Lily's Ghosts

by Laura Ruby

  Empty.

  “There’s nothing up here!” said Vaz. Lily thought he sounded disappointed.

  “Nope,” she agreed. And there wasn’t. Not a single stick of furniture, not a box or a book. And certainly no enraged spirits ready to jump them or set them on fire.

  “He could still be here,” said Vaz.

  “Who?” asked Lily, though she knew who. Her heart was still hammering in her chest.

  “Remember the breathing in the kitchen? We didn’t think there was anyone in the room then either.”

  They stood in the center of the room, backs to each other. Lily wasn’t sure if she should be scared or angry or confused or what. She was beyond feeling much of anything.

  “I don’t hear any breathing,” Vaz said.

  “Me neither.”

  Vaz cleared his throat. “So if there’s nobody here, who closed the door?”

  “The wind?”

  “What wind?”

  “Maybe the door has those hinges on it that makes it slam shut,” Lily said, knowing it was dumb as she said it.

  “And open and shut and open and shut?” said Vaz. The two of them waited, absorbing the words.

  “Maybe we should try the door,” Lily suggested. She jiggled the knob. It stuck fast, the way it had when she had first tried to open it all those weeks ago.

  “We’re locked in,” she said.

  “Guess so,” Vaz said. He walked over and pressed his ear to the door. Then he dropped to his knees and tried to look under the crack at the bottom.

  “See anything?” said Lily.

  “No.”

  “Hear anything?”

  “No.” Vaz got to his feet.

  “Do you still think we’re having an adventure?”

  “Sure, don’t you?” He grinned. “You didn’t happen to bring any pizza with you, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Cake? Cookies? Popsicles?”

  “Sorry.”

  He went to the window and looked out. “Well, there’s one less evildoer to worry about. Bailey’s wandering around in his backyard. And he doesn’t have a gun, you’ll be happy to know. He has a badminton racket.”

  “A badminton racket. Well, maybe it has a death-ray attachment.”

  “Right,” said Vaz. “You know, I bet he was the one who made that phone call a few weeks ago. I bet he was the one who called me Odysseus. What do you think he wants? And what was all that stuff about Ms. Reedy? ‘She sent you?’”

  Lily shrugged. “I have no idea. War of the librarians?” She sat down and leaned up against the wall, and rubbed her legs with her hands. “She was acting kind of weird, though, don’t you think?”

  “Ms. Reedy’s always weird,” said Vaz.

  “Yeah, but she kept hovering around us, you know, like she wanted to see what we were doing.”

  “Either that, or she was afraid we’d blow up the microfilm reader.”

  “True,” said Lily. “Well, you might think this is an adventure, but I’m kind of sick of it all.”

  “Yeah,” said Vaz. He looked at his watch. “My mom’s going to kill me if I don’t show up sometime this week.”

  “My mom should be home soon,” Lily said. “She’ll let us out.”

  Vaz sat down next to Lily. Lily picked at her fingernails nervously, and Vaz played with the drawstring on the hood of his sweatshirt.

  “At least we found out who the ghost is,” said Vaz.

  “But we still don’t know what he wants.”

  “He probably wants what every ghost wants,” Vaz replied.

  “What’s that?”

  “Peace. Isn’t that why ghosts haunt people?”

  “I don’t know why ghosts haunt people,” said Lily.

  Vaz pulled both ends of the drawstring until they were exactly the same length. “I have to say I was expecting a show when we got up here. At least a bonfire or a mysterious message written in blood on the wall. Something.”

  “Maybe he’s not here,” said Lily.

  “This is where he died,” Vaz said.

  Lily thought about that. “Maybe ghosts don’t always stay where they die. Maybe they wander around. Maybe they go to the movies.”

  “The movies?”

  “Well, how do we know what ghosts do? Did you ever ask your father?”

  Vaz’s frowned. “I told you, it’s not like that. He can’t hear me. He doesn’t give me advice or anything. We don’t chat about politics or the movies. He’s dead, Lily.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you mad,” Lily said. She chewed on her lip. “I think…forget it.”

