The Haunting of Sunshine Girl (12 page)

Instead of falling back to sleep, I go over the evening's events in my head: Is Mom really
incapable
of seeing what Nolan and I saw? Does that mean Nolan and I are both crazy and the shadow is some kind of joint hallucination—or is
Mom
crazy,
because she can't see it? Or is there something to this magic that you can't perceive it above a certain age or something? Like maybe you have to be young and pure of heart, like in all those movies and fairy tales about children who slip into enchanted worlds without adult supervision?

I shake my head.
No
—a photograph is a photograph, and Nolan and I haven't known each other long enough to have some kind of shared delusion.

Thunder crashes, and Oscar jumps onto my bed, curling himself up beside me the same way he did our first night in this house. “What's the matter, buddy?” I ask, stroking the soft spot between his ears. He loves being petted like this; if he were a cat, he'd be purring right now. But instead, he's shaking, trying to hide his face beneath my arm.

“You never used to be so scared of thunder, big boy,” I coo. Oscar is a little dog, but Mom and I both always describe him as big. Suddenly I hear something else, hiding in between crashes of thunder. It's not the thunder that's got Oscar so frightened.

It's the sound of a child crying.

Okay, I know that in, say, a court of law or something, a dog can't exactly testify as a witness. But there's no denying that Oscar is another person—well, you know, another living creature—who
feels
that this house is haunted. He's been scared and jumpy ever since we moved into this house. And Lex literally tried to run out the front door this evening, something he never, ever tried to do in our old house. So that's four of us—Oscar, Lex, me, Nolan—at least one of whom is an impartial third party, may I add—who know
something
is going on here.

“Why are you crying?” I ask my empty room. “Didn't you like playing with me? I thought that was what you wanted.”
Oscar nestles under my arm. “Come on, please answer me! Are you the reason this house is so cold and creepy? Can I help you?” I shake my head: what am I doing, asking a ghost if she needs my help? I'm the one who needs help. I'm the one who's stuck in a haunted house, fighting with my mother for the first time in sixteen years.

“Why are you crying?” I plead. I stare at the ceiling like I'm waiting for it to fall down on top of me. “What are you trying to tell me—that you want to play, that you need my help?”

Lightning rips across the sky, illuminating the room once more. What I see makes me scream. Oscar dives down to the ground and under the bed. “I'm sorry, boy,” I say, but I'm whispering now instead of shouting, and even with his dog hearing, I doubt he can hear me. Even if he could hear me, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to make him feel any better.

Dr. Hoo is flying around in circles just beneath the ceiling, his wings dripping water as though he were flying through the rain outside—Dr. Hoo, my long-dead, long-since-stuffed owl. His wings make so much noise that I think maybe the entire room is about to levitate.

I reach for the light beside my bed, turn it on, and grab my cell phone. Maybe Mom will be able to see
this.
Maybe Mrs. Soderberg and I were wrong: sure, film can capture things that aren't visible to the naked eye, but when the naked eye can see what I'm seeing now, digital should work just fine.

With my phone's camera trained on the owl, I hit record even though my hands are shaking, so the video will be shaky too. Even though the camera doesn't make a sound—no click, click, click like when I take photos with film—Dr. Hoo seems to sense a change in the air. Abruptly, he stops flying in circles and
hovers in place for a heartbeat, his wings still flapping mightily. He looks around, his owl's neck turning almost 360 degrees just like they said on all those nature shows. Finally he looks down, fixing his gaze on me. I shake my head; the owl's eyes aren't real. They're made of glass, long since replaced by the taxidermist. Still, Dr. Hoo seems to perceive me, and he swoops down in my direction.

Oh my gosh, Dr. Hoo is going to kill me! Ashley was right all along. Taxidermied animals are creepy. I should have been grossed out by him.

I scream again—sorry Oscar!—but at the last second Dr. Hoo shifts, and instead of hitting me, he hits the lamp at my bedside, knocking it over and plunging the room into darkness. I drop my phone. I hear it thud against the carpet on the floor, and I tumble out of bed to search for it, but I can't find it. There's no more lightning to illuminate my dark room; the storm has moved on. The sound of flapping wings ceases. Even the falling rain has dwindled into just a slight trickle down the window-pane. Oscar peeks his head out from under the bed and crawls into my lap, panting as though it's hot in here.

But of course, it isn't hot. It's freezing.

I don't know when I fall asleep. To be honest, I don't know
how
I fall asleep, after everything that happened. But the next thing I know, it's morning, and my neck aches from sleeping sitting up with my back against the bed frame. Oscar isn't in my lap anymore, and despite the tree outside my window, enough light is streaming in that I can see that Dr. Hoo is back on his shelf, and my phone is beside me on the ground as though I placed it there for easy access.

“Jeezus Loueezus,” I sigh, wrapping my fingers around my phone and standing. I turn my neck from side to side. The air between my bones crackles and pops when I move. “I feel like an old lady,” I say out loud.

“What's that?” Mom asks, sticking her head through the door.

“When did you get home?”

“Just now. I have exactly three hours to nap before I have to go back in for my next shift.”

“But it's Saturday.”

“You don't think babies are born on Saturdays?” Mom says, but she's smiling. My whole life Mom has had to work on weekends and holidays, though she tries never to be on duty during Christmas break or my birthday.

“Sorry,” I mumble.

“Hey, I wish I had Saturdays off too.” She gestures at my phone. “What do you have there?”

I look down. When I picked the phone up, I must have pressed the button to replay the video I shot last night. The sound of thunder and lightning emanates from the phone's tiny speaker. I pause. Let's give this one more try. Maybe the only way Mom will look at this with an open mind is if I don't mention the ghost.

