by Paula Morris
“You have to help me,” he said. “I have to return to New Orleans tomorrow. Please. I need someone who can find something for me. Something very precious. Very valuable. If it isn’t found, then I’m doomed to haunt the docks, here and down there, for eternity. Back and forth, back and forth …”
He looked so utterly despairing, Rebecca felt sorry for him.
“What’s this thing you need to find?” she asked. But before the boy answered, the front door of the restaurant squeaked open.
“There you are!” It was Ling. “Aren’t you freezing to death out here?”
In the instant it took for Rebecca to glance at Ling in the restaurant doorway, the boy with blue eyes disappeared.
One speedy cab ride later, Rebecca was back in her bedroom. She was trying to calm down from her encounter with the blue-eyed ghost when her phone began buzzing like an enraged wasp.
“Hey,” said a familiar voice. Anton. Her heart skipped, just as it always did when they talked on the phone. “Is it too late to call?”
“Sure — no. I mean, it’s OK.” Rebecca pushed her door shut. Should she tell him about the ghost boy downtown? She hadn’t said a word about it to Ling or her father, but she was aching to share the story with someone.
“So,” said Anton. “I got your text.”
Right. After the confrontation with the ghost, Rebecca had forgotten all about texting Anton. Now, something in the tone of his voice worried Rebecca. He didn’t sound very enthusiastic.
“The thing is …” he said, trailing off.
“What?” Rebecca braced herself. He was going to give some excuse for not seeing her, she just knew it. Too much time had passed since they last saw each other.
Too much time since they last kissed.
Rebecca felt herself blushing. He probably had a girlfriend in New Orleans now. This was probably going to be one of those awkward “we have to talk” conversations.
“It’s … It’s Toby,” Anton said at last. “Toby Sutton. He’s run away from home and from school — his new school, the one in Mississippi.”
Rebecca swallowed hard. She felt relieved that the “thing” was about Toby, but no news about Toby Sutton was ever good. Toby had been part of Helena Bowman’s gang; his sister, Marianne, was Helena’s best friend. He was thuggish at the best of times, and to say that he disliked Rebecca was a major understatement. Wherever Toby went, trouble turned up as well — usually in the form of an arson attack. He’d even tried to burn down his own school.
“So,” said Anton, “I think he’s hiding out somewhere in New Orleans. He’s been sending me all these weird texts, rambling stuff about unfinished business. He’s still pretty bitter about what … you know, what happened to Helena. If he finds out you’re back in New Orleans, I don’t know what he’ll do.”
“Maybe he won’t find out that I’m there,” Rebecca suggested, though she knew this was unlikely. Some Temple Mead girl would probably spot her at the airport and send alert texts to everyone on the entire Gulf Coast. And then Toby would turn up with a bad attitude and a box of matches. Who knew what would happen?
“Maybe.” Anton sounded doubtful. “But I was kind of hoping that …”
“What?” Rebecca had to prompt him again. They were always really awkward with each other on the phone. Texting was so much easier.
“Well, um,” Anton mumbled. “I was thinking that maybe you would come to the Spring Dance with me. Your friend could come as well. There’s a new guy at school from California. He doesn’t know anyone here, and I promised him I’d help him find a date. Spring Dance is stupid, I know, but it’s kind of a big deal here.”
The Spring Dance. Rebecca knew exactly how big a deal it was. It was one of the social highlights of the teen year in the Garden District, when the boys of St. Simeon’s escorted the girls of Temple Mead to a dance at the country club. The girls in her old class at Temple Mead were probably working themselves up into a hysterical fever pitch about it right now.
“Sure,” she said, without thinking. “Why not? As long as Toby doesn’t show up and try to set my dress on fire.”
She was trying to make a joke, but neither of them laughed. They said awkward good-byes, and Rebecca flopped back on her bed. She wanted to pull the covers over her head, and hide from the world.
The boy with blue eyes had unfinished business. Toby Sutton had unfinished business. The girls at Temple Mead, who’d be out in force at the Spring Dance, had plenty of unfinished business with her: Rebecca was quite sure of that. So much for a stress-free trip to New Orleans. Why couldn’t they all just leave her alone?
