“Yes you do. What happened in there? You totally lost it.”
“I-I have no idea,” he said. “The boy drives me mad. Who is he to judge me? He knows nothing about what I’ve been through.”
“Just come back inside with me,” I said, rubbing his back and linking my arm in his. “C’mon, Henry. Come with me.”
Henry shook his head. “No. This was all a mistake. Ah!” He ran his fingers nervously through his hair. “You drive me mad, Alice.”
“Why are you getting so upset?” I said, having no idea what else to say—I wouldn’t really understand what went on inside that handsome head of his. “Tell me,” I whispered softly.
“It’s just…He can be with you in a way I will never be able to,” said Henry fiercely. “Do you not understand, Alice?”
I shook my head, not entirely sure I understood any of it. “I don’t have any feelings for Christian, at least not that kind. I’m with you, Henry. Isn’t that what’s important?” I said.
“No, Alice. This is all wrong. I can never have you, not in the way I want, and you can never have me.” He looked into my eyes, bearing his tortured soul. “Is it not obvious? If we stay together, we’ll only tear ourselves apart.”
I shook my head, not understanding a word of it. It sounded like a break-up speech, one of those it’s-not-you-it’s-me things, and I was not ready for that.
I couldn’t convince Henry to go back into the dance, so he drove me home. Not a word was spoken on our commute after our unfortunate evening. He even refused to look at me when he dropped me off.
I walked in just before midnight and everyone had gone to bed. My dad didn’t wait up because he trusted I wouldn’t break curfew.
Silently and heartbroken, I walked in defeat through the darkened house up to my room and closed the door. Mindlessly, I put my pajamas on, consumed with worry over Henry. What is happening to me? For a tiny moment, I wished I were dead. At least then I stood a chance of being with Henry forever…
Chapter Eleven: Disappearance
As soon as I walked into the schoolyard the next morning, I immediately knew something was wrong. Two Monterey County Police cars parked ominously outside the principal’s office, their bumpers nudged up against the row of pink rhododendrons lining the school wall. I wondered if there had been some trouble at the homecoming festivities, perhaps some of the jocks and cheerleaders getting drunk and causing trouble in town. When I had left with Henry, the seniors had already been quite restless and rowdy.
The corridors echoed with excited chatter as I made my way to my locker. I strained to hear what they said, but couldn’t make it out. I spied Emily walking toward me like a guided missile. As she neared, I saw her green eyes as big as saucers.
She opened her mouth, and a torrent of words came tumbling out. “Oh my God! Did you hear the news?” Emily asked, practically bursting to tell me.
“What news?” I asked, my heart almost skipping a beat.
“Heather Palmer. She’s just. . . She disappeared!”
“What do you mean disappeared?” I asked incredulous.
“She didn’t return home last night. She had that huge fight with Channing last night, and…”
“I know,” I said, nodding. I would never forget that argument we’d overheard on the balcony, the two of them going at it with such intensity.
“Well, she left the school, but no one has seen her since. Her mom called the police early this morning.”
“That’s terrible,” I said and meant it. Poor Heather. I wondered what could have happened to her. Maybe she just slept over at a friend’s house and this is all just a misunderstanding, I thought, soothing myself.
“The police are questioning, like, everybody.”
“So that’s why the cars are out there.”
“Yup.”
“What do you think happened to her?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Emily said with a shudder. “The Coast Guard’s been out since dawn, but no one’s found a body yet.”
A thought suddenly crossed my mind. “Wait! That vision of the girl you saw floating with her head held under the water. . . Do you think that could have been Heather?”
Emily scrunched up her forehead, thinking for a moment. The kink appeared in the middle of her forehead as it always did when she thought hard. “I considered that, too. I guess it’s possible. I had that premonition about her dress, too. Still, I’m not getting any vibes from her now. Normally, whenever Heather brushed past me, I could sense what she had for breakfast that morning, where she had just been, even when on her period. I could even sense if she’d recently been making out with a guy—which was more often than you’d think—but today, no matter how hard I concentrate on her, there’s just—nothing. It’s really strange, like she’s disappeared from the face of the earth. I felt the same way about my grandma, even before the police showed up to tell us about her fall.”
