My dad swirled around, his mouth full of toast. “Totally spaced on that for a minute, kiddo,” he said, swallowing quickly. “But of course I knew it was your birthday. I just forgot for a minute there.”
Lady Azura closed her eyes and let out a long sigh. “My dear, I did not forget your birthday. But as you know, morning is not my best time of day. Forgive an old woman a temporary memory lapse.”
I stared at the floor. I felt bad that I’d been so immature. But my feelings were still hurt from overhearing their thoughts. “It’s okay,” I mumbled. What was wrong with me? I’d been so irritable and anxious the past few weeks. Maybe it was the negative energy Lady Azura kept talking about.
“So the party on Saturday is for you?” asked my dad as he loaded his cup and dish into the dishwasher and glanced at his watch.
“Actually, no. It’s for a kid at school who’s moving away,” I said. My dad knew who Jayden was, of course, because we’d gone to the semiformal together, and he’d met him at our Halloween party last fall, but he probably didn’t remember. I mean, he tried to be involved with my life, but I wasn’t the kind of kid who shared every little detail. Like how Jayden and I were sort-of-kind-of going out.
Lady Azura seemed to rally. She looked up from her tea and smiled at me. “Well, I’m glad you have a party to go to, my dear,” she said. “Perhaps we can celebrate your birthday on a different day.”
“Yeah! That’s a good idea!” said my dad. He looked relieved that I had something to do. Had he made plans on my birthday? Had he asked someone out on a date or something? He definitely had a guilty look on his face. “Maybe the three of us can go out to dinner next weekend.”
I focused back in on my dad’s thoughts, to see what he was really thinking. Had he really forgotten that it was his only child’s birthday? But all I got were scrambled thoughts. Work, car, money, house. His mind seemed to be a whirlwind of incoherent snippets. I tried Lady Azura again. But this time she was unreadable.
I tried not to show how let down I felt. It was just a dumb birthday.
Chapter 6
I slept badly again that night. My dreams were restless. I kept waking up, nagged by worries. An unnamed distress loomed over me. I tossed and turned. Felt powerless. Frightened. I clutched the covers closer and rolled over, trying to get back to sleep.
And then I dreamed about the woman from the boardwalk again.
This dream was as vivid as the other one had been. Not jumbled up like my other dreams.
This time, though, she wasn’t on the boardwalk. She was in our house. Standing next to Lady Azura’s table, handing her something.
I was right there in the room with them. Over near the window. But neither one seemed to know I was there. Maybe they couldn’t see me, because the heavy shades were slightly open, and I was backlit by the sun. It was the weirdest dream. It seemed so crystal clear. As though it were really happening.
“Take it.” The woman practically spat the words.
Lady Azura looked troubled. Unusual for her. She always seemed so confident. It was unnerving to see her like this, even though I knew it was a dream.
“Please keep it,” Lady Azura said to the woman. She made no effort to take the object the woman was holding out to her.
I took a step forward to look at the object more closely. Neither of them seemed to see me. I saw with a start that it was a moldavite crystal. Large and green and swirly, a bigger version of the one Lady Azura had given me.
“I tell you, I don’t need it,” the woman said, thrusting her hand closer toward Lady Azura and giving it a little impatient shake. When Lady Azura did not reach for the crystal, the woman let out an exaggerated sigh of exasperation and dropped it onto the table. The thud made me jump.
I didn’t like this woman.
“I want more power, not less,” the woman snapped. “Do you not understand me?”
Dream or no dream, Lady Azura is not the type of person who reacts well to someone implying she is stupid. She crossed her arms and fixed the woman with her iciest stare. Even though it wasn’t directed at me, it made me quiver.
“I understand you perfectly,” she said.
“Then do you understand the implications? The possibilities? Already I have catapulted up through the ranks at work. No one can stop me. No one can do what I do. Why would I want to change that?”
Lady Azura sighed. “But at what cost, Nina? At what cost?”
