“No calling me bad names,” I yelled after him. Then I turned back to Grandpa Brewster. “So if I have all of this power just because I said Killian is mine, how come one of you didn’t just claim him or whatever before I did?”
A low murmur rose from the line, the spirits whispering and talking among themselves suddenly.
“What?” I asked. “What did I say?”
“None of us knew about him until yesterday,” Grandpa Brewster said, glaring at the people in line over his shoulder. “He was real good at hiding among the others.”
“Okay, but you still had plenty of time to—”
“She deserves to know the truth, Bob,” the pink-polka-dot girl spoke up. Then she gave me an evil gleeful grin. “Nobody claimed him because nobody wants to be what you are.”
“Liesel,” Grandpa Brewster said in a warning voice.
I frowned at her. “Everyone always wants to be what I am. What are you talking about?”
“You’re a spirit guide now. You’re at everyone’s beck and call, but especially his, the medium’s.”
Suddenly, I felt cold all over. I shook my head. “No.”
She sighed impatiently. “Been waking up in strange places lately?”
I stared at her. I hadn’t woken up on the road since yesterday morning. It had been close this morning, but no … I’d found myself inside Killian’s car.
“Wherever he is, that’s where you are, right?” she prodded.
“That doesn’t mean—”
“You tied yourself to him. You’re his guide.” She eyed me with a nasty gleam of amusement. “Has he started calling you yet?”
“What?”
“If he thinks hard enough about you, concentrates on you long enough, poof! You’re dragged away from whatever you were doing, wherever you were, to wherever he is.”
I felt a little sick. Could that be true?
Liesel stared up at the sky, her hand tapping her chin. “What is that phrase the kids use today? Oh, yeah. You’re his bitch, his spirit-world bitch.” She laughed delightedly at her own cleverness.
“Hey, Liesel, you’re looking a little thin today, don’t you think?” I asked. “A little more see-through than usual?”
Her laughter immediately ceased, and she stared down at herself. “No, I’m not … am I? Oh, God. Eric? Eric, where are you?” She wandered out of her place in line, looking for someone else to verify her state of existence.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Grandpa Brewster admonished.
I thought about that for a second. “Your hair looks …great, very healthy,” I called after her.
Grandpa Brewster stared at me.
I shrugged. “It’s the best I could do and still be honest. Besides which, she was being mean first.”
He opened his mouth, as if to protest, and then lifted his shoulders. “Fair enough.”
“So, is what she said true?” I asked.
He hesitated long enough that I didn’t need to hear his answer.
“Forget it,” I said firmly. “I am nobody’s bitch, spirit world or not.”
“I certainly wouldn’t have put it that way,” Grandpa Brewster said. “It’s very disrespectful, but—”
“But nothing. I don’t belong to Killian.”
“You’re denying the connection?” Grandpa Brewster asked casually.
“I …” It dawned on me that if I said yes, they’d probably all sail right past me into the school and begin bugging Killian again. He’d get kicked out of school and then locked up in some nuthouse, and I’d be stuck here forever. Then again, if he liked having a spirit guide well enough, it sounded like I might be stuck here anyway. But he’d promised to help me. The question was, did I believe him?
“Well?” Grandpa Brewster’s impatience showed through.
Looking at it from a purely selfish perspective, if I didn’t help Killian out with these guys, he wouldn’t be able to help me, even if he wanted to. Of course, that didn’t mean he would help me, but he’d seemed pretty willing to do so before, and besides which, even if he changed his mind, I can be very persistent. It’s part of my charm.
“No,” I said finally. “I’m not denying it.”
Groans rose up from the line.
“Oh, just quiet down,” I snapped.
“All right then,” Grandpa Brewster said with a sigh. “Then how do you want us? In a line, first come, first serve? Alphabetically?”
“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head and holding my hands out in front of me in the classic “stop” position. “Just because I’m claiming Killian”—I refused to think of it the other way around—“doesn’t mean I’ve got anything to do with you.”
