“Not really. You’ve got the gig.” She pulled a slip of paper out of her leather top and handed it to me. “Be at this address on Friday night by 7:00pm. We’ve got speakers and an amp. You just need to bring your rig. The rave starts at 9:00 p.m. – I assume you have something more suitable to play than just a rerun of this stuff?”
I took the paper and looked at it – the address was for some place on the edge of downtown Fort Worth. I’d never been over there, but I knew where it was. “Yeah,” I said, this time looking directly at her. I wasn’t shy about my music at all. “I’ve got it covered.”
She took a long swallow from her red plastic cup, her eyes twinkling at me over the rim. Damn, she was hot.
“Party’s wrapping up,” I said. “You wanna get a cup of coffee or something after this?”
“Hell no,” she said. “I never stay till the bitter end. Come late, go home early, before the vomit and trash detail.” She cocked her head. “I’ll see you Friday.” It wasn’t a question.
She turned to walk away, and before she got to the door, I had my mash-up with Dexy’s Midnight Runners 'Come On Eileen' up and running. She paused at the door, hand on the jamb, and gave me a long, appraising look. This time she didn’t glance down at my crotch, but she didn’t have to – I felt him waking up as if she had. She was hot and she knew it—that just made her hotter. She threw up the peace sign and left the party. Somehow I managed not to whoop out loud like some sort of Neanderthal on the prowl.
#
It took me a little over an hour to lug my stuff back downstairs and load it into Colton’s car. Having my own car would be so much better. In that respect, I was really looking forward to the gig and the cash it would bring. But it was more than that. There was a promise of something with Lily, and thoughts of her and that tight little leather top she was wearing were really distracting.
Even now, lying here on my bed, trying to go to sleep, I was distracted. Lily, music, the rave, having my own car, Lily in my car, making out with Lily in my car. Argh! If my brain didn’t quiet down, I was never going to fall asleep.
An owl hooted, deep and low outside my window, and I looked to see if Mr. Smith was on the verge of becoming owl food again, but I didn’t see him sauntering past Thompson’s. Instead, the street was deserted, the houses were dark, and it was only the owl, swooping past the streetlight that filled the empty night with the sound of its hoot and the flap of its wings.
Even the owl couldn’t creep me out tonight. My phone flashed from the bedside table and chirped once to let me know I had a text message. It was Melody, checking to see if I was back from my gig.
Yeah. It’s late. Going to sleep. Talk to you later, I replied, then thumbed the phone off so it wouldn’t wake me up. I didn’t feel like talking to her tonight, though I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I’d finally had enough.
Another ten or fifteen minutes flew by, my thoughts a chaotic miasma of images of Lily naked combined with ideas of music for the rave. Finally, I decided I would never sleep unless I got some of that energy out. When the creative juices were flowing, you just had to go with it.
I powered up my rig and started fishing through my tracks. On a whim, I thumbed through some of Mom’s old vinyl. I pulled out some Gracie Slick.
Something old, meet something new.
26. G.
Morning is definitely a better time for jogging than afternoon. Still hot—don’t get me wrong—but tolerable. Kind of like a June afternoon in Ohio, except without the humidity. I was enjoying my run, too, which is something I never thought I would say.
I rounded the corner and saw a lone figure walking down the sidewalk. During this time of morning, most folks were at work, and those who ran before work were already home taking a shower. It wasn’t a complete surprise to see someone out walking in the morning, though it was a surprise to see that this someone was Melody. I came up next to her and slowed to match her pace.
“Hey,” I said, trying to catch my breath.
“Hey!” She seemed genuinely glad to see me. “I didn’t know you ran.”
“I just started up again a couple of weeks ago,” I said. “I need to get in shape before ROTC starts in the fall, and I have all this energy that I don’t know what to do with, so I decided to stop putting off the inevitable. Weird thing though, I actually like it now. Like, I can’t get enough.”
“Is that what they call the runner’s high?” she asked.
