by Amy Sparling
Like freaking clockwork, Raine sits on the steps waiting for me to show up at work. He's wearing the same thing he wore last night; guess he didn't get any sleep either. "Hey you," he says, standing up and opening the door for me. I give him this half-smile-thing, still not sure if I'm going to keep acting lethargic like I did last night, or just blow it off and act like nothing happened. The later would be easier and avoid any awkward gut-spilling talks. But my mind is a fog of confusion and thoughts that are deeper than the blackest parts of the ocean, and I'm just not hat good of an actress. My half-smile disappears and I go inside without another look at him.
Margret is knitting which means the place isn't busy and therefore my slip up of being late hasn't harmed anything. "Sorry," I tell her, walking behind the front counter and dropping my keys and wallet in a drawer. "I fell asleep."
"It's no bother," she says, knitting and purling, knitting and purling. Raine's eyes are far away as he tries to hide whatever it is he's thinking. "So you were sleeping all day?"
"Yeah, sorry. I saw that you called but-" I take a deep breath because for some reason I feel like crying, "But I was running late so I figured I'd, you know, call you back later."
His back slides down the wall until he's sitting on the floor next to the counter. "It's fine."
An hour goes by without a single visitor to the museum and Margret starts dropping hints about how the old ladies on her block like to get together and play Canasta. Raine is still here, reviewing things in his notebook and writing down more stuff in a new spiral he stole from our office supply closet. I tell Margret she should go home early and I'll close up the museum after my night shift. Because the only thing more awkward than sitting in silence with Raine right now, is sitting in silence with Raine and Margret.
Five minutes later, the door closes behind Margret and Raine jumps to his feet. I reorganize the brochures. He leans his elbows on the counter and watches me for a moment. With a deep breath he says, "You don't have to talk if you don't want to, but are you okay?"
I nod, still looking at the brochures. Places to visit in Sterling – for the photographer! Raine pulls the papers out of my hand and moves them to the other side of the counter. "You don't look okay."
I turn to him and he brushes hair out of my eyes, even though I'm pretty sure it wasn't in my eyes to begin with. I smell his cologne and the leather in his jacket. Our eyes meet, and I melt into a sticky goo. How could I be so cold to Raine? He hasn't done anything wrong. Sure, my mind is racing a mile a minute with the realization that Brendan is a ghost, but again—that is not Raine's fault.
Raine has not done a single thing wrong.
I lean toward him and let my head fall on his chest, in that perfect spot where it rests just below his collarbone, as if it were created just for me. His body loosens too, as he wraps me in a hug. His warm embrace fills me with a thousand warm fuzzies and almost every bad thing in the world disappears.
Almost. "Raine," I say, staring at the pearl snaps on his shirt.
"Yes?" he whispers into my hair.
I pull back so I can look at him, but not far enough that he'd have to let me go. His arms around me are my anchor to sanity. "How do you find ghosts?"
His eyebrows crinkle. I have a feeling he was expecting me to talk about something—anything—other than what I said. "Well, you wait for them to show themselves. Usually you get better results at night, and you have to be really quiet."
"I know that part. I mean, how do you find where a ghost is? Like if you don't know where they are haunting?"
"I don't understand. If you don't know where a ghost is, then there's not a ghost."
I pick my words carefully, trying not to give away what I'm actually thinking. "Say you hear about a murder on the news, and then you want to find the ghost of the person who was killed. How would you do that?"
A man in a business suit walks up to the museum and pauses at the door. Raine drops his arms and moves away from me. The man reads the sign on the door and keeps walking. "Taylor, I'm glad you're into this and all, but you have the wrong idea. I can't just find ghosts out of nowhere. I always have a lead. Someone tells me about a place they think is haunted, and I investigate. Sometimes it's haunted, sometimes it's not."
"No, no, no," I say, pulling at my hair. "You're not getting it." Frustration boils up in me, and I am at a total loss for how to get the information I want. I can't tell Raine that I'm trying to find Brendan. He won't understand.
