by Amy Sparling
"Our thing?"
I shrug. "Yeah." I can't bring myself to say the words ghost hunting. The whole idea of hunting for ghosts is so juvenile and crazy. Logical people know that ghosts don't exist. Too bad I'm not one of those people any more.
"Graves Mansion?" Raine suggests, taking a bite out of his snow cone. I stick out my tongue and go, "Blegh."
He leans over and kisses my forehead. "I'm not a mind reader, Tay. Just tell me where you want to go."
"I don't know. Somewhere new." I throw my arms up in the air and half of my snow cone crashes to the ground. "Let's go find a new ghost."
Raine considers this for a moment. "I don't blindly find them. I always have a lead from someone."
"Well?" We're back at his car and he opens my door for me. I rest my chin on the roof of the car as he walks around to his side. "Don't we have any leads?"
He grins. "No, but I know where we're going. Get in."
Raine takes us to the other side of the island where we wait in line with other cars to board the ferry. I've never been on it, and although Raine assures me it's nothing special, I freak out with excitement as his car rolls over the dock and onto the ferry. "Can we get out?" I ask, my hand already on the door latch.
"Yeah, but I haven't done it since I was like ten." Raine cocks an eyebrow at me but I give him a puppy face. Eventually, he relents. "You win," he says, pulling his leather jacket from the backseat. "Let's go."
Many people get out of their cars and walk around the ferry as it's boarding. I don't know why Raine is making such a big deal about it, and I tell him this. "Look around. All these people are tourists."
A dog on a leash bounds past me, followed by its petite owner, almost knocking me over. Raine grabs my arm to steady me. "See? Tourists."
I poke him on the arm. "So what, I'm a tourist."
He wraps his arm around my shoulders, bringing me close to him. I love when he does this. He whispers in my ear as we step up to the ferry's outside wall. "You are the best damn tour guide assistant in the state. Not a tourist."
I rest my head on his chest and lean over the edge of the ferry. The wall comes up to my stomach but the fear of falling overboard tugs at the back of my mind. "Does anyone ever fall off of this thing?" Raine steps to the side and pulls me next to him, blocking me from being able to flip over but still letting me have a view over the edge. He smells so good when he's this close to me. I've never felt so comfortable with a guy. For once I'm not worrying about my hair or my make up or hoping there's nothing stuck in my teeth. I'm just me and he is just Raine. And I feel at home with him even when I'm nowhere near my bedroom.
The Capitan of the ferry comes over the PA system and announces some pointers about our trip across the bay. The ferry ride is twenty minutes long and is expected to go without a hitch. The loudest horn I've ever heard in my life blasts behind us, causing us both to jump, and then the ferry takes off through the dark waters, headed for the mainland.
Raine and I stay like this, huddled against the cool night air, looking out at the waters below. When the ferry reaches its destination, it bumps against several barriers in the water until it lines up with the dock. Raine and I run back to his car so we'll be ready when it's time to drive off.
I have no idea where we're going, but since Raine probably wouldn't tell me even if I asked; I stay quiet as we drive down a small beach road. My silence doesn't stop a goofy smile from sitting on my face.
"Have you heard of the lighthouse?" Raine asks, slowing down and turning down a gravel road. I shake my head. There's overgrown weeds on both sides of the narrow driveway, and although I'm pretty sure the beach is straight ahead of us, I can't see or hear it.
"I have to admit, I'm kind of scared of this place." A cold shock jolts through my body as he says this. Raine isn't scared of anything. He pulls into a makeshift parking lot and cuts the engine. His headlights go black, and the only light around is at the top of a huge lighthouse.
"What do you mean you're scared?" I give a half-hearted laugh to lighten the mood. It doesn't work. The air in the car seems to go from romantic to suffocating in two seconds. He drops his hand from my leg. "This place gives me the creeps. I've only been here once."
"So you thought bringing me here would make me swoon?" Again, I'm joking with him hoping to get that solemn look off his face.
