by Molly Ringle
“Okay,” said Laurence. “Let’s go over all this again. Just for me. I’m slow.”
We sat down on a park bench in Princes Street Gardens. Tony accepted a cup of tea and a handful of biscuits, and tucked into them while Amber started talking.
“So you guys left to get food,” Amber said, “and I started bawling. I was stressed, exhausted--”
“Fasting, too,” Tony said, his mouth full.
“Totally. Low blood sugar. So I’m there crying in the church, and Tony’s going, ‘What’s wrong? You can tell me,’ and well...” She took a deep breath, surveying the line of us down the bench. “There’s something I need to tell you guys. Eve and Shannon, I mean.”
I glanced at the boys. “Something they already know?”
“Yeah. See...” She gave an exaggerated cringe, like someone about to get a flu shot. “The ghost-seeing? I haven’t been completely honest about that.”
“What do you mean?” asked Shannon.
“Like, in the past, I’d sometimes kind of exaggerate.” Amber squinted up at the bare branches of the ash tree over our bench. “Or pretend.”
“Pretend?” I remembered her prank on me with Bloody MacKenzie, and my temper flared. “They weren’t there? You’ve been faking us out?”
“I was never sure,” she defended. “Or at least--well--you know how you can convince yourself of things? Especially spooky things. You’re alone in your room and it’s dark, or you’re in the basement in the hostel, with the laundry machines and the creepy shadows, and you start seeing or hearing things. Right?”
“But you actually did see things,” Shannon said.
“We thought,” I added.
“You guys liked it when I did! It was our exciting thing to do. God knows Wild Rose needed excitement.”
“Hang on.” My guilt in regards to Amber’s feelings was fast evaporating. “All these years--since, what, kindergarten? You’ve been faking it?”
“Until lately,” Tony interceded. “Tell them.”
Amber nodded, scooting to the edge of the bench, animated by sugar and the need to talk. “After my dad told me about my schizoid grandmother, and how she saw ghosts too, I started to wonder. Maybe we both really saw them--or maybe we were both insane. Then, on that ghost tour when Tony visited last time, I really did see them. Way clearer than before. And it freaked me out.”
“Wait a sec,” I said. “So all those other times, when you fed us a ton of details--the drowned woman floating above Princes Street Gardens, the medieval prisoner dude in the castle--what was that? Total fabrication?”
“Inspiration?” she offered, cringing again, twisting her fingers together. “It’s what I could imagine seeing, if I sort of let myself drift. You know?”
“Because you already read up on the history and knew about people like that.” Shannon sounded diplomatic, if not fully sympathetic. “It would be easy to picture.”
“Right,” said Amber. “But then, I swear, actual freakin’ hallucinations started! Ever since that ghost tour, all those things I said I’ve seen, I promise you, they looked real.”
“Including your big ol’ death date,” I said. “Today.”
“Yes.” She brightened. “But I’m not afraid of that anymore!”
Tony nodded, and gestured toward her with his tea cup. “Tell them,” he urged again.
“Getting there,” she promised. “Okay. So I’m crying in the church, because all this time I’ve been dishonest, and no one knew except Laurence--”
“What?” I shrieked.
Laurence, who had said nothing for a time, sighed and crossed his legs at the ankle. “Only recently.”
“I didn’t tell him till a couple of months ago,” Amber said. “When the visions were freaking me out. I had to tell someone.”
“You could have told us, too,” Shannon said, gently, of course.
“I was a coward. I was worried I’d look even more insane. Does that make sense?”
“Get to what happened in the church,” I snapped. I wanted to hear none of the details of how tight she and Laurence had been. God, and he dared get on my case for not telling the whole truth? Bitterly glad to have the high ground for once, I didn’t look at him, and sensed his angry tension in his silence and the frozen posture he maintained.
“Okay,” resumed Amber. “So I’m in the church, all upset, still seeing some old woman’s ghost a few rows up. I confess the whole thing to Tony, how I’d been faking, but wasn’t anymore, and now felt like I was being punished and was going to get killed or turned into a nut case by the end of the day.”
