He lies flat on the board and begins paddling out. He glances over his shoulder to smile at me and my stomach flips again. What am I doing? This is Frankie. The same person who chased me around the kindergarten playground and told everyone I smelled when I accidentally peed my pants during the pledge of allegiance.
He’s also the same person who made me feel whole for a brief moment in time.
He catches the wave and whips the board back and forth as he rides it to the shore. The water carries him lovingly as if the ocean and Frankie share a mutual affection. The swelling ocean lifts and drops me and I realize I’m about to confide in him the fact that a spirit is trying to help me fall in love with Conor. Am I crazy? I can’t tell Frankie about Mara or what she’s doing.
Do I even want to fall in love with Conor?
I swim toward the shore as fast as I can, duck diving every few seconds to avoid the crushing waves. Frankie sees me as he begins to paddle out. He throws up his arms in a silent question and I point toward the shore. He waves away my suggestion to head back, but he turns around anyway.
I check to make sure all the pieces of my bikini, and parts of my body, are in the right place as I tread out of the shallow water. Frankie is sitting on the sand next to my beach bag, his surfboard propped up in the sand.
“You getting tired?” he asks. “Or are you ready to tell me your big secret?”
Grabbing the towel out of my bag, I wipe the saltwater from my face before I wrap it around me. “I think I’m just going to head home. I still have to finish the final outline for Heart of Darkness.” My stomach aches when I see the look of disappointment on his face. “Unless you’re ready to go, you can come with me…. I don’t want to force you to leave.”
“I should go. I haven’t even started the final outline yet.”
We enter my room a half-hour later and I immediately begin to rummage through my dresser for clean clothes as Frankie plops down onto my bed.
“Go ahead and get started while I take a shower,” I say as I grab a pair of sweat-pants out of my dresser.
“Take a shower later,” he replies. “The saltwater is good for your skin.”
“Are you saying I have bad skin?”
“You have beautiful skin—I mean, your skin is fine. I was just saying…. Whatever, go take a shower. You do kind of stink.”
I stare at Frankie for a moment before I chuck my clean clothes onto the floor and hop onto the bed next to him. We lay back and stare at the ceiling in silence for a few seconds before I speak.
“So what’s up with you and Helen?” I ask, nudging his arm with my elbow.
“Nothing,” he replies quickly as he nudges me back.
“Come on. You can tell me.”
He flips over onto his side and rests his head on his hand so he’s facing me. I turn toward him and get that sensation again, like a thousand hummingbirds flitting inside my belly. He reaches over and lightly traces his fingertip over my cheekbone.
“You have a sunburn,” he says, appearing totally unaffected by this simple but intimate gesture. “So what did you want to talk to me about?”
Frankie and I used to sit on my bed counting the freckles on our shoulders after spending the whole day at the beach. We haven’t done that in years. Nothing has been the same since the-date-that-shall-not-be-mentioned. But today feels different.
I want to wrap this moment in a bow and stash it in the deepest corner of my memory. I don’t want to ruin this feeling with my stupid problems. Maybe they’re not even problems. Maybe Mara is just a hallucination.
I shake my head as I lick the salt from my lips. “Nothing,” I reply. “I just wanted an excuse to hang out with you.”
His hazel eyes light up as he smiles. “As flattering as that sounds, I know you’re lying. But I’ll let it slide… for now.”
Chapter 13
Belinda walks Frankie outside to his car as I watch from her window. She can’t see how hard that boy is attempting to win her affection. Of course, she also can’t see how dangerous he is. I’ve been watching Belinda for months, and even I didn’t see it until tonight.
I hover cross-legged above her bed as she showers. When she finally lies down to sleep, I speak.
“You can’t see that boy again,” I say as I glide toward the open window, half-wishing I could tumble out and feel the sensation of falling, falling, falling, like the day my body died.
“Who? Frankie?” she whispers as she glances around the dark bedroom. “Where are you?”
“You can’t tell him about me,” I continue. “It’s not safe.”
“What are you talking about?” she replies as she sits up in her bed. “Frankie’s my best friend. We’ve been best friends since kindergarten. I tell him everything.”
She doesn’t understand, but I can’t tell her the truth or she’ll surely call me a liar and banish me from her life forever. If only there were a way I could show her what I just saw a few minutes ago.
“Just promise me you won’t tell him about me.”
“Earlier today, you possessed me just so I would have the nerve to tell him and now you’re backing down. What’s the deal?”
“Please, Belinda.”
She can’t see me standing next to her window, so she stares silently at her feet where they bulge beneath the blanket. “Fine. I promise I won’t tell Frankie about you.”
“Thank you,” I whisper as my mind flashes to the moment before my spirit was ripped from my body for the first time.
Tuket, the man I was betrothed to, plunged the spear into Reno’s chest and I felt as if I were the one who had been speared. A pain I will never forget exploded in my chest and all the hope vanished from my body in a single instant.
Hope.
