I set the pizza aside, my plate making a thunk on the coffee table. I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples. A small thud made my eyes fly open and I froze in my spot. A series of small noises from upstairs that sounded like footsteps made my heart race and my legs draw up to my chin.
It grew quiet, but my heart pounded on.
Five minutes later I was armed with a heavy flashlight and gathered the guts to go upstairs.
Nothing under the beds, nothing in the closets, nothing behind the shower curtains. I let out a relieved breath and sat on my bed. That's when I noticed it. All the pictures in my room were crooked. Me holding the first - and last - fish I caught, Mom and me at graduation just a couple months ago, a collage of friends, me and an old boyfriend winning a local award for Best Couple's Costume - he was Bob Ross and I was the painting. Some were more askew than others, but every single frame was crooked. I got an overwhelming feeling that I wasn't alone. I dashed downstairs and onto the porch swing where I sat until my parents got home.
My parents looked concerned when I told them I had just needed air, but they didn't say anything. I followed them inside and finished my pizza that had gotten cold.
*
Wanna come watch Grey's Anatomy?
The text from Melissa startled me physically and mentally. I had barely heard from her and now had an invitation to come over. Grey's had always been our thing, we had watched together for years. We were currently re-watching the latest season to gear up for the upcoming season premiere. I had watched by myself a lot lately. I texted that I'd be over soon.
"Mom, I'm headed to Melissa's," I called out. I pulled some black ankle boots on and grabbed my purse. I heard her mutter a comment about my wayward friend but she answered with "Have fun!" I grabbed my keys off their hook and headed out the door.
Melissa's house always smelled a bit like wet dog. She lived with her mom who ran the local Search and Rescue K9 unit, so their three dogs usually smelled like the woods or dirty water. Their two Bloodhounds were asleep by the fireplace and their Poodle had her head in my lap. A lot of people made fun of the fact that Wendy the Poodle spent her time finding people and sometimes bodies, but I don't think they realized that Poodles were originally bred for hunting. Sometimes Wendy was better at her job than Bandit and Titus, the Bloodhounds. I stroked Wendy's cream-colored, fluffy head and tried to focus on the TV and not all the things I wanted to say to Melissa.
"Totally miss Derek," she said during a commercial break.
"Yeah, but the new guy is pretty hot."
She nodded and checked her phone for new texts, something she had been doing every ten minutes at least.
"Waiting for Tad?" I asked.
"Yeah, he's out with his brothers again. They're soaking up all the time they can before we move to New York for college."
"Right," I said. "So, something weird happened today." I wanted to tell her about the pictures. To get some kind of confirmation as to whether or not I was going crazy.
She sighed, annoyed and looked at me.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing. What happened?"
I told her about the noises and the pictures and the weird feeling. She looked at me a little blankly and leaned back into the couch further.
"What do you think?" I asked. "Am I losing it?"
"You're probably just tired from being in the hospital. They take your vitals, like every ten minutes and you never get to really rest."
"What does my being tired have to do with pictures moving? They all moved, Mel. Every single one."
"And you didn't imagine it?" she asked, looking bored.
"How would I imagine something like that? Physical things in my room moved." I raised my voice a little and Wendy got off the couch, eyeing me worriedly.
"Dude, chill. Okay, things moved. Maybe there was an earthquake or something fell and made everything move." Her phone dinged and lit up and she squealed. "Taddy!"
Once she began texting him it was like I had disappeared. I left during the next commercial break and she didn't even notice. It was hours later when I had just finished straightening all my frames that she texted me a fact about the fault lines that ran through our Colorado town. I rolled my eyes and tossed my phone on my bed.
*
I sat up in bed at three o'clock the next morning. My heart raced and my hair stuck to my neck with hot sweat. I grimaced and put my collarbone-length hair up in a tiny bun.
