Far Away

by Lisa Graff

  “Sometimes it’s hard,” Aunt Nic goes on. “Because the object really can be anything. Jewelry, clothing— Is that a lamp, sir?” She shades her eyes with her hand to peer out across the audience and receives a hoot in response. “Sometimes people walk in here, think we’re having a garage sale after the show.” She pauses for chuckles. “When you find the right object, you feel it, okay? Maybe you’re not a medium like me, you weren’t born with the Gift.” She puts a hand on her hip. “Being honest? Sometimes it’s a gift I’d like to give back.” More laughter. “But even if you can’t hear the words your loved one’s saying, the way I can, you can feel the emotional energy in their tether. It might be a strong, warm sense that overtakes you, or even”—she turns to the sisters again—“what is that smell I’m getting? It’s so him. It’s a weird smell, right? Like chemical-y, or . . . ?” She sniffs the air. “What is that?”

  “The burning?” one of the sisters chimes in, straight into the mic I handed her.

  Aunt Nic nods, a fast up and down. “Yes!”

  And the older sister laugh-cries. “That’s his model trains. The whole den always smelled like ozone from his trains.”

  “It’s awful!” Aunt Nic says, and the women all laugh again. She tilts her head. “He’s saying it’s not awful, but—I’m sorry, sir, it really is!”

  I wonder what it would’ve been for my mom, her tether. A favorite paintbrush? That pair of orange ballet flats she’s wearing in six different photos I have of her? What am I supposed to take heed of? I think at Spirit as we rush to another loved one. And what does the octopus mean?

  The next person Aunt Nic is called to is a woman with her army husband’s dog tags, and after that it’s a young couple who lost a baby. I hate the ones where they lost a baby. I think Aunt Nic does, too, although she’s never said as much. But she usually goes quick with those ones.

  “He was so little,” the dad says when Aunt Nic asks about the blanket the baby is mentioning. Only, the man is sobbing so hard he’s having trouble getting words out. “We never even got to hold him before he . . . We couldn’t . . . We didn’t . . .”

  As Aunt Nic talks to the boy, a sweet smile crosses her face. “He says, Don’t worry, Daddy, I’m safe and warm here with Spirit. I left that blanket so you and Mommy could be warm, too.”

  The woman sob-snots, completely overwhelmed by the message, and before she lets Aunt Nic move on to the next connection, she makes her wait for an enormous hug. The dad, too.

  “Hey,” I whisper to Jax as we hustle across the floor. Because he still looks a little freaked. “You’re actually doing really great.”

  “Yeah?” He grins.

  “I bet by the end of the week, Oscar’ll even let you work the floor all by your—”

  That’s when Jax bangs shoulder-first into one of Roger’s camera guys, and the whole audience oohs in horror as they both crash to the ground. We get a close-up shot up Jax’s nose, too, giant on the screen. I swear I can hear Oscar cursing from up on the spot bay.

  “Maybe by the end of next week,” I say, helping him to his feet.

  As soon as Aunt Nic is positive everyone is okay, she returns to translating for Spirit. “Who had the car accident?” she calls out.

  It’s another couple we reach next—older this time, grandparent age. A huge truck of a man with dark skin who doesn’t look too comfortable with the mic I push under his nose. His wife is a kind-looking white woman, short and fat, with an enormous chest.

  “It was our daughter,” the woman says. “Ashlynne.” She’s shaking as she holds out an envelope for Aunt Nic. “That was her wedding invitation. We lost her before the wedding.”

  Her husband puts an arm around her. “We don’t have to do this, Meg,” he tells her, then pulls his mic away when his words get picked up for the whole audience to hear. “We should go home.”

  Jax zooms in on the envelope in Aunt Nic’s hand, and I watch on the screen to make sure everything’s in focus. The letters tower six feet tall.

  Mr. & Mrs. Grant & Margaret Ezold

  877 Lake Forest Drive

  Bakersfield, CA 93301

  I hold my gaze on the last line of the address.

  Bakersfield.

  And just as it hits me that this couple is from my mom’s hometown, the woman says, “Ashlynne knew you, actually. Do you remember her, from high school? Ashlynne Ezold?”

