Coffee and Calicos

by Rosie Pease

  I sat down with my mocha at one of the nearby tables. There was no sense in taking it outside with me. It would have cooled down too much by the time I made it back to the apartment, and Mom and Gram would only wonder where theirs were, even though neither one of them drank coffee. Upon their insistence, I had already unpacked my tea kettle and various loose teas for them if they were in the mood to have anything while I was gone.

  My mocha was still much too hot to drink, so I took out my syllabus for Savory Bakes 304 to see what we’d be focusing on. Beyond seeing I had the premade kit to pick up, I hadn’t given it much of a glance. I’d been too busy.

  I flipped through the bulky syllabus. Chef Patterson had included all the recipes we’d be learning in class. Units focused on onions, various cheeses, meats, and spices. The recipes were making my stomach growl: caramelized onion and feta rolls, Cornish hand pies, braided pesto bread, and more. I’d have to get lunch soon and hoped Mom and Gram would be ready to eat once I got back to the apartment. I wasn’t going to be able to wait long.

  At the end of each unit, we had to create our own savory baked good for the class to sample. I already knew what I’d be making for the spice unit. Lussekatter, Swedish saffron buns that were traditionally made for St. Lucia Day. I’d learned the recipe when I was in junior high from my best friend’s grandmother.

  Scratch that.

  Former best friend.

  I was hit with a twinge of pain at the thought of my long-ago friend. We hadn’t spoken in almost seven years even though we’d attended school together until graduation, which wasn’t even three years ago. Ginny and I had been best friends since kindergarten when I accidentally got sand in her face after flicking my shovel up in the sandbox after it got stuck on something. She laughed it off through a few tears. After I hugged her to apologize, we’d been inseparable.

  That was until the day I confided in her that I could see ghosts when we were thirteen.

  Chapter 3

  I’d been able to see ghosts for much of my life, but in the beginning, I didn’t know that’s what they were. They looked just like living people. Not see-through, not glowing in any way, not hovering over the ground. They didn’t walk through walls or tables out of habit, although I’d learned they could if they had to. When I was little, I thought Mom and I lived with more people than we actually did. But, no, it was just the two of us. At first she believed I had an overactive imagination, that these people were imaginary friends. That changed when I told her that a man who was a dead-ringer for her father regularly sat with us at dinner. She called Gram immediately after that confession.

  As it turned out, I wasn’t the first one in the family who could see ghosts. Gram’s sister, Peggy, had been able to as well. It wasn’t something that got talked about, so Mom had no idea that numerous imaginary friends was a sign I had that ability. It had turned Peggy into a recluse, needing to live alone so she wouldn’t be surrounded by so many spirits. She even broke off all contact with Gram and the rest of the family, and she faded into obscurity, never brought up again until Mom called Gram about my issue. Mom hadn’t even known she had an aunt until Gram told her during that conversation.

  Gram told Mom to watch me and that as long as I was okay with what was happening, there was no need to intervene.

  It took a couple years, but I learned who was a ghost and who was a real person based on how they interacted with the world. Ghosts, for obvious reasons, weren’t social with the living even if they tagged along with a live person. The exception was small children. Ghosts liked to play with kids because the kids hadn’t stopped being able to see them. It was like some curtain hadn’t dropped yet, closing them off from the world beyond what most adults knew as normal. Almost everyone was born with the ability, but the capability ended after a few years as real life became more concrete for us.

  For me, the curtain never closed. For years, I easily managed my ability. It was fun to have extra people in my life.

  But as soon as I hit puberty, all of that changed. The regular ghosts remained, but new ones appeared. Ones that wanted my help. Ones that scared me. I don’t know where they had been for the first twelve years of my life, but I wanted them to go back to wherever they had been. I tried helping the ghosts that needed it if I could. Sometimes they needed me to listen. Those were easy—mostly. When they weren’t, it was because what they had to say wasn’t what anyone should have to hear. Those ones didn’t necessarily scare me, though. The ones that did were bad news all around. I’ve since locked those memories away.

