Haint Misbehavin'

by Maureen Hardegree

  “I don’t think so.” He rocked back and forth in his weird shoes that were like a combination sandal and hiking thing.

  “You know, you’re missing your movie,” I said, sitting back down.

  “Yeah, so are you.”

  One of the theaters opened up and people complaining about a projector breaking passed us by. From the snatches of conversation I overheard, it was the Tanner Chatum movie. Great. Amy’d whammied the machine. Probably for me. At least Audrey’d have to take me home now.

  I added up the rest of the evening—she’d encouraged Drew to talk to me, she’d repaid evil Karen, and now she’d made sure I could get out of here. She wasn’t trying to make my life a living hell, she was trying to help me. It all made a woozy sort of sense. I’d pay Amy back for this kindness—I’d figure out why she was here.

  Out of it as I was, I didn’t notice Xavier was still standing in front of me until his goober friend walked up next to him and inhaled loudly in horror.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Your face, it’s all puffy,” he said and stared. Other people who walked by now stopped to join in the staring. I felt more like a sideshow freak than ever.

  “Is she with you?” a squinty-eyed usher with short hair and a figure that provided no clue as to his-her gender asked. The usher’s voice was much deeper than mine, yet not totally out of the realm of possibility for a female.

  “No,” I said.

  “But I know her,” Xavier clarified and leaned in close, forcing me to gaze into his worried brown eyes. “Are you okay?”

  “Define okay.”

  “I’m not kidding around.” He knelt down in front of me, examining my legs. “You’ve got hives. Your face is . . . ” He thought better of insulting me. “Do you have an EpiPen? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

  “I don’t think so.” Balling my fists, I fought the urge to scratch, which was getting more difficult by the second. Why wasn’t the medicine working? Other people started gathering to watch the spectacle that was me, which only made my itching worse, as impossible as that sounds.

  I couldn’t see Amy now, but I knew she was sitting close enough that the right side of my body, from my upper arm down was cold.

  “What are you having a reaction to?” he asked. “Something you ate?”

  “No, it’s whatever they used to clean the theater,” I said.

  Several of the people staring heard me say something about the cleaning fluid, stopped, and added their complaints to the shemale usher, everything from scratchy throats to stuffy noses.

  The manager of the theater, the one who’d been so fast at the snack stand, joined the growing mob. “Young lady, are you okay?”

  “Not exactly.” I couldn’t stand it anymore and went into full scratch mode. Amy popped back into view, hovering above me.

  “Should I call 9-1-1?” Xavier asked.

  “No,” I croaked. “My sister will take me home.”

  “Everyone back away,” Xavier said to the people crowding us. “Give her some air.”

  Yeah, I now felt even worse about leaving him to pick up all the books at the library. I was probably freaking him out—especially since his brother died of an allergic reaction.

  The manager started handing out free movie passes to everyone who was affected by the broken projector or the cleaning fluid.

  “Let me through!” Audrey shouted, pushing aside gawkers and seekers of free passes. “Don’t you people have something better to do?”

  Xavier stood his ground next to me until she narrowed her gaze at him. If she could have pulverized him into dust, she would have. Seriously.

  She dug in my purse for another couple Benadryl and pushed them between my swelling lips. “Why the hell didn’t you call Mom?”

  “I did. I got voicemail.” I didn’t think I could o.d. on extra Benadryl. Was I up to five? Or six? Maybe Amy knew.

  Woozy, I leaned back against the bench.

  Audrey’s friend Karen hee-hawed. “Not so brave now with your little extra sensory tricks, are you? Payback’s gonna be a bitch.”

  Drew stood off to the side watching which meant that he might care about me a little bit, right? I imagined him kneeling in front of me, pledging his love and offering me a promise ring.

  “Why didn’t you come back into the theater to get me?” Audrey asked in a shrill tone that shredded all the warm fuzzies I was feeling thanks to my Drewdream and the multiple doses of allergy medicine.

  Wasn’t the answer obvious? “Because you would’ve gotten mad.” Like now.

  Audrey groaned.

  Xavier’s friend tugged on his arm. “Let’s go.”

