Darkest Hour tm-4

by Meg Cabot

  It isn't fair. It really isn't.

  "Okay, big guy," I said, after taking in the view for a minute or two and listening to the soothing pulse of the waves. "Go put on your swim trunks. We're hitting the pool. It's too nice out to stay inside."

  Jack, as usual, looked as if I'd pinched him rather than suggested a fun day at the pool.

  "But why?" he cried. "You know I can't swim."

  "Which is exactly," I said, "why we're going. You're eight years old today. An eight-year-old who can't swim is nothing but a loser. You don't want to be a loser, do you?"

  Jack opined that he preferred being a loser to going outdoors, a fact with which I was only too well acquainted.

  "Jack," I said, slumping down onto a couch near where he lay. "What is your problem?"

  Instead of responding, Jack rolled over onto his stomach and scowled at the carpet. I wasn't going to let up on him, though. I knew what I was talking about, with the loser thing. Being different in the American public - or even private - educational system is not cool. How Paul had ever allowed this to happen - his little brother's turning into a whiny little wimp you almost longed to slap - I couldn't fathom, but I knew good and well Rick and Nancy weren't doing anything to help rectify the matter. It was pretty much all up to me to save Jack Slater from becoming his school's human punching bag.

  Don't ask me why I even cared. Maybe because in a weird way, Jack reminded me a little of Doc, my youngest stepbrother, the one who is away at computer camp. A geek in the truest sense of the word, Doc is still one of my favorite people. I have even been making a concerted effort to call him by his name, David ... at least to his face.

  But Doc is - almost - able to get away with his bizarre behavior because he has a photographic memory and a computer-like ability to process information. Jack, so far as I could tell, possessed no such skills. In fact, I had a feeling he was a bit dim. So really, he had no excuse for his eccentricities.

  "What's the deal?" I asked him. "Don't you want to learn how to swim and throw a Frisbee, like a normal person?"

  "You don't understand," Jack said, not very distinctly, into the carpet. "I'm not a normal person. I - I'm different than other people."

  "Of course you are," I said, rolling my eyes. "We're all special and unique, like snowflakes. But there's Different, and then there's Freakish. And you, Jack, are going to turn Freakish, if you don't watch out."

  "I - I already am freakish," Jack said.

  But he wouldn't elaborate, and I can't say I pressed too hard, trying to find out what he meant. Not that I imagined he might like to drown kittens in his spare time, or anything like that. I just figured he meant freakish in the general sense. I mean, we all feel like freaks from time to time. Jack maybe felt like one a bit more often than that, but then, with Rick and Nancy for parents, who wouldn't? He was probably constantly being asked why he couldn't be more like his older brother, Paul. That would be enough to make any kid feel a little insecure. I mean, come on. Heidegger? On summer vacation?

  Give me Clifford, any day.

  I told Jack that worrying so much was going to make him old before his time. Then I ordered him to go and put on his swimsuit.

  He did so, but he didn't exactly hurry, and when we finally got outside and onto the brick path to the pool, it was almost ten o'clock. The sun was beating down hard, though it wasn't uncomfortably hot yet. Actually, it hardly ever gets uncomfortably hot in Carmel, even in the middle of July. Back in Brooklyn, you can barely go outdoors in July, it's so muggy. In Carmel, however, there is next to no humidity, and there's always a cool breeze from the Pacific....

  Perfect date weather, actually. If you happened to have one. A date, I mean. Which of course I don't. And probably never will - at least with the guy I want - if things keep up the way they've been going....

  Anyway, Jack and I were tripping down the brick path to the pool when one of the gardeners stepped out from behind an enormous forsythia bush and nodded to me.

  This wouldn't have been at all odd - I have actually gotten friendly with all of the landscaping staff, thanks to the many Frisbees I have lost while playing with my charges - except for the fact that this particular gardener, Jorge, who had been expected to retire at the end of the summer, had instead suffered a heart attack a few days earlier, and, well ...

  Died.

