The Ghost and the Goth (16 page)

“Right after I told my mom I wasn’t sticking around after graduation.” She’d fled the hospital in tears. That was more than enough probably to call my father from wherever he’d been residing. I’d promised to take care of my mother—it was the last thing I ever said to my father.

“So you’re saying that your dad, who knew you were a ghost-talker, was just hanging around waiting for
three
years for you to do something to piss him off before he tried to talk to you…or kill you, as the case may be?”

When she put it that way, it sounded ridiculous, but Alona didn’t know how things worked. Hell, sometimes I didn’t even know how they worked. Besides, who else, or what else, could it be?

“You ever see it when Joonie is not around?” Alona asked quietly.

I froze. Against my will, my mind played back all my encounters with the angry ghost and every time, sure enough, Joonie was nearby, if not standing right next to me. “No,” I said firmly. “Not possible.”

“Why not?” Alona stood up. “Because she’s your friend? Did you not see her in the caf today?”

I hadn’t realized Alona had noticed her, too. Joonie could have been praying, like I thought. Or maybe she was trying to concentrate on the Ouija board in her bag … No. I shook my head. I wouldn’t allow Alona’s prejudice to taint my thoughts.

“And I don’t even want to tell you the weirdness I witnessed from her in your room yesterday. She’s, like, in love with you or something, but …” Alona frowned. “No, that’s not quite right, either. Something is really wrong with that girl.”

“Stop it,” I snapped. “You don’t know her. You don’t know anything that we’ve been through in the last year.”

“Oh, what, the mysterious Lily?” She folded her arms across her chest. “Why don’t you tell me? I’ve asked enough times.”

I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. Joonie has no idea what I can do, so she’d never even think of what you’re suggesting. Not to mention there’s no reason, even if she did. She wouldn’t want to hurt me. She’s my friend.”

Alona dropped into the seat next to me and twisted to face me, tucking her legs beneath her. “Then why,” she asked quietly, “did she run away when you asked her about a stupid board game in her backpack?”

Direct hit. When had I ever doubted Alona Dare’s intelligence? “She was probably just embarrassed,” I insisted. But I’d seen the look on Joonie’s face a few minutes ago. If that wasn’t guilt, it was a close cousin.

“Uh-huh.” She tossed her hair back over her shoulders. “I may be pretty, but I’m not stupid. She is hiding something.”

“It’s not …” Suddenly, I remembered Joonie’s shift in intensity, from worrying about Lily to asking me questions. What was that all about?

“I could follow her, I’m real stealthlike these days.” Alona turned in her seat again, stretching her long legs out in front of her, and I found myself staring.

“Hey, my face is up here.” She snapped her fingers at me, and I jerked my gaze upward.

“You don’t have to follow her,” I said. “It’s Friday. I know exactly where she’s going after school.” No way would Joonie miss a visit to Lily, not after what she’d told me today.

“So are we going, too, or what?” Alona idly flicked a piece of … ghost lint? … off her shorts.

I grimaced. “I have detention right after school.” I thought about it. “Actually, I have detention today and Monday. I can’t afford to skip it.”

She brightened. “Oh, good, then you’ll have some time to do a little work.”

Alarm bells rang in my head. “What are you talking about?”

She raised the hem of her shirt, revealing smooth tanned skin over a tight stomach, her belly button a tiny divot in the taut surface—cheerleading does a body good—and reached into the waistband of her shorts to pull out a stack of small but neatly folded pieces of paper. “Sorry,” she said. “No pockets.”

I cleared my throat. “No problem.”

She handed me the papers, and I took them, still warm from her skin, and unfolded them. The top one read:
R. Brewster. Wants forgiveness from son for being antigay toward him, and grandson to reconcile with his father. Anon. letters?

Lifting the first sheet aside, I read the second one, or started to, anyway.
Liesel Marks and Eric …
I looked over at Alona. “What is all of this?”

