Past Midnight

by Mara Purnhagen

  “He killed my boyfriend.”

  ten

  “I just couldn’t tell you,” Avery said. We were in her room, sitting on the floor surrounded by crumpled tissues. Her eyes gleamed red, but she was done crying. The other girls had left after spending an hour reassuring her that they would not allow Jared to come near her ever again.

  Before they left, Callie pulled me aside. “Can you stay until her mom gets home from work?”

  “Of course.” I needed to stay. I needed to hear the whole story straight from Avery, and after everyone left, that’s what she did—explained everything, every secret she’d kept from me—until I understood.

  The clock on the dresser ticked and the room filled with a golden glow from the setting sun. I reflected on everything Avery had told me about Adam since we met. He was a senior last year, she had said. He got into Michigan. She never said that’s where he was now, only that he’d gotten into college. I talk to him every day, but still. It’s hard. I had assumed they called each other. She probably did talk to him every day, I thought. He just wasn’t able to respond.

  “Ever since it happened, everyone has treated me like a victim,” Avery said as we sat in her room. “It made people so uncomfortable that most of them just stopped talking to me, but I could see it in their faces—they pitied me.” She took a deep breath. “I thought finally, here was someone who didn’t know, someone who wouldn’t treat me like a walking tragedy.”

  I told her I understood, and I did, in a way. I’d never been pitied, but once people knew what my parents did for a living, they began to change. At first they would think my odd distinction was great and I was inevitably invited to Halloween parties, where everyone would stand around watching me like I could conjure dead people into the room. When the initial cool factor wore out, the rumors started, usually stuff about late-night séances that supposedly went on at home or how my parents were actually hunting vampires or were storing withered corpses in the basement. The weirder, the better—people seemed to believe only the craziest rumors, and instead of invitations to parties I received strange looks and cold shoulders.

  “Tell me about that night,” I said. “What happened?”

  Avery looked over at her dresser, where the framed photos of Adam stood arranged in a half circle. “We went to a party to celebrate the first day of spring break,” she began. “Only, I didn’t want to go. Dante had run off. He was missing and I wanted to stay home in case he came back.”

  The tiny dog heard his name and poked his head through the doorway. Avery patted the carpet and he trotted over and curled up next to her, but not before stopping to growl at me first.

  “Adam insisted. He said it would do me some good to get out and stop worrying for a while.” She paused to rub Dante’s belly.

  “It was just your typical party,” Avery went on. “Loud. Crowded. Normally, I would have loved it. But I was worried about Dante, and Adam was hanging out with his friends more than me.

  “I told him I needed to go home and asked if I could borrow his car. We didn’t have a fight or anything, but we didn’t kiss goodbye, either. He said he’d call me the next day, and I left. It was the last time I saw him alive.”

  Avery was slowly petting Dante, and soon his beady little eyes closed.

  “His mom called late that night. She said there’d been an accident. She said it was bad. Very, very bad.” She kept her eyes focused on her dog, who was now asleep. “Her voice sounded so broken, so hollow. And I knew. I knew that Adam was dead.”

  “How does Jared fit in to all of this?” I asked.

  Avery winced at the sound of his name. “He arrived at the party after I left. Callie overheard them talking. She said Jared was upset about something and said he needed to talk to Adam alone. They left together, in Jared’s car.

  “They were on Main Street. A witness saw the car jerk suddenly to the left, then it crashed into a telephone pole.”

  She looked at me. “It wasn’t an accident. Jared intentionally hit that pole.”

  I frowned. “Why do you think that?”

  “I went to see him at the hospital. He told me about the fight. He admitted that he had been driving and that the accident was his fault.” She looked down at her hands. “Jared had a death wish. Problem is, the wrong person died.”

  “I’m really sorry,” I said. “What can I do?”

  “I’m the one who’s sorry. I should have told you, Charlotte.”

  “It’s okay. I understand why you didn’t.”

