by Ellen Oh
Misery and exhaustion plagued Harper. It felt like her heart was breaking into a thousand pieces.
“I’ll take care of cleaning this up,” her grandmother said. “Why don’t you go next door and send over those busybody ladies to come and help me.”
Leaving the house, Harper was shocked to find the afternoon sun still shining brightly. It felt like she’d been inside the house for hours. She walked with a heavy heart. Her best friend was gone forever, just when she’d finally gotten her back.
MISSING ROSE
Friday, October 13
The days and nights without Rose passed without registering much with Harper. When she’d broken the news to Michael, he’d cried and sat on the bench in front of Rose’s mirror in the foyer for an hour.
“I didn’t get to say good-bye,” he sobbed.
Harper stayed next to him the entire time, trying not to cry herself as she shared her memories of Rose. Her heart ached.
By the time Dayo came to see her, Harper was exhausted. As she explained what had happened, her words kept getting caught in her throat.
“I’m so sorry,” Dayo said. “I know how much you’re going to miss her.”
Harper swallowed back a sob. “Grandma Lee said that I had to think about Rose and that she was in a much better place. And I know I’m being selfish, but I wish she could have stayed a little longer.”
Dayo offered up sympathy and lots of her mother’s cookies. Too sad to eat, Harper gave all the cookies to Michael.
Harper slid into a quiet solitude that her parents didn’t know how to break. Grandma Lee had spoken to them about what had happened in a way that, as she put it, they could understand. And it seemed like Harper’s parents were trying to accept what Grandma Lee explained to them. It had been hard enough to accept that the imaginary friend Harper had always played with was a ghost named Rose. Harper could tell there was also some relief for them, to know that Rose was gone, as if that would somehow make Harper normal. That was how she knew they didn’t really understand.
Even Kelly, who was usually clueless and self-absorbed, seemed to be trying to be nicer to Harper, going out of her way to offer to drive her places. But Harper didn’t want to go anywhere. She mostly stayed in her room, missing Rose, thinking of all the time they’d lost because of Harper’s accident and her memory loss. Before Harper’s family moved down to Washington, D.C., they’d lived in New York City, where Harper was possessed by a ghost who caused her to start a fire at her school. Because of the incident, Harper was sent to Briarly, a mental health institute for children. It was at Briarly that Harper was attacked by an angry, violent ghost. She was injured so badly she lost her memory and forgot all about Rose, something she couldn’t even imagine now.
Harper thought back to the moment when she remembered Rose again.
“Harper, I’ve been so worried about you!” Rose rushed out of the mirror and grabbed Harper in a ghostly embrace that felt like being squished between soft clouds. “I thought you would never remember me again!”
Harper could still recall the overwhelming rush of love and affection she felt at the sight of her friend. “Rose, I’ve missed you so much and I didn’t even know it!”
“And how do you think I felt? I could see you every day but never talk to you,” Rose said. “It was like going back to the dark days.”
The dark days were the days when Rose was trapped in the mirror with no one to speak to. Only now could Harper truly understand how hard it must have been for Rose. She’d just lost her best friend forever, and her heart hurt so much.
Her mother knocked and entered Harper’s room, not waiting for a response. Harper gave her a dirty look. She didn’t want to talk to anyone.
“Listen, I was trying to think of ways to make this trip more fun for you . . .”
Harper didn’t respond. Her heart was heavy from the loss of her friend. That her mother was talking to her about a trip she didn’t want to take at all seemed cruel.
Her mother cleared her throat and said, “Actually, I think I came up with a great idea—something I think even you will love. Want to know what it is?”
Harper shrugged. Nothing her mother said could make her feel better.
“Dayo’s mom said it would be okay for Dayo to come on the trip with us.”
At first Harper didn’t think she’d heard right. “Dayo can come with us . . . ?” she repeated slowly.
