The Awakening of Sunshine Girl (The Haunting of Sunshine Girl)

by Paige McKenzie

  I slip the rusty knife back into my pocket where it belongs and run back outside.

  “Can I ask you something?” I say before I swing my leg over trusty Clementine.

  “’Course,” Lucio answers, fastening his helmet’s strap around his neck and handing me mine.

  “Aidan’s research is all about humans moving on without us—and if most of them could, they would, right?” Lucio nods. “But Michael Weir’s spirit escaped Aidan’s lab and turned dark because he thought he had unfinished business here on Earth. And he’s not the only spirit in the world who feels like that—that his life got snuffed out too soon. What about the others who don’t want to move on?”

  Lucio cocks his head to the side. “Aidan has theories for that too. He thinks that over time spirits might be able to linger without going dark.”

  “But how much time?” My skin is still pink from exposure to the fire demon’s heat. “What if we’re extinct before that happens?”

  “We’ll just have to eliminate all the dark spirits before we go.”

  Yet another use for the word eliminate. Lucio makes it sound so simple.

  Certain Powers

  Nolan is so obviously heartsick that, under different circumstances, I might actually feel sorry for the boy. But instead, I keep my focus on using his weakness to my advantage. To his credit, I don’t think he’s the type to spill his secrets easily. Lucky for me, he is so tied up in knots over the girl that he can’t help himself.

  “I’m supposed to be protecting her,” he moans miserably. “But I don’t even know where she is!”

  I nod sympathetically. I know exactly where she is. I just can’t get there.

  “But Victoria’s letter”—how I hate saying that woman’s name, even now—“said that it was your job to guard information. You can do that even when she’s thousands of miles away. I can help you.”

  “I know,” Nolan nods. “You have been helping me, sharing what you found in the professor’s papers. It’s just a matter of time before we find something that will be useful to her.”

  The poor boy waits eagerly every day as I show up with a fresh notebook or file folder filled with the professor’s notes. He pores over them each day, as though all the information he’s supposed to be guarding is just another page away, as though the very next line might be the one that explains everything. He’s waiting to call Sunshine until he’s found the answers he’s looking for: why they can’t touch, why her mentor thinks luiseach are going extinct, why she’s been taken so far from him.

  He has no idea that all of my research is fake. That I’m the one writing barely sensible scribbles in the tattered notebooks he believes sat in the university’s basement for so long.

  “But,” he continues, “there’s been nothing to make heads or tails of Sunshine’s message.”

  “Maybe we should listen to it again.”

  Nolan reaches for his phone and presses play. I’ve heard this message at least a half dozen times by now, and every time my body reacts to that girl’s voice: goose bumps prickle on my skin; a knot of adrenaline surges across my belly.

  Halfway through the message I reach out and press pause. “What does she mean by handling multiple spirits?”

  “The day before she left with him, she had a sort of . . . breakdown in the hospital parking lot. There was an accident, and there were multiple casualties, and there were just too many spirits coming at her at once.”

  “What do you mean, a breakdown?”

  Nolan shrugs. “I wasn’t there. But she told me it was terrifying. Her heart was pounding, her temperature dropped, and she could barely move.”

  “Wow. Sounds scary.” In fact, it sounds like a weakness. I force my lips into a straight line.

  Nolan nods. “It was.” He presses play again. Sunshine’s voice fills the room once more, finally saying the words I was most hoping to hear: I wish you were here. Because if she wants Nolan there, he can go, even with Aidan’s protections in place. And I can go with him, as long as he wants me at his side.

  “I should have called her back.” Nolan speaks over her voice asking him to do just that.

  “You wanted to wait until we found some information that could help her.” He’s told me as much before.

  “That’s not the only reason.”

  “It’s because you can’t touch her.” Nolan nods like his head weighs a million pounds. I bite my lip as though I’m trying to decide whether or not to confess something. Finally I say, “There’s something I saw in my research. I wasn’t sure whether I should tell you—”

  “Tell me,” Nolan interrupts, and his voice is so firm that it almost makes me jump.

