Match Me If You Can

by Anna Staniszewski

  But when Lena tried to pull the door open, it was locked. And any trace of the soul had disappeared.

  • • •

  “Tell me all about the class,” Lena’s mom said over sandwiches at a little deli near the theater. “Did you like the other kids? Was the teacher nice?”

  Lena had to laugh. “Mom, you’re acting like it was my first day of kindergarten! But yeah, everyone was okay. I’m not sure my scene partner actually wants to be there though.”

  “Should I talk to the teacher about having you switch partners?”

  “What? No! It’s fine. I’ll figure it out.”

  Her mom shrugged as she worked on sawing her tuna sandwich in half with a flimsy plastic knife. “I just want this class to be a good experience, that’s all.”

  “I know. And it’s amazing. Except…” Lena considered telling her mom about the soul she’d seen floating after Miss Fine. After all, her mom was a soul hunter now. This was her territory.

  “Except what?” her mom asked.

  No, Lena decided. This was supposed to be their mother/daughter bonding week. Surely there was another soul hunter who could take care of it. “Nothing. It’s great. But why didn’t you ask me before changing my plane ticket?”

  Her mom shrugged. “I didn’t think it would matter. You don’t start school again until Monday.”

  “I promised Marcus I’d be home for the New Year’s Eve dance. He really wants us to be together at midnight.”

  “Midnight?” Her mom eye’s widened. “Your father was going to let you stay out by yourself until midnight? How would you get home?”

  “It’s a special occasion,” Lena said. “And I wouldn’t be by myself. All my friends will be there. I was going to get a ride home with Abigail.”

  Her mom shook her head. “I’m still not sure I like the sound of that, but you get to be in a play instead. Doesn’t that make up for it?”

  “It does,” Lena said. “The class is the perfect present. I just wish you’d asked me about changing my flight before you did it.”

  “I understand,” her mom said. “Next time, I’ll check with you first.” Her face brightened. “So what do you want to do after we eat? My friend has a daughter around your age. If you want, I can see if I can set up a playdate.”

  Lena started to laugh until she saw that her mom was serious. “Um, that’s okay. I had some stuff I thought you and I could do together.” Now that she and her mom had been reunited, she wanted to make sure they didn’t miss their chance to reconnect. “There’s a quilt exhibit at a museum near here, or maybe we could go check out some fabric stores. I noticed your apartment is really bare. The quilt I made you for Christmas would look good in the living room, but maybe we can make another one to hang in the guest room.”

  “I haven’t had much time for quilting recently, or for anything else for that matter. I thought of trying out for a play when I first moved here, but I haven’t had time.” She laughed. “And if I’m being honest, I’m a little nervous about the idea. I haven’t been onstage in years!” She reached over and started cutting up Lena’s sandwich too.

  “Mom? What are you doing?”

  “These sandwiches are so big. I figured it would be easier for you to eat it this way.”

  Before Lena could remind her mom that she was thirteen now and didn’t need someone to cut food up for her, her phone started beeping. A second later, so did her mom’s.

  There was a message from Eddie waiting on Lena’s phone, and it seemed like one he was sending out to all of his employees.

  Be advised that we are experiencing some power disruptions at this time. If you are on assignment, continue to the best of your ability. If you need help, contact me, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

  “That’s weird,” Lena said to her mom. “Eddie just contacted me and said there are—”

  “Power disruptions?” her mom asked. “I got the same message from my boss Yvonne.”

  Lena grabbed her mom’s phone and compared the two messages. They were identical. “What does it mean?”

  Her mom shook her head, a deep wrinkle appearing between her eyebrows. “I don’t know, but I’ve never gotten a message like this. And I’ve been a soul collector since before you were born.”

  Lena’s phone beeped again, and she expected it to be another message from Eddie. But it was from Marcus. My powers are out! Eddie says it’s an outage. Are you okay?