Her mother smiled and nodded. Despite herself, Harper couldn’t help but smile too. Having Dayo on the trip would make things so much better. Not because she could replace Rose—no one could ever do that. But because Dayo understood what Harper’s parents couldn’t.
Saturday, October 14
Harper and Dayo stood in front of the foyer mirror staring sadly at their reflections. Dayo put a comforting arm around Harper’s shoulders.
“It’s hard to believe I won’t ever see her again,” Dayo said.
Harper let out a shaky breath and wiped her eyes. “I miss her so much.”
“Me too,” Dayo said.
“She used to tell me the best stories about all the strange things she’d seen,” Harper remembered. “We’d play hide-and-seek for hours. Even though she could always find me, she would make it so much fun.”
“I loved her singing,” Dayo said. “She had the prettiest voice. And she could really rock a Beyoncé song.”
Harper giggled. “But boy, was she bad at rapping.”
Dayo laughed. “I loved that she’d still try.”
After several long minutes of silence, Harper led Dayo away, and they shuffled over to the kitchen to raid the shelves. Dayo stared at the overflowing pantry in amazement.
“Every time I come over, you always have new stuff,” she said in awe.
The pantry was filled not only with veggie chips and weird health food that her sister insisted on eating but also Asian snacks only found in Korean supermarkets.
Dayo pointed at something with Korean lettering that had a picture of a squid on it. “What’s that?”
“Dried squid,” Harper said. “But I don’t think you’ll like that. Let’s have some Pepero instead.”
She reached up to grab the big box of Korean chocolate-covered cookie sticks and let loose an avalanche of little packages that fell on both of their heads. Dayo was giggling madly when she grabbed one of the small packages. “Hey, I’ll have some of this dried seaweed,” she said. “What do you call it again—kim?”
“Yep, but I don’t know if I have any rice,” Harper said.
“I don’t need rice,” Dayo replied, ripping into the package and eating the thin black papery squares like potato chips.
Harper shook her head. “That’s just wrong, eating kim without rice.”
Dayo smiled. “Mmmm, salty!”
“Hey!” Harper exclaimed. “Look at this! I think I found my dad’s secret stash of junk food.”
She pulled down a box of Twinkies, Double Stuf Oreos, and a bag of crunchy cheese puffs. They’d all been hidden deep behind the pile of dried seaweed packages.
“Cheese puffs!” Dayo crowed. “My mom never lets me eat those. She says they’re too messy and too fake.”
“That’s why they taste so good,” Harper replied.
“I’m so excited to go on this trip with you,” Dayo said.
Harper smiled. “I didn’t want to go at all, but now I’m actually looking forward to it!”
“Why? Don’t you like the beach?” Dayo asked as she licked the creme out of her Oreo.
Harper shrugged. “I don’t care about it one way or the other. I just can’t stand my cousin Leo.”
“That’s the cousin who pranks you, right?”
“Yeah, and his last one was unforgivable. They came to visit in August right before school started,” Harper said. “You were lucky to miss him.”
“Oh, that was when I went to Georgia to visit my grandparents,” Dayo said. “I remember you had Rose scare him to death.”
Harper grinned.
Leo had been pulling pranks on her every time they would meet during family reunions. It was the first time she’d ever retaliated.
“He deserved it. My uncle Justin makes the best pastries, and his cream puffs are my favorite. He made me and Michael a big box of them, but Leo filled them with mayonnaise instead.”
Dayo gasped in outrage. “That’s despicable!”
“I almost threw up,” Harper said. “I was so mad.”
Harper remembered how excited they’d been to get the cream puffs. For once she’d felt complete goodwill toward Leo. The first bite was just awful. The taste was so disgusting that it had made Harper gag and Michael cry. And that was something Harper could not forgive. Even Michael, who was the sweetest kid, had approved of getting back at Leo with Rose’s haunting.
“So, what did Rose do?” Dayo asked.
“We waited until midnight, and then Rose put on that horrible clown mask that my dad has in his closet.”