Disappeared from the face of the earth? In the short time we’d lived in Monterey Bay, I’d learned the painful truth—it is common for people to go missing there. Maybe that’s what happened to Heather—she drowned. That would explain why Emily could no longer sense her. Maybe she’s stuck in the same place Henry is and become unreachable. Could she be a ghost too?
All I could imagine was Heather drowning in the bay, her long, yellow hair as fine as seaweed, floating in the water. I saw her face-down, the fish nibbling at her limbs, eating away at her flesh. Then I thought of her emerging onto the beach with the tide, a ghost-like creature, destined to spend her life in the fourth plane until she atones for harming another.
Squeezing my eyes tightly shut, I tried to vanquish the horrible image from my mind. When I opened them again, I saw Channing standing in the corner by the lockers. He looked haggard, like he hadn’t had a wink of sleep the previous night—my guess is that he’d been interrogated fiercely.
I nudged Emily. “Should we go talk to him?”
Emily nodded, and we walked over.
Channing’s normally handsome features looked laced with worry lines with puffy eyes and dry mouth. He looked like he’d been run over by a very large truck.
“You okay?” I asked. “We’re really sorry to hear about Heather.”
He looked at us gloomily and shook his head. “The cops questioned me for three hours this morning, showed up at my house at freaking four in the morning. Those idiots think I’m involved in her disappearance. Can you believe that?”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I know you wouldn’t hurt her.”
“Yeah, well, tell that to the boys in blue,” Channing said, his eyes hopeless. “When a girl goes missing, it’s always the boyfriend who gets canned.”
“What do you suppose happened to her?” I asked, probing.
Channing shrugged. “I dunno. One minute, we were dancing, and then she wanted to go up on deck for some air. We had an argument about something, then she ran out on me. I just figured somebody gave her a lift home. I didn’t call or anything. With Heather, you’ve gotta give her space sometimes, just let her cool off, ya know?”
The bell rang, but instead of going to first period, we were all ushered into the hall for a special assembly.
Stone-faced, Principal Philopolis walked up to the podium. “It is with great regret, students, that I call this assembly this morning. It appears that our homecoming queen has gone missing. No one has seen Heather Palmer since last night, and her mother has called the police to investigate. If anyone has any information that may help the authorities locate Heather, I urge you to please come forward. Any disclosures will be treated with the strictest confidence.”
I looked around at the gawking faces of the students in the assembly hall, did any of them know anything? And if they do, would they care enough to step forward?
“What about Channing?” Emily whispered to me. “That fight he had with Heather. . . Should we say something?”
“Say what?” I said. “It was just a lovers’ quarrel. That doe
sn’t prove anything. We can’t go around accusing people. We don’t really know anything about what happened to Heather.”
None of the students accomplished much that morning, even though the teachers tried to carry on as though nothing had happened. We were all already tired from the night before, and Heather’s disappearance only made it more difficult to focus.
At lunchtime, the only topic of conversation around all the cafeteria tables was Heather. As I helped myself to the salad bar, I couldn’t believe some of the petty, cruel things the other girls were saying, like Heather being dead made her a prime target for bitchy barbs.
“Ya know, my mom always says people get what they deserve,” said Melissa. “I guess that’s true of Heather.”
“Yeah, well, I shoulda won homecoming queen, anyway,” said Juanita. “That girl sure didn’t deserve her tiara. She practically slept her way to the top.”
I felt like opening my mouth and saying something; I’d always been one to speak out against injustice. I couldn’t believe how catty my classmates became. Only the day before, they had been part of Heather’s entourage, pretending to be her friend. At Homecoming, the whole school had practically worshipped her like some golden-gowned goddess and now—everyone from jocks to geeks continuously badmouthed her.
