Forever Freaky (5 page)

I burst out laughing again, as Jack gave me a
sour look.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “That was funny. You
got me laughing—I’ll give you that much. At the moment everything
is not so bad. I’m cutting class. I’m sitting in this diner.” I
paused to look around at the place, at the scattering of customers
sitting at other tables. “There isn’t a single spirit in here. Wow,
the food here must be awful—even the dead people won’t come in.” I
pulled one of the menus out from behind the condiment holder, and
started scanning the meals.

“I was being serious,” Jack said.

“I know. That’s what makes it so funny. Hey,
are you buying?”

He nodded. He looked pretty glum.

“You should, really—since you made me cry. I
think that should be a law: whenever somebody makes somebody else
cry, they owe that person a free lunch. The world would be a better
place.”

I studied the menu. It seemed all the meals
had meat. Dead cow. Slaughtered chicken. Mutilated pig.

“You find anything?” Jack asked.

“Everything has meat in it,” I said, and
explained to him briefly why I couldn’t eat meat.

When the waitress came, I ordered a cheese
omelet. Jack asked for just coffee.

He looked puzzled. “I don’t get something.
You can’t eat meat, I understand that, but you can eat eggs. Eggs
are future chickens, so how can you eat eggs?”

“If I eat eggs, I get visions of fluffy
little chicks. That’s not so bad. I figure what the hell,
somebody’s going to eat them, right?”

“I want to suggest something to you,” he
said.

“Go ahead,” I sighed.

“I have to ask you first: are you reading my
mind now? Because if you are, I’d be wasting my breath.”

“No, I’m blocking you out—boy, am I blocking
you out. And you’ll probably be wasting your breath anyway. But go
ahead. Suggest away.”

“Maybe there’s a reason that Mary Jo
vanished,” he said.

“Sure, she fell into an alternate
reality.”

“I mean a greater reason.”

“Like?”

“You ever hear that saying: everything
happens for a reason?”

“Yeah, but I never believed it. How could I?
I constantly see things that make absolutely no sense. What reason
could there be for that?”

“Well, what if Mary Jo vanished so that you
could find her, so that you discover a practical use for your
abilities.”

I stared at him for a moment. “Now you’re
thinking there’s a cosmic conspiracy to lead me to do what? Find
missing persons?”

“You could do worse things in life,” he
said.

“Sorry, I just don’t buy that,” I said. “I
guarantee you, if I find Mary Jo, it’s going to be for purely
selfish reasons. And I suppose I have to find her,” I added
dismally. Already that morning, Jerry had been harping that I
didn’t seem to be doing anything to retrieve Mary Jo.

“The girls’ bathroom is still sealed off,”
Jack pointed out.

“I know.”

“No way of getting in there during school
hours. That’s the bad part.”

“The whole thing is the bad part,” I said. “I
don’t want to go looking for this miserable tree-hugging bitch. By
the way, what do you think is the good part?”

“Well, the cops have been going in and out of
the bathroom, but none of them have disappeared.”

“That’s the good part?” I wondered; I loathed
the police, especially detectives, anybody in an official capacity
who might discover what I was. The idea of one or two cops going
poof was a happy thought.

“Sure,” Jack said. “If a couple cops
vanished, it would be a real mess. The school would be overrun with
federal authorities—the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and who knows who
else? It would be Men-in-Black City if it looked like something
really weird was going on. We would never stand a chance to get
into the bathroom and check it out ourselves.”

“And there’s a chance now?” I asked.

“If we do it after school hours,” he
said.

“You’re suggesting we break into the school
at night.”

“Too risky,” he said. “The school has an
alarm with perimeter sensors. All the windows and doors are wired.
But it doesn’t have interior motion detectors. So the best way to
do it is to get locked in the school, find some hiding place and
let the school shut down around us. That way we’d have the whole
building to ourselves, after Carl the janitor leaves, which is no
later than ten o’clock.”

I stared at him. “You just figured all this
out?”

“I think fast.”

“And you’re serious?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

“Did you figure out exactly how we’re
supposed to get Mary Jo back?”

