by Lisa Graff
I grip Gerald’s hand tighter. “Let me see that,” I say, trying to tug his arm closer.
“This old thing?” Gerald asks, pushing up his sleeve with his other hand.
The octopus on Gerald’s arm is nearly identical to the one I found on my wrist, only slightly larger. Nearly the exact same shape. Same profile, same image, same color. And just like the one on my wrist, there’s a message inside it, one letter in each of the eight tentacles.
“Jax!” I holler to the bozo in the truck. This time I need somebody else to see what I’m seeing. “Jax!”
“I see it,” Jax says. He’s already leapt out of the truck. He’s not scratching anymore. “Where did you get that?” he asks Gerald.
Gerald snorts. “You kids are definitely too young for tattoo parlors.”
“It’s a sign,” I explain. “For me.” Slow down. Why does Spirit want me to slow down?
But Gerald only pushes his sleeve down to hide the tattoo again. “Sorry, CJ,” he says. “This one was meant for me.”
He’s wrong, obviously, but it doesn’t really matter as long as I get the message. Only, there’s one thing I’m wondering.
“How come yours didn’t disappear?” I ask Gerald. “The octopus I got didn’t even last a minute.”
As soon as I say that, something on Gerald’s face changes.
“So you’ve been Charmed, too,” he says, eyebrows raised. Only he says “Charmed” with a soft ch sound, like “chandelier” or “chef.”
“Charmed?” Jax and I repeat.
“Haven’t figured it out yet?” I get the sense that Gerald is enjoying leaving us in the dark. “Took me a while, too. And it did disappear, same as yours. I just had my buddy re-create it in ink. What’d yours say?”
“Take heed,” I tell him.
He nods, thoughtful. “Good advice. You follow it?”
“Trying to. When did—?”
But Gerald cuts me off. “This is a mystery you’re going to have to solve on your own, CJ,” he tells me.
And with that, he’s off, tipping an imaginary hat at us as he heads back to his truck.
“Uh, that was weird,” Jax says, hoisting himself back into the driver’s seat. He spends a second checking the dashboard and seat and shifter, like he thinks maybe Gerald sabotaged us somehow. “What do you think ‘Charmed’ means?”
“No idea. Why do you think Spirit needed to send me another sign? I mean, I think we’re on the right path, because they didn’t say ‘Turn around’ or ‘Stop what you’re doing!’ but . . .”
“Well, none of those messages would fit inside an octopus,” Jax replies. He slams his door shut, concentrating so hard on starting up the truck that he doesn’t notice me giving him the stink eye. “Uh, you gonna help me shift or what?”
I shut my own door. “Ready? And . . . clutch,” I tell him, and we start up the truck together. Make our way back toward the 5 together.
Only, obviously, one of us is taking this trip a whole lot more seriously than the other one.
“You’re not even going to try to help me figure out what this new sign means?” I ask.
“It’s not a sign,” Jax says. He’s lots more sure of himself now that Gerald the Not a Murderer is gone. “It’s just a coincidence.”
I cannot narrow my eyes more than I currently am. “You honestly think that what happened back there—Ready-and-clutch!—was a coincidence? Three octopuses in two days? That’s not just a random thing that happens. Ready-and-clutch!” We merge back onto the freeway.
Jax checks over his shoulder, then switches into the middle lane. “Maybe there’s been tons of octopi all over the place, your whole life, only you never started noticing them till yesterday.”
I was wrong. My eyes can narrow even further. “Doesn’t it seem a little more likely that Spirit’s putting the octopuses there for me to find?”
“All I’m saying is you want them to be signs, so you think they are.”
“And you want them to be coincidences,” I reply.
Jax nods at that, like fair point. “Help me shift into fourth?”
I put my hand on the stick shift, then realize what I’m about to do. I pull away. “Slow down,” I say, repeating the message from Gerald’s tattoo.
“Wait, what?” Jax asks. Then, realizing what I mean, he lets out a huff. “CJ, seriously? We’re supposed to drive with the flow of traffic. Traffic is going more than forty miles an hour. I need to upshift.”
