“I am not sneaking. This is my room.”
I threw my clothes off and into a pile next to the rocker, then crawled into the bed in just my panties. I didn’t even brush my teeth. Or put on a shirt. So there!
Or wash my face, and Buddy’s smell was all over my skin. Was that cologne? My heart flipped around. I settled the sheet over my body. Thank goodness the AC was on. One thing about kissing is it raises one’s internal temperature. And one thing about JimDaddy is he is not a tightwad contractor. Nope. He just withholds important information about a star witness.
I flopped onto my side, away from where Tommie glowed in the corner.
“Gotta sleep,” I said.
When she spoke, she was right near my ear. He voice was sad as I expected a dead girl’s voice to be. Now that I knew she was dead, I mean. Really dead.
“I saw you with him.”
Could she strangle me, right here in bed, like in the movies?
Would she?
I touched my throat.
Tommie sniffed.
“Justin was my first and only boyfriend,” she said, and her words were brokenhearted.
Like that I remembered walking in on Momma when I was about six years old, and she was crying like she might never stop because my real daddy was gone and I wouldn’t ever remember him.
Did the dead feel as heartbroken as the leftover living? How fair was that?
“We were going to get married.”
Married? She’d only been twelve or thirteen. . . .
“He didn’t know. I’d made those secret plans in my heart. Even found a wedding dress and saved it online.”
I looked at nothing in the dark.
“You were kissing him, Evie.”
“Listen, Tommie,” I said, and sat up, keeping the sheet up around my neck.
But she was gone.
56
The next morning, me, Momma, and Baby Lucy got up early so we could talk and have breakfast together as a family. With JimDaddy. He told me everything, and I listened, squeezing Baby Lucy tight like a boa constrictor. Nah, not really. But she did look at me, brows furrowed, when I gave her a little more hugging than necessary.
“Sorry, Baby,” I said, my lips in her curls.
Momma wiped down the kitchen counters. They gleamed. The sink sparkled. I could tell she stayed on the edge of things so she could hear what we had to say to each other.
I glanced at the doorknob. Shivered.
“You listening?” Momma asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I was listening all right.
Tommie was nowhere to be seen. Did she watch us? See us all the time? Even in the bathroom?
Yuck.
This is what JimDaddy said:
Him and his wife were separated for more than two years. (Separated before their divorce? More news to me.)
He got the house (this house, with the jiggly doorknob) because his ex moved, with Tommie, to Daytona.
He’d let Tommie redecorate her room, and they spent every other weekend together and three days every other week (the best parts of his life), and then Tommie and her mother were killed in a car accident after visiting him.
“Me,” JimDaddy said. “It was raining and I insisted my ex bring Tommie here after they all went to the show. It was my time. My time to see my baby. I didn’t care but that I got it. No matter the weather.”
His voice rose. “You know how it rains in the summer.”
His eyes filled with tears that didn’t fall.
I nodded.
Momma looked like she had witnessed the wreck with her very own eyes.
JimDaddy said, “Your momma and me, we’d started dating a few months before the accident, Evie.”
Momma turned away then. Walked over to the stove. She had stopped stirring the oatmeal, and I could hear the bubbles popping, making a for-sure mess on the stove. Momma gathered her hair with one hand, kept her back to me. Was she crying? About Tommie? For her husband?
“You were together that long before you said anything to me?” I said. “I mean, I knew you were around but I didn’t know know.”
“It wasn’t her fault.” JimDaddy’s voice dropped to almost nothing. “She told me about you, and I couldn’t bring myself to meet you. Not for more than a year. I couldn’t.”
I nodded. Remembering. Remembering how Momma said to me one day, out of the blue, “If Jim Fletcher doesn’t meet you soon, we are done.” I’d said, “Who?” “Someone I’ve been seeing,” Momma had said. She’d wept for a week, too, after that announcement.
So what? I hadn’t met my gonna-be stepfather. I hadn’t cared one way or another if Momma stayed or went.
Except.
Except Momma was broken up about not being with him. I could see that. Those days grief was all over her face. In lines and worry and sadness.
“Whatever,” I had said. I was watching an old Legend of Korra show when Momma mentioned the ultimatum.
Not two weeks later Momma took me to meet JimDaddy, and he stared at me a good long time, not saying a word, just adjusting his tie (’cause we were at his office with the indoor palm trees), and then he’d scooped me up and held me tight for a long time. I hadn’t dared to move.
It’s uncomfortable when a strange man grabs onto you like that.
“She looks like you,” JimDaddy had said. They were married not long after.
Now I stood, Baby Lucy on my hip.
When JimDaddy talked, I could hear the anguish. Could see it sweating off him. Could smell it on his breath. It was too much.
“I still miss her,” he whispered. “Them.”
And he cried.
My heart twisted.
“I gotta get, Momma. Me and Aunt Odie are headed back to Cassadaga.”
I handed Baby Lucy to my stepfather, then walked out of the door and down the street to my aunt’s house, trying to breathe all the fresh Florida air I could get to keep the sadness away.
