Gully frowned at her, but he did not say what he was thinking, which was that she was too kind. It seemed an odd thing to believe: that someone could be too kind. And her kindness was what made him ever want to be her friend to begin with. But being kind meant granting requests like these, and Gully did not like the idea of anyone using Emmaline or getting her into trouble on their account.
Several minutes passed, and then the sisters walked up the stairs. They were sobbing and clinging to one another. They addressed Emmaline with a collective nod and sniffles. The shortest one grabbed Emmaline’s hand and gave it a grateful squeeze.
Emmaline couldn’t help smiling at that. Perhaps, she thought, the machine could serve a good purpose, after all. If it were to be used sensibly. The Sisters Allemand were happy under all those tears, after all.
Gully followed the Sisters Allemand outside, to help them catch their cat, who had not only escaped again but this time had scrambled up a tree.
Emmaline stood in the doorway and watched the scene unfold, her arms folded against the chill.
Oliver fitted his scarf over Emmaline’s shoulders like a blanket to keep her warm. She smiled at him.
“Emmy.” Oliver’s voice was hushed. “You did a very good thing. You helped them.”
“Me?” She blinked. “I haven’t done anything.”
“Of course you have,” Oliver said. “I wished you would have stayed to watch. Monsieur Allemand appeared, and it was as though he wasn’t a ghost at all. They hugged him, and everyone was crying, and he asked about his wife and his children. He said he thinks of them all the time where he is.”
Emmaline toyed with the fringe of the scarf. She knew what it was like to see the ghost of someone she loved. But what Oliver hadn’t seen was what came next. Tonight the Sisters Allemand would return to their quiet house, and turn out the light, and go to bed, and search for the memory of their brother they fed to the machine. They would realize that their minds had been prodded and scratched at, like discarded notes on a scrap of paper.
Oliver took her hand and squeezed it. Emmaline wished it could be as simple as Oliver made it seem. She wished all the good that the machine created wasn’t undone by the sadness it created, too.
Later, when Emmaline went to bed, she thought about the tiny silver plane flying into the machine, and the tea she’d thrown in anger, and what Oliver had said about her doing a good thing by letting the Sisters Allemand use the machine.
She tossed and turned until the clock struck four.
By four o’clock, Emmaline was no longer thinking about Granville Allemand. She was thinking of her mother. She was trying to see through the black patches in her memory. Something to do with thunderstorms, but what? Something her mother used to say to her—what was it?—a song?—a poem?—maybe just an embrace.
Whatever it had been, it truly was gone forever.
CHAPTER 9
By morning, Emmaline hadn’t gotten much sleep. She descended the staircase and was greeted by the smell of toast and syrup—her favorite.
“I thought you would be hungry,” her father said. He was smiling.
Emmaline had a hard time meeting his eyes. She had gone behind his back, and guilt was starting to set in.
She took a bite of her toast, but she wasn’t hungry.
“What’s the matter?” Her father touched her forehead. “Do you feel sick?”
“No.” Her response was too cheerful. “Not at all.” She took another bite of toast, summoning more enthusiasm.
Her father prepared a plate for himself and sat down across from her. “How is school?” he asked. “Didn’t you say you have an essay due soon?”
Emmaline’s mouth rose into a smile she couldn’t control. “You remember that?”
“Of course,” her father said, and took a sip of his coffee. “You’re my daughter.”
The guilt Emmaline felt was overwhelmed by warmth. “We have to choose a country to write about,” she said. “Gully is going to write about Japan. I haven’t decided what I’m going to pick yet, but I’ll have to hurry before all the choices I might want are already taken.”
“There’s some glitter in the scrap drawer from one of your mother’s old scrapbooking projects,” her father said. “We can use it for your cover page.”
“Really?” Emmaline said. “You’ll help?”
Her father smiled, but his smile turned sad. “I know that I haven’t been around, Emmaline. But I’ve thought a lot about what you said, and you’re right. We need to take care of each other. More importantly, I need to take care of you. You’re all I have left.”
