The Ghost Hunter (33 page)

I barely remembered Mom. But overall, my childhood hadn’t been horrible. Lonely, as we’d moved a lot; a little complicated as Grandma had to explain away my uncanny ability to know what others were thinking. But I couldn’t complain. I had a roof over my head and plenty to eat. Most importantly, she protected me as well as she could.
 

Grandma didn’t look like your typical old lady. Yeah, she was in her fifties, but she colored her dark hair and refused to cover her trim body with something as hideous as a housecoat. I got my hair and eye color from her, but my smaller features from my mom’s side of the family. Grandma was blunt and a little cold and it showed in her narrow face. But she’d taken care of me when no one else would, and for that I was reluctantly thankful.

“Anyone die?” I asked, pretending a nonchalance I certainly didn’t feel.

“Nope.” She said the word with ease. Her lack of empathy had always bothered me. She snapped her cookbook shut and peered up at me through her wire-rimmed glasses. I tried to ignore her hazel eyes, but it was impossible. I swear Grandma’s beady gaze could read a person’s soul. It was why I’d never lied to her. What was the point when she’d know the truth?

I wrapped my fingers around the handle of the refrigerator, relief releasing sweetly from my gut. No one had died. Just injured. No death. No guilt. At least not this time. But it was there, always in the back of my mind. Shame was the worst of it, knowing I could help if I’d just open my mouth. But as Grandma had taught me early on, there were worse things than feeling guilty, like feeling dead. I hadn’t realized a person could “feel” dead, but knew it was pointless to argue with Grandma.

“Cameron, isn’t that the café you visit?”

I pulled the refrigerator door wide, the burst of cold air adding to my unease. As if she didn’t know where I went. As if she didn’t know every tiny thing I did. “Yeah.”

“Were you there?”

I pulled out a can of coke, letting the chill aluminum numb my fingers, hoping that numbness would move to my heart, my gut, my brain. No such luck. “Yeah. I was there”

There was a short pause. I knew what she would ask next. Not that I could read her mind. I’d never been able to read Grandma’s thoughts like I could others. Grandma had learned, over the years, how to keep her thoughts to herself.
An ability
she refused to share with me and I knew why…then she wouldn’t be able to spy on me. Her power would be gone. And at times like this, I resented the hell out of her.
  

“Did you know?” she asked, her own voice casual.

Did I know the man was going to rob the café? Did I know he had a gun? Did I know someone might die and I could stop it? I swiped my hands on my jeans, wiping away the condensation. Slowly, I nodded.

“You didn’t say anything?”

Annoyed, I released a puff of air through pursed lips. Why did she even bother asking? She knew the answer. “No,” I grumbled.
  

“Good girl.” She pushed her chair away from the table, the legs screeching across the linoleum, and stood. “You’d only be courting questions and trouble. You remember what happened in Michigan. Always remember that when you want to warn someone. I’m going to the garden.”

Michigan. There it was again. As if I could ever forget the incident. The time I’d blabbed and we’d almost been caught. The time I’d realized I couldn’t trust anyone with my secret.

I watched her move to the door, my bitterness growing with each step she took. Whenever she praised me for keeping quiet, it felt so patronizing. Like inside she was smirking. Good little girl had done what she’d been told once again because she was too afraid to rebel.

The screen door banged against the frame and she disappeared into the back garden. Truth was, Grandma controlled me; she knew every one of my dark secrets, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. At times I felt beaten down, exposed, exhausted. Imprisoned like an animal at the zoo, constantly watched. One of these days she’d find me pacing my room…back…forth.
 

But in less than one year I’d be free of Grandma. She had to know I was eager to attend college, yet she never said anything. She had to know that when I went away, I could do whatever I wanted. Part of me worried that she had some nefarious plan to keep me by her side forever. I shuddered at the thought.

