Dust to Dust (27 page)

“I'm so happy to hear things are getting better,” I say, emotion quivering in my voice. And then I realize that what she's doing dovetails with what I have to ask her.

“Wendy,” I say, “I called because I need a favor.”

“Okay,” she says cautiously.

“It's going to sound strange.”

“Callie, since we've met, everything you've said to me has sounded strange.”

“I'm sorry,” I say, realizing that's true. “You know those
friends of Thatcher's, Reena and Leo?”

I hear Wendy's sharp intake of breath. “Yes. Of course. They . . . that night . . . they died, too.”

“I know,” I say. “I'm calling because I need something that belonged to Reena. It can be anything. Maybe Thatcher had something in his room, or—”

“What is this for?” she asks.

“I can't tell you. But please, just trust me. This is for Thatcher.”

I hear her sigh into the phone. “I'll look,” she says. “When do you need it?”

Carson is pointing her finger down and mouthing “now, now, now” at me.

“Now?” I say.

“Now?” Wendy echoes my question.

“Yes,” I say. “I'm sorry, it's really important. I could come—”

“This is for Thatcher?” says Wendy, interrupting me.

“Yes,” I say. “I promise.”

“I'm trusting you,” says Wendy, giving me her parents' address. “So don't screw with me.”

The house is modest and tidy—a single-floor ranch with brown shingles, a green door, and a big picture window through which I can see Wendy as Carson and I step out of her VW Bug.

Nick, Dylan, and Eli took us to pick up Carson's car, and then they drove Nick's van to the upper Wando—we're supposed to meet them there as soon as we can.

Wendy frowns at us from the window, and I ask Carson to hang back by the car.

“Hey,” says Wendy when she opens up the front door. We stand there awkwardly for a moment, but I see something softer than usual in her eyes. I go in for a hug and she grips me firmly, in a real embrace.

When we part, she glances at Carson in the driveway.

“Sorry I didn't come alone,” I say. “I needed a ride. And I guess we're all kind of in this together.”

“What is
this
exactly?” asks Wendy, her lip ring causing her to lisp a little.

“Believe me when I tell you that you don't want to know,” I say. “But it's important.”

Wendy nods, and Carson gives her an enthusiastic wave.

“Not her,” she says. She must remember Carson from campus.

“Only me?” I ask her.

“Yeah,” she says. “Sorry to be weird but his room is . . . sacred to me. I guess that sounds stupid.”

“No, it doesn't,” I tell her, giving Carson the
stay put
hand gesture. I don't want to risk anything tipping Wendy's emotional scale, and it seems like she's opening up more, like she's not as upset and moody as she was when I last saw her. Is that because Thatcher's been here, haunting her in a loving way?

I follow Wendy into Thatcher's home.

The first thing I see is a framed photo on the mantel, a picture of a boy kneeling in a football uniform and holding a ball under
his arm. He looks so all-American, so normal, so bright. And it's Thatcher. My intense and brooding, lovely ghost. The sight of him as a child takes my breath away and I gasp.

Wendy turns at the sound. “I forgot that this might be awkward for you.”

I nod, too overcome to speak for a moment.

“My parents are out,” she tells me, and I'm glad they're not around. I'm not sure I could handle more sensory experiences of Thatcher right now, since I'm at my fill when I imagine him sitting on this beige couch, eating at this teak dining table, leaning against the granite counter in their spotless kitchen.

“It's down here, space cadet,” she says, when I stand too long in the doorway of the kitchen.

I shake my head. “Sorry,” I tell her. “I'm a little overwhelmed.”

She smiles. “It's okay.”

We walk through the carpeted hallway, lined with photos of Wendy and Thatcher as babies, family portraits of four, black-and-white young-grandparent shots.

As we reach the door to Thatcher's room, I have the sense of being on a precipice, an entrance into another world. But when I walk in, I see that the cleanout has already begun in earnest, and I wonder if I should be disappointed or grateful.