57
That whole thing.
That whole thing was awful.
Seeing JimDaddy, crying like that.
Let me forget, I thought, and ran the rest of the way to Aunt Odie’s.
58
Too many people to avoid now.
JimDaddy.
Buddy.
And worst of all, Tommie.
Paulie better have something to tell me.
Yes, he better.
59
Paulie waited on the front porch. Aunt Odie (who was sworn off girdles, even around Paulie) and him didn’t gaze at each other or look at each other or giggle.
“Girl,” he said. “Odie.”
He was so tall, Paulie almost had to duck to get back into his house/place of business.
There were the walls, purple as a bruise. And there was that sign, blue-eyed, trembling out the invitation for someone to come on in. And here we were. My knees felt weak as cake batter.
This morning the sky was full of promises. No rain at all. Not that I could see. Fog settled over the grass, swirling like something moved through it. Paulie gestured for us like he had things to do, and we went into the darkened home.
“What you got for us, Paulie?” Aunt Odie said.
Both of them were down to business. No time to waste. Give me what you got.
“Sit,” he said. “Same places as before. Can’t disturb structure.”
I sat. They did too.
Paulie didn’t reach for my hand this time. He cleared his throat, pulled a plate of shortbread cookies out of the darkness, then two cups of coffee and a glass of milk.
The coffee overpowered the smell of sweet butter. My stomach buckled. What was Tommie doing now? Or Buddy? I hadn’t spoken to him in hours. Hadn’t responded to calls, hadn’t responded to his texts. Nothing.
“You sure we have time for this?” Aunt Odie said, then sipped at the coffee before Paulie could answer.
“Lookit,” I said. Something crawled up the back of my throat. I gulped. Hard. “I gotta go to school. We don’t have time to linger.”
“My recipe,” Aunt Odie said. She popped a cookie in her mouth. “Good job, Paulie.”
“Thank you.”
“I said,” I said.
“We heard you.” Aunt Odie wasn’t mad. Just doing what she does second best. Eating. First best, cooking. First-first best, loving nieces.
“The girl’s right,” Paulie said. He sipped at his coffee too, then leaned back in his chair.
“You won’t be late,” Aunt Odie said. “I’ll run you right up to the door.”
That I could believe. Aunt Odie driving across the front lawn of the high school, under the flag, and down the sidewalk to my classroom.
Darkness settled around us. When I glanced toward the window, I could see the day, but no light seemed to pass the glass.
“It’s like this, Evie,” Paulie said. “We all got Gifts, right? Everyone, near about in your family, they are aware of what they can do.”
“That’s right,” Aunt Odie said. “Go ahead and drink some, eat a cookie.” She handed me three.
Out of nervousness, I chugged at the milk that was cold as a Popsicle. Brain freeze. Brain freeze!
Paulie’s voice didn’t have a lot of ups and downs to it. He droned on, Aunt Odie interrupting. My head ached. My eyes were raw.
“Some people reach in and pull at the sensitive areas.”
“Now Paulie,” Aunt Odie said.
“Get your mind out of the gutter,” Paulie said, and they both laughed.
The pain was gone and I could see now.
“There’re people like me who sense things, like the future. Or worries of the living and dead. Helping in ways I can.”
Could see the shape of the room.
“There are people like your aunt, who get messages from the dead. Or your momma, who has inherited her abilities.”
Could see the furniture. The lamps. The woven rugs on the floor.
“Then some, they can taste what a spirit wants you to know. Others smell direction. Still others hear voices.”
Could see the family waiting on the sofa. The dad, who checked his watch. The mom, who held a baby on her lap. A little girl, who stood next to her father, hand on his knee.
“Remember Horton Hendley?” Aunt Odie said. “She lets spirits take over her body to communicate to loved ones.” Aunt Odie ate another cookie. “Remember that, Paulie?” She turned to me. “Horton resides in Pensacola.”
Okay.
He nodded, smiling, his teeth like Chiclets. “Special gift, for sure.”
“Sure is a pretty thing,” Aunt Odie said. “She sure is.”
And the man waiting in a wingback chair, hat in hands.
And the crowd at the windows.
That’s why the sun wouldn’t come in. Too many people.
Wait.
Wait, wait, wait.
I sipped at the milk again, hand trembling, and the door bulged with more waiting people, pushing, trying, silent. And there was Tommie.
“Tommie?” She was gone at her name.
“Excuse me?” Paulie said, and Aunt Odie put her hand on my arm, a hand as hot as an iron.
“And you, Evie, you have a little bit of it all—with the gifts and privileges of seeing the dead. Communicating. Socializing. Healing.”
The dead.
All around us.
Right now.
“Uh.”
“Now drink your milk.” Aunt Odie pat-patted me. “We gotta git.”
People pressed in around the table. They all looked so . . . worried. So helpless. No one said anything.
