“What do you mean?” Mags whispers. “You don’t think it was an accident?”
“No way,” I say. “That…was no accident.”
“Then what was it?”
I watch Ruby Red glance back at us one more time, slip her duster back on the cart and give it another shove with her hip.
“That,” I whisper, “was a warning.”
After our tunnel excursion, I stayed up most of the night to draw a map of the whole thing to show to Nyx. At least until my eyelids wouldn’t stay open one second longer.
It’s day seven.
And even after braving the tunnel of the eternally lifeless and going through every single picture on Mags’s phone, we haven’t found one solitary disembodied soul, orb of light or even a severed pinky toe.
How could the fortune cookie have gotten it so wrong?
Its whole purpose is to get the fortunes right.
But when I briefed Dad and the others at breakfast about the tunnel, they agreed there was a definite possibility that it was the most highly active spot in the hotel.
“Karma,” Dad said when he heard about our bobby pin 007 maneuver. “We need to get permission.”
“We didn’t have time for that,” I protested. “And today is day seven.”
“We have to follow the rules while we’re here,” he told me.
But following the rules hasn’t gotten them anywhere. Last night they were stuck filming in the dining hall hoping to spot the ghost Chef Raphaël had seen, and that’s only because Mr. Lozano still refuses to give them the key to the tunnel.
By lunchtime, I can barely stay awake.
“Karma!” Mags shouts.
I lift my head up from the dining hall table.
“Huh?”
“You have Chef Raphaël’s special pommes frites sauce in your hair,” she tells me, taking another bite of frite.
I yawn and hold my chin up with my palm.
“You can’t just not sleep,” she says. “It had to catch up to you at some point, and I think we’re here.”
My head is hurting.
My body is aching.
My stomach is churning.
WHAT-IFS
Feels fatal to me.
I wonder if anyone has ever died from not enough sleep. I might be the first.
My eyelids weigh a thousand pounds each. The thing is, when I put on Mom’s Journey T-shirt and slip under the velvet covers, the jumping beans won’t let me shut my eyelids for more than a few minutes at a time.
“Go upstairs and see if you can sleep awhile,” Mags tells me. “I’ll wake you up in an hour and we can start again. You look horrible.”
I nod and drag my worn-out body from my chair and up the grand staircase. I can hear trampling footsteps on the floor above me.
Alfred Hitchcock woofs.
“Dag gum hooligans,” I tell him. “They’re going to keep us up.”
He gives me another woof to tell me he agrees with me.
When I make it to room 332, I put my hand on the doorknob, but something stops me.
It’s Dad’s voice.
It’s loud and booming, but not the jovial kind of booming like when he’s talking to clients on the old-fashioned dial phone in the kitchen of apartment 4B. This time he sounds…mad.
I stand there and gnaw on my bottom lip.
I don’t even want to know what Big John and The Faz have to say on day seven with no ghost on film. It’ll just get me to counting ceiling tiles again.
“Hitchy,” I say. “Eavesdropping is wrong.”
He tilts his head to the side and stares at me.
“But you still think I should do it?” I ask him.
He tilts his head to the other side and keeps on staring.
“I mean, if you think I should do it anyway…then I will, but you need to give me a sign so I’ll know for sure.”
He gags up a couple of frites onto the viney carpet and then re-eats them.
“That’s a sign if I’ve ever seen one,” I say. “But it’s your fault if I get in trouble, okay?”
He just licks the carpet.
I tiptoe toward Dad’s door and wedge my ear up against it.
He’s still yelling.
He’s not just mad, he’s real mad. I know that for sure because I hear words that I don’t usually hear Dad say. The thing is, this time it’s not Big John or The Faz that I hear on the speakerphone.
It’s Mom.
Dad: How can you do this, Lara?
Mom: I had to follow my dreams, why can’t you just be happy for me? Your energy is very negative right now.
Dad: My energy? My energy? What about your energy? This is your daughter. If you don’t come home for me, come back for her. What do the signs say about that? What could the signs possibly say that make it okay to leave your daughter?
Silence.
Mom: They say it’s my turn.
Dad: That sure is convenient.
Mom: They say that I took care of her for eleven years and now it’s your turn.
Dad: I’m following my dreams too, you know? Me. It’s just so easy for you to walk away and leave me with everything. The bills. The responsibilities…Karma.
When I hear my name, I pull my head away from the door and run toward room 332. My hands are shaking and I drop my key card three times before I get the small green light and push the door open. Tears well at the rims of my eyes and my what-ifs are shouting at me at top volume.
WHAT-IFS
He wants to leave you too.
I feel like a balloon that’s lost its knot and is leaking air, blowing and darting around out of control. Inside the room, I grab my phone out of my pocket and delete every single solitary picture of Mom. I’ve always hated looking at my photo album anyway. There was an obvious line, a before and after, and I hated having to see it all the time—but I couldn’t stop looking. The pictures before the five suitcases and the ones that came after. I delete them all. Even the befores. The ones where I thought we were happy. The ones when I thought everything was okay. The ones where I had no idea that moms could leave.