The view of Louisiana from the air, Rebecca thought, made it seem like no other place in America. Instead of dull brown fields or sprawling towns, the landscape below the plane was green and watery, a swampland that felt mysterious, unfinished, maybe even dangerous.
Ling’s face was pressed against the window, and she was fizzing with questions: Was that the lake? Was that a bayou? What was the difference between a bayou and a swamp, anyway?
Rebecca, in the aisle seat, leaned across her friend to peer out. The plane was descending, skimming the western end of Lake Pontchartrain. Sun glinted off the water. The bridge, stretching below them like a gray ribbon, was the longest causeway in the world. The dark dots swooping across the ragged edges of waves were probably brown pelicans.
Rebecca remembered all this from the first time she’d flown into New Orleans. Everything, in fact, about arriving here again felt surprisingly familiar: the tinny piped jazz at the airport as they waited by the baggage carousel, the surprising heat outside the airport doors, the pungent, sweet tang of the air. Even the taxi driver’s accent, an odd mix of Southern drawl and Brooklyn swagger, felt like … home? Perhaps that was what New Orleans had become in a way, Rebecca mused — a second home. Given what happened to her here, that was a weird thought.
Her dad had kept a protective arm around Rebecca while they were waiting for the cab. But now he was beaming and pointing out the sights as they sped along I-10 toward the city, craning to get his first glimpse of the white-lidded Superdome.
“Nobody here calls the city ‘the Big Easy,’” he told Ling. Rebecca resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Her father was always happy to bore people with tidbits of information. “It’s called the Crescent City because of the way it’s scooped by a giant bend in the Mississippi River.”
Rebecca had forgotten all about the river. Although New Orleans was squeezed between bodies of water — the river, the lake, the bayous — Rebecca hadn’t seen them at all when she was living here. The lake was too far from the Garden District, where she had stayed with Aunt Claudia and Aurelia. The Mississippi was hidden behind its high green levee. The only water she’d seen was the torrential rain that could drench you in seconds.
“There’s no ocean beach, though, right?” Ling was asking. Rebecca’s dad started talking about the beaches of the Gulf of New Mexico, an hour’s drive to the east, or the slivers of beach on Lake Pontchartrain. New Orleans wasn’t really a beach town, Rebecca knew, but the colors of the place reminded her of being near the sea. It had to do with the washed-out blue of the sky, or maybe the sallow sand-colored concrete of the empty canal near the highway. Maybe it was just the knowledge that you were surrounded by water. The city had been inundated after Hurricane Katrina, filling up like a basin. Water lay in wait here, she decided. It encircled the city like a watery noose.
“Rebecca?” Ling nudged her. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” Rebecca replied. Somehow she didn’t think the others would be so taken with her “watery noose” idea. “I was just … thinking about … rain, I guess.”
“No rain today or tomorra,” the cab driver said over his shoulder. His car smelled of stale cigarette smoke and fried food. “But maybe later in the week. Just in time for Jazz Fest on Friday. You all in town for Jazz Fest?”
Ling arched her eyebrows at Rebecca. Jazz Fest took place over two long weekends, and this wee
kend was the first. Ling was excited; she’d already downloaded the schedule onto her iPad. But the tickets were really expensive, and Rebecca noticed the way her father changed the subject away from the musical festival. Maybe he didn’t want Rebecca wandering around in such big crowds. Last time she was in a big crowd in New Orleans, it had been during Mardi Gras, and she was kidnapped and almost murdered.
The cab zoomed off the highway, swinging down the ramp marked “Vieux Carre.” Old Quarter: That’s what it meant, though it was better known as the French Quarter. And that’s where they’d be staying this week. Hopefully the house Rebecca’s dad had rented wouldn’t be as weird as Aunt Claudia’s small yellow house on Sixth Street, cluttered with dusty tribal masks and voodoo charms, and practically leaning into the house next door. Aunt Claudia hadn’t picked them up from the airport because Saturday was her busiest day of the week: She told fortunes in Jackson Square. But she was going to meet them at the rented house and give them the keys.
