The Guardian's Playlist

by J Powell Ogden

  Right. I’d forgotten. He must’ve found an old one to use. “Still working on it…the funding that is.”

  “Well…” he paused, and I held my breath. “If you are working on it, then I guess I can give you a ride. Pick you up in a half hour?

  “Sounds great.”

  I tested the Pop Tart with the tip of my finger before picking it up, took a bite and raced quietly upstairs to get changed. I threw on a pair of old but respectable jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweater, and then ran a comb through my silky straight hair. Meri had done a great job on it.

  I packed my tote with the usual necessities and then started back down the stairs only to pull up short when it occurred to me that I might need one more thing. I didn’t know why it was important, but I raced back up to my room, dug it out of its hiding place and shoved it in my pants pocket. Then I dashed off a note to Mom and Dad, telling them I was going for a drive with Jason, laced up my hiking boots, grabbed my coat and headed out into the cool fall sunshine.

  When Jason turned off the Audi’s engine in the parking lot of Lewis Woods, he surveyed the muddy autumn field and the forest beyond. “So…you want me to just take off now? As soon as you get out of the car?”

  I nodded, not wanting to give anything else away.

  “And this is because you want to do some reflecting for one of your club projects?” His eyes lingered on my face, and then he absently pulled down the sun visor mirror to check his dark hair, which was always freshly cut above his meticulously groomed brows. He ran his fingers through it to muss it up. I had forgotten how much I’d liked to do that for him.

  “Right,” I confirmed.

  “And you didn’t ask your parents or your sister because…?”

  “I missed you?” Even as a partial truth, I knew that wouldn’t fly.

  “Nice try,” he said with a touch of sarcasm.

  “Look, Jason, my parents…well…they wouldn’t think it was such a good idea for me to be off hiking through the woods alone. You know my parents,” I reminded him. “They worry.”

  Both of Jason’s parents were successful plastic surgeons, and he and his sister spent most of their time on their own. It had always amused him when my mom gave me the third degree every time he and I went anywhere together.

  He rolled his eyes and smiled. “Yes. I remember. So I guess I’m springing you from the Big House, then?” I smiled back, relieved.

  “Something like that. Can you be back in two hours?”

  He leaned in. “Sure.” Last summer, this would have been the point where we kissed—for a while—but instead, I ignored the electricity that was building in the air between us. I turned my face away first and reached for the door handle to let myself out.

  “Um…okay. Thanks,” I said.

  “Cate?” he called after me. “You know you can call me if you ever need anything. I meant what I said. We’re still friends.”

  “I know, Jason. Same.”

  As he drove off, I turned and faced the forest, mulling over the fact that my parents had no idea where I was. A small voice inside my head chastised me for lying to them. You should call them, it urged. At least tell them where you are.

  You’re stalling, I shot back.

  I knew it. I was stalling. Everything visible in the landscape before me—the field, the autumn leaves, the white fence around the riding ring—they were all painted bright by the glorious October sun, everything but the pines. They were the only dark point on the horizon, and that’s where I was headed. I was scared. I won’t deny it. But I knew Michael needed me, and I ordered my feet to move.

  TEN

  SOMETHING TO

  WRAP YOUR HEAD AROUND

  AS I WALKED into the mouth of the forest, I studied every shadow and inhaled deeply through my nose, but I detected only the cool scents of pine trees and autumn air. I don’t know what I expected. That Michael would immediately emerge out of thin air and welcome me back?

  I moved deeper into the woods. Then I remembered my promise to God during my last visit, that if I made it out of the woods alive with my sanity intact, I would never venture into them alone again. I smiled ruefully as it occurred to me that breaking a promise to God was probably not the best way to begin a ghost hunt.

  “Sorry,” I whispered, letting my gaze drift from tree to tree—and then I smelled it: Higher. It was faint, but unmistakable. He was here.

