by Meg Cabot
"Not really," Paul said. "Hey, I have an idea. Let’s ask Jesse what he’d want, shall we? Say, Jesse, how would feel if I told you I could—"
"No," I interrupted with a gasp. Suddenly, it was getting very difficult to breathe. "Paul, really, that’s not necessary. Jesse won’t—"
"Now, Suze," Paul said as if he were speaking to a three-year-old. "Let’s allow Jesse to decide. Jesse, what if I told you that in addition to all the many other wonderful things that we mediators can do, it turned out we can also travel through time? And that I had generously offered to travel back to your time—the night you died, I mean—and save your life. What would you say to that?"
Jesse’s dark gaze didn’t leave Paul’s face, nor did his expression waver from cold disdain. Not even for a second.
"I would say that you’re a liar" was Jesse’s preternaturally calm response.
"See, I thought you might say that." Paul had the smooth patter and the self-confidence of a traveling salesman giving his spiel. "But I’m here to tell you it’s the absolute truth. Think about it, Jesse. You didn’t have to die that night. I can go back through time and warn you. Well, you won’t know me, of course, but I think if I tell you—the past you—that I’m from the future and that you’re going to die if you don’t do what I tell you, you’ll believe me."
"Do you?" Jesse asked in the same deadly calm voice. "Because I don’t."
That stumped Paul for a second or two, during which my breathing became easy again. My heart swelled with affection for the man leaning against the stone pillar beside me. I shouldn’t have worried about hiding this from Jesse. Jesse would never choose life over me. Never. He loves me too much.
Or so I thought, before Paul started his patter once again.
"I don’t think you understand what I’m saying here." Paul shook his head. "I’m talking about giving you back your life, Jesse. None of this wandering around in a sort of half-life for a hundred and fifty years, watching the people you love grow older and die, one by one. No way. You’ll live. To a ripe old age, if I can, you know, get rid of that Diego guy who killed you. I mean, how can you say no to an offer like that?"
"Like this," Jesse said tonelessly. "No."
Yes! I thought, flushing with joy. Yes!
Paul blinked. Once. Twice.
Then he said, his voice devoid of the friendliness that had been in it moments before, "Don’t be an idiot. I’m offering you a chance to live again. Live. What are you going to do, hang around here for the rest of eternity? Are you going to watch her get old"—he thrust a finger at me—"and eventually turn to dust like you did with your family? Don’t you remember how that felt? You want to go through all that again? You want her to sacrifice having a normal life—marriage, kids, grandkids—just to be with you, when you can’t even support her, can’t even—"
"Paul, stop it," I commanded because I could see Jesse’s face growing less and less expressionless with every word.
But Paul wasn’t done. Not by a long shot.
"You think you’re doing her any favors by sticking around?" he demanded. "Man, you’re only keeping her from leading a normal life—"
"Stop it!" I shouted at Paul as I reached out and grasped Jesse by the arm. Two things happened at once then. The first was that classroom doors suddenly flew open all around us and students began streaming out into the breezeway as they changed classes for the next period.
The next was that I seized Jesse’s arms with both my hands and, looking up anxiously into his face, said, "Don’t listen to him. Please. I don’t care about those things, marriage and kids. All I want is you."
But it was too late. I could tell it was too late. Some of what Paul had said was already starting to sink in. Jesse’s expression had grown troubled, and he seemed unable to look me in the eye.
"I mean it," I said, giving him a frustrated shake. "Don’t pay attention to a word he says!"
"Um, hello, Suze." Kelly Prescott’s voice rose above the noise of slamming lockers and chitchat. "Talk to the wall much?"
I flung a glance over my shoulder and saw her standing there with the rest of the Dolce and Gabbana Nazis, smirking at me. I knew, of course, what they were seeing. Me with hands raised, clutching nothing but air, and speaking to one of the pillars in the breezeway.
Like I don’t have enough of a reputation for being a freak. Now I really looked like I was going around the bend.
But when I turned my head back to tell Jesse we’d finish this conversation later, I saw that I was too late. He’d already disappeared.
