Messenger

by Carol Lynch Williams

  92

  Well, well, well.

  I didn’t have to do this.

  I could ignore it.

  If I wanted.

  Or train my mind to the Gift.

  If I wanted.

  And I didn’t.

  93

  It wasn’t my responsibility to take care of Tommie. No matter what I’d thought.

  Someone else could do it.

  94

  “Kiss me here, before we get to school,” I said. I needed to get rid of this ghost feeling. Get rid of this I’m responsible feeling.

  Buddy didn’t even hesitate. He pulled the car over to the side of the road. “Here?” he said, shutting off the engine.

  We were a good ways out of Cassadaga.

  I could taste the flowery chamomile still. “We don’t want anyone watching us,” I said as I leaned over the emergency brake to him.

  “Right,” he said. His lips touched mine. “Mmmm, sweet.”

  “Thank you.”

  Then Buddy pulled away. “What do you mean, anyone watching us? We don’t do PDA. I believe in keeping what’s important to me all my own.”

  “What?” I said, my voice going all screechy.

  He smiled at me.

  For a moment I forgot where I was. I was that comfortable.

  “Evie.”

  The windows steamed up. Expect Florida weather to get things steamy before they even have a chance to on their own.

  “What?”

  “What makes you think people been watching us kiss?”

  I looked out the window.

  No ghosts. No Tommie. I shrugged.

  “It’s your dad, isn’t it? Your JimDaddy.” Buddy took a tight hold of the wheel.

  “What? Gross. Are you kidding me? No. Ick.”

  Buddy ran his hands around the steering wheel. He sure looked cute when he was bothered. I let down my window to get a bit of cooler air in the car. A mosquito buzzed in. I killed it.

  “He used to watch me and Tommie.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Folded my hands in my lap. “Watch you? Like watch watch you?”

  “Like ‘I’m a father and I have my eye on you’ watch us.”

  “I see.”

  Buddy started the car. “You know,” he said, switching the car into gear. “It’s been years. I’d like to move on. But there are so many reminders.”

  He pulled out in the street without even looking in the rearview mirror.

  Whoever was in the car behind us laid on the horn, and Buddy flipped him off out the back window. Not that anyone could see from the steam. “We gotta get to class,” he said.

  95

  So maybe I had decided I would ignore my ghosty seeing abilities.

  Maybe I had decided I would not perfect them.

  Maybe I had decided I would not let Tommie enter my head again, because that’s where I wanted my momma to be. And my little sister. And my aunt and almost-boyfriend and my stepfather.

  Just no Tommie.

  So why was she in my mind?

  I would have to work harder.

  96

  Tommie waited at the double doors at the school. Glared at me and Buddy, drifted behind, on my heels.

  “If I could,” Tommie said, “I’d appear right now and make Justin see me.”

  I said nothing.

  “Remind him of us together.”

  I flapped my hand at her in a go away way.

  “He was mine first.”

  Buddy walked inside the school, like it wasn’t even raining. Tall and beautiful and anxious and worried and how could he be so cute and I liked him and wanted to be with him and there he was, opening the door for me, then saying, “See ya, Evie,” and leaving me standing there, rain spattered.

  He didn’t even look me in the eye.

  I watched Buddy take off down the hall. Kelly zoomed out of nowhere, swinging up next to him. He said something to her. I saw his mouth move. That mouth I’d just kissed. They walked away together. He didn’t turn. Didn’t wave.

  I gulped.

  Were we done? The two of us? Done because of JimDaddy?

  Did Tommie have something to do with this?

  My stomach clenched and my hair felt damp. I could tell it had gone frizzy. I . . . I wanted to weep.

  I wiped at the water on my face. Fanned my T-shirt. My throat felt tight.

  Tommie came closer. “You two are late.” She checked her wrist as if she wore a watch.

  “Did you make him leave?” I said.

  “I wish.”

  “Tommie,” I said. “I like him.”

  Her face grew tense. “I did too. I loved him.”

  “Now he’s with . . .”

  “That awful Kelly. She went to school with him from sixth grade on.”

  All around us people hurried. They hollered and laughed and kissed and squealed and swore and fought. Bumping into me. Walking through Tommie, who shivered each time it happened.

  My heart pounded.

  I would ignore her. I had to. I needed my simple life back.

  Make her go away for good.

  “You can’t make me go away,” she said.

  I bit at my lip.

  I clipped down the hall to the first restroom I could find, the teachers’ lounge. I would blow-dry my shirt and pull my hair into a braid or something. Knot it. Chop it off.

  Why couldn’t I have Aunt Carol’s skill at hair design?

  Why did I have to have this Gift?

  I kept up my planning. I would hide till school was over (maybe not in the lounge but some other bathroom), then walk home.

  The smell of cigarette smoke assaulted me when I stepped in the lounge. This room was too small for smoking, with a couple of sofas and a microwave and way over that way, the restroom door.

  “I see you. You see me.”

  Tommie was there. Arms folded. Legs crossed at the ankles.

