The Haunting of Sunshine Girl (9 page)

But what I see is even scarier. “Mom!” I shout, my voice is so loud that it startles me.

“What?” she shouts back, running up the stairs. “Are you okay?”

I shake my head. “Of course I'm not okay,” I answer. My hands are shaking so hard that coffee is splattering out the sides of my cup. She takes it from me, then looks me over like she's trying to find a cut or a broken bone, trying to figure out what could have made me shout for her the way I did.

“You're spilling this everywhere.”

“Did you . . . did you clean it all up?” I ask, but then I shake my head. She could have wiped up the water, but you can't
scrub away scratch marks. You can't replace a broken mirror at seven in the morning. Beneath my feet the carpet that was damp just a few hours ago is dry. The scent of mildew hangs in the air, but then again, this house always smells damp.

“I'm going to try to, but seriously, Sunshine, coffee leaves a stain. It's a good thing this carpet is tan . . .”

“What are you talking about?”

“You splashed coffee all over the carpet,” Mom says, pointing to the floor just outside the bathroom door. I haven't actually stepped inside yet.

I shake my head. “No, I mean . . . how did the bathroom get like this?”

She sighs. “Get like what? Listen, honey, I know I said I could give you a ride to school, but you really have to get going or else I'll be late. The way you shouted—my gosh, I thought you must have been dying or something. Don't scare me like that.”

“No,” I say slowly. “I'm not the one who was dying.”

“What are you talking about? Is the dog hurt?”

My skin prickles, making me want to scratch myself. “What are
you
talking about?” Mom doesn't answer. Instead, she crouches down and starts blotting the fresh stains on the carpet with a paper towel. A cold chill makes goose bumps blossom on my arms and legs. “What do you remember about last night?”

Without looking up at me, she answers, “We had roast chicken and mashed potatoes with too many lumps in them. We made ice cream sundaes, and you spilled chocolate syrup on your shirt, and we fell asleep on the couch watching
The Tonight Show,
and now I've woken up with a crick in my neck so bad that I think I might have to find a chiropractor.”

I take a step backward, away from the bathroom, away from her.

“That's all you remember?” I ask, my voice shaking. “Nothing else? Nothing at all?”

“Is there something you think I'm forgetting?”

Yes.

A scream so bloodcurdling I can still hear it echoing in my ears.

A little girl's voice begging for mercy.

A darkness so black, it felt like I'd never see the sun again.

Mom stops blotting, sits on her heels, and looks up at me. “Did you have another bad dream or something?”

Did I have a bad dream? No. It was real. I have the ruined shirt to prove it. But she says the stain on my shirt is chocolate syrup. One of us is going crazy. One of our minds has invented memories of what happened last night.

I close my eyes, willing myself to keep calm.
Take a deep breath, Sunshine. The answer is right in front of you.

Or on you, I think, looking down at my shirt. I
hate
chocolate syrup. I never, ever, ever put it on my ice cream. I like plain vanilla. Boring, just like Ashley says. Mom knows that. So there's no way the stain on my shirt is syrup. It doesn't even look like syrup; it looks like exactly what it is: a dried-out patch of rusty water.

She's
the one with the made-up memories, not me.

But now what? I can't make her believe me. All my proof is gone: the scratches on the floor, the shards of glass in the sink from the mirror above. I should have gotten my camera last night, should have taken pictures. In my terror I guess it never occurred to me that I might need more evidence. I thought
she finally believed me; that was the one part of the night that wasn't scary. I actually felt better, even with everything going on, knowing she was finally on my side.

I need some time to think. To figure this out. Alone.

So I say, “You're right. I'm just moving too slowly this morning. You should get going without me. I can walk to school.”

“You're sure?”

I nod.

“All right,” she says, pressing her hands against her thighs, pushing herself up to stand. She leans over and kisses the top of my head. “I know you're having a tough time adjusting, Sunshine. Maybe . . . I don't know. Maybe if things aren't better for you in a few months, we should consider moving back to Austin.”

Her voice sounds so sad when she says it that I shake my head. “I'll be all right,” I say, and I don't watch her walk down the stairs. Instead, I turn around and head for my room, closing the door shut behind me before I collapse onto the floor in a little ball, hugging my knees to the chest.

That's the first time I've ever lied to my mother.

CHAPTER EIGHT

A Good Old-Fashioned Haunting

I take my time getting dressed,
even though it means I'm missing first period, the first time I've ever cut a class. It's turning into a day full of firsts. Ashley would be so proud of me, doing normal teenage things like lying to my mom and ditching. That is, she would be proud of me
if
she knew, but she doesn't know because she hasn't answered any of my texts. I didn't go so far as to say it was an emergency, because then she might have called my mom, and that wouldn't do me any good. So I just said I really, really, really, really needed to talk. I was kind of hoping she'd think it was about
that hot guy
(how she refers to Nolan) and call back right away, but so far, no such luck.

Before I walk out the door I check my phone to find out the outside temperature: it's in the fifties, supposedly going up to the sixties. There's a chance of rain this afternoon, but what else is new? “I'm going to need a scarf,” I say out loud, wondering
who is left in this house to hear me. Is the little girl gone? She couldn't have been killed last night, not if she was already dead, but maybe she was . . . I don't know,
destroyed
or something? Just the thought makes me shudder.

