The Awakening (17 page)

"Aren't orbs supposed to mean something?" Taylor asks.

Celia explains. "Most of the time they're dust or bugs. But they can be entities."

"Do you see any bugs flying around my room?"

Celia and Taylor both laugh as Taylor clicks to the next picture.

"Whoa! Is that ectoplasm?" Celia asks. Sure enough, there's this misty white blobby thing (I'm sorry, that's the best way to describe it) next to me.

I nudge her teasingly. "How would I know what ectoplasm looks like? Holy shit, look at that picture!"

"I'm very proud of this one," Taylor says, unfazed by the fact that she's just captured our spirit on film. "It's clearly a hand. See the fingers curling there?"

"Double whoa! It's reaching out to you, Kendall." Celia makes a note of this.

Taylor holds the camera close and then scrolls forward a few. "And the pièce de résistance. Voilà!"

Celia gasps. "It's phenomenal!"

I swallow the lump in my throat. Girlie emotions—akin to PMSing—bubble up within me and I sort of want to cry because the image is so amazingly beautiful. The blobby white mist that had formed a slender arm and fingers reaching out has now turned into an electrifying bolt of glowing light that seems to be exiting straight up. None of us saw this with the naked eye. It was only captured on the camera. And what a photograph! That was the moment I felt as if I were being pulled up into an invitation to fly. Emily wanted to take me—or my spirit—with her. I'm not frightened or freaked out. In fact, I'm painted with a calmness, a beauty, a peace.

I glance over at Celia, who's grinning like the cliched cat that swallowed the canary. She winks, and I smile back. We both know we've turned a tremendously important corner.

"Oh yeah,
chicas,
we've made contact."

A
FTER A WEEKEND
of stealth paranormal research with Taylor and Celia, I'm ready to get back to school and out from under the ever-watchful eye (i.e., stifling observation) of my mother. Don't get me wrong. I love her, honest to Pete, but she needs to quit looking at me like I'm about to go all
Exorcist
on her. (I woke up last night to see her praying at the foot of my bed. As Celia would say, "Bless her heart.")

Mom's at work today and should be more concerned about who's on Dr. Murphy's flu-shot list than if I'm cutting pentagrams into my arms with her Gillette Venus razor. (Okay, that was harsh, but if she can react in such a retarded way, I can poke fun at it.)

The RHS lunchroom is packed and boisterous. I grasp my tray containing tuna salad and pita bread (trying to be healthy) and weave my way through the tables to where Taylor is sitting with her laptop.

"What's up, T?" I say, really comfy with her after spending the weekend together. Sure, she's a little high maintenance and loves to throw French words at you. But she's a lot of fun too, and she's into being a ghost hunter. It's like she has this special purpose now. Celia certainly pegged that one.

"Kendall!" her singsongy voice shouts out. "Sit, sit, sit."

I slide onto the bench and pop open my Diet Coke. "What are you working on?"

She licks her lips and smiles. "A report on our activities this weekend. I figured the best way to track our progress with each case is to keep a log file we can refer back to."

"That's a great idea," I say. "Mmm, they put apples in the tuna salad."

Taylor waves it off. "It's a Southern thing."

Just then, another tray smacks down next to me and I see Celia's long, jeaned legs lace underneath the table. "Hey, y'all. Sorry, got stuck in the hallway talking to Clay Price." She sighs and blows her bangs out of her eyes.

"Oh, he's a hottie," Taylor says, her eyes wide and shiny. "You should go out with him."

"That's what
I
told her!" I say.

Celia attacks her beef and potato casserole and shovels a way-too-hot mouthful in. "Shit!" After putting out the fire with a big chug of soda, she says, "Clay and I have known each other since, like, birth. That would just be ... ewww."

"Don't even try with her and Clay, Taylor. I've been there, done that."

Taylor tosses her long golden hair over her shoulder and doesn't miss a beat. "That's fine, because we have our hands full. Boys are nothing but a distraction for dedicated paranormal investigators like us." She tilts the computer screen toward us and I see her neatly charted notations and observations from our weekend ghost hunt.

"Awesome idea, Taylor," Celia says. "I have so many EVP files, I have to figure out a way to organize them. It's almost too much to keep up."