  My heart sped up, and the adrenaline rush that followed poured an emotion into my veins somewhere between sheer terror and pure ecstasy, not unlike the feeling you get as you crest the first hill of the Millennium Force at Cedar Point Amusement Park.

  “I know you’re here,” I whispered. I waited, listening.

  Nothing.

  I walked farther down the path, and the scent seemed to follow me, still faint, but intoxicating. When I reached the fork in the path where the pine forest ended, I looked down the autumn leaf-covered trail that descended to the river and then up toward the overlook, unsure which way to go.

  “Michael…” I whispered. His name tickled the roof of my mouth.

  Nothing.

  Crap, how do you call a ghost anyway? What could I possibly offer to entice him to show himself to me?

  I took the path up and out of the pines, and the wind picked up as I approached the clearing above the gorge overlook. The view was bright and clear under the turquoise October sky, but the wind had blown away the ethereal fragrance I had grown accustomed to over the last mile. I felt a stab of fear in the pit of my stomach.

  “Please don’t go,” I whispered.

  Nothing.

  “Stay,” I said louder.

  Nothing.

  Then I shouted, “I’m here to help you, you stupid dumbass!” My voice echoed over the brink and back like a boomerang.

  Nothing.

  I dug into my pocket, letting my fist close around the small object I’d felt compelled to bring. I knew why now. I stretched out my arm in front of me and opened my hand to reveal the golden plastic ring with its blue bead sparkling on my palm.

  “You still owe me!” I shouted into the wind.

  Nothing.

  “You still owe me,” I whispered.

  “I can’t believe you hung on to that…Catherine…” His voice was a sigh that disappeared into the wind as he whispered my name. A shiver ran down my spine. I let my eyes fall closed and lifted my chin to answer. Then the stillness was broken by the sound of a couple of elderly hikers coming up the path.

  They shot me curious, anxious looks as they rounded the corner obviously having heard my shouting. I eyed the hikers impatiently and then leaned casually against a tree and stared at them, unabashed, sending thoughts such as “Get the hell out of here,” in their direction. They stopped briefly at the overlook, glancing frequently back over their shoulders at me. Then, growing uncomfortable under my unwavering gaze, hurried back down the path in the direction they had come.

  I knew Michael was here, and my heart pounded like mad at the thought of seeing him, talking with him, but we needed to be somewhere more private, somewhere I could speak freely without looking like a raving lunatic. Having no idea whether or not he would listen to me, I turned my head to the side and whispered conspiratorially, “Follow me.” Then I turned my back on the overlook, stepped off the path, and headed deep into the forest.

  When I reached a tiny clearing surrounded by tightly packed trees, I dropped down onto a moss-covered log to wait. The midafternoon sunlight penetrating the canopy reflected off the bronze, pine-needled floor, casting everything it touched in sepia tones.

  I spent the first few minutes craning my neck from side to side, hoping to catch a glimpse of him the instant he materialized—if he materialized. After waiting for a while, my heartbeat slowed, and I looped the little ring onto my pinky finger and spun it around, watching the scattered points of light it threw move in an arc across the woodland floor. I don’t know how long the ring entertained me before I realized I was no longer alone.<
br />
  I lifted my eyes slowly and found him sitting cross-legged on the forest floor with his back against one of the larger pine trees just a few feet in front of me. My heart ached as my gaze trickled down over the cuts and bruises his otherworldly body bore from his fall. He was still wearing his cut-offs, still missing one shoe, and he was studying me unselfconsciously, as if he didn’t realize I could see him yet. His wide-set eyes were luminous and deep, like the churning wake of a ship on a north Atlantic morning. When our eyes finally locked, he looked startled, and then a look of profound relief flooded his features.

  “I didn’t know if you would show yourself to me again,” I whispered, afraid that if I spoke too loudly, I might scare him back into the afternoon breeze.

