I almost asked, which one? “It’s going well. Thanks to Lara and her efficient timetable and great ideas.” I smiled, and so did Mr. Jameson.
“Well, she does like to put one hundred percent into every project,” he said, and Lara emerged from the kitchen with a tray of food.
I peered into the living room and waved hello to Mrs. Jameson in her wheelchair. “Nice flowers,” I said, pointing to the fresh, colorful posy bursting from a vase on the side table. I thought I saw a smile, but her face kept shifting expressions, so I wasn’t sure.
“She loves the garden,” said Mr. Jameson. “In our previous house, she’d grown quite a display of interesting plants.”
Before the disease took hold, I could hear him thinking.
“We don’t have a garden as nice as yours, but we have some nice flowers here and there. I’ll bring some over one day,” I offered.
“She’d like that.” He smiled.
“Did you know that three of the most popular gifts people give are things of a temporary nature?” said Lara. “I read it online. Flowers, chocolates, and books. All of them, once made use of, can never be experienced in exactly the same way again.” She stood, still holding the tray, brown hair pulled back in a blue scrunchie, expression neutral.
“That’s interesting, I never thought of it like that,” said her father. “Regardless, your mother still loves flowers.”
“I like books the best,” I said, though I didn’t know why.
“We have a bit of a collection upstairs in the sitting room. You’re welcome to borrow any that you’d like,” said Mr. Jameson.
Yes. And no. I’d never deny free books, but I only wanted to be in that room to do one thing: find a way to get rid of the damn ghosts. I imagined perusing the bookshelves, running my hand along the spines, and then a random book flying out from the shelf and hitting me in the face, courtesy of grumpy old ghost woman. “Thanks, that’s kind of you,” I replied. (The offer to borrow a book, not the being hit in the face by one.) And then I got an image of all the books flying out and flinging themselves around me like the psychotic murderous birds in that Alfred Hitchcock movie. The pages would flap like wings and I’d get bruises and paper cuts and post-traumatic stress. For now, I’d stick to rereading the Harry Potter series, and the only thing getting whacked with a book would be the odd bug that made the unfortunate decision to buzz around my bed at night.
Lara made her way to the stairs. “We need to get to work now.”
“I’ll leave you to it.” Mr. Jameson returned to the living room and we followed Lara.
“Personally, I prefer chocolates,” said Damon as we walked up the stairs.
“Quick,” Lara said firmly, greeting us at the entrance to the living room. “Let’s get the allocated amount of work done as soon as possible so we’ll have time to ask the ghosts why they’re being such assholes.” She went into the room and we followed. On the table was a pile of pipe cleaners in various colors. One for each type of brain wave. “We need to shape these into the curves of each brain wave and attach them to the model of the EEG.” She pointed to the cardboard frame we had cut out of a box last week, which would create the monitor to show the brain waves. I felt like I was in kindergarten. A very special kindergarten for gifted kids destined to become neurologists and chosen to participate in some kind of fast-track accelerated learning program. By the second grade we’d probably be doing brain surgery.
I took the blue pipe cleaners and molded them into the loose curves of delta waves like on the diagram, while Damon shaped his into smaller, tighter curves for beta waves. He then did something completely unexpected. He hooked one behind each of his ears, so it looked like he had antlers or alien antennae. He widened his eyes and wiggled his fingers around in front of me. I burst out laughing, which was a nice change after the stress of the ghost situation.
“We don’t have time to waste on that kind of silly behavior, Damon,” said Lara, and I covered my mouth.
“Yes, boss,” he said, and then tried to hook the antennae around Lara’s ears, but she pushed them away with an expression of resigned irritation.
I attached my pipe cleaners to the cardboard frame while Damon held the side steady for me. Our fingers brushed together as I twisted the end of the pipe cleaner through the hole and bent it to make it stay put.
A moment later, I texted him: You’re crazy.
His reply: Hey!
My reply: Good crazy.