Slowly I made my way to the screen door. Grandma stood in the middle of our small, overgrown yard, just stood there, looking at her stupid lilac bush. She worked on that thing night and day and still it didn’t bloom. Why, I wanted to know, would she waste her time? But she never could give me a proper answer. She’d lost her son, she’d lost her daughter-in-law and maybe she knew she was losing me. Was the lilac some desperate attempt to hold onto something?

A horn blared out front, pulling me from my morose thoughts. For a brief moment, I paused, feeling bad about leaving her here alone. She didn’t have friends, she didn’t have family but for me. Her entire life revolved around some desperate attempt to keep me safe from unknown enemies. I knew, deep down, she was only trying to protect me, but it didn’t make me feel any less caged. The horn blared again. If I stayed here, I’d become alone and bitter. I’d become her, and I couldn’t let that happen.

I set my pop on the counter and moved to the front door. Emily was parked alongside the curb, her new red convertible shiny, free of dents and scratches. I knew that wouldn’t last long, the girl had almost flunked Driver’s Ed. I hadn’t said how ridiculous it was to get a convertible when you lived in Maine. Icy roads and convertibles didn’t mesh. But Emily loved the car and Emily got what she wanted, everything but attention from her parents.

Blonde and blue eyed, she was everyone’s idea of perfection and she was my best friend. I couldn’t hate my abilities, no, because if I couldn’t read minds, I would never be friends with Emily. I would never get the grades I got, and I wouldn’t be as good at soccer as I was. I knew answers, I knew game plays, I knew what people were thinking practically before they did.

“Come on!” She waved me over, large Chanel sunglasses covering half her face. Fall in Maine was far from warm, but she liked to pretend she was some incarnate version of Audrey Hepburn. If anything, with my petite features and dark hair, I looked more like the old movie actress. But if Emily wanted to be Audrey, Emily got to be Audrey.

I tripped down the brick steps, eager to escape if only for the evening. Some days were harder to get through than others. Today was one of those days. At times I felt like I was acting; no one knew the real me. My smile wavered and I swallowed over the sudden lump in my throat. They only knew the person they wanted me to be. It was exhausting. But today I didn’t care. I wouldn’t care. Today no one had died at the café and I was going driving with my best friend. And most importantly, after today I’d no longer have to take the bus to school.
  

“It’s gorgeous,” I said the one thing she was waiting for me to say, the thing she wanted to hear. She could have gotten
a car months
ago, but had waited for them to ship this one specially from Germany or some other car-loving country. “You’re so lucky.”

Because we were constantly moving, it made it hard for me to get a job and buy my own car. Heck, I’d be happy to have my Grandma’s rusty Toyota.

Emily shrugged, but I knew she was thrilled I was envious. Emily’s desire was to be worshipped and envied by all. Not that she was a horrible person. No, she wasn’t. At least not deep down. I was the only one who knew she cried herself to sleep most nights. I was the only one who knew what was wrong when her gaze got that far away, sad look. Both doctors, her parents were often gone and Emily looked for attention where she could get it. Of course she’d never admit that dark secret, but she didn’t need to.

How I wished I could tell her I understood. But she’d die if I admitted I knew the truth. And so I pretended that everything was great and so did she. I pulled open the passenger door and settled onto the soft, black leather seat. I held no illusions. I knew Emily and I wouldn’t be friends if it wasn’t for my ability. I knew exactly what Emily wanted me to do, think, say, and because of that, I was her perfect B.F. We sure as heck wouldn’t be friends if I told her what I was really thinking, but today that didn’t matter because the sky was clear and the air somewhat warm for October.
 

I smoothed my fingers over the arm rest as Emily took off. I didn’t bother leaving Grandma a note. She knew where I was going. At least, she would until I got out of range. At some point, and I still wasn’t sure where, she wasn’t able to read my thoughts anymore. It was a realization I’d stumbled upon three years ago when I’d gone off with a friend without telling Grandma, only to return and find her frantic with worry. The only time she’d shown she cared.

