Haint Misbehavin'

by Maureen Hardegree

  As soon as he shut the front door behind him, I faced my father’s smirk. “You are so mean. Did you have to invite him to lunch, too?”

  “Come on, Heather. He’s had a rough time of it, and he’s lonely. The least you can do is be kind to him. Xavier’s a nice boy.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I grumbled. “Have you ever thought that’s the problem?”

  I couldn’t stand the itching and lifted the edge of my t-shirt to glance down at the spot where the metal button on my jeans rubbed against my navel. The whole indentation was raised and red. I oh-so-carefully scratched the edge of my innie.

  “What would it hurt to spend a little time with Xavier?” Dad asked, turning on the radio and tuning in WABE and “Weekend Edition” with Scott Simon.

  Only what little hope left of improving my reputation, but don’t let that worry you.

  “I know you probably couldn’t tell to look at me now,” Dad said, “but I was a geek in high school.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him not much had changed. “No offense to your former status, but being seen with Supergeek won’t exactly catapult me into the normalhood I seek.”

  Dad adjusted his glasses. “Some day fitting in won’t be so important to you.”

  “Yeah, like when I’m thirty-five and I’m married to some guy losing his hair, no offense again, and we have two kids. But I’m not thirty-five, I’m fourteen.”

  “You’re funny, Heather,” Amy said with a giggle.

  Dad sighed as if he was disappointed in me. I hate when he does that.

  Time to change the subject. “I was kind of hoping I’d have a chance to talk to you alone, you know, daughter to father.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest, like he didn’t really want to hear what I had to say. “Talk away.”

  Roquefort chose that opportune moment to let another one rip. Yeah, I wasn’t happy.

  While Dad used all the technology at his command to disperse the odor, including opening the back vents and putting the fan on full blast, Amy floated up to the front and sat on the console between me and Dad. “That dog’s stinkier than an unmucked pig sty. Can’t you plug her with something, like one of your Daddy’s wine corks?”

  Although Amy’s idea for controlling the stink had merit, the best I could do in Mom’s van would be an art gum eraser. I checked the glove compartment, and found, oddly enough, gloves. No art gum.

  I snapped the thing shut and glanced at the clock. Eight thirty-seven. Xavier would be back soon. It was now or never. “Um, I’ve been wondering. You still believe me about there being no ghost?”

  “Mm, hmm,” Dad said.

  “And you don’t think I’m, like, insane or anything, right?”

  “Right,” Dad said, in a similar manner to the “yes, dears” he feeds my mom when he’s reading the newspaper and we all suspect he isn’t really listening. But then he surprised me by going into the details of why he believed me. “Your Aunt Geneva doesn’t have a ghost friend, either. She pretends she does because she likes the attention it gets her. In the art world any eccentricity is exploited, and it makes good business sense for her to have some quirk or gimmick. Here comes your friend.”

  Dad took the car out of park after Xavier climbed in with a more than healthy dose of cologne. To impress me, I guess. Let me say right now, it didn’t.

  The car beeped its displeasure that Dad hadn’t waited for the automatic door to finish closing, so he had to put it back in park.

  Amy glanced at Xavier then pinched her ghostly nose. “He’s worse’n that beagle. Can’t you do something?”

  I angled one AC vent toward my face and the other toward Amy’s.

  Dad hiked an eyebrow at me, then gazed through the windshield at the road. “So Xavier, how’s your summer going?”

  “Pretty good. I’m mowing some lawns for spending money and volunteering at the library.”

  “The library. Hmm,” Dad said, then he glanced at me pointedly as we waited for the traffic to clear at the entrance to the subdivision so we could take a right onto Red Tip Road.

  “Yeah. It looks good on a college application,” Xavier said, “and I figure learning my way around will help me in the long run. When it’s a slow day, I can look up stuff I’m interested in and read.”

  “See, Heather,” Dad said, “some children do educate themselves without coercion. And they think about getting into college before they hit high school.” Luckily for everyone in the car, Dad didn’t launch one of his lectures.

  “Speaking of the library, Heather,” Xavier said, leaning forward. “The suspension should be over in two more days.”

