by Apryl Baker
“So have you nailed her yet, Jake?” Tommy asks. He’s grinning like a lech. What a creep.
“Tommy, shut up,” Jake growls, fury in every word.
“What? The way you two were kissing looked like you were trying to crawl inside each other. I just assumed you’ve banged her.”
“Tommy!” Meg yells, face red, looking like she wants to crawl under a rock and hide from the embarrassment.
I’m all for smashing him into goo. “It’s none of your business who I bang and who I don’t,” I shot back.
“This is true, but it might be mine,” says a new voice.
We turn our heads to see Officer Dan standing not more than a foot away in full uniform. He is glaring at Tommy. Those brown eyes so do not look happy.
“Wait, how is it any of your business?” I demand.
He grins and taps his badge. “You’re only sixteen, Mattie. Tommy, you and Jake are seniors right?”
“So?” Jake asks.
“Eighteen?”
“Yeah.”
Oh, no. “You wouldn’t dare.” My mind scrambles for what the legal age of consent is in North Carolina, but for the life of me I don’t remember. Would Dan really go there?
Officer Dan grins wickedly at me. “You bet I would.”
“Excuse me for a second.” I push out of the booth and grab Officer Dan, pulling him outside the diner.
“Now look here…”
“No, you look here,” he interrupts. “I’m trying to help you.”
“Help me?” I screech. “Jake is my boyfriend and if I want to… to… well, I will!”
“I’m not worried about, Jake. It’s Tommy I’m trying to warn off,” Dan says, face serious.
“What?”
“Look, there have been several complaints about him, but none of the girls would press charges. I want to make sure he knows someone is looking out for you, someone official. I saw the way he was staring at you and I figured he needed a reminder that you’re off limits.”
My anger deflates like a popped balloon. “Oh.” Wow. Officer Dan is looking out for me? That’s really sweet. “Sorry I yelled at you.”
“No, you’re not,” he laughs. “You yell at me all the time.”
“True, but you deserve it. Have you found out anything about the kids I told you about?” I switch topics on him, knowing I’ll only have a minute or two more before Jake comes looking for me.
“Yeah, a lot actually. I’m off tomorrow so I’ll pick you up and show you everything I’ve found out – if that’s cool?”
“Yeah, that’s great. I need to be home before five, though. It’s Saturday so Jake and I are going to a movie.”
“Uh-huh. I’ll swing by in the morning around seven then. You can have breakfast with me and my parents.”
“Your parents?”
“Yeah, you are forgetting I’m still in college? Apartments aren’t cheap, Mattie. I don’t pay rent at home.”
I can’t stop the laughter from bubbling up. “Ohmygosh, Officer Dan, you still live at home with your parents.”
“Shut up,” he growls. “It’s not funny. It’s called being responsible and saving my money.”
“If you say so…”
“Mattie, you are such a dork.”
That only makes me laugh harder and he stomps away. I’m still chuckling when I go back in and sit down. Jake does not look happy. Ohhhh, is he jealous?
“You know Dan Richards?” Meg all but yells, bouncing in her seat. “He is sooo HOT!”
“Officer Dan? Yeah, I guess,” I say, remembering the horrified look on his face when I’d started laughing at him. “He’s more of a pain in the rear than anything else.”
“Ass, Mattie,” Meg laughs, “He’s a pain the ass.”
I shrug. “That, too.”
“So how do you know him?” Meg asks, but Jake answers.
“He was one of the cops investigating her foster sister’s disappearance.” There is a definite bite to his tone. Oh, yeah, my boyfriend is sooo jealous of Officer Dan.
“I forgot about that,” Meg frowns. “Do they know what happened?”
I shake my head. “No, they think she ran away, but she didn’t.”
Meg looks like she wants to say something to me, but isn’t sure how. I know that look. I saw it from Mrs. Olson and from Nancy. Meg figures she ran away, too. I am not wasting my breath arguing with her.
