping?”
“Umm . . . yeah. I’ve heard stories like that.”
“Sometimes the key to a ghost’s extrication is something as simple as saying goodbye to someone and then they move on.”
“So how long after you die do you become a ghost? Is it immediate?” I asked, my curiosity overcoming the remnants of fear.
“Becoming a ghost is an instantaneous occurrence, but it takes a person a while to figure out what happened to them. I couldn’t always be seen or heard by people, either. You have to train yourself to be able to take on the human form. For a lot of us, we can’t train ourselves to be physically touched until after everyone who knew us on earth has moved beyond this life, too. Some ghosts can’t even figure out how to make themselves be seen in any form for decades.”
“This is so overwhelming. I feel like my head is on overload right now.” I paused before asking, “People say that ghosts can’t actually hurt a human. Can you hurt me?”
Sophia smiled and then reached over and pinched my arm. It hurt.
“Oww,” I hissed.
“Yes. I can hurt you.”
I reached over and pinched her arm. She just stared at me.
“So you can hurt me, but I can’t hurt you?”
“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”
When she saw my worried look she continued, “Don’t worry. I have no reason to harm you. Most ghosts are good people who just didn’t have enough time on earth to finish up what they needed to. Evil people are usually sent straight to wherever it is they go. It’s rare that they remain on earth after they pass on. The evil ones who do remain are usually attracted to evil people who are still living, so you shouldn’t ever have anything to worry about.” She patted my shoulder in an attempt to reassure me. I tensed again.
“I can’t even begin to describe how I’m feeling right now.” I sighed. “If I’m your soul saver, what do I have to do?”
“I’m not sure. A soul saver helps a ghost to figure out and finalize everything for their extrication. Not every ghost has a soul saver and not every soul saver even knows that they are one. Sometimes they help a ghost without even knowing they did anything. A person is usually dead for a really long time before they find someone that can help them. More often than no
t, a soul saver is related to the deceased person, although I don’t think that’s the case in our situation. I really feel like you’re supposed to help me, Jamie.”
I stood up. “Fine. I’ll make you a deal. My head is seriously swimming right now and I want nothing more than to go home and take a nap. I’m still not convinced that I won’t wake up tomorrow and realize that you and everything you’ve told me weren’t anything but a crazy dream. If I wake up and you still exist, I’ll try to help you.”
“I knew you would.” Sophia jumped up and threw her arms around me. I tensed and pulled away.
“So . . . do you have any guesses as to what your unfinished business might be?” I asked.“Have you ever heard of the ghost ship known as the Mary Celeste? It was found floating in the Atlantic Ocean a hundred and forty years ago without any of its crew or passengers.”
“Of course I’ve heard of it. That’s one of the greatest mysteries in all of American history. The Mary Celeste’s captain lived here in Marion. I’m pretty sure we’ve studied about it in school every year since Kindergarten. Legend says that everyone on board disappeared including Captain Briggs and his wife and daughter . . .” My words trailed off as realization struck. My heart pounded again and my throat was suddenly so dry I could barely swallow.
Sophia started to nod her head before the words were even out of my mouth.
“You’re Sophia Briggs. You’re the daughter of Captain Benjamin Briggs. You were on board the Mary Celeste.”