The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney

by Suzanne Harper

  “’Course, turns out that Mark didn’t do it; it was Danny Ramos.” He shrugged. “Oh, well.”

  He turned back to the mystery at hand. “You must have made somebody really mad.”

  “No, I haven’t!” I was flustered at being the center of so much attention, worried about how I would clean up the mess, and—the bell rang—now late to class as well.

  I was saved by Assistant Principal Donovan, a small man with beady, suspicious eyes. “What’s going on here?” he asked.

  The crowd melted away as everybody suddenly remembered that they really had to get to class, there was a quiz scheduled in geometry, Mr. Hines hated it when people were late. . . .

  I was left alone with Mr. Donovan, who stared at my locker as if it held evidence of some sort of massive conspiracy. He said, “I’ll call the janitor to clean this up.”

  “I think someone already did,” I said, nodding toward an older man who was walking stiffly up the hall, carrying a mop and bucket and shaking his head wearily.

  “Oh?” Mr. Donovan looked over his shoulder, then turned back to me, frowning.

  Too late I felt a wintry chill, tasted chalky antacid tablets, and noticed that the man’s work shirt had a certain vintage look. “Twenty years of cleaning up messes at this school,” the ghost was muttering sourly. “Twenty years.”

  I met Mr. Donovan’s puzzled gaze. “I thought I saw someone down by the office,” I said weakly.

  “And here I am,” the janitor said, scowling at the melting Jell-O. He set the bucket down with a clang and plunged the mop into the water. “Still cleaning up messes.”

  I closed my eyes briefly. Could this day possibly get any worse?

  “Sparrow?”

  I opened my eyes. The janitor had vanished, but Mr. Donovan was looking at me as if he thought I should either book a session with the school counselor or get a prescription for some excellent drugs. Or, preferably, both. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, of course!” I said quickly.

  He squinted at me, clearly running through a mental checklist (“Ten Warning Signs of Imminent Mental Breakdown in High School Sophomores”). Finally he said, “I don’t suppose you know who did this.” It was a statement, not a question, but I answered anyway.

  “I have absolutely no idea.” My voice rang with conviction.

  “Hmm.” He looked at the locker again, and his pale eyes suddenly sharpened with interest. He reached past me to pull something from the sticky mess.

  It was a plastic sandwich bag. Inside was a piece of paper, folded as precisely as origami into a tiny hexagon.

  Mr. Donovan gingerly pulled the bag open, trying not to get his hands sticky. “Perhaps we have found our first clue,” he said. “Why don’t you read that note out loud?”

  Reluctantly I unfolded the paper and read the message, which had been written in a beautiful, almost calligraphic script.

  “Surrender, Sparrow,” the note said. “Resistance is futile.”

  Mr. Donovan eyed me suspiciously. “You’re sure you don’t know what that means?”

  “No,” I said, all wide-eyed innocence. “I don’t have a clue.”

  And I thought, Luke, if you weren’t already dead, I would kill you.

  Chapter 11

  I was running behind all day and totally exhausted by the time I got to my last class. Because it was Wednesday, that class was gym, the most loathsome hour on my schedule. As I rushed breathlessly into the empty locker room (so late, so late!), I saw that no matter how bad your day has gone, there’s always the potential for it to get worse.

  Luke was lounging on a bench, absently twirling a combination lock and humming a little tune.

  “Well, Sparrow, what do you think?” he asked without looking up. “I’d make a pretty good poltergeist, don’t you agree?”

  “Dandy,” I said. “Although it’s a low and shabby ambition.”

  “I know.” He tried to look shamefaced and failed miserably. “But you made it quite clear that you won’t help me—”

  “And you think that what you put me through today is going to change my mind?”

  “—even though I most urgently need your help,” he went on, ignoring me. “What we have here is a classic problem.” He pointed to me. “Immovable object.”

  “You got that right,” I muttered.