The woman’s green eyes blazed. “You’re just jealous. You wish you could do what I do.”
“No, in fact, I do not.”
“You’re nothing more than a charlatan. With my powers, I could run you out of business in a heartbeat.” She laughed unpleasantly. “But not to worry. Carry on with your little game. Give your shoreline tourists a bit of fun. I have set my sights much, much higher.”
“I think you should leave,” said Lady Azura. Her voice was steely.
The woman turned to leave, but paused at the doorway. She turned around. Stared straight at me. I was so startled, I took a step backward. And crashed through the window.
I screamed.
And woke up.
I opened my eyes. It was the middle of the night. I shivered, still freaked out from the dream. But at the same time I felt drugged with sleepiness. I fought the urge to roll over. Instead I leaned over my bed for the little notebook and pen that I kept on the floor. Blindly scribbling, I made a few notes about the dream, but this time I was awake enough to make an effort to write carefully. The woman with white hair. The crystal. Her conversation. Then I dropped the pen onto the pad and rolled over, sinking almost immediately back into sleep.
I soon drifted into another dream.
This one was much less focused. A series of images. Spoken words. Restless feelings and fragmented scenes. My disappointment about my birthday. Jayden leaving. The indifference of my family, my friends. I was in the cafeteria, sitting at a crowded table, but invisible. People talked over my head, ignored what I said, reached across me for stuff. Then I was home, in the kitchen, but my dad and Lady Azura were both talking, talking, talking on their phones. Lady Azura on the house phone; my dad on his cell phone. Neither seemed to notice I was even sitting there. And then I was sitting in a darkened theater. Watching Lily and Miranda, dancing on a brightly lit stage. I sat watching. Watching them and feeling jealous that they were together, that they shared this special bond.
I sat up quickly in bed, wide awake. That dream sequence had been more troubling than the first one. I decided not to write it down. I didn’t want to remember it.
I looked at the clock. A little past three in the morning. The house was still. The moon outside was full, and my room was lit with silver moonbeams.
I had the distinct feeling that I wasn’t alone in my room.
My heart thumped. I looked around. The curtain fluttered ever so slightly, even though the window was closed. But they were leaky windows. No doubt a breeze had stirred it. Or was there a spirit in here? That couldn’t be. The house spirits, the ones I had come to know and get used to, almost never came into my room.
Gradually I became aware of the cloud.
There was a cloud inside my room. I was sure of it this time.
It seemed to be hovering over my bed. Over me. My throat went dry. My heart raced. All my muscle fibers felt tight. Stressed.
I couldn’t help but be reminded of one of those dark rain clouds I used to see in the cartoons, the ones that floated directly above the characters as they drove in a car or whatever, and didn’t affect anyone else around them.
I rubbed my eyes. The cloud stayed.
I peered into it. I felt that I had no power to look away. I could see through it, the hazy outline of my ceiling, the patterned, curlicue molding, the familiar crack that zigzagged outward from the corner of the ceiling. I was overcome by an awful wave of fear. Anxiety. It
wasn’t normal. This cloud shouldn’t be here. I felt like I was suffocating, like I desperately needed to claw my way out of this stifling, heavy darkness.
Instinctively, my hand flew to my collarbone. I clutched at the stones that were hanging from my necklace. My fingers searched for the crystal that Lady Azura had just given to me. I put my hand over it and held it tightly. It felt warm and solid in my hand. And it was definitely vibrating. I closed my eyes against the dark cloud. What had she told me to do?
Her words made their way into my muddled mind. “Positive energy. Think positive thoughts.”
I began to chant to myself. “I am protected. I am loved. I am strong enough to overcome this.” I thought about the people I loved. Who loved me.
And then I thought about my mother. Conjured up my picture of her, the one of her sitting on the rock and laughing. Help me, Mom, I wished silently.