Murmurs downstairs filled my ears. That's what had woken me up, someone talking. There was no way my dad was up because he could sleep through the zombie apocalypse. Maybe my mom couldn't sleep and she was watching TV. That happened sometimes. I would hear her drop pans and I'd go downstairs. We'd make sandwiches and watch a movie until we fell asleep on the couch.
I slipped out of bed and slowly made my way down the stairs. The rug at the bottom had a corner flipped up and all the lights were off. The moon shone through the kitchen windows so I didn't need to turn on the flashlight on my phone. I kicked the rug corner back in its place and stepped off the stairs.
I couldn't make out what the murmurs said. I followed the quiet noises, the hushed voices, into the kitchen, and then the house fell silent. I looked around and saw nothing out of place, the doors were still locked, everything was untouched. I shut my eyes and rubbed my temples.
"You're not crazy," I told myself quietly. I opened my eyes and caught sight of a shadow in the corner of the living room, and I bolted up the stairs and into my parent's room.
I trembled on their bed while my dad, still half-asleep, turned on all the lights and searched the house with a baseball bat. My mom sat next to me with a worried look on her face.
"There's nothing down there," my dad announced. He put the bat back on my mom's side of the bed and gave me a shrug. "I dunno what to tell you, kiddo."
"But I saw a shadow. It was tall, like a human. Dad, I felt something down there. Someone was there."
My parents exchanged a look and my mom set her hand on my knee. "Of course there was."
"There was!" I insisted.
"Maybe we should look into someone for you to talk to. Sweetie, lightning can cause all kinds of things to happen in the body. I Google'd it," she said.
I sighed and set my face in my hands.
"I have to get up for work in three hours," my dad said.
"Oh my God," my mom said with a glare.
"What?" he asked.
My mom shook her head, took my hand and led me into my room. "Boys are stupid. Never think they outgrow it. You are way more important than getting enough sleep to go to work for shmucks."
"Those shmucks pay well," I told her.
"Still." She tucked me in and then lay next to me above the covers. She glanced around my room and sighed. "Won't be long before you're out and in a dorm room, huh?"
I froze. I had talked to my parents about taking a gap year, but I hadn't told them the real reason behind the idea. My dad had taken a gap year to backpack through Europe, so he was all for it. My mom never went to college, but she had also backpacked through Europe after high school. My parents met at the Trevi Fountain in Rome. Without that gap year they may not have met, so they were pretty gung ho about them. I figured it also gave me a year to find out what to do about college. My dad was adamant that I go. An Ivy school was ideal, but he would settle for State. I spent all of high school volunteering, asking for extra credit, and studying. And every school I applied to rejected me. Nothing said failure like fifteen college rejection letters. I hadn't figured out how to tell my parents, especially my dad.
"Do you think I need to see a therapist?" I asked her, ignoring the college comment.
My mom sighed and crossed her ankles. "I don't know. It just seems too soon. You've only been home a couple of days. I think you just need time to settle back in and to heal."
But I wasn't so sure. It felt like something much bigger than healing was happening to me.
FOUR
Ellen stared
into my closet with her hands on her hips. She had planned a double date for us with her boyfriend and his brother. She said it would be good to get out. I hadn't left the house since the baseball bat night.
"You look good in red." She pulled out a red sweater and some faded high-waist jeans and tossed them at my head.
I had a pounding headache but pulled the outfit on anyway and stood in front of my mirror.
Ellen stood next to me with a smile. "Not too shabby, Wilder." She turned in the mirror to examine her tight jeans and opened-back top. "Not too shabby, either."
"Where are we going?" I asked. I knew I had asked before, but I couldn't concentrate on much besides my headache.
"Dinner at Olive Garden. Plus, Jake's brother is pretty hot."
"I do love pasta," I said.
"Okay, so no backing out. Stop wincing and go take your pain meds. They'll be here in fifteen to pick us up."
I trudged downstairs and into the kitchen. My mom had my medications lined up on the counter, organized by the time I needed to take them. I popped a pain pill and washed it down with some juice.