  “I think I—” Aunt Nic begins, studying the envelope.

  “She was two years behind you in school. I’m sure you remember. She and Jennie June were practically joined at the hip senior year.”

  I whip my head back to look at the couple. “My mom?” I say. I’m not supposed to talk to the loved ones. “You knew my mom?”

  “You look so much like her,” the woman, Meg, tells me then, with that sadness-smile I always get from folks who know my mom has died. “We were so sorry to hear she’d—” She chokes up again, then finds different words to push out. “I brought something.” She digs through her purse while, beside her, her husband, Grant, slow-blinks toward the sky. I wait for Aunt Nic to relay Ashlynne’s message, because they usually come through right away, but she’s tilting her head like whatever station she’s listening to isn’t tuned properly. At last, Meg pulls out a photograph, a printed-out one, with a crease in one corner. She tries to show it to Aunt Nic, but Aunt Nic’s still tuning, so Meg hands it to me instead. “The girls painted that together, in Ashlynne’s bedroom. Isn’t it gorgeous? She was so talented, your mother.”

  I’m looking at a photograph of a long wall with an enormous mural painted on it, floor to ceiling. The side that covers the closet door is a sand dune, with strange skinny flowers reaching toward a blue sky. Seagulls soar above toward a deep, dark ocean, with all sorts of creatures swimming in the water. Fish. Sharks.

  An octopus.

  “Take heed,” I whisper.

  “What’s that?” Meg says.

  But before I get a chance to reply, Aunt Nic speaks into her own mic, loudly. “I’m so sorry,” she tells the couple. “It wasn’t your daughter.” And she hands back the wedding invitation.

  “I don’t—” Meg begins.

  “The spirit reaching out to me is a man,” Aunt Nic clarifies. “I’m sorry.” She takes back their microphones, hands them to me as I fumble, confused. Then she calls out to the wider audience, “Who’s the man, in the car accident? There were no passengers, only him?” A man jumps up, waving his hand, and Aunt Nic bolts off to talk to him, leaving Meg and Grant to sink sorrowfully into their seats.

  “CJ?” Jax says when he realizes I’m not following Aunt Nic.

  I glance at my aunt, plowing ahead into the audience, and then at the Ezolds, still clutching that photograph with the octopus in it. And as much as I don’t want to, I tell Jax, “Coming!” and hurry off behind him. I just have to trust that if Spirit has gotten me this far, they can get me the rest of the way.

  THREE

  “HOW ARE YOU going to have time for schoolwork if you’re out driving?” Aunt Nic asks me. She’s sitting at the table in the middle of the tour bus, sipping her coffee, still in her pajamas. “Plemmons is going to be a real shock, you know, if you’re not prepared.”

  I bounce from foot to foot in the doorway. It’s not even seven a.m., but I’m buzzing with energy.

  “It’ll just be a couple hours.” I point to Oscar and Jax’s hotel at the far end of the parking lot. “Jax really needs the practice, and Oscar said he was too busy to do it. Please? Next month I won’t be around to help anybody at all.”

  As soon as the show was over last night, I rushed to the Ezolds’ seats, but they’d already gone. Then I spent the whole trip from Santa Barbara to L.A. trying to find their email addresses in my contact list—till I realized they must be the sort of old folks who don’t have any. I was starting to worry I’d messed up Spirit’s whole plan u
ntil this morning, when I figured out what they must’ve wanted me to do all along.

  Aunt Nic wraps her hands around her coffee mug, studying my face. “Okay,” she says at last, and I leap with excitement. “But only surface streets, no freeways. And be back by lunch, all right?”

  “Absolutely.” I grab my new messenger bag off the passenger’s seat. Atlas, check. Tablet, check. I drape the strap across my chest. “You’re the best,” I tell Aunt Nic, standing on my tiptoes to give her a hug. It takes everything in me not to tell her where I’m really going, and what I’m going to bring back for her. But with Spirit guiding me, I know she’ll hear her sister’s voice again soon. I can’t wait to see her face light up when she does.

  I can’t wait for my face to light up, either.

