by Stacey Kade
I stayed away from Alona’s friends and edged closer to the table of junior-class elites, the second table pushed up against the stage. They still thought they were better than me, but they’d hesitate longer on starting a fight, waiting for the seniors to react first.
When close enough, I pulled the cell phone from my pocket. “What are you doing up there?” I asked, trying to sound casual. “Who are your new friends?”
At first, I didn’t think it would work. How would Alona hear me, let alone know that I was talking to her? In this particular case, though, the ear-ringing silence that accompanied my approach into forbidden territory actually benefited me.
“Will?”
I heard her voice, but I dared not look up at the stage. At this angle, I’d look crazy, staring at nothing. Well, crazier.
Seconds later, her white gym shoes appeared, and she knelt down, her blond hair swinging over her shoulders, releasing that familiar, sweet, perfumey scent. “What are you doing down here?” She sounded perplexed. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“What am I doing? What are you doing?” I asked through clenched teeth. “You’ve got half the Groundsboro cemetery up there with you.”
She glanced back over her shoulder, as if she hadn’t been aware of this fact until I mentioned it. “Yeah, well, they just keep showing up. I think someone’s passing out flyers or something.” She laughed.
“Oh, ha, ha. It’s very funny. What are you doing up there?”
She shrugged. “Taking notes. As your spirit guide, it’s my job to—”
“As my what?” This time, I couldn’t help but stare up at her.
She rolled her eyes. “Your spirit guide. You know, someone who helps you work with the spirits.” She paused thoughtfully. “I’m kind of like your manager.”
“My what?” I said weakly. I couldn’t seem to stop repeating myself.
“Manager. You know, like you’re the talent and I’m the one who hooks you up with the people who need you. Besides, it keeps them quiet”—she jerked her head toward the ghosts behind her—“if they think someone is listening, and it gives me a chance to do something nice, right?” She shifted slightly to stare at someone or something over my right shoulder.
“But I—” I didn’t even know where to begin.
“Oh, heads up. Nine o’clock. You’re about to get your face beat in.” She turned her head and gave me a sunny smile. “See, I’m being helpful already.”
I started to turn to my left, but then, remembering Alona’s previous difficulty with the clock concept when facing me, I turned to the right instead — three o’clock — to find Chris Zebrowski and Ben Rogers approaching.
“If you get out of here right now, they’ll probably leave you alone.” Alona pushed herself back up to her feet.
“Wait,” I said.
“I can’t. Do you see how long this line is?” She rolled her eyes with a sigh. “I’m going to be here all day.” She shook her head and started back toward her position at the counter.
“Alona,” I whispered as loudly as I dared. Nothing like shouting a dead cheerleader’s name in the middle of the cafeteria to get people to stare at you. Not that I needed the help.
“What’s up, Will Kill? You lost?” Ben Rogers’s oily voice came from behind me.
I turned to find him and Chris behind me, ready to face off. Ben had his hands in his pocket, a deceptively relaxed pose, but tension ran through his shoulders. He might have been a rich, lazy son of a bitch, but he didn’t shy away from a fight. Next to him, Chris, Alona’s ex, made no pretense that this was anything but a fight. A shorter, stockier guy with years of experience on the wrestling team, he stood with his feet apart and fists at the ready.
“No freaks allowed in the first tier,” Chris added.
I held up my hands in the “don’t shoot” position, my fingers wrapped around my cell phone. “No trouble here, guys. Just taking a call, and I needed better reception. I’m leaving.” As much as I hated their privileged asses, I wasn’t about to start a fight on their turf. I’d get blamed for it and I’d lose. Two against one wasn’t fair. Sixteen against one, as it would end up being when all the sheep jumped in to follow their leaders, was a bloodbath.
I started to walk around them, back toward the stairs, but I didn’t get very far. A small wisp of black smoke appeared out of nowhere in the center aisle, on the second-tier steps. It looked like exhaust from an oil-burning car. I stopped, my heart pounding in dread. Almost instantly, as if it had been waiting for me to see it, the little wisp of smoke grew to a roiling and seething mass of black vapor.