Dayo shuddered. “Clowns are evil.”
Harper nodded. “She floated right in Leo’s face, wearing the clown mask, until he woke up. He was screaming like a baby.”
The girls laughed.
“He definitely deserved it,” Dayo said. “But won’t that make him want to get you back even more?”
Harper shrugged. “Nothing he could do could ever compare to a real ghost haunting.”
Dayo nodded but looked perplexed. “Still, I can’t believe Rose agreed to do it. She was such a nice person.”
“She would never have agreed to it normally,” Harper said. “But she got so mad after the cream-puff incident.”
Harper could see Rose’s reaction in her memory. She had glowed bright with anger and had agreed immediately to Harper’s plan.
“Rose was the kindest person in the entire world,” Harper whispered. “Even though she agreed to do it, she felt really bad afterward. Leo was so scared.”
But Harper didn’t tell Dayo what Rose had said to her: “I never want to scare anyone like that again. I felt like I did something really wrong, and I don’t like that feeling.”
Harper had felt guilty ever since.
“Well, it will be interesting to meet your cousin,” Dayo said.
Harper grimaced. She wasn’t looking forward to it.
AT GRANDMA’S HOUSE
Thursday, October 26
The day before their Halloween trip to the Caribbean, Harper and Michael spent the night at their grandmother’s house. Although Grandma Lee had invited Kelly also, Kelly had been too worried about packing to come over. But Harper was surprised when Kelly offered to drive them without their mom asking first.
“Stop making that face, Harper,” Kelly said. “You’re lucky to have me.”
Michael giggled. “Harper, you look so funny.”
Harper closed her gaping mouth and got in the car. “What’s the catch?”
“I felt like it,” Kelly said with a shrug. “Besides, this way I can see Grandma before we leave.”
As they drove up to the small white house, Grandma was standing at the door waving.
“Grandma always knows when we are coming,” Michael said with a happy grin.
Inside, Kelly gave Grandma a big hug but turned down dinner. “I’ve still got a lot of laundry to do before I can even pack,” she said as she ran out the door.
Harper and Michael sat on the floor to give Monty lots of love. The little dog was ecstatic to see them and kept running back and forth between them. Grandma Lee quickly called them to dinner, where a platter full of Harper’s favorite kalbi, grilled short ribs, sat center stage.
“Harper, your mama is worried about you,” Grandma Lee said as they were eating dinner. “She says you only have Dayo as a friend and haven’t made any others yet. And if Dayo is busy, you don’t do anything but stay at home and mope.”
Harper tried to swallow her food around the large lump that had formed in her throat. She put down her chopsticks, no longer hungry.
“But Grandma! Harper doesn’t like to go out,” Michael said. “She likes to be with me.”
“Of course! Everybody loves you. But your sister needs more friends,” Grandma said.
Harper looked away, resentment crawling up her throat. A feeling of betrayal churned within her. She’d just lost her best friend in the whole world. Wasn’t she allowed to grieve? Couldn’t she be left alone? She loved Dayo and was really glad to be friends with her, but she hadn’t met anyone else at school that she had clicked with. Why did everyone think making friends was so easy? It wasn’t. It was complicated and difficult, especially in middle school.
Grandma Lee was looking at her with sympathetic eyes. Suddenly she reached over and gave Harper a big hug. “I promised your mama I would say all that, but don’t you even worry about it! You are a wonderful girl, and you will make many friends in your life. I’m not worried about you.”
“Harper is the best,” Michael said, his mouth full of rice and meat. “She’s my favoritest person in the whole world, next to Mommy and Daddy and Grandma. And Kelly, when she’s in a good mood. And Dayo, and my best friend Jacob, and my teacher Mrs. Burton, and my soccer coach—”
Before he could continue, Harper covered his mouth with her hand. “Little dude, you like everyone.”