“And she brought up God,” Tony said. “It actually wasn’t me this time.”
“It’s true,” said Amber. “I told him how I felt like I’d been really unfair to religious people. I mean, with all the weird stuff I’d been going through, how could I judge? And some churchgoers were even nice to me--Altar Boy here came thousands of miles to help me.”
“Because we’re your friends,” said Tony. “Which I told her, and I also said God forgave her, even if she didn’t believe every word of the Bible. You feel better if you just pray once in a while, talk to whoever you think is listening. That’s what I told her.”
“So we went quiet, praying I guess,” said Amber. “It lasted a while. I kind of fell into a trance. I don’t remember if I had my eyes open or not.”
“Me neither,” Tony said. “It’s odd.”
“I forgot where I was,” Amber went on. “The church and the smell of candles and the hunger pains all went away.”
“Same here,” said Tony. “But then I felt this warmth, and this need to look at her hands.”
“He said, ‘Amber, look,’ I looked down, and he took my hands...”
“I saw...” Tony lifted his own hand, spreading it open before his face, and gazed at his pale, clean skin. “A wound, in each of her palms, bleeding.”
“Stigmata?” Shannon asked.
“I touched one,” he said. “Blood came away on my fingers.”
Shannon reached for Amber’s hand. Amber willingly held them both up: completely unmarked.
“I didn’t feel any pain,” Amber said, “or see any blood. But when he touched my hands, this feeling flooded my arms, this, like, electric heat, and then this complete happiness all through me. I looked toward the altar. The old woman’s ghost was gone. And I didn’t hear words, exactly, but I just knew someone was saying to me, ‘You’ll never be afraid again. You’re at peace.’ And I knew it meant I’ll never see ghosts again. I’ll be like everyone else.” She laughed. “And believe me, that is all I want.”
“But did you see anything?” asked Shannon.
“No, but I heard that message, and I knew it came from the altar. Or rather, looking toward the altar was the only way I would hear it--not that I exactly heard anything.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” Tony put in. “But the stigmata, they were as real as…as this zipper on my coat.”
“And when we came in, the blood was suddenly gone?” asked Laurence.
“It was gone a few seconds before,” said Tony. “As soon as I understood I was seeing a miracle, that God was calling me. And then Amber started talking...”
“I started saying, ‘It’s over, it’s over; thank God, it’s over’,” Amber said.
“And I looked at her face for a second, then when I looked back down at her hands, the marks and blood were gone.”
“But how do you--” Laurence started in frustration, then gave up. He looked at his own hands, saw nothing unusual, and thrust them into his coat pockets. “Look, there was a sun break right then. We all noticed it on our way back in.”
“That’s true,” Shannon said. “That could cause the warmth, and if it came through red stained glass, it could look like blood.”
“But I felt the texture,” Tony said. “Slippery.”
“Sweat on your hands,” Laurence insisted.
“The warmth when he touched me was way more than sunlight or sweat,”
Amber said. “More like...standing near a bonfire.”
“Static electricity,” Laurence tried.
“Believe what you want,” said Tony. “You weren’t there, and it’s natural you wouldn’t understand. I know what it meant to me. I know what I want to do.”
“You--” Laurence growled. He stopped, cleared his throat, and said in a more controlled voice, “this was a self-fulfilling prophecy. You two were tired and fasting. It’s common to hallucinate under those conditions. The Native Americans did it all the time; they called it a vision quest. You were expecting to experience something today, so you did experience something. Period.”
“Then why does my mind feel so clear, even after eating?” Amber stuffed another gingersnap into her mouth.
“And mine too?” said Tony, sipping his tea.
“Hell if I know.” Laurence sighed. “Look, I’m giving it my best scientific shot. Whatever caused it, I hope you’re both right. Amber, I hope you’re done with your ghosties. And I hope Tony’s not just...overreacting to the situation.” He infused the last four words with significance.