  He straightened his legs. “What?”

  “I think I’m jealous of you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s going to sound horrible.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  Lily took a deep breath. “I’m jealous that your father still talks to you. I mean, I know he’s dead, and I’m sorry for you, but at least he still tries to contact you. My dad left us when I was five and never came back. He’s alive, but he might as well be dead.” When Vaz was silent, Lily said, “See? I knew it was a horrible thing to say.”

  “No, I think I know what you mean.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry about it.”

  She swallowed hard. She couldn’t remember the last time she had said something so terrible but so true. It hurt, but it felt good, too. The way it does when you pull a sliver of glass from your skin.

  Her backside started to fall asleep, so she shifted, glanced down at the floor. From the opposite wall towards the middle of the room, the floorboards had a fresh, untouched look, only getting darker and more warped underneath her. She knew then that the opposite side of the floor had been destroyed and replaced, while some of the original flooring had been preserved on the side where she sat. Instinctively, she ran her hands along the floor. Her fingernail caught on a groove in the wood.

  “Look,” she said. “There is something up here after all!”

  The two of them crouched. A faint heart was scratched into the surface of the wood right beneath the window.

  “I can’t make it out,” said Vaz.

  “M,” said Lily, running her fingers over the lettering. “M. W. plus A. B. Max. But who is A.B.?”

  “I don’t know,” said Vaz.

  “Max loved her,” said Lily. Max couldn’t be that bad if he loved someone, could he?

  She traced the heart with her fingertip a few times before she realized Vaz was staring at her. She glanced up at him, the blood flooding her face. He was so good looking he was almost pretty. If it weren’t for the big, bumpy nose, he would be.

  He leaned forward and her stomach flipped over when she realized he was about to kiss her. And then he did, his lips soft and plush as the skin of a peach.

  He pulled back, staring again. “Even with the pink clothes and the twigs in your hair, you’re so pretty.”

  She couldn’t help it; she touched her fingers to her mouth. “I was thinking the same thing about you.”

  He looked confused. “That’s a weird thing to say to a guy.”

  “But I mean it.”

  “Sure. Whatever. Shut up.”

  “But—”

  “Hey, it’s been a long day.” He leaned forward and kissed her again. Lily felt something inside her, achy and new, open up like a bud.

  Then the door flew open and her mother, magnificent in purple and orange, towered over them. “Just what in the name of Picasso is going on up here?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  For three days Lily had to endure her mother’s abrupt transformation from fun-loving free spirit to judgmental, overprotective parent: the reproachful glares, tight white lips, endless head shaking, and what-kind-of-child-have-I-raised glances up at the sky.

  “What in the world were you thinking, Lily? What happened to that responsible person I left in charge of the house? Do you really think it was okay to spend your days making o
ut with your boyfriend? Did you think I wouldn’t find out? I was thirteen once, too, you know.”

  Lily’s face burned, but she did not look up from Oliver Twist. Now Lily was forced to go to the Something Fishy gift shop every day to do her schoolwork under her mother’s baleful eye. Her mother would not allow her to stay in the house by herself, would not allow Vaz to come over unless they were “supervised.” Lily couldn’t remember the last time her mother had supervised her, and considering how odd and unconventional her mother’s behavior normally was, Lily didn’t see why her mother should start doing it now.

  Her mother sat at the glass counter, removing pairs of earrings from plastic packets, arranging the pairs on blue velvet display pads. “I feel guilty about uprooting you again. But that doesn’t mean you can do anything you want.”

  Lily turned the page in her book, the letters meaningless squiggles. She was so angry and embarrassed that she had read the same ten pages three times and could barely remember what had happened in them. “I don’t think I can do anything I want,” she said. “That wasn’t what I was doing.”

  “I don’t want to think about what you were doing.”

  She could still feel Vaz’s kisses on her lips and it made everything go all fuzzy and bright, as if she had looked at the sun too long. “Mom, just a few weeks ago you were talking about what a hot taco Vaz was, and now you’re upset? I don’t get it.”

