Possessing Jessie (3 page)

And now, so weird.

“Hey, girlfriend,” Alisha said as she sat down. “That's one hell of a hairdo.”

Jessie seemed out of focus at first. It took her a moment to look up and try to smile. Alisha saw tears in her eyes and knew she had to be careful. Crying at the funeral was all right, but Jessie would hate it if all the kids here at school saw her bawling.

So Alisha started to eat, complaining, “They cut this stuff into bricks and they call it spaghetti?”

Jessie smiled. “It's no worse than some of the casseroles the neighbors have been bringing.” Her soft voice sounded tired.

“You're not eating your lunch. Have you been eating at all?”

Jessie didn't answer. She had that out-of-focus look again, and it was as if she hadn't heard.

“Jessie?”

“Um.” Jessie managed to tune in. “Sorry. Accident keeps going through my head like a bad movie.”

“Ow. That must be hard.”

“It has to go away sooner or later. What did you ask me?”

“Whether you've been eating.”

“A little. Alisha, I'm really getting worried about my mom. She's not eating at all. Not one bite.”

Alisha checked Jessie's eyes. No tears, just a wide, dry desperation.

“And I don't think she's sleeping,” Jessie went on, “and I don't think she's cried
yet
. At least not that I can tell.”

Weird. During the divorce, Mrs. Ressler had cried for months.

“What does she do, then?”

“Just sits, and I get the feeling she's waiting.”

“For what?”

“I can't imagine! Maybe she's lost her mind!”

Alisha just smiled without remarking that some kids were saying the same thing about Jessie. “She's had an awful shock, that's all.” Jessie's mother was nice, in Alisha's experience, and baked awesome frosted brownies, but Mrs. Ressler didn't seem real strong, what with her back problems and nerves and everything. “She should go to the doctor. Get some pills.”

“She won't. Since the funeral, she's not talking to anybody.”

“Not even to you?”

“No. Well, not until this morning, when I put this getup on.”

So that's what this is about
, Alisha thought with an old anger she kept quiet because it was futile.
Jessie, the smartest kid in class, yet always in her brother's shadow. Jessie trying for her mother's attention
.

“Jessie,” Alisha said gently, “that's kind of sick. I mean, just because she's taking it hard doesn't mean you have to–”

“She won't look at me!” Jessie interrupted. “She won't let me touch her or hug her. If I try to talk to her, she won't …” Jessie's voice started to break up, and tears pooled in her eyes.

“Okay,” Alisha said softly. She reached over and laid her hand on her friend's twisting fist. “Okay, whatever, Jessie. Whatever you've got to do.”

Chapter Five

After school, Jessie did not feel like working on the yearbook or hanging around to listen in on debate club or see what was going on backstage, whether there was scenery being set up or kids making props. She didn't want to talk with anybody. The text messages on her phone now said things like
pervert, u r so rong, ur sick, stop rite now, sicko.
Maybe she would not look at the phone anymore. She drove home, very carefully in the loaner car, parked on the street–there was no driveway, no garage–and walked up the short sidewalk into the little cream-colored house crowded among similar vinyl-sided houses, beige, powder blue, eggshell white. For the first time, Jessie didn't want to live here, wanted to move somewhere else.

As she closed the door, Mom's voice called from upstairs, “Is that you, Sweetie?”

“No, it's me,” Jessie called back.

Only silence answered her.

The cold truth froze Jessie where she stood. Her response had been automatic, not conscious, never conscious until now: She was not “Sweetie” and never had been “Sweetie.” She was Jessie or, if her mother was angry with her, Jessica.

Jason was “Sweetie.”

This morning Mom had called her “Sweetie.”

And God damn everything, Mom was going to call her “Sweetie” again. Pressing her lips together to stay strong, Jessie slipped back outside, then came in again, stomping this time instead of walking quietly, and making sure she slammed the door behind her.

“Sweetie?” Mom's voice floated down, anxious, from upstairs. “Is that you?”

“Yo, Mud.” In a deep voice like Jason's.

“Oh, thank goodness.” House slippers pattered as Mom came running downstairs. “Did you have a good day? What would you like for supper?”

