Giving Up the Ghost

by Phoebe Rivers

  “I did you a favor!” Lady Azura called after the woman, although of course the woman couldn’t possibly have heard. “That blouse was hideous!” She tipped her chin up and shrugged and then spoke, as if to herself. “She didn’t like what I had to tell her. Sometimes the truth hurts.” Suddenly she sniffed. Looked my way. She seemed to notice me for the first time, standing with my back to the doors of the sitting room.

  “The tea leaves spilled down her blouse. I did nothing. They simply leaped from the cup.” She furrowed her brow. “What is that dreadful smell? Why on earth are you standing there? And what is smeared all over your face?”

  “Ashes,” I said. “There seems to be a problem with the chimney in the sitting room.”

  I opened the doors and gestured toward the room. A small puff of soot unfurled from the room as I did so.

  She stared into the room. Her brown eyes, heavily ringed with black eyeliner and thick black eyelashes, widened with surprise and dismay.

  “What a state the room is in! We must clean it up, Sara. Why don’t you fetch the broom and vacuum? I’ll go change.”

  Ten minutes later, she reappeared. My eyes widened at the sight of her wearing velvet sweatpants and a T-shirt advertising an old Broadway show I’d never heard of. Her hair was tucked up into a pink turban. I suppressed a smile. Lady Azura in leisure wear. I wished for a moment that Lily was here to see this.

  For the next hour and a half, we dusted, swept, and vacuumed. We pounded a couple of small throw rugs on the clothesline outside.

  Coughing, opening windows, setting up fans to try to get rid of the worst of the sooty smell, we didn’t say much.

  After we finally finished, the room looked a lot better. It seemed to smell better too, but by that time our noses were so used to it they were probably immune. Luckily, both of the couches had washable slipcovers, which meant we could have them cleaned to get rid of the smell and stuff. I balled them up and stuffed them into large yard bags so my dad could take them to the dry cleaner.

  “I believe the next step is for both of us to bathe,” said Lady Azura, staring at me with a glimmer of amusement in her eyes. She was right. Much of the soot seemed to have transferred from the room to ourselves. It was funny to see her in a state of disarray, when she was always so beautifully dressed and groomed.

  “Go. Have a luxurious bath or shower, my dear,” commanded Lady Azura. “I will do the same. Then we’ll talk.”

  In the shower, I scrubbed my body with a washcloth. I had to wash my hair three times before the water that swirled down the drain ran clear. And I thought the smell of soot would never leave my nose. But an hour later, Lady Azura and I sat down to a quiet dinner of spinach salad together. Knowing that a salad would not be enough for me, Lady Azura thoughtfully placed a platter of warm cornbread in front of me.

  “Your father is working late,” she told me. “Perhaps now might be a good time for us to compare notes. About the house. The negative energy that we both feel.” She locked eyes with me.

  Did she think I knew something she didn’t? I paused in the middle of buttering a big slab of cornbread. “It does seem like weird stuff has been happening,” I ventured finally, when it was clear she was going to make me speak first. “Like my dad and those pictures crashing down. The chair on the porch. The teacup that spilled by itself on that lady. And now the chimney thing in the front room.” I shrugged.

  “Yes. I believe that most of those events are outside of the ordinary.”

  “And also we’re both having weird dreams.”

  She looked at me sharply. “Are you having weird dreams as well, Sara?”

  “Well, sort of. This morning when I woke up I thought it was still dark out, but then I thought there was this dark cloud over my bed. Maybe I dreamed it, I don’t know.”

  Dark cloud! Is she mistaken?

  “No, I don’t think so,” I said.

  I realized too late that she hadn’t asked me that question out loud. I’d just heard what she was thinking.

  I heard her breathe in sharply.

  I avoided her gaze and concentrated on cutting my cornbread into neat little pieces.

  Lady Azura stood up slowly from the table. I jumped up to clear away the dinner stuff.

  “Leave that,” she said. “Come. To my room. Now.”