  Avery nodded. “Just don’t treat me any differently, okay? No sympathy, no pity. Promise.”

  “I promise.”

  My cell phone rang and I reached into my backpack. “It’s my mom. I forgot to tell her where I was going after school.” I flipped open the phone.

  “Charlotte, thank God! Where are you? The school called and said you missed classes today!”

  “I’m fine, Mom. I’m at Avery’s. I’ll be home soon.”

  “Did something happen? What’s going on?”

  “I’ll explain later. Everything’s fine. Really.”

  How was I going to explain my day to her? Everything was not fine. I got into a fight with my sister, my phantom followers had attacked Bliss and my new best friend had come undone in front of my eyes. Avery was trying to pretend that she was handling her boyfriend’s death, but her anguish was still there, waiting to be triggered. I understood now why she always steered clear of Main Street and why she was such a careful driver. She was building a life around avoidance, trying to keep away from anything that might bring back painful memories.

  I got off the phone and told Avery that I needed to head home soon. “You going to be okay?”

  Avery gave me a sad smile. “Sure. Time heals all wounds, right?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She looked surprised. I continued, “Time teaches you how to live with your wounds. It doesn’t erase them. Not completely.”

  Avery hugged me. “Thank you. You’re the first person who hasn’t said that I’ll forget all of this one day.”

  “You won’t. But it’ll get better, I know it.”

  I walked home hoping that what I had said was true. I didn’t have a lot of personal experience with grief, but in my parents’ line of work, I’d been around it and had witnessed how people dealt with losing someone. There were those who spent the rest of their lives mourning and those who went on living. I truly hoped that Avery would be in the second group, but she wasn’t there yet. Of course, I reminded myself, Adam’s death had occurred less than a year before. No one could expect her to bounce right back. She needed time and support.

  And eventually, she needed to face Jared.

  There was still so much Avery didn’t know. What had happened in the car that night? Why had Jared swerved directly into the telephone pole? I had spoken to him only twice, but he didn’t strike me as having a death wish, like Avery had said. Only Jared had the answers. I remembered the newspaper article Noah talked about. What had Bliss written that had angered Avery so much? I hoped Noah would find me a copy soon.

  My parents were waiting for me as soon as I walked in the front door. I’d never caused the school to call home before, and they seemed confused as to whether they should be really angry or really worried. Shane was in the living room, so they didn’t yell too much. I kept telling them that everything was fine, but they weren’t buying it, so I came clean about what happened with Bliss.

  “What do you mean, she lost her voice?” Dad asked.

  “It was like she couldn’t talk. She was fine later. But it was scary.”

  Shane called us over to the living room. He had the Courtyard Café footage displayed on his monitor. “I think Charlotte’s right about the trigger being the color pink,” he said. “But there’s more to it. Watch this.”

  I watched the footage of me and Annalise, but nothing new stood out. When the clip ended Shane turned to us. “Did you catch it?”

  Mom frowned.
“No. What are we looking for?”

  “Three things happen immediately before the white figures appear. Watch the second clip.”

  After the second clip, I understood. “It’s the color pink, my name and the sound of my voice. Those three things combined form the trigger?”

  Shane clapped his hands together. “Exactly!”

  I sat down next to him. “Great. So I’ll ask people to call me Charlie instead of Charlotte. Problem solved.”

  “Not quite.” Shane swiveled in his chair to face my parents. “There’s energy when even one of the triggers is present. It’s only when all three happen at the same time that the energy manifests itself.” He looked at me. “So unless you change your name, stop talking and are never around anything pink, the energy will remain in some form, even if it’s weakened.”

  “Okay, plan B. We throw some holy water around, say a couple of prayers and send these guys back to Charleston.”

  Mom sighed. “Charlotte, I wish it were that simple. Once energy like this is triggered, it’s unlikely to just stop.”

  Dad adopted his professional voice. “Think of it this way—a boulder is rolling down a hill. That boulder will stay in motion and keep rolling until it hits something bigger than itself, something strong enough to bring it to a standstill. I’m afraid we need something stronger than removing one trigger to stop this kind of energy.”