That shut them up for a second.
“You’d turn your back on your own kind?” Grandpa Brewster asked, astonished.
“None of you are my kind … except possibly her.” I tilted my head toward a pretty blond, pony-tailed girl in a poodle skirt, tapping her saddle shoe impatiently against the sidewalk, about halfway down the line. “If she dressed better.”
“Some of us have waited years, decades even, to say our piece,” Grandpa B.said. “You think we like being stuck here?”
I frowned. Now that he mentioned it … “No, probably not.”
“You’re going to deny us our one chance to make things right for ourselves?” he asked. “People like Will, the special ones, they don’t come along very often.”
I felt a twinge of guilt. No one had mentioned this part of the bodyguard job. “You don’t even know if he can help you. He said he doesn’t know what makes one person get stuck and another get pulled into the light.”
“But you won’t even let us try,” Grandpa Brewster pointed out.
“Why does it have to be me?” I tried to sound petulant instead of whiny. Trust me, there’s a very fine but important difference between the two.
“What are you going to do instead?” Grandpa demanded. “Spy on the living? That gets old real quick.”
“No, I have other things to do. I have a life. An afterlife.”
“Like what?” Grandpa asked, amused. “Knocking stuff down, making scary sounds to frighten the bejesus out of the living?”
“How did you know that?” I demanded.
“Trust me, honey, if anyone has that vindictive look, it’s you.”
“Oh. Thanks?”
“You know pulling those shenanigans will turn you into nothing faster than just about anything else,” Grandpa advised.
“I know that ... now.” I plopped back down on the bench, not even taking care to cross my legs just right so the little fat dimple on the side of my left thigh wouldn’t show. I was too depressed. All of this was depressing.
“Help your boy help us,” Grandpa urged. “It’s better than sitting around staring at the living. Besides, it’ll count as a good deed. Maybe you just need a big one to catch their attention upstairs, so they’ll send the light for you.”
I looked up at him. “I thought Liesel said—”
He waved his hand impatiently. “Don’t listen to her. She meets one former spirit guide while she’s stuck with Claire on vacation in Puerto Rico, and she thinks she’s an expert. None of us had ever met one of the ghost-talkers before yesterday. Nobody knows how it works. Everything we know is based on rumors that keep circulating here on this side of things. Plus whatever we see on television.” He shrugged. “You may have a shot to help yourself out, kid. Don’t blow it.”
I sighed. “All right, all right. I’ll try. What do I have to do?”
Normally, being trapped in the tiny, overheated, and infrequently used special ed room with Brewster coming in and out every ten minutes would have been a nightmare. Especially with Grandpa Brewster and the others knowing who I was and what they could do to get my attention. After the first fifteen minutes, I’d have been huddled under my desk, trying to protect myself from their shoves and pinches, and that would not have gone over well with Brewster.
But this morning … it w
as like nothing I’d ever experienced. It was quiet in the little room, which I suspected used to be a supply closet from the lack of windows and the holes in the wall where shelves used to be, and I was alone. Really and truly alone. Not a single ghost popped through to bitch and moan or try to trick me into talking.
Brewster stopped by midway through the morning and tossed Marcie at me. I probably should have been mad that he didn’t return her first thing, like he was supposed to. But no way was I using Marcie until I’d completely disinfected her headphones or bought new ones, and besides, I didn’t need the music. At times, the complete and utter silence around me actually made my ears ring. It was great. Whatever Alona was doing, it was working.
Then lunch happened.
Mrs. Piaget stopped by a little before noon. “I’ve got cafeteria duty today. Mr. Brewster is meeting with the superintendent at the regional office now, but he says you can come with me to get some food. You have to come back here to eat, though.” She gave me an apologetic smile.
“Okay.” I pushed back from my desk, stood up, and stretched. It felt good to be able to sit still and concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing instead of putting so much energy into blocking everything else out.