  “Well,” I begin, “I saw something in the professor’s notes about certain powers a luiseach’s mentor can have.” I pronounce the word correctly now, just as Nolan taught me. “A mentor can”—I pause as though I’m searching for the right word, as though I haven’t planned out every aspect of this conversation—“can control certain aspects of his mentee’s life.”

  “Like what?” Nolan asks darkly.

  I shake my head frantically. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s just . . . I couldn’t think of any other explanation for why you two can’t touch each other! Not when other protectors and luiseach can.”

  “So you think her mentor”—to Nolan’s credit, he’s never actually told me Aidan’s name—“put some kind of spell on her so she feels sick anytime she touches another person?” Nolan shakes his head, answering his own question. “No. I’ve seen her touch her mom, touch Victoria. There must be something different about when we touch.”

  I look down at the table, tracing the wood with my fingers like I’m too shy to look into his eyes when I say, “Maybe it’s because when the two of you touch, it’s a romantic sort of touch. You know, not platonic.”

  I figured this out weeks ago—Aidan’s machinations are the only explanation for what’s going on between Nolan and Sunshine. I was pleased that Aidan thought to do such a thing, to limit her attachments to the human world. At least some part of him couldn’t deny what might have to be done.

  When I look up, Nolan is blushing feverishly. “But why would he do that?”

  “To control her,” I answer simply. Oh Aidan, you made it so easy for me to turn this boy against you. “Like she’s nothing more to him than a puppet on a string.”

  Nolan stands so quickly that his chair clatters to the ground behind him. “I have to tell her.”

  “Maybe we should wait,” I say hesitantly. “I mean, we don’t know for sure—”

  Nolan shakes his head, righteous indignation clear on his face. “She has to know what Aidan did. I’m supposed to be protecting her. If he could do something like this, who knows what else he’s capable of?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Almost

  It’s sunset by the time we arrive back at the campus. Clementine screeches to a stop outside of the mansion.

  “Thanks,” I say, handing Lucio my helmet. What’s left of my hair is still damp.

  “You’re welcome.” He smiles.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “’Course.”

  “How did you learn to do that? I mean, earlier—how did you learn to combine your powers with another luiseach if there were no luiseach left here to train with you by the time you were old enough?”

  “It wasn’t easy,” Lucio admits. “It was pretty disappointing, actually, after all that time watching luiseach on the playground, waiting for it to be my turn. But one by one they all left over the years, and I knew I’d be facing my lessons alone.” He cocks his head to the side. “But Aidan is a good teacher. He took time away from his lab to make sure I’d learn everything the luiseach on the other side of the rift learned. And Victoria was here sometimes, you know. She’d pretend to know a lot less than she did, taking lessons alongside me.” He smiles at the memory.

  Victoria told me her work took her away from home when Anna was young. I shou
ld have guessed her “business trips” brought here down here.

  “Sounds like she was a better luiseach than she was an art teacher.”

  Lucio laughs. “Yeah, can’t quite imagine her doling out paintbrushes and grading collages.”

  “It wasn’t her strong suit,” I agree.

  “She was good at her real job,” Lucio says, his voice turning solemn. He looks away, like he’s thinking about what Victoria gave up—her powers—to help set her daughter’s spirit free.

  “Why did he have to make Anna my test?” I whisper, dropping my head into my hands. I don’t understand what Anna has to do with any of this. And I certainly don’t understand why the time isn’t right for her spirit to move on.

  Lucio speaks before I can ask. “Looks like Aidan is back in his lab.” He gestures to Aidan’s SUV parked in front of us.

  “I guess we should go tell him what happened.” Suddenly I remember something else I never got to tell him, about the man in the black hat I saw at the airport, the man I saw again in the fishing village. I wonder: Did Lucio see him too?

  Before I can ask, Lucio says, “I’m glad Aidan is still working tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t want him to see it when I finally kissed his daughter.”