“Sorry,” I tell him. I raise both my hands in the air. “Just following orders from Spirit.”
“You are the most annoying human, CJ Ames,” he says. But he merges back into the right lane, where traffic is moving more slowly.
“I’m annoying? What about you, Mr. Freaked-Out-For-No-Reason? What was that back there? Gerald was being totally helpful, and you were being weird.”
“I was not being weird,” Jax argues. But he lifts his right hand from the steering wheel to scratch under his left sleeve again. When he sees me noticing, he pulls his hand away and slaps it back on the wheel. “It’s not weird to not want to get murdered, CJ.”
His words are angry, but there’s something else there. He’s like a porcupine, with his quills up, trying to keep me from getting at something tender.
I slouch back in my seat, arms over my chest, gazing out the window at the cars zooming around us. “You want to play the Geography Game?” I ask.
I kick Jax’s butt at the Geography Game, obviously. He seriously thinks he’s gonna stump me with “Phoenix,” like I can’t come up with any places that start with “X.”
“Xenia,” I say immediately.
“Uh, where’s that?” Jax replies. “You made that one up.”
“Xenia is a city in Ohio. I’ve been there.” There’s one in Illinois, too, but I’ve never been to that one. “Want to see it in the atlas?”
“No,” he says. “What letter do I have? ‘A’?”
“‘A,’” I agree. Then Jax goes silent for approximately fifteen minutes. “You are so bad at this game.”
“I’m thinking! There aren’t that many places that start with ‘A.’”
I count off on my fingers. “Anaheim, Azusa, Apple Valley, Arcadia . . . And that’s just within two hours of here.”
“All right, all right,” Jax grumbles. But there’s a laugh in there, I can hear it. “I give up. You win.”
“Yeah?” I sit up in my seat, excited. I mean, I knew I was gonna win, but still, it feels nice. “You gotta say, ‘CJ Ames is the Geography Game Champ of the Universe.’”
“I don’t know about the universe,” he says. “Definitely this truck, though.”
“Say it,” I instruct him, very seriously. “Say ‘Universe,’ or I’ll make you play another round.”
At that, he rolls down his window, sticks his head out as the wind zips past. And he shouts, “CJ Ames is the Geography Game Champ of the—! Whoa.”
As we crest the hill ahead, that’s when we see the accident. Major crash, three cars all smashed together in the middle lane.
“Holy . . .” Jax begins. It is ugly.
Together we downshift to second, then inch past the wreck in silence. Crushed metal. Scared people on the side of the road. The sound of sirens approaching.
“I hope everyone is okay,” Jax says in a hush.
And I don’t say anything, but here’s what I think.
Slow down.
That could’ve been us in that accident. And it wasn’t, because I followed the sign.
I lift my eyes and send up a thank-you. Obviously Spirit wants me to get to Bakersfield in one piece.
All I need to do is pay attention.
FIVE
“YOU REALLY THINK it’s a good idea to just knock on the door?” Jax asks as we climb the porch steps. I told him he could wait in the ca
r, but he said if I went in alone I’d probably get myself murdered, and then he’d lose his job for sure. “What if they won’t let you in? What if they’re not home, or this isn’t even their house, or they’re mean?”
“Their car is here,” I say. “And this is definitely their house.” I point to a wooden sign beside the door—THE EZOLDS. “And they seemed nice last night.”
“But what are you going to say? ‘Hello, people I don’t know. I want to go into your dead daughter’s bedroom to look at an old mur—’”
Ding-dong! I ring the bell.
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “Spirit wouldn’t lead me here if it wasn’t going to work.”
Meg whips open the door before I even hear her coming. “You kids selling gift wrap?” she greets us. Then she checks the sky like she’s figuring out what time it is. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
I stick out my hand, very polite. “Hi, Mrs. Ezold,” I say. “I’m CJ Ames. Monica Ames’s niece? From last night. This is Jax Delgado.”
All at once, Meg recognizes us. But she does not shake my hand. “You drove all this way to see me?” she says. I can’t tell if she’s about to burst into tears or shout at us. “Why?”