“I have some ideas,” he said.

“Meaning, no.”

“I figured we have to play that part by
ear.”

After thinking it all over for a moment, I
said, “This sounds like a really bad idea.”

“So you want to try it?”

“Yeah, for sure,” I said, concluding that a
bad idea is better than no idea at all.

“Tomorrow is Friday,” he said. “I figure it
would be good to do it tomorrow. When they lock down the school,
everybody will be in a hurry to get home. There will be less of a
chance of anybody catching us hiding. I’ll tell my parents I’m
staying over at a friend’s house. What about your parents?”

“What Dad doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Mom
pretty much lets me do whatever I want—she understands that I can
see trouble coming from a long way off.”

“So we’re good?”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said, trying to sound
enthusiastic.

The waitress brought my omelet. As I ate it,
I had flashes of fluffy yellow and white chicks. I tried to feel a
sense of loss for them, but I couldn’t feel anything.

*************

“The girl’s been missing for nearly three
days.”

“I know, I know, I know,” I said.

It was Friday morning, and I was eating
breakfast alone—except for Jerry, of course.

Jerry was being wretched. I hadn’t thought it
was possible for a ghost to be so impatient. He’d burned my toast
three times, before I finally had to make it myself.

Now I tried to eat my scrambled eggs and
toast, while Jerry sat across from me, complaining that I was
taking too long to find Mary Jo. He sat there in his uniform,
looking like he belonged on a ghastly police-recruiting poster.
Join the police force. Serve and protect. Get your brains blown out
by an armed felon.

“Three days is a long time to be lost in an
alternate reality. No telling how much damage might be done to the
girl. In the meantime, there have been three more accidents here
that should never have happened. Two more car accidents—minor
fender benders—and a senior citizen fell off a stepladder and broke
his leg while changing a light bulb,” he said.

“I’m working on it. It’s not that easy, you
know?”

“What’s the hold up?” he demanded.

“There are cops at the school every day. The
bathroom is still off limits to students. But there is a plan,” I
said, and told him about Jack and about what we had planned for
that evening.

He thought for a long time, and then he said,
“You know, technically, you’d still be breaking and entering, and
trespassing. Those are some very serious charges.”

“You said I needed to find her. You didn’t
say anything about having to find her legally.”

“I’m just saying, you’d be breaking the
law.”

“And how could I do it without breaking the
law. I mean, I figure I have to get into the bathroom. I need to
check it out. If I can’t even check it out, there’s no way I can
find her. And how can I do that legally if it’s still a crime
scene? You can’t make an omelet without cracking a couple eggs, you
know.”

He shrugged a thick shoulder. “I guess you’re
right. I just don’t like the idea of you breaking the law.”

“Think of it as the lesser of two evils.
Maybe that will help.”

“It doesn’t. I feel that I am turning you
into a juvenile delinquent.”

“Jerry, please, just—just stop talking about
it, okay?” I said. “You keep talking, and I’ll forget the whole
thing, I swear. I didn’t want to do it from the beginning,
anyway.”

“All right,” he said glumly.

He still sat there, but kept his mouth shut.
I was able to eat in relative peace for a few minutes.

“So what about this guy? Jack—is that his
name?” he asked.

“Jack Kilgore, yeah.”

“You like him?”

“No, not at all,” I said.

“But you told him about yourself, about what
you can do.”

“Everybody has a weak moment now and
then.”

“And you’re letting him help you with finding
Mary Jo.”

“Jack is an idiot,” I said. “He actually
wants to help me. If he wants to be stupid, who am I to stop
him?”

“And that’s all?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said.

“Can’t you talk about the weather or
something?” I asked.

“You have to like somebody.”

“Who says?”

“Life must be so lonely for you.”

“Lonely? What are you, kidding? I have
annoying ghosts pestering me all the time.”

He gave me a sad look, and shook his head. He
stood up and drifted into the next room, finally leaving me to
finish my breakfast in peace.