“You have lots of people who care about you, Papa,” Emmaline said. “Aunt Cherelle sends you all those books and letters, and the neighbors ask about you all the time.”
“Yes, I suppose,” her father said. “But you’re the one who matters most.”
It was such a beautiful thought. Once, it had gone without saying. When Emmaline was small, she had always felt important. Once. But now, though she feared ruining the sentiment, she had to ask, “Do I matter even more than the machine?”
Her father was wounded by that. Not because she had asked, but because he’d given her such reason to. “Yes,” he said. “You matter more than the machine. More than ten of them.” He brightened. “In fact, I have an interview this afternoon at the shoe factory.”
“You’re going to get a job?” Emmaline asked.
“I think it’s about time to return to work, wouldn’t you say?” he answered. Before his wife’s death, he had worked in a patent office, overseeing all manner of strange and peculiar inventions. But then he’d left work to become an inventor in his own right, and after two years of exhausting his resources and forcing both himself and Emmaline to pinch every coin that crossed their paths, money had grown thin.
Before Emmaline could ask her next question, he answered it for her. “I will still work on the ghost machine, Emmy. You have to know I can’t give up on it. But it can be more of a weekend project. Or perhaps every other weekend.”
It was progress, at least, Emmaline thought.
They ate in silence for a while, each of them considering the conversation and all the changes it would bring. And then Emmaline said, “Papa? What if you used the ghost machine to help people? Like how Oliver and Gully wanted to see their dog one last time, or if someone wanted to ask for clarification on a will—things like that?”
“You have a good heart,” her father said. “And if everyone in the world were more like you, then I think that would be a wonderful idea. But there are people who would take advantage of it. There are people who would be greedy, or maybe just too sad to say good-bye only once. We can’t trust this secret with the world.”
Emmaline was thinking of the collective look on the faces of the Sisters Allemand. The machine had helped them. It had helped Gully and Oliver, too. But it had also stolen her father away for two years.
It was a dangerous and confusing thing, that machine.
December was especially brutal this year. By the end of the first week, Emmaline, Gully, and Oliver were wading through a foot of snow on their way to school.
“Did your father get the job?” Oliver asked, rubbing his red mittens together for warmth.
“Yes,” Emmaline said, and Oliver smiled at the cheer in her tone. Her bright verve this morning even coaxed a smile out of Gully’s usually pensive expression. “He’s starting on Monday.”
It had been three days since the Sisters Allemand visited with their brother’s ghost, and three days since Emmaline and her father had their conversation about living a more normal life. She had begun to write her essay and was already planning a design for its cover. She was so happy that even the machine’s ever-present humming within the house had become less of a nuisance. It was soft, automatic, like the ticking of the clocks.
“We should celebrate,” Oliver said.
“The lake behind our house is frozen over,” Gully said. “We could go skating.”
Like the tire swing in the summer, skating in the winter was its own tradition. The twins’ mother was an avid skater, and both their parents gave scuba diving lessons in the summer, and so water in all its forms was in the twins’ blood. Emmaline remembered when she had first learned to skate on the DePauls’ lake. She fell and slid and crashed into Gully more than she actually skated, but they’d laughed the whole time.
“Yes, let’s,” Emmaline said.
The school day was perfectly average, and Emmaline savored it. For lunch she ate a jelly and banana sandwich her father had made for her. The sun sat high and beaming in the winter sky, and everything about that day felt beautiful and full of hope.
After school Emmaline walked home to grab her skates from the hall closet, and she met Gully and Oliver, who were waiting for her on the log beside the lake behind their house.
Gully fixed his brother’s red scarf, which had become unfurled, and Oliver swatted him away.
“I’ve been thinking about the ghost machine, about what I told you the other night,” Oliver said to Emmaline. He didn’t bother lowering his voice. The house was several yards away, and there was no one to hear them. “Have you given it any more thought?”