Well, maybe he would. Maybe he wouldn't. Either way, this is my dead best friend and it's my problem, not his. I have to find Brendan. I need to find Brendan. I need to tell him I'm sorry and I'm a worthless friend. I ruined his life all because I was a jealous loser. I need to see him one more time, like I saw Mrs. Graves. I could help him move on to the afterlife.
He won't have to be a ghost for a hundred years like she was.
"You're weird today," Raine says. He constructs the brochures into a paper house as I zone out and think about Brendan. So many things have happened in the last six months. I was a depressed lunatic zombie after Brendan died. Then I moved to Sterling and did a total one-eighty. This move was supposed to help me heal, but I had no idea it would improve my life ten fold. I'm not even the same person I used to be. I'm happy.
"Hey," Raine says, bringing me out of my daydream and back to reality. I say something that sounds like huh and what merged together. He makes this goofy face like he's hiding a secret from me. "You look pretty today," he says, giving me his cheese ball smile. I smile back, and that's all the motivation he needs to lean over and kiss me.
And, holy lip lock Batman, it's an epic kiss. The mouths-open-and-tongues-grazing-each-other kind of kiss. His hand slides under my shirt as he pulls me to him. His fingers are warm against my skin. My hands lock around his neck and although I'm vaguely aware that we should not be kissing at work—I don’t care about that because this kiss is amazing.
Until it's not so amazing any more. All the euphoria flowing through me turns dark and cold. The bitter stab of guilt pierces into my soul. I see a Mohawk in the back of my mind, remember the way his lips felt against mine in that hurried, desperate kiss six months ago. I shove Raine away.
"I can't do this," I say. My hands shake and I flatten them on the counter, trying to calm down. The last thing I need is to have another breakdown in front of Raine.
"Right." Raine shoves his hands in his jeans pockets and rocks back on his heels. "That was unprofessional."
"Yeah," I say, even though we are so not on the same page. "Unprofessional."
Chapter 41
My breath fogs on the glass display case as I stare at Mrs. Kline's necklace. The damn thing is backwards today. Still on the velvet necklace holder—just backwards. A monogram is stamped into the 14 karat white gold backing of the diamond pendant. I let out another breath, fogging the glass again. I know as soon as I pull my head off the glass, there will be a gross oily makeup smear from my forehead, so I stay where I am a little longer.
The thing doesn't move when I stare at it. It doesn't vibrate or glow with some sort of otherworldly presence brought on from the ghost of Mrs. Kline. Yet it changes positions in its glass case almost every day now. Either someone is pulling the prank of the decade on Margret and me, or I have to accept that the necklace is haunted.
The necklace is haunted. Ugh, it sounds stupid even thinking it in my head. I glance back at Margret, who is busy knitting a sweater for her cat Pringles, having long since accepted the haunted necklace and no longer cares about it. "Spirits don't just haunt houses, you know," she had told me the other day when we came to work to find the necklace crumpled in the corner of the case. "They haunt possessions. Things that meant a lot to them in their life. I think Mrs. Kline doesn't like her diamond necklace on display for everyone to see."
I pull away from the glass and wipe the make up with the back of my hand. It leaves an unsightly smear, but hell—that's what my night shift is for, why bother cleaning it
now?
I check the time on my cell phone. Raine will get here in an hour, and he'll want to go over the tour plans for tonight. He will probably have a list of notes for me and a map of the town because he still thinks I don't know my way around when I do. He'll want to make the little sarcastic comments he's so good at, and he'll probably try to sneak a kiss when Margret isn't looking.
Unfortunately for him, I don't want to do any of that. The thought of kissing Raine again makes me nauseas. What if Brendan knows what I did? It's only been six months—SIX MONTHS—since he died and here I am, waltzing around Sterling Island giving ghost tours and smooching the hottest eighteen-year-old in town. I'm despicable. I'm no better than a slutty cheerleader.
Mrs. Graves was murdered by her love and then woke up one day and realized she was a ghost. Does Brendan feel that same kind of heartbreak? He's probably wandering around this earth, a lost heartbroken soul with unfinished business and no one to help him.