  “A few weeks ago I thought I could trust you to behave responsibly. Now I’m not so sure. Where’s my mature, grown-up daughter?”

  “I’m right here.”

  “You don’t even know that kid.”

  “I do, too.”

  Lily’s mother poked a gold earring through the velvet. “What do you know? You don’t know anything.”

  Lily thought of the Computer Geek. Her own father. “You should talk,” Lily muttered.

  Her mother stopped poking. “What? What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I am an adult, Lily. You can’t compare your life to mine.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.” Lily’s mother finished the earring display and opened the door of the glass cabinet. “You’re mature in a lot of ways, but you’re not all grown up yet, no matter what you’ve been through. What we’ve been through.” She put the velvet card in the case and slid the door shut. “I talked to the school. You start next week. As soon as the store opens.”

  “But Mom!”

  “I’m sorry. I thought I could handle the homeschooling. I thought you could handle it, but we obviously can’t. So we’re going be regular people and do the regular thing and send you off to school.” Her mother gathered up the pile of tiny plastic bags.

  Lily shut her book and dropped it to the floor. There was no point in reading it now. “I found out about Uncle Max.”

  “Found out what?”

  “How he died. That’s what me and Vaz were doing. Reading old newspapers. Researching his death.”

  “Researching each other is more like it.” Lily’s mother threw the bags in the garbage can.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Max died years ago. Before I was born. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “He’s still there, Mom. The noises, the phone calls, the doll in my bed. I found jam in my shoes. There’s something weird going on. I think maybe the house is—”

  Arden put up a palm. “Stop. Stop it right now.”

  “Mom, would you just listen?”

  “No, I’ve had it.” Her mother’s eyes shone with tears. “You don’t seem to get it. We have to live in that house. Making up a bunch of scary stories about it isn’t going to help anything. We don’t have anywhere else to go, do you understand me?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “We have no where else to go.” For a moment, her expression softened. “Forget about it, Lily. Please? I’m stuck. You’re stuck. This is what we’ve got. This is all we’ve got.” She straightened, wiped her eyes. “So if my dead, delinquent uncle Max is playing with dolls and making phone calls to China, there’s not a heck of a lot we can do about it.” She turned and stalked from the room, patchwork skirt streaming out behind her.

  Lily sat in her chair, still and stunned. She had only kissed a guy once. Okay, twice, if you wanted to get technical. Still. What was her mother so angry about? She was the one who should be angry! Her mother knew how much it hurt her to make a friend or two only to have to leave them. And no matter how many times her mother said that they were stuck, that this was it, Lily knew they’d leave. They always did.

  She got up and stood in front of the big window. The sky was gray and flat as paper, the row of storefronts looking like cutouts against it. Her mother didn’t believe that the house was haunted, and Lily still didn’t know why Uncle Max was haunting it. What if Uncle Max wanted to do more than just scare them?

  Across the street, in the window of the Good Fortunes Shoppe, a fuzzy head appeared. The dandelion woman. The woman who had spied on her mother. Something darted across Lily’s brain, a memory, what was it? Something that the woman had said to her mother, something odd.

  Suddenly, it burned neon across her vision. The woman had run out of her store yelling something about a boy on fire.

  A boy on fire.

  Max.

  Lily read the list on the door of the shop, zooming in on MEDIUM SERVICES AVAILABLE BY APPOINTMENT. Her mother had said mediums talk to ghosts. The woman had seen Uncle Max! And if she could see Uncle Max, she could probably talk to him. But that, Lily thought, was sure to cost money, a lot of money. Where would she get a lot of money?

  Lily looked around the gift shop. Maybe she could swipe one of her mother’s unset jewels when she wasn’t looking — an amethyst or even a ruby. But if her mother caught her…well, Lily didn’t want to think about that. Besides she’d feel awful stealing from her mother, no matter how strange and unfair and stupid she was acting.

