Uncle Pat sighed, then nodded. “Your mother could, and our Mom and our grandmother. Can’t say beyond that, but those we knew for sure.”
“But why wouldn’t you ever talk about it with me?” Tara cried.
Uncle Pat sighed. “I guess I was hoping if I ignored it, it wouldn’t happen to you.”
“OMG,” Tara cried, and then threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. “At last . . . something about me that finally makes sense. I’m not so different, after all.”
Uncle Pat frowned. “Why, I had no idea you felt like this.”
Mona patted him on the arm, then smiled at Tara. “Men don’t mean to, but they’re usually oblivious.”
Flynn frowned. “Dang, Mom.”
Mona patted him, too. “It’s all right, honey. We love you anyway.”
Tara managed a smile, but took comfort in knowing her Uncle Pat was okay with everything that had gone down. All her life he’d been the one she’d depended on, but today, she’d found another man who’d been dependable, too.
Flynn.
“Thanks, Flynn,” she said softly.
He smiled, and then held out his hand.
Tara looked up at her Uncle. She saw him hesitate, then nod. Tara slipped her hand in Flynn’s and they walked a short distance away toward the lake shore.
Behind them, both detectives were talking to the adults, while the crime scene investigation team was gathering evidence from inside the cabin, as well as Charlie’s old yellow truck.
Somewhere on the far side of Stillwater, Charlie Pratt’s world as he’d known it was coming to an end. He would be in a jail cell next to his father before the night was over, and both would still be behind bars when Shirley Pratt got out of the hospital
It was all about choices, and he and his father had made the wrong ones.
Flynn put his arm around Tara’s shoulders as they stared out across the water.
“Hey, Moon girl.”
“Yeah?” Tara asked.
“I’m really proud of you.”
She sighed. “You are?”
“Yeah.”
Tara leaned against him. “Thanks. That means a lot.”
There was another long stretch of silence as they watched the waves ebbing and flowing at the edge—like someone’s life can get—always in motion without ever really going anywhere.
“Everyone at school is gonna know what I can do,” Tara muttered.
“I’m not gonna tell,” Flynn said.
“But there’s Davis. He’ll tell Bethany.”
Flynn shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe, but you know they are also going to be pretty grateful. I’m thinking if you asked Davis . . . ”
Tara nodded. “Maybe.”
“Even if he tells, don’t’ sweat it,” Flynn said. “Who’ll believe him?”
Tara managed a smile. “Yeah. You’re right. Who would believe him?”
Tara and Uncle Pat went to the hospital the next day, which was Sunday, to check on Bethany and Mrs. Pratt. Davis and his parents, as well as Bethany’s parents, were there at her bedside, and when Davis saw Tara standing at the door, he jumped up from his chair and ran to meet her, then hugged her.
Tara was shocked by his friendliness. Then Davis turned and made the introduction.
“Everyone . . . this is Tara, the girl who saved Bet’s life.”
Bethany’s parents swarmed her, engulfing her in hugs and praise that left Tara breathless.
Then Mr. Fanning put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to Tara.
“I was actually going to your house this afternoon, but you’ve saved me the trip. I’ve never been happier in my life than to be able to give you this. You’ve more than earned this, young lady.”
Tara frowned. “Give me what?” she asked. Then her eyes widened in disbelief as she stared down at a check he’d written in her name, for more than fifty thousand dollars. It was the reward.
“Oh no, sir! I can’t take this.”
“Nonsense,” Mr. Fanning said. “You earned it.”
“But that’s just it. I didn’t really. I just . . . just . . . ”
“Got lucky,” Davis added. “You got lucky, but you did earn it.”
Bethany sat up, then swung her legs off the side of the bed and motioned to Tara. “Hey, Luna . . . come here,” she said.
Tara walked over to the bed, a little nervous as to what Davis must have said.