“Anyway, shouldn’t we get going to the game? Coach’ll kill you and Tommy if…”
A little old woman I don’t know is waving her cane at me and distracts me from what I start to say. She’s standing there in the middle of the waitresses moving around carrying food to tables, just waving at me. Her hair is a silvery color, almost with a hint of blue in it. She’s wearing old lady clothes, the kind with the floral prints all over them. I blink rapidly. Maybe I’m seeing things, but no, she’s still there and coming towards me! Another ghost? Great.
“If what?” Jake prompts.
“Huh?”
“You okay, Mattie?”
“Yeah, fine,” I say. “Just tired.”
The little old woman moves until she is standing behind Tommy. “I need help,” she tells me.
“You look like you just saw a ghost,” Meg laughs.
“Ghost? No, no ghosts,” I deny quickly. Meg, you have no idea what that really means.
The woman jabs her cane at me. “You!” she says. “You have to help me. Oliver needs help. He’s all by himself in the basement. Someone has to let him out.”
“I think we probably should all head over to the school.” Jake stretches. “Coach will be mad if we’re late.”
“Coach?” the woman yells, waving her cane. It goes right through Tommy’s head. He doesn’t seem to feel it, but I stare, wide-eyed at the site of the cane moving back and forth through his head. “What about Ollie?” she says.
“Ollie?” I whisper, fascinated as the cane cuts through Tommy’s head again and again. How can he not feel that? So cool, and so weird.
“Who’s Ollie?” Jake asks, his eyes going from me to Tommy. He can’t see the old woman, so he’s frowning.
Dang, gotta watch that stuff. “What? No one. Come on, let’s get going before you two get into serious trouble with Coach.” I slide out of the booth then leave the diner, eyes straight ahead, refusing to look at the old woman screeching behind me. Ignore her and she’ll go away, ignore her and she’ll go away, I mutter to myself. They always do. Right?
Jake takes my hand and leads me to his car. As I buckle the seatbelt, I can see the old woman standing outside the diner, yelling at me, but I can’t hear her anymore. She is persistent. I have a feeling next time I go back to the diner, she’ll still be there waiting for me to help Ollie. None of the ghosts are giving up so easily – now that I’ve started getting chatty with them. Rats.
“You okay?” Jake asks me while he puts his Jeep into gear.
“I will be,” I tell him. And I would. As soon as I can figure out what happened to Sally and the others and maybe save Mary. Then I can go back to ignoring the ghosts and maybe they’ll go back to ignoring me.
God, I hope so.
Part II: Lies
Chapter Eleven
The sound of thunder wakes me. My room is pitch-black and I rub my eyes. The hard sound of rain beating at the walls and the roof drowns out the room’s white noise. I can’t sleep without some kind of white noise. Never could, not even when I was little. I can hear the wind whipping the trees outside into a frenzy. We live at the end, on a cul-de-sac. Behind the house is a small forest that wraps around the entire neighborhood. I can hear the trees wailing even over the sound of the storm, which is odd.
My eyes roam blearily to the clock. It’s 5:47 a.m. Dear God, almost time to get up. Can’t believe I agreed to a 7 a.m. meeting of the minds with Dan. It’s unheard of to get up this early on a Saturday morning. The alarm is set to go off in exactly thirteen minutes. Do I go ahead and get up or lay here waiting for the alarm to g
o off? I’m fond of option two. I got into the habit of it around foster home six. You lay half awake, half asleep and just watch the clock. It’s weird, but I love it. Your thoughts wander, never resting on any one thing.
There is one thought I can’t get away from. Why haven’t I seen Sally again? Mary seems to find me without problem, but not Sally. I’ve only seen her the one time at the party, but not since. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Sally never was much of a fighter. What if she just gave up? Is that why she isn’t trying to find me now? She thinks everyone has given up on her? That bothers me more than anything. What if it were me? What if I thought no one even cared enough to look for me? I’d be pretty depressed, too. Can ghosts even get depressed? I don’t think so, but who really knows?