"Those EVPs really are phenomenal! I mean, even if you don't believe that it's an actual ghost, it's definitely something," Taylor says. "How else do you explain it?"

"But it has to be paranormal activity," Celia nearly pleads. I'm in awe of how passionate she is about this subject. "There are a lot of paranormal investigators out there who suggest that EVPs, in addition to being the voices of people who've died, might also be psychic echoes from the past, or even psychokineses unconsciously produced by us and others around us." She reaches for her notebook and thumbs through it while she spoons in another bite of her casserole. "Here, right here. There are some other pragmatic explanations, which include apophenia—finding connections between insignificant or unrelated phenomena—and pareidolia—interpreting all sorts of random sounds as words in your own language. Then there's the possibility that we just misidentify what we're listening to or—"

"You know what, Celia?" I say, stopping her from going off the deep end. Damn, she's one smart cookie. It's hard for me to keep up sometimes, and I get As! "We need someone to focus on the sound, so you can concentrate on the equipment and working with me on my abilities. If we have someone doing sound, it'll take that burden off of you."

"True. We do need more people. But who?"

Celia's not much of a school socialite—apparent by her hanging out with the new girl—and I'd venture a guess that Taylor's regular friends wouldn't think too much of what we're doing, since even she doesn't hang with them all that much anymore.

As I listen to the funky House music that plays through the caf, I think about the kind of person we can approach. "I think it should be a girl. And she should have a really good ear for sounds."

"That's not exactly a trait people put on their Facebook page," Taylor remarks.

I tap my foot to the Kaskade remix of a Seal hit, feeling the rhythm and beat spread through me. Turning to Celia, I ask, "Do you know anyone in band? You know, musicians have great ears."

Celia looks like I just poked her with my fork. "What? The dorky girl knows other dorks? Geesh, Kendall."

"That's not what I meant." Man, she's Little Miss Sensitive today. Who peed in her Rice Krispies this morning? "I just thought you'd know who was who more so than me. Chillax, hon."

"Sorry. My mom was all over my ass this morning about not being home most of the weekend and thinks I'm slacking off on my schoolwork. As if! That's not even an option." She turns her dark eyes on me. "You know that's not true. You know how badly I want to escape Radisson and go off to college."

"It's okay, Celia. Why don't we have an outward show of studying at your house today. That way, your
mom
will chillax."

"Chillax? Is that a Chicago word?" Taylor asks.

"Chill ... relax ... chillax."

"
C'est bon ... oui,
I must use that," she says with a giggle. Then she starts humming along with the overhead music.

Right then, it hits me!

I glance across the lunchroom and spot a girl with dark makeup, spiky hair, and a noticeable tattoo on her right forearm. She's wearing a headset, standing at her DJ station, and concentrating on mixing out the cafeteria beat. She clearly reeks of
Rebel Without a Cause,
and I have the perfect cause for her to take up. Why didn't I think of this before?

Trying not to be too obvious, I point her out to Taylor and Celia. "Who's she?"

"That's Rebecca Asiaf," Celia explains. "School DJ, obviously. She does all the dances and gets paid to do weddings and other parties on the side."

Taylor clasps her hands. "Oh! I see where this is going. She'd be awesome to listen to our EVP recordings and decipher what we've captured."

"She's obviously got a great ear," I note. "Do you guys know her?"

Celia fixes on Rebecca in front of the turntable. "We had physics together last year."

"I think Jason knows her," Taylor says.

Just the mention of Jason's name makes my stomach clench. I gulp deeply, hoping I don't, like, pass out again. He's not around, is he? I mentally scan the caf. Nope, he's not here. Phew! Didn't want to get another tongue-lashing from him today.

"Jason and I were invited to her sweet-sixteen party last year," Taylor adds.

"She had a sweet-sixteen party? I find that hard to believe," I exclaim. It's probably the nose piercing and the black nail polish that sort of wash away the "sweet" image. This girl's dark and hard-core.

"Wouldn't know. I didn't get invited," Celia says, but she doesn't seem too disappointed about it. "I do know that her transformation to the dark side, shall we say, happened not long after that."

I zero in my attention on Rebecca, seeing if I can pick up any energy from her. My psychic senses must be working because I can feel a lot of anger in her. Annoyance she hasn't really dealt with yet, thus her rebellion. I see her, though, as a girl of about ten or eleven. She's in a pretty pink dress ... in a beauty pageant? A woman is there, cheering her on. No. She's fussing at her for not doing better in the contest. Little Rebecca is crying. The woman is chastising her. Then the image disappears.