Oh God. He could be right here, right now.
A cold chill creeps over my body.
"Margret, if you were a ghost what object would you want to haunt?" I make small talk to get my mind off the horrible reality that Brendan could be looking at me. Right. Now. Margret slips a metal hook around a loop of yarn and keeps knitting. "What makes you think I'd want to haunt something? I plan on going straight to heaven."
"I mean hypothetically," I say, watching her wrap the yarn around her needles and knit faster than my eyes can follow. "Suppose you had to haunt something, what would it be?"
Her lips pucker up and she sets down her knitting. "I guess I'd haunt my rocking chair. It's my favorite place to relax every day after work."
"No offense Margret, but that's boring."
She points a knitting needle at me. "Well, what would you haunt?"
My answer comes easy. I don't even have to think about it. "I'd haunt my tree house."
"You have a tree house?"
"I did have one," I say, my brain recalling all my childhood memories in one heartbreaking second. "At my old house." My eyes burn with the start of tears, which I blink back before it has time to form a tear drop and roll down my face. I pull out my hair tie and sweep my hair back into a pony tail just so I have something to do. Margret's eyes narrow in on me, her expression soft. I think she may be about to tell me something inspirational and heart warming, as if she can somehow feel my pain.
"I've never been in a tree house," she says, going back to her knitting. The moment is over.
I think about that stupid tree house for the next hour, and let it consume me as I go through the motions of closing the museum for the day. If I had to be a ghost, I'd want to live in the tree house. I always wanted to live in it as a kid only it lacked a bathroom and central air and heat. As a ghost, I wouldn’t need those things anyway.
As Raine walks in the door, I have an overwhelming urge to tell him where I'd haunt if I were a ghost. He's a ghost enthusiast after all; he'd be interested in this sort of thing. "Raine!" I bolt around the counter so fast that the corner clips me in the hip. Every nerve on the right side of my body screams in pain, stopping me in my tracks. Raine shakes his head disapprovingly, looking past me at Margret. "This girl," he says, trailing off.
"Ugh." I rub my hip bone. "Raine, I'm glad you're here."
"Of course you are," he says, handing me an envelope. "It's pay day."
I shove the envelope in my back pocket. It's thicker than usual. Through my ragged breathing, I say, "Where will you haunt when you die?"
Raine sticks out his bottom lip and blows hair out of his face. "What makes you think I'll haunt somewhere?"
"Because you love ghosts."
"I just hope I get to heaven," he says, going to the counter. He gives Margret one of his tour punch cards. "I want to be with the people I love when I die, not skulking around in the crawlspace under the stairs."
"You'd haunt the crawlspace under your stairs?" I rub my hip some more. "But that's boring."
"So what? It was my favorite place growing up."
I guess I can't really make fun of him. A crawlspace is a lot like the tree house only without a view. Raine and I have more in common than a teenage lust after each other. We'd both want to spend eternity cooped up in a small wooden place by ourselves.
Only I wouldn't be alone. I'd be with Brendan in my ghostly afterlife. It only makes sense that he'd be with me since we grew up in that tree house together.
Oh, my god.
"Shit," I say, forgetting to curb my language around Margret. I punch the counter. "I can't believe it." I'm staring at the floor but my entire world-even my body—goes fuzzy. I want to scream and cry and scream while crying.
"What is it?" Raine asks, grabbing my arm. "Are you okay?"
"You look like you've seen a ghost," Margret quips.
Why did it take me so long to piece this together? Brendan is haunting the tree house. He has to be; it was our favorite place in the whole world. It's not like he ever got out of town when he was alive—that's the only place he knows. And he's there right now, waiting for me. I don't know how I know this, but I can feel it.
I have a lot of apologizing to do. And I better start now.
