Vesper

by Jeff Sampson

After a long moment I said, “Yeah. Let’s get me fixed up.”

  Chapter 7

  Sounds Like a Plan

  “Well, as far as I can tell, girls, you’re both completely healthy.” The school nurse, Mrs. Hawkins, stood in front of me and smiled. Her blond perm glowed under the bright fluorescents, making her seem like a grown-up and wrinkled version of one of those chubby angels you see hanging in church-lady bathrooms.

  I studied the walls, not sure what to say. I mean, I felt fine now, but I knew I couldn’t seriously be healthy. Across from where I sat atop her little examining table there were all sorts of posters tacked to the walls. One about the food pyramid, another about proper brushing, one with tiny writing all about the dangers of sex. They were all faded, the laminate peeling from their edges. I wondered what the school board had deemed healthy to put on a poster about sex back in 1986 when these posters were plastered here.

  “She’s not okay, Mrs. Hawkins,” Megan insisted. She stood much too close to the nurse, towering over the short woman. “She was dressing all trashy, coming on to my brother’s twenty-one-year-old friend, sneaking out of her house. There was even something about drive-bys with drinking.” She waved her hand at me. “I mean, come on! Slutty is not Emily!”

  Mrs. Hawkins rested a pudgy hand on Megan’s arm. A little gold chain she had round her wrist slid beneath the sleeve of her Lane Bryant blazer.

  “No offense, dear, but you two are teenagers,” she said. “In my experience, if it’s not drugs or alcohol driving you kids crazy, it’s hormones. Girls develop at different rates, and perhaps Emily is just . . . developing.”

  Megan let out an exasperated sigh and stomped away. “Please! Emily developed when we were eleven.”

  Self-consciously, I wrapped my arms around my chest as Mrs. Hawkins inspected me. I had felt more aware of my stupid chest the past couple days than I had in years, and I didn’t like that at all. Being in fifth grade with everyone else still flat as a board, and me . . . It was just easier to cover things up, keep quiet, and hope everyone would forget I was different.

  Megan turned back to face Mrs. Hawkins. “She never acted like this back then, and even if she was going to now, why just for a couple hours a night? And on the same night as Emily Cooke lost her mind, went walking in the dark in a nightie or whatever, and got herself killed? Is that something that ‘developing’ girls do?”

  Raising her fist to her pursed red lips, Mrs. Hawkins let out a prim little cough. “Well, yes, you have a point,” she said after a moment. Leaning in toward Megan and me, she lowered her voice. “Honestly, girls, there’s only so much I can do as a school nurse. I’m only here because I taught Health and Sex Education last year, and I was going to be let go this year unless I took this post.”

  Reassuring.

  Shuffling away, she went to a file cabinet near the door and yanked it open. She said, “Emily, you seem fine from what I can tell, but if you’re really concerned you should have your mother take you to a see a real doctor.”

  Nonchalantly, Megan said, “Her mother’s dead.”

  Mrs. Hawkins spun around from the filing cabinet, one hand fluttering to her chest. In her other hand she clenched a bunch of pamphlets. “I’m so sorry, dear. I didn’t know.”

  “Oh, it’s all right, it happened when I was two,” I said.

  “Still, dear,” Mrs. Hawkins went on. “The relationship between a girl and her mother is an important one. I can’t imagine what it would be like to not have had my mother show me the ropes growing up.”

  If I wasn’t uncomfortable before, well, I surely was then. The last thing I wanted to talk about with the school nurse was growing up mommy-less. And so I just said, “I have my father and my stepmother. One of them could take me, I guess.”

  Her plump cheeks rising into a smile, Mrs. Hawkins handed me the pamphlets. “Well, I’m glad to hear that. Now take a look at these and see which one you feel fits your problem. I was a girl once myself, and I know all about the moods we get, but if you think it’s more . . .”

  I held the pamphlets side by side. The first one read, “From Bliss to Blah: The Blight of Bipolarism.” The next said, “So You’re Going to Be an Unwed Teenage Mother?”