"You know how the ghosts we deal with are kind of, you know, invisible?" He waves his hands through the air, motioning at the nothingness in front of us. I push aside the thought of Mrs. Grave's ghost, in its perfect human-like form, and nod. "Last time I was here, I saw—"
He drifts off into thoughts about something else. "What?" I grab his hand to get his attention. "You saw what?"
"I saw, a figure. Like a person." Goosebumps trickle down my arms. "And although I was a firm believer at the time, it still caught me off guard."
"So you've only seen a real ghost that one time?"
He reaches under the neckline of his shirt, checking to see if his silver chain is still there. "Yes, but you don't have to see a ghost to believe in them. They are very much real. I've just never seen anything like it before and it scared the piss out of me." He puts his hand on the door handle. "Ready?"
"Hell yes I'm ready." My heart is pounding in my chest but I'm psyched for the chance of seeing another ghost. I need the confirmation that what I saw in Mrs. Graves' room wasn't just an elaborate trick of my brain. We hop out of the Civic and join each other in front of the car. Raine reaches out his hand and I take it. This simple gesture used to be a connection between tour guide and assistant as we explored places unknown. Now it's both comforting and warming and means something much more than it used to—affection.
The lighthouse is massive from this point of view. I look around and find nothing but sand and weeds and ocean as far as my eyes can see. Instead of walking toward the light house, Raine pulls me in the opposite direction. We go to the water's edge and then turn around and face the light house. Raine drops his head back and stares at the top of the light house. At the very top is a small room with glass windows on all four sides. I see the moonlight reflecting off the windows. That and the small glow from a light post a few feet away are the only sources of light.
I'm used to hanging out in the middle of nowhere with Raine, not making a single sound, and just waiting around for something to happen. So when we stand here for ten minutes, holding hands and looking up at a small empty room, I just go along with it.
The beach can be a beautiful, serene place to escape and forget about the world. But when you're alone in front of an abandoned light house at night, with a thin guy in a leather jacket as your only means of protection, the beach becomes terrifying. The ocean crashing on the shore starts to sound like someone whispering just behind my ear. A buoy hitting against the dock sounds like footsteps creeping up on us. With dozens of ghostly adventures with Raine under my belt, tonight is the first time I'm actually scared.
"Raine," I whisper, but it sounds like a scream bursting through the silence. He squeezes my hand. "Hmm?"
"What did you see last time you were here?"
He turns to me. "A shadow, shaped like a man. It paced back and forth in that little room up top."
I look up at the room, squinting to see it clearly in the dark. "Are you sure it wasn't just a random shadow?"
"It was real." Raine drops my hand and pulls out his notebook from his back pocket. "I yelled at him," he says, flipping through the pages, stopping at a page in the front. "June fourteenth of last year. I said 'hey! What are you doing up there?' and he stopped." Raine's eyes go wide as he tells his story. A few weeks ago I would have pinned this as a lie. But now that I consider Raine my best friend, my closest ally, I'm inclined to believe him. He wouldn't lie to me.
"So what happened?" I ask. Raine shrugs. "His shadow stopped and it's like he was just looking at me. I know I sound like a total squid, but it scared me. Bad. The shadow just stayed there for several minutes and finally I got s
o freaked out I ran back to my car and jetted out of there."
I resist the urge to point out how Raine is normally hella brave and has never been scared in all the time I've known him. That would only make him feel more like a squid. Whatever that means. "Maybe he's not a ghost anymore," I say, touching Raine's arm to get him to stop glaring at the light house and look at me. "Maybe he moved on to the afterlife."
"Good theory, I guess." He smiles, and I smile too, and then his smile turns into a grin that sends shivers down my spine. I look away, unable to contain the goofy look on my face. He takes a step closer to me, making us toe to toe in the sand. His forehead falls on top of mine and his arms slide around my waist, his thumbs hooking into my belt loops. We're so close that his eyes blur into one mega eye as I look at him.
Any second now he's going to kiss me. And he does. And then he frowns. "What?" I ask, my stomach turning over at the thought of him suddenly deciding he doesn't like me any more. "I'm just bummed that we haven't seen anything tonight. I was really hoping to show you real, substantial proof so you'll finally start believing."