There are boxes all around the twin bed in the corner, and a desk on the opposite wall has only a couple of items on top of it. One of them catches my eye and I walk across the room to pick it up.

It's another framed photograph, this time of three friends, high
school seniors with their arms around one another, laughing.

Leo's face is open and joyful—he looks a thousand years younger without the shadows of bitterness that cover his deep-set eyes and hang from the corners of his mouth. Reena, too, is a picture of innocence. Her soft brown eyes are warm and welcoming, her smile brimming with happiness. She looks like a Disney Channel star, one who bounces around singing about dreams and stardust and best friends forever.

And the third friend.
Thatcher
. His gorgeous full lips are holding back a grin that's on the verge of bursting through, like someone just told him the funniest joke of all time. His blue eyes, unclouded by the storms I've seen in them, shine like the open sky, full of promise and wonder.

“They're so . . .” I don't know how to finish my thought.

“They are,” agrees Wendy, coming up behind me, and I know she understands the words that are unsaid but still hang in the air.
Alive. Untouched. Hopeful.

We stare at the picture for another minute, and then Wendy clears her throat.

“You can keep it if you want,” she says.

“You're sure?”

“Yeah,” she says. “We have a bunch.”

I take the photo out of the frame and put it in my pocket. “Thank you.” I shake the emotional cobweb from my voice with a cough.

“I found something that may help you,” says Wendy, switching gears.

“Great.”

She reaches for a shoe box that's resting on top of a bigger cardboard box, and she pulls out a shoelace. I give her a curious smile.

“It was Reena's,” she says. Then she sits on the end of the bed and stares at the white string for a moment. “It's funny. I have a distinct memory of sitting with her in Thatcher's room—over there by the closet—and helping her change out her shoelaces for cheerleading practice. She had these white ones, but she wanted to swap them for red and gold, the school colors. There was a pep rally that night.”

She lets out a little laugh, lost in the past. “I remember Thatcher joking around with her, saying her school spirit was out of control. But I was twelve, and I thought she was so cool.”

“
You
thought cheerleading was cool?” I laugh.

“It was before I knew who I really was. And before these.” She points to her piercings, and then she shakes her head, clearing the memory. “Anyway, I found this on the floor of Thatcher's closet,” she says. “It's definitely hers.”

She hands it to me and I look at it in my palm. This piece of string was once on Reena's sneakers. Back when she was a girl, like me. Before she was . . . the vengeful creature she is now. I stuff the shoelace into my pocket.

“Thank you,” I say.

“I also found this.” She reaches back into the box and pulls out a small round pin with an intricate drawing of a tree on it—it's tiny but you can see the texture of the bark, a delicate knothole, the detailed roots. Just like the drawing in Leo's room.

“Did Leo make this?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says. “He used to draw all the time and he pressed buttons too. It was on the strap of Thatcher's last backpack.”

I take the circle in my hand and finger it gently.

“Thank you,” I say to Wendy. “I like knowing that this side of Leo existed once.”

“What do you mean?”

“He changed,” I say. “In the Prism, Leo's so angry. He can't come to terms with what happened to him.”

“Like Thatcher,” says Wendy, looking down at the carpet.

“No,” I tell her. “Not like Thatcher at all.”

She glances up at me, and I can sense a secret in her face, one that is longing to come out. Her eyes are asking if she can trust me.

“What is it?” I ask.

“You know that feeling when you're bodysurfing and you get trapped under a wave and rolled along the sand?”

I nod, not sure where she's going with this. Anyone who's gone in the ocean has had that happen at some point—that feeling of panic just before you come up to the surface and breathe again, coughing and choking.

“Yeah,” I say. “It's scary.”

“Right,” says Wendy. “It is. And it's even scarier if someone holds you down.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was the first time after Thatcher's death that Mom and Dad let me go off with a friend's family. Jen and I spent the day in the sun, reading magazines and digging our feet into the sand. And
when we went in the ocean, Thatcher was waiting.”