  “Thank you.” Grabbing my backpack from the table beside me, I leaped down to the floor. I felt unnerved—Megan had been more than a little forthcoming about what had happened last night, though thankfully she’d left out the part about my jumping out of her car—and I couldn’t help but think Mrs. Hawkins was thinking how much of a freak I was.

  Before the nurse could say anything else, I yanked open the door and stepped outside. The nurse’s office was connected to the front office lobby, and old secretaries milled about, deep in discussion—about how to keep teenagers from rioting or how to handle uppity parents or whatever.

  I marched out of the office and into the hall. Lunch was long over and fourth period had started. I realized I should have gotten a note from Mrs. Hawkins, but I decided I’d much rather get yelled at by my English teacher than go get poked and prodded by the nurse again.

  “Hey, Em, wait up!”

  Megan ran up to me in the hallway and took my arm. “Well, that was a waste,” she grumbled. “Remind me never to get seriously injured at school with her as our potential lifesaver.”

  I glanced down at the pamphlets, then unzipped my backpack and shoved them inside. I wondered if there was a pamphlet on how to handle sudden-onset adolescent ghost possession. That could have been actually informative.

  “So, we need a plan,” Megan said as we walked. “Because you probably won’t be able to see a doctor tonight, so I should come over and keep watch, make sure you don’t do anything stupid.”

  I stopped and looked at Megan, part of me suddenly not wanting her to be there later. It was that secret, hidden part of me again, the one that daydreamed about being some sort of comic-book hero.

  Flipping her head, she sent her long hair cascading down her back. “What’s that look for?” she sniped.

  I hadn’t realized I was giving her a look, so I twisted my head away. “Sorry, it’s just . . . Maybe it won’t happen again. I feel fine now, anyway.”

  “Don’t be dumb,” Megan said. “Earlier you were worried you were going to get yourself killed because you couldn’t control yourself when you had those mood swings or whatever.”

  I didn’t say anything. The change that had happened the night before was freaktastic, yes, but . . . what if I let it happen again? What if I didn’t have Megan there, watching over me as I turned from dowdy lady into super-tramp? I could feel those sensations, experience that addictive, liquid grace. . . .

  Get into more trouble that I’d have to face when I woke up the next morning, normal once more.

  She shook me. “Hello?” she said. “So we have a plan then?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Hey there, Leelee, how was school?”

  I dropped my backpack by the front door as it slammed shut behind me, and forced myself to give my dad a smile. There was a loading screen on his monitor, so he actually bothered to swivel around in his chair to greet me, his bifocals crooked and a headset clinging atop his balding head. He waved me over for a hug.

  “It was fine.”

  I bent and hugged him, burying my head in his neck. He smelled so very dad-ish, like Old Spice and a little bit of sweat and a whole lot of reassurance. I clung to him a little too long, I guess, because he whispered in my ear, “Hey, kid, something wrong?”

  I let him go and forced another smile. What was I supposed to tell him? Yes, Dad, there’s a whole lot of wrong going on, because the last two nights I seem to have developed a split personality that made me leap around like I had my own ninja wire stunt team, which—honestly?—felt completely awesome and exhilarating, but which still freaked me out in the morning. And now Megan thinks I’m sick, and I’m afraid the angry spirit of a dead classmate has taken me over, and the school nurse seems to think I’
m either pregnant or mentally unstable. Care to run me to the hospital—or the local psychic—to see if any of those are the case?

  “No, nothing’s wrong, just had a long day.” He continued to look at me quizzically, not quite sure if I was telling the truth, so I asked, “And how was your day?”

  His face lit up. “Oh, busy, busy. The guild had a raid earlier and we totally kicked butt, but I completely ran out of potions and needed to hit the auction house.”

  “Oh. Sounds . . . neat.” I started to turn toward the stairs, then bit my lip and turned back. “Mind if I watch a little?”

  “Yeah! Grab a seat.”

  Our front door opens up into the dining room and the little foyer where my dad has his computer, so I dragged over one of the dining chairs and scooted in close. Patting me on my back, Dad turned back to his game and started pressing keys to highlight monsters and kill them.

  I sat there for a while, watching him play, not really understanding what exactly he was doing but not really wanting to go up to my room and be by myself, either.