  He pointed to himself. “Irresistible force.” He smiled smugly and added, “Emphasis, of course, on irresistible.”

  I eyed him coldly. “You flatter yourself.”

  “Constantly,” he agreed. “Helps keep my spirits up.”

  Before I could respond, I heard the dulcet voice of Coach Drogoszewski, the football coach who had most unwillingly been forced to take over the girls’ PE classes when the regular teacher quit after the first day.

  He marched into the locker room, scowling. “Delaney!” he barked. “Get dressed and get on the court in five minutes, or this will be the most miserable hour of your life!” He started to storm out, then turned and fixed me with a basilisk stare. “For your information, this is the sixth class I’ve taught today, and you are now the thirteenth girl to be tardy. I’m warning you! I’m near the end of my rope!”

  He slammed out the door. I opened my gym bag and began pulling out the hated uniform as quickly as possible.

  “Will you get out of here?” I snarled at Luke just as I realized that I had forgotten my socks.

  Luke leaned over to pull a stray volleyball from under the bench and began pushing it back and forth with his foot. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I kind of like it in the girls’ locker room. There are distinct advantages to being invisible to most people.”

  I was on my way to change inside a stall, but I stopped to look at him with an awful suspicion. “How long have you been lurking here?” I demanded.

  He grinned. “Long enough.”

  “That is disgusting,” I said through gritted teeth. “Despicable!”

  I jumped into the stall, slammed the door closed, and began tearing my clothes off. “Chauvinistic! Shameful! Inexcusable! Degrading to women!” I continued to yell through the door.

  “You are so right,” Luke said complacently. “Not to mention horrifying, appalling, dreadful, and wicked.”

  I burst out of the stall, red-faced and breathless. I tried to put on my right sneaker while standing on left foot— never a good idea—and promptly fell over. “If you think I’m going to give in, just because of a few pranks—”

  I pulled myself up onto the bench, jammed my left foot into the other sneaker, and began to fumble with the laces.

  “Two minutes, Delaney!” Coach Drogoszewski yelled from the hallway. “I can see the end of the rope from here!”

  I shoved my bag in my locker. “I don’t have time to talk about this, he’s going to kill me, you have no idea what a fiend he is—”

  “Sparrow.” He put his hand on my shoulder. The sudden cold shocked me, and I jerked away.

  He held up a hand in apology. “Sorry. But . . . do you know what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?”

  I threw my hands up in despair. “I don’t know! Nothing, I guess.”

  “Exactly! Because they can’t both exist. If the force is irresistible, the object will move. If the object is immovable, the force is not irresistible.” He paused a second to let that sink in, then added, “One of us will win, and that means one of us will lose. Unless—”

  “Unless what!” I didn’t have time for this.

  “Unless we call a truce and figure out a way for both of us to win.”

  I began frantically searching for my lock, then realized it was still inside my gym bag, which I had stuffed in my locker. As I pulled the bag back out again, I said testily, “What kind of truce?”

  “I won’t play any more pranks if you’ll let me argue my case with you. All I want is the chance to convince you to help me.”

  “Convince me how?” I asked cautiously.

  “Through reas
oned and intelligent debate.”

  I shook my head. “No, thanks. I have enough ghosts arguing with me already.”

  He nodded, conceding the point. “All right. How about if I agree to visit you once a day? And further-more”—he held out his hands, palms up, as if to demonstrate how completely sensible and fair and conciliatory he was being—“furthermore, I will stipulate that at each visit I get to make one, and only one, argument on my behalf. Now, that is a more than reasonable offer, right?”

  “I don’t want you droning on and on,” I countered. “Each argument will last no longer than five minutes.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Ten.”

  “Done.”

  I stopped. I looked at him. I considered. “Wait. This is a negotiation, right?”

  “Ye-es . . .”

  “So what do I get in return?”

  He tilted his head to one side. “What do you want?”

  “Delaney!” I jumped as Coach Drogoszewski’s voice echoed through the room. “This is your last warning!”