“This is, like, the most AMAZING place,” Ling said, her voice squeaky with excitement. She’d lowered her window to take pictures, and the breeze that blew into the car was warm. They were driving across Rampart Street, one of the boundaries of the French Quarter, and passing a cluster of tall old buildings with the broad cast-iron porches known here as galleries. Some of the galleries were a vibrant jungle of drooping ferns, but the house on the corner looked almost derelict, its windows boarded up and its brick façade gray with dirt. It looked as though it had been empty and unloved for a long, long time.
Rebecca wondered why it wasn’t renovated and occupied like the others next to it, or like the similar old town houses in the Quarter itself. Maybe it was because Rampart Street wasn’t such a desirable place to live. Aunt Claudia had always warned her to avoid Rampart Street, though Aunt Claudia had warned her about a lot of things — like staying out of Lafayette Cemetery, for example — and Rebecca hadn’t really listened.
It was strange to be back on Rampart Street now. There was nobody in sight but a woman walking out of a tattoo parlor and pausing to light a cigarette, and a guy in ripped jeans hosing down the sidewalk outside a bar. Real live people, Rebecca thought with relief, rather than battle-scarred ghosts. While she had to admit she was curious about that good-looking ghost boy with blue eyes, and whatever it was he was trying to find, life was much easier when ghosts weren’t popping up all over the place. Instinctively, she wriggled down in her seat, glad she was wearing sunglasses.
Driving through the Quarter was a lot slower than speeding along the highway. The streets were all narrow and one-way, with STOP signs at almost every corner. A broken-down car on the next block forced the taxi driver to take a detour, and then they were crawling along in the wake of a mule-driven carriage. Even when the carriage turned to clip-clop its way down Bourbon Street, a sea of people washed across their path.
Ling didn’t care about their zigzag route: She was halfway out the window taking pictures of everything — the Lucky Dog salesman, with his hot-dog-shaped cart; the candy-colored old Creole cottages; teenaged street musicians lugging their trumpets and tubas to another corner. A woman carrying a yapping dog — both wearing purple bandanas round their necks — strolled in front of the car as though it were invisible, and didn’t even turn around when the taxi driver honked.
“She got all the time in the world,” he complained to Rebecca’s father, the cab inching its way along a crowded Royal Street. Here the railings of the galleries spilled over with flowers and dangled long strands of Mardi Gras beads — purple, green, gold, silver, red. The last time Rebecca saw Mardi Gras beads, she was throwing them from a float in the Septimus parade. What did New Orleans have in store for her this time?
“Here it is!” announced her father when they finally screeched to a halt on Orleans Avenue. Rebecca clambered out of the taxi, taking it all in. The one-story building had a steeply pitched roof, and cracks were visible in the yellow-painted brick, with four long windows (or maybe they were doors?) hidden behind pale blue shutters. She’d seen lots of houses like this in the Quarter before, old houses that sat right there on the street without gates or gardens, the kind of house you’d love to peer into as you walked by. But with their shuttered windows they always seemed completely closed off to strangers, with no apparent way of getting in or out. Everything was secretive in this city, she thought, even the houses.
A heavy iron gate to the left of the house creaked open, and Aunt Claudia stepped out, jangling the keys and then dropping them onto the terracotta cobbles of the sidewalk.
“Rebecca, honey!” she called, her voice cracking with emotion. Her kohl-lined eyes — green and intense as the sea — were moist with tears. She pulled Rebecca into a hug, and Rebecca felt her own eyes filling. The minute she saw her aunt — not a real aunt, but whatever — Rebecca remembered how kind a person she was, how welcoming and generous. She also wore the craziest clothes, but this was a Saturday after all, and she had to wear her “work” gear.
“I packed up early so I could let you all in,” Aunt Claudia murmured. “I’m so glad you’re here. Aurelia’s on a school trip today, otherwise she’d be here as well.”
“This is my friend, Ling,” Rebecca said, guiltily relieved that her aunt wasn’t wearing her most extreme gypsy costume, and didn’t smell too strongly of incense.