  “What about what I need? I need this thing, whatever it is, to leave me alone!” I could feel tears burning in my eyes. I didn’t want to hear about big boulders. My parents were the paranormal experts. Why couldn’t they take care of this without me? It shouldn’t be up to teenaged girls to usher restless sprits into the afterlife. I had enough problems of my own without the dilemmas of dead people added to the list.

  Mom rubbed my shoulder. “We’ll figure this out, honey. We’ll help you.”

  I realized someone was missing from our little gathering. “Where’s Annalise?”

  Mom stopped rubbing. “She left this afternoon.”

  “Left for where?”

  Dad was putting on headphones. “She went back to school.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t believe that Annalise had left without saying goodbye to me. She’d never done that before. Of course, we’d never really fought like that, with me storming off and her driving away. “When is she coming back?”

  Mom was looking over my shoulders at the monitors. “We’ll see her at Thanksgiving,” she mumbled. Thanksgiving was nearly two months away. I needed to speak to Annalise before then. I couldn’t bear to have my sister angry with me for that long. I reasoned that I should give her a little time to cool off, though. A few days, maybe.

  Mom was distracted, so I slipped out of my chair and went upstairs.

  I had been staying away from my room over the past few weeks, sleeping downstairs and grabbing clean clothes directly from the laundry room. I stood in my bedroom doorway for a moment, feeling like a stranger. I crossed the room and sat on my still-made bed.

  “I don’t know how to help you,” I said out loud. I kept my voice low, almost a whisper. It felt silly to be talking to myself. Annalise had been right, though—I did think we were dealing with something that was more than just energy. I really felt that whatever it was possessed some sort of intelligence, although I couldn’t explain why.

  “Can you hear me? It’s Charlotte. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do for you.”

  I waited for some kind of acknowledgment. A sound or a feeling. Anything. After a few minutes, I got up and searched for something pink. I found Annalise’s sweater balled up on the floor and grabbed it, then sat back down on my bed.

  “Okay, one more time. This is Charlotte. I know you’re here.”

  I thought I saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye. I took a deep breath.

  “Right. So you can hear me. I know you’re looking for your daughter, but I don’t know how to find her. I need help.”

  I wished I had brought the EVP recorder upstairs. Maybe they were talking to me but I couldn’t hear them. I was about to go downstairs when it happened.

  Someone sat down next to me.

  I felt the pressure on the mattress, and when I looked over, there was an indentation on my bedspread. I slowly moved my hand over the spot. It felt icy cold. I pulled my hand back. The hair on the back of my neck prickled.

  Someone was sitting next to me.

  Someone I couldn’t see or hear, but I felt them, as surely as I would have felt my mom or dad if they had sat down. I stiffened and wished that I hadn’t triggered them while I was alone. They were getting stronger, strong enough that I could feel them, and it terrified me.

  “I can’t do this,” I whispered. “I can’t find her for you.”

  Whatever had been sitting next to me immediately got up. I panicked. Had I made it angry?

  “I’m sorry, really I am, but I just can’t. I don’t know how.”

  I stood up to leave, but at that moment I heard a scratching sound coming from my nightstand. I froze. I didn’t want to turn around and look. Something was happening directly behind me and I did not want to look at it. I could feel my heart pounding, could feel my legs glued in place. My bedroom door was open, but I was convinced that if I tried to run, it would slam shut in my face and I would be trapped. I opened my mouth.

  “Mom!” I screamed as loud as I could. “Dad!”

  They heard the fear in my voice and began running up the stairs. Shane was shouting something about grabbing a camera. My parents burst into my room. Dad was looking everywhere, trying to figure out what was going on, but Mom came over to me right away.

  “What happened? Are you okay?”

  “Something was in here with me. I heard scratching. On the nightstand.”

  Dad walked over to the little table and looked at it. “Karen, you should see this.”