“What does it look like? I met with all your spirits and wrote down what they wanted.” She flicked her hair away from her eyes. “Hey, did you know that if you die or transition or whatever with something you get to keep it? Thank God that one girl died with a pen and notebook in her purse or I would have had to remember all of this.” Leaning closer to me, she pointed to the papers. “I even negotiated for you and got you out of making personal visits or phone calls.” She sat back in her chair with a shrug. “Basically, all you have to do is write some letters, find a few lost items. That kind of thing.”

“No,” I said flatly.

She whipped around in her seat to face me, her hair hitting me in the eyes as she turned. “Are you kidding? I spent my whole morning on this.”

I lowered my ice pack and glared at her. “Oh, gee, I’m sorry. Whatever are you going to do with the rest of eternity?”

She took a deep breath, opened her mouth … and then stopped. Holding her hands out in front of her, she inhaled and exhaled slowly.

“What are you doing, meditating?”

“No, I’m trying to calm down so I don’t kick your ass,” she said through clenched teeth.

I swallowed back a sigh. “I appreciate what you tried to do, really, and you helped me out by keeping them occupied but—”

“Listen, I wasn’t cool with this either in the beginning.” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “I mean, seriously, who am
I
to be your message girl?” She rolled her eyes. “But if you just listen to what they’re asking for, it’s not—”

“I’m not getting into this again.” I held up my hands, papers in one and the ice bag sloshing in the other.

“All they want is what you have. To be able to speak and be heard. That’s it. Apparently, whatever you are”—she looked down her nose at me—“is pretty rare. Except maybe in Puerto Rico.”

“What?”

She ignored me. “So, if you walk away, they might not get this chance again.”

“Chance to do what? Send me on a bunch of useless errands that don’t help anyone? I told you. This doesn’t work.” I held the papers back out to her.

She folded her arms across her chest. “What if it wasn’t you and it was your dad trying to get through and some ghost-talker wouldn’t help him?”

I froze. “My dad is none of your business.”

“Really? It seems to me that he’s very much my business since you think he’s the one showing up here, knocking you around, and trying to kill you, which, let me tell you, would put a serious crimp in my plans to get out of here.” She shuddered. “I don’t even want to know what happens if a spirit guide lets her person get killed.”

“Alona, just leave it alone,” I said wearily.

She examined the tips of her nails. “I think the whole reason you want that scary black cloud thing to be your dad is because at least then you have some kind of contact with him. Otherwise, he just left you hanging, and you of all people know he could have come back to talk to you if he wanted—”

“Enough,” I shouted, and threw the papers at her. They fell to the ground with a dry raspy sound like dead leaves.

“What is going on here?” Nurse Ryerson burst in through the door. She stopped short when she saw me alone in the room.

“Nothing,” I said tightly. “Nothing’s going on in here.”

“Damn right about that,” Alona muttered. She stood up and stepped over the papers on the ground, careful to avoid them.

“I thought I heard …” Nurse Ryerson’s voice faltered. She poked her head in farther to check behind the door, as though someone might be hiding back there.

“That shouting, you mean?” I asked.

She nodded.

I gave a shrug. “Not from in here.”

She frowned and slowly backed out the door.

Alona started to follow her.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I demanded in a whisper.

She lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Clearly, you don’t need me, and
I
don’t have to go to class anymore. One of the few benefits of being dead.”

“What about—”

“The spirits? The ones that have been bothering you? I don’t know,” she snapped. “I had worked out a deal where if you agreed to help them, they’d leave you alone. I guess that’s off the table, though, right?”

I sighed. “Alona.”

“Good luck with class,” she said with faux cheer. “Hope you like musicals. I’ll make sure to tell them
Annie
is your favorite.”

“Wait, just wait a—”

Without another word, she slipped through the closed door, humming “Tomorrow” under her breath.