“Given what more thought?” Gully asked.
“I told Emmy that the machine helped the Sisters Allemand.”
“So?” Gully said. “It helped them. That’s no reason to allow everyone to use it.”
“Not everyone,” Oliver said. He looked past his brother, at Emmaline. “We could decide who gets to use it. Like a test.” He clapped his hands together excitedly. “We could—”
“It sounds very nice,” Emmaline said. “But it would cause more problems than it would fix. They’ll want more than the brief time they’re given, or they won’t be able to keep it a secret.” Or they would just be sad all over again when the ghost left them, but she couldn’t bring herself to add that out loud.
“It’s too dangerous,” Gully said, stepping onto the ice with an expert glide that turned into a circle.
“Just because it’s dangerous doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea,” Oliver said. “You could be very selective about who knows about it.” He took Emmaline’s hand, and together they pushed forward onto the ice.
“I asked my father about that, and he didn’t think it was a good idea.”
“There,” Gully said. “See? I told you.”
Oliver ignored him. He squeezed Emmaline’s hand. “I know you hate the machine sometimes, Emmy, but it can be used for good.”
“It would be better if it never existed at all,” Gully said, skating at Emmaline’s other side. “Dead is dead.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Oliver said. “You never think about what it would be like to see Granny Lina’s ghost?”
“Granny Lina is still alive,” Gully said.
“Yes, but she’s very old,” Oliver said. “One day she’ll die.”
“That’s the way things go.” Gully’s logic was unwavering. “And I won’t want to see her as a ghost. I didn’t even want to see Tidbit as a ghost, but you went behind my back after we’d agreed.”
“We didn’t agree,” Oliver said. “You were trying to boss me around. You’re always so bossy.”
“I wouldn’t have to be bossy if you used more sense.”
“I do,” Oliver said. “It’s just my sense is different from yours.”
Oliver and Gully often argued, and normally Emmaline didn’t mind. She even found it endearing. But this argument felt more pointed somehow, and it was starting to worry her.
“Seeing a ghost is not always a good thing, Oliver,” she interrupted. “I’m glad I got to speak to my mother again, but I lost a memory of her, and I can’t get it back.”
“But you made a new memory when you visited with her ghost,” Oliver said. “And if someone I loved died, I’d make the decision to see them again.”
Suddenly Emmaline was fighting the urge to cry. She had been listening to the brothers argue about the machine, and it only reminded her that there was no escaping it. Even here, where there was nothing but ice and snow, and no electricity to be seen, the machine still hummed and clattered in her brain. It haunted her just as surely as any ghost it may have produced.
She ripped her hand out of Oliver’s grasp. “You don’t have to make a decision like that, because your mother is still alive. And so are your grandparents, and your family is still the way it’s supposed to be.”
She felt bad the instant she’d said the words. Her skates whispered to a halt, and her vision flooded with tears.
“Oh, Emmaline,” Gully said. He looked at his brother. “Do you see what you did? Why can’t you let things go?”
Emmaline rubbed at her eyes, and the tears caught in the fibers of her white gloves.
“I’m sorry,” Oliver said. “Emmy, I didn’t mean to make you sad.”
She couldn’t raise her head even enough to look at him.
“You’re always making such a mess of things,” Gully told him. He put his arm around Emmaline, and she let him guide her back to the log at the lake’s edge.
They left Oliver behind, and he didn’t move to follow them, guilty as he felt. He had never made Emmaline cry before, and now he seemed afraid to say another word, like breathing too close to a house of cards about to collapse.
As soon as she sat, the tears came faster, and Emmaline buried her face in her hands.
“I really miss her, Gully,” she choked out. “I wish I could have her back, and not as a ghost. I wouldn’t want anyone to see someone they lost as a ghost, because it’s like losing them all over again a second time, and we’re not meant to lose someone twice. We’re just not meant to.” Her voice was strained, and as she shuddered with a sob, Gully put his arms around her.
