Four
The first spirit I’d ever seen was a girl about my age who had been in a car accident. I’d told my parents in my four-year-old voice about my new friend, Abby, and how she had been in a smashed car. They humored me and went along with it, even “talking” to Abby.
I thought they could all see her.
It wasn’t until I went to school that I realized no one else could see my friends. But it wasn’t until my teacher called my parents in for a serious talk that I knew it was something I had to hide. The night after they came home from the serious talk they sat me down and told me that I was going to see a doctor, a psychologist the school had recommended.
We played games and I drew her pictures and she fed me cookies and asked me about my friends. I thought she was nice until she told me that the people weren’t real, that they were in my head. My mom was adamant that I needed to be on medication, and she refused to prescribe it for someone so young, so they found a doctor who would.
Dr. Chase had put me on medication that had gotten rid of the spirits, but it had turned me into a robot. I went off and on them for a few years before my parents decided to pull the plug. I would have been right back on them if they knew the truth about The Incident, but fortunately, they believed my lie.
The fourth thing I knew about spirits was that if they didn’t take care of whatever they needed to take care of, they didn’t get to cross over. That meant they wouldn’t leave me alone.
At first it started out with me mailing messages and instructions and things they needed to say. So I got really good at finding people. Amy wasn’t the only secret agent in the family. Even if I just had a last name and a date, or a location, I could find just about everything out about you. Not all of my searches were, um, quite legal, which was why I’d learned how to route my computer through a different IP address. Just in case.
It didn’t matter if the person believed the message I sent or not. All that mattered was the delivery. As long as they got it, the spirit could move on. That was why I did it. Yes, having them around was an irritation, but how could I not help them?
A few years ago Amy had caught me talking to a woman who wanted to get a message to her daughter about some stock certificates she’d left in an unknown safe-deposit box that were worth quite a bit of money. She was getting upset, and I was trying to calm her down so she’d stop screaming at me. If you’ve never had someone scream at you inside your head, count yourself lucky.
I’d only been able to stop Amy from going to our parents when I’d told her the truth. She’d kept her mouth shut ever since. That was the thing about my sister. We might be night and day personality-wise, but we understood each other.
I’d put a strain on our relationship when I’d asked her to lie about The Incident. Our parents believed me when I said it was an accident. Felicity and Nora had believed me. But none of them knew the truth. That, they wouldn’t believe, even if I wanted to tell them. Somehow, instead of pushing us apart, my secret had made us that much closer. Yes, she still annoyed me and wouldn’t get out of my room and borrowed my socks. But she kept a promise for me that not many adults could handle, and that was worth all the irritation in the world.