  * * *

  • • •

  “This seems like an awful lot of practice,” Jax says as we zoom along the 101 North. “I thought we’d just stick to, like, parking lots.”

  “Nah,” I say. When Jax picks up speed, I shout, “Ready? And . . . clutch!” And together we shift into fourth. “Aunt Nic specifically said she wants you to practice freeway driving. It’s six hours from Oceanside to Phoenix tomorrow night.”

  It’s not like I want to be lying. And I’ll tell Jax the truth eventually, when it’s too late for him to turn around. But if I tell him now, he’ll only call Aunt Nic. Get her worried about me all over again.

  Anyway, I am helping with his driving, so it’s only partially a lie.

  “I guess that makes sense.” Jax nods toward the cup holder, where his cell phone is resting. “You mind calling my uncle? I want to double-check when he needs me back to help set up.”

  “Eyes on the road!” I scold. “This is a cell-free driving environment.”

  Jax scrunches his mouth. “But if you—”

  “Chill out. We’ll be fine on time.” It’s a little over two hours to Bakersfield without traffic and two hours back, so we have to hustle if we want to make it back for lunch. But once I bring Aunt Nic my mom’s tether, I figure she’ll forgive me for being a few minutes late. “Keep your eyes peeled for the 5 North.”

  That gets another mouth-scrunch from Jax. “You lost or something?”

  “I’ve traveled to all forty-eight continental states,” I tell him, “at least three times each, and I’ve navigated the whole way myself. I’ve never once been lost.” I point out the windshield to the sign for the 5. “The exit’ll be on your right.”

  “If you’re up to something, you have to tell me. I can’t get in trouble with Uncle Oscar. I can’t lose this job.”

  “All I’m up to is helping you out. Like Oscar asked me to.” Technically, Oscar said I could help. “Or do you think you’re ready to shift by yourself already?”

  Jax lets out a sigh. “Whatever you say, Miss Navigator,” he replies. He checks his blind spot, then switches lanes.

  * * *

  • • •

  The 5 is by far the quickest route to cut through California, but it’s incredibly boring. Desert all around. Dirt and highway and highway and dirt. Every once in a while, there’s a tiny speck of a farm.

  We drive in silence for twenty minutes or so, until I can’t take it anymore.

  “Do you know how to play Horse?” I ask Jax.

  “Like H.O.R.S.E. the basketball game?”

  “Horse the car game,” I specify.

  “Oh. No.”

  “Okay, I’m going to tell you the rules. It’s really complicated. You listening?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “All right, here it is. When you see a horse, you yell, ‘HORSE!’” I shout at the top of my lungs. “You got it?”

  He blinks at me. Once. Twice. “That’s it? That’s the whole game? You yell the word ‘Horse’?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I think Aunt Nic might’ve made it up. We drive a lot. We get bored.”

  “How do you win, though? You yell ‘Horse’ the most?”

  “You don’t win. You just yell ‘Horse.’”

  More blinking. “Or we could just, like, not do that.”

  I cross my arms over my chest. “You’ll see,” I tell him. “It’s awesome. You just don’t get it, because you haven’t played before.”

  “Mmm.”

  I do not reply to the “Mmm.” There aren’t any horses around right now anyway. “How ’bout Twenty Questions?”

  At that, Jax perks up a little. “Sure. You pick first.”

  Jax guesses my pick—a tree—in only five questions, then stumps me completely with Alexander Graham Bell.

  “That’s the guy who invented the light bulb, right?” I ask after I lose.

  Jax pulls one hand from the ten-and-two position to smack himself in the forehead. “The telephone, CJ. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.” I only shrug. “I think probably your mom and Nic are right about boarding school.”

  “At least I know how to drive stick,” I snap back. “Anyway, it’s my pick again. I’m going to really get you with this one.”

  Jax guesses in four.

  “You keep picking things just ’cause you can see them,” he says.

  “No,” I reply, even though I picked my atlas. “Anyway, I’ll get yours this time. Is it a person?”

  “No. Nineteen questions left.”

  “A place?”

  “No. Eighteen questions.”

  “Okay, so it’s a thing, then.”

  “Is that a question?” Jax asks.

