Teenage Psychic on Campus

by Pamela Woods-Jackson

  My jaw dropped. “Ghosts?” I peered into my uncle’s semi-solid face to see if he was joking, and when I knew he wasn’t, I shook my head. “Can’t be. I didn’t see any ghosts. Today or last summer.”

  Uncle Omar stood up straight, hands on his hips. “You’re a psychic medium, Caryn. Meaning you see and talk to spirits, those who have crossed over to the Other Side. You can’t see or communicate with earthbounds. You know, the ones stuck here on Earth.”

  I gasped and took a few steps back, my hand with the phone in it dropping to my side. “That’s not true!” It couldn’t be! I’ve been seeing spirits all my life, and making predictions since I was in kindergarten.

  “Sorry, kiddo,” Uncle Omar said. “I thought you knew. Ghosts aren’t your thing.”

  Now that I thought about it, the only spirits I’d ever seen were the crossed-over kind. I felt like a fraud, like I’d been lying to people and my paying clients for years, just now finding out part of the spirit world was off-limits to me. I stamped my foot like a toddler throwing a tantrum. A couple of students stepped around me on the sidewalk so I hurriedly put the phone back to my ear. “What the—”

  “Language, Niece,” my uncle warned.

  I took a deep breath and thought through what I’d just learned about both Gary and myself. “Thanks for the news flash,” I grumbled.

  “If that’s all, I’ll be off.” And just like that, Uncle Omar vanished.

  My hand was shaking as I stuffed my phone back in my jeans pocket. It was pretty unnerving to find out something you’ve always taken for granted isn’t entirely true. So now I knew I wasn’t a ghost whisperer. Maybe I owed Gary an apology.

  ****

  Gary rushed into the campus bookstore’s back room. The store sold textbooks, offered a small selection of novels and nonfiction books, stocked school supplies, and even offered Hamilton Liberal Arts-embossed clothing and souvenirs. It also housed a popular coffee shop, which was always packed with students. Today was no different. Gary clocked in and grabbed his nametag off the employee bulletin board. He had lots of work to do, but instead of getting started, he logged on to the computer that not only stored the online inventory but also linked into the campus network.

  “C minus.” Gary cringed as he looked at his posted grade from the Hamlet speech. “Dammit.”

  “You’ve got a customer, Gary.” Ellis Garrett, the student bookstore manager, tilted her head in the direction of a girl standing next to the cash register, tapping her foot impatiently. Ellis had run this store for eons—okay, since the nineties—and knew almost all the students by name, and also remembered some of their parents who had attended as well. She was sort of like a den mother to her employees, pulling them into a hug if they needed it, or scolding them if they needed that. Gary was too tall for her short, round frame to get ahold of easily, but that rarely stopped her.

  “I’m on it.” He logged out of his student account and headed to the register bay.

  Just then Sean and Annabeth strolled into the bookstore hand in hand, and stopped by the counter where Gary was opening the cash drawer and cracking open a roll of quarters.

  “Hey, dude, how’d your speech go?” Sean asked him.

  He dumped the quarters into the cash drawer. “It sucked. I sucked. And that was my midterm grade.” Gary glanced up from the register and thought he recognized the girl waiting to make a purchase. He couldn’t come up with a name, but he knew he’d seen her around the dorm. She was gorgeous and very tall. “Aren’t you…?”

  “In a hurry,” she said.

  Gary would have liked to get to know her, but obviously this wasn’t the time. He rang up her blue books and ran her credit card. “Have a nice day,” Gary said as he handed her the receipt.

  “Whatever.” She shoved the receipt inside her bag and stormed off.

  “Rude, Erica!” Annabeth called after her.

  “You know her?” Gary asked, his eyes following the girl.

  Annabeth nodded. “Erica Stone. She lives on the same floor as Caryn and me.”

  Sean waved his hand in front of Gary’s face. “How’d that happen, man? Your speech, I mean. Last night you were spot-on. Go up on your lines?”

  Gary’s shoulders slumped. “I was the victim of a haunting.”

  “Ooo, do tell,” Annabeth said with a giggle.