"Whoa."

"What happened?" Celia asks.

"Umm. Nothing. Just, you know, my Spidey senses," I say, trying to laugh it off.

"Let's go talk to her," Taylor says. "What do we have to lose?"

The three of us approach her as she transitions from a Dance song into one with more Deep House rhythms. I'm feeling a tremendous amount of energy coming from Rebecca. It's almost as if she's surrounded by bands of color radiating from her. Not that I can read auras or anything, but this chick comes alive when she's spinning her tunes.

"You're really awesome," I finally say.

Rebecca sneers at me; the diamond stud in her nose almost winks my way. She puts the large headphones up to one ear and totally ignores us.

"How's it goin', Rebecca?" Taylor asks ever so sweetly.

Celia shifts in her Timberlanded feet and tucks her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. The look in her eyes says exactly what I'm thinking:
This isn't going to work.

Rebecca pulls the headphones from her ear, tosses them on the table, and then downs a gargantuan gulp of Mountain Dew. "What do you Barbies want?"

Barbies? The three of us? You've got to be frickin' kidding me! Taylor, maybe. But me? Certainly not Celia.

Taylor steps forward to make the introductions. Not even addressing Rebecca's slur, she says, "You know Celia Nichols, right? This is Kendall Moorehead. She just moved to Radisson from Chicago."

"Charmed, I'm sure," Rebecca tarts off.

"Hey." Deep inside, I understand that this isn't about me. It's about people who look like me who may have treated Rebecca differently because of her chosen attire. Or maybe it's something deeper. I don't exactly want to examine the psyche of my fellow classmates, so I focus on the music. "Like I said, you're wicked amazing. I heard a lot of DJs in Chicago, and you're good enough to spin in clubs."

This seems to crack the veneer a little. She nods her head, her product-filled hair not moving. "Thanks."

"Go ahead, Taylor," Celia presses. "Ask her."

Rebecca locks her dark eyes on mine. "Ask me what? I'm sort of busy here."

Taylor surges on, ever sparkly, charming, and determined. "Rebecca, we've got a
projet reserve
going on."

Celia knocks her in the back with her elbow. "English, Taylor."

"A secret project."

Rebecca clears her throat. "And this interests me how, exactly?"

"You know how Radisson has thousands of ghost stories? Well, we've decided to form a ghost-hunting group. Celia is our technology specialist, I'm the photographer, Kendall here is our sensitive. She's psychic."

"Get the hell out of here," Rebecca scoffs.

"Seriously!" Taylor says, like it's a perfectly normal thing.

"She's a lunatic if she's telling you that."

"No, I'm not. Why would anyone claim to be something they're not?"

This stops Rebecca for a moment. "Why do I care about any of this?"

I step forward. "Because you have an amazing ear, apparent by your music, and we think you'd be the ideal person to handle all of our sound needs." My pulse snare-drums away under my skin for no reason at all.

Rebecca runs her fingers through her hair, not messing it up at all. Then she hooks her thumbs into the belt loops of her jeans and starts laughing. "You're serious."

"As a heart attack," I say. "When you're ghost hunting, you pick up a lot of sound anomalies, and we need someone with a trained ear to decipher what's real and what's not real. It's a very important position on the team. We all agree you're the person for the job." I pause and make eye contact again with Rebecca through her black liner. "It was a decision we didn't make lightly, I assure you."

Rebecca doesn't blink for at least five seconds. Neither do I.

She lets out a whooping laugh that causes other students to turn and stare. "Y'all bitches are full of shit! You don't have the guts to actually hunt ghosts. Why don't you go play with your other Barbie friends and leave rational people like me alone?" And with that, she places the headphones firmly over her ears and continues to snicker as she shuffles through CDs.

We skulk off to an appropriate distance.

"I think that went quite nicely, don't you?" Celia opines.

Rebecca tucks a thumb into the waistband of her low-slung jeans. I have the overwhelming sensation that she's either thinking of our offer or thinking of how to have me exterminated. When her head pops back up and the middle finger of her left hand points my way, I have my answer.