It was the same for me. Once a person was a football field or so away, I couldn’t read their minds no matter how hard I tried.

It was a thrilling feeling of escape that coursed through my body as we drove out of town toward the coast. Emily whipped around a curve and I fell into the door, laughing. Excitement followed Emily wherever she went. It was part of the reason why I liked her; she could make me forget that I was a freak. The world was a movie, and she was the star. At the moment she was pretending she was some hot spy and being chased by an equally hot guy. Of course she’d never admit how many times she invented movies in her head and she’d probably kill herself if she realized I knew.

“Where should we go?” I asked, a secret smile playing on my lips.

“Lakeside!” she said.

Lakeside was a diner near the ocean. Half the teens worked there after school, the other half hung out. There wasn’t a lot to do in our small town, but years ago the students had quickly taken over the restaurant as their own.

“So get this, Trevor suddenly has to study Saturday night.” Emily glanced briefly at me, interested in catching my reaction. The wind was blowing her hair around her perfect face. But while my hair was getting stuck in my mouth, whipping me in the eyes and wrapping around my neck in a chokehold, she somehow managed to look like a model in a print ad. Ugh, so not fair!

“What do you think?” she asked.

I thought, no, I knew Trevor was seeing someone else from another school. But I also knew how Emily wanted me to answer. I shrugged, not quite meeting her gaze. “Maybe his parents are on him about his grades.” Emily didn’t want to know he was cheating. Most people didn’t really want to know the truth.
  

“Yeah,” she seemed relieved. “That’s what I figured.”

Emily couldn’t stand the idea that someone would dump her. No, Emily dumped boys, boys didn’t dump her. Hurt them before they hurt her. She was worried that was exactly what was happening with Trevor. I was no psychologist, but I’d seen enough episodes of Oprah to wonder if her need to be adored had something to do with the fact that her parents were never around.

“Still, if he keeps this up, I just might dump his ass. God, what does he expect? Doesn’t he know how many people would go out with me?”

She was arrogant, but she was right. I’d read enough horny teenage minds to know that 99% of the school’s male population wanted Emily. The other one percent were gay.

She followed the road that ran along the coast, lurching this way and that with the curves. Thank God I didn’t get motion sick. The ocean was rough, the winds and weather making the waves crest into white peaks that looked like snow. It was a volatile life we led here on the coast, and more than one fisherman drowned every year under the unrelenting power of the ocean. Despite the danger, I loved the feeling, the energy that surged from the waves…that secrecy of not knowing what was there underneath the water.
 

“I swear Kevin was checking me out the other day.”

For a moment I thought I’d heard her wrong. That the roar of the ocean had made me hear something she hadn’t really said. But no such luck, her thoughts were as clear as my own. My heart squeezed, even as I forced my smile to remain in place.

She was looking at the road, but she was wondering what I was thinking. “If Trevor doesn’t get his shit together, maybe I’ll go out with Kevin.”

My heart thundered painfully in my chest, my palms growing damp. The urge to shout out
No!
bounced around my skull. But I didn’t move, didn’t dare move for fear she’d read something in my gestures.

She slid me a sly glance. “You don’t still have a crush on him, do you?”

Yes.
“No,” I somehow managed to get out, although my voice sounded strangled.

“I didn’t think so.”

Just like that my good mood fled. Time to face facts. Emily was getting worse. Her bitterness toward her parents coming out in her actions more often now. I’d known she was changing, but most of us were. Half the senior class was nervous at the thought of graduating and being alone, the other half were eager to taste freedom. It was an odd year, full of odd emotions and I’d wanted to ignore the signs that Emily had finally taken a step fully into the dark side.

Morose, I rested on my elbow on the window and gaze at the passing scenery. Less than half a year and I’d be gone. I’d been through so many schools, never staying long enough to make true friends, that I’d been desperate when we’d moved here a year ago. When Emily had taken an interest, I admit my self-esteem had savored the attention of the most popular girl in school.