Fire in Frost

by Alicia Rades

  They wouldn’t be in there, would they? I thought. That’s the storage room, not the break room. Or am I wrong? What if they left the door unlocked by mistake and someone is robbing their storage room?

  My heart raced as I considered this possibility. A shiver ran down my spine, and I felt a shift in the air. Still, my body sweated nervously. I considered turning around and fleeing for a moment, but I was too curious to turn away.

  What would I do if there was someone else here, though? I would scream, I decided. I would scream and run as fast as I can.

  My heart pounded on the walls of my chest, reverberating through my ears as I neared the door. I began to feel faint. I grabbed the handle with my damp palms and twisted slowly, and then in one quick motion, I whipped the door open.

  My heart beat slowed when I found nothing in the storage room but a bunch of boxes. I switched off the light and let the door fall shut with a click.

  Once I was back in the dark hallway by myself and ready to leave, the humming noise caught my attention once again. What was that? I followed the sound and pressed my ear against the door that led to the break room.

  I could hear muffled voices, but I didn’t see a light under the door. Who was in there? The sound, I realized, was a woman humming a stagnant note.

  “We’re here to help you,” Sophie’s voice rang over the humming.

  I didn’t take a moment to consider what they were doing behind the door. Once I was sure it was my mother and her friends, I wasn’t scared anymore.

  I had only a split second to take in the scene. The three girls sat in a circle around the break table, their hands connected as if in prayer. Candles lit up their faces. Just beyond the table stood another girl with blonde hair and brown eyes. Olivia Owen’s ghost stared back at me with that same look of urgency.

  “Help,” she mouthed, but I didn’t hear any sound come out.

  The sight of Olivia lasted only a moment before the women jerked their eyes up at me in surprise and pulled their hands back, breaking their circle. Olivia disappeared.

  My jaw dropped. What is this? What are they doing?

  “Olivia,” I murmured before I could stop myself, although I wasn’t sure they could hear me. My racing heart returned, and my fingers quivered against the door knob. I felt hot and sweaty all over at the same time a chill overcame me. I was frozen in place and holding my breath.

  I am crazy, I thought.

  My mother smiled at me innocently like I hadn’t just walked in on some satanic ritual. “Can I help you with something, sweetie?”

  I couldn’t find my mouth to formulate my words. I stayed where I was, unmoving for several long seconds as my eyes fixed on the empty space where Olivia stood only moments ago. When I regained my composure, I simply spat out, “I need some cash.”

  My mother rose from the table, grabbed her purse off the hook near the door, and led me out into the hallway. “It’ll just be a minute,” she assured her friends as she guided me out of the room.

  My whole body trembled and felt weak as I tried to make sense of what I had just seen. I knew what I had seen, and I couldn’t deny the fact any longer. I was crazy. Olivia’s ghost? What was Olivia doing in my mother’s shop? Could my mother see her? Did I imagine her?

  “Wh—What? Did I—? Were you—?” I spattered, unable to put my thoughts into words. Did they know Olivia was there? I couldn’t quite understand what had frightened me so much. Was it the fact that I saw Olivia? Was it the fact that I knew for sure that I had seen Olivia at school the previous day? Or was it because I started believing that I was going crazy?

  “We were just meditating,” my mother said.

  “Meditating?” I said without inflection, still trying to catch my breath.

  “It helps relieve stress.”

  Really, meditating? Because to me it looked like you were conducting a séance. But this kind of stuff is just for kicks! It isn’t real, right? I tried to rationalize.

  “I just need some money for pads,” I managed to say almost normally.

  My mother smiled at me as if relieved. She reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet. “Here you go. This should be enough.”

  I grabbed the bill and thanked her before I turned my back and headed toward the door.

  “Have a good night, sweetie.” She disappeared back into the break room.

  When I reached the back door, I paused for a moment and crept back to the break room. I pressed my ear against the door to listen.

  “I don’t know what she thought,” my mother said. “I mean, she can’t know what’s going on, right? Then again, she just started her period. Maybe there is still hope for her.”

  Hope? Hope that I’d finally grow into my breasts and my hips. If only.

  ***

  The gas station sat another block down, and when I went in, I used the extra money I had left over to buy a bag of chips. I knew I’d be late to Emma’s. I was hoping this would be enough of an apology. I picked out her favorite, Old Dutch dill pickle chips, even though I didn’t really like the flavor.

  When I got to her house, I knew she was about to scold me for being late. I lifted up the bag of chips, and that was enough to make her squeal in excitement.

  “I totally forgive you for letting the pizza go cold.”

  I smiled back at her, and within minutes, my bad mood from the previous day and fright of what I’d seen earlier melted away. I felt completely comfortable at Emma’s. Once we started gorging on pizza, soda, and chips, I was back to my normal self.

  “Where’s your dad?” I asked, half expecting Emma’s father to come around the corner and make a silly joke like normal. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table going over some paperwork and ignoring us. Her younger sister Kate was in the living room, but their family didn’t feel complete without John there.

  “He’s not here,” Emma answered as if I was supposed to know where he was.

  Oh well, I thought.

