“I am not a cowboy,” he informed me angrily. He added something in Spanish in an undertone, but since I had always taken French, I had no idea what he was saying. At the same time, the antique mirror hanging over my new dressing table started to wobble dangerously on the hook that held it to the wall. This was not due, I knew, to a California earthquake, but to the agitation of the ghost in front of me, whose psychic abilities were obviously of a kinetic bent.
That’s the thing about ghosts: They’re so touchy! The slightest thing can set them off.
“Whoa,” I said, holding up both my hands, palms outward. “Down. Down, boy.”
“My family,” Jesse raged, wagging a finger in my face, “worked like slaves to make something of themselves in this country, but never, never as a vaquero—”
“Hey,” I said. And that’s when I made my big mistake. I reached out, not liking the finger he was jabbing at me, and grabbed it, hard, yanking on his hand and pulling him toward me so I could be sure he heard me as I hissed, “Stop with the mirror already. And stop shoving your finger in my face. Do it again, and I’ll break it.”
I flung his hand away, and saw, with satisfaction, that the mirror had stopped shaking. But then I happened to glance at his face.
Ghosts don’t have blood. How can they? They aren’t alive. But I swear, at that moment, all the color drained from Jesse’s face, as if every ounce of blood that had once been there had evaporated just at that moment.
Not being alive, and not possessing blood, it follows that ghosts aren’t made of matter, either. So it didn’t make sense that I had been able to grab his finger. My hand should have passed right through him. Right?
Wrong. That’s how it works for most people. But not for people like me. Not for the mediators. We can see ghosts, we can talk to ghosts, and, if necessary, we can kick a ghost’s butt.
But this isn’t something I like to go around advertising. I try to avoid touching them—touching anybody, really—as much as possible. If all attempts at mediation have failed, and I have to use a little physical coercion on a recalcitrant spirit, I generally prefer him or her not to know beforehand that I am capable of doing so. Sneak attacks are always advisable when dealing with members of the underworld, who are notoriously dirty fighters.
Jesse, looking down at his finger as if I’d burned a hole through it, seemed perfectly incapable of saying anything. It was probably the first time he’d been touched by anyone in a century and a half. That kind of thing can blow a guy’s mind. Especially a dead guy.
I took advantage of his astonishment, and said, in my sternest, most no-nonsense tone, “Now, look, Jesse. This is my room, understand? You can’t stay here. You’ve either got to let me help you get to where you’re supposed to go, or you’re going to have to find some other house to haunt. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
Jesse looked up from his finger, his expression still one of utter disbelief. “Who are you?” he asked softly. “What kind of…girl are you?”
He hesitated so long before he said the word girl that it was clear he wasn’t at all certain it was appropriate in my case. This kind of bugged me. I mean, I may not have been the most popular girl in school, but no one ever denied I was an actual girl. Truck drivers honk at me at crosswalks now and then, and not because they want me to get out of the way. Construction workers sometimes holler rude things at me, especially when I wear my leather miniskirt. I am not unattractive, or mannish in any way. Sure, I’d just threatened to break his finger off, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t a girl, for God’s sake!
“I’ll tell you what kind of girl I’m not,” I said crankily. “I am not the kind of girl who’s looking to share her room with a member of the opposite sex. Understand me? So either you move out, or I force you out. It’s entirely up to you. I’ll give you some time to think about it. But when I get back here, Jesse, I want you gone.”
I turned around and left.
I had to. I don’t usually lose arguments with ghosts, but I had a feeling I was losing that one, and badly. I shouldn’t have been so short with him, and I shouldn’t have been rude. I don’t know what came over me, I really don’t. I just…
I guess I just wasn’t expecting to find the ghost of such a cute guy in my bedroom, is all.
God, I thought, as I stormed down the hall. What am I going to do if he doesn’t leave? I won’t be able to change clothes in my own room!
Give him a little time, a voice inside my head went. It was a voice I’d very carefully avoided telling my mom’s therapist about.
Give him a little time. He’ll come around. They always do.
Well, most of the time, anyway.