Great. Not only do I have an angry spirit guide, but an angry spirit guide with a vindictive streak and an unnatural knowledge of show tunes. Better and better already.

I
stalked to the end of the main hall, reaching the double glass doors, and stopped. I had no idea what to do or where to go next. Actually, to be honest, I was a bit surprised to find myself intact still. I hadn’t exactly been nice to Killian back there, but then again, I was fighting for the right. He hadn’t spent the last few hours hearing all the stories, seeing all the faces …

Look, I’m no soft touch for hard-luck stories. You make your own bad choices, you have to live (or not) with the consequences. But most of the people I’d talked to earlier were resigned to their fate. They’d come to talk to me after hearing rumors about Killian’s ability—the dead apparently
love
to gossip—on the slimmest possibility of hope. Some of them had been here for
years
, watching helplessly as everyone they’ve ever known or loved had moved on or spiraled into a half life of misery and regret.

Tricia, the girl who’d given me the pen and paper, had been stuck since 1988 (the leg warmers would have been a big clue even if she hadn’t told me). She’d chased after their family’s dog, Mooshi, when she went out into the street, but Tricia had slipped on an icy spot and hit her head. She’d died almost instantly. All she wanted now was to tell her “little” brother that it wasn’t his fault. He’d left the door open, just a crack, after he and Tricia had come home from school, and Mooshi had nosed her way out. He was only eight, and it was just a dumb mistake. But even now, he still blamed himself for Tricia’s death, their parents’ divorce, and every bad thing that had come after that. According to Tricia, he’d tried to kill himself twice.

We
, Killian and I, could change that. We could tell Dave what his sister wanted him to know, helping both of them at once. And yeah, maybe it wouldn’t work every time. Maybe some of the spirits were deceiving themselves about what was really holding them here, but what about the one or two or five that
weren’t
?

A swirl of black in motion in the
H
-branch to the right caught my attention. I spun around, expecting to see Gloomy Gus coming to shred me for real this time. Instead, it was just Joonie emerging from the bathroom, her book bag clutched tightly to her chest. Her face was pale, except for around her eyes where it was red. She looked like she’d been crying.

Tucking her head down, Joonie scurried toward the library. I followed. Killian had said that there was no need to trail her. He knew her schedule on Fridays. He’d never bothered to explain it to me, though, so I’d have to do the detective work on my own. No problem. Wasn’t like I had anything else to do right now.

“Hey, Alona!” Creepy janitor guy waved to me with great cheer as I passed him once more mopping the carpet.

God, if Killian didn’t come through on at least some of those requests, my reputation was going to be shot all to pieces. I waved back and kept going, following Joonie through the library doors and to one of the computer stations against the wall.

With a nervous glance over her shoulder, she set her bag, now zipped, carefully on the floor next to her.

“Oh, good,” I told her. “Now you worry about who might see it.”

In a few clicks, she was on the Internet and then Google. Her search topics? Comas, ghosts, contacting the spirit world, and my personal favorite, reincarnation.

I snorted. No, Joonie wasn’t involved in this mess, not at all. I wished I could print it all out and show it to Killian. He’d never believe me otherwise, finding some other perfectly rational explanation for her behavior that did not include raising a really pissed-off spirit or whatever the heck Gus was.

The question was, why? Why would she go to such dangerous lengths? Her last stop on the Web provided one possible answer.

After a quick glance over her shoulder to check on the location of Mr. Mueller, the librarian, Joonie typed in a MySpace Web address. A bright pink page appeared on the monitor, along with the first few crashingly loud notes of some former
American Idol
pop song. While Joonie fumbled for the mouse to turn down the volume, I leaned in to take a better look. To my surprise, the girl in the profile photo looked vaguely familiar. Cute in that innocent farm girl kind of way. Straight, mousy brown hair pulled back in a ponytail (with some blond highlights and a decent cut, it would be acceptable), pale skin (hello, Mystic Tan?), and light brown eyes that would have been striking, if not pretty, with the right application of products. The little box that listed her vital stats put her at sixteen, possibly a sophomore, maybe a junior. That would explain why I didn’t know her, even though her page claimed she went to Groundsboro High.

