Crossing Over (7 page)

“Will you look at that tree?” murmured Ben.

I was already looking at it. It was like the great-grandfather of trees—warm and wide and strong and reaching far up into
the air where I could see movement on its branches.

Ben walked over and placed both hands on the trunk, and he leaned in close so his face was almost touching the bark. I was
on the verge of asking Jac to secretly snap a picture of him doing this delightful thing when I began to hear voices again.

The voices were male, there were a number of them, and they were speaking or
chanting in a guttural language so foreign to
me I couldn’t even begin to identify it. And unless there was some odd, avant-garde bit of performance art taking place somewhere
in the Biodome, the voices were not coming out of my time, or my space.

But they weren’t ghosts. Not the way I usually experienced them. My eyes were open. People were moving about, pointing at
things and taking pictures and walking and talking, and there were no spirits cavorting amidst them. But I could hear this
strange chanting clear as a bell. What was happening to me?

Should I be scared?

I had gotten a half minute or so into serious consideration that I might be experiencing some sort of mental breakdown—because
let’s face it, hearing voices is never the best sign—when I heard a dainty scream.
Shoshanna was standing a few feet away
from me pointing at a spider—a very large, hairy spider that may well have been carrying some sort of weapon. The fact that
the spider was displayed under Plexiglas and had all the appearances of being, you know, dead, had not done anything to alleviate
Shoshanna’s distress at having seen it. The Satellite Girls instantly surrounded her, at least three of them did, making sympathetic
sounds of disgust and covering their faces with their hands. Both of the sporty Random Boys joined the group, alternating
between mocking the girls’ fear and offering anti-spider protection services.

Brooklyn had been left out of this comfort-fest and stood off to one side, unable to squeeze into the crowd and equally unable
to tear herself away from it. When it became obvious that the sea of Satellite Girls was not
going to part and welcome her
in, Brooklyn took a few confused steps in the opposite direction. She caught sight of Ben, his hands still on the tree, and
she walked over and stood behind him, clearing her throat. When he didn’t move, or acknowledge her in any way, she spoke.

“Ben,” she said, more loudly than she needed to. She shot me a look to make sure I was listening.

“Ben,” she repeated, “Can you help me with my camera? The thing won’t—”

Ben held up one hand in a “wait a minute” gesture. He remained with his back to her, hands on the tree. Brooklyn stood for
an uncomfortable minute, then looked in another direction, like someone had called her name. Which no one had.

She took a step back from Ben, weighing her options. Then her eyes met mine. And
they narrowed. I wasn’t going to pretend
I didn’t see. Brooklyn was in the middle of one huge incomplete forward pass. Why should I make it less embarrassing than
it was? Brooklyn should have picked another boy to bat her eyelashes at, plain and simple.

“Bummer about that camera,” I said.

“Be quiet, Spooky,” Brooklyn said. She came right over to me and got in my face a little.

“I almost didn’t come on this trip because of your gypsy mother,” Brooklyn said.

What?

“That’s right. My mother was very concerned about your mother being a chaperone. Actually, most of the mothers were concerned
about it. It’s inappropriate. A fortune-telling crystal ball reader has no business supervising children. And I think it’s
my duty to make sure Ben has all the facts about your family.”

My face flushed furiously with rage. Once, when Brooklyn had said similar things about my mother, I had gotten so angry I
recited a fake incantation and made her believe I was conjuring up spirits to haunt her. I knew it was wrong for any medium
to deliberately cause fear, and I’d promised both myself and my mother I’d never do it again. But I certainly enjoyed the
memory of Brooklyn running away from me in terror.

“How come you’re not hanging out with Shoshanna?” I asked innocently, as if the subject of my mother had never come up. “Oh
yeah, I forgot. She doesn’t like you anymore.”

“Of course she likes me,” Brooklyn snapped.

“Really? I thought people who liked each other usually hung out together. Even talked to each other. My mistake.”

“Shut up,” Brooklyn said. “I’m out of here.
I’ll catch Ben later, make sure he gets up to speed on our local coven of witches,
sorry, I mean your family.”