Chapter 42
"I have to go," I say, like it’s some kind of epiphany. I run back to the counter, careful not to bash my hip into the corner again, and grab my wallet and keys. I've finished all of the routines for closing, so Margret can lock up by herself. Raine is at my heels as I dash out of the museum and hop off the stairs, skipping the bottom two and landing on the sidewalk with a thud.
"Where exactly are you going?" he asks, power walking next to me. Although Raine is amazing in every possible way, he is treading the waters of becoming a total pain in my ass. "Don't worry about it." My lips crack into a sneer that is supposed to be a smile, but I'm so screwed up right now, I can't make my face muscles do that. He reaches for my arm, but I twist it away and break into a slow jog. I have to get to the Ford, NOW. I have to go back to the tree house. If I put it off for one more minute, I may actually drop dead from guilt.
The Ford's waiting for me in the parking lot. I throw open the door and feel around in the console for Brendan's GPS. I've only used it once when I drove to Sterling, and it's the only way I can find my way back to Algoa.
Raine watches me like a lost puppy as I dig through the console. I wish he would go away, but I don't have to heart to say anything. I find the GPS and press the power button. Nothing happens.
"It's dead," Raine says.
"How do I charge it?"
"I charge mine with a cable plugged into my computer."
I turn it over in my hands. "Are you kidding me? There's no other way?"
He shrugs his shoulders. "Not that I know of."
I slam it into the floorboard. "Dammit!" My head falls on the steering wheel. Raine takes out his car keys and jingles them. "You can use mine if you want."
I punch in my old address and wait as his GPS maps a route from here to there. Then I scribble the directions on the back of a flyer I found in my truck and hand the GPS back to him. Raine leans against the hood of his car. "Where are you going?"
My brain tells me to lie, but my mouth speaks before I can think of one. "Algoa."
"Can I ask why?"
My brain catches up to my mouth. "I uh, just remembered that I forgot to go visit my dad. I promised him."
Raine crosses his arms. The lost puppy look disappears. "What the hell, Taylor?" He's yelling at me. I can't believe he's showing an emotion other than calm. "We have a tour tonight."
I shrug. "I have to go."
Dad works the evening shift at the station and spends every waking second at his girlfriend Tracy's house, so it's no surprise when I pull up in my old driveway and no one is home. The grass is a foot high and weeds threaten to overtake the gravel driveway. Dad used to pay Brendan fifty bucks a month to mow the grass. It's weird how I remember that.
I park at the end of the driveway li
ke I did on my last night here, partly for old time's sake but mostly so I can prepare myself for what I'm about to do. The mud is all dried up from the lack of rain this summer, so my flip flops don't get filthy this time around. I fight back feelings of déjà vu as I step closer to the old oak tree that was my safe haven for ten years. I still remember the day Dad came home from work with a ton of plywood in the bed of his truck; it was salvaged from a construction site and he knew just what to do with it.
Raine always takes a moment to center himself before we go looking for a rumored ghost in a new part of the island. He closes his eyes and shakes out his hands and just stands there for a while. He says it's to open himself up to the spirits so he's more receptive to their attempts to contact us. I try doing this now.
Standing under the tree house, which isn't nearly as tall as it seemed when I was a kid, I close my eyes and take a deep breath. But I can't keep them closed for long, because I'm overwhelmed with the feeling of being watched. This isn't some random hundred year old mansion—this is mine. Mine and Brendan's.
He could be here right now.
The thought sends a chill down my spine and goose bumps that trickle down my arms. I've never been scared of ghosts—I've never been scared of anything besides real people because they can actually harm you. I shouldn't be scared right now, but I am.
I grab the wooden two by fours nailed into the tree truck and climb my way up to the tree house. The plywood creaks under my weight. I don't know what I'm expecting when I crawl inside, but the place is just how I left it—empty.
It only has one window and it faces Brendan's old house. Just outside the window, there's a rusty nail with a decorative dollar store welcome sign hanging from it. The other side is blank. I used to turn the sign to the blank side when I had a horrible fight with Dad or when some skank at school had embarrassed me in front of everyone. Brendan would see it and come hang out with me until I felt better.
