The Haunting of Sunshine Girl

by Paige McKenzie

  I shake my head. How will it work—this forgetting? Will I remember Ashley, but not the fact that she loved my mom? But how can I remember Ashley without remembering Mom and our life in Austin—all those things are tied up together so tightly. Does that mean I’ll forget my life in Austin too? I’ll only remember my haunted life here in Ridgemont?

  How long will it take for me to forget? Victoria hasn’t forgotten her husband yet, not completely, and he died only a year ago. Maybe it will happen slowly. At first I’ll just wonder where my favorite mustang T-shirt came from, but eventually I won’t know who raised me until, finally, I’ll believe that no one raised me at all. That I never was a part of a family, even a small one that was only made up of two people.

  My phone buzzes with another text from Ashley: Hello? Earth to Sunshine? So I write back, We’re fine, hoping that in a few days it will be the truth. Maybe that way it’s not technically a lie.

  Make any progress with that hot guy?

  We had a fight, I type honestly.

  Oh no! Think you can work it out?

  I’m not sure.

  Well, keep me posted.

  I will.

  And let me know if you want to talk about it.

  I smile a tiny, sad sort of smile. I can’t talk about it without talking about a dozen other things Ashley won’t believe or understand. The truth is, even though Ashley and I have been close since elementary school, we’ve never actually had all that much in common, and now—with so much distance between us, going to different schools, living in climates so different we may as well be on different planets—we have even less to talk about. The two thousand miles between Austin, Texas, and Ridgemont, Washington, did come between us in the end. Now it feels absurd that we ever thought our friendship was stronger than that.

  I stuff my phone back into my pocket and resume the walk home. Even after the desolation of Victoria’s street, our neighborhood looks even more deserted than usual today. The decorative lights outside the house across from ours aren’t lit. It looks like no one is home. This isn’t the kind of neighborhood people come home to for the holidays. It’s the kind of place people leave.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Apologies and Thank Yous

  Mom is in the kitchen sipping coffee when I walk in. She’s still dressed in the scrubs she slept in, her auburn hair mussed and knotted down her back. She probably asked to have today off months ago, long before the demon moved in, back when she still cared about holidays and vacation. She doesn’t look surprised to see me, doesn’t ask what I was up to at this hour on the first day of winter vacation, doesn’t ask how my jeans ended up dirty and ripped.

  “I was just taking a walk,” I say. Even if she’s not asking, I feel the need to make up some kind of excuse.

  If I stared long enough and hard enough, would I be able to see the demon beneath her skin? I narrow my eyes, remembering the shadow that trailed behind her from one room to the next, so much bigger than her shadow should have been. Was that the demon’s shadow I saw?

  I take a deep breath, tasting the mildewy-ness that saturates our house. I take off my hat, gloves, and jacket, then put them dutifully away in the coat closet by the front door. I run my fingers through my frizzball and knead my scalp with my fingertips the way Mom did when I was little and couldn’t sleep.

  If I fail, I guess I won’t remember that. Maybe I’ll rub my scalp and wonder why it’s so comforting.

  I trudge upstairs to shower and change. I pull my phone from my jeans pocket, impressed that I had enough willpower to keep from looking for nearly five whole minutes. Still no word from Nolan.

  Maybe I should text him again.

  Maybe he was somewhere without a signal and my message got lost somewhere in the cyber-ether and he’s just walking around in the woods somewhere, totally oblivious to my apology.

  Or maybe he’s just so angry at me that an apology wasn’t enough. I force myself to put my phone away.

  In my room not even one item is out of place—no toys strewn across the floor, no unicorns facing the wrong way. The checkerboard is exactly how I left it: Anna hasn’t made her next move. Even Dr. Hoo is still and dry on his perch.

  “Anna Wilde,” I say out loud. The walls shudder in response. “I talked to your mother. She misses you. And I know how much you miss her.”

  I bite my lip. I sure miss mine.

  “I’m sorry for all the times I wanted you gone,” I add softly. “I know it’s not your fault you’re still here. That none of this is your fault.”