I got to school early, and sat in my car
parked in the student lot. It was a gray day. The school looked
like a castle beneath the sky of heavy dark clouds. The zero-period
crowd was arriving by ones and twos, straying into the building. I
could never understand why anybody would sign up for pre- and
post-class activities. Weren’t regular classes enough? Does the
world real need over-achievers? People whose sole purpose in life
seems to be to remind the rest of us that we are total losers? I
would have been content to stay in bed under my blankets. I could
have done that every day, but especially today.

It wasn’t long before Jack arrived and was
sitting in the passenger seat of my car. He was the first living
being to ever get into the car with me. My parents wouldn’t even
ride with me; my driving was so bad because I was constantly
distracted by some weird thing or other.

Jack started going over his master plan with
me again. He’d brought a gym bag that contained a large flashlight,
a hundred feet of rope, and a notebook filled with hand-written
spells.

“I have to tell you,” I said. “I’ve been
thinking things over, and I’m pretty sure this is the stupidest
plan anybody ever dreamed up.”

Jack was irked. “So you don’t want to go
through with it?”

“I’m not sure.”

“But I brought rope and everything,” he
whined.

“That’s what I mean. Why do we need rope? So
if the plan doesn’t work, you can go and hang yourself?”

“Rope is a good idea,” he said. “Rope always
comes in handy.”

“So does duct tape. You bring that with,
too?”

“I can’t believe you’re telling me this now,”
he said, clearly disappointed. He was so dull he’d probably been
looking forward to the whole event. He believed it would be fun.
“Well, what do you want to do?”

“I was thinking that maybe I could slip into
the bathroom between classes.”

But he was already shaking his head.

“Too risky. Too many people around. If you
get caught trying to get in during the day, that’s it. We won’t get
another chance. Right now, they don’t suspect there might be a
reason for anybody to want to get into the bathroom. But if they
ever thought there might be some reason, they’d probably leave
somebody to guard the room at night.”

“So this incredibly lame plan is all we
have?”

“It’s not that lame,” he said. “It’ll get us
into the bathroom without anybody else around. Now, have you
figured out a hiding place?”

I looked down at myself, and snorted. “Are
you kidding? I can hide just about anywhere. I could probably stand
in the middle of the hallway and turn sideways, and nobody would
notice me.”

He gave me a sour look. Obviously he didn’t
think I was taking this seriously—and in many ways I wasn’t.

“All right,” I sighed. “I was thinking the
girls’ locker room. There are about a million places to hide there.
The lockers are too small, but there’s a closet and air shafts, and
other nooks and crannies.”

“Good, that wouldn’t be too far from my
hiding place.”

“Which is?”

“Under the bleachers in the main gym,” he
said.

“Uh, don’t they roll those in at night?” I
asked. They were the type of bleachers that collapse toward the
wall when you press a button.

“No, the only time they do that is after a
basketball game, so that they can clean the floor better.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m not going to climb under
the bleachers if there’s a chance of me getting crushed.”

I thought about that for a second. “Maybe I
just ought to hide under the bleachers with you,” I suggested.

“No, it’s better if we separate. If one of us
gets caught, then the other can still get into the bathroom.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” I said, but still
wondered. What if I was the one to get caught? Exactly what would
Jack do once he got into the girls’ room? I didn’t even know what
I’d do.

“Look, it’s almost over,” he said. “After
tonight, no matter what happens, it’s over. You find Mary Jo, or
you try and can’t find her. In either case, you’re off the hook,
right?”

It seemed right to agree with him. Still I
had a nagging feeling this wasn’t going to be so simple. I couldn’t
envision anything bad happening tonight. But my foresight wasn’t
always perfectly clear. Sometimes, the future was so clear it
seemed like the past. At other times, the future was a vast muddle
of possibilities. Right now all I was getting was muddle, and a bad
feeling.

Later that day, after lunch and before
English, I wandered up to the second floor so that I could pass the
sealed girls’ room. I was not a curious person by nature. How could
I be? I already saw and knew way more than I ever wanted to know.
But, now, briefly, curiosity caught hold of me.