It’s OK. I shouldn’t have asked you.
He sounded . . . different. Not sad, not happy, just sort of . . . calm.
I’ve been thinking a lot, Jack went on. And I’ve been getting some help.
From who?
I can’t really say. You wouldn’t understand.
Ken had a sudden image of Jack surrounded by a bevy of kind and wise angels. Jack was right – wherever he was right now, Ken could never understand.
So, it’s OK if I don’t go after her?
Yeah. You see, I’ve got to let go.
Of Lucy?
Of everything. I have to let go of my life. And I have to stop asking you to live a life for me. I gotta get into where I am now.
So – you’re not going to talk to me any more? With a pang, Ken realized that he would miss hearing from Jack.
Oh, we can still talk. I’m just not going to be asking you to do me any more favours.
Oh. OK.
You said you had a really bad day. What happened?
Long story. Can I tell you tomorrow? I need to get some sleep.
Sure. And if Lucy keeps coming on to you, feel free to blow her off.
I already did, Ken thought dismally. He wondered if he could drum up the energy to sit down at his computer right now and compose an apologetic email to her.
Hello, can you hear me?
He thought Jack had gone.
Yeah, I hear you.
Excuse me, I ’m sorry to disturb you . . .
Well, it definitely wasn’t Jack. He’d never be so polite.
I need your help. It’s important.
Look, I’m sorry, but this isn’t a good time, OK? Would you mind going away?
Please, young man, you could save my family!
Right. They were always dramatic, these spirits or ghosts or whatever they were.
Another time, OK?
It won’t take long. I just want to tell you where I left a lottery ticket . . .
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AN HOUR LATER, WHEN the guard finally returned, Amanda did something she’d only done once before in her life, when she wanted her parents to buy her real diamond studs for her pierced ears.
She begged.
‘Please, please, please, don’t tie me up! I promise I won’t hit my head against the wall again! Honestly, I swear to you, I won’t!’
The guard didn’t even look at her. She spoke to the other guard.
‘Let her out. She made bail.’
Amanda jumped up. ‘You’re kidding! Who bailed me out?’
But these guards apparently never shared any more information than they absolutely had to. The guard opened the door, and Margaret-Amanda made a hasty exit. She was directed down a hall and told to go through the last door on the right.
She was clinging to one big hope – that Jenna had read her mind when she was in Cassandra-Serena’s apartment. Jenna was the only person who just might know that the Margaret Robinson who was arrested at the seance was really Amanda Beeson. And Amanda made a promise to herself. If this was the case, and Jenna had arranged to get her out of jail, Amanda would never be mean to Jenna again. She would never criticize her or laugh at her behind her back – or in front of her either. She’d even persuade her own personal friends to let Jenna into their clique.
But she started regretting her promises even before she reached the door. Jenna would never fit into Amanda’s clique. She had the wrong style, the wrong personality, the wrong everything.
So it was almost a relief when she walked through the door and found that Jenna wasn’t waiting for her. But someone else was.
‘Come on,’ Serena said, leading the way out of the room and down the hall, towards the main doors. ‘I’ve got a taxi waiting for us outside.’
‘Who bailed us out?’ Amanda asked.
‘Very funny,’ Serena snapped. ‘Really, Margaret, I’m not in the mood for jokes.’
Amanda was on the verge of telling her that she wasn’t Margaret, but she didn’t think this was the right time or place. Serena probably wouldn’t slap her right in front of a police station, and even if she did there was no guarantee it would send Amanda back into her own body. Besides, the idea of a taxi taking her back to Margaret’s apartment was a lot more appealing than walking or looking for a bus stop.
They settled into the back of the taxi, and Serena gave the driver an address that was unfamiliar to Amanda. It was neither Serena’s address nor Margaret’s.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Where do you think?’ Serena retorted. ‘Honestly, Margaret, what’s the matter with you? Did one hour in a jail cell turn your brain to mush?’
Amanda managed a weak smile. ‘I guess I’m just a little tired.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ Serena said, sinking back in the seat. ‘Not to mention extremely aggravated. I really thought we’d score tonight. We were so close! I could taste that lottery ticket!’
‘Yeah, me too,’ Amanda murmured.
‘I can’t believe Ken went and told his idiot classmates about the seance,’ Serena went on. ‘When I was the student teacher in that class they barely talked to each other – they were like strangers.’
She was right, Amanda realized. A lot had changed since those days when she herself had first entered room 209, just before Serena appeared as a student teacher. Not that she would call any of them her best friends now or even invite them to a party.
But they’d shared some very peculiar stuff, and they’d helped each other in and out of some very weird situations. A strange sort of bond was forming. She just had to be very careful that the rest of Meadowbrook Middle School never found out or her reputation would be in tatters.
‘Do you think Stevie will ever find the lottery ticket?’ she asked Serena.
‘Who knows?’ Serena shrugged off the question. ‘Who cares? It won’t be ours.’ She sighed. ‘Well, it’s no big deal. It would have been nice to have the two million, but we’ve got bigger stuff in the works.’
Amanda choked back the words ‘we do?’ Apparently, she and Serena were connected well beyond the seance scheme. What kind of terrible activities were next on the agenda?