  “You have to answer one question a day,” I blurted out. “In exchange for making me listen to you.”

  “Questions about what?”

  “About being, you know . . .” My voice trailed off.

  “Dead?” he suggested helpfully.

  “Well”—I cleared my throat—“yes.”

  He paused, as if considering, then nodded with decision. “Agreed.”

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s a deal.”

  “Excellent.” It wasn’t until I saw his shoulders relax that I realized that our negotiation had actually meant something, maybe even a lot, to him.

  But before I could consider that at length, I heard Coach Drogoszewski yell, “All right, Delaney! You had your chance! I am now officially at the end of my rope!”

  “Bye,” I said hastily, then ran up the stairs to the gym to a grim hour of wind sprints, frog jumps, and push-ups.

  When I got home and limped upstairs to my bedroom, Luke was sitting at my desk. I was happy to see that he had finally used his ghostly powers for good, righting my room so that everything was back in order. He was gazing with interest at my dad’s postcards (lifted from my mother’s bedside table one dark and nervous night), which I had pinned to the wall. I had typed out all the messages and then pinned that sheet of paper next to the cards themselves so that I could see the pictures on the front and remember what he had written on the back.

  When I read them all at once like that, the words, which were a model of economy and noninformation, almost started to seem like a poem. I preferred thinking of them that way, actually. A poem from my father. With a title like “Thinking of You, More Later.”

  Dear family,

  The adventure continues to go well, but

  the food is bad.

  Since I am the cook,

  I can’t complain.

  Thinking of you.

  More later.

  Dear family,

  Funds are low, but

  spirits are high.

  Moving to new camp

  tomorrow.

  Thinking of you.

  More later.

  Dear family,

  Had to leave Peru

  suddenly.

  Don’t believe

  Anything you hear.

  Thinking of you.

  More later.

  “‘Dear family, Heading to India in search of mountain quail,’” Luke read out loud. “‘Sorry couldn’t afford trip home at Christmas, thinking of you—’”

  “More later,” I said as I reached over his shoulder and pulled the paper off the wall. This close, the cold that came off his body nearly stopped my breath. “That’s private.”

  He stepped back. He put one hand over his heart.

  “My apologies.”

  I gave him a long look, then nodded. “Accepted.”

  He glanced at the wall. “You like maps.”

  “Yes.” I waited, wondering where this was going.

  But all he said was, “That will be helpful.” He sat down in the window seat, pulling his feet up to rest on the cushion. “Now, I’d like to make a brief opening statement before launching into my first argument—”

  “Let me guess,” I interrupted, flinging myself into the rocker. “Your spirit cannot rest.”

  There was a long pause.

  He glared at me. Finally he said, “Well, it can’t.”

  “Uh-huh.” I nodded, unimpressed. “And that’s because—let’s see, what could it be?” I snapped my fingers. “You have unfinished business!”

  “Well, I do,” he said coldly.

  “So you need to pass on a message from beyond the veil? And I’m sure there’s some kind of unfortunate miscommunication that needs to be cleared up?” I sighed condescendingly. “All very standard.”

  He swung his feet to the floor and stood up. He paced back and forth a few times, running his hands through his hair and muttering to himself. Then he turned to face me. “The stakes are much higher than that. I need you”—he paused here for dramatic effect—“to right a terrible wrong!”

  “Oh, well, then, that’s different,” I said in mock surprise. “But you know what? It sounds like it might be a bit beyond me.” I gave him a wide-eyed look. “Maybe you should try a more experienced medium.”

  “You can’t just dismiss my points out of hand—”

  “Oh, but I can. I do.”

  He shook his head sadly. “How did such a young, innocent girl develop such a cold, cold heart?” he asked the air.

  “Practice,” I told him.

  For the next few minutes the room was quiet. I opened my civics textbook and began reading chapter three. Luke stared out the window, frowning.

  Finally I said, “So, now it’s my turn, right?”

  “What?”

