The Haunting of Sunshine Girl, Book 1

by Paige McKenzie

  “You okay?” he says, looking up from his collage. “You don’t look so good.”

  I must blush crimson. I mean, okay, I know I don’t look good—I barely slept last night, and after my mom left, I was still avoiding the bathroom. I brushed my teeth in the kitchen sink and skipped a shower altogether, then ran to school through a fog of spitting, drizzling rain. My hair is probably sticking out like a cartoon of someone getting electrocuted.

  Well, I guess that’s appropriate. I mean, I’ve certainly had a shock.

  Still, I hate for Nolan to see me like this. I mean, I know I have much, much, much more important things to worry about, but he’s a boy and I’m a girl, and . . .

  “Sunshine?” he prompts. “You okay?”

  “Sorry,” I say, nodding frantically. “Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Just. I didn’t sleep much last night. It happens, right? Blah!” I giggle nervously. Why do I feel the need to ramble on when Nolan just asked a simple question? I did that the day we met, when he asked whether I was okay after I bumped into the table.

  “Blah?” Nolan echoes.

  “Yeah, I just say that sometimes. When I can’t think of something else to say.”

  I expect Nolan to laugh at me, but instead he says, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You know, from Mary Poppins. A word to say when you can’t think of anything else to say?”

  “Exactly!” I grin. I spent most of preschool carrying a Mary Poppins DVD like I thought it was a clutch bag. “Wow, I can’t believe I didn’t think to say that instead of blah!”

  “Blame it on the bad night’s sleep,” Nolan offers.

  “Good idea.”

  A voice behind me says, “Oh, I couldn’t sleep either. I just had the worst nightmares.” I jump and turn around. Ms. Wilde is standing over me. Her skirt is so long that it looks almost like she’s floating. The dark circles under her eyes are even more pronounced than usual, her skin a shade paler, as blue as my mom’s looked last night. And her eyes are bloodshot, as though she’s been crying. Actually, as though she’s still crying, just a little bit.

  Wow, I can hardly believe it, but I think Ms. Wilde is in even worse shape than I am.

  “What is it that kept you awake, Sunshine?” she asks.

  “Bad dreams?” Nolan tries, but I shake my head. I’m not about to tell them what really happened, but I’m not going to lie either. I’ve done that enough for one day.

  “It’s . . . complicated,” I reply. Ms. Wilde leans down over me so I have to crane my neck to look up at her face. She squints.

  “You have very . . . unusual eyes.”

  “I know,” I say, dropping my gaze.

  “I don’t know how I didn’t notice that before.” Her usually melodic voice is an octave lower than usual, like maybe she’s getting over a cold.

  I turn around on my stool, pretending to be concentrating on my collage, but the truth is, I just want Ms. Wilde to leave me alone. I’m too tired to make small talk about my weirdo eyes. After what seems like forever, I hear the swish of her skirt as she walks away.

  “She is the weirdest teacher ever,” Nolan whispers, and I nod in agreement.

  During lunch, instead of eating, I sprint to the library. Maybe I can find something—online, in a book, somewhere—to help me explain all of this to my mother, to help me convince her. I sit in front of a computer and Google haunted houses and demonic possession and poltergeists and ghouls, but 90 percent of the results are ads and reviews of horror flicks. I plant my elbows on the table and rest my head in my hands, closing my tired eyes. This is getting me nowhere.

  “Got a thing for ghosts?”

  For the second time today a voice from behind me makes me jump. Well, I’m sorry to be such a spaz. If people knew what was happening to me, they’d hardly blame me for it.

  This time, when I turn around, it’s not a teacher standing over me but Nolan, his lips curled into a grin as though he’s just heard the funniest joke in the history of funny jokes.

  Great. Someone else who thinks ghosts are every bit as absurd as Mom and Ashley do.

  I shake my head. “Not exactly. I mean, I never used to. I mean . . .” I trail off. “It’s complicated,” I sigh.

  “Of course it’s complicated.” Nolan pulls out a chair to sit beside me. I feel just a tiny bit warmer with him near, and I resist the urge to lean into him, like I’m in an old cabin and he’s the fireplace.

