Haunted Memories

by Phoebe Rivers

  “He’s never even spoken to me,” I protested.

  “Actions speak louder than words, my mom always says,” Lily replied knowingly.

  I looked at Luke, but my gaze traveled to the end of his table, where Jayden sat. He tossed a piece of popcorn in the air and caught it in his mouth. Raising his fist in victory, he smiled, and I found myself wishing it were him. Maybe he’d left me the gifts.

  Another popcorn piece launched into the air. The outline of a shimmering hand reached out and guided the kernel into Jayden’s open mouth. Victory again. Jayden celebrated, as Spirit Boy hovered beside him. Then his translucent companion turned and caught me watching. He directed a dark glare my way. Warning me away.

  I sighed. It couldn’t be Jayden, I realized. Spirit Boy would never allow it. Would he?

  “Toss your trash and come with me,” Lily whispered five minutes before lunch ended.

  “Where?”

  She nudged me. “Just come.”

  I crumpled my paper bag, folded the paper crown, and stood. I could make out the gym teacher across the room, pushing the trash can closer so a girl with bad aim aced the slam dunk of her apple core. I led Lily to a different can.

  “I want to see who signed up to run for Harvest Queen,” she confided, as I followed her down the narrow aisles and around the crowded tables. “The list is over there.”

  “I thought you said it was silly.”

  “It is.” Lily stopped before a piece of notebook paper stapled to a neon-orange poster board on the wall. “Did I tell you I joined the school newspaper? I’m going to be a reporter. This is news, so I need to know about it. It’s like my job now.”

  She may be a reporter, I thought, but Lily’s genuinely curious. But after putting down Harvest Queen to Miranda, she couldn’t tell the girls at our table she was dying to know who was on the list.

  “Caroline Melillo . . . Dina Martino . . . Chloe Wohl, she’s nice . . .” She read the names out loud. I leaned in. It was hard to hear over the chatter and squeals of the entire seventh grade.

  “Ava Gomez . . . all eighth graders . . . oh, Christine Wu, she’s in seventh, and—” Lily stopped reading. Her brow furrowed, and she tilted her head. “I didn’t know you wanted to be Harvest Queen.”

  “What? I don’t.”

  “You could have told me, you know.” She sounded hurt.

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded.

  She pointed to the final name on the list: Sara Collins.

  “That’s not me,” I said.

  “Oh, come on, Sara. If you wanted to run, you should have just told me—”

  “I didn’t sign up,” I insisted, still staring at my name written on the sheet.

  “Really?” Lily sounded dubious.

  “Really. Someone is playing a mean joke.” I grabbed the black Sharpie hanging on a string by the poster board and blacked out my name.

  “That’s so weird,” Lily said.

  I glanced at the gym teacher, over at Jayden and the Spirit Boy, then down at the folded paper crown in my hand. Lily didn’t know the half of it.

  I doodled on my sneakers, swirls spiraling along the tongue. Every few seconds I stole secretive glances at Jayden, sitting on a stool to my right. First period. Science. Jayden. He’d said hi but then started talking to A.J. about a video game with different levels. Spirit Boy hovered in the corner, disinterested.

  No new gifts in my locker this morning. I wondered again if there was any chance Jayden had given me the flower. I thought back to Lady Azura reading my palm. She said I’d meet a tall, dark stranger. She didn’t say he’d like me. But then in my vision he’d looked at me like he really did like me. A lot.

  I wasn’t sure what it all meant.

  “Announcements, class,” Miss Klingert called out. “Eyes on the screen.” During class, the huge white screen displayed her PowerPoint presentations, but in the morning, schoolwide announcements were broadcast over it. Kids in the journalism club took turns as on-air anchors. Usually it was mind-numbingly boring. Jayden and A.J. continued debating the best way to reach level five.

  I barely listened to the rundown of after-school activities. I had to go right home. I’d promised Dad. It had been days since I’d seen Lady Azura alone. Luckily, she never emerged from her rooms before noon. She said it took time to “put on her face.” So avoiding her in the morning was easy. Then, by dinnertime, Dad was around. I spent my nights hidden upstairs doing homework and messing on the computer with the photographs I’d taken this summer.