This wasn’t the life for her. Among the many fantasies Amanda had entertained for her future, being a criminal just wasn’t one of them. All the money in the world wasn’t worth the churning, sickening feeling she had right now in the pit of her stomach.
But if she was stuck in Margaret Robinson’s body, what were her options? Serena was dangerous. She wasn’t just going to let Margaret walk away from a life of crime. In the back of her mind, she started considering the various possibilities. Those parents in Florida . . . She could go down there and stay there, far away from Serena Hancock. It wouldn’t be easy pretending to be Margaret in front of Margaret’s own parents though. She’d managed to do it with Tracey’s parents, but that hadn’t been so difficult since Tracey’s parents had never paid much attention to her. From that phone conversation she’d had with Margaret’s mother, she got the feeling they were a lot closer. Mrs Robinson might be able to see that a stranger was occupying her daughter’s body.
If she could find the code for Margaret’s bank account, she could take all her money – but how much money would a substitute teacher have? She could buy a flight with one of Margaret’s credit cards and flee the country, but that meant having a passport, which meant providing documents like birth certificates – assuming Margaret didn’t have one already. She had no idea how to get her hands on stuff like that, and she hadn’t found a passport on any of her hunts through Margaret’s apartment. And even if she did make it to, say, France, what would she do there? She couldn’t even speak the language.
Suddenly she felt like she was going to throw up. But she was too scared even to do that.
The taxi pulled up at an ordinary medium-sized house on a tree-lined street. Amanda started to breathe a little easier. This didn’t look very scary. Serena turned to her.
‘Ready?’
r /> For what? Amanda wanted to ask. But she just managed a weak smile and nodded.
‘Remember,’ Serena said as they went up the path to the front door, ‘we’re members of the team too. And they’ve all had missions that didn’t work out. The big project is still on schedule. I realize that this is the first time you’ll be meeting them, but don’t let them intimidate you.’
‘I won’t,’ Amanda whispered.
‘And let me do the talking.’
Amanda was perfectly willing to go along with that.
Serena had a key to the front door. They walked into a foyer which led into a bland, ordinary living room.
‘Hello?’ she called out.
‘We’re in here.’ The voice was masculine and deep. Amanda thought it sounded vaguely familiar.
She followed Serena into another room, where three people sat at a dining table. And none of the three was a stranger to Amanda.
The first one she recognized was Clare. Her hair was blonde again, the way it had been when Amanda-as-Sarah had been kidnapped by her.
Next to her was the man she knew as Stuart Kelley, who had claimed to be Jenna’s father.
And on the other side of Clare sat Mr Jackson, the principal of Meadowbrook Middle School.
None of them looked at her with any particular interest. Why would they? They’d never seen her before – or so they thought.
But Amanda had seen all of them before, in different places, and in circumstances that were completely unconnected. Or so she’d thought. And the realization of what she was now seeing stunned her. She was dizzy, her head was spinning. Reeling actually. She didn’t think that she’d ever had a greater shock.
Which could explain why she suddenly found herself lying in her very own bed with a very sore throat.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WHEN HE WOKE UP the next morning, still dressed in the clothes he’d worn the day before, Ken’s first action was to check to see if an open notebook lay on the nightstand by his bed. With enormous relief, he found it.
So it hadn’t been a dream. And he’d done the right thing – he’d written the instructions down. He read them over and over, until he committed them to memory.
It was early – his alarm wasn’t set to go off for another two hours. This was good news, as he had a lot to do before the start of school. As he took a shower and changed his clothes, he went over the plan. He would go back to the Fisher house and catch Stevie before he left for school. He’d tell the boy how he’d had a message from his father, and he’d show him where his father had left the lottery ticket. He bet Stevie would be really surprised to know that his father had a secret place where he kept important things – under a loose floorboard in the back of a rarely visited cupboard full of old junk.
Stevie’s mother could cash in the lottery ticket and save the family home. Little Dena could see a real doctor about her rash, and Cindy could have a new pair of shoes. And best of all – for Ken at least – Stevie would know that Ken was a good guy, that he had never been a part of Serena’s scheme to steal the ticket. Maybe he and Stevie would remain friends and Ken could be like a big brother to him.
There was only one small problem. Two, actually. First of all, Stevie wasn’t going to be very happy to see Ken back at the Fisher house. Ken was going to have to do a lot of fast talking to persuade Stevie to let him in.
But it was the second problem that really made him nervous.To accomplish this task, he would have to let Stevie know about his gift.
He’d argued with Madame and others in the class about this. He hadn’t believed that his gift had any value to whatever enemies the class had, and he’d been sure that none of the others in the gifted class would be in danger if he revealed his gift.
Well, events of the past week had proved he was wrong about the first part of his assumption. Bad people had tried to use him. And if he could be wrong about that, he could be wrong about putting the class in danger.
But Stevie needed that ticket. And now that Ken knew where the ticket was, how could he do nothing? How could he let Stevie and his family suffer – lose their home, live in poverty – when they didn’t have to?
His mother was in the kitchen when he came downstairs.