  “Is she going to be okay?” he asked.

  Karen snorted. “As okay as someone as freaky as she is can be.”

  Barely able to keep my swollen eyes open, I closed them. I didn’t want to see the anger and embarrassment on my sister’s face. No wonder she hated me. I hated myself. “Just take me home, okay?”

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll bring the car to the door. Claire, you stay here with Heather. Don’t go wandering off somewhere like you usually do. Heather, don’t go to sleep. I can’t carry you.”

  Claire sat down next to me, clutching what was left of her Sour Patch Kids candy. I tried to keep my eyes open.

  “You don’t like him, do you?” Karen asked, voice dripping with disdain.

  “Who?” I braced myself for her to explain in excruciating detail the reasons why Drew Blanton would never look at a girl like me except as an example of what chemical sensitivity can do to a body.

  “Supergeek,” she snarled. Literally.

  “Oh.” Relieved she hadn’t honed in on the object of my affection, I stalled. I needed a fine balance here. I didn’t want to hurt Xavier’s feelings, but I also didn’t want people getting the wrong impression—especially Drew. “Not like ‘like,’” I said. My itching finally eased, and I focused on Karen’s somewhat fuzzy image. “But he’s okay as a person, I guess.”

  “He’s not that bad,” Claire chimed in. “If you put him in some Abercrombie clothes and shaved the moustaschy thingee, he wouldn’t look that bad.”

  “But how,” Karen asked, “are you going to change his geekazoid brain? He volunteers at the library and he’s an altar boy.”

  Claire leaned across me. “So? If he likes Heather and she likes him—”

  “I don’t like him!” I yelled.

  All evidence to the contrary, meanness is Karen’s m.o., not mine. I didn’t want to hurt Xavier’s feelings, especially since he was worried about me.

  “You’d better not.” Karen warned. “Audrey’s already living down your Carrie moment in the bathroom. Unless you can be somewhat normal before school starts, we’re dropping her. Hanging out with Supergeek isn’t a step in the right direction!”

  Her threat hung in the air as I glanced over to where Xavier stood, staring at me, his dark eyes glittering with either hatred or tears. I couldn’t tell for sure which, but my chest burned at his humiliation and my own eyes filled. I didn’t want to worry about him and his feelings. I had my own feelings to deal with. Plus a ghost that I really needed to get rid of if my plan of normalcy had any chance of succeeding. I had to get off this downward spiral.

  I must have dozed off for a second because the next thing I knew someone was tugging on my arm.

  “I just wanted to say thanks,” a familiar female voice said.

  For what, being a freak? I opened my eyes to Suzanne and Tina waving their free passes at me.

  “Um . . . You’re welcome.” I looked to Tina for the 411.

  “That cleaning fluid is bothering me, too.” Suzanne turned around to show me the splotchy rash on the back of her thighs. “I’m going to have my mom write them a letter.”

  Tina tried to pantomime something. Head laying on hands, eyes closed. Looked like sleep. No duh, I was sleepy. I nodded.

  Tina rolled her eyes at me. “Heather was going to ask you to sleep over at her hous
e.”

  I was?

  Amy danced a jig in front of me. “Man alive! I ain’t had a sleep over since Martha Carrie invited me to her house. Mr. Smith got mad at us giggling about the cat jumping on the rafters and made us sleep outside in the cold with no quilts or nothing. We liked to about froze.”

  “When?” Suzanne asked.

  “This Friday,” Tina answered for me.

  “But aren’t you—” Claire started to speak. I clamped my hand on her knee, the threat of ‘horse eats corn’ heavy in the air. Restriction ended Friday. I’d ask Mom tonight. It was perfect timing. Grandma was going off somewhere with her senior group this weekend. We could stay in her mother-in-law suite.

  “Yeah, this Friday,” I said, suddenly a whole lot happier. If she was the person Tina claimed her to be, by the end of the sleepover, Suzanne and I might be better friends. If Suzanne and I were friends, Audrey’d see I was trying to fit in more. So would her friends. And if my slumber party was as much fun as they usually are, Amy would finally confide in me why she’d remained here on earth when the rest of her family had moved on.