“Take it . . . please,” Bethany said, and closed Tara’s fingers over the check she was still holding. “And just for the record, I’m so sorry we all treated you so bad before. I don’t care how lunatic you get, there’ll always be a place for you to sit with us at lunch.”
College. All four years had just been paid for. All she had to do was graduate high school with a decent GPA.
Tara looked at Bethany and read what she was thinking. “People can think what they wanna think about what happened to you. You know Charlie didn’t uh… touch you and that’s enough. Your friends won’t care one way or another. They’re going to be happy you’re alive and well.”
Bethany’s eyes filled with tears, but she was smiling.
“You are such a lunatic.”
“Yeah. I know,” Tara said, then turned around, noticed her uncle was standing back, looking a little ill at ease among some of Stillwater’s social elite, and knew that wasn’t right. “I am so forgetting my manners. Uncle Pat, this is Bethany. Bethany, my Uncle Pat.”
Bethany smiled.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Uncle Pat said.
Bethany looked up at Tara, then exhaled slowly. “Yeah . . . I am okay, aren’t I,” she said. “Thanks to Tara.”
“Mr. Carmichael, you have certainly raised an amazing girl,” Johnson Breedlove said.
“Yes, I think so,” Uncle Pat said.
Tara smiled with pride as she watched them including her uncle into the conversation.
What about me? I helped raise you, too.
Tara stifled a laugh. Who else could claim a ghost as a parent? She sighed, and then put the reward check into her pocket and slipped her hand into the crook of her uncle’s arm. As she did, she felt a lighter, less firm pressure on her other arm. Henry—giving her his version of a ghostly hug, too. She sighed.
So . . . considering everything, she might be a little bit amazing, after all.
Epilogue
On Monday Flynn met Tara at the front of the school, then walked with her into the building. He kept smiling at her as if he knew a big secret that she didn’t.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Flynn said, but he kept smiling as they walked up the steps and into the front door.
In the space of time it took for Tara’s eyes to adjust to the change in light, she began to hear people clapping and saying her name.
“Luna. Luna. Luna.”
“What’s going on?” Tara cried.
Hundreds of students were lined up on both sides of the hall, clapping and shouting her name. Flynn looked at the expression on her face and then laughed.
“If you’re all that psychic, you should have seen this coming.”
Tara couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Everyone was grinning at her and waving and shouting her name. She saw Nikki standing beside this tall, skinny kid with dark hair. Suddenly she realized it was Corey Palmer. It was the first time she’d seem him alive and in his own body. When he saw her looking, he gave her a thumbs up.
Then she saw Mac and Penny . . . and Mrs. Farmer and Coach Jones. And . . . even Mrs. Crabtree was smiling at her. This was unreal. She felt like giggling. Then she saw Prissy and Mel coming toward her.
“We’re really sorry,” Prissy said. “Bethany told us it was yo
u who saved her life.”
“Flynn and Davis were there, too,” Tara said.
“We heard,” Mel said. “Anyway . . . this is our way of saying thanks,” she added.
Tara felt like dancing. Maybe being the new kid at school her senior year wasn’t going to be so bad after all. She glanced at Flynn. He was still grinning.
“Walk me to my locker?” she asked.
“I’ll walk anywhere with you, Moon girl,” he said softly, and together, they headed down the hall with everyone watching.
Tara felt like she was floating. Was this what Hollywood stars felt like as they walked the red carpet? Wow! What a great way to start a new week. Uncle Pat was cool with her ‘stuff’ and Bethany was alive. What more could a lunatic girl want?
Maybe . . . the location of DeeDee Broyles body?
That’s right. Emmit! DeeDee! How was she going to convince Detectives Rutherford and Allen that she had another case for them to solve?
She sighed. How swiftly a bubble can burst.
Then she grinned. It was cool.
At last, she had a life.
(Continue reading for more about Sharon Sala)
What’s Next in Tara’s Lunatic Life?
