Haint Misbehavin'

by Maureen Hardegree

  “You are so making the wrong choice,” Karen said and flounced out.

  Audrey rolled her eyes. “You’ve got little blisters all over your legs and from your hands all the way up to your elbows, Heather. So which medicine?”

  “Benadryl and the hydrocortisone cream,” I squeaked.

  She’d picked me over Karen? I pinched my wrist. I wasn’t dreaming. No, this was all too real. Including the stare from the angry store manager.

  He rocked back on the heels of his black loafers and eyed me coolly as Audrey brought me my medicines.

  “My father’s in the bathroom, sir.” I said unscrewing the cap of the cream. I started slathering it over my shins and calves. “He’ll assure you that I have no superpowers.”

  That’s when Drew stepped forward. “And I can vouch for Heather. She was nowhere near the register and the chips when they started going haywire.”

  “Or the bread,” the girl in the hairnet behind the counter added.

  “Thanks,” I said, my voice huskier than usual. I loved Drew. My breath caught. Oh, my God. I loved him. My feelings had deepened beyond crush.

  “No problem,” my defender said. He truly was a knight in shining sunscreen.

  Xavier shook his shaggy head like I was the one who didn’t get it—whatever it was. Amy, who was standing next to Xavier, bowed her head, placed her hands in the pockets of her pinafore and struck a pose, the perfect picture of a docile early twentieth century farm girl.

  Drew glanced at Xavier who was still hovering around me.

  “Yeah. Um, I guess you’re heading to the pool?” I said, wanting to prolong our conversation as I popped a fast-melt pill out of the blister pack.

  Audrey snorted. Yeah, considering what he was wearing, my question was pretty lame. I guess the statute of limitations on being nice was up. In a few minutes, she’d realize what she’d done and how I’d ruined her life.

  Drew bit back a smile. “Yup. Had to get some sustenance first, though. I didn’t realize you two—” He looked from me to Xavier, then back to me again.

  “My dad is thanking Xavier for helping us clean the cemetery,” I said, my words tumbling out in a quick jumble.

  Was he asking because he liked me? Or did he think I was a loser? “He’s in the bathroom,” I added for clarification. “My dad.”

  Xavier poked me with his elbow. “You said that earlier.”

  I cringed; Drew checked his watch. “Well, I gotta jump. Maybe I’ll see you at the pool soon and you can tell me why you’re first girl I’ve met who cleans cemeteries on summer vacation.”

  “I’d like that,” I said, stifling my sigh. He was so cute and cool.

  Drew gave Xavier a nod of acknowledgement, then headed out the door.

  Once I realized I’d been in a trance, I turned to Xavier, who was staring at me like I’d plunged one of the Sub-a-Dub serrated bread knives in his back. Oh, my, God. What if Xavier had been looking at me like that while I was talking to Drew?

  What if Drew still thought I was more than friends with Xavier? Drew wasn’t the kind of guy who’d go after another guy’s girl. At least I didn’t think so. He probably had the same feelings I had, but he was trying to hide them. Otherwise, why would he stick up for me and talk to me?

  “So are we going to finish eating?” Xavier asked in an extremely annoyed tone.

  I handed him my cream and the empty blister pack. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “You stay,” I told Amy, but Xavier probably thought I was talking to him.

  “I remembered something I need to tell Drew,” I said and ran out the door after the lifeguard of my dreams.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Drew!” I called as I crossed the hot asphalt lot, gleaming in the mid-day sun. “Wait!”

  He turned and leaned against the open car door with his sunglasses in hand.

  “I just wanted to make sure you know I’m not going out with Xavier,” I said in a rush of words that all blended together. I tried to catch my breath.

  “Yeah, I got that from the whole dad taking us out to eat explanation.” With a twinkle in his pale eyes, Drew asked, “Why do you care so much about what I think anyway?”