Chapter
Four
Dinner at the Ackerman household was pretty much like dinner in any other large household I had ever known: Everybody talked at once—except of course for Sleepy, who only spoke when asked a direct question—and nobody wanted to clear the table afterward. I made a mental note to call Gina and tell her she’d been wrong. There really was no advantage, that I could see, in having brothers: They chewed with their mouths open, and ate every single Poppin’ Fresh bread roll before I’d even had one.
After dinner, I decided it would be wise to avoid my room, and give Jesse plenty of time to make up his mind about whether he was leaving with or without his teeth. I’m not a big fan of violence, but it’s an unfortunate by-product of my profession. Sometimes, the only way you can make someone listen is with your fist. This is not a technique espoused, I know, by the diagnostic manuals on most therapists’ shelves.
Then again, nobody ever said I was a therapist.
The problem with my plan, of course, was that it was Saturday night. I’d forgotten what day it was in all the stress of the move. Back home on a Saturday night, I’d probably have gone out with Gina, taken the subway to the Village and gone to see a movie, or just hung around Joe’s Pizza watching people walk by. Hey, I may be a big-city girl, but that doesn’t mean my life there was glamorous by any means. I have never even been asked out by a boy, unless you count that time in the fifth grade when Daniel Bogue asked me to skate with him during a couples-only song at Rockefeller Center’s ice rink.
And then I’d embarrassed myself by falling flat on my face.
My mom, however, was all anxious for me to throw myself into the social scene of Carmel. As soon as the dishwasher was loaded, she was like, “Brad, what are you doing tonight? Are there any parties, or anything? Maybe you could take Suze and introduce her to some people.”
Dopey, who was mixing himself a protein shake—apparently, the two dozen jumbo shrimps and massive shell steak he’d consumed at dinner hadn’t been filling enough—went, “Yeah, maybe I could, if Jake wasn’t working tonight.”
Sleepy, roused by the mention of his name, squinted down at his watch and said, “Damn,” picked up his jean jacket, and left the house.
Doc looked at the clock and made a tsk-tsk ing noise. “Late again. He’s going to get himself fired if he doesn’t watch it.”
Sleepy had a job? This was news to me, so I asked, “Where’s he work?”
“Peninsula Pizza.” Doc was performing some sort of bizarre experiment that involved the dog and my mother’s treadmill. The dog, who was huge—a cross between a St. Bernard and a bear, I think—was sitting very patiently on the floor while Doc attached electrodes to small patches of the dog’s skin he’d shaved free of fur. The strangest thing was that nobody seemed to mind this, least of all the dog.
“Slee—I mean, Jake works in a pizza place?”
Andy, scouring a baking dish in the sink, said, “He delivers for them. Brings home a bundle in tips.”
“He’s saving up,” Dopey informed me, a thick white milkshake mustache on his upper lip, “for a Camaro.”
“Huh,” I said.
“You guys want me to drop you anywhere,” Andy offered generously, “I’d be happy to. Whaddya say, Brad? Want to show Suze the action down at the mall?”
&nb
sp; “Nah,” Dopey said, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Everybody’s still up in Tahoe for the break. Next weekend, maybe.”
I nearly collapsed with relief. The word mall always filled me with a sort of horror, a horror that had nothing to do with the undead. They don’t have malls in New York City, but Gina used to love to take the PATH train to this one in New Jersey. Usually after about an hour, I’d develop sensory overload, and have to sit down in the This Can’t Be Yogurt and sip an herbal tea until I calmed down.
And I have to admit, I wasn’t that thrilled with the idea of anybody “dropping” me somewhere. My God, what was wrong with this place? I could see how, given the San Andreas fault, subways might not be such a great idea, but why hadn’t anybody established a decent bus system?
“I know,” Dopey said, slamming his empty glass down. “I’ll play you a few games of Cool Boarders, Suze.”
I blinked at him. “You’ll what?”
“I’ll play you in Cool Boarders.” When my expression remained blank, Dopey said, “You never heard of Cool Boarders? Come on.”