  “What?” Dad asked, nearly steering off the road, before he jerked the wheel back.

  I swung around to stare daggers into Xavier. What on God’s green earth made him think I’d actually told my parents?

  And my dog had the gall to lay her head on Xavier’s thigh.

  “It’s no big deal, Mr. Tildy,” Xavier said. Naïve boy that he was, he thought explaining would make it better. “She accidentally put a book into her backpack that couldn’t be checked out. Probably to make it easier to carry around and she forgot it was in there. It wasn’t like she was trying to steal it. She most definitely will be allowed to use the regular library again, just not the special collections.”

  Dad’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. His knuckles whitened. “Really?”

  “She wouldn’t have even been suspended if it had been her first offense,” he added, then had the decency to wince when he realized he’d tattled about my other infraction.

  Okay, so now I was totally screwed. I’d willingly given up the whole ghost alibi, too. And if I went back on my word and said something like Dad, I swear it wasn’t me, it was that ghost I told you didn’t exist, I’d be worse than the boy who cried wolf.

  “Pull off at the bottom of the hill,” I said. Determined to prove that old saying that the best defense is a good offense, or something like that, I added, “And just so you know, the only reason I got suspended was because someone made me write a stupid paper and I was forced to go to the library to do research.”

  “No, siree,” Amy said, shaking her head. “The reason you got suspended was them beeping noises.”

  His mouth pressed flat in anger, Dad pulled off to the side of the road at the bottom of the hill and parked on a flat spot of weeds near two posts and a chain blocking vehicles from proceeding. A rusted “no dumping” sign that I hadn’t noticed before hung from the chain links.

  Amy left the car and sat on the chain, making it swing and creak. The June heat hit me in a slow wave as I opened my door.

  Xavier focused on the chain seeming to move of its own accord. Using his hand to shield his eyes from the sun, he glanced up at the treetops, which weren’t moving, then back to the chain. He scratched the side of his shaggy-haired head.

  Wishing I could somehow telepathically indicate to Amy that she really should stop swinging, I squinted in the bright sun and tried to get my bearings. Everything seemed different in daylight.

  That’s when I noticed the other sign posted to a tall, thick pine with bark segments the size of Dad’s shoes strewn about its wide trunk. No trespassing. Violators prosecuted.

  Amy saw the sign, too. She snickered. “I guess y’all won’t be venturing into those woods now.”

  Every inch of my skin not already sweating, released its perspiration as I envisioned my name linked to Xavier’s in the weekly police report published in the Gwinnett section of the AJC. “You know, this may not be a good idea.”

  “What if the police come by?” Xavier asked, apparently sharing my concern.

  Not giving a rat’s behind about the sign, Dad got out of the van and opened the back hatch. He handed Supergeek a pair of Mom’s gardening gloves, the ones with the hot pink rubber palms and fingers. “Not a problem. Just say you’re visiting a cemetery.”

  Xavier glanced down at the gloves dubiously, like he knew pink wasn’t his color, t
hen slipped them on. Dad pulled on his own gloves and grabbed the sprayer. Roquefort hopped out and Dad grabbed her leash with his free hand. She didn’t even try to yank him along; she trotted at a normal pace for once, like she’d been trained or something.

  Debating the likelihood of Dad’s claim that cemetery hunting was a get-out-of-jail-free card for trespassing on private property, I stayed put.

  About a hundred yards down the path, Dad realized I wasn’t part of the expedition. He turned back toward me. “You chickening out?”

  “No, but—”

  “Stay here with me and swing,” Amy called out from her seat on the rusted chain.

  “But what?” Dad asked, miffed that he’d gone to all this trouble and I was balking.

  I pointed to the sign. “I didn’t see that at night.”

  “I told you, cemetery visitors are exempt.”

  If I stayed, Amy stayed and probably went on vacation with me, not to mention high school and college. No getting around it, I had to see that epitaph. “Fine. Let’s just go and get it over with.”

  “Let’s not,” Amy said with a smirk.