Raine's always been honest with me. And I haven't exactly been honest with him. If I were Pinocchio, my nose would be three feet long from every time someone asked me if I still didn't believe in ghosts. I take a step back and sink to my knees in the sand. Raine sits beside me. He doesn't even flinch when his crisp jeans and jacket smoosh into the wet sand. "I need to tell you something," I say, folding my hands in my lap. I tell him the true story of when I went to the Graves Mansion alone. I tell him about Mrs. Graves and how she talked, and moved and looked like a real woman. His mouth falls open and stays like that for several minutes.
I think he's going to be mad at me. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you until now."
Finally, he speaks. "I'm jealous. I'm so freaking jealous." He laughs and it's kind of a delirious laugh but at least he's not mad. "I can't believe you saw a full bodied apparition."
"Trust me, I can't believe it either," I say, breaking into a smile. "It's almost like she knew she needed to show herself or I'd never believe."
He nods. "True that. So now I guess I should really be worried about you stealing my job."
"Shut it, I don't want Raine Tsunami's job." I lunge into his arms and we fall over in the sand. "I just want Raine Tsunami."
He brushes the hair away from my eyes and we kiss, and kiss again, and kiss again. And then I start laughing at how insanely happy I am in this life. I never could have imagined that I'd experience this sort of happiness. We lie in the sand and stare up at the stars. Raine's jacket makes a great pillow as I cuddle up against his arm.
"Why do you think some people become ghosts and some don't?" I ask.
"Unfinished business, usually." Raine points up at the sky. "There's the big dipper."
I follow the stars with my eyes, tracing their path as they form a handle and a dipper. "How do you have unfinished business? I'd think once you're dead nothing else matters."
Raine considers this. "That, or they die abruptly and become ghosts because they can't cope with their unexpected death."
Something nags at the back of my mind. "Like a murder?" I say, remembering Mrs. Graves.
"Yep. Or a car crash or something."
I bolt up in the sand. A rush of gloom and doom and horrible things I've never felt come over me. Raine coughs and spits sand out of his mouth. "What's wrong?"
A cold chill flows through my heart as it speeds up so fast, I can't hear anything but my own heartbeat. Raine's voice is worried. "Taylor? You're pale. What's wrong?"
I swallow, testing my tongue to make sure I can still talk. "You said a car crash can cause ghosts?"
He shrugs. "Sure, any sudden death can cause a ghost."
I clutch my stomach with my clammy fingers. I suck in air through a crack in my lips, trying to slow my breathing and bring my heart back to a reasonable pace. The waves are loud now, piercing my eardrums with each crest of water that splashes up on the shore. Raine's hand touches my cheek.
"I need to go home," I say, pulling myself to my feet. "I think I'm gonna be sick."
Chapter 40
My phone rings for the fifth time this morning. As with the other four times, I press ignore. My head falls back against the wall and I pull my knees up to my chest. My room is massive, threatening to swallow me whole. I need to dig a hole and fall into it. I want to be so far away from reality that I forget I ever existed.
My closet is barely two feet wide. I kick out my shoes and crawl inside; wedging myself between fallen clothes and a shoebox filled with ghost tour flyers. Reaching my fingers under the door, I pull it shut, closing me inside this tiny lightless space.
This is better. Too bad it smells like moth balls in here.
It's probably nine or ten in the morning, but I've lost any sense of time since I didn't sleep all night. Raine had dropped me off last night, and after losing the battle to get me to talk, he left me on the floor, right here in my room. And now he won't stop calling. Can't the boy get a hint?
I close my eyes since I can't see anything anyway, and I think this through again. For the millionth time. Brendan died six months ago.
We were at that stupid party that was mostly seniors. I was so pathetic; I actually thought it was cool that I was the only junior there, having received an invitation from Marcus, the pothead soccer player with a massive crush on me. The only guy with a crush on me. I didn't like him, but I wanted to see how Brendan felt seeing me with another guy. I wanted him to hurt like I hurt when I saw him with Charlene. His perfect little girlfriend with a tiny waist and silky hair and a smile that makes you want to like her even when you can't because she stole your best friend.