  It’s my fault. Because I was born different.

  After a shower I change into pj’s—no feet, but Christmas colored, red and green with white kittens dancing across my shoulders like the Rockettes. I pull my computer onto my lap and search for exorcisms and demons and luiseach until the words all bleed into each other. I can’t make heads or tails of any of it. Having another week won’t do me any good if I can’t make more progress than this. What am I going to do? Miraculously, I fall asleep eventually, my hand still on the mouse.

  I don’t know how much later it is when I wake to the sound of knocking on my door.

  “Come in, Mom,” I call, slamming my laptop shut.

  “It’s not your mom,” a male voice answers. A voice I know well. I pull myself to sit up and try to straighten my pajamas and flatten my hair as Nolan steps into my room. Despite the fact that it’s much colder out now than it was the day I met him, he’s still wearing his leather jacket, though now there’s a gray scarf wrapped around his neck and a black knit hat pulled down tightly over his ears, his blond hair peeking out from under it.

  “I got your text,” he says. He slips off his hat and sits on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping beneath his weight. I feel a rush of warmth in his presence—not the oppressive heat I felt in Victoria’s house, and certainly not the bitter cold I felt on the walk home. Not to sound like Goldilocks or anything, but this warmth is just right.

  “I wasn’t sure. You didn’t write back.”

  “I couldn’t,” he replies. “I was driving.”

  “Where?”

  “Here.”

  “Won’t your parents be mad at you for missing Christmas with your grandmother?”

  Nolan shrugs like he knows that they might be, but it wasn’t enough to make him stay. “I couldn’t stay away. Not when I knew you needed me.”

  Ashley was wrong. Neither the pink nor the taxidermied bird will make Nolan turn tail and run away as fast as his legs will carry him. Not if he came back after everything else that happened.

  If this were a movie, now would be when he leaned in to kiss me. Or maybe he’d just take my hand, and the warmth of his skin against mine would make my heart flutter and maybe our lips would fit together like they were meant for each other.

  But this isn’t a movie, and even though I like how close to me he’s sitting, I still feel strange. I wonder whether Nolan can feel it too. Maybe this haunting—maybe Anna and the demon—are the reason for it. Maybe the feeling will dissipate if I defeat the demon and save Anna and my mom. Which I must do. I have to. I will.

  Or anyway, I’ll try.

  “You were right,” I say.

  “About what?”

  “About everything,” I sigh. “But mostly, about me.” I take a deep breath and say, “I’m a luiseach.”

  “Oh, you know how to pronounce it now?” Nolan smiles, but I know he’s serious.

  “Shut up,” I say shoving him gently away, careful to make sure that my palm presses against his jacket and not his skin. A gagging fit would really ruin this moment.

  “I did a little research of my own. And I found some new evidence.” I tell him all about Anna Wilde, about running to Victoria’s house at the crack of dawn. About the fact that Victoria confirmed what Nolan already believed: I’m a luiseach.

  “There’s something else,” I add urgently. I explain what will happen to my mother’s spirit—and Anna’s too—if we fail. I swallow the lum
p in my throat. I don’t want to cry anymore. I can cry all I want once all this is over, but right now I have to stay focused.

  “But we only have a week,” I add urgently. “And I have so much to learn before then.”

  “I know.” Nolan nods. “But I’ll help you. And Ms. Wilde can help too. Good thing you found a luiseach, right?”

  “I left that part out. She’s not anymore. She had to give up her powers in order to put the test in motion.”

  “You can stop being a luiseach?” Nolan asks. “I thought it was a lifelong kind of thing.”

  “Apparently not.” I try to sound nonchalant, but the truth is, I want to know more about what Victoria did. So that when all this is over—when my mom is safe—I’ll be able to do it too. Give up my powers and go back to being a normal sixteen-year-old. Well, as normal as I ever was.

  “Okay, but she used to be a luiseach, at least. She must remember what to do, right?”

  “I hope so,” I say, and I smile. “I’m sorry.”

