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

by Paige McKenzie

  Or not just two, as one of us is getting out of here.

  It’s even windier inside. The door slams shut behind me so hard that I’m not sure I could open it again if I wanted to. No place to go but forward then. The wind blows harder with each step I take, lifting what’s left of my hair off my shoulders so hard that if feels like someone is standing behind me, pulling my hair from my scalp.

  Inside the lab Aidan and Lucio are shouting. It sounds like the first few minutes in The Wizard of Oz when it’s still in black and white and Auntie Em is calling for Dorothy, and they’re all terrified because a twister is coming.

  Research papers and Aidan’s notebooks swirl around the room in the chaos. I’m struck by a large piece of paper on my leg. I look down and see that it’s the map Aidan had tacked to the wall, the one with four red circles and dates by each circle. Quickly I fold it and stick it in my back pocket. The map is coming home with me. Maybe Nolan will be able to make sense of it.

  “Michael Weir’s spirit wasn’t this worked up when it escaped!” Lucio cries. A flashlight spins around in the breeze, casting strange shadows on the walls. It gives off enough light that I can see that Lucio’s eyes are closed. He’s trying to reach out to one spirit at a time like he always told me to do. “You have to let me move them on before it’s too late,” he begs.

  “No!” Aidan yells to be heard over the whistle of the wind, but his voice is as even as ever. “We’d have to start all over again.”

  “Better to start over again than risk all of them turning dark!”

  My teeth are chattering so hard, it’s a wonder they don’t crack right down the middle.

  “No!” Aidan repeats. “They won’t turn dark in this much warmth.”

  “What warmth?” Lucio counters. “It’s freezing in here. And it didn’t seem to stop Michael Weir’s spirit.” His muscles flex with the effort it takes to stay upright in this windstorm. “None of the old rules apply anymore.”

  What magic did Aidan have to work to lock these spirits inside? Victoria had to give up her powers to create the energy it took to send Anna and her demon to our house in Ridgemont. How much energy did this take? Perhaps he made a deal with another luiseach, just like he did with Victoria. Split another person in two for the greater good.

  How much energy would it take to set them all free? I remember a lesson from physics class: the law of conservation of energy. Energy is never created or used up; it’s just moved from one source to another. I wonder whether I have enough energy in me to set all of these spirits free.

  I rub my hands up and down my arms, feeling the ridges and bumps of the goose bumps beneath my fingers. The wind sends the papers that had been neatly stacked on Aidan’s cold metal table flying around the lab. The flashlight smacks into the wall so hard that its batteries fall out, throwing the room into darkness.

  Neither Aidan nor Lucio notices me stepping inside the room. It starts as soon as I step over the threshold: image after image, flash after flash, one life and then another. Every memory looks and feels angry. I stumble, crashing against the table with a whomp.

  “Sunshine!” Lucio catches me before I hit the ground. We lean against each other to stay upright. I reach out blindly and lace my fingers through his. “You have to get out of here. It isn’t safe for you.”

  I manage to shake my head. Understanding crosses Lucio’s face. I close my eyes and concentrate, just like I’ve been taught.

  I hold my breath and seek out one spirit, just one. The man with the walker. His name is Joseph. But this time the memory of his life that flashes before me isn’t one of him calmly walking up and down the hallways of his retirement community. This time it’s a fight he had with his caretaker, when he was refusing to take the medicine she offered him. When he was so sick of suffering that he just wanted to let go.

  Just like he wants to let go now.

  “Get her out of here!” Aidan shouts.

  “No,” Lucio counters. “Maybe she can calm them down.”

  My thoughts exactly, I think but do not say.

  “I want to help,” I manage. And not just because Ashley will be here in less than eleven hours. The spirits in this room are suffering. It’s bad enough they’re trapped in here. Now they’re trapped and reliving some of their worst memories. Their anger shoots through my body. I slide my hands from Lucio’s and ball them into fists, digging my fingernails into my palms.