I dropped my hands and turned to face Paul, who still stood there looking angry and defensive and pleased with himself at the same time.
"Thanks a lot," I said to him.
"Don’t mention it." He walked away, whistling to himself.
chapter ten
"Is there wheat in this?" a petite woman in a China chop and huge dark sunglasses asked me as she held up a chocolate chip cookie.
"Yes," I said.
"What about this?" She held up a brownie.
"Yes," I said.
"What about this?" A Mexican wedding cookie.
"Yes."
"Are you telling me," she demanded, looking outraged, "that there is wheat in all of these baked goods?"
I lowered my chair. I’d been tilting it out of boredom, to see how far back I could lean without falling.
"Because Tyler doesn’t eat wheat," the woman went on, her hand going to cradle the chubby-cheeked face of a kid standing beside her. His blue eyes blinked out at me past his mother’s perfectly manicured nails. "I’m raising him on a gluten-free diet."
"Try one of those," I said, pointing to some lemon bars.
"Is there dairy in it?" the woman asked suspiciously. "Because I’m raising Tyler lactose-free, as well."
"Dairy- and gluten-free, I promise," I said.
The woman slipped me a dollar, and I handed her the lemon bars. She passed one to Tyler, who inspected it, bit into it . . . then gave me a dazzling smile—his first of the day, no doubt—as his mother took his hand and led him away. Beside me, Shannon, my fellow bake sale attendant, looked appalled.
"There’s wheat and dairy in those lemon bars," she said.
"I know." I rocked my chair back again. "I felt bad for the little guy."
"But—"
"She didn’t say he was allergic. She just said she was raising him without it. Poor kid."
"Suu-uuze," the eighth grader said, giving my name multiple syllables. "You are so cool. Your brother Dave said you were cool, but I didn’t believe him."
"Oh, I’m cool, all right," I assured her. It was weird to hear someone call David "Dave." He was such a David to me.
"You so are," Shannon said with perfect seriousness.
Whatever. It was so the story of my life to be stuck running a school bake sale while the rest of the world was enjoying such a perfect Saturday. The sky overhead was so blue and cloudless, it was almost painful to look at. The temperature was hovering at an extremely comfortable seventy degrees. A beautiful day for the beach or cappuccino at an outdoor cafe, or even just a walk.
And where was I? Yeah, that’d be manning the eighth grade bake sale booth at the Mission’s charity antique auction.
"I couldn’t believe it when Sister Ernestine told us you would be helping out at the booth," Shannon was saying. Shannon, I’d discovered, was not shy. She likes to talk. A lot. "I mean, you being an eleventh grader and all. And, you know. So cool."
Cool. Yeah, right.
I hadn’t expected so many people to show up at the auction. Oh, sure, a few parents, eager to look like they cared about their kids’ school. But not, you know, hordes of eager antique collectors.
But that’s exactly who was here. There were people everywhere, people I’d never seen before, all wandering around, peering at the items that would be auctioned off, and whispering conspiratorially to one another. Occasionally, some of them stopped by our booth and shelled out a buck for a Ric
e Krispies treat or whatever. But mostly they had their eyes on the prize. . . . in this case, a hideously ugly wicker birdcage, or some old Mickey Mouse watch, or a snow globe of the Golden Gate Bridge, or some other equally non-designer thing.
The bidding got started late because the monsignor was supposed to have been acting as auctioneer. Because he was still in a coma up in San Francisco, there appeared to have been some frantic phone calls on the part of Sister Ernestine, as she looked for someone worthy to fill in.
You can imagine my surprise when she got up onto the dais at the end of the courtyard and announced into the microphone, in front of all the many antique collectors gathered there, that in the monsignor’s absence, the auction would be called by none other than Andy Ackerman, well-known host of a home repair show on cable . . .
. . . and my stepdad.
I saw Andy climb the dais, waving modestly and looking abashed at all the applause he was getting. Not sure if there could possibly be anything more embarrassing than this, I started to slink down in my chair. . . .