  I tried to manage it on my own. I didn’t even tell Mom at first because I had no memory of her ever talking to Gram about it. She’d taken her instructions literally. She watched me. For the most part, we’d never talked about the ghosts who visited us regularly ever again while I was a kid. She certainly didn’t encourage my skill. As new-age as Mom has always been, I think this was over the top, even for her. Maybe it would have been more normal had Great Aunt Peggy stayed.

  It went on for a year before things got to be too much. I had to confide in someone. Mom wasn’t my first choice, though.

  Ginny had been my best friend for over half my life. She seemed like she’d be a safe person to tell. Best friends forever, right?

  At first she thought I was joking. Then I described her Grandma perfectly. The one I’d never met—not the one who showed me how to make the saffron buns—because she lived out in California and Ginny only visited her at Christmas and for two weeks in the summer until she died when we were ten. Ginny grew concerned with that until she said I could have seen a photo. She laughed at me, even when I protested and said it wasn’t funny. That I wasn’t joking. She said I could cut the act. So I described the periwinkle dress and ivory shoes her grandmother was buried in. For some reason, those were the clothes she had chosen to stay in for her ghostly form. Ghosts didn’t change outfits but weren’t locked into anything either. That had been another reason I could tell who they were. Ghosts wore the same thing day in and day out.

  Talking about her grandmother’s clothes did it for Ginny. She believed me, but she didn’t accept it. She told me I was crazy and said she didn’t want to hang out with me anymore.

  I thought she’d be fine after the weekend. We’d had little tiffs before, but we’d always made up. On Monday, she didn’t sit with me on the bus. She moved seats in all of the classes we had together. She sat at a different table at lunch. The cool kids adopted her, and she became one of them. From then on, she ignored me. I don’t think she ever told anyone what happened, I never heard those rumors spreading in the halls, but she never talked to me again.

  “You have not taken one sip of your eggnog mocha in the last five minutes.” Meredith plopped into the seat in front of me. “Did I not make it okay?”

  I shook all thoughts of Ginny from my head and looked at Meredith. “Sorry, what?”

  “I asked if you liked your drink.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m sure it’s fine. Waiting for it to cool off and liking how it’s keeping my hands warm. I ate the whipped cream before it melted.”

  “Ah, gotta keep those taste buds working properly, right?” She winked at me.

  “You got it.” The last thing I needed while in a culinary program was to burn my tongue on hot coffee and screw up my ability to taste for the day. I needed to be able to taste my food as well as those of my professors and classmates. How else was I supposed to grasp subtleties of each dish’s flavor?

  “I understand completely. So where’d you zone off to? I like to pretend I’m on a tropical island. Especially in this weather.” She waved her hand at the window in a displaying fashion.

  “Oh, I didn’t go anywhere that time, I was just thinking.”

  “Must be some deep thoughts. You gave yourself a crease right”—she pointed to in between her eyebrows—“here.” She laughed. “I wouldn’t go doing that too often.”

  I joined her in her laughter. They did say it was the best medicine. “I’ll try
not to.”

  I lifted the cap of my mocha and blew into the cup, then drew a small sip to confirm the temperature was safe.

  “Good, right?” she asked.

  “Mmm . . . It’s perfect.” I took another, longer, sip. “This is one drink I wouldn’t mind having all year.”

  “You never did become much of an iced coffee person, even in the summer.”

  I shook my head. “Nope.” She’d tried to introduce me to the concept of having ice-cold coffee when we moved into our dorm freshman year since I’d never had it, but after giving it try—several times at her insistence that they didn’t make it right, and once more after she got the job here and she could do it the “right way”—she’d left me to my hot coffee year round. Just like I left her to her iced coffee even in the dead of winter. I wasn’t surprised to see one on the table in front of her.