  My skin flushed. Please no hives, please no hives. “I don’t know. I just do.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t. You’ve gotta be more confident, Heather. Who cares what anyone else thinks? And, even though you aren’t seeing Xavier, you should know you could do a lot worse. He’s probably going to get into some Ivy League school. And the way he looks at you . . . ”

  “Well, maybe I’d prefer someone else,” I said, summoning every ounce of courage left in me to look directly into those glacial blue eyes. What I saw was that me liking him made him uncomfortable.

  “Yeah, about that . . .” He glanced off into the parking lot, then covered his eyes with the mirrored lenses so that all I could see was the reflection of my own devastated, blotchy face. “Don’t you think I’m a little old for you?”

  I wanted to say, “I understand, really. It’s okay. No big deal.” I wanted to slink off and forget this day ever happened. But I was stuck to the pavement, stunned and stung like the first day of sixth grade when I was eating lunch with a popular girl who’d gone to a different elementary school. She didn’t know I was considered a weirdo until this other girl from my elementary school came over and whispered in her ear. I couldn’t move then either.

  But this rejection hit a million times worse. I loved somebody who didn’t love me back. It wasn’t because I was too young. Juniors dating freshmen wasn’t unheard of. It was the same old thing. I was weird; I couldn’t change my skin anymore than I could change my age or my sensitivity to ghosts. He didn’t want me.

  He reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “Look, I like you, Heather, just not the way you want me to. You make me laugh, and that’s a good thing.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying in front of him. “Yeah,” I managed to croak without sobbing.

  I mumbled something about having to go back inside before my dad worried about me. I stumbled away from him, tripping over a patch of broken asphalt to cement his impression of me as a funny girl, too young and weird to be girlfriend material.

  Mortified that I was so soundly rejected, I re-entered the sub shop and found a sullen Amy playing with the neon “open” sign, making it flash off and on. Audrey, who now had to wait for us to drive her home, was pissed. Xavier was even more pissed. The only one in what I’d label a good mood was Dad. From the time I returned to the booth to find Dad scarfing down his sandwich and chatting away about his grapes to when we dropped Xavier off at his house, Xavier hadn’t said another word to me. It was almost like I was the ghost.

  I tried to convince myself it was okay. He was Dad’s guest, not mine. It wasn’t like I invited Xavier to lunch. I still felt guilty. As Grandma says, that’s the problem with trying—it’s not doing.

  When Dad, Audrey, Amy, and I arrived back at the house, Dad zipped out of the van in full throttle, leaving me to unload the cemetery junk, while he headed around back to check his scuppernong vines. I tell you the man is obsessed with a capital “O.”

  I got out of the van.

  Audrey groaned as she opened the front passenger door, hopped out, then slammed it behind her. “I hope you’re satisfied. You’ve ruined my life.”

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Yeah, I wasn’t exactly in the mood. “Here you’ve spent most of your life ruining mine, and it only takes one hour for me to ruin yours in return.”

  “I should’ve left with Karen.”

  “So why didn’t you?” I grabbed the backpack full of epitaphs and pulled the lever so the automatic side passenger door closed at its usual measured pace. How I would have liked to have been able to slam it. “Why for once did you do the right thing, Audrey?”

  “I don’t know. I guess you made me feel guilty.” She looked down at the smooth floor of the garage. “You don’t understand, Heather. It’s like you thin
k everyone is only making fun of you, but they’re always making fun of me, too, for being related to you. And yeah, the noble thing would be for me to tell them all to go ‘f’ off, but I’m not noble. I just want to be liked.”

  I wished I could hate her for it, but how could I? “Me, too. God, you don’t know how much I want to be liked. Only the person I most wanted to like me . . . was . . . is . . . you.”

  “Me?” She snorted. “Are you serious?”

  “Forget I said it.”

  “You are so twisted.” She came toward me slowly, then, arms outstretched like she was going to hug me. Audrey was going to hug me. “If you dare tell anyone I did this, you’re dead meat.”

  “Thanks. Thanks a lot,” I said as she pulled me to her loosely. This embrace, if you can call it that, was nothing like a bear hug.

  “For what it’s worth, I don’t hate you,” she added.