I opened my eyes. The cloud was still there, but another cloud, a different cloud, had formed alongside it. The new cloud was silvery. Light. Swirling with sparkly stuff. Was it a reflection of the moonbeams? It reminded me of the way a sunbeam dances with dust motes on a lazy summer afternoon. It brought on a calming feeling. I felt my furrowed forehead slacken, as though the worries were streaming away from me.
The light, silvery cloud moved into the dark cloud, as though the two forces were in opposition. As I watched, the dark cloud moved away from me. It swirled and churned like smoke, and then seemed to thicken and blacken, tumbling around and around. I watched as it swirled and roiled around the room and then seemed to get sucked out of the room, underneath the door.
I wasn’t scared anymore. I was mad. I swung my legs out of bed and set out in pursuit. I felt this overwhelming urge to follow it, to keep it from harming my family.
I opened my door. I could see it tumbling down the hall. The cloud stopped in front of my father’s closed bedroom door.
Then, from behind me, the silver cloud zoomed out of my room and swirled past me. Was it chasing the dark cloud? It seemed to be. The dark cloud began to dissipate, like smoke from a smoke ring. It glided away and then drifted apart until it vanished.
I had no idea what I had just seen. But the terrible thoughts I’d dreamed about were gone. I no longer felt worried. Or anxious.
I got back into bed and fell asleep.
A deep, dreamless sleep.
The next morning I woke up feeling much better, even though I heard the rain before I opened my eyes.
It was pouring outside. One of those gray, cold, drenching spring rains. But somehow my spirits weren’t dampened. I felt lighter and happier than I’d felt in days.
I picked up the notebook next to my bed. This time I could more or less read what I’d scrawled in my dream journal: Woman with white hair. Crystal. Lady A. mad. Power.
The dream was still vivid in my memory.
Maybe it was because I had finally gotten a decent night’s sleep, but I realized that the dark feeling of anxiety I had been carrying around with me lately seemed to be gone. I felt like me again. I decided I would talk to Lily. Today. About my birthday. Maybe we could do something together tomorrow, just the two of us. I felt sure Lily hadn’t intentionally meant to hurt my feelings about my birthday.
Chapter 7
Lily was late that morning. I wondered if she’d overslept because of the rain. I heard on the television once that people are more likely to oversleep on rainy days. That made sense to me. I always had a hard time getting up when it was raining.
I stood by her front walkway, my raincoat hood pulled low down over my eyes and cinched tightly, stomping my feet and aiming my umbrella into the wind in an effort to keep the rain away. That didn’t work. It was one of those rains that seem to come from all directions, making the use of an umbrella semi-pointless.
I was just wondering if today would be the day I’d get my very first tardy slip, when Lily finally burst out of her front door and splashed down the path toward me.
“Sorrrrrrreeeeee!” she trilled, struggling to open her umbrella as she ran. “Yucky weather! I could not decide which rain boots to wear!”
The idea that anyone might have more than one pair of rain boots to choose from kind of amazed me. But that was Lily. And sure enough, her pink polka-dotted rain boots looked way better than my boring brown ones. She managed to look great, even in the pouring rain.
I took a flying leap over a puddle, my heavy backpack bouncing on my back. “Yep. But luckily, it’s supposed to clear up by tomorrow.” Maybe now was a good time to bring it up. “Hey, speaking of tomorrow, do you, um, feel like hanging out? It doesn’t have to be an actual birthday thing or anything like that, but—”
“You cannot believe the drama in my house this morning,” said Lily, who seemed not to have heard me. “My brother lost his baseball glove—or at least he thought he did, until he realized he left it out on the lawn overnight and it got rained on, which evidently is the end of the world, judging by the way he flipped out this morning.”
I waited for her to take a breath and tried again.
“So, tomorrow? I was thinking—”
“And then Cammie decided to try to flush several Super Balls down the toilet. Apparently, she saw someone do this in a cartoon. But they kept bobbing back up, and it wasn’t until the third try that . . .”