  In a flash I feel another set of hands on me. It takes the combined strength of both men to keep me upright. They lean against me. I feel warmth coming from the center of their bodies, from their heartbeats, nearly as fast as my own.

  I can do this.

  I’m so sorry you’re trapped in there. I would set you free if I could—but no, I wouldn’t. The last spirit to escape this lab became a fire demon. A breeze whips across my bare neck, sending shivers down my spine.

  No, I wouldn’t set you free. But I would help you move on, like I did Estella. I imagine it: one right after the other, like some kind of one-person luiseach assembly line in a spirit factory.

  I wish you could move on by yourself, like Aidan wants. I wish you could feel the peace that comes with releasing your grip on this Earth.

  I know your son loved baseball and that you could always taste the pills the nurse crushed into your applesauce.

  The wind shifts, the deafening whistle just one octave lower. The flashes of Joseph’s life change before my eyes: instead of seeing all the times he couldn’t do what he wanted, I begin to see the times he succeeded: the race he won in high school, the promotion he worked so hard for.

  I must be succeeding. I lower my fists.

  Leaning against Lucio and Aidan, I seek out another spirit.

  The woman with white hair and dark brown eyes holding her grandchild.

  I know your granddaughter’s name is Maria and that your grandson loved dogs.

  And then another. A man who never got to say good-bye to his husband.

  I know how much you loved each other.

  And another.

  I know you’re sorry you got behind the wheel when you were too tired to drive.

  And another.

  I know how much you loved your wife.

  And another.

  And another.

  I’m shivering, but I’m also sweating from the effort of concentrating so hard. My teeth are clenched so tightly that I can feel them grinding against one another.

  I tell every single one of them I know how you felt in life. How you feel now, in death. I can feel it too.

  “You’re suffering,” I say out loud. “I’m suffering too. And I will suffer until each of you has gotten to move on like you should.”

  One by one, the images that flash before me go from the worst moments of these people’s lives to the small, petty inconveniences, to just the normal, everyday sorts of things. Finally the memories shift from frustration and powerlessness to success and accomplishment.

  Because I’m accomplishing something.

  What’s more, I can’t think of Nolan. There just isn’t room in my brain for worry. Not with all these lives taking up so much space.

  Finally the wind quiets, dying down until it’s nothing more than a hum, barely blowing my hair back at all. Aidan takes his hands from me, stepping back like he can’t believe what he just witnessed. Exhausted, I slump against Lucio, who hugs me gently.

  I have no idea how long we’ve been in here.

  But it must have been hours. Nearly eleven, in fact.

  Over the hum of calm spirits I hear a car horn blasting up from the courtyard.

  I twist myself from Lucio’s embrace and break into a run. It’s time for me to go home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Ashley to the Rescue

  The storm has passed; there isn’t a cloud in the sky. I squint as my eyes adjust from darkness to light. The campus is still wet from last night’s rain, and the humidity is as strong as ever. I can’t wait until I’m breathing in th
e air conditioning blasting from the vents of Ashley’s dashboard.

  It looks like Ashley’s shiny blue hybrid is glowing in the brightness. Soon we’ll be cold and wet and beneath miles of cloud cover back home. I can practically taste the fog on my tongue.

  Before I can stop her, Ashley jumps out of the car and throws her arms around me.

  “Where is this guy?” she shouts.

  I shake my head and toss my bags into her backseat. “Let’s just get out of here.” I expected Aidan and Lucio to run after me, but they’re still somewhere inside. Somehow their absence makes this all feel even creepier. What are they waiting for? Aren’t they going to try to stop me?

  I grab Ashley’s arm. She raises her gaze to take in her surroundings: the courtyard, the mansion, the shattered glass at our feet, the jungle closing in.

  “What is this place?” she breathes. This is definitely not the vacation-type scenario Ashley had in mind when I first said I needed her to drive to Mexico.

  “It used to be a sort of college campus,” I answer. “Aidan—my birth father—was like, the dean or something.”