  “Wait a minute. Isn’t this the part where you’re supposed to tell me deep down you’ve always liked me?”

  She let go, laughing. “Drew’s right. You are funny.”

  “Is this your way of saying you forgive me for making you choose between me and Karen?”

  Audrey tossed her overgrown bangs out of her eyes. “You didn’t make me choose. Karen did.”

  She headed into the house, and I think I was forgiven. I’m still not completely certain.

  “Let’s play, Heather,” Amy’s voice drifted down to me from the vicinity of the garage ceiling.

  I looked up and found her sitting on one of the door opener contraptions, in almost the exact same spot as that fat raccoon that snuck in last year when Dad left the door open all night.

  I unzipped my pack, rummaged through the sheets until I found hers, then lifted the newsprint to show her. I read the words again. “With heavy hearts, we commend to heaven sister and much beloved daughter Amy Malcolm. See? They didn’t hate you.”

  Third time wasn’t a charm. Amy still wasn’t convinced even though the truth was written in freakin’ stone. She stayed sitting up there pulling at the wires connecting the door opener to the electricity.

  “Please don’t short out the opener, okay?”

  She sighed. “’kay.”

  I didn’t get it. “So if you know now that they love you—”

  “You’re wrong.” She swept down and poked her finger through the paper. “That ain’t proof. That’s what people ‘spect when someone dies. You think my daddy would ask the stonecutter to carve something like Amy was a pain-in-the-patoot and never gave her mama a moment’s peace? You think he’d say, carve in there how she killed her brothers and her mother?”

  Okay, she had a point. “So how did you kill them? Did you catch the house on fire? Did you give them food poisoning? What was it?”

  She turned away from me.

  “I’m trying to help you, Amy.”

  “Am I really so hateful that you don’t want to have me around?” she asked, voice all young and trembly.

  “To be honest, your pranks haven’t exactly made me seem more normal so I have good reason to want you to move on. But really and truly, I know that you’d be happier if you made peace with your parents.”

  She scoffed. “You haven’t made peace with yours. You down right lied to your daddy. You told him you don’t have a haint.”

  “Yeah, but I made peace by writing those papers. Telling him about you—that’s complicated. The point I’m trying to make here is that I know he loves me even if he thinks I’m a little bonkers when I do stuff like sneak out of the house late at night. Parents are that way. You know, they yell and scream when you make mistakes, but they love you no matter what.”

  Amy hovered closer. “Maybe your mama and daddy, not mine.”

  “And what about Audrey? If she can choose me over her friends despite the embarrassment I created for her, then can’t your family want you despite what you did?”

  And then I felt it, a tiny flicker of hope in her little ghostly heart. She was trying hard not to believe the words written on her gravestone, too hard. She wanted me to prove her wrong. She wanted me to prove their love. But how could I?

  If the answer wasn’t in the gravestone, it had to be somewhere else, like in the library’s special collection, specifically in that stupid journal she’d tried to steal. Problem was that I’d basically been banned from that particular room for the rest of my life. My only hope was Xavier, and I’d ticked him off more than usual today. He might just stay mad at me forever. But I could at least try to persuade him to help me.

  I took a deep breath and rang the bell at Xavier’s house, noticing for the first time how the white glossy paint was peeling on the wood trim and how trash trees like pine saplings and Mimosas were taking hold in the pretty island in the front yard that featured dogwoods and azaleas. A few mud wasps were building a huge clay-colored nest in the corner of the side light window. A couple of others were hovering over the wilting lipstick pink impatiens nestled in a weedy crescent that followed the sidewalk’s curve. I hoped they wouldn’t suddenly get interested in my soda-soaked shorts.

  An aura of sadness draped the house, and I felt even worse about how I dealt with Xavier. I mean, it was obvious that his parents were in a deep depression about his little brother’s death. Especially his mom. It was late afternoon and all the blinds were still closed.

  “Doesn’t look like anybody’s home,” Amy said.

  No one with a physical body. I sensed someone.