He led me toward the wide-screen TV in the den. Cool Boarders, it turned out, was a video game. Each player got assigned a snowboarder, and then you raced each other down various slopes using a joystick to control how fast your boarder went and what kind of fancy moves she might make.
I beat Dopey at it eight times before he finally said, “Let’s watch a movie instead.”
Sensing that I had probably erred in some way—I guess I should have let the poor boy win at least once—I tried to make amends by volunteering to supply the popcorn, and went into the kitchen.
It was only then that a wave of tiredness hit me. There is a three-hour time difference between New York and California, so even though it was only nine o’clock, I was as tired as if it were midnight. Andy and my mom had retired to the massive master bedroom, but they had left the door to it wide open, I guess so that we wouldn’t get any wrong ideas about what they were doing in there. Andy was reading a spy novel, and my mother was watching a made-for-TV movie.
This, I was sure, was strictly for the benefit of us kids; most other Saturday nights I bet they’d have closed that door, or at least have gone out with Andy’s friends or my mom’s new colleagues at the TV station in Monterey where she’d been hired. They were obviously trying to establish some sort of domestic pattern to make us kids feel secure. You had to give them snaps for doing their best.
I wondered, as I stood there, waiting for the popcorn to pop, what my dad thought of all this. He hadn’t been too enthused about Mom’s remarrying, even though, as I’ve said, Andy is a pretty great guy. He’d been even less enthused about my moving out to the West Coast.
“How,” he’d wanted to know, when I told him, “am I going to pop in on you when you’re living three thousand miles away?”
“The point, Dad,” I’d said to him, “is that you aren’t supposed to be popping in on me. You’re supposed to be dead, remember? You’re supposed to be doing whatever it is dead people do, not spying on me and Mom.”
He’d looked sort of hurt by that. “I’m not spying,” he’d said. “I’m just checking up. To make sure you’re happy, and all of that.”
“Well, I am,” I’d assured him. “I’m very happy, and so is Mom.”
I’d been lying, of course. Not about Mom, but about me. I’d been a nervous wreck at the prospect of moving. Even now, I wasn’t really sure it was going to work out. This thing with Jesse…I mean, where was my dad, anyway? Why wasn’t he upstairs kicking that guy’s butt? Jesse was, after all, a boy, and he was in my bedroom, and fathers are supposed to hate that kind of thing….
But that’s the thing about ghosts. They are never around when you actually need them. Even if they happen to be your dad.
I guess I must have zoned out for a little while because next thing I knew, the microwave was dinging. I took the popcorn out and opened the bag. I was pouring it into a big wooden bowl when my mom came into the kitchen and switched on the overhead light.
“Hi, honey,” she said. Then she looked at me. “Are you all right, Susie?”
“Sure, Mom,” I said. I shoveled some popcorn into my mouth. “Dope—I mean, Brad and I are gonna watch a movie.”
“Are you sure?” My mother was peering at me curiously. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired, is all.”
She looked relieved. “Oh, yes. Well, I expected you’d have a bit of jet lag. But…well, it’s just that you looked so upset when you first walked into your room upstairs. I know the canopy bed was a bit much, but I couldn’t resist.”
I chewed. I was totally used to this kind of thing. “The bed’s fine, Mom,” I said. “The room’s fine, too.”
“I’m so glad,” my mom said, pushing a strand of hair from my eyes. “I’m so glad you like it, Suze.”
My mother looked so relieved, I sort of felt sorry for her, in a way. I mean, she’s a nice lady and doesn’t deserve to have a mediator for a daughter. I know I’ve always been a bit of a disappointment to her. When I turned fourteen, she got me my own phone line, thinking so many boys would be calling me, her friends would never be able to get through. You can imagine how disappointed she was when nobody except Gina ever called me on my private line, and then it was usually only to tell me about the dates she’d been on. Like I said, the boys in my neighborhood were never much interested in asking me out.
My poor mom. She always wanted a nice, normal teenage daughter. Instead, she got me.
“Honey,” she said. “Don’t you want to change? You’ve been wearing those same clothes since six o’clock this morning, haven’t you?”