He glanced at me and made a show of wiping his brow in relief. Then when Lara had turned around to pour herself a glass of water from bottle that sat on the table against the wall, I picked up another pipe cleaner and lodged it between my top lip and nose, making a fake moustache.
Damon laughed—a sweet, beautiful, quirky laugh—and Lara turned around just as I let the pipe cleaner drop.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“Just some residual amusement from my alien antennae.” He slid a wink at me.
“Boys sure do mature more slowly than girls,” Lara said with a sigh, seemingly to herself.
A few minutes later, my phone vibrated again and I glanced down, expecting another text from Damon. But it was from Savannah: Got it!
And below her words was a black-and-white photo of three people with serious facial expressions like they used to do in pictures in the old days. Damn, my sister was clever. How did she manage that?
I didn’t want to upset Lara and her routine, but I needed to show them. “Um, guys? Here are the people that might be your ghosts.” I held out my phone and they both peered at the screen.
Lara grasped the phone from my hand and held it close to her face. “Well, that’s interesting,” she said.
“What is, Lara?” asked Damon.
She handed the phone back to me. “I’ve seen those faces before.”
Chapter 18
Lara swiftly exited the living room, then reappeared in the doorway. “Can one of you please come with me into the sitting room?”
Damon stood. “I’ll go.”
I didn’t know what she was doing, but I was curious where she had seen those people before. Were they her ancestors? Maybe she and Damon were unknowingly related to Mandy and the ghost people were the link and I was here to help reconnect the broken family ties. It would be like one big, crazy, messed-up family reunion, with me as the facilitator.
Lara came back in, carrying a large box, followed by Damon. She set it down on the coffee table and I went over and sat on the couch. So much for Lara’s tight schedule and routine. Our science project had become so much more than investigating the wonders of the human brain.
“I remember seeing this ages ago.” She lifted off the lid and exposed a bundle of scrunched-up tissue paper, some of it retaining the shapes of tea cups and saucers, like a pillow that kept the shape of someone’s head after they’d slept on it. She lifted two old photos from under the paper. I leaned forward.
The first picture was a photo of the house. This house. But the garden wasn’t as mature. The second photo was of the same three people in the picture Savannah had sent me, but in this one, I recognized the window frame behind them in the corner. It was the same one that was in the sitting room. This photo had been taken in this very house, decades before. And assuming that they were the owners of the voices, then in that sitting room they still sat, even after death.
“She took it. Give it back!”
My breath caught in my throat at the sudden voice that had come from the room next door. I stared at the wall that separated us but at the same time didn’t. What comfort came from the security of walls when one’s senses stretched beyond physical confinement? The physicality of the world that I’d grown up in seemed like a façade now, a construction that only gave the illusion of structure and order and safety. I struggled sometimes to get my head around the other dimension, the one that was the medium for our abilities, the invisible force that connected everything and everyone and didn’t rely on time and space.
“
Serena?” Damon asked, “Did you hear something?”
“They said to give it back.”
Damon’s eyes widened, and Lara’s hand trembled slightly as she held the photos. Lara snapped a picture of the photos with her phone, then shoved the photos back under the tissue paper and replaced the lid. “Can you…?” she asked Damon.
He stood silently and carried the box out of the room. I waited in the hallway. I heard a cupboard door close, and Damon’s footsteps as he quickly walked out. “It sure seems like the voices belong to the people in the photo,” he said.
“Most likely.” We went back to the living room and I looked at the picture on Lara’s phone. “It must be her.” I pointed to the older woman who stood behind the other woman and the man as they sat on two chairs. Her hands held the backs of the chairs, her cheekbones were harsh, and her head had an upward tilt to it, like she was in a position of authority. “I feel like she’s the owner of the main voice. The one who said to get out.”
“I think we definitely need to try and have more of a conversation with them. Get some answers,” said Damon.
“Savannah and I could come over on Saturday. Would your parents mind?”