She fell against him, and she cried like she hadn’t cried in two years. She cried like the loss was brand new, because it was. Funerals ended and bodies were buried and prayers were said. But loss couldn’t be buried. It could only be forgotten about for a while, during a sunny day or while listening to a pretty song, only to return anew.
Emmaline didn’t know how long she cried, but Gully didn’t try to stop her. He kept his arms around her and said nothing until at last she raised her head, looked at him, and swiped the loose hair out of her eyes.
She was surprised to see that he looked as sad as she was.
“Why did he have to make that machine?” she asked him.
“I don’t know,” Gully said. “It isn’t fair. He shouldn’t have done it. I understand why you wanted to break it.”
“Today started out so perfectly,” she said. “I don’t want to waste it by being sad.”
“Maybe you needed to let it out,” Gully said. “You’re always trying to be happy for everyone else.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t mean to sound so jealous. I’m glad you and Oliver haven’t lost anyone. I’m glad you don’t know how this feels. You shouldn’t, for a long time. And when I’m around you, I remember what it felt like to be normal.”
Gully let out a small laugh. “I don’t know if you’d call Oliver and me normal.”
Emmaline smiled at him.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“Yes.” She rubbed at her eyes. Gully stood and held out a hand to help her to her feet, and together they shuffled their way back to the ice.
Emmaline had the thought that she should apologize to Oliver. But when she skated back onto the lake, he was gone.
“Oliver?” Gully skated under the tire swing and to the jagged rock wall that cut into the water. “Are you hiding?”
“Oliver?” Emmaline skated in a broad circle. She even looked up at the tree whose branches overlapped the lake and shielded her eyes from the sun to get a better look. Maybe he had climbed, she thought, even though she’d never known him to play hiding games before.
“Did he go back inside the house?” she asked.
“I would have seen him,” Gully said. “
And look. There are no footprints in the snow besides the ones we made coming out here.”
Emmaline’s tears were long forgotten by then, replaced by a new, slow-burning dread that made her stomach hurt.
“Oliver, this isn’t funny,” she said. “I’m going to be mad at you if you don’t come out.” That was a lofty threat. Oliver couldn’t stand it when he’d made someone unhappy, and it should have brought him out immediately. But he was nowhere to be found.
Gully must have spotted something she didn’t, because he skated past her so fast that the motion sent a cold breeze under her coat. She followed after him, and seconds later she saw what he did: a red scarf lying where the ice had cracked and broken, revealing a placid pool of icy water.
“Oliver!” The fear in Gully’s voice made him a stranger to Emmaline. She had never seen him like this. He skated in a frenzy, and when he reached his brother’s red scarf, he fell to his knees and began pulling off his skates.
“You can’t,” Emmaline cried. “The water’s too cold. You’ll drown.”
But he didn’t seem to hear her.
The water where the ice had broken was deceptively calm. It gave no indication that it had swallowed a boy whole, leaving nothing but an abandoned scarf.
The skates were removed, and Gully tore off his coat next. Emmaline dropped beside him and locked her arms around his a second before he would have jumped in.
“Maybe he didn’t fall in!” Emmaline tried to reason. It didn’t seem possible that Oliver could be down there. The day was still bright, still sunny, still carrying all the hope and promise it had this morning when she awoke. “Please, you can’t go in there!” Somehow she knew that she would never see him again if he did.
But Gully was something different than the boy she knew then. He was wild, determined. He wriggled in her arms, fighting her, even elbowing her to get away. But she wouldn’t let go.
Instead, Emmaline screamed. She screamed for Madame DePaul, the twins’ mother, who would surely know what to do. She screamed louder than she ever had, over and over, until she saw Madame DePaul running toward them. First, there was a dishrag in her hand, and then there wasn’t anything in it at all.
The Girl With the Ghost Machine Page 6
