Meeting (10 page)

Sully got out sometimes. He was still a pet.

Am I a pet?
Rimi thought.

No!
Maya thought. Then she remembered stroking the egg-seed Rimi had been before she hatched, loving the way it purred. Rimi had seemed like her little pet then. That was before Rimi spoke to Maya, before she had a name.
You’re not a pet,
Maya thought slowly,
but I don’t think everyone knows that.
She remembered Noona talking to Maya as though Maya was the only person who had met Kachik-Vati. Maybe people had trouble knowing Rimi was a person because they couldn’t see her.

“So are you going to tell me about the fork now?” Peter said. He had straightened the covers on his bed and was sitting on top of them.

“I—” Maya felt the familiar paralysis in her tongue and throat. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t. I physically can’t.”

Peter frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“And I can’t explain it—”

But Harper didn’t put a silence on me,
Rimi thought.
Plus, I want to explore your silence and see if I can relax it.
Maya felt warmth in her throat and mouth.
Try to say it again.

Before Maya could open her mouth, Peter spoke. “Do you have a poltergeist?”

“I don’t—huh?”

“You know, the kind of ghost teenagers get that makes noises and throws things.” Peter lifted a fat, tattered, bluegreen book off his bedside table and flashed it at her:
Paranormal Phenomena.
“I’ve been studying and that seems like the closest thing I can figure to what you do.”

Peter had been reading up on her and Rimi? She had had no idea. How many times had they slipped? She had thought she was doing a good job of disguising her changes, but maybe Rimi had been doing other things when Maya wasn’t watching. “Huh. Maybe I do.”

“Like, it happens to disturbed teenagers, and you’re pretty disturbed.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Because of Steph,” Peter said. He stared down at the book on his lap and bit his lower lip.

“Oh.” So many things had happened lately that Maya hadn’t had much time to think about her best friend. She felt guilty. Stephanie was dead, but a way to keep her alive was to visit her in memory.
If I don’t think about her, does she die all over again?
Maya wondered, not for the first time.

“Can you control it?” Peter asked.

“No.” Not unless Rimi wanted to do what Maya suggested. Rimi was pretty agreeable on most things, but Maya didn’t even want to try ordering her around.

“But you know what I’m talking about. You’re not going to deny it.”

Rimi had switched to petting the guinea pigs, and they made contented burbling sounds.

Maya stopped watching the fur ripple across the guinea pigs’ backs and looked at her younger brother. She shook her head.

“I wish
I
had a poltergeist,” Peter said. “It would be so cool. Things moving around without anybody lifting them. When kids have poltergeists, sometimes stones fall on the roof of their house, mysterious rocks. Geologists can look at them and tell they’re not from around there. It’s like they come from space. And there are knocks on the walls or under the tables, and—are you sure you can’t make it do things like that?”

“I can’t make it do anything,” Maya said.

Rimi opened and closed a drawer in Peter’s dresser.

“Whoa! Whoa! What was that?” Delighted, Peter jumped up and ran to the dresser.

Rimi picked up all the dirty dishes in the room and piled them by the door. Peter was staring at the dresser and missed the new phenomenon until the dishes clattered as they settled in a stack. “Whoa!” Peter turned around and stared.

Every dirty piece of clothing draped around the room rose and stuffed itself into the laundry bag. “Whoa!” Peter grabbed the laundry bag out of the air and peered inside.

He looked at Maya. “Usually, poltergeists mess things up and break them. How’d you score one who does housekeeping?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“Hey, poltergeist!” Peter said. “Thanks for helping. Do you clean animal cages?”

Rimi picked up the calico guinea pig, opened the cage door, and brought it out. It shrieked stridently, then settled into contented muttering as Rimi stroked and cradled it. She brought it to Maya and set it in her lap.

“Wow,” Peter whispered.

“She doesn’t take orders,” Maya said. “She does what she likes.”

“It’s a girl? Poltergeists are girls and boys?”

“You know more than I do,” Maya said. She pointed to the book he’d left on the bed.