  Sports scores passed in a blur, though from his reaction I guessed that Jayden was on the soccer team. They won, I think.

  Harvest Queen candidates were next. Eighth-grade girls I didn’t know. Their school photos flashed on the screen as each name was announced.

  My mind drifted back to Jayden. Maybe I should go watch him play soccer.

  “That’s me!” Christine shrieked across from me. I glanced up at the screen and caught a stiff studio portrait of Christine smiling widely. Kids in class cheered for her.

  Maybe I could join the school website as a sports photographer, I thought. I liked to take pictures, and then I’d have a reason to hang out at the soccer games—

  I sensed the quiet immediately. All the kids stopped talking among themselves, as if on cue.

  I gazed up. Dozens of eyes stared at me.

  Jayden, A.J., and Christine stared at me. Then at the screen.

  Me—on the screen.

  A hastily shot, blurred image of me walking down the hall was being shown on every screen in every classroom in the school!

  And then my name. Out loud. Announced on the morning broadcast.

  Sara Collins. For Harvest Queen.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Seriously?” Christine leaned over the table in disbelief. “Seriously?”

  “That’s cool,” A.J. murmured.

  “Who is she?” asked someone behind me.

  “The new girl. Over there. See?” Stools scraped. Kids looked.

  “Can you believe it?” someone else said. “She’s new. No one even knows her.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I had crossed off my name. I hadn’t written it there in the first place, but I had crossed it off. Why were they announcing it now to the whole school? I cringed. The whole school!

  “You’re really going after Harvest Queen?” Christine’s voice was measured, trying to hide her annoyance.

  “No.” I shook my head wildly. “It’s a mistake.”

  “Well, then you should tell someone. Go to the office,” Christine said. “You’ve got to fix it.”

  She was right. I raised my hand.

  “Yes?” Miss Klingert was already putting up a PowerPoint about sunspots.

  “May I have a pass? To the office. Please?”

  She turned, noticing me for the first time since school began. “Is it important? Can it wait until the end of class?”

  I hesitated, but Christine mouthed, Now.

  “May I go now?” I asked.

  Miss Klingert handed me a pass, and I hurried out of the room and down the empty hall in the direction of the office.

  “Hey, Sara!” Avery emerged from the girls’ bathroom. She’d been folding her yellow pass into what looked like an origami bird. “Aren’t you excited about Harvest Queen?”

  I was having trouble processing all this information. I didn’t know what to say.

  “It’s about time someone ran who—”

  “I’m not running.”

  Avery smirked. “Of course you are. You were announced.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “But they said it.” Her face brightened. “Hey, don’t worry, I have it all figured out. I can help you.”

  “Help me what?” The office door beckoned, wide open, down the long hallway. I have to get there, I thought.

  “Campaign. Get votes. I’ve been waiting for this, to—”

  “Thanks,” I cut her off. “It’s a mistake, t
hough, and I need to fix it.” I moved toward the open door, then felt bad about brushing her off. “See you at lunch,” I called over my shoulder.

  The office hummed with activity. Two assistants typed furiously, one muttering to herself. Several teachers milled about, placing absent students’ work into folders and drinking coffee out of mugs adorned with apples and pencils and other teacherlike artwork. A parent stood at the counter, pushing her child’s clarinet case toward a gray-haired woman, reminding her that Greg had band second period.

  I waited until the mother left, then stepped up to the counter. I told the woman, who seemed as if she ran the office, that they’d announced my name by mistake this morning. She frowned. Then she shuffled toward a desk behind her. She returned with the piece of notebook paper and some other sheets.

  “Is this your name?” she asked. She pointed to Sara Collins written in blue pen immediately below the black marker cross-out on the sign-up sheet.

  “Yes . . . but no!” I took a deep breath, trying to string words together. “I mean, that is my name, but I didn’t sign up.”