  We spent the rest of the night tackling homework and goofing off in Emma’s room while ignoring Kate’s pleas to play with us.

  “We don’t play,” Emma insisted.

  When we sent Kate to watch a movie in the living room, she fell asleep almost instantly, leaving us alone upstairs to read magazines, listen to music, and try out different makeup techniques. Emma was great with makeup whereas I had a difficult time putting on eyeliner.

  I was trying, and failing miserably, to put on a dark line across my eye when Emma turned off the radio.

  “What was wrong with that song? I liked it.”

  Emma wrinkled her nose. “I hate that song. Let’s listen to some real music.” She sifted through her stacks of CDs to find one she liked. “Crap. I can’t find the one I want. That was my favorite CD! Oh well. We’ll listen to this one instead. You can pick something if you want.”

  I sighed, finally giving up on my eyeliner. Emma returned to the mirror and began powdering her dark complexion. I switched spots with her and shuffled through her CDs. Where I collected owl décor, Emma collected CDs. I recognized several that I’d given her from birthdays and Christmases in the past as I ran my hands across the cases and read the artists’ names. Suddenly, an idea struck.

  I stood up almost too quickly and fell back down at her open closet.

  She turned to look at me in confusion. “What are you doing?”

  I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew where she had lost her favorite CD. I threw clothes out of the way that she had let lie on her closet floor—the only part of her room that wasn’t pristine—and flung myself deeper into her closet. I couldn’t see what I was doing, but sure enough, my hand finally fell around the corners of a CD case. I pulled it out and looked at it in triumph.

  “Is this the CD you’re looking for?” I asked, holding it out to her.

  “Oh my gosh!” she squealed. “Yes! I don’t know how it got in there. Thank you.”

  We ended the night by watching scary movies and falling asleep in her queen
-sized bed around four in the morning. I woke up around 10:00 a.m. and checked my phone for messages. There was a text from my mom telling me to be home by noon because I had chores to do. After chocolate chip pancakes, I said goodbye to Emma and headed home.

  “Thanks for staying the night,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do Friday nights without you.”

  As I neared my house, the memory of the previous night at the shop came flooding back to the forefront of my mind. Did I really see Olivia in my mom’s shop? How was that possible?

  I contemplated telling my mother about what I had seen in case I needed help or something. What if I started seeing other people, like my dad? I was sure that would make me go crazy for real, and I needed someone there to support me when they put on the straight jacket.

  When I entered the house, my mom was already preparing lunch.

  “I’m not hungry,” I told her.

  “That’s fine because I didn’t make you any food. I figured you would have eaten already.”

  I watched as my mother set her grilled cheese sandwich on the table. It was charred in the middle. How had she not learned how to cook yet? She paced back around the counter and pulled one of the glasses from the drying rack.

  Should I tell her? I wondered. My hands shook and my stomach knotted as I tried to work up the courage to say anything.

  “Mom,” I managed.

  “Yeah?” she said as she turned from the sink and took a sip of water from her glass.

  I paused for a moment, unsure if I should admit I was going crazy, but in the next second, I knew I had to say it. I spat it out before I could stop myself.

  “I saw Olivia Owen last night.”

  My mother’s eyes widened, her jaw dropped, and the glass in her hand fell to the floor and shattered.

  6

  “How could you hide something like this from me?” I stared at my mother in disbelief, trying to process what she’d just said. I wanted to be mad at her for keeping this a secret, but I just couldn’t.

  An expression of guilt fell over my mother’s face. She sat across from me at the dining room table after we’d cleaned up the glass shards. She had just told me the truth about my heritage.

  As much as some people would run from the house screaming that my mother was a crazy person, I believed every word she said. Perhaps it was exposure to the paranormal through her business, even if I always believed her crystal balls and tarot cards were fake. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t terrified. It was comforting to know that I wasn’t actually going crazy.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you had the gift. I wanted you to live a normal life.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Crystal, you have to understand,” my mother pleaded, trying to justify her actions. She really didn’t need to. I wasn’t mad at her. I was just confused. “Being psychic is hard. People will hurt you. It’s not all rainbows and butterflies.”

  “Hurt me? How?”

  She took a deep breath. “They’ll either think you can give them something you can’t, or they’ll shun you because you can do something they can’t. Sweetie,” my mother said urgently, grabbing my hands from across the table. “You can’t tell anyone. You know that, right?”

  “Why not?”

  “Some of them will call you a witch. Others will take advantage of you,” she continued.

  “But Mom, you use your gift every year at the Halloween festival,” I pointed out. It was odd to think that all the fun she was having didn’t originate from the town gossip but rather from her honest-to-God gifts.

  Mom averted her gaze from my eyes and curled her mouth up guiltily. “Everyone thinks that’s just for kicks. Even you didn’t believe I could do it for real.”

  She was right. No one really believed she was a fortune teller. She played her role well, a woman who wasn’t psychic but pretended to be. Except that she really was.

  “What I’m saying,” she continued, “is that you have to be careful. I’m carefully hiding out in the open where no one will notice.”

