I focused on the conversation in front of me. Diana was speaking to my mom. Lady Azura had followed her up the stairs and was standing at the door of the room. This was really weird to see, as Lady Azura never climbed stairs anymore.
“Natalie, honey,” said Diana in a soothing voice. She crossed the room and sat down on my mom’s bed. My mom sat with her knees up, her arms clasped around them, her shoulders slightly hunched, like she was bracing herself for something.
“Julie has told her mother that you said you were seeing things. Hearing people speak. Paranormal things. Is that true?”
There followed a long silence. The clock ticked. The tension in the room was palpable. At last my mom spoke.
“Um, well, I might have said something along those lines to Julie,” my mom said as if she was struggling to remember. “But I was, um, just kidding around. Like, no big deal.”
“Could this be the result of spending so much time with your grandmother?” asked Diana.
“Now just a minute—” began Lady Azura indignantly, but Diana interrupted her.
“Maybe just hearing her talk about it so much has put these ideas into your head?” prompted Diana. “Wishful thinking or something?”
“Um, yes!” said my mom, looking relieved. “That’s totally it. I must have just been listening to Lady Azura talking about it so much that I just thought it sounded cool. That’s probably what happened. Because really, I was just kidding. I don’t see ghosts. Or hear them. That would be totally weird and awful, right, Mom?”
The hard, tense lines in Diana’s face softened. My mother had told her just what she had wanted to hear.
But Lady Azura’s face fell. She looked so disappointed. I wanted to rush across the room and hug her, but of course I couldn’t. I turned to look at my mother. She was avoiding looking at Lady Azura. She must have felt terrible.
You should feel terrible, I wanted to tell my mother. I couldn’t believe the way she had hurt Lady Azura.
The vision ended.
I sat there holding the diary, feeling betrayed by my own mother.
I scanned the rest of the entry. I read how Diana had asked Lady Azura to leave. How my mom felt really badly about all of it, but blamed her “stupid powers” as she had begun calling them, for everything. How if she could have one wish, just one, it would be more than anything that she could make these powers go away.
I closed the book.
Chapter 11
I woke up early Tuesday morning. I was still tired, but I couldn’t sleep anymore—probably because I had fallen asleep so early. After putting the diary away, I’d gone downstairs and had a quiet dinner of leftover soup with my dad. He and I shared a turkey sandwich along with the soup. My dad looked like he’d had a long day too.
Lady Azura’s client had stayed past eight p.m., and when I saw how tired she looked, I didn’t have the heart to ask her if we could do our séance. There was still plenty of time, I told myself. Plus, I knew my heart wouldn’t have been in it. I was too upset about my mom.
I had done a lot of tossing and turning all night, thinking about my mother. How disappointed I felt. Wondering why she’d even wanted me to look at this diary. Why she’d bothered to send Duggan to tell me where to find it. Was she trying to tell me how to get rid of my own powers? Maybe that’s why her spirit had never appeared for me.
Maybe she didn’t want me to see her. Didn’t even want me to be able to.
I pulled out the diary from beneath my bed, where I’d stashed it the night before. Opened it to the entry I’d left off at.
Friday, September 7
I’m ashamed of what I did, Diary. But I have to live my life, right? All I want is to be normal. To have these spirits go away and stop bothering me. I hate these stupid powers. My grandmother is probably upset with me, and I don’t blame her. But she likes seeing spirits. I don’t. Not one bit. I wish with all my heart that I could make them stop.
Several days passed without another entry. And then I read this.
Wednesday, September 19
Sorry I’ve been away for so long, Diary. But the best thing has happened! My powers are gone! I think for good! It’s been almost a week since I had an “encounter.” And yesterday I rode my bike over to Lady Azura’s house, even though Mom says I am not allowed to go over there since their big fight. But I wanted to test it out. Usually when I’m over there, that’s when I have the most problems. But yesterday I didn’t see one single spirit or hear any weird voices. Hooray!
My grandmother asked me all kinds of questions about my mom. She seems really upset about the fight. I feel bad that I kind of caused the fight. But she was really nice to me. I think she’s as convinced as my mom is that I made it all up just to get attention. That I was never able to really see spirits. That’s fine with me if that’s what she thinks. She did ask me to promise to tell her if I ever start seeing spirits so we could talk about it together. I promised, but I had my fingers crossed behind my back. Hopefully my powers are gone for good, though!
I decided I’d read enough.
I closed the book, got out of bed, and opened my closet. Standing on tiptoes, I shoved it way up on the highest shelf, behind a pair of old boots that didn’t fit. I wasn’t going to read it anymore. I felt no connection at all to my mom. I didn’t want anything more to do with the book. It just made me feel worse. But at least it explained why Lady Azura had told me that my mother did not possess any powers.
As I walked into school later that morning, I felt my ruby crystal vibrating again. Was it trying to tell me something about Mason? Maybe I should make more of an effort than I’d been making.
I found Mason trying to cram his sports bag into his locker. He was jamming it in with his foot. It looked like he’d have a tough time getting the door to close on it.