  Yet there was Jorge in his beige coveralls, holding a pair of hedge clippers and bobbing his head at me, just as he had the last time I'd seen him, on this very path, a few days before.

  I wasn't too worried about Jack's reaction to having a dead man walk up and nod at us, since for the most part, I'm the only one I know who can actually see them. The dead, I mean. So I was perfectly unprepared for what happened next....

  Which was that Jack ripped his hand from mine and, with a strangled scream, ran for the pool.

  This was odd, but then, so was Jack. I rolled my eyes at Jorge, then hurried after the kid, since I am, after all, getting paid to care for the living. The whole helping-out-the-dead thing has to play second fiddle so long as I'm on the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort time clock. The ghosts simply have to wait. I mean, it's not as if they're paying me. Ha! I wish.

  I found Jack huddled on a deck chair, sobbing into his towel. Fortunately, it was still early enough that there weren't many people at the pool yet. Otherwise, I might have had some explaining to do.

  But the only other person there was Sleepy, high up in his lifeguard chair. And it was pretty clear from the way Sleepy was resting his cheek in one hand that his shutters, behind the lenses of his Ray Bans, were closed.

  "Jack," I said, sinking down onto the neighboring deck chair. "Jack, what's the matter?"

  "I ... I't-told you already," Jack sobbed into his fluffy white towel. "Suze . . . I'm not like other people. I'm like what you said. A ... a ... freak."

  I didn't know what he was talking about. I assumed he was merely continuing our conversation from the room.

  "Jack," I said. "You're no more a freak than anybody else."

  "No," he sobbed. "I am. Don't you get it?" Then he lifted his head, looked me straight in the eye, and hissed, "Suze, don't you know why I don't like to go outside?"

  I shook my head. I didn't get it. Even then, I still didn't get it.

  "Because when I go outside," Jack whispered, "I see dead people."

  CHAPTER 2

  I swear that's what he said.

  He said it just like the kid in that movie said it, too, with the same tears in his eyes, the same fear in his voice.

  And I had much the same reaction as I had when watching the movie. I went, inwardly, Freaking crybaby.

  Outwardly, however, I said only, "So?"

  I didn't mean to sound callous. Really. I was just so surprised. I mean, in all my sixteen years, I've only met one other person with the same ability I have - the ability to see and speak with the dead - and that person is a sixty-something-year-old priest who also happens to be principal of the school I am currently attending. I certainly never expected to meet up with a fellow mediator at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort.

  But Jack took offense at my "So?" anyway.

  "So?" Jack sat up. He was a skinny little kid, with a caved-in sort of chest, and curly brown hair like his brother's. Only Jack lacked his brother's nicely buff shape, so the curly hair, which looked sublime on Paul, gave Jack the unfortunate appearance of a walking Q-tip.

  I don't know. Maybe that's why Rick and Nancy don't want to hang around him. Jack's a little creepy looking, and apparently has frequent dialogues with the dead. God knows it never made me Miss Popularity.

  The talking to the dead thing, I mean. I am not creepy looking. In fact, when I am not wearing my uniform shorts, I am frequently complimented on my appearance by the occasional construction worker.

  "Didn't you hear what I said?" Jack was depressed, you could tell. I was probably the first person he'd ever told about his unique problem who'd been completely unimpressed.

&
nbsp; Poor kid. He had no idea who he was dealing with.

  "I see dead people," he said, rubbing his eyes with his fists. "They come up, and start talking to me. And they're dead."

  I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.

  "Jack," I said.

  "You don't believe me." His chin started trembling. "No one believes me. But it's true!"

  Jack buried his face in his towel again. I glanced in Sleepy's direction. Still no sign that he was aware of either of us, much less that he found Jack's behavior at all odd. The kid was murmuring about all the people who hadn't believed him over the years, a list which seemed to include not only his parents, but a whole stream of medical specialists Rick and Nancy had dragged him to, hoping to cure their youngest child of this delusion he has - that he can speak to the dead.

  Poor little guy. He hadn't realized, as I had from a very early age, that what he and I can do ... well, you just don't talk about.