By mid-afternoon, as I tried to get through trigonometry, we received more sensational news: The Coast Guard found some of the golden flowers in Heather’s braid floating in the bay. They had been fished out by one of the trawlers returning from an overnight catch.
“She’s dead. I know she is,” said Emily dramatically when we heard the news. “I mean, where else would she be?”
“You can’t know that,” I tried to reassure her, even though I wasn’t entirely convinced myself.
“Then where is she? People just don’t disappear,” Emily said.
“They seem to in Pacific Grove,” I said, remembering the surfer who also vanished off Carmel without a trace. Dad told me there was still no sign of him and his car remained abandoned in the parking lot so long it had to be towed away. Mysterious swimmers disappearing, lights in the bay, vanishing homecoming queens: They all seemed to be routine happenings in our sleepy little town.
I wondered what would happen if Heather had drowned in the bay. Will she suffer the same fate as Henry and be confined to the fourth plane forever? Will I see her again, maybe walking along the costal path at night, lost and tearful like poor White Dove? I thought about asking Henry the next time I saw him.
The bell finally rang at the end of the last period, and there was a flurry of excitement among the students.
I slowly walked the coastal road home after school. I needed time to think. Mostly about Henry, but thoughts of Heather kept creeping in.
I made myself a cup of coffee and settled down with some homework at the kitchen table. I tried to read Little Women. Our book club was scheduled to meet the next day, and I hadn’t read a word of it. I knew Ethan would quiz me, and I didn’t want him to get the better of me. I quickly skimmed through the chapters, making my own mental Cliff’s notes. Luckily as a fast reader, I can absorb a lot of information quickly.
The front door opened just after six, and Dad and Sophie came in. He tossed the evening edition of local newspaper onto the kitchen table and shook his head.
I looked up from my book and read the headline: “Local Homecoming Queen Disappears.”
“Did you know this girl?” he asked, pointing to the picture of Heather wearing her movie star smile. She looked every inch the homecoming queen with her blonde braid and all-American, beach-babe grin. On the surface, she appeared like a young woman who had everything going for her, but the one thing she didn’t have was good luck.
“Sure. She was in some of my classes. She was. . .” I said then stopped. I had a hard time talking about Heather in the past tense.
“Tragic. Such a pretty girl, too,” said Dad.
“Yeah, she sure was,” I conceded. Heather’s beauty hadn’t gone unnoticed by anyone, not even my dad, who didn’t ever seem to notice women after my mom died. He was so oblivious, I began to doubt he’d ever find someone again.
“Anyway, how was your evening with what’s-his-name?” said Dad, opening the refrigerator.
“Henry,” I clarified, sipping my coffee.
“Yeah, that’s right,” replied Dad, pulling out a carton of juice. “Well, how was it?” he asked loftily.
“Fine, Dad.”
“He didn’t try to, uh—?”
“No, he didn’t. He’s not like that. Henry is always a gentleman.”
“A gentleman, huh? Well, that’s a first. Don’t get too many like that anymore.”
“He’s not like other boys,” I said, and I meant it.
Sophie came skipping down the stairs carrying her crayons, eager to get started on the coloring book that Dad had bought for her in the aquarium gift shop. “Alice has a boyfriend,” she said in a singsong voice as she smirked at me.
I didn’t say anything. It was the first time my family expressed any interest in my love life. Not that I minded; I actually found it cute—I just wasn’t used to it.
That evening, we ate mushroom risotto that I cooked. After dinner, I was absolutely exhausted. The events of the past twenty-four hours had caught up with me. So after doing the dishes, I excused myself and went up to my room.
I wedged my window open with my copy of Little Women and looked out toward the bay. Heather’s disappearance had really affected me. Where is she? I asked over and over again, imagining her horrible fate and hoping she hadn’t been sentenced to death, or worse, sentenced to the fourth plane.