"They're on their way! Jake just texted!" Ellen called from upstairs.
"'Kay," I yelled back. Motion caught my attention out back. My eyes flickered to a kitchen window and I slowly walked over to look out into the backyard. There, at the tree line, dressed in a navy suit was my grandma. My grandma, who had died two years ago and had been buried in her favorite navy blue suit. I felt the glass in my hand slip and crash to the floor, and I slowly made my way to the back door, my eyes never leaving her. "You're not crazy," I whispered to myself, and opened the door. I got to the edge of the deck but couldn't bring myself to walk down the stairs. My grandma hadn't moved an inch; she just stood there and stared. I lifted my hand to give a cautious wave.
"Should I wear flats or heels?" Ellen asked from upstairs.
I looked back at the house for a second, forgetting she was upstairs. When I looked back, my grandma was gone. I stood there for a minute, wondering if I had imagined it or if maybe all these meds had given me an insane side effect. Right now wasn't the time to have any kind of medication-induced breakdown. I shook out my trembling hands and then headed back upstairs to help Ellen pick out shoes.
*
Craig, Jake's brother, was pretty hot, like Ellen said, and he even held the door open for me when we walked into the Olive Garden. Our town was small, and the The Olive Garden was the nicest restaurant around.
"Doesn't Pippa look pretty?" Ellen asked Craig once we were seated.
I felt confident in the outfit, but the band of my jeans rubbed against a blister and I had to put a band-aid over it in the bathroom once we got there.
"Uh, yeah." Craig smiled at me and gave Ellen a look for putting him on the spot.
"Thanks," I said. Craig may have been hot, but once we were all in the car together I realized I already knew him. In seventh grade he had asked me to a dance and when I said yes, he yelled "Psych!" and laughed with his friends all the way down the hall. I wasn't one to hold grudges, but I didn't have the best feeling that tonight would lead to a second date.
When the waiter came Ellen ordered a salad with dressing on the side like she always did when we were in public, but I knew she would eat two helpings of her mom's pot roast the second she walked in her door. I ordered the biggest bowl of pasta they offered and just smiled at Craig when he looked at me in surprise. I grabbed a breadstick and finished it in a few bites. If he was paying for the meal and I wasn't getting a second date, I was definitely eating what I wanted. I took another breadstick and leaned back into the booth.
"Are you excited for school, Ellen?" Craig asked after a few silent minutes. Ellen had gotten into UC Denver and was going to major in Communication. For as long as I could remember, Ellen had been very determined to make her first million before she was thirty. Melissa, on the other hand, was going to a small university in New York and planned to major in Philosophy. My mom predicted she'd only last one semester. "It'll get hard and she'll come up with an excuse to leave," she had said.
"Totally," Ellen said. "Dorm room, freedom. Orientation was super cool. I've been e-mailing with my roommate for a couple of weeks now and she sounds really cool, too."
"You'll rock college," Jake said, nudging her with an elbow. Ellen blushed a little and fiddled with her fork.
"If anyone was made for college, it's you," I said, and I meant it. Jake was right, she'd rock college.
"Thanks," she said with a small smile.
The waiter brought our entrees out shortly and I began to fill my stomach with pasta. Pasta was an ultimate comfort food for me, and it was much needed. I sopped up extra sauce with garlic bread and could feel eyes on me. I glanced at Craig who in turn handed me a napkin. Hey, there was no sexy way to eat noodles. My eyes drifted to the back of the restaurant and I spotted the navy suit again. Back turned to me, navy suit pressed neatly, my stomach churned. I stared back at my pasta.
"Pippa, are you okay?" Ellen asked me in a hushed voice from next to me.
I kept my eyes on my bowl and nodded, not trusting my voice. This was it; I was losing my mind. I was going crazy. I was going to have to be medicated for life or end up on the fifth floor of the hospital without access to shoelaces. My heart started to echo loudly in my ears and I noticed my fork shook a little as my hand trembled.