  Before Ashley can ask anything more, the sound of someone whooping fills the air. Not just someone. Aidan. I turn in the direction of his lab—somewhere inside that big building, my serious, composed mentor/father is literally cheering. Within seconds Lucio has joined him, shouting in Spanish.

  The sound is getting closer. They’re running down the stairs. Finally running after me.

  “We have to go, Ash. Now.”

  Ashley folds her arms across her chest and taps her foot against the muddy ground. “What the heck is going on here?”

  “It’s too complicated to explain in ten seconds.” I tug at her arm. “We’ll have plenty of time on the drive to Ridgemont.”

  “To Ridgemont? I thought I was driving you back to Texas.”

  “I have to get home. There’s not a second to spare,” I add, even though it makes me sound less like a real person in a hurry than the heroine of a romance novel. “Come on,” I beg, and she follows me back to her car.

  “Sunshine!” It’s Lucio’s voice. “Sunshine, wait!”

  I don’t answer and I don’t turn around.

  Ashley opens the drivers’ side door and puts the key in the ignition. The engine comes to life, but Lucio is still shouting my name. I can hear his footsteps bearing down after us. Followed by another set of footsteps. Aidan’s.

  “Sunshine, please.” Aidan appears beside the car so quickly that I actually jump in my seat. He tries to open the door, but I’ve already locked it. “You can’t leave now. We had a breakthrough.”

  “I don’t have time for your breakthroughs,” I shout breathlessly. I bet that outside the car the wind is picking up again, the spirits getting riled up along with me.

  “It’s not safe out there! And now that things have changed—”

  “Nothing has changed!” I yell back. “I have to get back to Nolan.”

  “Everything has changed!”

  I refuse to look at him. I won’t look at anything but the dashboard in front of me. I don’t want to see the trees whipping in the breeze, the vines hanging over the mansion swaying from side to side, threatening to crush the whole thing to the ground. I turn to Ashley.

  “Floor it,” I say, and she does.

  Ashley waits until we’ve left the campus behind, until we’re on an actual paved roadway and there is even the occasional other car on the road before she opens her mouth to ask, “Sunshine, will you please tell me what the heck was going on back there?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “We have a fairly long car ride ahead of us. I think we have time for complicated.” I don’t answer and Ashley sighs. “You don’t have to tell me everything,” she offers gently. “But you do have to explain some of this. Like, for starters, what the freak happened to your hair?”

  I burst out laughing. In no time I’m laughing so hard that I can’t even sit up straight, and Ashley is giggling right along with me. I shake my head, struggling to catch my breath. I don’t notice at first when my laughter turns to tears. But soon I’m crying so hard that I can’t even see the road in front of us. I can’t even see a few inches in front of me. All I can see are the tears in my eyes, blurring everything so that the world is even more confusing.

  Ashley pulls over. She unclicks her seatbelt and reaches across the front seat, taking me into her arms. For a few seconds I let her rock me back and forth like she’s my big sister instead of my best friend, but then I pull away, shaking my head.

  “No,” I say through my sobs. “We don’t have time to stop. We have to keep going, as fast as we can.”

  Ashley must hear the desperation in my voice, because she nods and restarts the car.

  “There are tissues in the backseat,” she offers without taking her eyes off the road.

  I twist around and grab them. “Thanks,” I say, sniffling.

  “Sunshine, talk to me.”

  I take a deep, ragged breath. Then another, then another, until finally I’m breathing almost normally. “Like I said on the phone last night . . .” I concoct a version of reality that will make sense to my friend. She’s as skeptical about ghosts as Mom used to be, so I’m not about to tell her what’s really going on. Instead, I say that my birth father isn’t who I thought he was, and I needed to get out of there. It’s not that far from the truth.

  Things get a little trickier when I explain why I absolutely must get to Nolan as quickly as possible. Luckily Ashley has no trouble believing I’m in love with him. “I’ve been rooting for you two to get together for months now!” she squeals. She doesn’t even balk when I explain that we’re rushing home so I can tell Nolan how I feel before he falls into the arms of this other girl he’s been seeing since I left town. It sounds like something out of a romance novel, but Ashley buys it, hook, line, and sinker. Thank goodness my best friend is boy crazy.