  It had been ages since I’d hung out with my dad. I mean, we used to, a lot. For a long time it was just me and him—Dad and his little Leelee staying up late watching TV, going out to movies every weekend, reading Alan Moore comics to each other as bedtime stories. He religiously took me to practice when little me was sure that dance was my calling in life, never missing a recital no matter how crappy my part or how late he had to work at whatever construction job he may have had that week. When I dropped out of that, he let me take tae kwon do classes until I realized that I wasn’t meant to be an action hero either. He seemed relieved when all I asked for on my next birthday was a new bookcase and a bunch of DVDs of old horror movies.

  But I got older, and he got older. He met my stepmom, and she and Dawn moved in. I started having more homework and ended up spending most of my free time with Megan or up alone in my room—I mean, I’d started to, y’know, develop—and though he was my dad, there were a lot of things that were easier to talk to Megan about. Not that it much mattered, since my stepmom took my place for evening TV, and when Dad didn’t have a construction job to go to, he now had his game to occupy his time.

  So it was nice to just sit there with him, the two of us alone at home sharing in the fun of pixels fighting other pixels on a screen with glowy effects swirling around.

  I thought again about everything as I watched him jab at his keyboard, eyes darting back and forth as he moved his character around. I wanted so, so bad right then to be just me and him again, back before junior high and high school, back before Megan and Dawn and my stepmom. . . . Maybe then I could have asked for his help.

  Instead I coughed. When that failed to get his attention, I jabbed at his shoulder.

  “Hmm?” He darted a glance at me briefly before focusing once again on his monitor.

  “Yeah, so, Megan wanted to come over tonight. Is that okay?”

  “No!” Smashing his index finger over and over on the number one key at the top of his keyboard, he muttered a swear under his breath. I saw his character fall down dead on-screen and everything go gray as he turned into a little animated ghost.

  “I hate gnomes.” He lowered his headset and turned to me. “What was that? Something about Megan?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Can she come over, maybe stay the night?”

  Before, he would have asked me why, or maybe even offered to make a night of it for us, conveniently forgetting that we likely had homework so that we could stay up late having a Nightmare on Elm Street marathon.

  “Oh, sure thing,” he said. “You two have fun.” With that, he returned to his game and started running his character’s ghost back to its body.

  And that was the end of father-daughter time.

  Returning my chair to its place under the dining room table, I picked up my bag and went upstairs to my room. Then I sat at my computer, opened up the browser to Google, and typed in “Emily Cooke.”

  I scrolled through the search results, ignoring the links I’d already clicked on. I muttered to myself, “So, other Emily: Who were you?”

  I found a few things I hadn’t the day before, distracted as I’d been by Terrance Sedgwick’s post about me on Emily Cooke’s blog. But following a series of links revealed that Emily Cooke didn’t just have a blog—she had her own web page. Nothing super fancy, probably made with one of those programs from a box, but it was classier than most high schooler web pages I’d seen.

  The site was full of poetry and sketches and whimsical watercolor paintings. There was a gallery of black-and-white photographs that I weren’t sure were ones she just liked, or ones she’d taken herself. Either way, I found them striking—photos in profile of people I didn’t recognize, of interesting objects in a home, all in sharp contrast that seemed to reveal some flaw that made them so imperfect that they became . . . perfect.

  None of the stories or poems I read seemed to reveal any latent superpowers—though I guess if Emily Cooke was really the long lost daughter of the Incredibles family, she wouldn’t broadcast it on the internet. Mostly, her writing revealed that she had a pretty sly sense of humor. One story, a thinly veiled tale about an alien conspiracy nut going all Chicken Little that just had to be about Ms. Nguyen, left me in a giggling fit that, for a few moments, made me forget all about the craziness of the past few days.

  I wasn’t getting anything from this little excursion into Emily Cooke’s virtual world that screamed, Girl superhero that is puppet-mastering you from beyond the grave! Mostly, I just realized that maybe there had been more to Emily Cooke than I’d thought.

  And now she was gone. All that was left of her was text and pictures on a computer screen.