  Come Saturday, I’d be well on my way to finding eternal slumber for my little friend, to being less of a thorn in Audrey’s side, and to transforming Drew’s impression of me from zany freak to potential girlfriend . . . unless this party sucked.

  Chapter Ten

  “Truth or dare?” Audrey asked, the Bioré strips lining her forehead, nose, and chin, giving her the look of a woman recovering from an extreme makeover.

  Sleepover Tip #1: If the party gets boring and you’re trying to keep your friends, siblings and a ghost happy, you’ve got to resort to risky activities.

  Oh, and you may be curious as to why Audrey’s hanging out with us, considering that she doesn’t really like me. My parents forced me to invite her, which just goes to show how clueless people over forty get. I’m not sure if it’s the loss of brain cells with age, or the accumulation of mercury from having those old silver-colored fillings, but my parents actually thought including Audrey would please her. And it did, which in turn made the butterflies I had about the evening grow to the size of pterodactyls. She hates me even more than before thanks to her friends now threatening to dump her because of what happened at the movies.

  Claire looked up from sorting through her basket of nail polish and leaned forward, squinting. “Truth.”

  “We didn’t have any celebrities on our cruise,” Tina shouted from Grandma’s bathroom that was decorated in the same apricot, green and cream colors as the rest of the suite that not only looked but also smelled like it belonged at the beach, thanks to the Ocean Breeze air freshener she used. “You’d think a cruise line with a name like Celebrity, would, hello, at least have one or two on board . . . ”

  Audrey flared her nostrils, then eased back against the cushions of the loveseat opposite me. She flicked her tongue quickly over her bottom lip like a snake. “So, Claire, are you sick of hearing about Tina’s cruise?”

  Claire’s bob swung as she turned her head to look at me. I tried to reach her telepathically, not that it had ever worked before. Lie.

  “Um, can I have another question?” Claire asked.

  Audrey smiled, the hardened Bioré strips crackling at the movement. “You said truth.”

  “Please?” Claire asked, her eyes shifting to the bathroom door. “Pretty please? I’ll tell you anything else you want to know.”

  “I don’t want to know anything else.”

  Suzanne left Tina and returned to where we were sitting. She started peeling off her strips, showing the little oil plugs to us. “Oddly fascinating, isn’t it?”

  Audrey made a face. “Oddly gross that you’re sharing.”

  “What’s gross?” Tina asked, emerging from the bathroom. She preened, batting her thickly shellacked lashes. “How do you like my smoky eyes?” She lifted the Teen Vogue she’d brought with the step-by-step instructions and before and after photos.

  “Very. . . smoky,” I said. What I was thinking was that she resembled a raccoon.

  Amy hovered next to the end table where I’d placed my coke on top of Grandma’s latest issue of Southern Living. She stuck her nose over the fizz escaping from the popped top. “I had a Coca-Cola one time when Daddy and Mama took me to Atlanta to get some new shoes at one of them fancy stores.”

  “That’s real nice, Amy. Thanks for sharing,” I whispered.

  Tina glanced from Claire to Audrey whose eyes were locked. “What?”

  “I’m just waiting on Claire’s answer,” Audrey said. “She picked truth. So, Claire, are you or are you not sick of hearing all about Tina’s cruise?”

  Tears welled and threatened to spread the smoky make-up down Tina’s cheeks in little charcoal trickles. I could no longer pretend to be gracious to the sister I disliked more than conjugating Spanish verbs.

  Audrey drummed her acrylic nails against her can of Red Bull. “We’re waiting to hear your answer, Claire.”

  Claire paused in painting her toenails a metallic chartreuse. Her foot rested on one of the empty, grease-spotted pizza boxes. “I liked hearing about the cruise when Tina first got back.”

  “But you’re tired of it now. Right?” Audrey pushed.

  “I guess.” Claire stood with half-painted toes, separated by foam hearts and hobbled over to hug crestfallen Tina. “I’m sorry.”

  Tina hugged her back, but I could hear the hurt in her voice. “It’s okay. I didn’t realize I was being so annoying.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “If I had to give a prize for most annoying this evening, you wouldn’t be the winner.”