THE LUNATIC DETECTIVE
Excerpt
Worms crawled between the eye sockets and over what had once been the bridge of her nose. The lower jaw had come loose from the joint and was drooping toward the breastplate, as if in eternal shock for the circumstance. The finger bones were curled as if she’d died in the middle of trying to dig her way out.
Tara stood above the newly opened grave, staring down in horror.
“Is that you, DeeDee?”
But DeeDee couldn’t answer. There was the problem with her jaw.
All of a sudden, someone pushed Tara forward and she felt herself falling . . . falling . . . into the open grave . . . on top of what was left of poor DeeDee Broyles.
That was when she screamed.
Tara Luna sat straight up in bed, the sheet clutched beneath her chin as she stared wild-eyed around her bedroom, her heart pounding against her ribcage like a drum. All of a sudden, the loud roar of an engine swept past her window.
VVRRROOOMMM! VVRROOOMMM!!
She flinched, then relaxed when she saw the familiar silhouette of her uncle, Patrick Carmichael. She glanced at the clock, then groaned in disbelief as the roar of a lawn mower passed beneath her bedroom window again. It was just after eight a.m. on a Saturday! Couldn’t he have waited a little longer before starting that thing up?
I think you’d look great as a red-head.
Tara rolled her eyes. Millicent! She’d just had the worst dream ever and was not in the mood for any input on hairstyles from the female ghost with whom she shared her life.
“I am not dying my hair,” she announced, and swung her legs over to the side of the bed and stood up.
I was once a red-head . . . and a blonde . . . and a brunette.
Tara arched an eyebrow, but resisted commenting. She’d always suspected Millicent had been quite a swinger in her day because she was still way too focused on men.
“I’m going to shower,” Tara announced, and headed for the bathroom across the hall. She opened the door just as Henry, the other ghost who shared her world, came floating by. Before she could stop herself, she’d walked through him.
“Eww! Henry! I hate when that happens!” she shrieked, and swiped at her face.
Henry didn’t appear too pleased with her either, and vaporized himself in a huff.
He doesn’t like to be displaced.
“Yeah, well I don’t like to be slapped in the face with frozen spider webs, and that’s what that feels like.”
Interesting. I remember once when I was in France . . .
“OMG, Millicent. Please? I just woke up here.”
A pinkish tinge suddenly flashed across Tara’s line of vision, then she heard a very faint pop before Millicent’s voice disappeared. “Oh great. Now she’s ticked, too.”
Still, finally glad to be alone, Tara closed the bathroom door behind her. Just because Henry and Millicent were no longer alive in the strict sense of the word, didn’t mean she wanted them as company while she showered.
A short while later, she emerged, wide-awake and starving. She dashed across the hall to her room, dressing quickly in a pair of sweats and a new white tee from Stillwater, Oklahoma’s world famous burger joint, Eskimo Joe’s.
As she entered the kitchen, it was obvious from the amount of dirty dishes in the sink that Uncle Pat had already cooked breakfast. She began poking around, hoping he’d left some for her, and hoping it was regular food and not one of his experiments.
Her uncle had a tendency to mix things that didn’t necessarily go good together. It was, he claimed, his way of ‘going green,’ by not wasting perfectly good food. If she could only convince him to quit stirring everything into one big pot to heat it up, she would be happy. She didn’t mind eating left-overs. She just wanted to know what it used to be before she put it in her mouth.
As she passed by the sink, she saw a shot glass sitting inside a cereal bowl and stopped. This wasn’t good. If Uncle Pat had already started drinking this early in the morning, the day was bound to go to hell before dark. Still, after she found a plate of food in the microwave that actually looked good, her mood lightened a little. She could smell sausage and potatoes, which went well together. She just hoped the yellow stuff on the side was scrambled eggs. He’d been known to try and pass off mashed squash on her before, claiming eggs and squash were both yellow and fluffy, so he failed to see her issue. She poked her finger into the food. It had the consistency of eggs. She licked her finger then grinned. Eggs!
“Bingo! Lucked out on this one,” she said, and popped it in the microwave to heat. She poured herself a glass of juice and as soon as the microwave dinged, took her food and sat down to eat.