“Whatever.”

Mom made chicken with cheese sauce, Jason's favorite. Jessie didn't like it, but she didn't say anything. She just ate it. Her mom was smiling. Her mom was
eating
. Her mom was talking to her. “How was school?”

Jessie grunted just like Jason.

“I thought you had wrestling practice today. Did you skip? How come?”

Mom wanted her to go to wrestling practice? Jessie felt a twinge of panic, because Mom seemed to be taking the game a bit too far. Quickly, in her own voice, Jessie said, “I got an A on a calc quiz.” Jason took algebra, not calculus, and Jason never got an A.

Mom stopped smiling. Or talking. Or eating. Without a word Mom got up and scraped the food that was left on her plate into the garbage disposal. Without looking at Jessie, Mom left the kitchen, trudged upstairs to her bedroom, and closed the door. After a moment Jessie could hear the sound, muffled by pillows, of her mother weeping.

Mom hadn't wept before, at least, not to Jessie's knowledge. Maybe it was a good sign. But it sure didn't feel good, listening. Jessie felt lower than roadkill. She'd made her mother cry.

After what seemed like a long time, the sound of Mom's crying stopped, but Mom did not come out of her bedroom. It got late. Jessie didn't know whether Mom was sleeping or not, whether it would be all right to tell her good night.

She tried not to think it, but she knew: Mom wouldn't answer unless she acted like Jason.

Finally, Jessie went to bed without saying anything. But she couldn't sleep. She piled all of her stuffed animals into the bed with her, hugging her favorite, the fat yellow armadillo, as she pulled the pink plaid comforter up around her neck–but her eyes wouldn't close. She stared at the shadows on her ceiling, feeling like there was a stone the size of her clenched fists lying inside her chest.

The first time she looked at her clock, it said midnight. About the tenth time she looked, it said half past one.

“Damn everything!” Jessie kicked and punched, sending her comforter and stuffed animals flying. She lunged out of bed, threw on Jason's clothes because they were handy, picked up his Nikes, and in sock feet she sneaked out of the house. She sat on the front steps to put the shoes on.

Under a cloudy moon she walked the mile to the cemetery. It was no creepier than any other lonely place at night. Daring each other to walk into dark graveyards was a game kids played to get scared when they didn't have anything better to do. Stupid. Jessie had something better to do.

She passed through the gate and heard it creak on its hinges. She heard a whispering, rustling sound like leaves in the breeze, but there was no breeze, and there were no trees.

She didn't care.

Somebody had taken the wilted flowers off Jason's grave. It looked raw and swollen, like a hurt place in the earth. Jessie sat on the red dirt and cried.

“I–can't–stand–it” she said, sobbing. She pounded the dirt with her hands, hitting Jason. But then she made herself stop, because it wasn't his fault that she felt the way she did.

It wasn't his fault that she couldn't forget him and the way he used to tease her by hiding her homework. The way he had raced her for the bathroom in the morning. The time he had dared her to sneak into an R-rated movie. The time he had talked Mom into letting her go to a pizza party when she was supposed to be grounded.

It wasn't supposed to happen. It was an accident. It wasn't his fault that he was so fun and bad and now he was dead.…

Or was he?

That moment, like a mist rising up from his grave, something embraced her like a soft blanket. Something made her feel not exactly good, but calmer. It made her feel like he was there.

“Jason,” she whispered.

Chill out, Sis, for God's sake
.

“I can't. Mom is–Mom's a mess. She adored you. She worshipped you.”

So what else is new
?

“She never loved me that way.”

Yeah, yeah
.

“What am I supposed to do?”

You're doing okay. Just relax
.

And in that moment she
could
relax. It was wonderful to be able to relax. She lay down on the soft grass, the soft grave, and when she left the cemetery about three in the morning, she felt comforted, as if she'd had a good conversation with a friend.