  I knew it was pointless to argue. Luckily, it was a light homework night. I followed her out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into her fortune-telling room.

  She sat down at her round table and beckoned me to sit across from her.

  I sat down warily, wondering if I was in trouble. I hadn’t mentioned to her about my new ability to read people’s minds. What if she got mad at me for not saying anything? The reason I hadn’t said anything was that the power had sort of come on gradually. The first few times I’d overheard other people’s thoughts, I hadn’t even been sure that’s what was happening.

  She rested her elbows on the table and clasped her hands. She seemed unsure of where to begin. Finally she leaned toward me. “Has anything changed for you in the past few weeks?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I suddenly felt apprehensive about talking to her about this. What if she got angry at me for reading her thoughts? I tried to focus on her thoughts, to see if she was angry with me, but I drew a blank. She probably knew how to put up a blockade or something.

  “Um, well, yeah,” I stammered out. “I have definitely had some weird stuff happen. Strange dreams, like I already mentioned.”

  She nodded. “You should keep a notepad near your bed. Write down any strange dreams you have, so you remember the details, and then we can discuss them.”

  “Okay,” I said. “And there’s been some other strange stuff too.” I told her about my missing homework. About Lily being so casual about my birthday. About Jayden moving away.

  Lady Azura’s face relaxed. She smiled sympathetically. Nodded. And then all of a sudden I could hear her thoughts.

  Just the usual adolescent silliness, thank goodness.

  I jumped as though I’d been stung.

  She thought my problems were silly. Not important. First Lily, now my great-grandmother. Twice in one day, my feelings had been hurt by people I cared most about.

  Lady Azura hadn’t noticed my response, because she had already stood up and gone over to the sideboard. She opened her drawer and began rummaging around. She turned toward me, holding out a small crystal. It was green and sort of twirly and bubbly inside. I stared at it. It had a beautiful pattern, like deep lake water that swirls around a boat’s oars.

  “This is a moldavite crystal,” she said, placing the green stone into my outstretched hand. “It will protect you from the negative energy in the house. It is a stone of intense frequency and high vibration.”

  I blinked at her. I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “It is a powerful, protective stone. Negative entities find it difficult to latch on to your aura when you wear it. I have one as well.”

  It was a really pretty stone. I attached it to the cord around my neck. I felt its weight against my collarbone. It felt warm, and—this was weird—like it was ever so slightly vibrating against my skin. Faint but detectable.

  Lady Azura looked around the room distractedly, as though she’d forgotten I was still there.

  “Well, so, thanks,” I said. A little stiffly maybe. I was still a little hurt about the “adolescent silliness” comment. Actually, not comment—thought. Which, when I reflected on it, wasn’t very fair. Didn’t I often have thoughts that weren’t very nice? She hadn’t said it to me.

  I wanted to know more about this “negative energy” she kept talking about. I kept thinking there was more to the story than Lady Azura was letting on. It bothered me that she was keeping it from me. As though trying to protect me. Did she think I couldn’t deal with it?

  I wa
s finishing the washing up in the kitchen when I finally heard my father’s truck in the driveway. I glanced at the clock. Nearly eight thirty. Lady Azura had retired to her room. I could hear her watching her favorite miniseries, some British drama about a bunch of people living in a huge manor house and getting all dressed up for dinner every night.

  I was just opening the refrigerator to take out the pitcher of iced tea for my dad when I heard the crash.

  So hard the house shook.

  With my heart in my throat and a sick feeling in my stomach, I raced to the door to see what had happened.

  Chapter 5

  My father had driven his truck into the garage.

  The garage was really an old carriage house. Lady Azura told me it had been built long before cars were invented. But it was big enough to hold two cars. Darkness had set in by now, but by some miracle, the headlights hadn’t gone out. I could see debris and falling plaster still raining down onto the top of his truck. I could also see that the airbag had inflated, and that he was moving inside, shimmying out of the driver’s-side door.

  I sprinted to the garage just as my dad emerged, looking shaken but unhurt.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, running over to give him a hug.