  “Of course it is?”

  He grins. “Sure. Only a fool would expect the paranormal world to be simple.”

  I can’t tell if he’s making fun of me or not, so I keep my mouth shut.

  “I mean, my grandfather—”

  Oh my gosh. What an idiot. Me, I mean, not him. Here I am, talking about ghosts to someone whose beloved grandfather passed away a few months ago. He must hate me. “Nolan, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “Didn’t mean what?”

  “To, I don’t know. Make light of . . . I don’t know. You know. Death.” Butterflies flutter in my stomach when I say the word death. I must have said that word a thousand times before: you know, Jeez, Mom, you scared me to death (when she snuck up on me from behind back home in Austin), Golly, Ashley, I’m bored to death (every time she made me go to the mall with her). I don’t think I ever fully appreciated what the word meant before. Now, it seems to me that it’s the kind of word that should give you a jolt of adrenaline when you say it out loud.

  “What?” Nolan asks, narrowing his eyes in confusion. I don’t answer, just shake my head, and somehow Nolan seems to understand. “Oh, I didn’t mean anything like that,” he adds quickly. “I meant that my grandfather used to tell me these amazing ghost stories. Tales that he’d been told by his father, who’d been told them by his father, and so on as far back as he knew. Stories of spirits and ghouls passed down from generation to generation, from one side of the country to the next.” He smiles wistfully, and suddenly I can picture him as a little kid, that same sort of wide-eyed wonder on his face, sitting in front of an old stone hearth in his grandfather’s house, listening to story after story.

  I wonder what Mom’s parents were like. Maybe I’d have been close with them. Maybe I’d have complained about being forced to visit them every summer like Ashley did about her grandparents. Either way, it’s only now, here with Nolan, that I understand that I missed out on something big, not having had grandparents.

  “Sounds nice,” I say to Nolan.

  “Nice?” he echoes, and bursts out laughing. “Are you kidding? It was terrifying!” Soon I’m laughing too, so loud that the librarian comes over to shush us. Quietly Nolan continues. “Most kids are raised on fairy tales, but not me. My bedtime stories had more blood and guts and gore than they did fair maidens and gallant princes.”

  “Guess you had your share of nightmares.”

  He shrugs. “Not really. I mean, like I said, I was raised on those stories. I know it sounds strange, but I always found them kind of comforting.”

  “Plus you knew they weren’t real,” I add. Just like I knew the fairy tales my mom told me weren’t real.

  “No way.” Nolan shakes his head. “I believed every one of them. My grandfather believed them too, no matter how much the rest of the family made fun of him. He’d been a believer his whole life. My mom used to refer to him as ‘that crazy old man.’” He sets his mouth in a straight line as he recalls his mother’s words, like even now, months after his grandfather’s passing, he can’t stand knowing that people talked about him that way. It’s clear that Nolan never thought his grandfather was anything but perfectly sane.

  Wait a minute . . . does this mean Nolan believes in ghosts? What would he say if I told him what’s going on in my house, the stories that do nothing but bore Ashley and irritate my mother?

  “I’m actually writing an extra-credit report for my history class about ghosts of the Northwest. Thought if I could back up some of his stories, get an A out of it,
it might . . . I don’t know—”

  “Keep your mom from calling him crazy?”

  Nolan nods. “Pretty much. I was going to check out some of the places where my grandfather swore he saw specters this weekend. You interested?”

  I sit up a little straighter. Am I interested? He means do I want to come with him, right? If Ashley were here, I’d have to step on her foot to keep her from squealing. She’d say that a ghost hunt—though, in her opinion, totally fake—could be the perfect first date. So many opportunities to grab a boy’s hand—Oh, no, did you hear that too?—and warm embraces—I’m so scared that I’m shivering.

  “Earth to Sunshine, Earth to Sunshine,” Nolan singsongs. I blink and look up at him. “Searching for sketchy old haunted houses not exactly your cup of tea?”

  “If only you knew,” I mutter.