"We're gonna go powder our noses." Ellen grabbed my elbow and steered me to the bathroom. I locked myself in a stall and emptied the contents of my stomach. It would be a while before I could eat pasta again. I groaned and leaned the side of my head against the cool metal door.
"Are you sick?" Ellen asked. "You got super pale all of a sudden."
I sighed and rubbed my temples. If Melissa wouldn't listen to my troubles, maybe Ellen would. "I'm losing my mind."
"Come again?" she asked.
I told her everything. The shadows, the voices, my grandma. When I was done and realized it sounded even crazier out loud, Ellen was quiet. I stood up and slid the stall latch open, and stepped under the fluorescent light of the bathroom. Ellen stared at me thoughtfully. I rinsed my mouth out and then faced her.
"When I was nine, I went to a sleepover and we played with a Ouija board," she started. I blinked and leaned against the wall, listening. "It started out fine and fun and you could totally tell some of us were moving the little disc thingy. But then things got weird. There were noises upstairs when there was no one up there. Lights flickered. We all got super freaked out. Half of us left and went home, myself included. I couldn't sleep all night. For days, I felt like I was being watched." She picked at her fingernails and shifted on her feet.
"Ouija boards are fucked up," I agreed.
"You don't get what I'm saying?"
I raised my eyebrows and waited. Acid still burned at the base of my throat.
"Ghosts, dumbass," she said lightly. "I think this is ghosts, you're not going crazy."
I hesitated and mulled that over. "Shit, that's almost worse."
"Worse than going crazy?"
"Well, with crazy there are meds. With ghosts there's...death."
"Everyone dies, Pippa."
"I'm terrified of death, Ellen. Like, utterly. I can't even fathom losing someone I love. I wouldn't survive it. God couldn't have picked a worse person to have see ghosts."
She frowned a little, but nodded. "I do understand fearing death and losing those you love. But maybe you could see this as more of a gift. Eventually, anyway."
I sighed loudly. "What should I do?"
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Do I just go home and keep seeing my dead grandma? Keep hearing odd things, keep having things move around? I'll lose my mind. I mean, what am I supposed to do with this? I don't even like horror movies. I can't have ghosts popping up all over the place. My grandma is out there, Ellen. My dead grandma. This is so fucked."
Ellen chewed on her nail. "What about that doctor? He was struck, too, right? Maybe he
can help."
"Dr. Washington. Yeah. Wait, there was a second in the hospital when I saw a shadow and he looked kind of near it. Could be nothing, but it's worth a shot, right? But what if he thinks I'm a freak and wants to commit me?"
"You're almost eighteen, Pippa. You can't just be committed without your consent unless it's, like, court ordered, I don't think. Maybe word it a bit carefully until you see how he reacts, just to be safe."
"Yeah. I should at least go talk to him."
"You should. Look, you're the one always talking about things happening for a reason, right? Everything happens for a reason. It was your quote for three yearbooks in a row. Maybe this is all for a reason."
Maybe she was right. "Yeah. Maybe."
"Hey, we should get back, they're going to eat our food."
"I don't think I can finish that pasta now," I said.
"Just pick at it while you talk. They won't notice," she said with a smile.
"Maybe I'll get it to go. Dessert, too."
"Where do you put all that food?" she asked. "I'm going to be lucky if I only gain the freshman fifteen. My pants are tight just from that salad. I swear to God they put butter on it."
I cracked my first smile of the night and followed her back to the table. She was right again; I picked at my food the rest of the date and got it to go, and Craig never mentioned anything.
FIVE
The next Tuesday night, I became completely convinced Ellen was right. I had been out driving to clear my head when the gaslight came on. I pulled into the local station and filled up. When I went inside I had a sudden craving for Cheetos. I wandered the aisles until I found them and picked up a bag.
"The flaming ones are better."
I looked over and saw a girl with fiery red hair standing by the Funyons. Her shoes were wet and left damp prints.
"I don't really like heat," I told her.
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