My eyes grow large and I take a breath in.

“The boy in the ocean wasn't like my brother. He was bitter and mean. Reena and Leo were with him.”

I nod, encouraging her to go on.

“Thatcher waited for a wave to take me, and when I ducked under, he held me down.”

I'm shaking my head now,
nonononono
, but she's nodding yes.

“He was in a rage, churning like the ocean itself.”

“It was a hallucination,” I say. “Maybe you hit your head on the bottom, maybe—”

“No,” says Wendy, interrupting me.

“It was Leo, then; I'm sure of it. I know he was different when he was alive, but Wendy, you don't know what he's capable of now. He's—”

“It. Was. My. Brother.” She says it staccato-style, and her intense stare makes me go quiet again. “I know it was. Just before I broke the surface, Thatcher whispered, ‘Always remember,
this
is what it feels like to drown.'”

I look up at her, shocked, and her kohl-rimmed eyes are filled with tears.

“My brother blamed me, almost enough to want me dead. So how can I not blame myself, too?”

I stand up and move closer to her, sitting on the edge of the bed. I stroke her back for a minute as her shoulders shudder, trying to process this information myself. Is it possible that Thatcher did this to his sister? That he held her under water and scared her half
to death? I shake my head. It can't be.

“I don't know what happened that day at the beach,” I tell her honestly. “But I do know that Thatcher loves you very much. He always has. You can't hold on to the guilt you're carrying—you've got to let it go.”

“I've tried,” she says, drying her tears and pulling away from my touch. She stands up quickly and crosses her arms in front of her chest. “I go to church, I went to therapy, I do all the things they say can ease grief. I even kept a journal about my feelings for a year. But I keep reliving that day, under the water, when Thatcher's words were full of hate and I wasn't sure I'd see the sun again.”

My heart goes cold. I can't believe what I've just heard.

Was Thatcher once a poltergeist, like Leo and Reena?

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

WHEN CARSON AND I step out onto the beach where we picnicked the day Thatcher possessed Nick, my mind is not thinking the way I want it to. I'm supposed to be focused on using this incantation to expel Reena and Leo from the universe, but Wendy's confession has me reeling. The thought of Thatcher trying to hurt his own sister—the realization that I don't know everything about his past and what kind of spirit he used to be—is so unfathomable to me that I keep trying to make sense of it, running through possible alternate scenarios in my head, and my balance is totally off-kilter.

I haven't said anything to Carson, but of course she senses something's wrong. As we close in on Dylan, Eli, and Nick, who are assembled in a little triangle about a hundred feet away on a mound of wet sand, she gives me a sharp look.

“So are you going to tell me?” she asks.

“Tell you what?”

“Don't play dumb. Something happened at Wendy's house. Something that really has you spooked.”

I shrug. “It was weird being there. In his room, with some of his stuff. I just . . . I can't shake the feeling.”

It's all true, but I'm afraid to mention what Wendy told me about her brother, how he held her down under water so he could show her how horrible it felt to drown. I don't want my friends to mistrust Thatcher, especially not now. I hate to admit it, but my trust in him is wavering a bit.

“There's more to it than that,” Carson says, stopping for a second. “Your eyes were totally glazed over when you left their house.”

I tug her along by the wrist, so that she doesn't lag behind me. “Please, let it go. We have to focus on the incantation.”

“That's what I'm worried about. You know better than anyone that stuff like this doesn't work unless you're spiritually centered. If you're not focused, it can backfire,” she warns.

“I'll be fine; I just need another minute to settle down, okay?”

“If you say so,” Carson says skeptically.

“Hello, ladies,” says Dylan, waving us over and smiling from ear to ear. Eli, on the other hand, still looks puzzled, while Nick appears to be scanning the beach, for what I'm not exactly sure.

“Do you still think you're dreaming?” I ask Eli.

He scratches his head. “There's a lot of logistics in this dream,” he says. “A lot of driving.”