I’ve been immersing myself in the world of spooks, reading everything I can get my hands on. I even went to the library. Normally, the only time I visit a library is for school projects like a huge research paper. And even that’s pretty rare, since I get most information I need online. There is another reason I avoid the library. It’s the smell of the old books; it reminds me of my mom. She loved to read and would read aloud to me every night – even when she was high as a kite. I ended up trying to read the book. It was a tradition for her, for us.
My mom has been on my mind a lot the last couple of days. All the ghost activity makes me wonder why I’ve never seen her. I mean she’s dead and all. It stands to reason I should have seen her, at least once. Right? Is she avoiding me? Ashamed of what she did or just sorry she didn’t finish what she started? Some part of me wants to ask her those questions, but another part doesn’t. What if I don’t like what she’d tell me? Sometimes not knowing is its own kind of hell, but thinking about knowing the truth – would it make things worse or better? I think I’ll stick with not knowing – for now, anyway.
I glance at the clock and smack the alarm button off. 5:59. I yawn and stretch before hauling myself out of bed and heading to the closet. Where is that old UNC sweatshirt? Then I flip on the light and rummage. I find it and yank, causing a small box to fall down and smack me in the head. “Ow.” Grumbling, I bend down to pick it up. The contents have spilled out. I freeze as my eyes land on the picture staring up at me. It’s the one of me and my mom, the one before she flipped out. Our faces are side by side. I was about two. Strange that we look so normal. I’m all smiles and she’s laughing at whoever is taking the picture. I’ve often wondered if that person was my dad.
She is so beautiful in that picture. I don’t look a thing like her. She has blonde hair and brown eyes. I have dark brown hair and hazel eyes. Her coloring is a bit darker than mine too. She used to smile so much, before the drugs. In the end her eyes were dull and lifeless. She looked about ten years older than she really was too. It was definitely the drugs. That stuff burns you out, makes you older than you really are. I won’t touch that crap. I’ve seen what drugs can do. When you see the damage firsthand, you’ll never, ever even think about trying them.
And I miss my mom. Strange. I miss the woman who wanted me dead. She wasn’t always a bad mom. I have some really good memories. Like when I was four, I decided that for my birthday I wanted to go swimming in a pool of chocolate pudding. We were in New Orleans at the time. She went to Wal-Mart, bought one of those little plastic kiddie pools and a humongous amount of pudding and milk. I played in that pool all day, my mom climbing in with me right before she said it was time to get out. She laughed so hard. It’s one of the best memories I have of her. That was before she became a junkie. Sad.
So I guess I do want to kind of see her, maybe. Even though I’m terrified of what she might say, I need to see her. She’s my mom and I miss her. Either that or I’m just a glutton for punishment. Sighing, I pick things up and put them back in the box containing what few keepsakes I own. My photo, an old matchbox car from the first foster kid I met – Max. He took care of me while I was with him. I wonder sometimes what happened to him. The movie ticket from mine and Jake’s first movie. I chuckle softly. I’d put it in my box of treasures even before I knew how much I liked him.
The frame slips from my hand and falls to the carpet, coming apart. Dang it. I scoop everything up and flip it over to fix it. That’s when I see the writing on the back of the photo. Curious, I pull it out and read the short message.
For my darling from both of us, Mattie and Claire.
My darling? Who was she referring to? I flip the picture back over and just stare at it. The more I stare, the more I can see things I didn’t before. There are spots all in the picture, little things you don’t normally notice, but it’s like sunlight reflecting off the lens of the camera. Wait a second. Could those lights be… ghosts? I remember reading about them showing up in pictures as distorted images or blots of light. Had the ghosts been a part of my life even then?
My mind keeps going back to the “my darling” phrase. She looks so happy in the photo, so maybe it is my dad who took the picture. Normally, I don’t even think about it, but all this stuff with Mary, Sally, and the other ghost kids are making me very nostalgic for some odd reason. I keep thinking of my mom, who my dad might be, if I have grandparents, aunts, uncles. The things I normally refuse to think about are now haunting me. I never really cared before, but I do now. Maybe it’s Officer Dan’s influence. Him and his talk of family.