“You do that,” I said, scowling. “If you can get him to give you even a minute of his attention.”

“Oh, I can do much better than that,” Brooklyn declared. She tossed her high-maintenance hair and walked off, navigating around
the Satellite Girls like she hadn’t noticed them, and making a beeline for the oversized toothy fish display.

I felt uncomfortable. Ben obviously wasn’t high on Brooklyn, but I knew when she put her mind to something she could be extremely
driven. Particularly when that something would make someone else upset.

I used to think people like Brooklyn Bigelow existed only in books and movies. By which I mean people who took pleasure in
deliberately causing difficulties or unhappiness for others, simply because they found it fun. But Brooklyn Bigelow was sadly
real. Maybe she had low self esteem. Maybe her parents were mean to her, and she was merely turning her pain outward and dulling
it by being cruel to others. Maybe Brooklyn Bigelow was miserable on the inside.

Frankly, I didn’t care. I hated her.

Ben, Jac, and I were way ahead of the group by the time we emerged from the Antarctic ecosystem, where Jac had squealed with
delight at the antics of the various penguins waddling with dignity and sliding on their stomachs into pools of water.

“They’re just like little people,” she exclaimed.

“Like which little people exactly?” I asked her, suppressing a laugh.

“Little… partygoers in formalwear milling about and frolicking,” Jac declared.

“Oh right,
those
little people,” I said with a grin.

We were waiting for Ben to finish up at the cash register. He had picked out a beautiful book about rainforests, which I would
have wanted to borrow from anyone but especially wanted to borrow from him. (“Read it together,” Jac had already coaxed.)
He had also purchased a small lump of rock thought to be thousands of years old that had actually come from Antarctica, where
it was dug up by a geologist.

“I guess we can go back into the lobby,” I said. Brooklyn, having nothing better to do, had just wandered into the gift shop
and was sullenly examining a display of sterling silver spider monkey earrings. I couldn’t relax around Ben when I knew Brooklyn
was just waiting for another chance to jump in
and berate me. Or worse yet, to breathlessly inform Ben that both my mother
and I were mediums.

I didn’t need that.

“Let’s go grab some seats in the lobby or the café,” I said.

“Excellent idea,” Jac agreed. Her current plan was to agree with all my suggestions, to encourage what she had now apparently
decided was just a long wind-up to Ben’s and my marriage ceremony.

“Good thinking,” Ben said. “I could use a break. I’m on sensory overload.”

We walked out of the gift shop and down the hall leading back toward the café and ticket counter. It was late enough in the
afternoon that the lobby had cleared out. Everyone who was visiting the Biodome today was already inside.

As we walked, I got the distinct feeling we were being followed. Stupid, too-much-time-on-her-hands-not-enough-gray-matter-between-the-ears
Brooklyn! But when I shot a look back, it was not Brooklyn Bigelow that was following us. In fact, it was not a person at
all.

It was a penguin.

Okay. Take a deep breath.

I peeked over at Ben. He was holding the Antarctic rock up to show Jac.

“Gack,” said the penguin.

Another deep breath.

Since I felt I could assume that the Biodome was not in the habit of allowing its many penguins to visit the gift shop with
guests, or to leave the Antarctic ecosystem at all, there were only two logical possibilities left. First, that through multiple
system
failures and human error, one of the penguins had managed to escape undetected. The second possibility was that this
penguin was in fact a former penguin.

Which meant I was seeing my first real animal ghost.

Okay, yeah, I’d glimpsed a few pioneer-era oxen by the local history museum back when I first started seeing spooks, and there
might have been a couple of horses, too. But I’d only seen them fleetingly, from a distance. They weren’t interested in me,
just in pulling their covered wagon full of pioneers in the direction of the Oregon Trail.

“Gack,” the penguin repeated, flapping his little wings in the air for emphasis.

“What are we doing?” Jac asked. “Are we going back to the gift shop?”

“Hang on a second,” Ben said. He was still
holding the rock in his right hand, but his gaze had gone distant. “Did anybody
hear something funny?”

There was a long silence. My mind raced.

Jac caught my eye and mouthed “what’s happening.” I shook my head. I didn’t know yet.