I frowned. Why did I remember her face? Something niggled at the back of my brain but wouldn’t move forward into the light.

Joonie clicked to view her pictures, and as the images scrolled across the screen, one major piece of the puzzle dropped into place. A few vaguely out-of-focus pictures of a dog and a much too childlike bedroom with princess wallpaper passed by, and then I saw people I recognized: Joonie sticking her studded tongue out at the camera; Killian with his arm protectively around the girl as she stretched her arms out to take a portrait of the two of them together. Killian grinned into the camera, revealing those perfectly white and even teeth. I’d never seen him that happy. She wasn’t facing the camera, though. She’d tipped her head back to look up at him, adoration shining from her plain face.

My gaze snapped back up to the Web address. Lilslife. Lil. Lily. The one I’d been hearing so much about—this was her. She was—what?—Killian’s girlfriend? He said they were just friends; I heard him tell his sketchy psychiatrist that. But still …

An uncomfortable prickle started in my chest. I wrapped my arms around myself. It wasn’t jealousy, though. No. What was there to be jealous of here? A pseudo-goth guy and his plain-Jane maybe-girlfriend? Just because I’d never looked at anyone like that, not even Chris on our best days, and now it was too late because I was dead, and Killian had never smiled at me—

A loud sniffle from Joonie interrupted my thoughts. “I’m sorry, Lil. I’m trying,” she whispered. Her black eye makeup ran in streaks down her cheeks. She glanced back over her shoulder, checking on Mr. Mueller’s position, then turned back to face the computer, kissed the tip of her index finger, and pressed it against Lily’s mouth in the picture.

Whoa. What was going on here?

While I gaped at her, Joonie exited the browser and logged off the computer. She stood up, scooped her bag off the floor, and strode to the library door—her skull necklace clanking—with what appeared to be a renewed sense of purpose.

I, of course, followed, my thoughts all abuzz. If Lily was
Killian’s
girlfriend, Joonie sure had a strange way of showing it. I mean, seriously. I’m not afraid of gay people, guys or girls. I don’t think every lesbian in school wants me; I
know
they do, just like all the straight guys. But I also know that they aren’t going to trap me in the corner of the girls’ bathroom and try to convert me. Please, Alona Dare as a resident of Lesbos? I don’t think so. I like the male form a little too much for that. Plus, I hate flannel.

Joonie’s behavior was just … weird. Also, clearly, something had happened to this Lily chick. When they talked about her, it was in this hushed and holy tone. Was she dead? Then why had Joonie said something to Killian about visiting her in the hospital?

I followed Joonie around for the rest of the afternoon, ditching her only the few times when I saw Killian coming. He didn’t look happy with me. Too bad, so sad. The best part was that it had never been easier to avoid him. Not like he could call out after me, right?

Unfortunately, as far as Joonie was concerned, nothing else happened. No bathroom stall séances or blood sacrifices at her locker. Joonie went to class just like normal, or as close to normal as she could get, anyway. Until last hour.

Joonie hauled her bag up tighter on her shoulder and hurried into chemistry class. I frowned, my complete and utter boredom shattered by the small but odd behavior change. In my vast hours of experience with her, Joonie never hurried to anything, especially not a class. Her whole persona was based on an utter lack of caring about anything.

Which is total bullshit, of course. First of all, because she obviously cared about making people think she didn’t care about anything. But whatever.

I followed her, watching with amazement as she sat down at her lab table, pulled her chemistry book and notebook from her bag carefully, and lined them up on her desk … a full two minutes before class even started.

Mr. Gerry nodded with approval at her from his lab stool up front.

“What is going on here?” I muttered.