She asked me this right as Doc was coming in to get more glue for his electrodes. Not that I was going to say anything like, Well, to tell you the truth, Mom, I’d like to change, but I’m not real excited about doing it in front of the ghost of the dead cowboy that’s living in my room.
Instead, I shrugged and said with elaborate casualness, “Yeah, well, I’m gonna change in a bit.”
“Are you sure you don’t want help unpacking? I feel terrible. I should have—”
“No, I don’t need any help. I’ll unpack in a bit.” I watched Doc forage through a drawer. “I better go,” I said. “I don’t want to miss the beginning of the movie.”
Of course, in the end, I missed the beginning middle, and end of the movie. I fell asleep on the couch, and didn’t wake up until Andy shook my shoulder a little after eleven.
“Up and at ’em, kiddo,” he said. “I think it’s time to admit you’ve gone down for the count. Don’t worry. Brad won’t tell anybody.”
I got up groggily, and made my way up to my room. I headed straight for the windows, which I yanked open. To my relief there was no Jesse to block the way. Yes. I’ve still got it.
I grabbed my duffel bag and went into the bathroom where I showered and, just to be on the safe side—I didn’t know for sure whether or not Jesse had gotten the message and vamoosed—changed into my pajamas. When I came out of the bathroom, I was a little more awake. I looked around, feeling the cool breeze seeping in, smelling the salt in the air. Unlike back in Brooklyn, where our ears were under constant assault by sirens and car alarms, it was quiet in the hills, the only sound the occasional hoot of an owl.
I found, rather to my surprise, that I was alone. Really alone. A ghost-free zone. Exactly what I’d always wanted.
I got into bed and clapped my hands, dousing the lights. Then I snuggled deep beneath my crisp new sheets.
Just before I fell asleep again, I thought I heard something besides the owl. It sounded like someone singing the words Oh, Susannah, now don’t you cry for me, ’cause I come from Alabama with this banjo on my knee.
But that, I’m sure, was just my imagination.
Chapter
Five
The Junipero Serra Catholic Academy, grades K–12, had been made coeducational in the 1980s, and h
ad, much to my relief, recently dropped its strict uniform policy. The uniforms had been royal blue and white, not my best colors. Fortunately, the uniforms had been so unpopular that they, like the boys-only rule, had been abandoned, and though the pupils still couldn’t wear jeans, they could wear just about anything else they wanted. Since all I wanted was to wear my extensive collection of designer clothing—purchased at various outlet stores in New Jersey with Gina as my fashion coordinator—this suited me fine.
The Catholic thing, though, was going to be a problem. Not really a problem so much as an inconvenience. You see, my mother never really bothered to raise me in any particular religion. My father was a nonpracticing Jew, my mother Christian. Religion had never played an important part in either of my parents’ lives, and, needless to say, it had only served to confuse me. I mean, you would think I’d have a better grasp on religion than anybody, but the truth is, I haven’t the slightest idea what happens to the ghosts I send off to wherever it is they’re supposed to go after they die. All I know is, once I send them there, they do not come back. Not ever. The end.
So when my mother and I showed up at the Mission School’s administrative office the Monday after my arrival in sunny California, I was more than a little taken aback to be confronted with a six-foot Jesus hanging on a crucifix behind the secretary’s desk.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, though. My mom had pointed out the school from my room on Sunday morning as she helped me to unpack. “See that big red dome?” she’d said. “That’s the Mission. The dome covers the chapel.”
Doc happened to be hanging around—I’d noticed he did that a lot—and he launched into another one of his descriptions, this time of the Franciscans, who were members of a Roman Catholic religious order that followed the rule of St. Francis, approved in 1209. Father Junipero Serra, a Franciscan monk, was, according to Doc, a tragically misunderstood historical figure. A controversial hero in the Catholic church, he had been considered for sainthood at one time, but, Doc explained, Native Americans questioned this move as “a general endorsement of the exploitative colonization tactics of the Spanish. Though Junipero Serra was known to have argued on behalf of the property rights and economic entitlement of converted Native Americans, he consistently advocated against their right to self-governance, and was a staunch supporter of corporal punishment, appealing to the Spanish government for the right to flog Indians.”