  Mom got up. “Oh, my.”

  I still couldn’t bring myself to look. “What is it?”

  “A message. It looks like it was scratched into the wood.”

  Dad crouched on the ground and plucked something from the floor. “A picture hook,” he said, holding it up. I saw a small hole in the wall where the hook had been.

  “What does the message say?” I asked, my voice wobbly.

  When they didn’t answer me right away, I turned around and inched closer to the nightstand. There, in scraggly letters, read just two words.

  You will.

  eleven

  Noah gave me the newspaper article about Adam and Jared’s accident the very next day during AV class.

  “Don’t let anyone else see it,” he whispered as he slipped me the folded page. “They might, you know, freak out a little.”

  I nodded and slid the paper into my backpack. “No problem. I’ll read it at home.”

  I’d had enough of people freaking out. The school was buzzing with rumors about Jared and Avery’s confrontation in the parking lot the day before. Thankfully, Jared didn’t show up for school, but the cheerleaders were on high alert. If they overheard someone talking about what had happened, they confronted that person or stared them down. They were a force to be reckoned with, particularly when Avery was involved.

  It was strange, but I finally felt like I fit in with the other girls. I now knew the big secret-that-wasn’t-really-a-secret, and I shared the other girls’ commitment to keeping Avery safe from vicious gossip. I also felt more bonded with Avery. We shared a common goal, even though she didn’t know it: we both wanted to be treated as totally normal. Of course, Avery was normal, but dealing with tragedy, whereas I was dealing with ghosts who were getting stronger every day and taking a more active role in my life.

  You will. The two words etched into my nightstand felt tattooed on my brain. You will what? You will help us, no matter how hard you fight it? Or you will know how to help us? I couldn’t decide whether it was a threat or a prediction.

  Or both.

  “Charlotte, you there?”

  I bl
inked. Noah was watching me.

  “Sorry. I was daydreaming.”

  “Right.” He motioned to the computer screen. “I asked if you thought we should lead with the tree ceremony or the soccer highlights.”

  My answer was automatic. “Tree ceremony.”

  I hadn’t seen Bliss since our strange confrontation. She was avoiding me, and I was fine with that. I was making a more conscious effort to balance the sports footage with other news, and the tree ceremony was my attempt at apologizing. Bliss had been out of line, but rendering her speechless in the hallway was something I felt guilty about.

  I tried to focus on editing, but my mind kept wandering back to my paranormal problem. The main question I had to answer was what had happened to Charlotte Pickens. If I could figure that out, maybe I could find her final resting place and lead her parents there.

  I nudged Noah. “I have a question for you.”

  He frowned at the screen. “Is it why Bliss is wearing purple and green? Because she shouldn’t. She kind of looks like an eggplant.”

  I laughed. “No comment. But seriously, can I ask you something?”

  He turned his chair toward me. “Ask away.”

  “Have you ever known someone who ran away from home?”

  He raised an eyebrow at me. “Do I need to be worried?”

  “No, it’s not me. Promise. It’s for this, uh, documentary my parents are working on.”

  “Well, if it’s for the advancement of documentary film, then yes, I do know someone who ran away from home. My mom.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. She left home at seventeen.”

  “Wow.” I hesitated before asking my next question, unsure if I was getting too personal. “Can I ask why?”

  “She and my dad kind of…eloped.”

  “How romantic!”

  Noah blushed. He was cute when he did that, I thought. If he was only another year older, he’d be perfect boyfriend material. Now I was blushing, I was sure of it. I doubted that Noah saw me that way. We worked well together and had interesting conversations, but he’d never even hinted that he saw me as anything other than a friend, and I was okay with that. Callie had been talking a lot lately about wanting to set me up with Harris Abbott, a senior on the football team. I wasn’t sure I was ready to add a boyfriend to the chaos that was my life, and I definitely didn’t want to go on a blind date, but the concept of lumbering through my entire senior year without being kissed was more than a little depressing.