  He hugged me back and nodded. “I’m fine, kiddo. But I have no idea how that just happened,” he said, brushing white powder off first one arm, then the other. Then out of his hair. “The accelerator malfunctioned. I was pulling in, ever so slowly, and then the gas pedal seemed to depress to the floor all by itself.”

  I nodded, hugely relieved that he was okay, but full of new anxiety. What was happening to this house? Was some sort of bad spirit causing these things to happen?

  Lady Azura’s car didn’t seem like it had been damaged. She kept a tarp over it because she so rarely used it. But on the side where my dad parked his truck, I could see cracks all up and down the back wall.

  “I’ll have a look tomorrow, when it’s light out,” he said, wearily leading me into the house. “Looks like there’s going to be some front-end damage. And the garage will need some serious repairs. There goes my weekend.” He was muttering now, half to himself.

  “Gracious me, Mike, what on earth happened out there?” asked Lady Azura as she hurried into the kitchen.

  “Little mishap with the accelerator,” he said. “I’m fine, but the truck will need to be towed to Vern’s tomorrow.”

  Lady Azura and I exchanged a look. Her expression said, Another little mishap?

  “Hoping I can borrow the ocean liner for the day,” he said, missing our silent exchange.

  “Of course, of course,” murmured Lady Azura.

  Underneath that tarp, Lady Azura kept a huge, powder-blue convertible from the fifties that still ran. It had wide tail fins jutting up in the back and pearly whitewall tires. I’d only seen her drive it once since we’d gotten here, and that was to visit a friend for tea who lived two blocks away. Watching her turn onto the main road did sort of remind me of the way an ocean liner makes a turn—slowly, grandly, and with a very wide arc. My dad told me the car was in near-perfect condition.

  My father set down his briefcase and sniffed the air suspiciously. “What happened here? Has there been another fire?”

  “Oh, nothing to be concerned about,” said Lady Azura casually. “Just a bit of back-draft from the chimney. I am sure the chimney just needs to be relined and cleaned. And who knows what sort of birds are nesting up there. Sara and I did a bit of vacuuming, and it’s all taken care of now.” She glanced at me, and I read her look: Let’s not make a big deal of this, her expression told me.

  My dad eyed her suspiciously. His face had a weird, ghostly look to it, because it had a fine layer of white powder on it—from the airbag going off, I knew. But I could read his expression, too. He looked like he didn’t believe a word she’d said. I didn’t want to hear his thoughts. I tried to put up the bubble, but I guess I was too tired. It dropped the second his thoughts hit it, and they came streaming into my mind.

  First the fire upstairs. Now this. The place is a firetrap. We’ve got to find somewhere else to live. Maybe I can convince her to sell this place. . . .

  I knew he was worried, after the fire we’d had a few weeks ago in the upstairs pink bedroom. But I couldn’t believe he would really make us move. This was our home. The first place I had ever been really happy in. What would I do if he really decided we had to leave?

  My worried state grew so bad my breathing became shallow. My skin went dry. My heart thumped. Was I having an anxiety attack or something?

  “I’m going upstairs to shower,” my dad said, and trudged up the steps.

  “I guess I’ll head up and do my homework,” I said to Lady Azura in a quivery voice.

  She looked at me strangely. One of those searching, sharp looks that made me feel like she could see straight through me.

  “You’ve had a long day, ” she said finally. “And you bear greater burdens than most children your age. Get some rest. Try to think positive thoughts before you fall asleep, Sara. That, combined with the crystal I gave you, will hopefully grant you a good night’s rest without bad dreams.” With that she gave me a gentle squeeze on the shoulder and then headed to her room. I watched her retreating back, my anxiety soothed somewhat for the moment, and then turned and headed up to my own room.

  Up in my room I tried to relax. I did try to think positive thoughts, but I was too preoccupied. So I tried to study my English vocab for the quiz I had the next day. But the words just swam in front of my eyes. Finally I gave up. I put down my note cards and crawled into bed.