Oh but wait, there was something more embarrassing than my stepfather calling the school antique auction. There was also the fact that most of the applause he was getting was coming from a woman in the front row.
My mother.
"Hey," Shannon said. "Isn’t that—"
"Yes," I interrupted her. "Yes, it is."
A few minutes later the auction began, with Andy doing a very good imitation of those auctioneers you see on TV, the ones who talk really fast. He was gesturing to an ugly orange plastic chair and declaring it "authentic Eames" and asking if anyone would be willing to bid a hundred dollars for it.
A hundred dollars? I wouldn’t have traded a Rice Krispies treat for it.
But wouldn’t you know it, people in the audience were lifting their paddles, and soon the chair went for 350 bucks! And nobody even complained about what a rip-off it was.
Clearly Sister Ernestine had impressed upon this audience just how badly the school needed its basketball court repaved, because people were just throwing their money away on the most worthless pieces of garbage ever. I saw CeeCee’s aunt Pru and my own homeroom teacher Mr. Walden both bidding against each other for an extremely hideous lamp. Aunt Pru finally won it—for 175 bucks—then walked over to Mr. Walden, apparently to gloat. Except that a few minutes later, I saw them having lemonade together and overheard them laughing about sharing custody of the lamp, like it was a kid in a divorce settlement. Shannon, observing this, went, "Aw, isn’t that cute?"
Except that it totally wasn’t. It totally isn’t cute when your best friend’s weird aunt and your homeroom teacher make a love connection, and you yourself can’t get the guy you like to call you, because, oh guess what, he’s a ghost and doesn’t have a phone.
Not that if Jesse’d call, I’d have had anything much to say to him. What was I going to do, be all "Oh, yeah, by the way, Paul wants to travel through time and make it so you never died. But I plan on stopping him. Because I want you to roam around in the netherworld for a hundred and fifty years so you and I can make out in my mom’s car. Okay? Buh-bye."
Besides, it wasn’t like it was going to happen. Paul going back through time, I mean. Because he didn’t have that anchor thing his grandpa had been talking about. The thing to anchor him to the night Jesse died.
Or that’s what I was telling myself—reassuring myself—right up until Andy held up the silver belt buckle Brad had found while he’d been cleaning out the attic. When he’d found it—wedged between the floorboards beneath the attic window—it had been this tarnished, crusty old thing I’d barely glanced at twice. Andy had thrown it into the box marked MISSION AUCTION, and I hadn’t really thought about it again.
When he held it up now, I saw it winking in the afternoon sunlight. Someone had washed and polished it. And now Andy was going on about how it was an artifact from when our house had been the area’s only hotel—a fancy way of saying what it had really been a boardinghouse—and that the Carmel Historical Society had put its age at close to 150 years.
About as long, actually, as my boyfriend had been dead.
"What’ll I get for this sterling silver buckle?" Andy wanted to know. "A real piece of old-fashioned craftsmanship. Look at the detail in the ornate D carved into it."
Shannon, sitting beside me, suddenly went, "Does your brother ever talk about me? Dave, I mean."
I was idly watching my stepfather. The sun was beating down on us kind of hard, and it was difficult to think about anything except how much I wished I were at the beach.
"I don’t know," I said. I could understand Shannon’s pain, of course. She had a crush on a guy. All she wanted to know was whether or not she was wasting her time.
As the sister of the object of her affections, however, all I could think was . . . ew. Also, that David is way too young to have a girlfriend.
"One of the members of the historical society—don’t think I don’t see you there, Bob," Andy went on laughingly, "even ventured that this belt buckle might have belonged to someone in the Diego clan, a very old, very respected family that settled in this area nearly two hundred years ago."
Respected, my butt. The Diegos—or at least, the ghost of the one member of the family I had had the misfortune to meet—had all been thieves and murderers.
"I believe that for that reason and not just because of its intricate beauty," Andy continued, "this piece is going to be highly sought after by collectors someday . . . and, who knows, maybe even today!"
"David doesn’t really talk about girls at home all that much," I said to Shannon. "At least, not to me."