“I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s weird. I’m a book worm, the quintessence of laziness, if you catch my drift. I hate PT – physical training—but since I moved here, I have more energy than I know what to do with.”
“Growth spurt?”
“I hope not! I’m already 6’4”. I don’t want to become the jolly green giant.”
The image made us both laugh. “So what’s going on with you?” I asked, suddenly aware that I hardly knew her at all.
She was quiet for a moment. “A lot, you know, because of the business with my brother’s ghost. And maybe some interesting side effects. Other than that, not much. Oh, except Shelby won’t talk to me. But she’ll get over it.”
“Yeah, girls are like that, right?”
“I suppose,” she said. “I don’t really have any good female friends except for Tara. I mean, I like Shelby and Brittney, but they aren’t BFF’s or anything.”
“I don’t have any BFF’s either,” I said, shrugging my shoulders and shaking my head. We both laughed.
“Hey, you want to come in and get a coffee with me? Usually Sam walks with me in the mornings since he goes this way to work, but he didn’t show.”
I shrugged. “Sure. I don’t drink coffee though, it’s nasty.”
She arched a brow. “That’s because you’ve never had French Pressed coffee.”
We stood in line at Smitty’s for several minutes, and I tried really hard to ignore the looks I was getting. Yeah, I was new in town, yeah, I towered over everyone else in the shop, but that wasn’t what was going through my mind – instead it was I hope I don’t stink like sweat. I resisted the urge to try and catch a whiff of my pits. If I stunk, then oh well. I was headed home to take a shower before work anyways.
“Man, you must have a hole bored through the back of your head by now,” Melody said, looking up at me and grinning.
“What do you mean?” I whipped my head around, paranoia about my sweaty self taking over. I didn’t see anyone behind me staring, except a random, not-half-bad looking chick sitting at a table in the back.
“That girl back there is Tanya Griffin. She’s in our grade. She’s been looking at you like dessert since we walked in here.”
I turned to look at Tanya over my shoulder. She gave me a smile. I nodded and turned back to look at Melody who was laughing silently.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell Tara.”
“Tell Tara what?”
“That all your exercise has turned you into a person of interest.”
I was dumbfounded. I looked down at my right arm and flexed. Holy shit, I had muscles. And you could actually see them. Hell Naw, when did that happen?
“I guess it’s all the push-ups,” I said.
“I guess so.”
Melody grabbed her coffee, and one for me too, and we sat down at a table outside on the patio. The breeze felt good, and the coffee, surprisingly, was not bitter. “You’re right,” I said. “This isn’t terrible.”
“See? It’s the paper filters that make coffee bitter. French Pressed coffee uses a fine wire mesh instead of paper, and the coffee grounds are only steeped for around four minutes or so, not long enough for the acids to take over the flavor. It’s really the only civilized way to drink coffee.”
I took another sip. “If you say so.”
“I do.”
My eyes wandered to a shop across the street. “Muy Thai,” I said. “That’s what they use in cage fighting.”
Melody followed my gaze, her expression unreadable. “Yeah. My brother
used to take lessons there. He got really buff doing it. I asked him why he chose such a violent martial art, and he said he’d rather be the best weapon he could be than a victim. I thought that was weird.”
I didn’t think that was weird at all. It made perfect sense to me. “Did he say how much it cost?”
“No idea.”
“I think I’m going to check it out. The running and calisthenics are fine, but I feel like I need something… deeper. Whatever, I know I don’t make sense.”
“You’re a guy. All you really gotta say is Me man, me strong, ugh!”
I pounded my chest. “Me Muy Thai!” I said, and we both laughed. Seriously though, I was going to check it out. After dealing with douche-bag at my last school, I knew what being a victim was like. I didn’t care to repeat the experience. Ever.
27. TARA
Working in Esme’s shop definitely had its perks. Besides the employee discount on pretty, shiny things, there was the large book selection which I could use for research all day long when customers weren’t at the register – and never have to buy a single book.