  She heaved a sigh. “But you filled out the permission form.” She laid another sheet on top of the sign-up list.

  I gaped. A two-page form with my name on it, completely filled out in the same blue ink. I held the paper close, my hands shaking. It was my handwriting. My handwriting! My loopy Ls. My words slanting to the left.

  “The form came with rules. You checked off that you understood the rules, and your parent signed.” She pointed to the signature on the second page.

  “I didn’t fill out this form,” I insisted, my voice a panicked whisper.

  “This is not your writing?” She furrowed her brow.

  “It is, but . . .” I didn’t know. Who would do this? Who copied my handwriting so well? And forged my dad’s signature? Who?

  “Are you okay, dear?” Her tone changed to one of concern.

  “Yes. No. I need to get out of this. . . .”

  She nodded. “I can’t do that for you. Since we do have a form you filled out with your parent’s permission, the principal needs to review this. Unfortunately, Principal Bowman is at an off-site meeting today. You’ll have to stop by on Monday.”

  “But I don’t want to be on the Harvest Queen list—”

  “I can’t change anything until the principal returns to assess the situation. Do you need a pass back to class?”

  “But—”

  She shrugged. “That’s all I can do.” She handed me a yellow pass. “Others are waiting.” She indicated the line of kids forming behind me.

  I left the office just as the bell ending first period sounded. In seconds, the hall filled with kids. I stood for a moment, still puzzled about my handwriting on that form. Then, over the noise of squeaking sneakers and voices raised in greeting, I heard a familiar deep laugh.

  The shimmery form of the gym teacher stood across the hall, holding his belly and laughing.

  At me.

  “Surprise,” Dad called that afternoon, when I climbed the narrow stairs to the second floor. He sat in front of his laptop at the wide wooden table we’d brought from California. In the small kitchen in our old house, the table had seemed comically large. Every night when I was little, and even when I’d outgrown it, we’d set six places at the table—two for me and Dad, the other four for my stuffed animals. We always had “guests.”

  Today the table looked small and adrift in the high-ceilinged main room of the rambling Victorian house. We didn’t own enough furniture to fill this room, let alone the six other rooms that made up the top two floors that we rented.

  “You’re home!” I gave him a big hug.

  No one-on-one with Lady Azura today, I realized.

  “Yep, kiddo, I snuck out early ’cause it’s Friday,” he said. “My boss thinks I’m still at a site writing up a jewelry theft report.” He shrugged. “The wonders of a laptop.”

  He worked as an insurance claims adjuster. If someone had a fire or a car crash, my dad was the one who decided how much of the repair the insurance company should pay. I sank into the chair next to him, digging my hand into his opened bag of pretzels.

  “How was school?”

  “Fine.” My autopilot response.

  He stopped typing. “I don’t believe you.”

  I shrugged. How could I explain? “It’s just . . . weird.”

  “All new things are weird. Give it another week or two, and what seems weird now will be completely normal,” he said.

  I doubted that. I picked flecks of salt, one by one, off a pretzel. I wondered how much I could safely tell him. “It’s confusing here.”

  “The schoolwork?”

  I shook my head. “I’m good with the school stuff. It’s the people—and the way things happen.”

  I could see the uncertainty in his blue eyes. “The ice cream place on the boardwalk hasn’t closed yet for the season. Double-fudge crunch?”

  Ice cream was always one of Dad’s answers.

  Ice cream wasn’t going to make the spirits in the school go away or explain who signed me up for Harvest Queen, but I knew it was the best he could do.

  “Let’s go,” I said, standing.

  I pulled my comforter to my chin, my eyes open. My body stiffened as I listened to the house. Creaking floorboards. Clanging pipes.

  Old house noises, I lied to myself.

  But it wasn’t the house. It was the mustached man who paced the floors of our main room. His heavy shoes slapped the floor in an agitated rhythm. It was the wooden rocking chair squeaking in the pink bedroom down the hall. The woman’s painful wails of despair as she rocked and cried. Cried and rocked. The faint odor of pipe smoke drifted through the vents from the man in the sailor cap, forever perched at the upstairs window.