“You seem better today,” Mrs. Piaget said when I joined her in the main hallway.
“Not getting expelled really agrees with me.”
“I can see that,” she said with a startled laugh.
I followed her down the hall to the caf. Joonie, with her ratty old book bag strapped across her chest, waited right outside the doors, near the start of the serving line. She straightened up when she saw me, but her gaze flicked to Mrs. Piaget and she didn’t come any closer.
Mrs. Piaget hesitated and then turned to me. “Remember, food and then back to the room. Don’t give him any excuses.” No need to specify the “him” in this situation, I guess.
I nodded. “Thanks.”
Mrs. Piaget disappeared through the doors to the caf, and I approached Joonie. This close up, I could see something was clearly wrong. Purple shadows of exhaustion looked like bruises under her eyes, dark streaks of makeup were smeared on her cheeks, and one of the holes in her lip was empty and flaked with dried blood.
I resisted the urge to touch my own lip in reflexive sympathy. “What’s going on? Are you—”
From down the hall, a group of rowdy freshman surged toward us. Joonie grabbed my arm and yanked me into the caf, off to the side.
“They’re going to let her die.”
Who, the word came to the tip of my tongue, but I shut my mouth in time. I knew who, of course. “What are you talking about?”
She fiddled with the strap of her bag, plucking at one of the buttons she’d pinned to it. This one read, Let’s just say I have a problem with authority. It was a gift from Lily last year before everything went south.
“I went to visit Lily after school yesterday, and I heard some of the nurses talking.” She shifted her weight back and forth, pacing without taking a step. “It’s about her parents’ insurance or something. They’re going to take her feeding tube out and let her starve to death… .” Her breath caught in her throat and she had to stop, choking on her emotion. “Or, they’re going to take her away, put her in some more permanent facility back in Indiana somewhere.”
I took an involuntary step back, her words like a slap out of nowhere. I knew, at some point, this day would come. I just hadn’t realized it would be today.
Her eyes welled with tears. “What are we going to do?”
Joonie and I had been there, visiting Lily, since the first day it was allowed. I’d touched her hand, seen her eyes. She was gone. The essence of whatever made Lily Lily had moved on a long time ago. She hadn’t even stuck around long enough to haunt her hospital room. Or the place where her car had crashed. I’d checked there, too. Just to be sure. So, there was nothing left to do. “Joonie, we can’t—” I tried.
“You don’t understand. It’s my fault she was there in the first place.” Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she didn’t bother to wipe them away.
“Why, because you guys had a fight months before and she stopped talking to us?”
I’d figured Joonie and Lily would work their issues out, and didn’t think a whole lot more about it. Until Joonie and I’d arrived for the first day of our senior year, Lily’s junior year, and watched as Lily, dressed in a short skirt and tottering unsteadily on high heels, clung to the fringes of the junior-class elite. She’d walked past us like she didn’t know us, her nose up in the air. Two and half weeks later, she’d lost control of her mom’s station wagon and wrapped it around a tree.
I shook my head. “J, don’t do this to yourself. You tried to apologize for whatever happened, and she wouldn’t listen. She chose to hang out with those people, and she chose to go to that party. We didn’t have anything to do with that.”
As I said it, I realized it was true. Maybe I could have changed things, maybe I could have saved her if I’d heard my phone that night. But she was the one who’d chosen to dump us as friends. All I’d done was miss a phone call from someone who hadn’t spoken to me in months. She didn’t even leave a message.
I felt lighter suddenly, relieved in some way. I would still have given anything to see Lily whole and healthy again, even if she didn’t want to be my friend. The fact that I wouldn’t, though, was not my fault. It was the combination of a hundred factors, only one of which—answering my phone—I’d had control over.
However, my words did not have the same effect on Joonie. “You don’t understand,” she said tonelessly, her eyes fixed on some invisible point in the distance.