  Lena swallowed. I’m fine, she wrote back. But she didn’t feel fine. She’d been hoping things were finally back to normal with their powers, with her family, with everything. But if people all over the country had lost their powers, that meant something had to be really wrong.

  Chapter 5

  Marcus hovered near his front door, waiting for the doorbell to ring. He normally hated for people to come over and see his disaster of a house, filled with Ann-Marie’s gym stuff and reeking of his mom’s latest art project, but Natalie had insisted on coming to him.

  He’d been hoping to talk to Eddie instead, but Marcus’s supernatural boss had sent his daughter in his place. Marcus wasn’t sure he completely trusted Natalie after she’d lied about being a soul collector and a bunch of other stuff, but she was also a seer. Being able to peek into the future had to be helpful in situations like this, right?

  As he waited, Marcus paced back and forth in the hallway until his dad yelled at him to stop wearing out the carpet. Then he sat on the couch and practically strangled a pillow with his restless fingers.

  Ever since he and Lena had kissed at Connie Reynolds’s party a few months ago and swapped powers, the supernatural world had been upside down. Just when they thought things were fixed, they’d go crazy again. How could they be sure this mess wasn’t somehow their fault too?

  When the doorbell finally rang, Marcus jumped up and opened it before anyone else could get it. Then he hurried outside and closed the door behind him, so that he and Natalie could talk on the porch.

  “Um, hi,” she said, pulling her coat tighter around her. “Is everything okay?” Clearly, she’d been expecting him to ask her in.

  “You tell me,” Marcus said. “I can’t get ahold of your dad.”

  “He’s been on the phone all day, trying to figure stuff out. This outage thing is pretty serious. That’s why he sent me to talk to you instead of coming himself.”

  “So the outage is happening everywhere?”

  Natalie sighed. “At first we thought it was only in the United States, but now it looks like it’s in other countries too.”

  “But people can’t not die or not fall in love! That will mess everything up!”

  “My dad’s working on it with the boss lady,” Natalie said. “They’re hoping people can do their assignments without their powers. Can you still see auras?”

  He nodded. “I checked my sister’s after I got the message, and it’s still kind of yellow, like she might get a love boost soon. The guy she’s been hanging out with is so perfect for her. I figured it would have already happened.” Marcus sighed. Maybe Albert crushing on his sister was messing things up somehow? But he couldn’t think about that now. It was all too confusing. “Did your visions warn you that this outage was coming?”

  “I haven’t had a vision in days,” she said.

  “Are you guys sure this isn’t all because of me and Lena?” Marcus asked. “It wouldn’t be the first time our powers messed stuff up.”

  “My dad says it’s not possible,” Natalie said, but she sounded skeptical.

  “What do you think?”

  “Well…” She smoothed back her long hair. “This started all at once, right? Like something triggered it? So either you guys caused it, or something else did.”

  At that moment, the door opened, and Ann-Marie stormed onto the porch in her running clothes. She was moving so fast that she crashed right into
Natalie, sending the girl stumbling into a potted plant.

  “Whoa! Sorry!” Ann-Marie said, pulling Natalie up to her feet. Then she glared at Marcus. “What are you doing lurking out here? Dad said you have to load the dishwasher.”

  “I should go,” Natalie broke in. “I’ll let you know if there’s any news, okay?” Then she hurried down the steps.

  “News about what?” Ann-Marie asked, stretching her hamstrings.

  “Nothing.” Marcus frowned. “Since when do you go running after dinner?” Normally, his sister woke up at dawn—or even earlier—to go sprinting around the neighborhood.

  “They’re at it again,” she said, motioning toward the house. Sure enough, Marcus could hear his parents’ raised voices. “Apparently, Mom was scraping the frying pan the wrong way.”

  Marcus shook his head. “You ever wonder what changed? I mean, at some point, they must have actually liked each other, right?”

  Ann-Marie shrugged. “What’s the point? It’s not like we can do anything to fix it.” Then she gave him one last glance and jogged away into the night.