There were several books about my favorite psychic, Edgar Cayce, but nothing about sigils or anything like that. At least I had my laptop with me and Esme had a steady, if wired, Internet connection. So the last few days I spent time looking up sigils and warding spells on the Internet, and I found out a bunch of really interesting stuff – but none of that had anything to do with what was happening with Melody and her brother’s ghost.
Something was niggling at the back of my brain, but I couldn’t quite make it work. I gave up on it for a while and decided to tackle everything from another direction… Who was Orla and why did we have to stop her?
According to a popular baby naming website, Orla was a girl’s name of Celtic origin, and it meant ‘golden queen’.” I looked through the local phone book until my eyes were blurry, and then through any online phone book website I could find for someone named Orla – either first or last name – and came up empty. That is, until sweet little Myrtle York walked up to the register with a basket full of candles and incense and decided to tell me her life story. And when she started telling me about the vacation her husband was going to take her on for their anniversary in a couple of weeks, my eyes were beginning to glaze over and I almost missed it.
“And the riverboat is supposed to be huge! The Golden Queen, it has everything on board, like a mini cruise ship, right down to a ballroom and a casino. It’s going to be just lovely.”
I snapped out of my reverie just in time. As Myrtle was grabbing her sack of treasures and about to walk out the door, I was able to squeeze in one last question.
“That sounds really awesome, Myrtle! I hope you two have a wonderful time. Where did you say the boat was again? I think that’s something that my parents would really enjoy.”
The old lady smiled at me and gushed. “Oh, they would! And it’s not far either – just up on the Red River on the Oklahoma and Texas border. Just go to the Hawthorne Marina at Lake Texoma and you can’t miss it. If you tell your mother to hurry, she could get the sale price!”
“I’ll tell her, thanks Myrtle. I’ll see you next time!” I couldn’t resist grinning. The Golden Queen on the Red River. Hello, Othello, I think we might finally have a clue we could use.
28. MELODY
“Sam’s avoiding me or something; he hasn’t texted me back for days.”
“Did you make him mad?” Tara asked, busy poring over a road map of the Texas and Oklahoma border.
“I don’t think so. I mean, I haven’t talked to him enough to say anything that would make him mad. It’s weird.”
“I thought that’s what you wanted? For him to stop mooning over you?”
“I suppose. I mean, no more than he wanted you to stop mooning over him. But that didn’t mean I wanted him to just disappear altogether. He’s still my friend.”
“Uh-huh,” said Tara, clearly not paying attention to me at all.
“And then I kissed him passionately and told him I wanted to bear all of his children. At one time. Like a huge litter of little Melody-Sam’s.”
“Uh-huh,” she said again, her finger tracing a line on the map.
“Tara! You’re not even listening.”
“I am, I mean, I was. I’m just distracted. I’m trying to figure out the best route for us to drive up to the Golden Queen to investigate.”
“Sure, we can drive there, but then what will we do when we get there? The only one of us who is eighteen is Sam, and he’s not returning my calls. And it’s a casino. Don’t we have to be at least eighteen to get in?”
“It’s also a hotel and resort. You take overnight river cruises on it. I figure we could sneak on, or maybe we could fake a reservation. Or maybe your Gram would reserve a room for us? No?”
“She’s pretty laid back as far as grandmother’s go, but there’s no way she’s going to reserve a room for us on board a riverboat casino.”
“So just make the reservation in her name.”
“No way. I’m not going to steal her credit card!”
“You don’t have to steal it, silly. My mom does it all the time – she makes the reservation to hold the room with a card, but when she gets there, she pays cash so the charge never shows up. It’s easy. I can do it if you want.”
It sounded easy. Clearly that meant there was a catch, somewhere. “Okay, I guess. What do we have to do?”
“We need to call and make a reservation, and we have to um, liberate the card from her wallet for a minute to do it. We’ll need that verification code on the back to prove it’s not stolen.”