I caught her by the shoulders and shook her gently. “You have to stop. This wasn’t your—”
It was at that exact moment I saw Alona on the stage, surrounded by every dead person I’d ever seen haunting the halls at Groundsboro High, and I knew I was in trouble.
First, if you’re wondering why our cafeteria has a stage, it’s the same reason we have cafeteria tables on different levels. Our cafeteria doubles as an auditorium, which some flipping genius dubbed a “cafetorium.” As you walk out of the lunch line, you’re on the same level as the stage but directly across the room from it. Then there are steps leading down to the various tiers of tables. Alona’s crowd, the so-called first tier, hang out, ironically enough, on the lowest level, what serves as the orchestra pit when the drama club decides to shed its student-written, angsty, and apocalyptic plays for the rare cheerful musical. It’s the farthest from teacher supervision, so no surprise in their choice there. From there, the level of popularity decreases as you go up. Joonie, Erickson, and I eat in the glass-enclosed courtyard when it’s nice enough, which puts us completely off the map as far as popularity is concerned. All the better.
But the stage … the stage was the holy grail for the first-tier crowd. Clearly, it was a position they felt should be theirs—sitting high above the disgustingly average crowd—but this was one benefit they were denied. Ever since some kid, no doubt a first tier, broke his leg jumping off the stage a few years ago, no one is allowed up there during lunch except the members of the drama club, and then only if they’re preparing for a production. This winter, everyone got high on the fumes when they painted sets for their spring production, Death and Sundaes. I have no idea what it was about, but it involved a lot of black-and-red painted sets and complaining from the first-tier girls when the occasional spatter came flying in their direction.
So, really, I guess it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Alona had taken advantage of her invisible-to-most-of-the-world status to claim the stage for herself. Still, it was more than a little shocking to find her sitting on a barstool behind a section of what appeared to be a 1950s diner countertop (another prop … don’t ask, I have no idea how it relates to death or sundaes), taking what appeared to be notes while ghosts waited patiently in a long and winding line for their turn to speak with her individually.
“What the
hell?” I muttered.
Joonie snapped out of it enough to look at me, really look at me. “Are you okay?” She rested her cool fingers on my arm. “You look like you’ve seen a—”
I didn’t wait to hear the rest. Pulling away from her light grip on my arm, I started down the stairs, heading toward the stage. I won’t be as melodramatic as to say that the entire cafetorium noticed and held their collective breaths, but I did see heads turning. After all, I hadn’t been lower than the third tier since starting here almost four years ago. That was just like asking one of the first- or second-tier jocks to hit you, a fight you’d also be blamed for starting.
“Will, what are you doing?” Joonie’s loud whisper followed me down the stairs, but I didn’t turn back.
However, the second my foot touched down on the first-tier carpet, a ripple of noise and movement spread through the room, people turning to whisper and watch. Normal conversations died down until it grew quiet enough that I could have sworn I heard the rustle of the carpet fibers beneath my shoe when I took my first step.
Alona’s crowd did nothing at first but stare. After all, this was their inner sanctum; no one dared to knowingly trespass here, and those who found themselves here by some kind of accident or misunderstanding (new kid; geeky guy under the illusion that because Misty had asked to cheat off his chemistry test that he would be allowed to acknowledge her existence; the occasional utopian fool who thought that popular people “are just people too,” etc.) usually broke quickly under the weight of a nasty stare from so many perfect faces, and ran away. But not me, oh, not me.
I stayed away from Alona’s friends and edged closer to the table of junior-class elites, the second table pushed up against the stage. They still thought they were better than me, but they’d hesitate longer on starting a fight, waiting for the seniors to react first.
When close enough, I pulled the cell phone from my pocket. “What are you doing up there?” I asked, trying to sound casual. “Who are your new friends?”
At first, I didn’t think it would work. How would Alona hear me, let alone know that I was talking to her? In this particular case, though, the ear-ringing silence that accompanied my approach into forbidden territory actually benefited me.