“Not about
your
poltergeist,” Peter said. He took his laundry bag to the bed, shoved the book over to make room, and settled down.

“That’s true. She’s not really a poltergeist, Peter, but I can’t tell you what she is.”

“Don’t you know?”

“Uh-huh, but I can’t talk about it.”

“You said that before.”

“There’s a—” She felt the silence lock her throat again. She stroked her throat with her hand, trying to ease the closing. Rimi flowed into her mouth, a warmth in her throat.
Words! Words lock up words! There are little
squizzles
in the walls of your air tube. I
flurr
them, spinning green brown things in here that close your throat. I will unspin them!

Maya spread her hand against the skin of her throat. Surges of warmth and coolness alternated. She felt like she had a fighting fur ball stuck in her throat, and she coughed and almost choked, but then it smoothed out and she could breathe again.

“Are you all right?” Peter asked, peering at her.

“I-I-I hope so. Rimi?”

“Janus House is magic,” Maya whispered. Nothing stopped her. She swallowed, her hand on her throat.
Rimi. Rimi. Thank you.
Maya dropped her hands to cuddle the guinea pig in her lap. Its furry warmth comforted her.

“Sure, I knew that,” said Peter.

“You did?”

“Yeah. That’s one of the reasons I checked these books out of the library. I’ve been watching Bran at school and all those Janus House people during Music Night. Bran is so quiet. But sometimes he does weird stuff when he thinks no one’s watching. He won’t really look me in the face, though. I try talking to him to see if we can be friends, and he looks at the ground and kind of shifts away.” Peter pounded the bed with a fist. “It’s so frustrating having someone not be there when they’re right there, you know? I don’t know how to get past that.”

Fairy dust,
Maya thought. Chikuvny
. A disguise, so they think you’re one of them.

Peter continued, “Sometimes when those guys sing on Music Night, strange things happen. Lights shine where there aren’t any lights, and the air tastes funny. I snuck my camera down one night to try to get pictures of it, but nothing happened that night. Next week, the lights went crazy, but I forgot to bring my camera. I can’t paint pictures of it the way you can.

“That’s why I want to see
all
your art,” he added. “You’re painting stuff that happens next door, aren’t you?”

Maya drew a
deep breath. The true test of Rimi’s relaxing of Harper’s commands came now. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah.” She touched her throat again.

“The aliens with wings and funny hair, the people dancing around that colored fire, the alien egg?”

Maya nodded.

“The dead boy,” Peter said slowly.

Maya swallowed, felt Rimi’s rush of sadness at Bikos’s loss again. She nodded.

Peter’s lips tightened. “Since then, you’ve been using up a lot of sketchbooks, but most of them aren’t here. Sometimes I find one in your backpack and it’s full of amazing pictures. Then it’s gone and there’s a new one. What happens to them when they’re full?”

“Peter, how many times do I have to tell you not to snoop through my stuff?” Maya asked, angry with him all over again. She had to stop leaving her backpack any place but in her room. She wondered if Gwenda could help her ward her room or her pack or both against Peter.

“I know you hate it, but it seems like the only way to find out what’s going on, Maya, and I want to know. I mean, you’re hanging out in a house full of magic users, and you draw pictures of big scary centipedes and monsters. What if something bad happens to you? I want to at least have a clue.”

“If I tell you what’s going on, would you quit going through my stuff?”

He clenched his hands into fists. “I don’t know. Maybe. I have this hunger. You know. Candra has it, too, but she does something else with it.”

I can help you guard things from him
, Rimi thought.

Maya sighed. Her anger ebbed. “I guess if I were you and you were me, I’d want to know what was going on, too.”

He smiled, relieved.

“And my new friend the poltergeist wants you to know.”

“What you have is not really a poltergeist,” Peter said.

“No.”

“Is it Stephanie’s ghost?”

“No. I wish, but no.” She stroked the guinea pig. “Peter, you have to swear you won’t tell anybody about this, okay?”

He looked up at her. “Okay,” he said. “I do so swear.”