  Even though I’m sure I’m walking into a trap somehow, I ask, “Is it a thing?”

  “No. Seventeen questions.”

  “How can it not be a person, place, or thing? What the heck it is, then? You’re cheating.”

  “I’m not cheating. You wanna keep playing or what?”

  I huff and slouch in my seat.

  “Don’t you think we should turn around soon?” Jax asks while I try to figure out what isn’t a person, place, or thing.

  “Nah. Oscar said not to come back till you were a highway-driving expert. I say we stay on the 5 for at least”—I check the atlas—“thirty-five more miles.”

  Jax gets this look on his face, like he might be bad at stick but he is not a dummy, and he says, “Cough it up, CJ.”

  “Cough what up?”

  “I know you’re not hauling me all the way out here to practice stick. You’re trying to get somewhere. And I think I should get to know where.”

  I think over my options. On the one hand, even if Jax did want to turn around now, he probably couldn’t without me helping to shift. On the other hand . . . My gaze drifts to his cell phone in the cup holder.

  “You promise not to tell Aunt Nic?” I ask.

  “Uh, no,” he says. “Actually, the fact that you asked me that makes me think I probably will want to tell her.” And when I scowl at him, he continues, “Look. Maybe I’ll agree to keep going, maybe I’ll flip a U on the highway and call your aunt right away. I won’t know which till I hear the truth. But you could at least tell me what crime I’m helping you commit.”

  “It’s not a crime,” I say at last.

  “Okay. So.” He nods. “Tell me the truth. And I promise, no matter what, I’ll always tell you the truth, too. Where are you taking me, CJ Ames?”

  I take a deep breath.

  “Bakersfield,” I say.

  And suddenly, it’s like I can hear the gears clicking in his brain.

  “That couple from last night?” he asks. “The ones who knew your mom?”

  I nod. “I need to get to that mural, the one my mom helped paint. That’s her tether—I know it. It’s my only way to draw her back to Earth.”

  “O . . . kay,” Jax says slowly. Like he’s thinking things through. “Only. Okay, say that really is her tether.”

  “It is.�
��

  “Say it is, and we get there, and you see the mural, and you have the feeling or whatever.” I nod, not sure what he’s so confused about. “I mean, then what? Every time you want to talk to your mom, you and your aunt have to drive to Bakersfield and touch a mural? Wouldn’t it be easier if you had a doorknob or something?”

  “I don’t have a doorknob,” I say. I’m feeling grumpy toward Jax, and I’m not totally sure why. “I have a mural. Anyway, you know what’s better than a doorknob? A whole door.”

  “A door?”

  “The mural covers the closet,” I explain. “I saw it in the photo. The closet has a sliding door. And closet doors”—I sit up a little higher in my seat, growing more sure of my plan as I say the words out loud—“come off their tracks. So I don’t need to bring Aunt Nic to Bakersfield every time she wants to talk to my mom. I can bring the door to her.”

  Jax takes his eyes off the road long enough to give me another look. “How do you know these people will even let you see the mural, let alone take the closet door off?”

  “They’ll let me,” I say. Spirit sent me this far. I know they’re not going to give up on me till I get what I need.

  When Jax darts his gaze to me again, his face is softer. “Are you sure this is what you want to do, CJ?” he asks.

  “I don’t have a choice,” I reply. “Spirit’s telling me what to do. I’m just going where they say.”

  Jax doesn’t answer for a few minutes. But he doesn’t reach for his phone, either.

  Finally, he says, “Can I tell you something I don’t get? How do you know when Spirit’s sending you a message and when it’s just a coincidence? I mean, with that story you told me last night, with the lady and her dog. Maybe that was Spirit, warning her about the tree, but maybe, like, the dog kept smelling a squirrel.”

  I just raise an eyebrow at him. Because Jax Delgado definitely isn’t the first person to try to tell me that the signs Spirit sends aren’t really signs at all. “Fine,” I tell him, to let him think he’s won the argument—just for a second. “Say the dog was smelling a squirrel.” And then I turn it on him. “How can you know it wasn’t Spirit who put the squirrel there, to make the dog bark?”