“Hey,” I said, turning to lean against the row of lockers next to his and staring down with amusement as he tried to readjust the bag.
“Stupid bag,” he mumbled. “Hey yourself.”
“So, how’ve you been? It’s been a while since I’ve seen you.”
Mason screwed up his face and looked adorably puzzled. “Didn’t I see you on Sunday at the arcade?”
“Oh, right!” I laughed. I was making a mess of this. I decided to just plunge right in. “So listen, do you want to try and go out again? Since our get-together got kind of—cut short?”
He turned to me. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Maybe we can stay away from the crowds this time. Maybe this coming Saturday. We could go for pizza in Harbor Isle. But, um, maybe we shouldn’t make a big deal of it at school. Like, just pretend we’re not, like, a couple.”
I blinked at him, not sure what he meant. “Okay. Why?”
He shrugged. “Just because, well, I don’t know. You and I, we, um, give off a lot of energy when we’re in the same place at the same time. I think other people sense it. Me with my, you know, and you with your, you know. You know?”
I didn’t really know. But I guessed he meant the fact that he had powers and so did I. That somehow that wasn’t a good combination. I opened my mouth and then closed it again, not sure what to say.
The bell rang.
“Got to get to class,” I said. “Good luck with that bag.”
I headed off. I didn’t feel great about our conversation. Why would we need to pretend? It seemed wrong somehow. Was I misunderstanding what he had meant?
Just before lunch, Mason flagged me down near the water fountain outside the cafeteria.
“What’s up?” I asked him. “Are you sure this is wise? I thought we weren’t supposed to be seen talking together,” I added teasingly. I hoped he would tell me I was being silly, that I had misunderstood what he meant before.
He didn’t.
“Listen, um, I was in study hall with a group of kids last period, and Jody was talking about you.”
I swallowed. “What was she saying?”
“Well . . .” He looked right and left, then down, like he coul
dn’t meet my eye. “She said she thinks you think you hear voices. That you’re, you know.” He twisted a finger around in a circle near his head, as if to describe a crazy person.
I stared at him. I could feel hot tears behind my eyes, but I forced them back. They weren’t tears of humiliation. They were tears of anger. At Jody. And also a little at Mason. I had a feeling he hadn’t jumped to my defense. Although I couldn’t be sure. I thought of my mom and lifted my chin. “Well, I can’t really control what other people say about me, Mason.”
“Yeah, well, but there’s a little more to it. Everyone kind of looked at me, like to see if I knew all about it. I just changed the subject. But a lot of people seem to know we were out together Saturday night. Jody and her friends.” He shrugged. “I just thought you should know that everyone knows we hung out or whatever.”
I crossed my arms. Forget angry. Now I was just confused. “Well, what does that matter? We were out together, weren’t we?”
“It’s just, I don’t like being talked about,” he said. “What if they find out about your, you know, powers? And what if they somehow find out about mine? That would just be so uncool.”
“Okay,” I said. I didn’t see what the big deal was. “I’ll be more careful from now on. It was a really unfortunate coincidence that Jody happened to pop out of nowhere the two times I happened to say something to a spirit.” It was actually three times. Twice with Barkus, and once with the spirit on the boardwalk. But I didn’t think it would help my case to share every detail.
The bell rang for lunch, and we headed into the cafeteria. I couldn’t help but notice that he fell back a step, walking behind me, as though to signal that we were not together.
Mason and I sat at separate tables, as we usually did. As I set down my tray at the table with Lily and Marlee and Miranda and several girls from Harbor Isle, Jody was in the middle of talking about her father’s new commercial. Everyone else at the table was listening raptly, except Lily, who was doing her best to look bored.
I sat down. Quietly picked up my fork and poked my mac and cheese as I listened to the conversation.
“So yeah, it’s just a commercial, a twenty-second spot, but still. I can’t believe I get to be in it!”
“Awesome,” breathed Miranda.
“I’m lip-synching the music, of course. It’s a commercial for breath mints.” Jody giggled, and everyone at the table laughed except me and Lily. I took a sip of milk and shot Lily a look. She shot back an almost-imperceptible eye roll.
“So what do you have to do?” asked Marlee.
“I pretend to be singing about how great the mints are, and then I pop one in my mouth”—she popped an imaginary breath mint into her mouth, then tossed back her glossy hair and smiled confidently—“and then I go striding up to this hot guy and lean in close to him—you know, because I’m so confident my breath is minty fresh—and I say something to him and laugh, and he laughs back.” She pantomimed the dramatic swaggering walk, even though she was sitting down.
Several girls laughed. The rest of the table seemed struck dumb with awe.
“And then they cut to a shot of the breath mint and a guy voices over how great they are and that’s that. But here’s the best part. Guess who’s going to play the hot guy? Don’t tell them, Sara or Caroline!”
“Who?” asked everyone at the table except me and Lily and Caroline. Lily and I were the only ones not leaning forward toward the center of the table. Caroline looked ecstatic to be in on the secret already.
“Mason Meyer! I know, right? He said yes, although his buddies are giving him a lot of grief about it.” She giggled.
