Signs of You (14 page)

Chapter 15

Read the Signs.

I haven't even been reading for f ifteen minutes when the text comes in from Dad:

WHY ARE YOU NOT AT SCHOOL?

Oh, no.
We have bungled the skipping school protocol. Kate must have gotten distracted and not set her phone alarm after all. Not that I can blame her. Despite my earlier request that someone set an alarm so we would all remember to text home before second period started, apparently, no one did. And my dad's direction is clear and still in all caps:

GET TO SCHOOL. NOW.

I was hoping I'd get some leeway, given that I witnessed Dad getting to second base on the front porch last night, but apparently my payback for that has run out.

After a tortuous check-in
with the front off ice, we receive our usual sentence of lunch detention for the next three days. Then we are dismissed. I slide into my seat near the end of third period Biology.

And immediately, I start freaking out. I can't stop looking for my mom and for other spirits in the people around me
.
I awkwardly glance at everyone in the lab; I even stare into the ref lection of my dark iPhone screen to see if I can catch a f licker in my own eyes. I notice a thin sheen of sweat forming on my brow. More disturbingly, I feel it on my back as I squirm against the seat back. Which is extremely gross.

After Bio, I head for the snack machine in the cafeteria, thinking that a candy bar may calm my nerves. I f ish for a dollar, smooth it between my hands, and reach up to feed it into the machine. But before I can get the bill in place, douche bag Carl cuts in front of me. He's wearing a super-expensive brand-name shirt that has sailboats on it. Because his family, the elite of the Cleveland burbs, does
so much sailing
on Lake Erie, they feel the need to broadcast it
.

I'm not the least bit surprised when he nudges me out of the way, feeds his own dollar into the machine, and gets the very last Snickers. Nor am I surprised when he looks at me, shrugs, and f lashes his usual shitty grin.

I'm not even terribly surprised at what happens next. Just extremely terrif ied and disturbed.

As he smiles, I see a spirit. A girl. She f lickers in and out with a smirk on her face just as evil looking as his. I see glimpses of her long black dress and a tiny pillbox hat on her head, a black feather jutting out. And as he walks away, she f lashes once more. Then she's gone.

I think back to all the times spirits have probably been around me, especially with ass-hats like Carl, and I just didn't realize it. Like the day Carl came down out of the tree and knocked Noah's Coke out of his hands: evil spirit. None of us saw him do it, but I'd bet anything that's what happened. And the night Jay was epically lame and texted Sarah back after we got home from the cemetery: evil spirit. Maybe an evil spirit even got Kate to want to join air band in the f irst place. Or buy things with her mom's credit card. Maybe evil spirits point Jay toward the wrong girls all the time. Maybe his picker isn't broken. Maybe he just can't tell a good spirit from a bad one.

I hurry down the hall. “I'm not okay,” I say to Kate as she stuffs books into her locker.

“I'm going to need more details,” she responds, slamming her locker shut and spinning the combination lock. “Is it the whole seeing-spirits thing? Or something else I'm not aware of?”

I give her a small smile, and she puts her arm around my shoulders. She leans on me as we make our way toward the cafeteria. I feel wobbly, world-weary. And I'm pretty sure I'm too young to feel this way.

“We'll f igure this out,” she says. She tries but fails to sound sure of herself. Then she looks me straight in the eye. “We
will
.”

But I know she catches the expression on my face and realizes she's not helping. Because there's no way she knows what she's talking about. I may never see my mom again. I'll see spirits for sure, but maybe not my mom. Ever. And just guessing that I will is making it way worse. We turn the corner and head into the cafeteria. She tries again.

“
Struggling montage
, Riley. That's what this is. We're just not at the happy ending, that's all.” She chews her f ingernails as we walk toward the pile of cafeteria trays. I glance at her hands. The nails are nubs; she's picked at her cuticles until they're bloody. It's not lost on me that she's putting so much effort into appearing okay for my benef it, to keep it together, hoping her outsides will help my insides.

“You're right,” I say. “It's the struggling montage. Totally struggling montage.”

She picks up a cafeteria tray and gets in line. I follow. Instead of focusing on my uninspiring lunch choices, I start doing the staring thing again. I look at the cafeteria ladies, all the people in line, the cooks in the back. I scan the cafeteria, looking at all the groups, at all the stray students lingering at the sides of the room. I see Jay at a table and wave. Then I go back to searching. Over and over. Searching for my mom.

“Um, are you okay to eat lunch with Jay?” I ask. “Without me?”

“Yeah, I guess? If you are?”

“I just need to be alone for a little bit. The cafeteria, with all these people—”

“I get it,” she says. “Go.”

I stop by my
locker, grab my bag, and head to the auditorium. Air band practice will not be in session; there won't be any popular girls on stage doing dance moves. I push open the swinging doors and see the seats unoccupied, the stage vacant. The f loor is strewn with empty Gatorade cups and candy wrappers. Just as I hoped, no one's here.

I walk up the stairs to the stage and sit on the edge, dangling my feet over the gym f loor below. I unzip my bag, pull out the original manuscript and open it. I run my hand over the wrinkled Magis section.

Nos omnostria sumus
. . .

I look below those words and see the symbol, the series of squiggly, unconnected lines. I think back to what we learned at the CPL, that Ignatius likely used some incorrect or made-up Latin in his original text because he didn't know it all that well at f irst. I reach for my cell phone and instead of Google Translate, I pull up an online Latin dictionary. And instead of entering the whole phrase—which totally stumped GT earlier—I enter just the f irst three letters of
omnostria
:
o
,
m
, and
n
. If Ignatius made this word up and was trying his best at Latin, then maybe he got the root of the word right at least?