  She tugged at her collar and her finger slid over the chain around her neck. Would it be enough? She was sure it would be. She reached around her neck and unclasped the chain. She had to use it; there was no other choice. Lily squeezed the necklace in her palm, then slipped it into the pocket of her jeans.

  “Mom?”

  “What?”

  “I’m hungry. Why don’t I go across the street and pick us up some sandwiches for lunch?”

  A pause. “You don’t have any plans to meet anyone, do you?”

  “Mom, it’s a school day. Even if I wanted to meet someone, I couldn’t.” Lily walked to the back of the store and peeked her head into the stockroom, where her mother scribbled something in a logbook. “Come on, Mom. I’ll just be a little while. I’m starving.”

  Her mother opened up her drawstring bag and pulled out a rumpled ten-dollar bill. “Just sandwiches, okay? We can drink water from the cooler. And no wandering off.”

  “Okay.” Lily reached out for the money but her mother grabbed her hand instead.

  “I want the best for you. I want you to be happy. You know that, don’t you?”

  The pendant dug into Lily’s hipbone. “I know.”

  Madame Durriken’s Fortune

  Madame Durriken had tried reading the tarot, the I-Ching, the crystal ball. She had attempted to put herself into a trance and send her spirit into another astral plane. She had even called on that silly twit over on Jackson, Fortuna de Luck, but the fraud simply piped in some “ghostly” voices over the intercom and tried to charge fifty dollars for the privilege of listening to them. What was the world coming to?

  She bit into a slice of cold pizza that she’d had to pry from the box with a letter opener shaped like a dragon’s head. Not a single customer had darkened her door in days; even papery old Mrs. Wilma Hines — she of the wayward checkbook — stayed home. Just as well, thought Madame Durriken. The shoppe was a disaster. Fortune-telling paraphernalia littered the tables and counters, satin capes and cloaks puddled on the floor becaus
e Madame Durriken — frustrated with another failed attempt at contacting the ghost — had ripped them from their hangers and stomped on them.

  Some time off, yes, that’s what she needed. A little vacation, somewhere nice and warm. The Bahamas? Somewhere in Mexico? Or Italy. Now that would be wonderful. She had heard that Italian men favored pale women. Or was it plump women? She pried another slice of pizza from the box.

  A knock on the door startled her, and she dropped the pizza into her lap. “Swords and sorcery,” she muttered, then stood and wiped at the sauce on her yellow caftan. When the knocking became more insistent, Madame Durriken was stricken with the idea that it was the ghost boy hammering his flaming fists on the door. What to do, what to do?

  She grabbed the dragon letter opener and gripped it in her fist like a dagger before moving slowly to the door. With a bony finger, she pulled the curtain away from the window, looked out, and sighed with relief. Just a kid. Madame Durriken scanned the brick walk for the ghost, but he had disappeared. She hid the letter opener behind her back, threw open the door.

  “What?” she barked.

  The girl shivered in her thin coat. “I want…I need a reading done.”

  Madame Durriken eyed the girl’s clothes suspiciously. “Do you have money? This isn’t a charity, you know.”

  The girl glared, reached into her pocket and pulled something from her pocket. “I have this.” She dangled a silver pendant on a chain in front of Madame Durriken’s eyes.

  Madame Durriken took the necklace, hefted it in her hand. The chain was smooth and light as a trickle of water, but the pendant itself was more interesting. Symbols carved in its battered surface hinted at something ancient, something mystical and magical and…expensive. She could get one hundred fifty dollars for it, easy. She smiled. “Come in, dear.”

  The girl stepped into the store, unzipping her jacket. Her eyes widened as she looked around. “What happened? Were you robbed or something?”

  “Just doing a little inventory, that’s all. I’m sorry about the mess. I don’t normally do much business this time of year.” The girl was tall for her age, with extremely long, untidy reddish hair, ragged little eyebrows and pale skin. A pretty young thing, but fierce. Her green eyes were hungry, draped underneath with dark circles. Madame Durriken smiled. She loved the hungry ones; they always came back for more.