The tears start down my face, and that sadness, the one that makes you feel like you’re drowning and will never make it to the top again, hits me.
Delete.
Delete.
Delete.
After all the pictures are gone, I pick up the stupid Crystal Mystic, and it spouts an answer to a question I didn’t even ask.
CRYSTAL MYSTIC
YOUR SPIRIT GUIDES ARE ON A LUNCH BREAK. TRY AGAIN LATER.
“Hunk of junk!” I shout, and hurl it at the door of the room.
Alfred Hitchcock woofs whole-body barks at the ceiling.
Then the door opens and Mags is standing in the doorway looking at me.
“What’s going on in here?” she asks me.
“What’s going on?” I holler back at her. “My mom isn’t coming back and my dad doesn’t want me. How about that?”
My jumping beans are using my insides as a trampoline, my brain is racing, my heart is pounding and air is rushing inside my lungs and out again.
It feels like I’m running a relay and I can’t catch my breath.
Air rushes.
Jumping beans hop.
My head spins.
My heart drums.
“What’s the matter with you?” Mags asks me.
“I—I can’t…catch…my breath,” I say.
“Well, sit down or something,” she says. “I mean, just stop it.”
That’s when my stomach starts to roll like thunder and the explosion I’ve been stuffing down is coming and I can’t stop it. I run past Mags and jump over Alfred Hitchcock, making it to the toilet just in time to throw up all of Chef Raphaël’s pommes frite
s and his special sauce.
I gag again and more frites come out of me.
Mags is on the floor with me, her hand on my back.
Because that’s how it is with true blue.
When I don’t have any pommes frites left to hurl, Mags reaches up and flushes while I lay my cheek on the cool porcelain seat. I don’t even care that it’s gross or that Bloody Mary might reach out from that little hole in the bottom of the toilet and snatch me to the in-between, right this minute. It feels good on my hot cheek.
“Come on.” Mags pulls on my arm. “Get into bed.”
I feel like the Raggedy Ann rag doll I got at a stoop sale in first grade, with nothing to hold me upright.
Mags pulls the covers down. “Get in and sleep already,” she tells me. “You can’t just not sleep.”
I burst into tears and throw myself face-first on the pillows and cry the painful heaving cries that come out from the depths of you. The kind that feel like they’ll never stop. The kind that take your breath and all your strength, too.
“News flash!” I shout into the pillows. “My dad hates me and doesn’t want me either.”
“Where did you get that?”
I turn my head to face her. “I can read between the lines.”
“What lines?” Mags asks.
“I overheard him talking on the phone in his room,” I tell her. “Mom isn’t coming home and he doesn’t want me either and Netflix isn’t getting their ghost and it’s all because of me. Why can’t I just be normal like everyone else? Then no one would leave me.”
Mags sits down next to me on the bed and puts a hand on my arm and says, “I would die a thousand deaths if you weren’t you. You’re my best friend. I wouldn’t want you to be anyone else.”
“Everyone hates me,” I sob.
“That’s not true.”
“Darby Woods hates me.”
“Yeah, well, Darby Woods hates everybody.”
I sit up and wipe my face with my sleeve. “Why can’t I just be normal?” I ask her.
“What’s normal?”
“Everyone else but me,” I say.
“That’s ridiculous,” she says. “Maybe you’re a little different—but that’s what I like about you. You’re like no one else I know—and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Still,” I say. “Where am I going to live now?”
“I really think you’re wrong about your dad,” she says. “But if you really had no place to live, you’d come live with us. My mom likes you better than me anyway.”
I snort a laugh and so does Mags.
“That’s not true,” I say. “She calls you all the time and baked you cookies because she missed you so much.”
“First off, she always asks how you are too, and second, half the cookies were for you.”
“The Made-with-Love Cookies?”
She nods. “I just didn’t tell you so because I didn’t want you to hog them all, but you did anyway, so…”
I laugh again.
“That’s the thing,” she tells me. “You’re already part of the family. You’ll never not have a family. No matter what. She already canceled our trip to Ohio for Thanksgiving this year so we can have all you guys over. Big John and Gloria and The Faz and The Fazette, too.”
“She did that?”
Mags nods.
“What if I do something that makes you want to leave me too?” I ask her.
“Like what?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“That would never happen in a million years,” she tells me. “I’m here playing superspy with you, aren’t I? Chasing ghosts? Only true blue does that. And I’ve never told you this before, but everyone knows that your mom leaving has nothing to do with you and everything to do with her. Real moms don’t leave. And that’s the truth of it.”
“Really?”
“Totally.”
There’s a knock on the door and Mags gets up from the bed.
“But what about my dad?” I call after her.
“All I can say about that,” she tells me over her shoulder, “is that you must have heard it wrong.”
The lock clicks and she pulls the door open.
It’s Dad.
“What’s going on in here?” he asks. “I heard crying.”
First there’s whispering and then he comes over to the bed while Mags slips out the door.