  “If only I knew what?” Nolan says, his eyes widening just a little.

  I hesitate. Should I really tell this boy about what’s going on? I mean, it’s great that he believes in ghosts and everything, but that doesn’t mean he’ll believe me. Maybe, like Mom, he’ll take one look at our house and say that the sounds I’m hearing are probably just branches hitting the windows, pine needles falling on the roof. Maybe he’ll think I’m just crazy, and then he’ll tell everyone at school that I’m crazy, and he won’t even sit next to me in visual arts anymore and I’ll have to go back to being freezing absolutely everywhere.

  But . . . what if he does believe me? What if he doesn’t explain away the sounds and smells and actually remembers what happened the morning after the scariest night of my life? Then I would have an ally. Someone to talk to about how terrifying all of this is. And maybe someone to help me figure out how to prove it.

  So, slowly, I tell Nolan about our house. I tell him about the creepiness that’s settled over everything since we moved in, about the laughter and the toys, about the film I sent off to Austin to be developed, about the chill in the air (I leave out the fact that the chill diminishes when he’s close). Finally I tell him about what happened last night and the even scarier thing that happened this morning, when my mother woke up oblivious once more.

  “Wow,” Nolan whistles. “Sounds like you’ve got a good old-fashioned haunting on your hands.”

  “I don’t know what I have on my hands.”

  The bell rings, signaling that lunch period is over and it’s time to go to class. I turn and close the window on the computer. All my ghost Googling disappears. I pick up my bag from the floor and start to walk to class, but Nolan doesn’t budge.

  “What are you doing?” I ask him.

  “Waiting,” he answers.

  “Waiting for what?”

  “Waiting for you to invite me over after school today so I can help you try to figure out what’s going on in your house. I’d invite myself, but I don’t want to be rude.”

  I grin. In my entire life I’ve never been so relieved to issue an invitation (and yes, I know, issue an invitation is total Jane Austen–speak).

  When Ashley finally texts me back—everything okay?—I write back: Sorry. False alarm. There’s no point in telling her what happened last night, not when she won’t believe me. Not when there’s someone so much closer to home who actually does believe me.

  Although I am tempted to ask for her advice about having a boy over for the very first time.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Photography

  At home later I hesitate before opening the door to my room. Nolan isn’t coming over until five o’clock, and I’m tempted to wait till he gets here before checking on the state of my checkerboard. But I force myself to turn the knob and step inside.

  The checkers are exactly where they were when I left this morning. Maybe I invited Nolan over for nothing after all. I drop my backpack in the center of the room with a sigh and spin around on my heel, closing the door behind me.

  Nolan knocks on our front door at precisely five o’clock. I’d suggested we walk home from school together, but he said he had some work he wanted to get done first. Turns out, the work was research. About our house. He walks into the door shaking his head.

  “I couldn’t find anything unusual about this house or your neighborhood. No reported hauntings, no mysterious disappearances, and no little girls murdered in the bathroom.”

  I shudder at the mere mention of a little girl murdered in the bathroom as I lead him into the kitchen. He’s barely stepped foot inside the house, and he’s already as skeptical as Mom and Ashley.

  Great.

  “I thought all the scary stuff happened upstairs?” he asks, though he takes a seat at the kitchen table.

  Flustered, I nod. I mean, it’s not like my mother ever handed me a list of rules about being alone with a boy in the house or whether he’s allowed in my room. Still, I can’t help thinking about what Ashley said a couple of months ago: What would be more mortifying: the dead bird or the pink walls?

  It doesn’t matter. Or anyway, it shouldn’t matter. Nolan isn’t here for me. He’s here for the ghost—and of course, now that I finally have another believer in the house, I’m not even sure she’s still here. There’s no laughter, no creaking footsteps, no tears.

  I shudder. Did the ghost actually drown last night? I mean, I know ghosts are already dead, but maybe they can . . . I don’t know, die a second death. A horrible death, I think, remembering the sounds of her struggle.