“Ummm,” I say slowly. “I shot a video of the storm last night. It must have been right above us. The lightning made everything so bright.” I cross the room and hold my phone out in front of me. Mom leans down to look at it.

“Wow,” she murmurs.

“Wow?” I echo hopefully. Maybe she sees Dr. Hoo flapping around. Maybe she hears someone crying.

“Looks like it was quite a storm. The thunder must have been deafening.”

“Oscar hid under the bed. I thought it was weird because thunder and lightning never used to scare him.”

Mom shakes her head, dropping her gaze from the phone. “Oscar's just a big old baby,” she says, then pats my shoulder. I practically jump.

“What's the matter?” Mom asks.

“Your hand is freezing,” I answer. The back of my T-shirt is moist where she touched me. “Did you just get out of the shower or something?”

“What are you talking about?” she sighs, and I shake my head. I don't want to start this day off with a fight.

“Nothing.”

“Why don't we have some breakfast before I hit the hay?”

“Be down in a minute,” I say softly as she leaves my room and makes her way downstairs. I sit on the edge of my bed and lift my T-shirt over my head and lay it out flat in front of me.

There's a rusty, wet handprint on the back, the cold water spreading across the shirt's fibers like a stain. Before I know what I'm doing, I've crushed the shirt into a ball and thrown it beneath my bed like I never want to see it again.

I reach for my phone and watch the video once more, straight through from the start. In addition to thunder and lightning, I hear crying and the sound of Dr. Hoo's wings. The owl takes up practically the whole screen, flying circles around my room until he finally plunges straight toward me.

I curl my hands into fists as I head downstairs so Mom won't see the way they're shaking. Something has happened to her, something that's keeping her from seeing what I see and feeling what I feel. She can't even feel that her hand is cold and wet.

Wet with rust-colored water. Just like the water in the bathroom that night.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Extra Credit

“I don't think you should stop recording,”
Nolan says on Monday.

“Why not?” I say, kicking the ground. It's lunchtime, and Nolan suggested we take a walk rather than talk in the cafeteria. Maybe he was embarrassed to talk about this in front of the rest of the school, the cliques already so firmly established, but Nolan doesn't seem like he cares about that kind of thing. In fact, he's been living in Ridgemont his whole life and doesn't seem to have a crowd the way everyone else does, from the jocks to the misfits. Maybe he preferred his grandfather's company the way I always preferred my mother's.

We're walking in circles on the track behind the school. I take it that Ridgemont High's track team isn't exactly the cream of the crop, because the ground beneath us is muddy and cracked, as though the school doesn't think it's worth keeping it in good shape. It's not raining, but it's misty and there's a chill in the air, making me want to walk ever closer to Nolan, like he's a heat lamp and I'm a fly drawn to his flame. But I don't want to look
like the weirdest girl on planet Earth (even if maybe I am), so I settle for just staying in step with him. “My mother can't see anything, no matter what medium I try—photography, video . . . to say nothing of real life.”

Nolan shakes his head, his damp, long hair falling across his face. He pushes the sleeves of his leather jacket so they bunch up around his elbows perfectly, like something out of a James Dean movie, even though beneath his jacket he's wearing a flannel button-down and jeans that look like they're at least one size too big, plus a pair of beat-up sneakers that were probably partly white once, which kind of clashes with the James Dean effect of the jacket. “She can't perceive the ghost now. Maybe that will change.”

“Doubtful,” I mutter, looking at my feet. My Chuck Taylors have been covered in mud and grime since the day we moved here.

“I can tell you're discouraged,” Nolan begins, and I laugh.

“Oh really? What gave you that idea?”

“But come on, you should feel good.” I raise my eyebrows, and he shrugs. “Okay, maybe not
good,
but better, at least. I mean, you have evidence now.
Proof.
My grandpa spent his whole life talking about ghosts, and he never found proof, not even after ninety years. That's got to count for something, right?”

Nolan isn't entirely wrong: I
thought
I'd feel better if I had proof, but proof seems worthless when my mom can't see it. Or
perceive
it, like Nolan said.

“Why keep recording then? I already have proof, like you said.”

“A little more can't hurt. And maybe we'll see something in your videos that you missed in real life.”

“Because in real life I'm too busy being terrified to look closely?” I shudder when I remember the way Dr. Hoo flew above me. Part of me did want to hide under the covers until it was over.

Nolan grins. “Exactly.”

“Speaking of looking closely . . .” I gesture with my chin to a figure crouched on the decrepit-looking bleachers across the track.

“Is that who I think it is?” Nolan asks. He squints, taking in the long dark hair, the witchy cloak, the pale, pale skin—Ms. Wilde.

“Gosh, that is one creepy lady,” I sigh. “What's she doing here?” I fold my arms across my chest and rub them up and down.

Nolan shrugs. “What are we doing here?”

“You're saying she doesn't give you the creeps?”

“Shhh. She might be able to hear us.”

I want to roll my eyes, but the truth is, it does kind of look like our art teacher is listening to us. I mean, she doesn't have any of the usual distractions people bring with them to sit all alone: no sandwich to eat, no cell phone to check, no papers to grade, no book to read. She must see us staring at her, because she drops her gaze, her hair falling across her face like a curtain. Nolan and I start walking in the opposite direction, farther away from her—and hopefully out of her earshot.

“What if my mom asks why I'm taking videos around the house?”

“Just tell her it's for a school project or something.”

I cock my head to the side, considering. I really don't want to have to keep lying to her. It doesn't feel good—it doesn't feel
natural,
like walking backward or trying to write with the wrong hand. “I guess that's not a total lie,” I say slowly. “I mean, you
are
doing an extra-credit project on ghosts of the Northwest. Maybe you could use all this for it?”