When she got home, instead of going to her own room, she went to Jason's. His sports posters leered down from the walls. His bed, hard and narrow under its army blanket, faced her like a monument, its surface smoothed faultlessly as usual by Mom that last morning of his life. Jessie yanked back the covers and lay down between the camouflage-patterned sheets she had always considered so ugly. Now it didn't matter what they looked like; a faint scent of Jason still clung to them. With her head on Jason's flat pillow, Jessie eased instantly into sleep.

The next morning, late, when she finally woke up, she put on some more of Jason's clothes. His 250 Club T-shirt, meaning he could bench-press that much weight. His blue plaid long shorts, the latest style. His Converse slip-ons, no socks, no shoelaces.

Her legs needed to be shaved, but so what? She didn't wear a bra, but again, so what? Her breasts weren't very big. To heck with bras. She used Jason's deodorant because she was in his room and it was handy. She grabbed Jason's cell phone; same reason.

She heard Mom moving around downstairs in the kitchen. She took a deep breath, knowing what she had to do. “Yo, Mud,” she called.

“Good morning, Sweetie! I thought you were going to sleep all day. You're late for school. Come on down. I made Belgian waffles.”

Careful to swagger, Jessie thumped downstairs for breakfast. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to find Mom happy and smiling again.

Walking into school, tardy, she encountered a bunch of kids changing classes, but she didn't fold her shoulders or duck her head. The feeling she had experienced at Jason's grave, a sense of his presence, was still with her, encouraging her. She walked the way Jason would, as if she owned the place.

A teacher scowled at her. “You're late, Miss Ressler. Report to the office.”

Jessie had hardly ever been late before, but she just shrugged. It wouldn't have bothered Jason, and it didn't bother her.

The teacher, a yappy-dog sort of woman, snapped, “Also, you are most inappropriately dressed.”

Jessie grinned. “Yeah, yeah.”

Chapter Six

Alisha's grandmother from Haiti talked about ghosts and spirits as if they were not only real but commonplace, like cats and dogs. Alisha did not believe a word of it, yet she felt her spine chill and the small hairs on the nape of her neck stand up when she saw Jessie stride into school. There was something–

Stop it
, Alisha ordered herself. The only real change was that Jessie had her head up and was walking tall, like Jason. Acting like Jason, not just dressing like him. That was all. Well, and she wasn't wearing a bra, but she didn't really need a bra, so no big deal.

Yet Alisha felt something like a cold, icy, arctic rat crawl into her belly and start gnawing. At lunchtime, when she saw Jessie sitting at a table by herself, she couldn't blame anybody for staying away from her. Approaching Jessie was like walking up to a ghost. Nobody wanted to go near her.

Neither did Alisha. But somebody had to do something.

She took a firm grip on her tray–mystery meat, ick–and marched herself over to sit across the table from Jessie.

Her friend, actually eating the rather disgusting lunch, ignored her.

Pointedly Alisha said, “Hel-LO.” Jessie glanced up, and Alisha looked her in the face.

Jessie stared back stony-eyed, no smile, even though she was close enough so that Alisha could smell her, and she definitely did not smell like any of Jessie's favorite perfumes from Victoria's Secret. Instead, she smelled like Axe.

“Jessie,” Alisha blurted with more force than she had intended, “you're sick.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Stop it, Jessie! Talk like yourself.”

Jessie put down her fork. Her face softened, and her posture relaxed. “What self is that?” she asked in her normal quiet voice. “I don't have a self.”

Alisha felt so relieved, she didn't really hear what Jessie was saying. She just knew that her friend was still in there, under the spiked hair, behind the 250 Club T-shirt, and beneath the Axe.

Jessie added, “Before I started dressing up like this, I was nothing. Nobody knew who I was.”

Uh-oh
.

Quietly and carefully Alisha said, “That's not true. I knew who you were. Plenty of people knew who you were. Just about the smartest person in the school, that's who you were, probably going to be valedictorian, and you studied hard and stayed out of trouble and you wanted a real future–” Alisha stopped, shocked at herself for saying it all wrong, in the past tense.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jessie murmured.

“Don't disrespect yourself!” Alisha tried to keep her voice down but got loud anyway. “You still
are
smart and you still
are
going to be somebody and you still
are
my best friend.”