  The room was empty. Well, you know. Except . . . I skittered across the floor, quick, so a teacher wouldn’t see me in here, and ran into the bathroom.

  Keep calm, Evie. Have a backbone. Resolve not to use the Gift.

  “Get going,” I said to my reflection. I locked the door.

  Tommie pushed through the wood.

  I turned on the hand dryer. The rain splotches weren’t that bad. Tears dripped on my shirt, matching the droplets of rain.

  Tommie scooted closer. The hot air rippled through her, but she didn’t seem to notice. This was my first indication Tommie wasn’t real. And the door thing, which I hadn’t seen until this very minute.

  “Why are you crying?” she asked. Her voice was tender. She put her hand on my shoulder, and my skin tingled under hers. “Oh! I can touch you.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t say, You know that boy you left behind? I like him more than you know. And now he’s dumped me.

  So instead I said, “Go.”

  “You’re too late,” Tommie said. Her face was dead serious. No pun intended. “You and I have bonded. We’re inseparable.”

  “Paulie said—”

  “He’s wrong. I’m here for good.”

  The tears dried up and a bit of Messenger steel went down my spine.

  “We’ll see about that,” I said.

  97

  In biology, the long test tubes on each table. People wearing safety goggles. Me partnered with Jo Dorman. Bunsen burners.

  “I’m here.”

  98

  The gym, where we all stood as spots and Vicki Finlay jumped on the trampoline and then without warning rolled right off—midleap—and onto the floor.

  “I’m here.”

  99

  Even in the lunchroom, where the Sloppy Joes, made with soy protein and a little beef, staine
d the plastic plates a greasy orange. Aunt Odie would have been disgusted. I sure was, and I wasn’t even eating this crap. My lunch had been packed by a pro.

  “I’m here.”

  100

  Me: Please. Go away.

  Tommie:

  101

  That night.

  Late.

  After I cried for twenty minutes in the shower . . .

  After I helped with dinner and Baby Lucy and watched Momma and JimDaddy sitting apart on the sofa when we should have all been watching Hook, one of JimDaddy’s favorite movies of all time . . .

  After I had walked to my aunt’s house and let her try to hug and feed my sadness away . . .

  I went to bed.

  The house was silent, and I hadn’t seen Tommie for hours. Was she gone? I flipped off the light and snuggled myself into bed, thinking maybe, maybe I was free, maybe all I had to do was ask her to go and she would.

  So why was I sad? This was what I wanted.

  Today was too long. Too gloomy. I’d lost Buddy and Tommie and there was weird stuff going on with JimDaddy and Momma. Their relationship. I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I couldn’t ignore any of this. My cells ached and I was sure it was because the Gift pulled at them, trying to make me do what it thought I was supposed to do.

  Tommie’s face materialized next to mine on my pillow.

  “We’re friends,” she whispered.

  I drifted off toward sleep.

  An ache filled my heart and I knew what I had to do, because what would it be like to be all alone?

  102

  And in my heart I knew I was a Messenger, through and through.

  103

  Shhh. You sleep. You rest.

  Everything will be okay.

  104

  “Look,” I said to Aunt Odie the next afternoon. I’d come to her place like she asked.

  She stared in my eyeballs.

  I sifted flour and baking powder together. Then salt.

  “Are you thinking loving thoughts?” Aunt Odie said. Behind her the sun broke through the window and crowned my aunt with a halo.

  “Not really.” I knew what was coming.

  “Then you can’t work on the food.”

  Aunt Odie waited until I said, “Fine.”

  I clapped my hands free of ingredients. Flour poofed in the air like a cloud. “I better stop working.”

  “Yes, you better had. You know what makes this product the best in the land.”

  “Love,” we said at the same time.

  I pulled the apron over my head and threw it on the table (with no love), then stomped around the kitchen like I might make an exit any second (also with no love). Aunt Odie took my hand. Led me into the living room. She plopped down in a rocker in a dusty puff.

  “Climb on up onto my lap,” she said. She patted her knees. “You know I will hold you long as your feet don’t touch the floor.”

  I gave a bit of a nod. Only a woman who dreamed recipes and was assisted in the creative cooking process by the dead would hold me, no matter that I was taller than her, no matter if her own feet had a hard time reaching the floor when she sat in the rocker.

  Aunt Odie’s been saying I can sit on her lap since I can remember. Maybe even longer. I bet she said that to me first thing, right after I was born and she held me in her arms that early morning when it rained so hard and the weather was so rough three tornadoes were spawned. She probably said these words, “I’ll hold you on my lap as long as your feet don’t touch the floor,” ’cause her momma said it to her and her grandmother before that and her great-grandmother—you get the picture.

  In slow motion, I walked to where Aunt Odie sat. I eased myself onto her lap. Pulled my feet up so not even my toes would touch the flowered carpet.

  The rocker moved and I let out a sigh. No matter what anyone says, fifteen is not too old to have your auntie hold you and soothe away the rumples that ghosts can cause. And boys. And parents, too.

  “This is the way of the Messengers,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I whispered my answer.