  I sighed. Really, it would have been too much to ask, apparently, for me to have a normal summer. I mean, a summer without any paranormal incidents.

  But then, I'd never had one of those before in my life. Why should my sixteenth summer be any different?

  I reached out and laid a hand on one of Jack's thin, quivering shoulders.

  "Jack," I said. "You saw that gardener just now, didn't you? The one with the hedge clippers?"

  Jack lifted an astonished, tear-stained face from the terry cloth. He stared up at me in wonder.

  "You ... you saw him, too?"

  "Yeah," I said. "That was Jorge. He used to work here. He died a couple days ago of a heart attack."

  "But how could you - " Jack shook his head slowly back and forth. "I mean, he's . . . he's a ghost."

  "Well, yeah," I said. "He probably has something he needs us to do for him. He kicked off kind of suddenly, and there may be stuff, you know, he left unfinished. He came up to us because he wants our help."

  "That's ... " Jack stared at me. "That's why they come up to me? Because they want help?"

  "Well, yeah," I said. "What else would they want?"

  "I don't know." Jack's lower lip started to tremble again. "To kill me."

  I couldn't help smiling a little at that one. "No, Jack," I said. "That's not why ghosts come up to you. Not because they want to kill you." Not yet, anyway. The kid was too young to have made the kind of homicidal enemies I had. "They come up to you because you're a mediator, like me."

  Tears trembled on the edges of Jack's long eyelashes as he gazed up at me. "A ... a what?"

  Oh, for God's sake, I thought. Why me? I mean, really. Like my life's not complicated enough. Now I have to play Obi Wan Kenobi to this kid's Anakin Skywalker? It so isn't fair. When was I ever going to get the chance to be a normal teenage girl, to do the things normal teenage girls like to do, like go to parties and hang out at the beach, and, um, what else?

  Oh, yeah, date. A date, with the boy I actually like, would be nice.

  But do I get dates? Oh, no. What do I get instead?

  Ghosts. Mainly ghosts looking for help cleaning up the messes they made when they were alive, but sometimes ghosts whose sole amusement appears to be making even bigger messes in the lives of the people they left behind. And this frequently includes mine.

  I ask you, do I have a big sign on my forehead that says Maid Service? Why am I always the one who has to tidy up other people's messes?

  Because I had the misfortune to be born a mediator.

  I must say, I think I'm way better suited for the job than poor Jack. I mean, I saw my first ghost when I was two years old, and I can assure you, my initial reaction was not fear. Not that, at the age of two, I'd been able to help the poor suffering soul who approached me. But I hadn't shrieked and run away in terror, either.

  It wasn't until later, after my dad - who passed away when I was six - came back and explained it that I began to fully understand what I was, and why I could see the dead, but others - like my mom, for instance - could not.

  One thing I did know, though, from a very tender age: mentioning to anyone that I could see folks they couldn't? Yeah, not such a hot idea. Not if I didn't want to end up on the ninth floor of Bellevue, which is where they stick all the whackos in New York City.

  Only Jack didn't seem to have quite the same instinctive sense of self-preservation I'd apparently been born with. He'd been opening up his trap about the whole ghost thing to anyone who would listen, with the inevitable result that his poor parents didn't want to have anything to do with him. I'd be willing to bet that kids his own age, figuring he was lying to get attention, felt the same way. In a sense, the little guy had brought all his current misfortunes down upon himself.

  On the other hand, if you ask me, whoever is up there handing out the mediator badges needs to make a better effort to see that the folks who get awarded the job are mentally up to the challenge. I complain a lot about it, because it has put a significant cramp in my social life, but there is nothing about this whole mediator thing I do not feel perfectly capable of handling....

  Well, except for one thing.

  But I've been making a concerted effort not to think about that.

  Or rather, him.

  "A mediator," I explained to Jack, "is someone who helps people who have died to move on, into their next life." Or wherever people go when they kick the bucket. But I didn't want to get into a whole metaphysical discussion with this kid. I mean, he is, after all, only eight.