  Gary knew all about Annabeth’s love of ghost stalkers and mediums, including her roommate Caryn, who not only talked to spirits but could predict the future. Now that was creepy. He scouted out the bookstore one more time, hoping Erica hadn’t left yet.

  “What sort of ghost did you see?” Annabeth asked, leaning her elbows on the counter to get the scoop.

  “You know this campus is a hotbed of paranormal activity, Annabeth,” Gary said. “Isn’t that why you enrolled here? To hobnob with the undead?”

  Annabeth grinned at him and waved away his sarcasm. “I enrolled because of the J-school. So who was he? Or she? Details!”

  Gary related his encounter with the nineteenth century dead lady as Annabeth hung on his every word. “Oh, and I bumped into your friend Caryn,” he added. “Literally. And she thinks I’m nuts.”

  Annabeth shrugged. “She’s had her share of people thinking she’s weird. I can talk to her if you like.”

  Gary frowned. “What for? She’s not my type.”

  Annabeth followed Gary’s gaze and spotted Erica Stone chatting with some upper classmen in the coffee shop. “She’s out of your league, Gary. And Caryn—”

  Gary cut her off. “—wants nothing to do with me. Not that I care.” Then Gary noticed Ellis giving him a disapproving frown from the other side of the bookstore as she pointed over his head to the history section. “I gotta get back to work.”

  “We’re going for coffee,” Sean said, jerking his thumb in that direction, “but I just wanted to know if you’d checked your email today.” He let a sly grin slip out.

  “I just looked at my online grades…”

  “No, man, check your personal email. Might be something there.”

  Gary shook his head and hurried over to the history textbook section to help a bewildered-looking fellow freshman.

  ****

  Exhausted after a long day, which included a bad performance on his midterm and demanding customers, including Erica Stone, Gary tossed his dorm room keys on his desk and collapsed onto his unmade bed. Just as he was about to drift off to sleep, he remembered Sean’s cryptic comment about some email he needed to check. He yawned, opened his laptop and pulled up his inbox. One from his mom, several from fellow drama students wanting study or scene partners, a couple from professors with notices to check updated assignments, and then one that really caught his eye. Ghost-Stalkers Club was the subject line. “What now?” Gary groaned as he opened it.

  Hey Gary,

  Our member and your roommate Sean Paxton suggested we contact you. We have been invited to search for ghosts at the Pelson family’s nineteenth-century farmhouse in Hamilton County. The building was being renovated as a bed and breakfast before the workers were scared off by supposed paranormal activity. We need a medium and hope you will agree to join us, at least for this one night. Please respond to this email ASAP.

  Sincerely,

  Barry Lansing, President, Ghost Stalkers Club, Hamilton Liberal Arts College

  “Sean Paxton! I’m gonna kill you!” Gary shouted to the computer.

  Chapter 3

  Gary was so angry at Sean that if he’d actually spoken to him after opening that email from Barry Lansing, he might have ripped him a new one. So to avoid an argument, Gary ducked out of their dorm room and took refuge in the library. When it closed and he had to leave, he slung his overstuffed backpack on his shoulder and started walking aimlessly, ending up off campus at a twenty-four hour burger joint. He just wanted hot coffee, but when the waitress scowled at him, he ordered a burger that turned out to be a greasy slab of meat on a stale bun. With no place to go, he pretended to eat while watching peop
le come and go, mostly students pulling all-nighters. Some of them appeared as lost as he felt. When he couldn’t stand the smell of rancid cooking oil and soggy French fries anymore, he paid the tab with a small tip for the waitress, endured another scowl from her, and left. Then, to kill more time, he just walked around the empty streets of downtown Belford, peering into closed store windows.

  Gary had forgotten how chilly late October nights could be. He pulled his jean jacket tighter around him and buttoned it up, angry at himself for just taking off without a thought as to where he was going or how he was dressed. He reached down to pull up his tube socks, then remembered he’d been unable to find any clean ones and had just stepped barefoot into his worn tennis shoes. Shivering, he stopped under a street lamp to check the time on his phone. 2:00 a.m. He hoped Sean was asleep by now and he could sneak back in without starting a conversation, or more likely an argument, but even if Sean was still up, it was too cold to stay out here any longer. He put his hands in his pockets and retraced his steps through downtown Belford and back toward school.