  He shook his head slightly, his eyes clouding over. “I wasn’t sure if I would make it back,” he murmured, and then he looked away, his jaw tensing. His coloring was brighter today in the afternoon light, but he flickered gently against the forest backdrop. He was at once entirely alien and entirely human.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  He knitted his brows together. “I…um, how to explain it…” He ran his hands through his hair, which still looked uncomfortably damp with the sweat his body had pumped out on that hot summer day he died. “I…” He paused again, looking down at his hands. “Remember how I told you that it’s sometimes hard for me to tell where I end and the things around me begin?” He paused, waiting for me to consider that.

  I nodded.

  “It’s getting harder,” he said, looking me worriedly in the eyes. “It’s like I’m losing myself—like I’m disappearing.”

  An electric current sliced through my heart as I thought of last night’s nightmare. I saw him being dragged under…

  “Into darkness?” I prompted, scared of what his response would be. He looked up, surprised, and then leaned forward and gestured with his hands as he answered.

  “Yeah…it’s like, I watched you come into the forest, but I couldn’t stay focused on you.” He paused and shook his head, frustrated. “But then I saw you smile, and I felt more…pulled together somehow, more like me. But it wasn’t until you held up the ring—that stupid little ring—that I felt entirely here. It was like it gave me something to wrap my head around, to pull me back.” His gray eyes were intense as he struggled to help me understand.

  “Back from where?”

  “I don’t know. Nowhere…nothing…” His eyes darkened with fear and confusion. “If you hadn’t come back—”

  “But I did,” I pointed out. A rustling sound caused us both to glance into the woods to see the tail of a chipmunk disappearing into the hollowed-out stump of a tree.

  He rubbed his temples with his fingers, thinking. Then his eyes lit up with amusement. “Why’d you come back anyway? I didn’t think you believed I was real. I thought you thought you were stoned.”

  “Yeah, well…those weren’t my cigarettes, and when I saw you Friday, I thought maybe someone had spiked them with pot or something.” I stopped there, not wanting to tell him about the nightmare that had warned me to come back. I didn’t want to add to his fears. Instead I just said, “You really scared the crap out of me.”

  He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. The light faded from his eyes. “Do I look that…different?”

  I didn’t want him to feel worse, but there was no point in denying the obvious. “Pretty much. Yeah,” I said. “You sort of, um…waver at the edges a little, and your coloring is kind of…off.”

  He held his scraped arms up in front of him and turned them over and back. “I don’t look faded or wavery to me,” he murmured, examining them from every angle. He dropped his arms and raised his eyebrows, his eyes and thoughts refocusing on me. “And what the hell were you doing smoking, Genius? I thought you were supposed to be the smart one, smarter than me, anyway.” His voice scolded, but his eyes teased. I looked away self-consciously. I didn’t want to talk about dying grandmothers either, so I moved off the log and sat closer to him, holding up the gumball ring between us.

  “So…you remember?” I asked.

  His eyes lit up at the sight of it. “How could I forget? When all those other kids ran screaming to the back of the classroom, you dove after Fang. You sent Sister Patricia’s piles of graded spelling papers flying, you know, just like flying all over the place.” He waved his hands around his head to illustrate. “You saved him. I had to give you something.” Then an incorrigible grin spread across his face. “Though, my mom was pretty pissed at me.”

  He reached under his shirt and pulled up a washed out gold chain. Threaded onto the delicate chain was the beautiful, though faded, Claddagh ring. But how could that be, when I had seen the little ring safe in a velvet box on the table at his wake? But then I remembered I’d seen him too, in a box that day, and I realized the Claddagh was a ghost, like him.

  He fingered the ring carefully and then let it drop back down on top of his shirt, saying, “I always knew it was special to her, but my mom never told me why. And when she died—” He looked away again and then abruptly stood up and turned his back to me.

  I was shocked to find out he didn’t know that the ring was a celebration of him, so I pushed myself up off the prickly ground and stood quietly behind his shoulder.

  “Michael…”

  He shifted his weight from foot to foot, refusing to turn around. The fingers of his left hand were clasped tightly over his sword and Angel wing tattoo, exposing only thin bands of it. His knuckles were white.