If I had to explain to someone what part of a human body carries the spirit I would say it is the same part that carries hope. You can’t survive without hope.
If Belinda tells Frankie about me, and my plans for her and Conor, Frankie may decide to reveal his secret to her. And if that happens, Belinda may find herself repeating my mistakes.
It all comes back to the single most important thing I learned about the spirit realm: the Three-Spirits Law.
The Three-Spirits Law is governed by the keepers of the realm, otherwise known as the ECHOES: the Ethical Control and Handling Of Existing Spirits. If a carrier spirit causes three humans to lose their spirits, the carrier spirit will be doomed by power of the ECHOES to spend eternity as a shadow spirit, lurking in the darkest most hopeless corners of humanity, feeding off the despair of humans. After what happened on the beach three hundred years ago with Darius and his mistress, I was brought before the ECHOES and given my one and only warning. Charion, the head magistrate of the ECHOES, looked into my eyes as she handed down my sentence. If I cause one more spirit—if I cause Belinda’s spirit to abandon her….
I don’t even want to think about what will happen to me.
As much as I miss my human form, the pounding of a drumbeat in my chest, the softness of a warm hand on my skin… as much as I miss those things, I would still prefer a lifetime as a carrier spirit over a single moment as a shadow spirit.
Chapter 14
You should never make a promise you can’t keep. My father taught me this lesson when I was seven after I promised to take Frankie to Disneyland for his birthday. Yet, there I was last night, sitting in my bed making a promise to Mara to not reveal our secret to Frankie.
I tip the last drops of orange juice from my glass onto my tongue and slam the glass on the counter before I sling my backpack over my shoulder. “I’m walking to school today!” I shout to my mom who’s still upstairs getting ready for work.
“Don’t forget your pepper spray!” she shouts.
I already called Frankie to pick me up. I made up some lie about my mom having to stop and deposit money for the mayor. My mother is Mayor Lemon’s secretary, so she’s always running personal errands for him. If my mom weren’t my mom, I’d suspect her of havi
ng an affair with Blake Lemon. He’s not bad looking for a man in his late-forties, but he’s married and my mom is not that type of woman. To my mom, marriage is a sacred cosmic pact, which should never be violated or entered into lightly. This is just one of the reasons she never remarried after my father’s death.
Though my mom doesn’t care if Frankie picks me up, I try not to let him do things my mom normally does for me. It gives my mom false hope that Frankie and I are going to become a couple… again.
Frankie’s mint-green Volkswagen minibus pulls up just as I step out onto the curb. He reaches across the passenger seat and throws the door open for me. I toss my backpack onto the floor of the van and hop into the front seat.
“Good morning, good morning,” he says brightly as he pulls out onto the street.
I have to tell him. Keeping a secret from Frankie is like lying to myself. It’s dangerous and makes me feel all slimy.
“I’m possessed by a carrier spirit,” I blurt out.
Frankie slams on the brakes so hard I nearly mash my face against the windshield. I throw my hands up in time to stop the collision, but I’m thrown back into the passenger seat by the force of inertia.
“What the fuck!” I shriek, my heart thumping wildly against my chest.
“Sorry!” he says as he pulls over in front of Mr. Avante’s house. “You surprised me. Are you hurt?”
He reaches for my head, but I bat his hand away. “I’m fine,” I say. “I guess you heard what I said.” Frankie doesn’t respond. He watches in silence as I buckle my seatbelt and kick my backpack away from my legs. “You don’t have anything to say? You’re not going to call me crazy or tell me to check myself into a mental hospital or something?”
“Well, it’s not like I haven’t already told you that before,” he replies with a grin and I roll my eyes.
“I’m serious. I think this is real and I need your help.”
“You need my help? What do you want me to do, slay some demons?”
I sigh. “Forget it.”
“Come on, Belinda. I was just kidding.”
“Yeah, whatever. Let’s get to school before we’re late for first period.”
“First period doesn’t start for more than half an hour. Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.”
“Just like that? You’re not going to ask me why I think I’m possessed—well, I’m not actually possessed right now—but that’s it? You’re not even going to question me?”
“Belinda, you could tell me you’re a fucking vampire and I’d believe you. You’ve never lied to me… except that one time you told me you were going to take me to Disneyland for my birthday.”
“Hey, I really thought I was going to take you. I didn’t realize three hundred miles was that far.”
“See. You’ve never lied to me.”
That isn’t true. I’ve never told Frankie the real reason why I haven’t gone to any of his surfing competitions since March. I told him I hate sitting around for hours in the hot sun waiting for his group when I’m really only there to see him. The real reason I haven’t gone is that I hate seeing girls in bikinis swoon over him.
“I first noticed—” I stop short when I hear the tinkling message tone of my cell-phone. I pull the phone out of my pocket and see a text message from Conor.
Are you going to the dog park today?
I can’t stop the smile creeping up my cheeks as I text back.
I’ll be there.
He texts back immediately.
Can’t wait to see you.
“Who was that?” Frankie asks as I tuck the phone into my pocket.