"Oh." Shannon looked dejected. "But do you think . . . well, do you think if Dave did like a girl, it’d be, you know, someone like me?"
"Let’s start the bidding for this fine piece of authentic period jewelry at a hundred dollars," Andy said. "A hundred dollars. Okay, we have a hundred. How about a hundred and twenty-five? Does anybody bid a hundred and twenty-five?"
I thought about what Shannon had asked me. David, a girlfriend? The youngest of my stepbrothers, I could no more picture David with a girlfriend than I could picture him behind the wheel of a car or even playing soccer. He just isn’t that kind of guy.
"Three fifty," I heard Andy say. "Do I hear three fifty?"
But I supposed that one day David would drive a car. I mean, I could drive now, and there’d been a time when my whole family had despaired of that ever happening. It made sense that someday David would be sixteen and do all the same things that his older brothers Jake and Brad and I were doing. . . . You know, drive. Take trig. Make out with members of the opposite sex.
"My goodness, Bob," Andy said into the microphone. "You weren’t kidding when you mentioned how important you thought this piece was going to be to our auction today, were you? I have seven hundred dollars. Does anyone—Okay, seven fifty. Do I hear eight?"
"Sure," I said to Shannon. "I mean, why wouldn’t David like you? I mean, if he liked anyone better than anybody else. Which I’m not saying he does. That I know of."
"Really?" Shannon looked worried. "Because Dave’s really smart. And I think he’d probably only like smart girls. But I’m not doing all that well in math."
"I’m sure David wouldn’t care about something like that," I said even though I wasn’t sure of it at all. "So long as, you know, you’re a nice person, and all."
"Really?" Shannon flushed prettily. "Do you really think so?"
My God, what had I said?
Fortunately at that moment, Andy brought his auctioneer’s hammer down hard, and distracted Shannon by shouting, "Sold for eleven hundred dollars!"
"Wow," Shannon said. "That’s a lot of money."
She wasn’t the only one in shock. There was an astonished hum through the crowd. Eleven hundred dollars was the most any item on the block had brought in so far. I craned my neck to see what kind of fool had that much money to burn on a piece of junk, and was a little startled to see that And
y was still holding up the belt buckle Jake had found in the attic . . .
. . and that Paul Slater, of all people, was striding up through the crowd to claim it.
I watched as Paul, looking pleased, shook Andy’s hand, took the belt buckle, then whipped out his checkbook. What a loser, I thought. I mean, I had known Paul was a weirdo for a long time. But to throw away his hard-earned money—well, not so hard-earned, actually, because I was pretty sure he was paying for the belt buckle with funds stolen from the Gutierrezes—on a piece of junk like that. . . . Well, that was just insane.
It didn’t make any sense. Why would Paul Slater spend 1,100 bucks on a banged-up old belt buckle . . . even if it had been polished and its linage could be traced back to its original owner, someone in the Diego clan?
And then, as if someone had brought Andy’s auctioneer’s hammer down on my head, finally banging some sense into me, it all became clear.
And I began to feel as if I might throw up all those baked goods we’d secretly been scarfing down behind Sister Ernestine’s back. I guess it must have shown on my face, since Shannon suddenly sucked in her breath and went, "Are you all right?"
"Bad lemon bar," I said. "I’ll be right back." I got up and hurried away from the bake sale table, around the back of the rows of folding chairs, and then up the aisle, toward the dais where Paul was standing, collecting his bounty.
But before I could get anywhere close to him, someone grabbed me by the arm.
My heart was beating so fast on account of the whole Paul-trying-to-keep-my-boyfriend-from-dying thing, that I almost jumped a mile in the air, I was so startled.
But it turned out it was only my mother.
"Susie, honey," she said, smiling beatifically up at Andy, behind his podium. "Isn’t this fun? Isn’t Andy doing great?"
"Uh," I said, "yeah, Mom."
"He’s a real natural, isn’t he?" She’s so in love with this guy. It’s totally gross. In, like, a nice way, I guess. But still gross.
"Yeah," I said. "Look, I have to—"
But I shouldn’t have worried. Because Paul found me.