“On all the things you hold sacred.”

“On all the things I hold sacred.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die, stick a needle in your eye?”

He made a cross over his heart and swore.

“It’s my new best friend, Rimi. She’s invisible most of the time.”

“Is she a ghost?”

“No. She’s an alien.”

Peter frowned. “I don’t get how aliens fit in with magic. What do you mean?”

“It’s confusing.” Maya stood up and set the guinea pig back in its cage.

“You got that right.”

“I don’t understand it either, but it all mixes up. Rimi is my new best friend. She’s like a part of me, like a shadow, but she’s her own self and makes her own decisions. She’s wanted to talk to you for a while.”

“She can talk?”

“Uh—well, she can talk to me, anyway. I don’t know if she can speak out loud.”

“Rimi?” Peter said. “Are you here? Knock once for yes and twice for no. That’s how they talk to spirits at séances sometimes. I don’t know if it works with poltergeists.”

Rimi knocked three times on the wall by Peter’s bed.

“Three times? Three times means what?” Peter flipped through the book, checked the index at the back, then looked up with a frown. “You’re teasing me.”

Rimi knocked once.

Peter frowned, then smiled. “Oh, okay. So, about the housekeeping thing—”

Rimi upended the laundry bag and scattered dirty clothes all over.

“Yikes,” said Peter.

“Okay, you know that’s not me doing it, right?” Maya asked.

“Yeah, I get that.”

Two grass-stained T-shirts danced in the air, moving together and apart, mirroring each other’s moves. “Wow,” Peter whispered. “Wow, Rimi. Wow, wow, wow.”

“Do poltergeists do things like that?” Maya asked.

“I don’t think they usually know how to dance,” said Peter.

Pounding sounded at the door. The T-shirts dropped to the ground. “Hey, talk louder so I can hear you,” Candra yelled. “What are you twerps up to in there?”

“None of your beeswax,” Maya yelled back.

“You can run, but you can’t hide!” Candra yelled.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” cried Maya. “We’re not running. We’re not even hiding. You know where we are!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Candra said. She stomped away.

Maya and Peter giggled.

“Is she gone?” Maya whispered.

Peter frowned.

Rimi eased part of herself under the door.
No. She snuck back. She has a glass to her ear and it’s against the door. What is that?

That helps you hear through walls
, Maya thought. She whispered to Peter, “Rimi says Candra’s still listening to us.”

He whispered back, “How can she tell?”

“Rimi is good that way. She can sneak under doors and check stuff out.”

“That is just
so cool
. You are the luckiest person on Earth,” he whispered.

Rimi ruffled his hair. “Hey,” he said out loud, startled.

“She really likes you,” Maya whispered.

“Hey,” he said, softer, and smiled. “I like you, too, Rimi.” He slid off the bed, tiptoed to the door, and yanked it open. Candra fell into the room, tucked and rolled so the water glass in her hand didn’t shatter.

“Wow.” Candra rose to her feet as though she had never fallen. “You sure haven’t been keeping up with the cleaning, little brother.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Peter. “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

Maya had a sudden swooping fear that Candra had heard everything. She tried to backtrack, wondering what words they had said aloud. Alien. Magic. She knew she had said both of those words.

“So. You were talking about poltergeists . . .” Candra let her voice trail off, waiting for someone to fill in a blank. Maya had seen Candra use that trick before.

Oh, good, Maya thought. Candra had fixed on poltergeists, the least worrisome of the words. Maybe she hadn’t heard everything.

“Yeah, poltergeists,” said Peter. He waved the paranormal book at Candra. “Do you have one? You’re disturbed enough.”

“I don’t have a poltergeist! But Maya has one, right?”

“No,” Maya and Peter said together.

“Oh, like I’m going to believe you now! You drive me crazy!”

“I don’t have a poltergeist,” Maya said. “I swear.”

“So is it something else? You have something else?”

Maya stood and brushed past Candra. “See you later, Peter. I better check with Mom and see if I finished my chores.”