Tony flushed. “You’d think I’d go off and become a priest, just because--” He shut his mouth and sat back. “Yes, that would be an overreaction. This is genuine.”
Shannon cleared her throat nervously. “Hey, does anyone else want tea? It’s getting cold.”
“Maybe I was hallucinating,” Amber said, oblivious to the romantic turmoil devouring the rest of us. “But I bet it was enough of a shock to make me stop seeing the ghosts, even if it was a shock I somehow gave myself.”
I finally dared to speak again. “Tony,” I said, “are you sure?”
He looked at me soberly. “Yes. I’m...sorry, Eva.” He glanced aside at Amber. For her benefit he had to keep up the appearance of a boy leaving his innocent girlfriend for a life in the clergy.
I doubted he was all that sorry. Like Laurence, I had suspected from the first minute that he may have invented the whole calling just to save face. But as Tony himself admitted, becoming a priest solely out of spite would be going overboard a tad.
“I’m not sure what to think,” I said. “On the one hand, I sort of expected it someday. On the other...the timing does look suspicious.”
“Why should it?” asked Amber. “Because it’s the nineteenth?”
“Well,” Tony said.
“Yeah,” I muttered.
“Here.” Shannon thrust a cup into Laurence’s hand. “It’s good tea. And Amber, here’s yours.”
Amber took it, frowning, then leaned forward to examine the rest of us. “Hey. What’s up with you guys? You’re not just tired. Something else is going on.”
The two young men gazed stoically at the trees.
I flopped one hand around. “Tony and I...kind of broke up last night.”
“Early this morning,” Tony corrected.
“Oh, I didn’t realize it was final.” Laurence sounded chilly as ever.
“Eva?” Shannon desperately handed me a cup. “Tea?”
Amber gasped. “Oh, no, you guys!” Her gaze shot to Tony. “Uh...dude, that really does look suspicious.”
He tipped back his head to glare at the clouds. “It isn’t. It’s unconnected. Jeez.”
Shannon drooped, gazing at the remaining cup in her lap. “I guess it’s not a tea kind of morning.”
“But what happened?” Amber frowned at Laurence. “Did you have something to do with this? Did you sabotage them?”
He only exhaled a breath through his nose, glowering across the park.
“It’s not his fault,” Shannon tried. “If anything, it’s mine.”
“No, Shannon, it isn’t yours.” I laced my fingers together, squeezing them backward until the joints cracked. “See, Laurence and I...”
“I caught them having sex,” Tony informed the sky.
I felt Amber’s jolt through the bench seat.
“What? Eva and Laurence?”
“We were not having sex,” I cut in.
“Still denying it?” said Laurence. “Funny, I would have counted that as sex.”
“Fine,” I said. “Yes. I only meant...”
“Oh, no,” said Shannon in a tiny sigh.
Amber rose from the bench and backed away, staring at us. Her braid fell over her shoulder, strands coming loose. “You? You two?” Her dark eyes squinted at Laurence. “This is why you didn’t want me?”
“Primarily, yes. Sorry.”
Her gaze darted to me. Gingersnap crumbs decorated her coat, giving her the look of a madwoman who feeds pigeons all day. “I thought you didn’t like him!”
“I didn’t! Until lately.”
“You never told me. Why didn’t I know about any of this?”
“For what it’s worth, neither did I,” Tony said dryly.
“Me either.” Shannon sat up straighter, lifting her head in its round fuzzy cap. “But it’s their business, and maybe we should let them work it out.”
“Like hell.” Amber still glared at me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to upset you,” I said. “With this February nineteenth thing going on...”
“What, I was too fragile? That’s total crap, Eva. Now you’re telling me on February nineteenth, like that’s so much nobler.”
“I didn’t want to,” I protested. “I mean, I wanted to wait till tomorrow, at least. But Tony caught us, and...”
“And people catching her is the only way she’ll tell the truth,” Laurence added. “And sometimes not even then.” He smiled helpfully at Amber.