Damon shook his head. “Dad’s always saying he wished we would invite friends over more often. Especially for Lara. I’ll tell him we’re going to hang out and watch a movie and play video games or something.”
“Cool.” Though I didn’t know how much of the conversation would be two-way. But with Savannah by my side, we might be able to get a better result. And if she could see them, then maybe she could reason with them. She had helped Riley’s father to move on, so hopefully she could do the same here. And her abilities seemed the strongest out of all of us. Probably something to do with the coma—she was the one who’d had all the delta brain activity, the initiator of our awakening into this new way of being.
“Let’s get back to work,” said Lara.
As we returned to the study table, and I tried to return my focus to what we needed to do next instead of listening and preparing to be interrupted by invisible voices, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I plucked it out and read the text from Savannah: How soon can u come home? Detective Savvy needs to brief u on Mission Mandy. I now know the reason why she is bullying Lara, and maybe the reason their house is haunted.
• • •
I didn’t say anything to Damon and Lara; I wanted to wait until I had the facts from Savannah first. I just told them Savannah found out some information from Mandy and I would get back to them with details. I practically ran home, and as soon as I got through the front door, Savannah ushered me into the bedroom, where my sisters had already gathered. I could barely contain my curiosity. My skin tingled and my nerves buzzed.
“Okay, where do I start?” Savannah ran a hand over her head and twisted side to side. “Rightio, well, guess who used to live in the Jamesons’ house?”
“The people in the photo?”
“Yes. But not only them. Mandy and her dad!” Her gesticulating hands were talking as much as her voice.
“Really? When?” I was genuinely surprised. How did someone go from living in a mansion like that to living in a “crappy place,” as Savvy described it?
“She moved out a couple of months before the end of last year and into the dump they’re living in now. The Jamesons moved in at the start of this year.”
The answers transformed and multiplied into questions. “So, hang on. The three old people—they’re related to Mandy, right?”
She nodded. “I couldn’t believe how easy it was to get Mandy to talk. God, I’m good!” She placed her hands on her hips.
“How did you get her to talk, anyway?” asked Sasha.
“Let’s get to that later. So, who are they? How are they related?” I asked. “And why exactly is Mandy bullying Lara? And why are the old people haunting the house?”
“Slow down, girl!” Savannah made me sit on the bed. “Here’s the deal. The three people in the photo are siblings. It was taken about a hundred years ago. The man is Mandy’s great-great-great-grandfather. Or was it great-great-grandfather? No, I think it’s great-great-great. Anyway”—she waved her hand in front of her—“so every generation of her family lived in that house. Until last year.”
My mind tried to imagine a family tree, branches stretching out and sprouting leaves, or in this case, family members, ending with Mandy. I was surprised the mean ghost woman wasn’t her great-great-great-grandmother. But they were still blood relatives. Heaven help some poor soul a hundred years from now if they got haunted by Mandy.
I glanced at Talia as I heard the scratching of a pen on paper. She was taking notes. Bless her.
“Apparently, Mandy’s mom left her dad a couple of years ago, took a divorce settlement, and her dad kept the house. But he didn’t cope so well without her—started drinking, smoking lots, and gambling. He blew all the money. Lost everything. Had to sell up to pay his debts.”
“Is he still gambling?” I asked.
“Think so. But not as much—he’s trying to break the cycle, so Mandy said.”
I thought about Mandy, with her pretty face and slim figure, her arrogance and sense of entitlement. She was angry. At her dad, at her mom, at the world. And at Lara. Lara was the girl she should be, living where she should be living. “Mandy’s taking out the unfairness of her situation on Lara,” I said.
“Exactly.” Savannah nodded. “Makes perfect sense. And, it explains why Mandy said she’s a thief. In Mandy’s eyes, Lara stole her house and her life.”