The rest of the class filtered in, including Jennifer Meyer, who was wearing the absolute worst plaid miniskirt. I shuddered. Plaid was so … mid-nineties.

The bell rang, and for the next thirty-three minutes, I saw a completely different Joonie Travis. She raised her hand on almost every question, volunteered to hand out safety goggles, and even put on a protective glove that no one else had to wear—Mr. Gerry thought the piercing in the web between her thumb and first finger might get overheated near the flames of the Bunsen burner—without complaint.

Now, you’re probably thinking, “Oh, how nice. The High Priestess of Pain found something she is good at that is also relatively socially acceptable.” Well, let me tell you that … she sucked. She got most of the answers wrong, and the ones she didn’t, it was only because she flipped through the textbook wildly before raising her hand. She also dropped two beakers—empty ones, thank God—and partially melted her own safety glasses when she leaned too close to the burner’s flame. In short, she was a disaster. But she kept trying … something I didn’t understand. At least, not until the last ten minutes of class.

When the clock reached 2:15, a full fifteen minutes before the end of class and the end of school, Joonie stopped working and began putting all of her equipment away. By 2:20, she was parked on her lab stool, books put away and bag zipped up, staring at Mr. Gerry.

After sighing at another pathetic attempt at the daily experiment by Jennifer Meyer and Ashleigh Hicks, Mr. Gerry finally looked up and saw Joonie, her foot jiggling against the stool legs and her body ramrod straight with tension. He nodded reluctantly at her, and Joonie leaped to her feet, slung her bag over her shoulder, and practically ran from the room.

Caught off guard by her sudden exit—I was entertaining myself by watching Jesse McGovern use the Bunsen burner to heat and bend plastic straws swiped from the caf into swearword sculptures—I had to run to catch up.

Joonie tucked her head down and darted down the hall and the stairs, through the main hall, and out the front doors. Interesting … she’d better hope that Brewster didn’t catch sight of her. He was exactly the type to bust her for skipping school, even if it was only the last ten minutes.

Breaking into a light jog—I hate sweating—I caught up with her near the Circle and tagged along out to her car, the Death Bug. She tossed her bag in the back, climbed in, and started the car while I was still talking myself into sliding through the metal.

She began backing out.

“Hey, watch it!” I threw myself the rest of the way into the car, trying to ignore the cold shuddery feeling I got from passing through the door. “What is your big freaking hurry?”

Joonie pulled out of the parking lot at, like, the speed of light, throwing gravel everywhere and leaving a huge trail of dust in her wake. She turned right onto Henderson, and then left onto Main. A couple more turns and it was obvious:we were heading into town.

Referring to it as “town” sort of gave the impression that Decatur was the cultural center of the area. It was, however, where most of the jobs were—people just lived in the little towns outside, like Groundsboro, and drove in to work at the factories. On a day with a strong breeze, you could catch a whiff of ADM or Staley’s, processing soybeans in town. It smelled like instant mashed potatoes. There’d been days when I couldn’t wait to get away from here and that smell. But now, honestly, if I’d caught the scent, I might have felt a little comforted. I’d died, but some things still stayed the same.

Anyway, Decatur did offer a few things—a movie theater, a mall, and a hospital. Actually, the big movie theater and the mall were technically part of Forsyth, another dinky little town clinging to the edges of Decatur, but that probably didn’t matter, since I doubted Joonie was going anywhere for fun.

My hunch was confirmed when, twenty minutes later, the Death Bug pulled into the visitors’ parking lot of St. Catherine’s Hospital. Joonie had mentioned visiting Lily in the hospital. I sat up straight in my seat. Finally, this was getting good! Maybe now I’d get some answers.

Joonie slammed the gear shift into park, snagged her bag off the floor by my feet, and hustled out of the car toward the hospital. With a sigh, I followed her, albeit at a slower pace. I didn’t understand what the big hurry was. If Lily was in the hospital, it wasn’t like she had other plans anytime soon, right?