All eyes swiveled to look at me. One of Lily’s eyebrows cocked upward with surprise.
I shrugged like it was interesting and smiled so as not to appear rude, but I wasn’t going to pretend I thought it was a big deal. Because it wasn’t.
I realized right then and there that I really didn’t care one way or the other.
Chapter 12
That afternoon I asked Lily if she wanted to walk by the vacant lot, but she had to stay after school to finish a project. I took the long way home, taking a few more pictures for my journal. Many of the stores on the boardwalk, I knew, hadn’t changed since my mom’s day. As I walked, I thought about what my mother had written in that last entry. How her powers seemed to have vanished. How could that be? Could she just have willed them to go away? I could ask Lady Azura. But I wasn’t yet ready to tell her about the diary.
As I turned into our driveway, a car I didn’t know was just pulling out. I guessed it was a client of Lady Azura’s.
I found her in the sitting room off the front hall, sprawled in the armchair near the fireplace.
“Everything okay?” I asked her anxiously. “You look tired.”
“I am, my dear,” she admitted, passing a hand across her brow. “I had a long and difficult session with a client just now. A man and his late brother, long estranged, endeavoring to communicate with each other. It was difficult enough for them to communicate with each other in this world, which made it doubly difficult with one of them in the next. I feel a cup of tea is in order. And then a nice long nap.”
I offered to put the kettle on for her. It didn’t seem right to bring up the idea of doing the séance for the young-man spirits I’d been seeing. She seemed weary enough as it was.
Lady Azura joined me in the kitchen as I was pouring the hot water into her teacup for her. I knew just how she liked it, of course. I set down the sugar bowl and watched with amusement as she began the elaborate process of adding cream and sugar to her cup.
“May I ask you something?” I asked her, as she stirred the cup contentedly.
“You may always ask me something, my dear,” she said with a smile.
“How is it possible for someone to make their powers go away?” I asked, thinking of my mother. “I mean, is it possible? Can you have them, and then wish for them to vanish and they do?”
A troubled look appeared on her face. “Sara, I thought you had gotten to a place where you embraced your powers. Are you reaching a point where you would wish them away?”
“Oh, no,” I said quickly. “I don’t mean for me. I love having powers. I would never in a zillion years wish them away. It’s part of who I am. ”
An amused look played across her face.
“What?” I asked. The way she was looking at me was making me feel embarrassed. “What?” I demanded again.
Lady Azura grinned and reached over to squeeze my hand. “It’s just that you have changed so much. Grown so much. It wasn’t that long ago that you would have wished your powers away if you could have.”
I started to protest, but she kept talking. “When you first came here, you were so confused. So desperate to be ‘normal.’ Don’t you remember?”
I clamped my mouth shut and stared at her. She was right, of course. I’d forgotten.
“Did I really hate my powers that much? I guess I’m a completely different person than I was last year.”
“Change is a natural part of life, Sara,” Lady Azura said, nodding. “Especially at your age. Why, when I was a young girl like you, I was practically a different person from year to year. You are far more grounded—far more mature—than most young girls. But you have come a very long way in a very short time.”
I reflected. I guessed she was right. I had come a long way. And it was almost all because of Lady Azura. I wished so much that my mother had been able to get this same guidance from Lady Azura almost thirty years ago. Would things have turned out differently? I wondered.
Then I thought of Mason. He seemed so ashamed of his powers. I felt sorry for him. He didn’t have Lady Azura in his life either. I didn’t know if he had anyone who could really help him the way she had helped me.
I was so incredibly lucky.
That evening my dad made spaghetti and meatballs. The three of us had a quiet dinner together. After the dishes, I did homework and then went to bed. I’d
lost interest in the diary. I took off my necklace because my ruby crystal was buzzing like a telephone set to vibrate.
Chapter 13
The next day, Wednesday, was dull and rainy.
At school I learned within the first two seconds of arriving that the commercial shoot had happened the previous afternoon. It felt like the whole school was buzzing about it. All my friends had been invited to go watch, except me. And Lily, of course. But she wouldn’t have been able to go anyway, since I knew she’d been working on a project.
I found myself avoiding Mason, but I’m not sure he even noticed, because the three times during the day that I saw him he was surrounded by groups of kids. All talking about the commercial.
I found myself avoiding Lily, too. I couldn’t wait to go home and do the séance after school with Lady Azura. Until I had something helpful to tell Lily, I didn’t want to see her and have her ask me for my advice again.
If I was going to give her advice, I wanted it to be great advice. Lily deserved that.
Wednesday afternoon I ran straight home from school and went in search of Lady Azura. I found her in her séance room, but she didn’t have a client. She was tidying up, replacing old candles and stuff, but stopped what she was doing, looking genuinely happy to see me.
“Are you available for that séance?” I asked her after we’d exchanged news about our days.
“I was going to suggest the same thing,” she said. “My last client had to cancel, so I’m free the rest of the afternoon.”
This was a rare event, having her free. When we first moved here, her clients had been few and far between. But last spring she’d been featured in some news stories after she’d helped Mason’s family recover some missing jewelry, and her business had been booming ever since.
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