I tuned out what she was saying. Without really meaning to, I focused in on her thoughts. Was she intentionally trying to change the subject? Her words tumbled out in a steady stream, like coins from a slot machine, making it hard to read her thoughts. I’d never realized it, but when a person is speaking, her thought stream kind of pauses—almost like you can’t talk and think at the same time. Anyway, it wasn’t easy to hear her thoughts. They came to me in brief snippets during the infrequent pauses in her conversation. But I heard enough.
Tomorrow? Not tomorrow! . . . shopping date with Miranda! Jayden’s present! . . . think, think, think . . . need a reason . . . my recital! Aha! Good. Have to practice for my recital . . .
I put up the shield. Managed to tune her out completely now—both what she was saying and what she was thinking. I was stunned. Lily and Miranda were going shopping together? And they were going to chip in to buy Jayden a present? Together? Wasn’t he my sort-of-kind-of boyfriend? Why were they buying him something? Wasn’t it enough that they were throwing him a party? Without asking me for any help?
I tuned back in to her words.
“—so yeah, then my mom was on the phone with the plumber, and it was one of those ‘eventful’ mornings.” She crooked her fingers into air quotes.
She was obviously trying to change the subject. To keep it away from doing something together tomorrow. I didn’t know how to feel. Confused? Hurt? Mad? Having a best friend might be all new to me, but I was certain this wasn’t normal behavior. Why was Lily treating me like this?
I was pretty quiet for the rest of the walk to school. I swallowed away the huge lump in the back of my throat. My eyes burned, but I didn’t cry. Between my hood and my soggy hair, my face was covered, so Lily didn’t notice.
I spent the first half of the day going over my conversation with Lily in my mind. Could I have misread something? Or had I done something wrong without realizing it?
At lunch I was still upset. Lily and Miranda were chatting away as I slid into my seat with my tray. I stared down at my taco. I wasn’t all that hungry anyway, and what was left of my appetite rapidly vanished as I observed the greasy orange sauce pooling around the taco, and realized it was not even remotely warm. I shoved my tray away a few inches, then opened my milk carton and took a long gulp. The light, normal feeling I’d woken up with was long gone.
“So I guess the Sunday thing didn’t work out so well,” said Lily, turning to me suddenly. “You know. For your birthday. Are you okay with it?”
“Me? Sure. I mean, whatever,” I mumbled.
I was aware that the others at the table had turned toward us to listen. I suddenly felt bold. Maybe Lily wouldn’t be able to hang out tomorrow, but possibly someone else would.
“Well, hey, how about tomorrow?” I asked. “Anyone feel like hanging out, maybe going to Scoops or whatever?”
I saw Miranda and Lily exchange a quick look. Marlee suddenly looked very interested in reading the ingredients on her granola bar wrapper. Tamara shoved a heaping forkful of taco into her mouth. Avery coughed.
I started to hear a chorus of their thoughts inside my head, but I forced myself to block them. I didn’t want to know.
After an awkward silence, Lily finally spoke. “Sar, I’m so sorry, but we have dinner plans with Aunt Angela and her family tomorrow, and we have to leave early.”
Lily was lying. I knew it without having to read her thoughts.
“Okay,” I said. I felt my lower lip quivering, but I made it stop. “So I guess you’re going to your aunt’s after you practice for your dance recital, then?”
The stunned look on Lily’s face told me I’d gone too far. She looked hurt. Then surprised. And then completely baffled.
With a pang, I realized my mistake. She’d never said out loud that she had to practice for her recital. She’d only thought it. And I just let her know that I’d heard her thinking it this morning.
Luckily, Tamara changed the subject. “I dropped my Spanish workbook in a puddle this morning,” she said. “Anyone have one I can borrow for Spanish class next period?”
I was relieved that the focus had shifted away from my conversation with Lily. I felt completely awful.
My gaze was distracted by a movement across the crowded cafeteria.
It was the spirit of the gym teacher. The one who always seemed to show up at the times I least felt like dealing with him.
Giving Up the Ghost Page 4