  Audrey couldn’t have missed the implication, but it didn’t seem to bother her, which meant something worse was on the horizon.

  “Okay, Tina. It’s your turn,” Audrey said, snuggling further under the crocheted throw as Amy giggled. “Truth or Dare?”

  “Truth.”

  Audrey wet her lips, and I knew this was going to be bad, worse even than Claire’s question.

  Before she could ask anything, I shouted, “No!”

  “She already called truth,” Suzanne said, the gap between her close-set, muddy brown eyes seeming even narrower now that she’d switched to contacts and was saying something I didn’t like. Didn’t she realize we were in a battle, and Audrey was the enemy?

  “Audrey hasn’t asked the question,” I pointed out. “Therefore, Tina can change her mind.”

  Tina looked at me with untroubled raccoon eyes. “I’m fine with the truth.”

  I gripped the armrest on the loveseat to brace myself. This was going to be bad.

  “Do you masturbate?” Audrey asked.

  What? I was expecting something bad, but not that. Nobody, and I mean nobody, asks about that.

  Claire choked on her Sprite. Tina turned Bulldog red; her smoky eyes watered. Amy asked me, “What’s that? What’s masterate?”

  “I’ll explain later,” I said under my breath, but to be honest, I wasn’t going to. A strange sense of relief washed over me that I hadn’t been the one asked, which in turn made me feel guilty.

  Audrey spread her fingers out to admire her manicure as if she’d asked something innocuous, like whether Tina ever thought about going all the way with Michael. “Well, do you?”

  “You don’t have to answer,” I reminded Tina once I’d gained my voice, but it was decidedly higher than my usual deep, smoky rasp. “You can change to a dare instead.”

  “She can’t change her mind, now,” Suzanne said in support of Audrey. “Rules are rules.”

  Some b.f. she was. I needed to regroup. The goal here was to make the Suzinator have a good time, to show Audrey that if Suzanne liked me then she should, too. If it made her happy to rake us all over the proverbial coals, fine. If everyone besides me was having fun, Amy would have fun. And if Amy had fun, then she would tell me how to help her flutter off to heaven, and my life would return to semi-normal and be nothing like Aunt Geneva’s.

  I w
as next. I had to prepare. Audrey must have something worse in her arsenal for me. No way in hell was I answering a truth. But a dare could be so much worse. I had no idea what to do.

  Hanging her head, Tina sighed. “It’s okay. I’ll answer.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Sure, on occasion.”

  Claire sat stunned.

  “Are we having fun yet?” Amy asked from her spot sitting half-in, half-out of the sofa opposite Audrey’s. “’Cause this sure don’t seem like fun to me.”

  I ignored Amy and smiled at Audrey to show her I wasn’t scared. I could only deal with one issue at one time. Living problem, then non-living problem.

  “Your turn, Heather,” Audrey said, smiling back, like she hadn’t disemboweled Tina. “Truth or dare?”

  “Truth. No, dare. No.”

  “Would you make up your mind?”

  One truth I knew absolutely. Audrey was determined to bring me down in front of my friends no matter what I picked. I crossed my arms over my chest in my best, Bring-it-on, bee-yotch expression. “Fine. Dare.”

  “Good,” Audrey said. “Xavier lives on the other side of neighborhood, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And he, I hear,” Suzanne added, her eyes shifting sideways to Tina, then back before faking a British accent straight out of a Jane Austen movie. “Thinks rather highly of you.”

  Betrayed by my supposed best friend.

  Audrey glowered.

  Tina shrank away from me, burrowing into the corner of the loveseat like she expected me to hit her. Not good. It was worse than just Suzanne knowing. “Well, she asked why you were being so nice to Xavier at the movies.”

  “But you didn’t have to tell her. Who else?” I managed to croak.

  “Who else what?”

  “Who else did you tell?”

  “Um, when Michael asked me to go out with him, and we were talking on the phone, I think I might have mentioned it to him because we were talking about crushes and that boy I told you about from the cruise. But I don’t think he’ll tell anyone.”