  “Michael,” I called again, more softly. “Yesterday morning I asked my mom what she knew about you. She told me your parents wanted you so much, that they waited years for you and had almost given up hope that they would ever have a kid. Then, when you were born your dad gave that ring to your mom, because you were his miracle.”

  He reached out his index finger and traced a deep blackened crack in the nearest tree that had been gouged out by a lightning strike. I could smell the scent of the damp bark mingling with the clean fragrance of Higher.

  “Hope springs eternal,” he murmured, reciting the inscription on the ring from memory. His jaw flexed again, and he added bitterly, “Some miracle.” He let his hand drop to his side.

  I walked around in front of him and waited until he met my eyes.

  “You are a miracle,” I said. If I believed what our faith taught us, we were all miracles, and I searched my head for proof, then I remembered the malevolent yellow eyes that threatened me last Saturday. “Take last week, for example. If you hadn’t been there, I would have been coyote chow or a chew toy at least.”

  “How did you know?” He leaned back against the tree he’d been studying, bringing his face level with mine.

  “Pine trees and oranges,” I reminded him. “And clean. I smell it every time you’re near me.”

  “I guess I have Shawn to thank for that,” he laughed half-heartedly, bouncing his back against the tree.

  “So…what happened? How did you know about the coyote?” I asked.

  His face took on a more animated expression, “When I first died, I hid out on the ledge up here, and I sat there without moving for days. I guess I was like in shock or something, and then one night this coyote came right up in front of my face and sniffed me, like she knew I was there. I was so relieved that something had noticed me that I started following her around. It was awful before that.” He looked down at his feet, bouncing his back restlessly against the tree for a moment before going on. “With her around, I didn’t feel so lonely. She seemed to sense my presence and even curled up next to me sometimes.”

  His eyes darkened. “One night she chased after this bat that couldn’t get off the ground, and she got bit. When she started to act sick, I felt bad because I couldn’t do shit for her. I didn’t want her to die, and I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.” He stepped away from the tree and paced back and forth, agitated.

  “That night in the park, I saw her nose her way int
o the bathroom. See, earlier that day some idiot clean freak mom was like, ‘Oh my god, it smells like crap in here,’ and then she propped the door open to air it out. Stupid. I figured the coyote was looking for a place to die, so I settled down nearby in the woods to wait her out. Then you and your stupid friends showed up—”

  “Hey!”

  “Well why the hell didn’t they notice when you left to go to the bathroom, huh?” he growled. “Though I did think the whole tiki torch marshmallow thing was kind of cool. I…” His expression turned suddenly thoughtful.

  “What?” I backed up and leaned against the lightning strike tree he’d just vacated, enthralled to hear about that night from his point of view.

  “Um…” he stopped pacing and gave me a shy grin. “It was kind of like I was invited to your birthday party. Happy Birthday, by the way.” I grinned back at him, and it almost seemed normal, almost ordinary, like we were just two friends hanging out on a Sunday afternoon, trying to stay out of trouble.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Anyway, when you headed up the path to the bathroom I was like freaking out about what would happen to you if you walked in. The coyote was pretty fucked up by then. I tried shouting at you, but you couldn’t hear me, though you did seem to notice something…” He stopped talking and searched my face for confirmation, his eyes filled with curiosity.

  “I already told you, I smell Higher every time you’re nearby, and it scared the crap out of me. I thought someone was following me,” I shuddered, remembering how scared I’d been.

  “I was following you, Genius,” he teased.

  “Yeah…well…I know that now, but last Saturday I almost ran into the bathroom to get away from whoever it was and then—”

  “I sort of tried to block the door,” Michael interrupted, “and we…um…overlapped…”

  My eyes went wide with shock as I remembered how his scent had resonated through my whole body, blocking out everything else. It almost burned.

  “We overlapped?”

  “Well…it worked didn’t it? You didn’t go in, right?”