  Once on campus, Gary inserted his dorm key card in the slot to buzz open the outer door and rushed into the warm lobby, blowing on his cold, red hands and stomping his feet to get some feeling back. He rode up the elevator, quietly opened the door and peeked in. Sean was sound asleep, so Gary tiptoed into the room, undressed in the bathroom without turning on the light, and then slipped under the covers.

  Unfortunately he slept not a wink, to quote the Bard, still agonizing about how to avoid a big blow-up with his roommate over this Ghost Stalkers hunt. He must have dozed off, though, because when his alarm blasted on at 7:00 a.m. it jolted him awake. He groaned and pulled his blanket over his head.

  “Dude. Get up.” Sean shut off Gary’s alarm and gave Gary’s backside a kick as he yanked the covers back. “Staying out all night doesn’t excuse you from classes, you know.”

  Gary knew. Walking the streets of Belford in the cold had left him feeling tired, achy, and yes, still angry at his roommate. He stumbled into the bathroom and got into the shower, letting the warm water roll over him. At least he’d put his time in the library last night to good use, because his English Lit midterm was this morning and he was ready. He needed to get a decent grade to offset the bad score he’d gotten on his Oral Interp presentation. Midterms factored into the grading equation that would determine his final semester grade and in turn, whether he kept or lost his scholarship money.

  Since Brenda had insisted he apply here, Gary had put in his application for federal student loans and been approved, but then he’d never heard from HLAC. Despite glowing recommendations from his high school drama teacher, Gary assumed his mediocre SAT scores had disqualified him. So he forgot about Hamilton Liberal Arts and applied to other state schools. But then out of the blue he got a phone call from the HLAC admissions office.

  “Mr. Riddell? We have some exciting news for you. Could you stop by our offices this week?”

  Being called ‘Mr. Riddell’ was a weird feeling for an eighteen-year-old kid. Brenda got all worked up about this mysterious news and urged him to go hear them out, despite his misgivings. Gary didn’t really know what could be so exciting about signing away the next twenty years of his life to pay off college loans, but to make her happy he went.

  “Gary Riddell?” The admissions officer smiled at him as she shuffled through a stack of papers on her desk. “Ah yes, here it is.” She shoved a document under his nose, handed him a pen and pointed to a blank line. “You’re eighteen, right? Sign here.”

  Gary recoiled. “What am I signing? I filled out all my FAFSA forms online.”

  “Oh you won’t be needing loans,” she said, again pointing to the line requiring his signature. “This is a full-ride scholarship.”

  Gary’s jaw had dropped. “What? How?”

  The woman had smiled indulgently. “This is from a private anonymous benefactor, and the scholarship covers four years of tuition, books, room and board. The only stipulation is that you maintain a B average and complete all four years here. Transfer out and the money doesn’t follow.”

  Gary’s hand was shaking when he signed his name where she indicated, and then he rushed home to tell his mom about his good fortune. Brenda hugged him, popped open a bottle of sparkling water like it was vintage champagne, and toasted to the anonymous benefactor.

  “I sorta feel like Pip in Great Expectations,” Gary said. “Why me, anyway?”

  Brenda shrugged and took a sip of her water. “Maybe he—or she—saw you in a play and wanted to encourage your talent.”

  Gary thought about that, and it made about as much sense as anything else he’d come up with. “I’ll still have to work part time, though, for spending money.”

  “As long as you keep your grades up,” Brenda warned.

  “I started working when I was fourteen, Mom, bagging groceries. I’ll be fine working part time during college.”

  Gary might be pissed at his roommate, but Sean was right. He couldn’t risk losing the scholarship and disappointing Brenda. He still had to keep up his grades, and going off half-cocked like he did last night couldn’t happen again. He finished his shower, got dressed, and headed to class.