I exhaled deeply, releasing some of the tension that had built up, and breathed in new understanding. They were both victims. Mandy was a victim of circumstance, and Lara was paying the price. But she already had a price to pay, a big one, and I doubted Mandy would want the girl’s life if she knew the finer details of it…the challenges of navigating life with Asperger’s, a terminally ill mother, a future of ill health for herself, and now having someone hate her for simply having a wealthy family who took ownership of a house.
“So, Serena, if Mandy is so angry about the Jamesons living in her house, then maybe those siblings are too. They would have grown up there. And Mandy told me about the older woman—Audrey, her name was; she was an old spinster. Never had a husband or children but word was passed down through the generations that she liked to take control, and had to look after her brother and sister when their parents weren’t around. Grew up fast.”
Talia put down her pen, but kept her gaze on the paper. “She, Audrey, probably feels she needs to protect the family and their house, if it was ingrained in her from a young age.”
Things were all starting to make sense now. These ghosts didn’t like the fact that a new family had taken over their family home. Back then, a home was more than a house, it was a legacy. Via the unfortunate situation of Mandy’s father, the Jamesons had unknowingly broken that legacy.
I needed to tell Damon all of this. I got out my phone, but my finger paused when Sasha leaned forward and asked Savannah, “So how did you get a picture of the photo without her noticing, and then make her tell you so much?”
Savvy laughed. “Booze.”
“Savannah! What, you got her drunk?” I asked. The girl had an alcohol-loving gambling addict for a father and my sister was encouraging a teenage girl’s illegal drinking habits for the sake of getting information?
“No, no.” She waved away my concerns. “I arrived at Mandy’s with her butterfly charm—which she was very excited to see again, by the way; apparently her mother had given it to her—and handed her a milkshake. Oh, by the way, Serena”—she glanced at me—“you’re newly lactose intolerant, okay? My excuse was I had bought one for you but you couldn’t drink it so I decided to give it to Mandy along with the charm.” She smiled with satisfaction. “Anyway, Mandy’s eyes lit up and she said she had just the thing that would make the milkshake taste even better, and asked me if I wanted some. I said yes.”
“You had booze too?�
�� My sister was getting naughtier by the second.
“No, let me finish…” Savannah paced up and down the bedroom, in a relaxed way, not in the anxious, impatient way I often did it. “I followed her into the kitchen and she opened the makeshift bar in the cupboard and pulled out a half-empty bottle of Bailey’s. I really didn’t want any, but now that I was in the house I didn’t want to miss the opportunity, so I pretended to be really interested in the bottle and grabbed it from her for a closer look, but accidentally-on-purpose dropped it.” She chuckled.
“And the bottle smashed?” Gee, Sasha was so insightful.
Savannah nodded. “The drink spilled everywhere, and I pretended to get all overapologetic and clumsy and knocked over some kitchen implements in my haste to help her clean up, so she basically wanted me out of the way so she could get it cleaned up properly before her dad got home.” Savannah grinned. “She asked me to go to the living room and get some newspapers from the coffee table to wrap up the broken glass, and bingo!” Savannah made a camera clicking motion with her hands. “Photo opportunity while she was busy soaking up the alcohol flooding the kitchen floor!”
Tamara, who had been quietly captivated by the unfolding story, raised her hand and high-fived Savannah.
“I hope her dad isn’t the angry type,” said Talia. “What if he got mad about his booze getting destroyed?”
“By the amount she drinks at our study sessions, I’d say he’s well aware of his stash draining away and probably ignores it. Otherwise she’d surely make an effort to hide her consumption.”
“Sad,” Talia replied. “The girl clearly needs help. Like AA or something. We should do something.”
“Let’s deal with the ghost issue first. One dilemma at a time,” said Savannah, and I agreed. We had enough responsibility of our own to deal with right now.
“And after she’d cleaned up, she didn’t kick you out? What made her tell you her life story?” Sasha seemed in awe of Savvy’s manipulative skills. She probably wanted to learn a few tips to get into Taylor Petrenko’s inner circle.
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