“Um, Killian? Gloomy Gus straight-up noon,” Alona called from behind me, tension threaded through her voice.
For once she had the clock right. “Yeah, I see him,” I said tightly.
I heard her drop down from the stage, landing lightly on the ground behind me. “So what’s the plan?” Her voice shook a little, and yet she was still there with me.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what, Will Kill?” Ben eased around to stand in front of me. He smiled, showing a little too much teeth. Chris followed him, slamming his meaty fist into the palm of his other hand in a rather effective use of a cliché.
Damn, I’d forgotten about them.
Everyone in the caf was watching, waiting to see what happened next. Joonie, at the top of the center aisle, seemed to be praying, her hands tucked securely inside her bag, her eyes half closed and her lips moving silently.
Then Gloomy Gus, as Alona had apparently dubbed him, lurched forward suddenly, pouring toward us in a rush.
“Alona, get out of here now,” I said sharply and without thinking. The without-thinking part turned out to be kind of key.
“What did you say?” Chris demanded.
Oh, shit.
Twenty minutes later, I sat in the nurse’s office with an ice pack against the left side of my face. Okay, so lessons learned: first, talking to a guy’s dead girlfriend in front of him, even when he’s moved on to greener pastures, is a big mistake. Second, the entity once known as my father, now known as Gloomy Gus, did not like competition. He disappeared, thank God, the moment Chris hit me. Third, Alona Dare may be my spirit guide, whatever that is, but Mrs. Piaget is my guardian angel. She got Mr. Gerry to break up the fight, and remained firm in her conviction that Chris had taken the first swing. I got another detention, but I could live with that.
I leaned back in the uncomfortable molded-plastic chair in the nurse’s office, wincing at the new ache in my ribs, and pressed the bag of ice cubes tighter against my swelling cheek.
The chair next to me wiggled and jolted, sending little shocks of pain through my side.
“What is your deal?” I said to Alona, who couldn’t seem to sit still, moving from one position to another. We were, fortunately, alone for the moment. Judging that it would not be wise to stuff both Chris and me into such a small room, Nurse Ryerson had stepped out to take care of him. Yeah, I managed to get in a swing or two. Bloodied his nose, at least.
She shifted her feet to the floor and stared at them for a long second before looking over at me. “You defended me. Why would you do that?”
“That’s what’s bothering you?” I asked. “Technically, I was just defending myself from your boyfriend’s fists of fury.” I opened my mouth and wiggled my jaw experimentally. Damn, wrestlers could really pack a punch, maybe even more so than the various football players who’d whaled on me in my younger years.
She shook her head with an impatient noise. “Not him. Though”—a faint smile appeared on her face—“that must have really pissed Misty off to see you two fighting over me.”
I rolled my eyes. “We weren’t fighting over—”
“Also, smooth move shouting my name in the middle of the cafeteria.” She slapped my shoulder hard, and the sensation traveled down to my ribs, making me grunt in pain. “But what I meant was you trying to protect me from Gloomy Gus.”
; “Oh.”
“You were just covering your own ass, right? I mean, I’m your spirit guide now and you probably love the idea of bossing me around too much to give it up this soon.”
The words sounded like something she would say, the bitchy arrogance of them, but beneath that, I could hear the question she wasn’t asking, the vulnerability she was trying to hide. Had anyone ever defended her in her life, except for when it benefited them? True, she didn’t seem like she needed much protection, but everyone wants to feel like someone’s looking out for them.
She had her head tipped down, pretending to examine her nails. The glossy curtain of her hair hid her face from me. It was the perfect time to say something classy, something that would convince her that even though she drove me crazy sometimes, I admired her strength, even more now that I knew some of what she must have lived through to get it.
“Um …” My heart beat fast in the back of my throat, and the words, any words, seemed to have vanished from my brain.