Sure enough, I get two options for Latin words that begin with
o
,
m
, and
n
. There's
omnis
and
omnes.
And they are different forms of a word that means:
all; the whole; each and every one
.

Next, I enter
nos.

That one comes up right away. We should have entered it alone the f irst time we looked. Its Latin meaning is clear:
we.

I put the two together. We and all.
We
and
all.
Ignatius must have meant
Nos omnes sumus.
I enter all three and get
WE ARE ALL
. But
we are all
what? We are all . . . squiggly lines.

Perfect. In a way: true. We are all a mishmash of indecipherable crap. That is a spiritual philosophy I can relate to.

But I know it means more than that. I sigh and pull out one of the library books on Jesuit symbols. I f lip through the pages looking for something—anything—that resembles the squiggly-lined symbol in the manuscript. But all I f ind is the seal for the Jesuit Society. It's become extremely familiar. I saw it last night when I was Googling Jesuit symbols with Noah at my house. There's a cross, the letters I.H.S., and then three nails below it in a
V
shape. And the whole thing is surrounded by rays of sun. The book says that the
I
,
H
, and
S
are supposed to be the Greek letters—iota, eta, and sigma. Which are the f irst three letters of a name: Jesus, in Greek.

I stop reading. I don't need to read the next part about the three nails in a
V
shape below; I'm pretty sure I know what those mean. You don't have to be a religious expert to know that Jesus was crucif ied—with nails. So the Jesuit seal has an abbreviation for the word Jesus and some nails on it. Which tells me exactly nothing.

Just then I hear a noise. I look up. It's Judy, one of our school janitors, coming through the auditorium doors in the back with a ginormous dust mop. I wave and she waves back. She goes to work on the mess the air band kids have left behind. I listen to the soft swooshing of her broom and the tumbling of paper Gatorade cups as they're swept along the f loor, and it sounds so sad to me. They should've cleaned the mess up themselves.

I watch her at the back of the gym as she methodically sweeps up the air band detritus. I follow her every move, hoping that maybe any minute she'll kind of drift up the aisle all ghost-like and stop right in front of me with her broom. That she'll f licker in and out—and in her place, I'll see Mom.

But she doesn't. She just keeps sweeping. There are no spirits here, apparently.

I get up and search in the wings, looking for a roll of plastic garbage bags or a big rolling bin so I can help Judy with the mess. As I open cabinets and a closet in the back, I let myself imagine seeing mom again.

It occurs to me that all I've ever thought about is what I would say to her if I ever got the chance, but now a different question hits me.
What will she say to me?
Will she yell about that last night I saw her alive? Will she ask how I could have been so heartless—to tell her I hated her, to let her get behind the wheel of a car, to just let it all happen and do nothing to stop it? Will she ask how I could've been so clueless? How I could've missed the spirit that was trying to help me, to help her? Will she f inally say what I
know
is the truth, that she regrets ever having a child, that the day of my birth was the worst day of her life? How being a mom is actually a really crappy job, lots of hard work, lots of sacrif ice, lots to lose? Does she wish someone had told her it
so
wasn't worth it?

And what will I say back? That I know.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry
.

And I am.

All at once, I hear Judy cry out. I run back onto the stage, and Judy is just in front of it, pointing to the f loor. I look down, and in the pile of garbage she's swept from underneath the front row of seats is a mouse—a dead one. It's all curled up, its hands knotted in tiny f ists, its long tail stiff and lifeless.

“I hate it when I f ind these,” Judy says. “And I still squeal every time.” She wipes the sweat away from her forehead. Then she laughs a little.

But I don't. Because I feel like it's a sign. An omen telling me that I'll never f igure this out. That I'll die before I lay eyes on my mother again. That I'll run around my life like a mouse trapped in a school auditorium. Always searching for the way out.

Judy says something else, but I don't pay attention. Because I get a text. From Noah.

 

I bailed on school again.

Meet me after. Think I found something.

WHAT IS IT?

I don't think the nails are nails. Get it?

NO.

 

I run down the stage steps, typing as I go.

 

But I'm on my way.

I grab Kate and
Jay and we leave school, knowing this will be the death knell for the rest of junior year. We'll probably get lunch detention for the remainder of our days and face grueling sentences from our parents. Well, everyone but Jay will get in trouble at home. His mom probably won't even answer the phone when the school calls.

I wonder if that's what will happen to my dad now that Sammy's in the picture. If he'll become a shadow of the person who used to be the central human being in my life. I push the thought away.

We drive to Noah's and when we get there, we don't bother texting him to open the door. We've been through this before. We head straight for the garage door keypad and type in the dorkiest garage code in all the world: 3.141. Pi to three decimal places. Noah's parents are at work. He's in his room, which is still strewn with research and books and half-full coffee mugs, hunched over his desk. He doesn't even look up as we arrive. Kate f lops stomach f irst onto his bed and bites at her already-destroyed nails.

“Tell me you've f igured out a way to make this stop,” she says. “I can't stand to see spirits anymore. Like maybe we need to start wearing garlic necklaces?”

Jay sits on the f loor next to a pile of books. I join him. Noah does, too. “So what did you f ind?” I say to Noah. “Nails aren't nails?”