To prove it’s not stolen. I tried not to groan. But I figured that Gram would never notice, because it’s not like she and Gramps ever went anywhere anymore, now that he was in a wheelchair most of the time. And I really, really, wanted to know what Orla, I mean the Golden Queen, was all about. Matthew’s ghost had been insistent. And I just couldn’t let something like that go. Stop Orla, he’d said. How the heck were we going to stop a river boat?
“We can do it tomorrow,” I said, hating myself as I said it. “She’ll be working in her garden most of the afternoon, and she’ll never notice. When do we tell the boys?”
“As soon as G. gets here, I guess. This is so exciting! First the garage, and now this – I feel like a character on Pretty Little Liars.”
G. showed up an hour later, and Tara and I had most of the details planned out by then. I would drive, since I had the most dependable car, and we each would say we were sleeping at the other person’s house. G. and Sam would do the same thing, and then we would just drive up to Lake Texoma, the four of us together, check into the riverboat hotel / casino, and case the joint. Tara thought we should bring along the Spirit Board to see if Matthew had further instructions for us, and I thought that sounded like a good idea. I mean, we really had no idea what we were looking for, except that Orla was a ‘golden queen’, and we were supposed to stop her.
“That’s risky,” G. said after he heard our plan. “You have to have the credit card with you to check into the room, which means you really would have to steal it from your grandmother’s purse. And then even if we did manage to get in, what are we looking for?”
“That’s what the Spirit Board is for,” said Tara brightly, putting her hand on G.’s arm. “We’ll have another séance or whatever, right there in the hotel room, so that Matthew can tell us what to do.”
“So now we take directions from a ghost?” G. looked bothered.
“Matthew’s message on the recordings was pretty clear… and there’s more.” Tara looked at me, silently asking permission to share the contents of the cloth-bound package we found in the garage.
I shrugged. What did I have to lose at this point? We weren’t getting anywhere on our own. Maybe having G.’s eyes, and Sam’s too—if he ever showed up—would help us figure it out.
G. looked from Tara to me and back to Tara again. “What do you mean there’s more
?”
“More what?” asked Sam as he strutted into the room, backpack slung over his shoulder and a big soft drink cup in his hand.
“More to this whole ghost story… Melody and I found something the other night.”
#
G. was looking at me and Tara as if we were naughty children.
“I can’t go,” said Sam abruptly. “Although it sounds like it might be an interesting time.”
My face stung, as if I had been slapped. “What do you mean you can’t go?” I asked, voice rising just a little bit on the last syllable. I could feel anger surge through me. First he dissed me through text and voice mail, and now when I actually needed his help with something important he just “can’t go”?
“Sorry, I’ve got a gig. A big one. It pays a thousand bucks, and with that I can finally buy my own car. I can’t go with you, but you kids have fun.”
Tara and I were both staring at him, mouths agape, but G. just bumped fists with him and grinned.
“The chick?” he asked Sam, eyebrows raised.
“Hell, yeah,” said Sam, grinning.
When did those two become such good friends? “Fine. You can’t go. G., you can come, right?”
G. looked from me to Tara, and then nodded slowly. “I don’t want to go to jail though, so if we get busted, I’m hanging you two out to dry.”
That made us all laugh, and the tension in the room eased a bit. Although Sam’s betrayal stung, how could I expect him to turn down such a juicy opportunity? What was wrong with me anyways? Wasn’t this what I wanted? Sam to finally have an interest in someone else with breasts besides me?
29. SAM
The ghost thing was crazy and even a little compelling, but I just didn’t understand the lengths that Melody was willing to go through to follow some wild goose chase. I knew she missed Matthew. Hell, I missed Matthew–I’d known him since the sixth grade—but stealing her grandmother’s credit card? That was a recipe for disaster.
A Quarrel Called: Stewards Of The Plane Book 1 Page 9