  The house was alive, even at night. Alive with dead people.

  I had learned to sleep through it. I ignored them. They ignored me.

  But tonight I was wide awake. The glowing numbers on the alarm clock taunted me. 1:36. 1:37.

  I closed my eyes. Images flickered on the back of my lids. The teenage spirit, his hoodie drawn over his head, glaring at me. The gym teacher’s belly shaking as his laughter echoed through the halls. My name being called over and over again on the loudspeaker. Everyone staring.

  Then the singing started. A high-pitched melody. I opened my eyes and strained my ears. A noise I’d never heard before.

  Off-key. Faint words about a chickadee and a woman lost.

  A spirit in the house? I didn’t know. Had the Sad Woman started singing?

  I listened, catching a few words but not all. The song repeated several times, and I found myself humming along. I pushed back my comforter and swung my legs aside. My bare feet touched the cold floor. Where was the song coming from?

  Awake and curious, I padded down the dark hall. The low rumblings of snores outside my father’s door told me he was asleep. I tiptoed into our main room. In the shadows I could make out the mustached guy, pacing in front of our worn corduroy sofa. He didn’t stop for me. I paused. The song continued softly. A woman’s voice, struggling for the high notes.

  I gripped the banister at the top of the stairs. What was I doing? I didn’t know what kind of spirits haunted this house. I should run back to my bed. Hide.

  The melody floated up. The song beckoning me down the stairs.

  One step at a time.

  Closer to the music.

  My feet seemed to move on their own.

  Shadows flickered on the foyer walls. Shivering in my tank top and thin pajama boxers, I crossed my arms over my chest and rubbed my arms. The chorus about the chickadee lilted in from the kitchen.

  Don’t go, I told myself.

  But I couldn’t stop. My feet moved me forward into the dark kitchen.

  CHAPTER 7

  I hesitated in the doorway, too frightened to breathe. A figure floated in the shadows. All in white from head to toe.

  The melody was softer now. A ge
ntle hum. The figure swayed in time with the song. I pressed my fingernails into my palms as the ghostly figure moved toward me. I gaped at the thin outstretched arms. At the blue-white skin. At the two steaming mugs.

  “Marshmallows or whipped cream?” the raspy voice inquired.

  I’d lost all ability to speak.

  “Both then?” The figure placed the mugs on the table. Two napkins, two spoons, and two plates of gingersnaps already waited on the pale pink tablecloth. “I was expecting you.”

  “You were?” I croaked. My mind slowly put together the pieces. Not a spirit. It was Lady Azura dressed in a long, white satin bathrobe. A white silk scarf wrapped like a turban concealed her mahogany-dyed hair. Her face, stripped bare of its usual makeup, was colorless in the dim light from over the stove. Her wrinkled skin hugged her high cheekbones like crepe paper.

  “Some nights are not meant for sleep. Some are meant for midnight snacks. Sit.” She pointed to a chair, then slid into the one opposite.

  For several minutes I concentrated on blowing the steam from my drink. Lady Azura nibbled a cookie, watching and waiting for me to speak. But what could I say? I see dead people, do you? I didn’t think my mouth could form those words.

  I glanced at the ceiling, noticing that the mustached man’s constant footsteps had now stopped. Tap, tap, tap. He drummed his thick-soled shoe impatiently, no longer pacing. A minute later he resumed his measured steps.

  “Some nights I find the rhythm soothing.” Lady Azura waved toward the ceiling. “Other nights I want to whack the poor man in the knee and put him and me out of our misery.” Her lips turned up in a smile.

  “You hear them too?” My voice came out in a whisper.

  “Yes.” Lady Azura met my questioning gaze straight on. “Mr. Broadhurst has a lot on his mind. He runs a large printing company. Or used to back in 1895.”

  “Can you see them?” My hands trembled, and I shoved them in my lap. I’m not the only one! The words repeated like a chant in my head.