  Either the crystal was faulty, which I doubted, or the house was just too full of bad energy, because my sleep was plagued with bad dreams. I kept waking up with my heart pounding but couldn’t remember what I’d dreamed about. Lady Azura had told me to record my dreams with a pen and pad next to my bed. I tried to scribble a few things on the pad before falling back asleep. When the alarm went off the next morning, I felt like I had barely slept a wink. In a daze I looked at the pad where I had jotted down notes about my dreams, and it looked like I’d written in Chinese. I couldn’t read a thing I’d scrawled in the darkness.

  I stumbled blearily through my morning routine. Showering, dressing, brushing my teeth, looking longingly at the rumpled covers on my bed, inviting me to crawl back underneath and snooze just one more minute. But I resisted. I grabbed my backpack off the floor and headed downstairs.

  I felt exhausted as I walked into the kitchen. And this time I was not surprised to find Lady Azura sitting at the breakfast table. She looked as though she’d been up for a while, and that she’d had the same sort of bad-dream-filled night I had had. But at least this morning she was fully dressed in a silky, swirly blouse and shimmery skirt, and fully made-up with heavily lined eyes, greenish-shadowed eyelids, bright-pink lipstick.

  My dad was just setting her teacup and saucer in front of her. She nodded slightly, looking distracted, far away in her own thoughts.

  “Morning,” I mumbled to both of them, moving slowly to the refrigerator for the milk. “More bad dreams last night?”

  “Yes,” she said. “This is getting quite tiresome.”

  I nodded. “Me too.” I set down the milk and rubbed my face with the palms of my hands, trying to get the circulation moving. Like my great-grandmother, I’m not much of a morning person.

  “Well, I can outdo the both of you,” my dad said grimly. He stood at the counter, buttering a thick slice of toast for himself. “I didn’t bother with bad dreams. I just stayed awake half the night, fretting.”

  “About what?” I asked cautiously.

  I heard his thoughts.

  Car. Work. House. Money.

  “Car. Work. House. Money. Whether I won the lottery, even though I didn’t actually buy a lottery ticket,” he said, grinning at me. “The usual grown-up stuff.�
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  At least his thoughts and his words were consistent. More than I could say for some of my friends from school. And I was relieved to see his grin. Maybe he wasn’t that worried if he still had a sense of humor.

  “I’ve called Vern Randazzo,” said my dad. “He’ll be by for the truck midmorning sometime.”

  Vern was the town’s only mechanic, but my dad said he was reasonable and honest. No surprise there. Vern was yet another of Lily’s relatives. I think a great-uncle on her dad’s side, but I wasn’t positive.

  I’d been wondering what we were going to do about my birthday. It was three days away, and neither of them had said a word about it, at least recently. I wondered if they even remembered. I told myself to get over it. The self-pity thing was annoying even to myself.

  “Oh, by the way,” I said casually, pouring milk over my cereal. “Is it okay if I go to a party Saturday night? At Scoops?”

  I waited for one of them to ask if it was a birthday party. For me. But all my dad said was, “Uh, sure. Sounds good.”

  I looked over at Lady Azura. She was glowering down at her tea, as though waiting for it to explain to her why she was up at such an early hour.

  I tuned in to their thoughts. I heard my dad’s first.

  Thank goodness the most important thing Sara has to think about is an upcoming party.

  Then Lady Azura’s.

  Ah, youth. To be able to distract oneself so easily with the thoughts of a party.

  I blocked them both. This time it came easily. Why couldn’t I figure out how to do it consistently?

  Irritation boiled up inside me. Did they think I was shallow? That my only thoughts were about parties? That I didn’t feel some of the worry and stress that our family was dealing with?

  Maybe it was lack of sleep. Or worry about this bad new direction my powers seemed to be taking. Whatever it was, my anger flared up. I decided to come right out with it.

  “So. In case you forgot, which you seem to have done, I thought I would remind you both that Saturday is my birthday.” I fought back angry tears.