And that’s where I get stuck. Because I figured this part would be easy—Spirit got us this far, after all. But I guess I need to figure the rest out for myself.
So I say the first thing I can think of that I know will get us in the door.
“Ashlynne told us to come,” I lie.
* * *
• • •
“Seriously, what is wrong with you?” Jax hisses at me from the other end of the kitchen table. Meg is upstairs getting her husband. “I can’t believe you said that.”
The entire kitchen is decorated in a “climbing ivy” theme. Ivy on the wallpaper, ivy on the tiles behind the kitchen counter, ivy on the curtains. There are even ivy patterns on the backs of the chairs we’re sitting in.
I’m trying to avoid looking at Jax because I’m not exactly thrilled with myself at the moment, either. But still. “I got us inside, didn’t I?” I ask. Meg practically yanked our arms off pulling us in here, she was so excited. “That’s what Spirit wanted.”
Jax doesn’t seem convinced. “Did you see her face? She was so . . . happy.”
“Since when is it a bad thing to make someone happy?” I ask.
“But what are you even going to tell them? They’re expecting you to give them a message from their daughter. Are you just gonna make something up?”
I have no idea what I’m going to do. I’m trying not to think about it. “I’m sure Spirit will help me out, when I need them,” I say. But Jax won’t stop giving me his I’m-so-disappointed-in-you glare. “Oh, why don’t you just go back to scratching your arm and leave me alone?” I snap at him.
And that shuts him up, at least. Jax darts his eyes to the table, and I can tell he wants to scratch but won’t because I said something. For a second, I feel bad, but he’s sixteen—he shouldn’t be getting his feelings hurt by a twelve-year-old.
Anyway, that’s when the Ezolds come in.
“You know how I can tell you kids are lying about talking to my daughter?” That’s what Grant Ezold asks when he enters the room. He’s a huge man, fills the whole doorframe.
I don’t answer. I can tell I’m not supposed to.
Grant nears the table, one heavy footstep at a time. “Because my Ashlynne,” he booms, “would never disrupt my crossword puzzle.”
Scratch-scratch-scratch.
“Oh, lay off, grumpus,” Meg tells her husband. She shakes her head in our direction. “He’s just . . . like that,” she explains. “You kids’ve had a long drive. You drink coffee? Pot’s already made.” She heads to the coffee maker on the counter without letting us answer. “For the love of god, Grant, sit down and stop acting so goofy.” She makes angry eyes at her husband until he gives in and sits in the chair between me and Jax. I sort of wish he hadn’t. “Grant has trouble with mediums and stuff,” Meg explains as she gathers mugs from the cupboard.
“I don’t have trouble with it,” he replies, folding his arms over his chest. “It’s hooey.”
Beside me, Jax is on a major scratching spree, but I try to act normal. “Men usually take longer to accept the presence of Spirit,” I say, mostly to Meg, because I can tell Grant doesn’t exactly want to talk to me. “Aunt Nic says that’s because women are naturally attuned to emotional frequencies.”
Grant snorts, but Meg ignores him, pouring steaming coffee into one mug, then another. I get the feeling she has a lot of practice ignoring Grant’s snorts. “You’ll come around,” she tells her husband, setting down one mug for me and another for Jax. “Soon as we hear what Ashlynne wants to tell us.” I wrap my hands around my warm mug, breathe it in. The smell is strong, inviting. Almost enough to settle the sour feeling that’s growing in my stomach.
Meg slides herself into the seat beside me with two more coffees. Jax takes a sip of his, then immediately jerks his head up, eyes bulging, and gives me a look that clearly says, Don’t drink it.
“So,” Meg says, pouring cream into her mug. Despite her cheerful tone, she’s shaking. She dabs at some spilled cream with a paper towel while I clench my stomach tighter. “I knew Ashlynne was trying to reach us. Last night with your aunt, I said, didn’t I say, Grant? I said, ‘Ashlynne’s here, I know it, she’s trying to speak to us, this lady’s got it wrong.’ And the whole time, she was talking to you.” She picks up her mug. It’s white with maroon letters that say DON’T BOTHER ME—I’M RETIRED. “Who knew you had the Gift, too?” She smiles at me, sad-happy. “Your mother would’ve been so proud of you, you know. I always knew she was a special one, that Jennie June. She and Ashlynne were such good friends, in school, and then afterward they lost touch. It wasn’t till a couple years ago we heard your mom had died. All of us, we were just heartbroken. And when Ashlynne . . .” She chokes up. Can’t even finish the sentence.