She made a disgusted sound. “Never mind. Forget it.” She tossed her hair back over her shoulder.
“Hey,” I protested. “You have to at least give me a chance to—”
The door to the nurse’s office edged open and Joonie poked her head in, looking around. It didn’t take long. The office consisted of a small desk, two chairs, and a cot. The other door leading out of the room led to a microscopic bathroom. “You alone?” she whispered.
Alona rolled her eyes.
“Yeah,” I said.
Joonie frowned at me and slipped all the way into the room. “Then who were you talking to?” She slung her book bag down on the floor in front of the chair next to mine, right on Alona’s feet.
Alona yelped. “Watch it, freak.”
“Nobody. I wasn’t talking to anyone. It’s nice of you to stop by.” I glared at Alona.
“Fine. Fine,” Alona grumbled. “She’s a good friend. Blah, blah, blah.”
“Hello? Killian?” Joonie waved her hand in front of my face. “I’m over here.” She moved over to sit in Alona’s chair and Alona scrambled out of the way to avoid being sat on. “Are you okay?” Joonie’s gaze felt too intense, and I had to look away.
“I’m fine.”
“I just saw you walk into first-tier territory to take a freaking pretend phone call. Yesterday you had a seizure in the hallway—”
I waved her words away. “I’m fine, okay?” Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Alona frowning at something on the floor.
“No, not okay.” Joonie fidgeted with the silver rings in her ear. “You’re acting completely bizarre even for you, and I can’t worry this much about you and Lily, okay? There’s not enough of me.” She gave me a shaky smile. “So, just tell me what’s going on.”
Alona knelt on the floor near Joonie’s feet, her head cocked to one side. “Check this out,” she whispered, completely unnecessarily. Then, using the effect of my presence around her, she pulled back the top of Joonie’s tattered and broken-zippered book bag. The corner of a flat wooden board, decorated with numbers and letters, stuck out. It looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it until …
I jumped up out of my seat. “Jesus, Joonie, is that a Ouija board?” Yeah, it was just a creepy but harmless kid’s game … unless you happen to be playing with one around someone like me.
Joonie stopped, her mouth hanging open midword to stare at me and then guiltily at the floor. Her face flushed red and then paled. “I have to go.” She stood up and yanked her bag from the floor before bolting from the room.
“Joonie, wait,” I said.
She didn’t answer, nor did she stop, and the door to the nurse’s office slammed shut after her.
I turned to Alona, who now leaned back against the nurse’s desk, her arms folded across her chest and a smug look on her face. “How did you do that? How did you know it was in there?”
Alona shrugged. “I’m dead. I know everything now. Like how you look for a little personal time every morning before—”
“Stop,” I snapped, trying to pretend my face wasn’t turning red. “Death doesn’t make you, or anyone else, omniscient.” Which meant she was an alarmingly good guesser or I was shockingly predictable. “Try again.”
“You are no fun.” She sighed. “The edge of the board stuck out for a second when she dropped her stupid, ugly bag on me. Took me a second to recognize it is all.” She shrugged. “What’s the big deal anyway? Other than it’s total proof of her freakiness that she carries that thing around with her.”
I shook my head. “It’s more than that.”
“You don’t think that thing actually works … do you?” She arched an eyebrow at me.
“Around me, it does.”
“Right.”
“I’m serious.” I lowered the ice bag from my face so I could see her more clearly. “For regular people, it’s no big deal, but for me …” I paused. “Okay, imagine you’re trying to make a call to someone in another country, but you don’t have a phone.”
“Am I stupid in this example? How do you call without a phone?”
“Just shut up for a second. I’m trying to explain.” I took a deep breath. “You want to call, you’re concentrating all your efforts on communicating, but with no phone, nothing happens.”
“Duh,” she muttered.
I ignored her. “Give someone a Ouija board, and you have a phone but no service.”
She nodded.