  “You already apologized.”

  “Over text doesn’t count. I needed to say it out loud.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  “Are you sure?” I smile again. “I mean, you’re in a position of power here. You could probably make me grovel a little bit more. No need to waste this opportunity.”

  Nolan cocks his head to the side as though he’s weighing his options. “Nah,” he says finally.

  “You sure are letting me off easy.”

  “It’s not your fault. You couldn’t fight with a demon, so you picked a fight with me. I understand.”

  “You sure understand a lot more than I do.”

  “I picked a lot of fights with my parents after my grandfather died.” He pauses, running his fingers back and forth over my comforter like it’s a keyboard. “Can I tell you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “I was telling the truth when I said I came back here to help you, but I also came back because I hate being at my grandparents’ cabin without him there.”

  Nolan swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bouncing up and down. He glances around the room, his eyes landing on the checkerboard and the Monopoly game.

  “Are these the games you’re playing with Anna?” he asks, and I nod. He leans down over the board. “Are you red or black?”

  “Red,” I answer. He starts to slide one of my checkers across the board, right next to one of Anna’s. When he lifts his hand, the checker slides right back.

  “Weird,” he says, sliding it again. And again, it slides back.

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to play with you,” I say, attempting a joke, but I’m actually mesmerized.

  “Maybe,” Nolan says, brushing his hands though his hair. “Or maybe I can’t play with her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not a luiseach. So I can’t interact with ghosts like you can.”

  “It’s a checkerboard, not a Ouija board,” I protest, but I know he’s right. “I’m glad you came back.”

  “Me too.”

  I bite my lip. “I owe you more than just an apology.”

  “You do?” Nolan drops his gaze, his hair falling across his face.

  “I owe you a thank you. I mean, I owe you about ten thousand thank yous. For all your research and your help. For believing me. For believing in me, even when I didn’t.”

  I pull my sleeve down over my wrist so that my palm is covered, and I rest my hand on top of Nolan’s on the bed, squeezing gently. He turns his own hand over and wraps his fingers around mine. Despite the strangeness, it does feel like our hands fit together.

  “You said I couldn’t fight a demon so I fought with you instead?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Turns out I can fight a demon. I have to. I just have to figure out how.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  A Wise and Trusted Teacher

  The day after Christmas Nolan and I walk together from my house to Victoria’s. Unlike my last visit, this one takes place at a reasonable hour, almost noon.

  “The last time we got expert help it didn’t go all that well,” I say as we walk down Victoria’s woodsy street, cringing at the memory of Professor Jones’s freezing empty office, the building that threatened to fall down around us.

  “Sure it did,” Nolan counters. “We never would have learned the word luiseach. We never would have figured out what you are.”

  I nod aimlessly as I walk beside him through the cold. The snow has turned to ice, and it crunches beneath our feet. It feels like we’re breaking something with every step we take.

  Nolan is wearing his grandfather’s leather jacket, and a wool hat covers his dirty-blond hair. My own frizzball is tucked into an old gray hat of my mother’s, with a matching scarf wrapped around my neck. When we get to Victoria’s house I keep the scarf on. It smells like Mom.

  Victoria is smiling when she opens the door. “Welcome back,” she says; then turning to Nolan, she adds, “Welcome.” I guess she expected he’d be coming with me.

  Victoria’s dark clothes stand out against her brightly decorated house. I wonder whether she dressed like this before Anna died or whether she wears the dark clothes as a sign of mourning.

  “You said you could help,” I begin eagerly as she leads us into the living room. I don’t sit down like Nolan does when Victoria gestures to her couch. Instead, I take a deep breath and make the request I’ve been practicing for the past twenty-four hours. “I need you to teach me everything you know about how to exorcise a demon. Will you be my mentor?” When she doesn’t answer immediately, I add a desperate, “Please?”

  Victoria shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Sunshine. It doesn’t work that way. You already have a mentor.”