  Thoughts of the man in black vanish as Lucio wraps his arms around me, his face hovering just above mine. His fingers rub my chin, and I can feel the blisters where the fire burned him earlier. Warmth radiates from his lips, and I can’t seem to stop my own lips from pursing in expectation.

  I close my eyes, but it isn’t Lucio’s face I imagine in front of mine. It’s Nolan’s. The last time I saw Nolan he wanted to kiss me good-bye. It would have been our first kiss. It would have been my first kiss. But I wouldn’t let him touch me. I couldn’t.

  Being with Nolan never felt like being with Lucio has felt. It certainly didn’t feel like this: cool hands, soft breath, waiting mouth. When Nolan touched me, it never felt quite right.

  Lucio’s lips feel soft against mine as he kisses me, but it only lasts a moment as I pull away. Being touched by someone else right now feels wrong too.

  “I’m sorry,” I breathe.

  Lucio shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have just assumed—”

  I cut him off. “It’s not your fault. It’s just—” Just what? Just that there’s this boy back home whom I’ve never kissed and barely touched and can’t stop thinking about every time you touch me?

  “You don’t have to explain,” Lucio offers. “Really.” He turns and heads into the house.

  I don’t think I could explain even if I wanted to.

  In the bathroom I look in the mirror above the sink and survey the day’s damage. I peel off my T-shirt, ripped and shredded in patches where the fabric just sort of melted away from the demon’s heat. The metal rivets on my shorts are still dangerously hot, but I manage to slide them off without undoing the button and zipper, feeling the weight of the weapon as the shorts drop to the ground. My face is covered in soot, and my skin is nearly as pink as that man’s had been when the demon possessed him. I was burned all over when I ran into him. But it will heal: demons can’t really damage us.

  Though it could, apparently, damage my hair. I guess technically hair isn’t part of me—it’s not actually alive.

  Before it caught fire, my hair was tied up into a ponytail on top of my head, which I guess explains why it burned the way it did. The flames started at my neckline, so first they ate off the long pieces hanging down from the pony tail, the pieces that were pulled up my scalp and into the elastic band that held everything in place before it too turned to ash.

  Now I study my reflection so I can see exactly what is left: the hair closest to my neckline has been singed almost completely off, as though someone took a razor to it. The hair closer to the top of my head didn’t burn completely, but the tips of my ponytail burned off. The layer of hair I have left isn’t even long enough to pass my shoulders.

  On the bright side, the frizzball is a whole heck of a lot smaller.

  I must be feeling better if I’m back to looking on the bright side of things. I’m not sure I could have found the bright side of things with a magnifying glass yesterday.

  Slowly I unwrap the strip of cloth from Lucio’s T-shirt. The cut on my palm is long but not deep. I run it under cold water in the sink, biting my lip when it stings.

  I can’t believe I almost kissed Lucio. Or almost let him kiss me.

  Don’t lie to yourself, Sunshine. You almost kissed him.

  Maybe he was the one who started it, but I had plenty of time to stop it before we got as close as we did. He literally announced his intentions ahead of time. I could have run away from him right then and there, but I didn’t. I waited until our lips were only a heartbeat apart before I pulled away.

  Lucio is not the boy I want to kiss. I mean, it’s not that I don’t want to kiss him. Not exactly. It’s just . . . I want to kiss Nolan more.

  Nolan. I miss the sound of his voice and his calm assurance that every problem has a solution that can be found if we just look hard enough. I should have asked him to look for the solution to this problem—to us.

  Why does it feel like I just cheated on my boyfriend? Nolan isn’t my boyfriend. Can you call someone your boyfriend when you’ve barely touched him and never kissed him?

  But today isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way. It’s felt like cheating every time Lucio touched me, every time I leaned against him to soak up his warmth, every time I compared him to Nolan.

  So now I don’t just feel like I have a sort-of boyfriend I can’t kiss; it also feels like I’ve been having an affair with someone I could kiss but won’t.