  • • •

  While Marcus got ready for bed, he couldn’t stop thinking about what Natalie had said about something triggering the power outage. As far as he could tell, it had started that morning. At least, that was when he’d noticed his powers not working. Eddie had sent the message about the power outage only an hour later, so it looked as if other people had experienced theirs at the same time.

  If Lena and Marcus were to blame, wouldn’t their powers have gone out first? And how could this be their fault? Lena wasn’t even around for them to have another power-swapping kiss or to be out of tune with each other and make their powers go haywire. Still, Marcus couldn’t simply sit back and wait for Eddie to fix things. He needed to do something. But he had no idea where to start.

  Instead of hopping into bed, he began looking up world events that had happened that day. But there were no earthquakes or volcano eruptions or UFO sightings, nothing that seemed major enough to have caused this kind of disruption.

  At a loss, Marcus moved on to worrying about what to do about Albert, but he came up empty again. He considered calling Lena and asking for advice, but they’d already had their scheduled phone call for the day, and he knew she was busy memorizing her lines. Plus, he’d sent her way more messages than she’d sent him. Any more would make him feel pathetic. He’d wait until the morning.

  He wished that Grandpa Joe were still around to offer one of his old-fashioned bits of advice. “Put your head down and keep rowing!” or “You never know what the cat will drag in until you let him outdoors.” But he wasn’t sure even Grandpa would have much to say in this situation, especially since his grandfather hadn’t known about the supernatural part of Marcus’s life.

  His phone beeped. It was a message from Lena. Just wanted to wish you a good night! Marcus smiled as he read it, his worries easing slightly.

  Then there was a knock on the door. “Marcus?” his mom said, poking her head in. “I thought you went to bed.”

  “I will in a minute. Just looking something up.”

  He expected his mom to leave, but instead, she came to sit on his bed. “How are you holding up without Lena?” she asked. “It seems like you two have gotten really close.”

  Marcus shrugged. “Okay, I guess. It stinks not to be able to talk to her whenever I want.”

  “Your sister said you had a friend stop by tonight? I’m glad you’re branching out,” his mom said. “It’s not good to spend too much time alone.” She laughed. “That’s how you wind up thinking that sculpting things out of dough is a good idea.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Mom?” Marcus asked softly. “Are you and Dad okay? You guys seem so…off lately.”

  His mom sighed. “Every relationship has its ups and downs. You’ve had yours with Lena, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah, but do you still even like each other?”

  In the past, his mom would have brushed off that kind of question, but this time, she took in a deep breath and said, “Sometimes when you’ve been with someone for a while, you have to reevaluate how you fit into each other’s lives.”

  “So you don’t fit together anymore?” He didn’t like the sound of that.

  “No, no. Of course we do,” she said. “The pieces that made us click together are still there. But the puzzle’s changed a little bit, that’s all. I think we’re just figuring out how to catch up.”

  “What made you click together when you guys met?” Marcus asked. He’d often wondered about the matchmaker who’d zapped his parents. Whoever it was must have been pretty powerful to take on such a tough job.

  His mom smiled. “This might surprise you, but your father and I met at an art gallery. He was there with a friend and didn’t know much about art, but he was willing to learn. In fact, when we first started dating, we would even paint together sometimes.” She shrugged. “After a while, he got more interested in redoing our kitchen than in helping me splatter-paint bits of old cardboard, but we both love creating things. We always have.”

  Marcus could hear his father still prying up pieces of tile in the bathroom down the hall, the way he’d been doing all day. He’d assumed his dad took on those kinds of projects to torture the whole family, but if his mom was right, then it was actually his weird way of being artistic. Huh.

  “Anyway,” his mom went on. “Things will be fine. Don’t worry. Now get some sleep, okay? Guaranteed your dad is going to drag you out of bed bright and early tomorrow.”