Ling dumped her duffel on the sidewalk so she could shake Aunt Claudia’s hand. With her headscarf and hoop earrings, Aunt Claudia must have seemed a little weird. The frizzy gray hair, the clanking bangles, the purple boots: This was a relatively normal look for Aunt Claudia, thought Rebecca, but Ling wouldn’t know that. Ling’s mother worked in an office and wore a dark suit and pumps to work every day. She carried a briefcase, not a tatty crocheted bag with a gris-gris pouch and a molting rabbit’s foot swinging from the strap.
“You’re home,” Aunt Claudia said to Rebecca. “We’ve missed you so much!”
“I missed you, too,” Rebecca told her. “It’s so good to be back here.” That was true, she realized. Despite everything that had happened, she was excited to be in New Orleans again.
“This house looks so cool.” Ling stared up at the row of wooden-slatted shutters. “Your dad was just saying it’s over one hundred fifty years old, and that there’s a courtyard out the back.”
Rebecca’s father had paid the driver, and was standing over the bags, talking to Aunt Claudia. Though Rebecca was pretending to admire the house, nodding while Ling raved on, she was really thinking about Anton. They hadn’t made any firm plans to meet up yet, but Rebecca realized she’d been hoping, secretly, that he would be waiting for her when they arrived. She’d texted him the address of the place in the Quarter — just as a casual FYI — and now it was hard not to feel disappointed. They hadn’t seen each other since last May, and all the IMing, texts, and calls in the world couldn’t make up for those long months of separation. Anton might have changed. She might have changed. And this whole Spring Dance thing was just another layer of pressure….
“So tomorrow morning at eight?” Aunt Claudia was asking them, and Ling was nodding.
“The Big Sweep,” she said. “Sounds cool!”
“I’d join you,” said Rebecca’s father, “but I have to go to a business roundtable. Even though it’s a Sunday — I know!”
Rebecca knew what a business roundtable meant — a big fat lunch somewhere fancy — but it took several more minutes of perplexing discussion until she realized that the Big Sweep was a community cleanup on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain.
She and Ling had talked about volunteering. They might as well start right away, even if all they were doing was picking up trash. At least — according to the cab driver — it wasn’t going to rain.
Her phone was buzzing, and Rebecca fumbled for it in her bag. Anton! In her eagerness to read his text, Rebecca almost dropped the phone.
here?
Really, that was the best he could do? One word.
yes, she rep
lied. Two could play at that game.
in MS, sorry, he texted back. MS. Mississippi. His family’s fish camp, Rebecca remembered, swallowing back disappointment. So there was no way she’d see him tonight. Her phone buzzed again.
c u at big sweep?
yes, she texted again, relieved. Suddenly the Big Sweep sounded like the best possible way to spend a Sunday.
Everyone else had already stepped through the gate, their voices fading as they walked down the narrow flag-stoned alley. Rebecca stowed her phone and bent down to pick up her bag. And in that instant, that brief moment of bending and straightening, the boy with blue eyes materialized right there on Orleans Avenue.
Rebecca gasped — with surprise rather than fear. He was standing just a few feet away, next to a spindly tree that grew, roots bulging, out of the cobbled sidewalk. In the sunlight his clothes looked even shabbier, if that were possible. His eyes bore into her like lasers, transfixing her.
“You came,” he said, and then he smiled — a slow, shy smile. “I knew you were a good person, that day I saw you with Lisette. I knew you’d help me.”
“Help you with what?” Rebecca asked, trying to keep her voice low. She wasn’t scared of him anymore, the way she had been outside the restaurant in New York. There was something so sweet and gentle about him. His stare wasn’t brazen; she’d been wrong about that. His eyes were pleading with her. Maybe he really did need her help.
“Rebecca!” Her father was calling her. “Where are you, honey?”
“Just closing the gate!” she called back. She fingered the straps of her bag, wondering how to handle all this. There was nowhere for them to have a private conversation, and anyway, her father would come out looking for her any second. The boy was still gazing at her, his eyes inky, as though he was about to cry.