  “No, I don’t!” I’m tempted to stomp my foot like a little kid, but Victoria’s carpet is so plush that it would barely make a sound. Instead, I lift my hands desperately, begging for help. “If I had a mentor, then he’d be here, helping me, teaching me. Isn’t that what mentors do?”

  I looked up the word mentor in the dictionary this morning: a wise and trusted counselor or teacher. Victoria might not be a qualified art teacher, but she’s still the closest thing I have to that definition.

  “He is helping you,” Victoria insists.

  “How?”

  “The professor,” Nolan says softly, and I turn around to face him. He looks so out of place in this room—Victoria’s plush furniture seems to swallow up his long arms and legs. “Your mentor must have brought him back to help us.”

  Nolan has a point: someone must have put that specter of a professor there for us to find. “So my mentor hacked into the university’s computer system with a listing of a long-dead professor’s office hours? Furnished an empty office in an abandoned building that he somehow magicked into looking only slightly less abandoned?”

  “Maybe he even planted the article about him in my grandfather’s papers,” he thinks aloud, his voice intense.

  I bite my bottom lip. Okay, fine, that’s some help. But it’s not nearly enough help. Not when my mother’s life is at stake.

  “He will appear, Sunshine. You just have to wait.” Victoria brings her long white fingers to her mouth, as though she’s said too much. I feel like she’s barely saying anything at all.

  “But I can help you,” she offers slowly, her soft voice melodic as she stands and disappears into the kitchen.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” Nolan suggests gently, and I sit on the couch beside him, but not too close. I don’t actually need his warmth, not in this house.

  I expect Victoria to return with a tray full of tea, but instead she comes back holding a handkerchief wrapped around something. “Here,” she says, holding the package out to me.

  I unwrap the item and immediately drop it into my lap.

  “A rusty old knife?” It’s not even a big knife. I mean, it’s not, like, a butter knife or anything, but it’s not exactly a sword or an axe either. It’s the kind of k
nife Mom uses to chop onions or carrots or celery. The sort of knife you’d find in most any kitchen.

  “It’s not a rusty old knife,” Victoria counters. “Can’t you see what it really is?”

  I shake my head. “What’s it supposed to look like?”

  “It’s a weapon,” she says breathlessly. “A weapon that only a luiseach can wield. Concentrate. Don’t you see it?”

  “See what?”

  “See something more than just an ordinary knife?”

  I pick up the knife and hold it up in front of me, turning it over in my hands. I squint and stare at it, then I squeeze it tight. I drop it to the floor with a hollow thump against the carpet. All the while it stays an ordinary old knife.

  “What do you see when you look at it?” I ask.

  “It doesn’t matter what I see,” Victoria replies. “The weapon manifests itself differently for each of us, based on our strength and our needs—and based on the strength and power of the demon we’re using it against, of course.”

  “What do you mean by strength and power? Are you saying that on midnight on New Year’s Eve my mother will be as strong as Superman?”

  “Not exactly. Your mother will be incapacitated, but her body—possessed by the demon—will be powerful.”

  “But if her body is going to have superhuman strength, how am I supposed to overpower it? You said you couldn’t destroy this demon, and you’ve been doing this for a lot longer than I have. It’s only been a few months since my sixteenth birthday.” Tears spring to my eyes. If she couldn’t destroy this demon, how am I supposed to? What kind of a mentor gives his mentee a task that even a seasoned luiseach couldn’t overcome? I feel like I’m destined to fail.

  “It’s been fifty-one years since I turned sixteen,” Victoria says.

  “But—” Nolan does the math automatically, “That would make you sixty-seven years old.”

  Victoria nods, and I lean forward, studying her face. There is barely a line on her forehead. Her eyes are ringed with dark circles—guess she doesn’t sleep much, just like me—but there aren’t crow’s feet peeking out at the corners. She smiles, and I see that her lips are full and thick, her teeth bright white. Either Victoria has the world’s greatest plastic surgeon, or . . . I think back to some of Nolan’s earlier research. Luiseach live long lives. They—we—must age at a different rate too.