“What’s going on, Snooks?” he asks.
“What do you care?” I demand.
“Of course I care,” he says. “What do you mean? Why are you crying?”
I sit up and fold my arms over my chest and give him a good glare. “I heard you.”
His eyebrows crinkle. “Heard what?”
“The phone call with Mom,” I tell him, standing up. “I heard it all. And I know she doesn’t want me and neither do you. But just so you know, Mags does. That’s how it works with true blue, so here’s the new plan: I’m moving in with the Bogdonaviches the second we get back to the Village.” I turn on my heel and head toward the door. “At least they want me.”
He grabs my arms and pulls me close, his nose almost touching mine.
“Don’t ever say that again,” he tells me. “You are everything to me. Yes, I was devastated your mom decided to leave, but you want to know what I would have been if she took you with her?”
“What?”
“There isn’t a word,” he tells me. “You are my whole entire heart and will always be. We are a team, you and me. There is no one I’d rather have with me than you. Everything I do is for us. All that I want to accomplish is for us. And that’s the way I want it. So please don’t ever say that again. It’s not true and it never will be. You want to know what true blue is? This,” he says, his voice cracking. “Us. We are true blue. We are family and that’s forever.”
Tears bubbling up at the rims of my eyes burst over and line my cheeks with two thick wet stripes. Mags and Dad are the only ones who’ve ever been able to catch me when I’m a bursting balloon. But Dad is the only one who can fill me back up with air again.
“Swear?” I say.
“I swear it,” he tells me. “I wish I could say Mom’s coming back…but she’s not and I can’t change that.” He clears his throat again. “I know you don’t understand it…but I’m afraid neither do I.”
More tears fall.
Him too.
“I know she’s not,” I tell him. “I’ve always known.”
He nods.
“Five suitcases,” I say.
He nods again.
“But I was always just too scared to ask the question,” I say. “Too scared to hear the answer.”
He blows air out of his mouth. “Yeah, me too,” he says. “But we know it now and we’re going to be okay. You and me. We are going to get through it together just fine. Don’t you worry about that.”
“We are?”
“Absolutely,” he says, giving me a squeeze.
“Promise?” I say, snuggling in under his chin.
“I promise.”
It feels good to have Dad’s arms around me like this. Even if grumpy Mr. Drago is demanding his money and Dad’s Netflix big break wasn’t what the fortune cookie said it was, somehow he’ll make everything okay. He’ll fill our balloon with air again. He always has and he always will.
“But aren’t we in trouble?” I ask.
“It’ll be fine,” he whispers into my hair. “I’ll pick up some more wedding and bat mitzvah gigs to make the rent and all will be fine. We always are. So it wasn’t my big break. Something will come our way eventually.”
“Dad?” I say.
“Yeah?”
I pull away from him and my eyes meet his. “I’m actually kind of glad we’re not moving to Connectic
ut or Jersey or wherever.”
“You are?” he asks.
“Uh-huh.”
“And why’s that?”
“It’s not us,” I tell him. “We’re creatures of habit. We don’t change. We’re the West Village through and through and always will be. I love it there. I love everything about it. Even the bad things.”
“Like what?” he asks.
“The old-fashioned dial phone,” I say. “For one.”
He laughs.
“The linoleum coming up in the corners of the kitchen,” I say.
He laughs again.
“And the fact that the windows don’t open on rainy days,” I say.
“You know what I love about the West Village?” he asks.
“What?”
“The moo goo at the Noodle King of New York City.”
“Definitely,” I agree. “And the Carmine Street Pool too.”
“The kitchen folding table that no one ever sits at,” he says. “And the dishwasher that’s always broken.”
“Grumpy Mr. Drago drinking coffee in nothing but his ratty old bathrobe on the front stoop in the morning,” I say. “And trips to Books of Wonder bookstore.”
And then at the very same time we say, “Toby’s!”
Because that’s how it is with true blue, and me and Dad are true blue to the end. I know it now for sure, and so do my what-ifs.
With or without a ghost or a strip of grass.
“Ah…Toby’s,” he says, nodding. “There’s no place like Toby’s.”
“I love Chef Raphaël’s cooking, but I can’t wait for an Egg on a Roll and a hot Apple Betty.”
“The first morning we’re home,” he says, holding out his fist for me to bump. “It’s a date, okay?”
I bump it and nod.
“See? I wouldn’t want to move,” I tell him. “Not for a barbecue, not for anything. I like our life, even if it’s a more simple kind of life. It’s ours and I don’t want it to change.”
He wraps his arms around me again. “Thank you,” he says.
“For what?” I ask.
His eyes meet mine again and he bends down so we’re nose to nose. “For letting me be exactly who I am and for being who you are and who you are meant to be,” he tells me. “Even when things don’t always go the way we want them to. The whole thing about life is…it’s a gift that we are always unwrapping. Who wants to know what’s inside the gift before you’ve opened the box?”
Karma Moon—Ghost Hunter Page 19