  Much as she didn’t want to, she came with us, pouting all the way as I trudged down the path, sweat trickling along my spine and into my panties. With each drip, I reminded myself of my ultimate goal. What was written on the headstone would help my haint move on.

  “Follow the path until we reach the fork!” I called out to Dad who got way ahead of me and Xavier because Xavier was determined to match my pace no matter if I sped up or slowed down.

  Every few yards he’d stare at me, so I looked anywhere but at him and noticed the brown thrashers poking around the leaves and pine straw littering the path. I guessed they were looking for worms to eat.

  Amy made kissing sounds on her arm. “That boy’s over the moon in love with you.”

  I glared at her, then adjusted the elastic band securing my ponytail. We made the turn, neck and neck, and saw Dad up ahead by the fork with a very well-behaved beagle.

  “You should go back,” Amy suggested, her freckled face suddenly earnest with concern. “It’s against the law. I think I hear one of them sirens.” Only Amy said it like “sy-renes” and she followed up with an imitation wail that made Xavier glance back down the path toward the van.

  “Go right,” I called, hoping Xavier would forget Amy’s siren, put it into gear and team up with Dad. No such luck; he stuck with me.

  When we got to the clearing, Dad pointed out all the poison ivy on the trees at the wood’s edge. Bush and climbing vines—something else I hadn’t seen in the dark.

  “You stay here in the shade, Heather, and guard the herbicide,” Dad said. “Don’t touch anything. Especially not Roquefort.”

  The stupid dog, now free of her leash, was rolling in a big patch of the poison ivy.

  “Where are the graves?” Dad asked.

  I pointed in the general direction of the brick coping. “The rubbing I want most is on the grave laid out long ways. The rest of the family seems to be lined up in rows.”

  “That ain’t the right one,” Amy lied, then disappeared.

  “Found it,” Dad called back. He knelt down to pull away the ivy vines, not even trying to uproot the plant like I stupidly had. He just scraped it from the granite with his pocketknife.

  “Toss me the backpack!” Dad yelled.

  I handed it to Xavier, who at long last left my side and brought it over to Dad. Dad unzipped the bag and took the rubbing of Amy’s grave, then looked up and wiped the beads of sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

  Wetness trickled down my own neck. Moisture pooled in the bends of my knees and elbows. My jeans stuck to my sweaty thighs. But the air to my immediate right was cool. Despite her protests, Amy’d stayed, which meant she cared, which gave me hope.

  “Do you want me to do all of them?” Dad asked, probably praying I’d say no. But I needed to check those epitaphs and find out why mischievous Amy thought she was a murderer.

  “Yes,” I said, feeling guilty that I was pretty much doing nothing but sweat when this had been my idea from the get go.

  Xavier moved on to cleaning off the twin angel topped graves belonging to Amy’s brothers Robert and Andrew.

  Once Dad completed the first part of his mission, he carried the rubbings back to me. One belonged to some Malcolm male who died in 1918, so I figured that accounted for Amy’s interest in the influenza epidemic. Amy’s father Harmon died in 1964. She obviously hadn’t killed him.

  Noting that none of the headstones mentioned murder and that four of the death dates were in close succession, the twins Andrew and Robert, Amy’s mother Carolyn Malcolm, a couple of days before Amy, and then Amy. So technically, since she was the last to die, she could have murdered them, but I sensed that she hadn’t. I wondered what had killed them all, some illness? A fire? Maybe she’d dragged them from a burning building. I sorted through the newsprint until I found the rubbing of Amy’s headstone. The words were pretty, not the kind of thing you’d say about a killer.

  Knowing she was lurking nearby, I read the epitaph out loud, “With heavy hearts, we commend to heaven sister and much beloved daughter Amy Malcolm” and emphasized the “beloved.”

  “They just don’t inscribe headstones like that anymore, do they?” Dad said, kneeling down next to me. He pumped the sprayer. “What do you think mine should say?”

  “How about vines on the brain?”

  “Very funny.” He started squirting herbicide on the leaves of three I should have let be, making his way slowly around the plot.

