The Haunting of Sunshine Girl (15 page)

I'm more confused now than ever. Maybe there are two ghosts in my haunted house? One good, one evil? I fold my arms on the table and drop my head down on top of them, my curls tickling my hands. I didn't even bother trying to pull it back into a ponytail today. What's the point? I'm pretty sure an elastic band wouldn't have a fighting chance against all this.

I can feel Nolan's hand hovering above me, like maybe he wants to rub my back. My muscles stiffen in anticipation, and he moves away. “We'll get to the bottom of this,” he promises.

I look up. “Have you had any luck finding an expert who might be able to help us?” I ask hopefully.

“Not exactly. But I've got a lead on one from my grandfather's old files. A professor at the university a couple of towns over.”

“What kind of college has a ghost department?”

Nolan shrugs. “We've got to start somewhere, right?”

“I'm scared. What if I'm not there the next time my mom—”

“You
will
be there. Look, you said she's working all the time these days, right?”

I nod.

“So it shouldn't be that hard to be home when she's home so that she's not alone. And if she hurts herself at work, then . . .”

“At least she's already at the hospital,” I finish for him. He nods, and I let out a deep breath. I guess it's lucky that my mom is a nurse. What if she were a teacher or a lawyer or something?

Nolan must sense that despite the proximity of medical care, I'm not exactly comforted by the thought of my beloved mother hurting herself at work, so he adds, “Anyway, if it's the house that's haunted—and it's the ghost—”

“Or ghosts,” I interrupt.

“Or ghosts,” he agrees, “that made her hurt herself, then you don't have to worry about her when she's not home anyway.”

I nod just as the bell rings, signaling the end of third period. I push my chair out from under the table, slide my phone in my pants pocket, and pick my backpack up from the floor. “I guess we better get to class.”

Nolan nods. “I have chem lab.”

“English lit,” I answer. Our respective classrooms are on opposite ends of the school, so we each set off in separate directions. The farther I get from him, the colder I feel, until goose bumps are popping up on my arms and legs, all the way down to my feet. I stop at my locker and get out my navy blue peacoat and slip it on. I found it at a vintage shop back in Austin; the original buttons have long since disappeared, and the six buttons that replaced them are totally mismatched, a rainbow of different colors.

How can being close to Nolan feel both so good and so bad? When I'm near him I'm warm. Is that how Mom felt when she held me for the first time? I shake my head—no, because every time Nolan actually touches me, it feels so wrong that I'm tempted to run as far from him as my not-particularly-athletic legs will carry me.

Okay, so maybe I'm not going to get swept up into a life-altering romance like Elizabeth Bennett. It's not like I have time to fall in love anyway, not with everything else that's going on.
What matters is that Nolan is my friend, the first new friend I've made since elementary school. And unlike Ashley, he believes in ghosts and cares about what's going on in my house. He'd watch that video a dozen more times if I asked him to, and I wouldn't be able to get Ashley to watch it once. Nolan doesn't think I'm nuttier than a fruitcake for seeing what I've seen. And because he can see it too, I have proof that I'm not crazy.

To get to English class, I have to pass the visual arts room. When I see Ms. Wilde hovering in the doorway, I brace myself, expecting to be sent to the principal's office for cutting. But instead, as I walk past, the edges of my art teacher's mouth curl up into a subtle, blink-and-you'll-miss-it smile.

Just before I drop into a chair in my English classroom I pick up my phone and send Nolan a text.

What if there's a day when I can't be there with my mom when she's at home?

I don't even have to wait thirty seconds before he sends his reply:

Then I'll be there.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Out of Ridgemont and into the Fire?

On Saturday afternoon
Nolan sends me a text—no words, just a picture of a wrinkled old article he found among his grandfather's papers. I'm not able to make out much more than the headline: “Local Professor Promises Proof: Ghosts Are Real.”

Immediately I write back:
Let's go find him.

After school a few days later I'm sitting beside Nolan in his enormous beat-up navy blue Chrysler—“Belonged to my grandfather,” he says proudly, pushing up the sleeves of his leather jacket.

“Your grandmother just let you have it?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, Gramps gave it to me when he was still alive. My parents took away his license right around the time I got mine.” From the sound of Nolan's voice, I guess that his grandfather didn't exactly give up his license willingly. I try to imagine the confrontation: can't let a crazy old man
who believes in ghosts behind the wheel. I wonder at what age Nolan's grandfather's belief in the paranormal stopped being something his friends and family called just an odd sort of character quirk and started being dismissed as the ramblings of a nutty old man.

“What was your grandfather's name?” I ask gently.

“Why?”

“I don't know. I feel like he brought us together—” Oh my goodness . . .
brought us together?
What am I saying? We're not together. Not
together,
together anyway. “I just mean . . . I feel like I have him to thank for the fact that you believed me that day in the library. So it feels like I should know his name, that's all.”

Nolan nods thoughtfully. “His name was Nolan, actually. I was named after him.”

“Well, thank you, Nolan,” I say softly, the words heavy with meaning.

I can't imagine an outing more different from the ones Ashley must take in Cory Cooper's convertible. Ashley texted me a selfie she took this morning—the two of them in his car, both wearing sunglasses to shield their eyes even though it's November, on their way to a music festival in downtown Austin. I wrote back:
Looks like fun!
Now I try to imagine how she'd react if I sent her a picture of Nolan and me in his car this morning, heading not to a festival but to a university I've never heard of a couple of towns away where the professor from the article runs the paranormal studies department. She definitely wouldn't write back that it looked like fun.