  Ashley would never guess Nolan is in real danger and I need to get him out of harm’s way before it’s too late. Not that I have any idea how I’m going to get him away from Helena.

  Or how I’m going to get myself away from her once Nolan is safe.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Homecoming

  Ashley and I take turns driving. I force myself to sleep when it’s her turn; I have to be strong to face Helena. As we drive the landscape shifts: out of the jungle and into the desert, and then up through Texas. It reminds me of driving from Austin to Ridgemont with Mom back in August, though it’s hard to believe just how much has changed since then. The weather goes from balmy to frigid somewhere along the way. At a rest stop in Idaho I put a sweater on over my T-shirt, change from shorts to long jeans, and slip the knife and map from one back pocket into another. I’m dozing when we cross the state line into Washington.

  I dream of Nolan. No—it’s not a dream. I know that now. It’s a vision. He’s sitting. He’s struggling to get up, but an invisible force is holding him down. He’s bleeding from a gash above his left temple. I read somewhere that a cut to just the right part of the temple can kill a man. Drops of blood drip onto the chair’s upholstery. A chair that looks so familiar . . .

  “The GPS says we’re only seven minutes away from your house.” Ashley’s voice wakes me. Groggily I open my eyes. We’re driving through downtown Ridgemont—well, as much as Ridgemont has a downtown—turning onto Main Street. It’s nearly midnight, and all the storefronts are dark. I gaze longingly at the pizza place where Mom and I had take-out on our very first night in this town. That seems like a million years ago. For most girls homecoming is a word associated with dresses and football and glittery plastic crowns.

  Not for me.

  Ashley turns a corner, and I find myself staring at the coffee shop where I dreamed of Nolan with Helena.

  Wait. Just wait. This isn’t a homecoming. I’m not going home. Not to my actual house. I’ve got to get to wherever Helena is holding Nolan hostage. I close my eyes and try to re
member every detail of my vision. I know I recognized it, but it feels out of reach somehow, like a word on the tip of my tongue that I can’t remember.

  “Stop!” I shout.

  Ashley slams on the brakes so hard that if I hadn’t been wearing my seatbelt, I would have slammed into the windshield. I turn around and look for cars honking like crazy behind us, but it’s late at night in our quiet little town, and the streets are empty.

  “I didn’t mean stop, stop.” Slowly Ashley presses on the gas.

  “Be more specific next time. What kind of stop did you mean?”

  “I meant . . .” I pause. “We’re not heading for my house. That’s not where Nolan is.”

  “You sure you want to go straight to Nolan looking like this? Don’t you want to, I don’t know,” Ashley continues like she’s ticking items off a list: “Shower, put on some makeup, maybe some clothes that you haven’t been wearing for this many hours in a row?”

  Somewhere Nolan is struggling. Nolan is fighting. Nolan is bleeding. I shake my head.

  “Okay then, where to?”

  I purse my lips, but it’s too hard to concentrate with the coffee shop staring me in the face. “Pull over for a sec,” I say. I close my eyes as she shifts the car into park. In my visions I saw Helena dragging Nolan down a pinecone-littered street. I saw him sitting in a pretty plush chair. Light pink, with little flowers embroidered into it.

  And then, as though I’m adjusting the lens on my camera, everything snaps into focus.

  “Can that really be where she took him?” I ask out loud.

  “Can where really be where who took who?”

  I take a deep breath and direct Ashley to number three Pinecone Drive.

  “This is where Nolan is holed up with some girl?” Ashley asks. The headlights from her car are bright enough that even in the thick Ridgemont darkness, she can make out the Victorian-styled wedding cake of a house where Victoria Wilde lived. Where her daughter, Anna, died. “Not exactly my idea of a romantic rendezvous.”