  “I get to ask you a question,” I reminded him. “That was our deal.”

  “Oh, right.” He steepled his fingers in a parody of an ancient Eastern philosopher. “It is good to see a thirst for knowledge in one just starting on the path to enlightenment. What do you wish to know, young Sparrow?”

  My mind flashed on how many times I had tried to wheedle information about the afterlife from Professor Trimble, Floyd, and Prajeet. Even when I tried asking questions in the most offhand manner possible. I was always met by bland smiles and a change of subject. Once Professor Trimble did snap, “Well, if you really want to know, the best thing about the afterlife is that I no longer have to carry a purse,” which was not helpful at all. So now I asked the first question that came to mind.

  “What was it like? Dying, I mean.”

  “Not as bad as you’d think. Although it wasn’t my first choice of things to do that day.”

  “I guess not.” I’d heard other mediums say that sometimes when people die suddenly, they don’t figure out what’s happened right away. The medium actually has to break the bad news (Hey! You, with the sudden ability to walk through walls! You’re dead, you idiot!) and then nudge them toward the Other Side. “Did you know you were dead?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said wryly. “There’s no mistaking that feeling.”

  “Good?” I asked. “Or bad?”

  “Oh, good, good,” he said quickly. “Peaceful, calm, all my cares gone away, just like the songs say. I felt like myself, only a whole magnitude better. Luke, version two-point-oh.”

  I was struggling to imagine this. “Better how?”

  “Well . . .” He paused. I saw the mischief in his eyes, but I couldn’t help leaning forward in anticipation.

  “Yes?”

  “I could never get a tan while I was alive. Now look.” He pushed his sleeve up his arm to reveal the golden glow of a perfect—all right, I’ll say it, heavenly—tan. “Almost makes it worth dying.”

  “I’m serious,” I began, with some indignation.

  But he held up his hand to stop me, his head cocked as if he had heard something. He grinned suddenly at whatever it was, then
said, “Next time,” gave me a wink, and was gone.

  A second later I heard footsteps pounding up the stairs and Lark yelling, “Sparrow! It’s your turn to set the table!”

  “Okay, okay,” I yelled back.

  She hammered on my door. “Hurry up! We’re all starving!”

  But I stood very still for another long minute, staring at the window seat where Luke had been sitting.

  Chapter 12

  The next day at lunch Fiona couldn’t wait to discuss every detail of the now infamous Jell-O incident.

  “Do you have any idea who did it?” she asked, then went on without waiting for an answer. “Maybe Sean Miller, but why would he do that to you, and anyway, he doesn’t seem the type to be able to figure out how to do something that complicated, but maybe Chad Hanson helped him, they’re friends, you know, and I heard that last year Chad was suspended after he let out all the mice from the biology lab, which he said was a protest against animal testing, but honestly, can you imagine Chad Hanson getting all political about anything, let alone mice—”

  “So,” I finally interrupted in desperation. “Jack and I are going to do some research at the Lily Dale Museum this Saturday.”

  Well, that silenced her. For about two seconds. Then she squealed, “That is awesome! You’re going on a date with Jack Dawson!”

  “Shh!” I hissed, glancing nervously around the cafeteria. “It is not a date! It’s homework!”

  Her expression changed to one of solemn concern. “Oh, I totally understand. I’d be a wreck, honestly I would! I mean, Jack Dawson! Every girl in the school has a crush on him!”

  I suddenly developed an intense interest in the contents of my lunch bag. “I wouldn’t give him many points for his personality.”

  Fiona unwrapped her sandwich. “He does seem a little quiet—”

  Quiet? “Try withdrawn, moody, surly . . .” I ran out of adjectives. “And when he does talk, he’s kind of—”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.” I tried to pinpoint what about our conversations made me feel so off-balance. “Sarcastic, kind of. Like he’s pushing you away.”

  “Mmm.” Fiona ate a potato chip as she considered this. “Well, maybe he’s shy.”