She stared at us, her face distorted with bewilderment and hurt. “You’re freaks. All of you. Shannon’s the only non-freak in front of me here.”
“Why am I a freak?” Tony asked.
She threw him a derisive look. “Dude. Girl dumps you, so you hallucinate a divine mystery and throw yourself at the Vatican?”
“Hey. If I hallucinated, so did you.”
“Maybe. We’ll see.” She grabbed her handbag from the bench and spun away.
I jumped up. “Amber, come on. Don’t go. It’s still the nineteenth. Don’t you want to stay with us in case something bad happens?”
She swirled to glare at me. “It already has, dumb-ass.” She stormed off, the winter wind buffeting her coat.
Chapter Forty-Six: In Pieces
Tony got up. “I’m going with her.”
Shannon rose. “I’ll go, too.”
“You guys don’t have to leave,” I said, feeling I should at least attempt to extend olive branches to these two today.
Tony glanced at Laurence and me. “I’m sorry, but I’d rather not be with either of you right now. I don’t think Amber wants to see you either.”
“And you guys need to talk,” Shannon said.
“Shannon,” I said, “I’m really sorry. I never thought you’d land in the middle of all this.”
“I’ll catch up to her,” Tony told her, and jogged off.
“It’s all right,” Shannon told me, already backing away. “I know you didn’t mean to. Just...” She paused, shoulders sagging in her gray coat. “Please don’t hate each other after today, okay? You two, Amber, everyone. I can’t deal if that happens. I have enough conflict in my life.”
“That’s up to people who won’t talk to me and don’t have much right to lord it over me about keeping secrets.” I shot a glare at Laurence, who still reclined on the bench, ankles crossed.
He looked across the park, squinting calmly in the breeze, as if my words were only the chirping of a robin.
“I’m just going to go.” Shannon took off, following Tony and Amber’s path.
“Tell her I’m sorry!” I yelled after her. Either the traffic swallowed my words or Shannon didn’t care to acknowledge them. She vanished around the corner of the building where Amber had headed a minute earlier.
“So,” I said to Laurence. “I think we better talk.”
“Nuh-uh.” He planted his feet on the concrete pad be
neath the bench and stood up. “Not today.”
“You’re seriously sticking to that rule?”
“Seriously and truly.”
“Even though I just found out you were keeping a huge whopping secret from me?”
“Amber’s ghosts? Please. It was obvious to anyone with a brain that she’d been embellishing all these years.”
“You’re the one making excuses now. You know you should have told me.”
“And what would that have accomplished, except to make you more annoyed with her? Anyway, she asked me not to tell. I’m sure she’s told you things you never told me.”
He kind of had a point there. “Okay, forget Amber for now. Look, Shannon’s right. I hate this fighting. Can we please strike a truce?”
He stretched his arms behind his back. “Know what’s been bugging me?”
“What?”
“I’ve spent all this time in Scotland and have still never seen the Highlands. I intend to remedy that.” He swiveled into the wind and set off down the sidewalk.
I tripped after him like an anxious puppy. “That’s sudden, but, okay. We could get out of town. I can take some time off work, or quit early, and--”
“Oh, you’re not going. Just me.”
“Laurence, don’t be stupid.”
“That’s what I’m trying to avoid.” He was hard to keep up with when he set a brisk pace, and today he put those long legs to cruel advantage. “If I stay around you, I’ll do something stupid. Again. So I’m taking a trip alone.”
The early stages of panic kindled under my skin, prickling like a rash. “How long? A weekend?”
“I haven’t decided. Maybe I’ll just stay away until it’s time to go home.”
“What?” I brought down the squeak in my voice and tried again. “Well, tell me where you’re going and I’ll call you.”
“You are so missing the point. I’m not telling you where I’m going, you’re not coming, you’re not seeing me off at the station, and you’re definitely not calling me once I’m there. I will talk to you about this when I feel like it, and not a day sooner.”
I ducked around an elderly man photographing the castle, and dove back to Laurence’s side. “Then you’ll give me another chance?”