  I get into the shower, washing off the soot and the sweat from the day. By the time I emerge from the bathroom, the sun’s long since set. I go to my room and shut the door behind me, climbing under the covers even though I’m still soaking wet. The tips of my newly short hair brush coolly against the nape of my neck, and I remember Lucio’s fingertips brushing against the very same spot.

  I lift my phone from the nightstand. I should call Nolan and apologize. But what exactly would I be apologizing for? Besides, it’s abundantly clear that he does not want to talk to me. He hasn’t called me once since I got here, not even after I left him a message practically begging him to.

  Victoria’s letter said Nolan was my protector, that our lives would be tied together for as long as we lived. But no one ever asked him whether he wanted that job. I can’t help what I am—I was born a luiseach. But maybe Nolan doesn’t have to be a part of all of this.

  If I let him go, maybe he could live a normal life. He could find a regular girl—no, not entirely regular. Nolan would still want someone quirky, maybe even someone who believed in ghosts and spirits just like he does. But this girl would be able to walk down the street without tripping over her shoes, and she’d be able to make it through the day without any spiritual interruptions. She’d have a regular name like Jessica or Jennifer or Elizabeth, and she’d be able to touch him, to hug him, to kiss him.

  He’d be so much happier with a girl like that. And if I care about him as much as I think I do, I should want him to be happy. Even if that means being happy without me.

  I toss my phone onto a pile of dirty clothes on the floor across the room. I won’t trudge out into the forest behind the house, searching for a signal so I can call him again, won’t leave him another message updating him on the latest luiseach shenanigans, asking him to call me back. Maybe, if enough time goes by, he’ll forget he ever heard the word luiseach.

  Maybe he’ll forget he ever knew a girl named Sunshine.

  In my dreams tonight I’m not a helpless infant, crying mournfully. There is no face hovering above my own, no arms holding me too tight.

  I’m back in Ridgemont, with a bird’s-eye view of a crowded coffee shop on Main Street. I scan the crowd, and my heart skips a beat when I see Nolan. He’s wea
ring his grandfather’s leather jacket. His hair is falling across his forehead. I try to call out to him, but no sound comes out of my mouth. I try to reach for him, but my arms aren’t there. I’m not a baby in this dream, but I’m still utterly powerless. In this dream I’m not anything at all, really. I’m just a set of eyes watching what’s happening, like it’s playing out in front of me on a movie screen.

  A girl sits down across from Nolan, her back to me. She has long hair—not short and jagged like mine is now—that cascades down her back in perfect, nonfrizzy curls. She holds herself so easily that I can tell she’s never tripped over anything in her life, never stubbed her toe just taking her pants off, never forgotten to put glue down before dropping a jar of glitter over her collage.

  She never turns from Nolan’s face. Clearly she isn’t distracted by spirits whizzing past. Unlike me, she’s not constantly haunted. She can focus on him completely.

  She reaches out and rests her hand on top of his. Her grip is soft and sure, and she doesn’t so much as cringe when their skin makes contact.

  I manage to wake myself up before I see what happens next. Before she does more of the things I can’t. Before she reaches over and touches his knee. Before she rests her forehead against his. Before they kiss.

  My heart is pounding and I’m covered in sweat, just like after one of my baby nightmares. And just like I do when I wake from one of those dreams, I reassure myself that it wasn’t real. I practically conjured that girl myself before I fell asleep tonight, thinking about the normal girl Nolan might date if I were out of the picture.

  Though I have to admit, I’m a little surprised my subconscious gave her hair as curly as my own.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  On the Precipice

  In the morning it’s back to my not-so-real luiseach work. My complete-and-total-opposite-of-real luiseach work. By the time I make my way across the courtyard Lucio is already inside, waiting for me at the top of the stairs, close enough to the door that I can almost feel the spirits, but far enough that I’m capable of having an actual conversation without my teeth chattering or, you know, passing out.