  “Is it you?” I whispered as I studied a self-portrait of Emily Cooke. “Are you doing this?”

  Her eyes were pale in the black-and-white photo, and she was half smiling, like she did know all the answers but couldn’t tell me. And as I studied her face—her slender nose, her arched brow, her stylishly cut blond hair—I felt a strange connection. Maybe it was just that she seemed to like words and interesting images the same way I did. Maybe it was that her spirit was still around, hovering over me for some reason I couldn’t know.

  Maybe it was something else altogether.

  I stared at the screen for a long time. Then I closed the browser and got ready to sit around and wait for the change—the possession, the sickness, whatever it was—to come and make me into a whole new girl.

  The red LED display on my alarm clock read 7:55 p.m.

  After delving into the online world of Emily Cooke, I’d set about completing my homework and finished by six. I ate a quick dinner downstairs and was done by six thirty—or almost, anyway. I could barely get down half a sandwich, my stomach felt so tight with nervousness. I tried reading, browsing online, watching a DVD, but it was useless—I couldn’t concentrate. Yesterday and the day before, my “mood swing” had come at a little after eight o’clock, when it was fully dark outside. That time was rapidly approaching, and there was no sign of Megan.

  I was torn. I still longed to let go and become the Emily Webb of the night before. But I was also still unsure about the whole thing, deeply afraid of what this could all mean. The more nervous and conflicted I became, the more I knew: Megan needed to be here. Change or no change, she was the one and only person I could rely on.

  I had called Megan five times between seven o’clock and 7:55. She hadn’t answered once. Back against my headboard, legs spread out over my bedspread and Ein cradled firmly in lap, I stared straight ahead at nothing, waiting.

  I peeked over at my clock. 7:59.

  Taking a breath, I reached over to the cell where it rested atop my desk, flipped it open, and scrolled down to select “Reedy.” The phone rang . . . and rang . . . and rang.

  “You have reached the voice mailbox of . . . ‘Megan Reed.’ Press one to leave a—”

  I snapped shut my cell and tossed it back on my desk. “Th
is was your plan, Megan,” I muttered. “Where are you?”

  The clock ticked over to eight o’clock.

  8:01. 8:02. 8:03.

  A sudden clattering and buzzing from my desk made me jump. The cell phone was vibrating where I’d tossed it, the display screen lit up: 8:04.

  Clutching Ein, I grabbed the cell, opened it, and put it to my ear. Before I could even say anything, I heard Megan on the other end.

  “Sorry, Em, I’m sorry I’m not there. I tried to get away, but my mom is making us have some stupid family night.”

  “What?” I said. Dread billowed into my stomach. “Megan, you’re supposed to be here, you said it was a plan.”

  “I said I’m sorry,” she snapped. Her voice was crackly, and I could hear muffled traffic in the background. “My mom found out about Emily Cooke this morning, and she’s been freaking out like it was me or Lucas who died. She made us all go to dinner, and now I have to drive home and play Parcheesi or something with her.”

  Gripping Ein even tighter, I flopped over onto my side, away from the clock. “I really need you here. Please, Megan . . .”

  “I can’t, Emily. I’m really sorry. You told your dad about this, right? Maybe ask him to watch you. Or chain yourself to the bed or something—just don’t leave the house, okay?”

  I thought about my dad, who was probably downstairs with my stepmom, watching reruns.

  “Emily? You still there?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m still here.”

  Megan sighed. “I’m almost home, so I need to hang up. Just please, please, please don’t do anything stupid, okay? Promise me.”

  “I promise,” I said.

  “Okay.” Megan sounded unsure. Another item on the rapidly increasing list of Ways Megan Never Sounded Before the Other Day. “Call me if you start to feel weird or anything, all right? I’ll drop everything and come over there, no matter how much my mom complains. Talk to you later.”

  Before I could say good-bye, the phone clicked dead.

  I sat there for a long moment, the phone still to my ear. I knew I should do something to prepare, just in case. Megan was right, maybe I needed to chain myself to my bed or something. I’d done some dangerous stuff without even thinking twice. I might do worse. I might get hurt.