“Now listen,” Paulie said, pushing back his chair. He took a hat from the man standing close behind him and put it on his own head. “You concentrate. Rein in the Gift. Control it. Don’t let it control you.”
“That hat,” I said, pointing. My words were like the fog.
Paulie ran his hands around the brim. “My favorite,” he said. And then, “Focus, Evie. You can do it.”
60
“Focus, Evie.”
I should be scared.
Terrified.
A wall had come down. A curtain had been opened.
I could see them all here. Milling about. Crowding inside.
But I wasn’t afraid. I shifted. Closed my eyes.
They didn’t seem to want anything from me. Of course not. They waited to see Paulie.
I peered at them again. There were no severed limbs. No blood. No guts.
Just people, all shapes and sizes and ages and colors, who moved without effort, who had varying degrees of light coming from their skin.
“They’re worried,” I said.
“You need to focus, Evie.”
No, I wanted to say, you focus, Paulie. This house of yours is full of spirits waiting for . . . for what?
I didn’t tell Paulie. No way. He might faint knowing what I saw in his front room and out on the porch and in the line waiting to come into this place. I guess I would have said, At least they’re acting all mannerly. No one’s pushing and shoving.
As me and Aunt Odie got in the Cadillac to drive off, another car pulled in. A true flesh-and-blood car. A man in a suit climbed out of the Kia, and from the line of ghosts that made its way around the house (close enough to touch the building) stepped a woman in a short skirt and jacket. Her hair was done up nice. She drifted over to him, her body trembling a little like Jell-O does if you hit into the table. Her glow grew as they neared each other.
“Go on in,” Aunt Odie said when the man hesitated on the first step. The dead pushed near. The woman tried to take the man’s hand. “Paulie’s the best. You looking to find your future?”
“No, I lost my sister,” he said. His face was like a broken dish.
The woman gazed at me. She said, “You tell Warren it’s okay,” and I could smell roses. “My passing is still new for him. For us.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “Tell him things are fine.”
I looked at Aunt Odie. She put the car in reverse. A shiver ran right up my spine. It felt like my nerves played in my hair, making knots.
The woman slid to the window and I almost screamed. “Tell him,” she said.
Aunt Odie said, “I cannot wait to get me something hot for breakfast. My stomach’s growling. You hear it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said all whispery. Even my eyebrows felt electrified.
“Let’s git,” Aunt Odie said just as the woman said, “Now, please. If you don’t mind. If it’s not too much trouble.”
The sun broke the horizon, slicing through clouds. The mist burned off the yard and the dew glittered like baubles.
“Wait,” I said to Aunt Odie. “Stop.”
The car rolled a few feet more as she slowed.
The man knocked on the door now, and I could hear Paulie calling out that we should go, he had an appointment and did we want to scare away business?
“Mister.”
He knocked again, and Paulie opened the door wide. “Go on now,” he said, waving at us. He wore that hat. Why? To the man he said, “Just family. Come on in, Mr. Bargio. They’re leaving.”
“Hey. Mister.” I tried to holler, but my throat was coated with his sorrow and I couldn’t say it louder than the sound a mouse makes on a lamp shade.
But he heard me. Mr. Bargio turned. His face was drawn. Sad. His eyes broke my heart.
“She said . . .” I gulped air like a fish pulled out of the water. “Your sister said, ‘It’s okay.’”
Mr. Bargio hesitated.
All of the dead looked at me. All of them.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s okay,” I said. “She said it’s okay. She’s fine. And then to the others, “I can’t help you. I gotta get to school.”
“You saw her?” Mr. Bargio asked.
I nodded.
“Is there anything else?”
I shook my head. “No. Not that she said to me.”
Paulie, Mr. Bargio, and the dead stared at me.
Aunt Odie mighta swallowed her tongue.
“Let’s git,” I said.
61
“You gonna tell me what just happened?” Aunt Odie rested one hand on the steering wheel. With the other she patted at my wrist, where I’d tied a friendship bracelet the first day of summer. I saw now the string was grubby. Me and Pearl would have to make new ones. This had flour crusted on it.
“No,” I said, and kept my eyes on the road for more of the dead. They gathered, I saw, at all the shops here in Cassadaga. They wandered close to the buildings, like they were looking for a place to shop. Walked up steps. Stood on covered porches. Marched down the sides of the road. Touched the houses.
“Sure you can’t talk about it?”
The sun blinded me.
“I’m sure.”
62
It was too sacred to talk about.
63
I didn’t know anything about this Gift, except that.
The dead being here was sacred.
64
At first I thought they would be everywhere, like in that movie from a million years ago about the kid who sees the dead.
But they weren’t. The throngs thinned out as soon as we left Cassadaga. There was a straggler or two headed into town.
But the farther from Cassadaga we drove, the fewer there were.
Did they need to communicate with the living? Did they need Paulie, and all the others, who read palms and tea leaves and tarot cards?
And there. There they were in the graveyard, right there at the edge of that old churchyard.
Fine! That made sense! But why was Tommie at my place?
Messenger Page 9