I’m about to say nobody before I remember Frankie has just offered to help me based on the fact that I’ve never lied to him.
“It’s just Conor,” I say as if my insides aren’t bubbly with the thought of seeing him at the dog park today.
Frankie’s face, always so open and vibrant, darkens at the mention of Conor’s name. “So what did you say about being possessed?”
“Okay, please don’t tell anyone, but it first happened in Health class when I was giving that presentation last week.”
“The one where you tripped over Helen’s backpack?”
“Yeah, right after I tripped something happened. Everything disappeared for a moment and then I couldn’t remember what happened the rest of the day,” I say, my excitement over finally being able to share this information with someone returning. “Then it happened again… when I met Conor at the dog park and again when we were on our first date.”
I can see a small muscle in Frankie’s jaw clenching and unclenching. “Go on,” he urges me.
“Well, I knew something was going on,” I continue. “I could feel it was some kind of… presence. For a second there, I thought it might be….”
“Your dad?”
“I know it’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” Frankie says adamantly.
The serious look on his face makes me want to hug him. Frankie always know what to say and do to make me feel normal.
“Anyway, it wasn’t my dad. It’s this girl…. She’s a carrier spirit, or, at least, that’s what she says she is.”
“A carrier spirit?” he repeats the words, but not with the incredulous tone I would expect. He almost sounds frightened.
“Yeah, her name is Mara.”
As soon as I say her name, Frankie jerks the key in the ignition and the engine rumbles beneath my seat. He pulls out onto the street away from Mr. Avante’s curb.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I don’t want to be late for first period,” he replies, but somehow I get the feeling Frankie is lying to me.
“Why are you acting weird? Is this too much? You think I’m losing it, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t think that,” he insists as he turns onto Mariposa. “I would never think that about you.”
“So what should I do?” I ask. “She offered to help me.”
The muscle in his jaw clenches again. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“You don’t even know what she wants to help me with.”
“A carrier spirit, Belinda? Are you serious?”
“See. I knew it!” I say, pointing at the judgmental scowl on his face. “You think I’m crazy.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Forget it,” I say as he pulls into the school parking lot.
“Come on, don’t be like that. It’s just a lot to take in at eight o’clock in the morning. Can you give me one fucking minute to digest this?”
He pulls into his usual parking space near the concession stand outside the stadium. I hop out and sling my backpack over my shoulder. I slam the door closed because that’s the only way the door will stay shut. Frankie’s van used to belong to his dad a million years ago. His dad held onto it and passed it down to Frankie last year. Frankie swears it’s the most beautiful piece of machinery ever to grace the streets of Payne Bay.
We pass the gym on our way toward the school gates and Frankie grabs my arm to whisper in my ear, “See you in third period.”
He takes off running through the gates and a throng of students quickly swallows him up as the first period bell rings. Something about his tone makes me uneasy. It sounded like a threat.
Chapter 15
The walk to the dog park puts me on edge as I try to think of something to say to diffuse the havoc I wreaked at the movie theater. I try to dream up a cute or sexy quip, but I’m no good at that kind of stuff. That’s Mara’s specialty and I haven’t felt her presence since I made a false promise to her last night.
As soon as I pass through the chain-link gate around the dog park, I see Conor sitting on the same bench where I met him last Thursday. It’s only been a week and yet so much has changed. For some reason, just the sight of him calms my nerves.
I walk Nina to the center of the play area and set her loose before I make my way to the bench. The boyish grin on Conor’s face makes me feel exposed a
nd I’m hyperaware of the grass crunching beneath my sandals.
“Hello, Miss Stiles,” he says as I take a seat on the bench. He remembers my last name.
“Hello, Mr….” My mind goes blank as I stare into his eyes searching for a clue.
“You don’t remember my last name?”
“Yes, I do,” I insist, hoping Mara will show up soon to refresh my memory.
“It’s Martin. It’s pretty forgettable so I may just forgive you.” Conor’s dog, Dizzy, scampers to his side, his tongue wagging as he nudges Conor’s legs. “Get out of here. Go play with Nina.”
He even remembers Nina’s name. How does he manage to be so gorgeous and considerate at once? I find myself staring at his hands as he tries to shoo Dizzy away. They’re slender and smooth, like artist’s hands.
“Do you paint?” I ask as Dizzy gallops away toward the chain-link fence where a stout man in his forties or fifties is entering the gate with an aging Golden Retriever.
“I draw a little,” he replies with a cunning expression as if he’s sharing forbidden information with me. “I’ve drawn you.”
“Really?” I say, trying to temper my stupid grin. I imagine Conor sitting in his bedroom, or maybe on this very bench with a pad of paper and pencil tracing the curve of my jaw with his fingers.
“Yeah, do you want to see it?”
“Yes.”
He smiles and I notice a small, irregular curve at the corner of his upper lip. I must be staring at it because his hand shoots up and touches the exact spot.
“It’s a scar,” he says. “I got in a fight over a girl in fifth grade.”