  ****

  I got interested in journalism after I was interviewed by a young reporter from The Indianapolis Star back when I was in high school. She wrote an article about me being a teen psychic, a topic I wasn’t too keen to have publicized, but she handled it so well that it put me at ease. Her example inspired me to want to learn to write news stories, too, so junior year I joined the Rosslyn High School newspaper staff as a reporter. I kept in touch with the reporter, Serena, and she even let me shadow her for a couple of weeks that summer. Senior year I was named co-editor of the school paper. I guess I did okay, because at the senior awards banquet before graduation last spring, I was awarded some scholarship money from the Retired News Writers Guild to study journalism. I was thrilled, Mom was ecstatic, and all my dads were proud of me. I deliberately chose Hamilton Liberal Arts College because it was such a small school and I don’t do well in crowds. I tend to psychically pick up too many random emotions from total strangers. At least here I wasn’t bombarded with them as much as I would be at a school with thousands of students.

  Annabeth and I were the only freshmen on the staff of The Hamilton Campus Herald. But in my application I mentioned my high school summer internship, which must have impressed someone because they brought me on board. And by “they” I mean our faculty advisor, Mr. Delwood. He was as dedicated to our small publication as if it were a big state university newspaper.

  When I got here mid-morning the office was quiet. Staffers who weren’t in class were probably out covering their assigned stories. Being in here alone helped me focus on my work, without distractions like ringing phones or psychic hits.

  Del usually assigned me breaking news and the fine arts scene. Janet Wilcox covered fashion and dorm gossip, Alex Bonham focused on sports and occasionally photography, and Sydney Marshall was part story editor, part news reporter. Annabeth was our main photojournalist. She had a head start on me in journalism, being on staff all four years at Willowby Prep’s WP Gazette, where she had tons of fabulous feature pics and front page photos. One shot of a spectacular catch by a running back on their football team got thousands of hits on social media. As a result, Annabeth had her pick of colleges, including some Ivy League schools, but she chose Hamilton Liberal Arts. I’d like to think it was because of me, but I know it was really because of her boyfriend Sean.

  The Herald offices were housed in the basement of the administration building in a large windowless room, furnished with a few desks and computers. There was also a tiny space that was once a storage closet, where Del managed to squeeze in a desk and used it as his office. We may be a small staff and work in a miniscule space, but we take pride in putting out a quality daily newspaper.

  “Hey, Caryn, you here? Anyone here?” Annabeth called out, her voic
e echoing through the empty office.

  I didn’t even glance up from my computer. “Yeah, I’m here.”

  Annabeth dumped her book bag on the floor by the door and went to check the assignment board on the back wall, a large whiteboard where everyone—editors, staff, even our faculty advisor—either left notes or checked for weekly assignments.

  “What’s your assignment?” I asked her as I continued typing away.

  “I’m supposed to be Sydney’s photographer at that art display at the Student Union.” Annabeth went to the cabinet where the cameras were stored, jiggled the handle and found it locked. “I don’t suppose you know where Del is with the key?”

  I kept my eyes on the screen, my fingers flying across the keyboard. “Yeah. Still in bed.”

  “You sure?”

  I gave her a duh look, letting her know how I knew.

  “Dang. I’ve got some free time right now and I’d like to get started.” She tapped her foot impatiently, stared at the whiteboard, and then suddenly burst into a fit of giggles.

  I glanced up from my computer. “What’s so funny?”

  “I hear you ran into Gary Riddell. Literally!”

  That reminder ruined my concentration. “Ha ha.” I stretched out my fingers and rubbed my neck. “He’s weird, Annabeth.”

  She was still guffawing at her own joke, but she fanned her face and took a few deep breaths to get control of herself. “Oh, come on, Caryn. He’s an artiste, you know? And they’re always a little spacey, especially if they’re trying to learn lines.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “I already knew he was a theatre major. After all, we did see him do Shakespeare.”

  Annabeth tapped her cheek with a manicured nail. “Okay, right, but I’m dying to know what happened when you saw him on campus.”

  I threw up my hands in disgust. “He was rude! He acted like he’d never met me before. He called me Carolyn, if you can imagine.”

  Annabeth let out a last tiny giggle followed by a snort and a cough. She went to her book bag and pulled out a bottle of water. “He got distracted by a ghost. Maybe you could—”