‘What are you doing up so early?’ she asked him.
At that moment, Ken learned that he wasn’t such a bad liar after all. ‘I’ve got a meeting at school with my science project group.’
His mother was impressed. ‘Well, you kids must be excited about this project if it’s getting you out of bed. What is your group doing?’
He couldn’t lie that well. He looked at his watch. ‘Oh wow, I’m late. I ’ll tell you about it later, Mom.’
‘Don’t you want something to eat?’ his mother called after him, but he just yelled back another whopper.
‘No, thanks, I’m not hungry.’ And he was out the door.
But now what? He still hadn’t worked out how he was going to fix Stevie’s problem.
His mobile rang. He flipped it open and held it to his ear.
‘Hello?’
‘Ken, this is Tracey. I hope I didn’t wake you up.’
He scowled.What did she want? He was still very much annoyed by the way the three girls had behaved. ‘No, I’m up. What do you want?’
‘I couldn’t sleep, I felt so bad about yesterday . We shouldn’t have made those plans without telling you.’
‘It was Jenna’s idea, wasn’t it?’
‘Yeah, but Emily and I went along with it, so we’re just as guilty.’
Ken doubted that. He knew how pushy Jenna could be. And Tracey sounded really sorry.
‘It’s OK,’ he relented.
‘I wish I could make it up to you,’ Tracey said, sounding sincere.
Ken stood very still. A brilliant idea had struck him.
‘Actually, Tracey, you can. If you’re really sorry, you can help me do something right now.’
He told her all about his visit to Stevie’s house the night before, and explained that he now knew where the ticket was. Then he told her his new idea. Ten minutes later, they met up at a corner halfway between their two homes.
Tracey was nervous. ‘It doesn’t always work, you know. I mean, I’m getting better, but sometimes I just can’t do it. And even when it does work, I never know how long it will last.’
But she completely understood why he’d come up with his plan. And she was willing to try as hard as she could to make it happen.
When they arrived at Apple Creek Road, Ken pointed out the house.
‘I can’t walk through walls, you know , ’ Tracey reminded him. ‘I’m going to have to wait for someone to come in or out.’
Ken looked at his watch. ‘Stevie should be leaving for school pretty soon. Can you get ready now?’
He told her about the cupboard and the loose floorboard. Tracey nodded.
‘OK. Here goes,’ she said. She stood very still and closed her eyes.
‘What does it feel like?’ Ken asked curiously.
She opened her eyes. ‘Be quiet. I have to concentrate.’
‘Sorry,’ Ken said.
He’d never seen the process in action before. Tracey had developed her gift back when her parents ignored her and she felt invisible. She was a much happier person now, and Ken knew it had to be difficult for her to recapture the feeling of being a nothing, a nobody.
But she did it. Right there, before his eyes, she began to fade. It was positively eerie, like watching a special effect in a science fiction movie. And then she wasn’t there.
‘Tracey?’ he asked.
She must have already taken off. He looked at the house across the street. He couldn’t see her, ofcourse, but if she was following the plan she was waiting just by the door.
Something could still go wrong, and Ken knew it. Maybe Stevie had already left for school, or maybe he wasn’t going to school today. Maybe nobody would go in or out of the house at seventy-two Apple Creek Road all day . Maybe, maybe, maybe . . .
But he could stop tormenting himself. The door of the house opened. Ken ducked behind a tree and peered through the branches. A woman stood there – Stevie’s mother, Ken guessed. She had a small child in her arms. That had to be Dena.
An older girl appeared at the door, a nd then Stevie was there too. They kissed their mother. Then they started walking away, the mother went back inside, and the door closed.
Ken let out the breath he’d been holding. There had been plenty of time for the invisible Tracey to get inside. Now she had to stay invisible long enough to accomplish her mission, and get herself back outside.
Ken stared at the house, even though there wasn’t really anything to look at. It was weird, not having a clue as to what was going on inside.
An eternity seemed to pass. He kept looking at his watch, and he could see that only a few minutes had gone by, but it felt like much longer.
The door to the house opened again, and Mrs Fisher came out. She was holding little Dena’s hand. With the other, she locked the front door. Oh no! Ken thought. Would Tracey be trapped inside until someone came home?
‘I’m here.’
He looked in the direction of the voice. ‘Tracey?’
Even though he couldn’t see her face, he could hear the excitement in her voice.
‘I found it, Ken! It was right where you said it would be, under the loose floorboard in the cupboard.’
‘What did you do with it?’
‘I put it on the refrigerator door, under a magnet. They can’t miss it.’
Ken frowned. ‘Isn’t that a little obvious? I mean, wouldn’t they have noticed it before?’
‘Haven’t you ever searched everywhere for something and then found it, right in plain sight?’
She had a point.
‘I guess we better get back to school. We’ve got a long way to go.’
‘Yeah, OK.’
‘And you can come back now,’ Ken added. ‘Nobody’s watching.’
‘Actually . . . I can’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it’s weird. I’m getting better and better at disappearing when I want to, but it’s not so easy to make myself reappear. It’s like, the invisibility has to wear off on its own.’