  I swallow a sigh. Maybe I should just admit I’m going crazy, like Ashley would say. Maybe I should let Mom send me to a shrink in her hospital every day after school. At least then I’d have a chance of seeing her before dark.

  “Ummm,” I say finally, leaning against the island counter in the center of the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink or something? I could make coffee.”

  “No thanks,” Nolan says, standing up.

  Great, he’s going to leave. He’s been here for less than five minutes. But instead, he leans against the counter across from me and smiles.

  “Don’t worry, Sunshine. Just because I came up empty-handed doesn’t mean I don’t believe you.”

  Now I do sigh—a sigh of relief, feeling that familiar Nolan-centric warmth wash over me. “I’m sorry I don’t have anything to show you. The ghost isn’t exactly at my beck and call. After last night, I don’t even know . . . I don’t even know if she’s here anymore.”

  “I’m sure she has a busy schedule all her own. You know, places to go, people to haunt.” Nolan grins, so I do too.

  The doorbell rings, making me jump. I laugh at how easily startled I am. “I’ll be right back,” I say, walking from the kitchen to the front door. It’s the postman, delivering an envelope that was too big to fit in our mailbox. I look at the return address as I take it from him, muttering a barely audible thank you: Max’s Photo Shop, in Austin.

  I reach into my pocket and text Ashley: Photos arrived—you’re the best!!! Then I spin around—almost tripping in the process. Maybe I do have something to show Nolan after all!

  I rip open the envelope and run back into the kitchen. “Look!” I shout, holding the photos up above me like I’ve just won something.

  “Are those the pictures you took?”

  I nod, and Nolan reaches out to take them from me. “Let’s have a look.” Standing side by side, we spread the black-and-white photos out on the kitchen counter.

  “Something isn’t right.” I bite my lip as I lean over to get a closer look. I can’t put my finger on it, but something about the photos looks . . . off, somehow.

  “Maybe the developers screwed up the film,” Nolan suggests, but I shake my head.

  “No. I sent the film to Max’s for a reason. They’re the best. And you can tell—nothing is out of focus, none of the film is smudged.” Nolan nods, leaning over the counter until our heads are nearly touching. Quickly—trying and no doubt failing to be subtle—I lower my own head closer to the photos, careful to make sure that my face doesn’t brush against his.

  “Look,”
I say, pointing to one of the photos of my bedroom. “Do you see it?”

  “What?” Nolan says. I can feel his breath on the back of my neck. Being this close to him still doesn’t feel right.

  Okay, I know I’m thinking about ghosts right now, but there’s enough room in my brain to also worry that I’m never going to get a first kiss if I can’t handle just standing this close to a boy. A boy I actually like, who’s being so nice to me—who believes me. But Nolan must sense the way I stiffen, because he slides a few inches down the counter, away from me.

  I shake my head. Maybe it’s impossible for anything to feel right when you’re literally looking at pictures of ghosts.

  That’d be a lot easier to believe if I hadn’t felt exactly this way when I was brushing glitter off his jacket in our visual arts classroom.

  “That shadow,” I point to a gray shape in the center of a photo I took of board games scattered across the floor of my room. I’m kind of relieved that the photos are black and white so Nolan can’t see that my room is actually bright pink. “There’s no object above it, nothing to actually cast a shadow. And yet . . .”

  “There it is,” Nolan finishes for me.

  “There it is,” I echo, studying the shadow. From this angle it just kind of looks like a blob. It could be anything.

  Nolan says exactly what I’m thinking: “I can’t tell what it is.” He sounds as frustrated as I feel, shuffling carefully through the pictures. “Maybe you caught it from a different angle in one of the other photos. So we can see what shape it is.”

  I dig through the photos; everything is all out of sequence. The pictures of the toys in my room are next to pictures of my room when we first arrived, when I hadn’t even unpacked my stuffed animals yet. I guess the folks at Max’s didn’t bother keeping the pictures in order. It’s not the kind of thing that was ever important to me before.

  “There,” I gasp, pointing. Nolan lifts the photo off the counter and holds it up in front of us, at eye level. Or his eye level anyway.