Shaking my head in, I put everything away and take a shower. Officer Dan will be here shortly. With my hair pulled back into a ponytail, my UNC sweatshirt over a purple tee and faded jeans, I grab my jacket and bag and head outside to wait for him.
It’s cold. That’s the first thing I notice when I step outside. Usually October in the Carolinas aren’t that cold. We really only ever see cold weather from late December through February. Snow is non-existent down here too. That’s one thing I don’t miss about Jersey—the snow and the cold. I have every intention of moving to a state that stays warm year round when I am old enough. I’ve already started researching good colleges in the warm zones.
The rain lashes at the porch and I shrink back. Dan pulls up in a rickety old Chevy truck just as I start to head back inside. I frown – gotta do this, then make a run for it. He has the door open for me. Good man, and I jump in. I start to fuss at my wet clothes. He just chuckles and turns on the heat full blast.
“This is not funny,” I fume when he continues to chuckle. “I hate getting wet.”
“It’s just a little rain, Mattie.”
“How far is it to your house? Am I going to dry out before I meet your mother?”
“Don’t worry. Wet or dry, she’ll love you.”
“I’m not worried,” I deny airily. “Everyone loves me.”
“Uh-huh. Sure. That’s before they hear your mouth.” He grins.
“Exactly so.”
“Then they’d want to wring your neck.” He chuckles and I settle back as he drives.
For some reason, Dan makes me comfortable, complacent almost. It’s quite disturbing, this effect. I can’t even flirt with the guy. It just feels wrong. And when I end up arguing with him, it’s not romantic. It’s like he’s just a good buddy, not a boyfriend. And that’s weird. But in a good way. I think.
Dan pulls up in front of what I deem is the typical family house. It’s in one of those neighborhoods that had been constructed years before the massive housing complexes started cropping up. He actually had a yard and lots of space between his house and the ones around him. The walkway is stone and there are shrubs in front, with flower beds around the big oak trees shading the property. Gnomes smile at me from within the hidden folds of the garden. The house itself is a two-story brick with shutters and yes, I kid you not, a white picket fence. It’s so homey I could gag if not for the envy tearing through me just then. This was a home, a real home, like Jake’s.
“Dan, why did you invite me to your house instead of some place public like the library or something? I figured you’d be all professional, considering you’re a cop and all. So why bring me here
?”
“I don’t know,” he mumbles and ducks his head. “I just did.”
I shake my own head and sigh. Nothing ever makes sense when it comes to Dan.
“You sitting here all day, Hathaway?” Dan gives me a crooked grin, recovering from his moment of awkwardness. “We might as well run for it while the rain’s let up a bit.”
“Ohhhhh.” I shake myself. More rain. Why can’t it have stopped already? The garage door is going up as I debate sitting here all day just as he asked. At least it’s a short sprint this time. Grabbing my bag, I scoot out and sprint. The wind catches my bag and I tuck my head down and push forward into the dry garage.
“You two look like drowned rats.”
My head snaps up and over to where a woman is standing in the door frame. She’s tall and willowy. Hair that’s the color of roasted chestnuts, is cut short around her face and makes her look younger than she really is, like in her thirties, but I’m guessing she has to be in her forties at least. Her eyes are blue, not brown like Dan’s. An apron covers her jeans and NC State sweatshirt. She sorta does remind me of June Cleaver, just a modern-day version.
“Hey, Ma.” Dan hits the button to shut the garage door. “This is Mattie.”
She smiles at me a little hesitantly. “Hello, Mattie. Dan said he was bringing a friend by for breakfast. I hope you’re hungry. I made a small mountain of pancakes.”
Pancakes. Wow. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good, now you two get those shoes off before you come in.” She disappears back into the house. I’m not sure she’s happy to see me. I get the feeling she thought Dan was bringing by one of his guy friends or maybe a girl he has been dating. Seeing me shocked her a bit. I know the signs as I’ve shocked more than my fair share of adults.
“Shoes, Mattie,” Dan reminds me. “Mom will make us mop the floor if we get mud on them.”