“Use a Ouija board around me and suddenly, you’ve got a phone with the megaservice package. Except instead of just sending voices, it’s like opening a doorway between the two places. The Ouija board acts as a focus, helps you concentrate and send your energy, but it can’t go anywhere without me. Me, whatever I am, I give it power and a place to go, a conduit to travel. Remember, I’m caught in the middle just like you, but I can interact with both sides. Energy on either side is just energy until it finds me, and then it has weight and substance and form….” A trickle of ice water leaked from the bag and ran across my hand, and I shivered from more than the cold.
“So Joonie calls up a couple of dead relatives to come through the doorway for a chat.” She shrugged. “What’s the big deal?”
“No,” I said firmly. “People who are gone, really gone, can’t be reached. And reaching out like that … you never know who you’re going to get. Just because you’re dialing a particular person, so to speak, doesn’t mean it’s going to be that person who answers.”
She frowned.
I sighed. “It’s like the telephone is ringing, and anyone walking by can pick it up. And some of those who are stuck in between are not people you want to be messing with.” Sometimes people were crazy before they died. Sometimes dying made them crazy … or crazier. Grandpa B., Liesel, and the rest of them, they were annoying sometimes, but not particularly harmful. That was not the case with others I’d seen and been careful to avoid.
She gave me a scathing look. “I get what you’re saying. I’m not stupid.” She paused, lifting one hand to her mouth to nibble at her thumbnail before she caught herself and pulled her hand away. “I was just wondering … how many times have you seen Gloomy Gus? I mean … you know who.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said dryly. “Ten, twelve times, maybe.”
“What makes you think that’s … your dad?”
I let out a slow breath, lifting the watery ice bag up to my face. “Because I’ve seen a few suicides come through here, and they’re sort of like that, not whole.” I gave her a sideways glance. “That’s how I knew you didn’t hurt yourself intentionally, no matter what Leanne Whitaker is saying.”
“Bitch,” Alona muttered.
“What were you doing that day anyway?” I asked.
She cocked an eyebrow at me. “My question came first. Why do you think it’s your dad?”
I watched her for a long second, and she met my gaze steadily. I opened my mouth to tell her to forget it, but the story of that last morning with my dad poured out of me
instead. It was the first time I’d told anyone, except Dr. Miller and Joonie, and I regretted it even as I was still speaking. But Alona just nodded thoughtfully.
“That still doesn’t explain why you think it’s him, though. Surely there are other people who’ve …” She made a face.
With a sigh, I continued. “It … he seems particularly focused on me. Whenever he shows up, he always comes straight after me.” I lifted a shoulder, wincing at the pain in my ribs. “He’s the only suicide that I’ve known personally.”
“They all look like that?” She pressed. “Big black clouds of smoke or whatever?”
“No, I’ve never seen one like this before. He’s … more waves of emotion than anything else. But I’ve seen lots of different things over the years. What are you getting at?” I asked impatiently.
“Your dad died, like, three years ago, right? That’s what you said.” She stared at me, daring me to challenge her.
“Yeah, so?”
“When did you start seeing Gus?”
Suddenly, I didn’t like the direction this was heading. “That doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes it takes a while for spirits to find their way—”
“When?” She kicked at my shin lightly.
I bent down and rubbed my leg with my free hand. “I don’t know, about eight or nine months ago, I guess.”
Actually, I knew exactly when I’d seen him the first time. It had been the first night the doctors would allow Joonie and me to visit Lily after her accident. My mom had come with us. And after I’d seen Lily and what my gift had indirectly caused, that’s when I’d realized I couldn’t stay.
“Right after I told my mom I wasn’t sticking around after graduation.” She’d fled the hospital in tears. That was more than enough probably to call my father from wherever he’d been residing. I’d promised to take care of my mother — it was the last thing I ever said to my father.
“So you’re saying that your dad, who knew you were a ghost-talker, was just hanging around waiting for three years for you to do something to piss him off before he tried to talk to you…or kill you, as the case may be?”