After a mile or two of silence Nolan says, “You know, if he were here, he'd thank
you
.”

“Me?” I squeal. “What for? For dragging his beloved grandson into my mess?”

Nolan cocks his head to the side, considering. “Pretty much,” he says finally, and we both burst out laughing.

“So did he ever deliver on his promise?”

“Did who ever deliver on what promise?”

“This professor,” I dig the article Nolan found out of the glove compartment. “
Professor Abner Jones promises proof of the paranormal
,” I read. “Think he ever produced said proof?”

Nolan grins. “You feel like you need more evidence?”

“Not for me,” I answer quickly. “I mean for everyone else.”

“I think we probably would have heard about it if he did. I mean, it'd have been a national news story, not just an article in a local paper that I found stuffed in my grandpa's desk, right?”

I nod. “Right.” I finger the article. It was published in 1987, before Nolan or I were born, but it mentions the location of the professor's office on campus: Levis Hall. Nolan tried to find his e-mail address on the university website, but he didn't have any luck. Still, he found a description of one of his classes along with a listing of his office hours. Wednesdays, from two to five.

“Did your grandfather ever meet him, do you think?”

Nolan shrugs. “I don't know. Guess I'll have to add that to our list of questions.”

I nod. It's not all that long of a list. It's really just one question: Can you help us? I close my eyes and imagine a bespectacled, gray-haired intellectual type saying,
Of course I can! Easy as pie.

Okay, maybe he won't exactly say that, but we're about to gain some clarity on everything that's happening, I'm sure of it. That's what experts are for, right?

It's my first time leaving Ridgemont since we moved here, and I actually hold my breath as we cross the county line. I wait for the creepy cold feeling that has saturated my life since moving here—well, not cold right now, since Nolan is close by, but still creepy—to subside.

It doesn't. I stare out the window.

“You worried about your mom?” Nolan asks.

I shake my head. “It's not that, actually. I mean, not right now.” Mom is safely at work; she was gone before I woke up this morning and even left me a note saying that she wouldn't be home in time to feed Oscar and Lex their dinner, so I was in charge. Nolan and I have plenty of time.

“What is it then?”

“I'm just so sick of this creepy feeling. You've lived here all your life—do you ever get used to it?”

“Used to what?”

“That
Ridgemont
feeling. Ever since we moved here, nothing feels . . . right. Everything I touch is cold, my hands are always clammy. And the air always feels thin and wet, so that taking a deep breath actually aches.”

“Ridgemont doesn't feel like that for me,” Nolan shrugs. “I mean, the ghost stuff is creepy and all, but the rest of my life is pretty normal.”

“Oh,” I answer, surprised. “Even inside my house? You didn't feel like the minute you stepped inside, the temperature dropped about twenty degrees?”

He shakes his head. Maybe those are extra-bonus feelings the ghost is saving just for me.

Or maybe I can feel something that other people can't.

I shake my head. That's just crazy talk.

We wander around the campus for what feels like hours, but we can't find Levis Hall. The college is ringed with towering Douglas firs, just like the streets back in Ridgemont. But unlike my neighborhood, the campus is actually landscaped so there are some wide-open spaces free of trees, where the meager sun (actually, it's not so meager now that we're out of Ridgemont) can get through the clouds. For the first time since we moved to Washington I actually have a reason to dig around in my purse and pull out my electric blue sunglasses. Students are sitting out on the lawns in front of their dorms like they think they might be able to get a tan despite the fact that it's November and about forty degrees outside. A group of boys are tossing around a Frisbee while some girls cheer them on from the sidelines, which looks like a lot less fun than actually playing, if you ask me.

Nolan stops and asks one of the girls for directions to Levis Hall. I'm not standing close enough to hear their exchange, but I can tell from the look on the girl's face that she wonders why we'd bother heading over to that part of the campus. Or maybe, I realize as Nolan pushes his dirty-blond hair off his forehead, it's just that she thinks Nolan is cute. Jealousy makes butterflies flutter in my stomach. Unlike me, she's dressed in normal clothes—nonvintage jeans and a university T-shirt, black sunglasses instead of blue. Her hair is long and straight, hanging flatly past her shoulders, nothing like my frizzball. I wriggle my toes inside my Chuck Taylors and pull the sleeves of my oversized sweater over my wrists, forcing myself to look away, pretending to be fascinated by the Frisbee competition, pretending I don't notice the second Nolan turns from her and back toward me.

“It's all the way on the other side of the campus,” he says. We get back into his car and leave the girls and the Frisbee game behind. When we finally pull into Levis Hall's cracked parking lot, Nolan's is the only car there. When I open my door I notice that it looks almost like the asphalt beneath my feet is tread upon so rarely that it's covered not only in fallen leaves but also in a layer of dust.

“Are you sure this is the right place?”

Nolan nods, pointing to a sign outside the enormous redbrick building across the parking lot. “Levis Hall,” he reads. “That's where his office is.”

I get out of the car and shut my door behind me, eyeing the building in front of us. I can't see a single light coming from any of its windows. “It's like a ghost town over here,” I say.

“Pun intended?” Nolan asks.

“Blah, pun most definitely
not
intended!”

Apparently Levis Hall's elevator is out of order, so we climb the stairs. The floor beneath our feet is marble, so our footsteps echo, and the banister is smooth dark wood, cool beneath my fingers. We don't see a single other person, and the fluorescent lights that illuminate the hallway are dim, making everything look abandoned and sad.

“I guess he's not the most popular professor,” I whisper. When we reach the fourth floor we're no longer walking on marble but on linoleum, dark green and dust covered enough to make me sneeze.