  Marcus groaned. “Don’t remind me.” He turned off his computer and jumped into bed. He was surprised when his mom came to tuck him in, something she hadn’t done in years.

  “Good night, Marcus,” she said, kissing his forehead.

  “Good night, Mom,” he said as she went out into the hall. Then he snuggled under his covers, feeling a little better than he had a few minutes earlier, and turned off the light.

  Chapter 6

  Lena tried to focus on learning her lines, but all she could think about was the power outage. Last time her powers had stopped working, she’d had to chase a soul around for days, putting up with its endless practical jokes. She really didn’t want to have to worry about finding shaving cream in her shoes again. Besides, was it too much to ask for a week off from that kind of crazy stuff?

  Finally, she put her script aside and texted Marcus to wish him a good night. Funny how only a couple of months ago, the two of them had barely been friends, and now it felt strange to go through a whole day without seeing him, let alone a whole week.

  With a sigh, she went out to the living room where she found her mom putting on a coat while scrolling through her phone.

  “Are we going somewhere?” Lena asked.

  “Thanks to the power outage, souls aren’t moving on when they’re supposed to. Someone has to track them down.” Her mom ran her hand through her hair, which was looking a little limp at the end of the day. “I have three to catch tonight. Hopefully, I can convince them to move on to the After without my powers.”

  “Okay, let me put my shoes on,” Lena said. She didn’t know much about soul hunting, but maybe she could help somehow.

  But as Lena grabbed her sneakers, her mom stopped her. “You need to get some sleep. I’ve asked Mrs. Martinez from across the hall to watch you while I’m out.”

  “Watch me? You mean she’s going to babysit?”

  “I’ll feel better if I know someone is here in case of an emergency.”

  “Mom! I’m old enough to—”

  “Please, Lena,” her mom said, and the exhaustion in her voice made Lena stop arguing. She’d only been here a day. She didn’t want the two of them to be at each other’s throats already.

  “Okay,” Lena said softly. “Good luck.”

  A knock came at the door
, and an ancient woman shuffled in. She was older than anyone Lena had ever met, and considering how many elderly folks Lena had encountered during her soul collections, that was saying a lot.

  “This is Mrs. Martinez,” Mom said.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” the woman said in a papery-thin voice.

  Lena tried to give her a warm smile, but she couldn’t help being annoyed. This woman was so old that if there was a fire in the building or something, Lena would have to rescue her and not the other way around.

  “Be good,” her mom said. She gave Lena a quick kiss and hurried out the door.

  After a few awkward moments, Mrs. Martinez had Lena sit on the couch and tell her all about herself, her school, and her friends. The woman nodded and nodded, as if everything Lena said was fascinating. Finally, the old lady’s head drooped, and then her soul sparkled inside her chest and slowly rose up until it was hovering above her gray curls. For a terrifying moment, Lena thought she was dead.

  But then Mrs. Martinez let out a soft snore, and the soul drifted back down to where it belonged. Lena sighed in relief. Clearly, the woman’s soul was a little loose, but it wasn’t quite ready to leave its body yet. Lena hoped it wouldn’t be for a little while longer.

  Once Lena was sure Mrs. Martinez was out cold, she tiptoed into the kitchen to wash the dishes. That would show her mom what a responsible person she was, one who definitely did not need a babysitter! That done, she decided to unpack some of the boxes that her mom still had piled up in the corner of the dining room. After that, she vacuumed and dusted and even rearranged some furniture. Then she hung up the quilt she’d made for her mom for Christmas. Meanwhile, Mrs. Martinez snoozed on.

  But as Lena stood in the now-inviting apartment, she couldn’t help the restlessness in her stomach. She might have made her mom’s apartment feel more comfortable, but Lena wasn’t sure it would ever feel like a second home.

  • • •

  Lena woke up in the wee hours to the sound of the front door unlocking. It was just past 5:00 a.m. Had her mom been out hunting souls all night?