  “Why are we here anyway?” she asked, seeming pretty happy. Probably because she had no idea where we’d be going and what I’d be doing if I could get Xavier to help me.

  “I need to ask Xavier something.” I rang the bell a second time, holding my finger on the button longer, just to be sure.

  That’s when I knew who I sensed was another kid, most likely Xavier’s brother. It was almost like smelling something cooking but not being able to taste it. The kid must not want me to see him.

  Someone mortal, probably Mrs. Monroe, called Xavier’s name inside the house.

  “Mom,” Xavier’s deep voice yelled back, “I’m getting ready for work!”

  Her answer was too faint for me to hear, but whatever she said must have ticked him off because he cursed, and the four-letter word he used didn’t begin with “sh.” I was shocked, as Father Flaherty would also be.

  Xavier pulled open the door part way. I got a glimpse of skinny, naked torso and towel. “What do you want?”

  “To say I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.” He started to shut the door.

  I stuck my foot in the door’s path to keep him from completely closing it on me. “Wait.”

  “I’m kind of dripping here, Heather, and I have to be at the library in twenty-five minutes. We’re expecting a big crowd.”

  On a Saturday night, in the middle of summer? Yeah, right.

  “The GASP meeting,” he said, like I should know what it meant. It was probably some meeting about extending school to year ‘round because we weren’t miserable enough with our reading lists and bridging workbooks.

  He opened the door a bit wider, so I could see his face. I focused in on his wispy mustache. “Well go ahead and shave. Get dressed. I’ll wait out here for you. I’ll walk you to work.”

  “I already shaved.”

  “But . . .oh.” I removed my foot from the door’s path. Too bad I couldn’t remove the proverbial one from my mouth. I really hadn’t meant to insult him. It sort of slipped out.

  The door slammed, so I sat on the steps waiting, debating how best to convince him to do something nice for me, especially now that I’d further insulted him by suggesting he shave that fuzz from his upper lip. He probably thought it was a mustache.

  Amy started yelling, “Oh yeah? Well, I was here first.”

  I looked down at her standing by herself on the sidewalk, glaring at the lawn. “What is your problem?” I asked.

  She pointed. “Him.”

  I couldn’t see him.

>   “Not uh,” she said, stamping her ghostly boot on the pavement without making a sound. “I lived here before this even was some fancy neighborhood. The whole thing belongs to me, including this yard.”

  I wondered how many ghosts were in this part of Georgia, and if this one was Xavier’s brother. Whoa. If it was, why had he stayed?

  “Hey,” Amy shouted in glee, “we can play hopscotch for it . . . . So what if that’s a girl game.”

  Right about that time, the wasps became intrigued with the dried soft drinks on my shorts. I jumped up and ran down the steps trying to dodge them. “I need a little help here,” I called out to Amy, who thought it was funny and couldn’t bring herself to stop the wasps.

  After what seemed to me like forever, Xavier came outside, dressed in khakis and a striped polo, the weak, little mustache still very much in evidence below his nose. Xavier smiled, revealing that dimple in his left cheek that I hadn’t ever noticed before today at Sub-a-Dub. “Dancing and talking to yourself?”

  “Yeah, well, the wasps were going after me, and I was . . . practicing my apology.”

  He locked the front door and started walking past the spot where I think his brother must have been standing because Amy waved goodbye to someone I couldn’t see.

  I had to practically run to keep up with his business-like pace. “Like I said earlier, I’m sorry.”

  “About what?”

  “About hurting your feelings.”

  He pressed his lips together and nodded. “And how do you think you did that?”

  “By being so obvious about liking Drew in front of you.”

  “Well, gee, thanks. What a swell apology. See you around.”

  I had no choice. I had to blurt out what I wanted. It was now or never. My family was leaving on vacation Monday morning, and the library was closed tomorrow. Amy hadn’t said it, but I knew in my heart she wanted to be with her family. “Xavier, I need your help.”

  He kept walking. “Right. I’m not good enough for you, but you need me. Why don’t you ask Drew to help you?”

  “He can’t.”

  “And why is that?”