  I found that a bit ironic, but she was right. “Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll be careful, but can I at least tell Emma?”

  My mother sighed. “I would advise against it. It’s your own choice, but you have to be prepared for the consequences. You have to make sure she doesn’t spread it around. I don’t want people to hurt you.” My mother’s eyes brimmed with tears.

  It took me a few seconds to realize the meaning behind her words. If I told anyone, it would put her secret at risk, too. Still, she was giving me that choice, which is something I really respected and appreciated.

  “Mom, Emma’s not like that.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you, but you understand, right?”

  I smiled. “Yeah, I understand, but how come you didn’t think I had the gift? Did I not show any psychic tendencies?”

  I could see it in my mother’s eyes that she was looking into the past. “Do you remember your imaginary friend, Eva?”

  “Of course I remember her.”

  “When you first mentioned her, I was happy and devastated at the same time. At one level, I wanted to share so much with you about the gift, but on another, I wanted you to live a normal life away from the supernatural. When I asked you if Eva was real, you said she wasn’t and that you made her up. I assumed that she really was a figment of your imagination. It’s not uncommon for children, especially those without siblings, to create imaginary friends at that age.”

  My mouth fell open in disbelief. I remembered the moment she was talking about. I had been in my room having a tea party with Eva when my mother knocked on my door.

  “Who are you talking to, sweetheart?” she’d asked.

  “Eva,” I said in my high four-year-old voice.

  My mother bent down beside my chair. “Sweetheart, who’s Eva?”

  “Eva’s my friend.”

  “Where is Eva?”

  “Right there.” I pointed to the chair across from me. I knew by my mother’s expression that she didn’t see Eva, my first friend my own age.

  In fact, I knew that no one else could see Eva because none of the other kids at daycare could. When I had asked my babysitter if she could save a seat for Eva at lunch, she had a long talk with me about how Eva wasn’t real and that I was imagining her. She told me that it wasn’t healthy to have imaginary friends and that I should play with other kids at daycare. So when my mother looked me straight in the eyes and asked me if I believed Eva was real, I put on my best lying face and told her no, I had made Eva up. It was the only time I can remember blatantly lying to her.

  “I told you she wasn’t real because I thought I would get in trouble if I believed it,” I told my mother.

  She smiled at me across the dinner table. Then my mother erupted into laughter. I simply stared at her for a moment, unsure of what was so funny. When she didn’t stop, I joined in the laughter.

  “After that,” my mother admitted, “you never really gave me a reason to believe you had a gift. I almost thought you were psychic when you guessed your birthday presents before you opened them. Remember that on your eighth birthday? You were so accurate, but then I figured you peeked before I had a chance to wrap them. I didn’t want to ruin your fun, so I didn’t say anything.”

  I hadn’t ever peeked.

  “There were other times when I thought . . . maybe . . . but I convinced myself that I was looking for reasons to tell you about my—our—gift.”

  Memories flooded back into my mind, and suddenly, so much more about my life made sense. “I guess I must have hid a lot from you.”

  “Like what?”

  I picked at my fingernails and kept my head low.

  “Like what?” she prodded.

  “You know when Dad died?”

  “You saw his ghost?” she squealed in shock.

  I was taken aback by this statement because it never occurred to me that my father roamed the world as a ghost. “A ghost? No. Is that wha
t Eva was? A ghost?”

  My mother stared into the distance for a moment. “Most likely. She could have been your spirit guide, but I’m guessing she was just a lonely girl who needed someone to play with.”

  “My spirit guide?”

  “Everyone has one. They’re like angels who guide you in the choices you make in life. I speak to my spirit guide all the time.”

  My spirit guide? I may have had psychic visions in the past, but I’d never spoken with a spirit guide.

  “What happened with Dad?” my mother asked.

  “Well, before he died,” I started reluctantly, “I dreamt of the accident before you ever told me about it.”

  My mother gasped. “You—you saw your father die before it happened?”

  “Yeah. I think so. I mean, I always thought it was just a coincidence. Do you think it was a vision?”

  My mother’s lips pressed together deep in thought. I gave her a moment to digest this.

  Her next words came out as a whisper. “Do you know what this means?”

  “No,” I whispered back. Where was she going with this?

  “Crystal, there are different types of psychics. Some can predict the future. Others can see the past. Some psychics see ghosts while others hear voices. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Crystal, most people don’t see spirits and predict the future. I mean, we can communicate with them—it’s easier in numbers, and that’s why séances work—but rarely do people like me see them. You clearly have an amazing ability. More amazing than any of us could have predicted. What else should I know?”

  I thought for a moment. “That’s pretty much it. I can usually tell who’s calling before I check caller I.D., but I always wrote that off as luck. Besides, you don’t need to be psychic to know who’s calling these days.”

  My mother smiled at this.

  I continued. “I always know when it’s going to rain, but I took that as a sign that I would make a great meteorologist.”

  My mom laughed. “Anything else?”

  I froze. I knew she would believe me, but saying it out loud made me feel like I’d have to admit it was real. But it was, wasn’t it? I took a deep breath. “I’ve seen Olivia Owen’s ghost three times now.”