That evening, her image really began to haunt me. Wherever I looked, I saw her: in the bathroom mirror, in the window reflection, and in the small mirror atop my vanity. Finally, I could stand it no longer. After brushing my teeth, I slipped into my PJs and went to bed. Closing my eyes, I hoped Heather’s ghost would go away, along with my all-consuming thoughts of Henry.
The next day, I went through the Saturday morning ritual of going to the market with Sophie. The winter vegetables started to make an appearance, and we browsed through the butternut squash, the zucchini, and the ripe avocadoes. When we got home, I made a simple salad of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and avocado then covered the bowl with plastic wrap and stored it in the refrigerator for later.
It was a sunny October day, so when Dad came home, we enjoyed lunch on the back terrace. In spite of the grim undercurrent in our community, we managed to squeeze in a few laughs as we ate.
After dinner, I headed to our book club meeting at Starbucks. When I got there, I spied Christian and Rachel sitting in the far corner. As I approached, I heard Heather’s name; she was still the topic of conversation. I hadn’t had a chance to speak to Christian since the dance and his fight with Henry, not confidant in how he would react to me.
Much to my surprise, he looked at me with a friendly smile on his face. “Hey! Guess what we’re talking about.”
“Heather?” I replied.
“What do you think happened to her?” asked Rachel.
I shrugged. “The police are still looking.” I glanced around the table and noticed the empty seat. “Where’s Ethan?” I asked, surprised he would be late, since he chose the book for discussion.
“I dunno, but I’m sure he’ll turn up,” Christian replied. He looked at me shyly. “Hey, I wanna apologize for the other night.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m the one who should apologize. It was inexcusable what Henry did, attacking you like that and calling you names. I’m sorry.”
Christian smiled at me gratefully.
Thirty seconds later, Ethan arrived. He sat down without a word, opened his copy of Little Women, and went to the counter to order a latte.
“Hey, bud. We thought you might be a no-show,” said Christian good-naturedly.
Ethan avoided our eyes, and sat down his latte. “Let’s get started,” he said. “The central character is conf
used and alone, repressed beyond belief.”
“I disagree with that,” I said.
Ethan and I dove into a literary debate, something I immensely enjoyed. We had only been debating for two minutes, when he picked up his books and stormed out of the coffee shop, abandoning us and the high-priced drink—shocked, I just watched him go.
“What was all that about?” Rachel said in astonishment.
I wondered, too. I could recall a time I’d seen him and Heather talking together at the lockers, and I wondered about their connection. They seemed an unlikely pair.
When I returned home, I almost collided with Dad, who rushed out the front door with a pained expression.
“Alice! Thank God you’re home, honey,” he said, obviously flustered.
“What’s wrong?”.
“Uh—just a little crisis in the bay. A few sea otters have washed up onshore, some mysterious disease. I have to go to the aquarium.”
“Now?”
“Yes, and I need you to stay home and look after your sister.”
“Sure, Dad. Of course.”
“Thanks, Sweetheart. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said, disappearing down the path.
“Do you want me to leave some food for you?” I shouted after him. “I can make you a plate to warm up.”
“Nah,” said Dad. “I’ll get something on the Row.” Then, just like that, he jumped into the car and was gone.
Since it would only be the two of us girls for dinner, I decided to make some tortillas to go with the salad I’d made earlier.
Sophie sat at the kitchen table scribbling away and singing. She sounded happy, and for a moment, her child-like glee helped me forget about all my distractions.
Halfway through rolling out a third tortilla, the doorbell rang. Wiping flour on my jeans, I walked over to the front door.
There stood Henry his eyes unwavering and wearing a fiercely intense expression.
“Wh-what are you doing here?” I whispered. “My dad’s gonna be home any minute now, and if he finds you here—”
“—You cannot keep me away,” said Henry, cutting me off. “I have been thinking of nothing else for the last few evenings.”
Ghost Maven Page 12