  “Won’t you get in trouble for not being behind the counter?” I asked.

  “Who’s here to tell on me?” She made a show of looking around the room, even standing up and spinning in a circle. We were the only two people in the coffee shop. “I’m not going to say anything if you aren’t.”

  I made a motion of zipping my lips closed.

  “See? I knew I liked you.” She laughed again as she sat back into the chair.

  We chatted and drank coffee for the next half hour or so until someone else came into the shop. She darted up from the chair and hurried behind the counter to take his order. I glanced over at the exchange. It was the guy from the bookstore. He’d put a gray beanie on, covering his blond hair, but the sweatshirt was the same shade of navy.

  I took that as my cue to leave. I needed to get back to my apartment. Hopefully it was still standing. I bet Mom and Gram would be done with their smudging by now. It wasn’t a big apartment. I caught Meredith’s eye as I headed for the door and gave her a quick wave before exiting the coffee shop.

  Chapter 4

  The wind had died down by the time I started my trek home. It helped the temperature some. Now it was just cold instead of freezing.

  I walked my usual pace down the sidewalk leading away from campus, passing a gas station, a laundromat I’d likely be frequenting since my apartment didn’t have a washing machine or dryer, and two pizza places. I’d passed a few ghosts too, but they were all carrying on with their normal afterlives and didn’t pay me much attention. Two years into my abilities, I’d learned if I didn’t let them know I saw them, they had no idea I could. Gram had seen to that when I finally confided in Mom about my spirit troubles.

  Gram wasn’t an expert or anything, but I guess she had learned a thing or two from dealing with her sister, and somehow—with her crystals, feathers, and some awful-tasting tea she had me drink—she locked that portion of my ability away or blocked me from being contacted by bad spirits. I’d asked her to make it all go away, but she’d said that would have changed me too much.

  Maybe I’d understand that reasoning someday.

  A ghost was why I’d moved into my apartment. Of course I’d end up in the one dorm on campus that had spirit activity. Despite all of the rumors that surrounded colleges, a majority of schools didn’t have real hauntings. Most ghosts didn’t want to stay at school for their entire afterlives. This one wasn’t done with his partying ways, however, and it was driving me crazy. Somehow, he’d figured out what I could do, so he flocked to me like those little striped brown birds that stole dropped french fries at the outdoor patios on campus. He constantly wanted me to party with him. He’d show up to my room drunk, stand right outside the doorway, and beg me to hang out with him. If the door was closed, he’d pound on it. Unsurprisingly no one else could hear it, so it wasn’t like I had backup in complaining about a noisy neighbor. Just a pillow to cover my ears when I was trying to sleep. Thank goodness he actually couldn’t get into my room, supposedly since Mom and Gram did the stuff with the sage and whatever else they did there too. I don’t know what I would have done had he been able to get inside.

  At first, I’d complained to the Department of Residential Life, saying I wanted to move buildings due to roommate issues—I didn’t even have a roommate, but it was worth a shot—that I didn’t like the first floor and the noise coming in from outside my window, anything sane I could think of. I certainly couldn’t tell them the real reason. Unfortunately, the school didn’t have any open rooms in another dorm, so I began looking at the ads, hoping I’d find something off campus. It took a few months, but I finally found something that would work for me. Mom and Gram didn’t need some elaborate explanations as to why I wanted to move. They jumped on board my plan as soon as I said ghost. I loved them for that.

  I glanced down at my watch as I climbed the four concrete steps to the door of my building. “Fifteen minutes.” Exactly like I’d thought.

  I sighed as I looked up the first flight of stairs. This was going to take some getting used to. I’d be better off in the end.

  I took off my coat before even reaching my door. Three flights of climbing had made me uncomfortably warm. I’d need to get a coat tree or some sort of a hook to put by the door if I was always going to have it off before walking in. I’d add it to the list of things I still needed to buy. Goodness knew my Mom and Gram had already started one for me.