  Outside, far away, I heard a siren go off and a dog howled.

  “There’s a reason you are the way you are, Evie,” Aunt Odie said after a few minutes of rocking. The words came out like a new song. “A reason I am the way I am. A reason everyone is the way they are. We each got duties. Some are easier known for a few of us. Like you and me. We’re lucky. We know what we are called for here on earth. Some people go through trials doing this, that, and the other thing trying to settle on what they’re supposed to do here in life. And some don’t find out till they have gone from this life to the next. When it’s too late. And then maybe they have wasted their chance at serving others and making the world a better place.” She let out a long sigh, like air being released from a balloon. “You should be glad about that, Evie. That you know.”

  I didn’t answer, but I thought.

  Maybe I didn’t want to help others.

  Maybe I didn’t want to leave the world a better place.

  I rolled my eyes at myself. Of course I did.

  Aunt Odie was right.

  At least, that’s the way I felt as she rocked me till the sun slipped away and all the world was covered with an evening blanket and I needed to get home so I could hold my baby sister, tight, on my own lap.

  Before I left her place, Aunt Odie patted my shoulder, handed me a casserole dish that was steaming hot, and said, “Listen, shug. I think they need to tell you what’s going on down to your place.”

  I narrowed my eyes at my aunt. “What are you saying?”

  Aunt Odie shifted from one foot to the other.

  “It’s your momma,” she said after a long minute.

  105

  I ran the whole way home, casserole dish in front of me like a gift from one of the Three Wise Men. When had eight houses gotten to be such a distance? And what was wrong with Momma? Was she sick? Dying?

  “No, no, no,” I said.

  “Evie,” Buddy hollered. Then he was jogging beside me. “I been thinking about us.” The evening was a sepia-colored photograph, tinged blue.

  Oh great.

  “You want I should help you with that?” He reached for the casserole dish.

  I shook my head.

  He said, “I wonder if maybe . . . maybe we’re moving too fast.”

  I swallowed. Tears sprang to my eyes. “I gotta get to my momma.”

  Then I jogged off, leaving Buddy behind, up my sidewalk and into the house.

  106

  I stood in the foyer, the chandelier sparkling, scattering fairy light everywhere.

  “Where you been?” Tommie said. “Things are happening here.”

  I clomped into the kitchen.

  Had Buddy just broken up with me? And the two of us not even dating?

  I grabbed a rooster oven mitt and set the dish on it, then swung around to meet Tommie. She was nose to nose with me. I took a step backward.

  “Personal space,” I said.

  “That smells real good.” Tommie breathed in deep, closing her eyes.

  “It’s made with—”

  “Love,” JimDaddy said. He stood in the doorway. “Who you talking to, Evie?” His voice wasn’t more than a whisper. And had he . . . I looked closer . . . had he been crying?

  What should I do with my hands?

  And my words?

  What should I say?

  “Tell him,” Tommie said. “Tell him I’m here.”

  Momma appeared behind JimDaddy before I could speak, and it was clear she was in no mood to be messed with. You know those old cartoons that show smoke rising from a character’s ears? That was my mother now.

  “What’s going on here?” I said, like I was the parent.

  Baby Lucy came in
to the kitchen next. Scooting. She flumped on her bottom to sit herself up and grinned. I could see a bit of one tooth showing through her gums.

  My mother and stepfather were silent. Not acknowledging each other.

  Baby Lucy crawled over to Tommie and cooed at her.

  Tommie grinned. Twisted a baby curl around her ghost finger.

  “I been cleaning all day,” Momma said, “and your JimDaddy here come home and plopped on the bed like I hadn’t just made it.”

  We all looked at him. Even Baby Lucy. And Tommie.

  JimDaddy didn’t say anything, just sank into a chair.

  “I been watching your sister.” Momma looked burnt around the edges.

  I wasn’t sure what to say.

  JimDaddy let out a huge sigh. A big, huge, gigantic sigh.

  “Tell him I’m near,” Tommie said. She’d drifted to him when I wasn’t paying attention.

  “She’s mad at me ’cause of me missing the girls,” JimDaddy said.

  If he woulda shouted at me, I wouldn’t have been more shocked.

  “Your girls?”

  “Is he . . . ,” Tommie asked. “Is he talking about me?”

  “Are you talking about . . .”

  “His family what passed on,” Momma said. She got this funny look on her face like maybe she understood just how bad that sounded.

  “I can’t get away from the sadness,” JimDaddy said.

  Momma didn’t say anything and neither did I.

  “Daddy,” Tommie said. “Daddy.”

  She slid to her father, and Baby Lucy watched Tommie go.

  “I don’t mean to feel this way,” JimDaddy said.

  And Momma said, “Jim, I know that. I understand losing the love of your life. I get it. But you close up when you start your mourning. And the mourning’s been going on since we started dating. I can handle being in second place. But you’re cold to me. You ignore me. That’s what I can’t bear.” Her voice was like melted chocolate, so soft and velvety and kind. Plus sad. Momma, I could see, was sad too.