Scratch-scratch-scratch.
I do not look at Jax. I do not.
Suddenly Meg sets her mug down, liquid sloshing over the top. “Okay, I can’t take it anymore!” she says, too loud. She is nervous laughing. “Just tell me, CJ. What’s Ashlynne saying?”
Scratch-scratch-scratch.
“Well, Mrs. Ezold—”
“Please, call me Meg. And the grumpy one is Grant.”
“Meg,” I say. And I wait for a sign from Spirit, but nothing comes.
Scratch-scratch-scratch.
Somewhere, a clock is ticking.
“Your daughter . . .” I begin. But I don’t know how to finish.
“This is nonsense,” Grant says. “This kid can’t talk to Ashlynne.” But Meg shushes him quick.
“Let’s just listen,” she tells her husband.
Tighter, tighter, I clench my stomach. If Spirit thinks I can do this all on my own, they must be right.
“Ashlynne says she loves you,” I tell them at last. Because what could be wrong with that? Meg brings her hand to her mouth, eyes welling up. “And she’s safe,” I go on, not looking at Jax. “She’s happy to connect with her other relatives Far Aw—”
Grant slaps his hand on the table so hard that more coffee goes sloshing. “I can’t,” he says. “This whole thing is some scam. This kid and her aunt scope out the biggest rubes, then she comes here to steal our—”
I put my hands up in the air. “I just want—”
“We know you’re not going to rob anyone, sweetie,” Meg says, handing me a paper towel. “Grant’s just terrified of what you’re going to say, that’s all.” And she shoots him a look like Enough. He harrumphs but stays quiet.
Scratch-scratch-scratch.
I’ve felt this sour feeling in my stomach exactly once before—back when I was five, and I thought it would be a good idea to eat an entire mega-bag of gummy pea
ch rings in one sitting. But unlike that time, I can’t just yack the feeling away.
Meg reaches out and grabs my hand. Squeezes it gently. “We can take it, CJ,” she says. “I promise. Just tell us.” She takes a big, shaky breath. “Does Ashlynne forgive us?”
“Forgive you?” I ask. I wasn’t expecting that. Absolutely everyone is watching me, waiting to hear what I’ll say. I’m sure Spirit is watching me, too.
Scratch-scratch-scratch.
What do I tell I them? I think up to Spirit. What if I get the answer wrong?
But if Spirit sends a message back, I don’t get it.
I drink a sip of my coffee, to give myself an extra second to think, then make exactly the same face Jax did. It is not good.
“I . . .” I say slowly.
I could make an excuse and leave right now, that’s what I’m thinking.
I pour cream into my coffee, and sugar. Three spoonfuls.
Or I could find a way to do what Spirit sent me here for.
“Meg,” I say. “Grant.”
I take a long, slow sip of coffee. Still disgusting.
“Ashlynne is telling me she would like to see her bedroom.”
* * *
• • •
The upstairs hallway is painted beige, but the door Meg reaches for is bright purple. It even says ASHLYNNE on it, scrawled there in pink, from when their daughter was just a kid, I bet. Meg’s hand shakes as she grips the door, like she’s not sure what she’s going to find when she opens it. Behind me I can hear Grant’s stompy footsteps and Jax’s scratching. My stomach is still sour—but I’m excited, too.
This is it, I think. My mother’s tether is right behind this door.
Only, it isn’t.
“This isn’t right,” I say, spinning around the room. Suddenly, my body is ice. “Where’s . . . ? This isn’t her room.”
“What do you mean?” Meg’s voice is shaking now, too. “Of course this is her room.” She turns to Grant, desperate, like he’ll understand. “Why would Ashlynne say this isn’t her room?”