  I dug my keys out of my purse and unlocked my apartment door. It stuck a little bit, but I pushed it open with a bit of extra oomph. I stepped in and pulled the door closed behind me.

  All was not right with my apartment.

  I called out to them, worried that something had happened. “Mom? Gram?”

  “Oh good, you’re back,” my mom said as she breezed into the living room. “We were starting to wonder if you’d gotten lost. Do you want to order food from somewhere? I think I saw a pizza place not too far away when we drove here.”

  “Are you two okay?”

  “Yes, dear,” Gram answered as she followed a few feet behind my mom. “Why wouldn’t we be?” She still had a sage bundle in her hand. Had they been doing that the entire time I’d been gone? Just how much smudging did my apartment need?

  The remote for the TV had been knocked off the coffee table in front of the couch. They were the only two pieces of furniture set up in the room, thanks to the furniture delivery people who’d put them together earlier. My water bottle was on the floor, no longer on the stool I was using as an end table.

  “Look at this place. It’s a mess.” How could they not see everything I did?

  My mom stifled a giggle. “Of course it’s a mess. You just moved in. Your stuff is supposed to be everywhere.”

  “You seriously don’t see it?” I didn’t know how she could have missed it all.

  The more I looked, the more I saw. The only reason my lamp hadn’t hit the floor was because its cord was too short. It leaned against the arm of the couch, the cord pulled taut. “Did you bump the stool and not realize you nearly broke my lamp in the process?”

  Mom shrugged. “I mean, I guess that could have happened. But there’s no need to get so worked up about it.”

  On the floor to the side of the room sat a plastic bag full of stuff from one of my dresser drawers back home. It looked like it had been rifled through. It was open and one of the handles had been pulled down. A few of the smaller things that had once been inside it had rolled several inches away.

  “Really, dear, I think you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed,” Gram added.

  I surveyed the small space some more. A tube of lip balm, which had been in the plastic bag, was across the room. I guessed one of them could have kicked it without realizing, but why were they in that bag in the first place?

  I nodded to the sage in Gram’s hand.

  “Are you sure the smudging worked? This apartment better not be haunted. My lease is for a year.” I didn’t know what stock I put in smudging, it seemed a little too witchy for me, but since they believed, I wanted their word that they had done their job.

  Gram put her hands on my shoulders. “We sm
udged everything. More than once, even, just to be sure. We don’t want anything to bother you while you’re here. Did something happen?” She searched my gaze. “No, you seem fine outside of this.”

  “Is your blood sugar low?” Mom asked.

  “You know I’ve never had a problem with that.”

  “When was the last time you ate? You don’t have to have a problem with it for it to affect you sometimes.”

  “Breakfast. At the rest stop. I had a coffee at the shop next to the bookstore.”

  Gram snapped her fingers. “That would do it. Mel, will you—”

  “Say no more,” my mom interrupted. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

  Gram placed her hand back on my shoulder. “You need to balance out all that caffeine. It’s making you jittery in more ways than one. Your aura is all over the place.”

  “Gram, you know I don’t believe in that stuff.” Now I’d done it.

  She put her hands on her hips. “You’d better start. You’d have a better handle on yourself if you opened yourself up to it.” She sighed. “You can see ghosts. Why won’t you believe me when I say I can see colors around people?”

  “I can only handle one weird thing, and you’ve got to admit, ghosts are a pretty big thing.”

  “You let us do the smudging, though. That’s not what you’d consider normal.”

  “That’s true, I don’t, but I figure it can’t hurt.”

  Gram shook her head as she tried to hide an eye roll.

  “Plus, it keeps you two busy and out of my stuff. Or it did until now.” I pointed at the open plastic bag.

  “I swear we haven’t touched your things.”

  “But—”

  She turned and walked toward it, pointing. “It probably fell over on its own. We’ve all been hurrying around to get you situated in here.”