After dinner, Harper read Michael several chapters of his current favorite book, about a lonely robot, before tucking him into bed. Once he was asleep, she walked down the hall to the last room, the shrine room of the gods. Grandma Lee was a good Catholic who went to mass every Sunday. She once told Harper that she was Catholic before she ever became a shaman. Mrs. Devereux joked about how horrified Grandma’s priest, Father Rios, would be if he ever saw the shrine room. However, Grandma Lee believed that communing with nature as a shaman was not incompatible with being a good Christian.
As a shaman, it was her job to lead the spirits that came to her back to the light. It wasn’t always an easy task, especially when the spirits were lost or unwilling. Harper knew people sought her grandmother only when they were in desperate need. She never charged money for her services, but money always came to her. Her pantry overflowed with food, and her closets were filled with presents from grateful clients. They would also leave her envelopes full of cash.
The shrine door was open, and Harper could see her grandmother kneeling before the altar, jade prayer beads clasped tightly in her hands as she chanted. Bowls of fruit and candy adorned the altar table. She remembered how her grandmother had laughed when she’d found out that Michael had eaten all the Snickers miniatures one night. “The child gods will be so upset that all they are getting are peppermints tonight,” she’d said.
The room was beautifully decorated, with a large painted fan displayed on a stand. There were drums and cymbals, and several vases of flowers that looked so real but were completely fake. On the wall behind the altar hung colorful paintings of the mountain deity San-shin, the ocean deity Bada-shin, and Princess Bari, the first female shaman. The walls next to the altar displayed various Korean costumes. A child’s hanbok as well as one that could be worn by royalty hung on either side of the altar, while the old armor of an ancient general was showcased on the opposite wall. On the floor before the altar stood a large janggu, a double-headed hourglass drum. Michael was fascinated by the drum, always wanting to bang on it.
“Grandma, why is it that Mom and Dad don’t want to believe in ghosts?”
Harper sat next to her grandmother in the shrine room, helping her take down and polish the old general’s leather armor.
“You see, some people have a very strong spiritual connection, like you and your brother. Others, like your sister and your father, have a very slight connection, which makes them aware of things but skeptical,” her grandmother said. “And then there are those whose minds are so completely shut off from the spiritual world that they are nonbelievers.”
“Like Mom,” Harper said.
“Like your mother,” her grandmother agreed. “But she is trying. Michael’s po
ssession by that ghost really shook your mother up. She’s more like your dad now. She recognizes something happened. But she’s not quite ready to name it what it really is.”
When they had first moved into their new house, there had been a little boy ghost who had possessed Michael, changing him into a monster. It had been the most frightening experience of Harper’s life, because she was so afraid for her brother.
“Sometimes I think Mom wishes I was more like Kelly,” Harper said.
Grandma Lee put down her polishing rag and stroked her hand through Harper’s hair.
“My dear girl, your mother loves you deeply,” she said. “She is frustrated because she does not understand, and that frightens her. This is just the way things have always been. People fear what they don’t comprehend.”
“You mean she’s scared of me?”
“Not of you, but of what her mind cannot accept. People will shut themselves off so completely to the world of possibilities that everything to them becomes only black or white. They try to explain everything away with some kind of rational explanation. But when they can’t, it frightens them—because it shakes their core belief system that life is what you see, with no mysteries.”
The explanation didn’t really make sense to Harper. If anything, it depressed her. How could her mother ever come to understand her if she couldn’t see the world as it truly was?
“Well, I know they are trying,” Harper said. “But it feels awkward. Like they’re pretending to believe something just to make me feel better, but it only makes me feel weird.”
“Give them time, Harper,” Grandma Lee said. “It has only been a few months since they found out that a ghost possessed their youngest child and almost killed him. They are still processing all of this.”
Harper shrugged. “Okay, but I hate that Kelly acts like nothing weird ever happened this past summer.”
Grandma Lee gave a little chuckle. “I’m not so sure that Kelly is as oblivious as she pretends to be. Something tells me she is more aware than we know.”