“Gack gack,” the penguin said.

“There it was again,” Ben said.

“I didn’t hear—”

“Jac, about the gift shop…,” I said hurriedly. “I forgot to… I meant to—I was going to see if they had any, um, books.”

“They have books,” Jac declared.

“Specifically, though, about… glockenspiels.”

Jac’s eyebrows shot up.

“Oh my gosh, that’s wonderful!” she said. “I mean, a wonderful idea! They might have
a really good glockenspiel book there.
I’m going to go back and check right now.”

She dashed down the hall as if she were being chased by wolves.

Ben gave me a curious look.

“Why would the Biodome gift shop carry a book about glockenspiels?” he asked.

Yeah, I definitely should have asked Jac what a glockenspiel was before accepting it as a code word.

“Gack-uh-gack,” said the penguin. He looked at me intently, and his little penguin eyes glittered, as if he were enjoying
our conversation.

I took a deep breath. I was developing a theory about Ben, and if it were right, it could mean everything. And if it were
wrong, he might never talk to me again. But I had to take the plunge.

“I hear it,” I said. “The sound. I hear it too.”

Ben looked at me closely.

“You do.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes. It’s like… gack.”

“Gack,” the penguin confirmed, rounding his little white belly proudly and shifting from side to side on his yellow feet.

“Yes, it is,” Ben said. He cocked his head to one side, which I normally would have found adorable but right now I was too
nervous to fully appreciate. “Jac didn’t seem to hear it, though.”

“Correct,” I said.

“Kat…,” Ben began. And I did take a good second or two to appreciate what a glorious thing it was to hear Ben Greenblott say
my name with his very own lips.

“I feel like you’re trying to tell me something,” he said.

I looked at my shoes. I heard Brooklyn Bigelow’s voice inside my head, taunting me, threatening to inform Ben about my mother
and me being mediums, so sure that when he found out what a freak I was he’d run all the way to the United States border and
never look back.

But the fact was, some things were beginning to add up. When I first heard disembodied voices at the Notre Dame Basilica,
Ben had been standing nearby with his hands pressed on an old wooden pillar. I was sure of that. It hadn’t seemed important
at the time, but I distinctly remembered it because I distinctly remembered every single thing Ben Greenblott did or said
in my presence.

Then in Mont Royal Park, when I’d heard more voices speaking in French, Ben had been standing with his hands on stone. And
in the rainforest ecosystem, he had been pressing
his palms against the big tree when I heard chanting. Now he was holding
an Antarctic rock, and not only could I hear a penguin, I could see one.

My mother says there are no coincidences—only red flags that the Universe throws our way to alert us to something significant
that is happening. Without knowing anything more, I could only make my best guess. And my best guess was that Ben Greenblott
was clairaudient.

He could hear supernatural sounds and voices that others could not. And somehow when he was channeling something, I picked
up the sounds, and sometimes apparently the images, as well.

The question was, did he know it?

“Gack.”

Ben looked at me, and I nodded.

You have to tell him,
I commanded myself.
You have to tell him you see spirits. You have to tell him he’s gifted, too. You have to do it right now.

I looked full into his face. His lovely dark brows had pushed together in concern and confusion, and his eyes looked worried.
He ran a hand over his hair, never once taking his eyes off mine. I had to tell him. I owed it to him.

If he didn’t already know about his gift, he might think he was nuts hearing those voices. What would I have given to meet
another thirteen-year-old who saw ghosts when it started happening to me last year? If I cared about Ben Greenblott, and I
think you’ve picked up on the fact that I did, I needed to be honest about who I was, and what I could do.

“Kat, do you know what a clairaudient is?” Ben asked suddenly.

My mouth dropped open. It’s a bad
habit of mine when I’m speechless. I’m sure I looked hideous, but I just let it hang there
for a second. Wide open. Total gaping maw. Attractive.

“Have you heard of clairaudients? I can’t even get into what you believe, not yet. Just if you know what I’m talking about.
They’re, um… people who can…”

“I know what a clairaudient is,” I said, quietly. “A clairaudient hears spirit voices.
You
are clairaudient.”