  “We’ll come back in a couple weeks and finish up, maybe replace the fence,” Dad said. “What do you think?”

  I just wanted to go home and get these clothes off before the seams in my sweaty jeans started bothering me. “Yeah. Great. Whatever.”

  “I’d be happy to help with the fence, Mr. Tildy, if Heather doesn’t mind,” Xavier said.

  “She doesn’t,” Dad answered for me because I was taking too long to reassure the boy.

  I was going to say it myself. Really. I’m not that mean. But I wasn’t looking to engage in any small talk with Xavier. Small talk is the first step to the inevitable “What are you doing Saturday night?” And by not getting all chatty with him, I was saving Xavier the inevitable pain that asking me out would cause. Because I’d have to say no.

  “Thanks, Xavier,” Dad said, “We’d appreciate your help.”

  Amy illuminated at their manly exchange. She twirled a braid. “Your daddy’s nice. Nicer than most.”

  Yeah, he was. And sometimes, that was the problem.

  Once we dropped Roquefort the incredible farting dog back at the house, Amy seemed sad again. I guess it was seeing the headstones of people she’d loved.

  Worried as I was about how Amy would behave at lunch, I couldn’t beg off to stay at home citing that fear that my ghost would misbehave. Remember, I had already assured Dad repeatedly that there wasn’t really a ghost. If I tried playing that card now, I’d get more than a reprieve from lunch with Xavier. I’d get that psychiatric evaluation I was worried about.

  Dad let Xavier pick the lunch spot, and knowing my luck, as you do, can you guess what place he picked? Yup, Sub-a-Dub. Pretty much the last place I wanted to be seen with Xavier during peak Saturday afternoon rush.

  “Um, Dad, I think Audrey’s going to be there today with her friends.”

  “And that’s a problem?” He asked, frowning.

  In so many ways.

  Chapter Eighteen

  You know that thing adults say, about everything “going to hell in a hand basket?” Well, I never had a clue what it meant until this lunch with Xavier. I mean, I know what hell is. But what exactly is a hand basket? And how could you go to hell in one?

  Let me set the scene for you. A sub shop crowded with everyone who was anyone at Pecan Hills High except the lifeguard of my dreams: my sister and her poopy friends who were glaring at me from their booth; my dad, who appar
ently thought Xavier was quite the catch; Supergeek Xavier, and let’s not forget haint Amy, who refused to accept that her family loved her and who had the potential to take out her angst on me and anyone in her vicinity when she got bored.

  At least Dad had the decency to let me change into a fresh shirt and shorts, so I wasn’t completely gross.

  I tried to make it seem like Xavier wasn’t in our party by looking everywhere but at him. Remember, I had that threat hanging over me (you know, Karen promising she’d dump my sister from her clique if I went out with him). I’d say the threat level at this moment had risen to red, i.e. extreme. Yeah, my skin was way itchy.

  I counted the number of people—seventeen—who stood between me and the sandwich maker, then decided to keep my gaze fixed to the floor so Audrey and her friends couldn’t tell if I was talking to Xavier. I had the skills to survive this day. After all, I’d kept a ghost hidden from my family for weeks.

  “Hey, Heather!” a familiar voice shouted. Tina?

  I looked up and tapped Dad on the shoulder. I nodded toward Tina. “Can I? Talk, I mean.”

  “Sure,” he said and resumed his squint at the large menu board, like he wasn’t going to order what he always did—turkey on whole wheat, twelve inch.

  Tina smiled, so I knew the get well card wasn’t a fluke. Her dark eyes sparkled. We were cool. “Aren’t you excited about Suzanne’s party?” she asked.

  “Uh, no. Should I be?” Why would I be excited about something I hadn’t been invited to?

  I heard snickering coming from a nearby table followed by the word “geek” and “princess,” more laughter.

  She cocked her head to the side and squinched up her nose; her ponytail swung. “Why not?”

  “I wasn’t invited,” I admitted as the other conversations around me stilled. Thanks so much for making me say it loud enough that more people were now staring at me. My face burned.

  Amy pushed Tina’s long ponytail, making it swish again.