With the first couple of months of her senior year at a new school behind her, she was beginning to feel like she belonged. She’d gotten off on the wrong foot with one of the cheerleaders, which had resulted in some pretty hateful gossip and hazing. When that had started, Millicent had felt an obligation to retaliate on Tara’s behalf. Flying dishes and ink pens had then shifted the gossip about Tara at Stillwater High to an all-out accusation that Tara Luna was not just a lunatic, but also a witch. She could handle being both a psychic and a medium, but a witch? How lame was that?
As she dug into her breakfast, she couldn’t help thinking about the one-eighty her life had taken after she’d used her psychic powers to figure out who had kidnaped Bethany Fanning, the head cheerleader of Stillwater High School. With the help of her new boyfriend, Flynn, and Bethany’s boyfriend, Davis, they had managed to rescue Bethany just before she became fish food in Boomer Lake. Just thinking about Flynn O’Mara made her shiver. He was one smooth hottie.
All in all, it had been an eventful two months.
She was still eating when she sensed she was no longer alone. Since the sound of the mower was still going strong, it couldn’t be Uncle Pat because he was still outside. She could also sense that whoever was here, wasn’t mortal. She looked up, then over her shoulder.
When she saw the sad little ghost who’d come with the house they were renting, she sighed and pointed to a chair on the opposite side of the table.
“Hey, DeeDee. Have a seat. I had a dream about you last night. I’ve been waiting for you to come back. We need to talk.”
DeeDee drifted past the chair Tara had indicated, choosing instead to hover near the doorway.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Tara said, as she chewed. “Millicent explained your situation to me. I know you used to live in this house. I know you were also murdered here. I also know there was never an investigation into your murder because no one repor
ted you missing . . . which leads me to the question, why not?”
DeeDee didn’t have an answer, which usually meant she didn’t know it. Spirits were often confused after they died. Sometimes they did not understand what had happened to them, or where they were supposed to be. Tara knew that after the traditional ‘passing into the light,’ they could come back and forth if they wished. But she suspected DeeDee had never crossed over. Ever. Which she found really sad.
“I’m really sorry that I don’t have any answers for you, yet. But you already know I’m having problems with your brother, Emmit.”
When DeeDee suddenly went from passive to a dark, angry shadow, Tara flinched. Talk about being in a mood. DeeDee was certainly in one now.
“So, what do you suggest?” Tara asked.
The dark shadow swirled to the ceiling and then down to the floor, like a puppet dancing on a string.
“That is not a helpful answer,” Tara muttered, and scooped another bite into her mouth, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully as she chewed. “Here’s the deal. I’ve already done a lot of legwork on this mystery. I found out you and Emmit once owned this house together, although he totally denies he ever had a sister.”
At that news, the dark shadow bounced from one end of the kitchen to the other, rattling dishes in the cabinets.
“Easy,” Tara cautioned. “No breaking dishes, please. I also found out where he lives now. You know I went to see him, which opened up this huge can of worms. Something I said to him set him off in a big way because now he’s stalking me.”
The dark shadow shifted back to DeeDee’s ghost again, drifting about a foot above the floor like dandelion puffs floating in the wind.
“But you already knew that, too, so don’t play dumb,” Tara muttered. “And, I thank you again for scaring him off before he found me here the other day.” She frowned. “However, I still can’t figure out how he got a key to this house. There’s no way the lock on the front door is still the one from back when you guys owned the house. Your freaky brother either picked the lock, or had some kind of master key. Either way, he scared the you-know-what out of me . . . digging through all our closets and stuff. I don’t even want to think about what he would have done to me if he’d found me hiding in the back of Uncle Pat’s closet. Like I said before, I owe you . . . scaring him off like that. But!” She pointed her fork at DeeDee. “Did you know he’s stalking me outside of the house, too?”
Sharon Sala - [Lunatic Life 01] Page 15