Charlene and Brendan walked into the party right as Marcus was telling me about his new soccer cleats—hot pink ones—while we sat on the couch. The moment I saw him, my heart burst into tiny pieces, splattering all over my ribcage. He was wearing his Gulf Coast Cycles shirt, jeans and flip flops. And even though I always made fun of him for wearing jeans and flip flops, I thought he looked hotter that night than ever before. His Mohawk was freshly shaved on the sides. His smile was perfection.
She had her dainty little arm wrapped around Brendan's massive bicep as they meandered through the crowd, stopping to say hello to her friends. Marcus was still babbling on about some crap, and I nodded at all the appropriate intervals to fake interest, but my eyes were on Brendan. And the way he wrapped his arm around Charlene. And the way his eyes sparkled when he watched her tell a story she was really excited about. I hated his happiness.
Finally, the moment came when his eyes met mine. He smiled and gave me that head-nod-thing that guys give to each other. The head-nod that meant Hey Taylor, you're just one of the guys. So what if I kissed you in the tree house last week. You're just. One. Of. The. Guys.
But that didn't matter because I knew what I was going to do, and I did it perfectly. Our eyes met. I grabbed Marcus's shoulder and leaned forward and smiled. I may have batted my eyes. I may have even blushed. And it may have worked like a fucking charm.
"What's wrong?" I asked a few minutes later, faking innocence on the back patio at the party. Brendan's hand clenched around the tiki candle next to us. "What are you doing with him?" Though his voice was low so no one around could hear us, he was yelling at me through his teeth. "You don't even like him!"
I crossed my arms. "Maybe I do, why do you care?"
He looked behind us, checking that we were still in the clear, and then glared at me. "You don't like him. You like me."
"Yeah well you have a girlfriend." I said the last word like it was the most abhorrent thing known to man, and spun around to leave. He grabbed my arm and pulled me to him. "Taylor, I love you."
"Shut up." I pulled my arm trying to get away. As much as I had wanted to hear those words, I couldn’t believe them once they were spoken. Not when he had looked at her like that.
"I'll break up with her," he said, his eyes pleading with
me. I shook my head. It was too late for that. He had hurt me, and he needed to feel the pain too.
And that's when he grabbed the back of my head, pulled me to him and kissed me. That's when my entire world flipped upside down. It was euphoric. It was the best day in the world.
Until Charlene caught us.
And then it was bad. It was embarrassing and horrible and worst of all, it was the last time I saw Brendan alive. Charlene had driven them to the party that night. The Ford was in Brendan's driveway back home. The Ford would have saved him. Charlene jumped in her car, screaming a million obscenities at Brendan, who was calmly trying to explain himself as he hopped in the passenger side. I stood in the front yard, surrounded by onlookers, crying my eyes out like the scorned adulteress that I was.
They sped off, and I went home. Charlene lost control of the wheel and wrapped her car around a telephone pole. She didn't die, but he did—probably with her still screaming at him.
If that's not unfinished business, I don't know what is.
I wake up with my head smooshed against the closet wall. Mom's voice is muffled from the other side of the apartment. "I don't know where she is, but I'll tell her to call you when I see her."
I press my ear to the closet door and listen. "Okay, Margret. I will. Okay. Bye." Footsteps come into my room and I hear Mom set my cell phone on my nightstand. I reach up and open the door. Mom jumps out of her skin. "Holy hell, Taylor!"
"Sorry," I mumble, climbing to my feet. The sunlight burns my eyes.
"What were you doing in there?"
"I fell asleep." It's a weak answer, but it's the only one I have. She points at my phone. "That thing has been ringing all damn day. I just answered it and talked to Margret. She wanted to know if you were coming to work today."
Work. How did I forget about work? "What time is it?"
"Five-thirty." The microwave timer goes off and Mom runs to the kitchen. I rub my hands over my face, trying to bring feeling back in the cheek that was against the wall. I can't believe I slept all day, and now I'm thirty minutes late for work. I'm in no mood for six hours in a museum. If it were the diner, I'd call in sick. But I can't disappoint Margret. So I pull on my museum polo shirt and grab my keys.