  "You mean like I'm supposed to help them go to heaven?" Jack asked.

  "Well, yeah, I guess." If there is one.

  "But ... " Jack shook his head. "I don't know anything about heaven."

  "You don't have to." I tried to think how to explain it to him, then decided showing was better than telling. That's what Mr. Walden, who I had last year for English and World Civ, was always saying, anyway.

  "Look," I said, taking Jack by the hand. "Come on. Watch me, and you can see how it works."

  Jack put the brakes on right away, though.

  "No," he gasped, his brown eyes, so like his brother's, wild with fear. "No, I don't want to."

  I yanked him to his feet. Hey, I never said I was cut out for this baby-sitting thing, remember?

  "Come on," I said again. "Jorge won't hurt you. He's really nice. Let's see what he wants."

  I practically had to carry him, but I finally got Jack over to where we'd last seen Jorge. A moment later the gardener - or, I should say, his spirit - reappeared, and after a lot of polite nodding and smiling, we got down to business. It was kind of hard, considering that Jorge's English was about as good as my Spanish - which is to say, not good at all - but eventually, I was able to figure out what was keeping Jorge from moving on from this life to his next - whatever that might be: His sister had appropriated a rosary left by their mother for her first grandchild, Jorge's daughter.

  "So," I explained to Jack, as I steered him into the hotel lobby, "what we have to do is get Jorge's sister to give the rosary back to Teresa, his daughter. Otherwise, Jorge will just keep hanging around and pestering us. Oh, and he won't be able to find eternal rest. Got it?"

  Jack said nothing. He just wandered behind me in a daze. He had been silent as death during my conversation with Jorge, and now he looked as if someone had whacked him on the back of the head with a Wiffle bat a couple hundred times.

  "Come here," I said, and steered Jack into a fancy mahogany phone booth with a sliding glass door. After we'd both slipped through it, I pulled the door shut, then picked up the phone and fed a quarter into the slot. "Watch and learn, grasshopper," I said to him.

  What followed was a fairly typical example of what I do on an almost daily basis. I called information, got the guilty parry's phone number, then phoned her. When she picked up, and I ascertained that she spoke enough English to understand me, I informed her of the facts as I knew them, without the least embellishment. When you are dealing with the undead, there's no need for exaggeration of any kin
d. The fact that someone who has died has contacted you with details no one but the deceased could know is generally enough. By the end of our conversation, an obviously flustered Marisol had assured me that the rosary would be delivered, that day, into Teresa's hands.

  End of conversation. I thanked Jorge's sister and hung up.

  "Now," I explained, to Jack, "if Marisol doesn't do it, we'll hear from Jorge again, and we'll have to resort to something a little more persuasive than a mere phone call. But she sounded pretty scared. It's spooky when a perfect stranger calls you and tells you she's spoken to your dead brother, and that he's mad at you. I bet she'll do it."

  Jack stared up at me. "That's it?" he asked. "That's all he wanted you to do? Get his sister to give the necklace back?"

  "Rosary," I corrected him. "And yes, that was it."

  I didn't think it was important to add that this had been a particularly simple case. Usually, the problems associated with people speaking from beyond the grave are a little more complicated and take a lot more than a simple phone call to settle. In fact, oftentimes fisticuffs are involved. I had only just recently recovered from a few broken ribs given to me by a group of ghosts who hadn't appreciated my attempts to help them into the afterlife one little bit, and had, in fact, ended up putting me in the hospital.

  But Jack had plenty of time to learn that not all the undead were like Jorge. Besides, it was his birthday. I didn't want to bum him out.

  So instead, I slid the phone booth door open again and said, "Let's go swimming."

  Jack was so stunned by the whole thing he didn't even protest. He still had questions, of course . . . questions I answered as patiently and thoroughly as I could. In between questions, I taught him to freestyle.

  And I don't want to brag, or anything, but I have to say that, thanks to my careful instructions and calming influence, by the end of the day Jack Slater was acting like - and even swimming like - a normal eight-year-old.