I run up the stairs and into my room, searching for my favorite blue-owl scarf. That's when I notice the checkerboard, right where it was when I got home from school yesterday, on the bed I didn't sleep in last night.

“I guess there's one way to figure out if you're still here,” I say sadly. I lean down over the board and slide one of the black checkers forward. I should be hoping that when I get back home later the checkers won't have moved. If they're just as I left them, then maybe ghost girl is gone. But part of me hopes I'll come home to a countermove instead.

“Freak,” I mutter to myself as I close my bedroom door behind me.

I walk to school slowly, going over the events of the past twenty-four hours in my head.

Splash, splash.

When we were nine Ashley's mom took us to the pool at the local rec center. There was a nasty kid there, a bully, and Ashley and I knew enough to stay out of his way. But some little kid accidentally cut him in line for the bathroom, and the bully was so angry that he picked the kid up and tossed him into the deep end of the pool before anyone could move quickly enough to stop him. The lifeguard dove in and saved him, but before she could get to him, the little boy splashed around desperately, trying to keep his head above water, gasping for air. I never
forgot the sound of it. I hoped I would never hear it again. And I never did.

Until last night.

Splash, splash.

I get to school just in time for visual arts, second period on Fridays. I sit down across from Nolan, particularly grateful when the warmth of being near him washes over me.

“You okay?” he says, looking up from his collage. “You don't look so good.”

I must blush crimson. I mean, okay, I know I don't look good—I barely slept last night, and after my mom left, I was still avoiding the bathroom. I brushed my teeth in the kitchen sink and skipped a shower altogether, then ran to school through a fog of spitting, drizzling rain. My hair is probably sticking out like a cartoon of someone getting electrocuted.

Well, I guess that's appropriate. I mean, I've certainly had a shock.

Still, I hate for Nolan to see me like this. I mean, I know I have much, much, much more important things to worry about, but he's a boy and I'm a girl, and . . .

“Sunshine?” he prompts. “You okay?”

“Sorry,” I say, nodding frantically. “Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Just. I didn't sleep much last night. It happens, right? Blah!” I giggle nervously. Why do I feel the need to ramble on when Nolan just asked a simple question? I did that the day we met, when he asked whether I was okay after I bumped into the table.

“Blah?” Nolan echoes.

“Yeah, I just say that sometimes. When I can't think of something else to say.”

I expect Nolan to laugh at me, but instead he says, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

“I'm sorry?”

“You know, from
Mary Poppins.
A word to say when you can't think of anything else to say?”

“Exactly!” I grin. I spent most of preschool carrying a
Mary Poppins
DVD like I thought it was a clutch bag. “Wow, I can't believe I didn't think to say that instead of
blah
!”

“Blame it on the bad night's sleep,” Nolan offers.

“Good idea.”

A voice behind me says, “Oh, I couldn't sleep either. I just had the worst nightmares.” I jump and turn around. Ms. Wilde is standing over me. Her skirt is so long that it looks almost like she's floating. The dark circles under her eyes are even more pronounced than usual, her skin a shade paler, as blue as my mom's looked last night. And her eyes are bloodshot, as though she's been crying. Actually, as though she's still crying, just a little bit.

Wow, I can hardly believe it, but I think Ms. Wilde is in even worse shape than I am.

“What is it that kept you awake, Sunshine?” she asks.

“Bad dreams?” Nolan tries, but I shake my head. I'm not about to tell them what really happened, but I'm not going to lie either. I've done that enough for one day.

“It's . . . complicated,” I reply. Ms. Wilde leans down over me so I have to crane my neck to look up at her face. She squints.

“You have very . . . unusual eyes.”

“I know,” I say, dropping my gaze.

“I don't know how I didn't notice that before.” Her usually melodic voice is an octave lower than usual, like maybe she's getting over a cold.

I turn around on my stool, pretending to be concentrating on my collage, but the truth is, I just want Ms. Wilde to leave me
alone. I'm too tired to make small talk about my weirdo eyes. After what seems like forever, I hear the swish of her skirt as she walks away.

“She is the weirdest teacher ever,” Nolan whispers, and I nod in agreement.

During lunch, instead of eating, I sprint to the library. Maybe I can find something—online, in a book, somewhere—to help me explain all of this to my mother, to help me convince her. I sit in front of a computer and Google haunted houses and demonic possession and poltergeists and ghouls, but 90 percent of the results are ads and reviews of horror flicks. I plant my elbows on the table and rest my head in my hands, closing my tired eyes. This is getting me nowhere.

“Got a thing for ghosts?”

For the second time today a voice from behind me makes me jump. Well, I'm sorry to be such a spaz. If people knew what was happening to me, they'd hardly blame me for it.

This time, when I turn around, it's not a teacher standing over me but Nolan, his lips curled into a grin as though he's just heard the funniest joke in the history of funny jokes.

Great. Someone else who thinks ghosts are every bit as absurd as Mom and Ashley do.

I shake my head. “Not exactly. I mean, I never used to. I mean . . .” I trail off. “It's complicated,” I sigh.

“Of course it's complicated.” Nolan pulls out a chair to sit beside me. I feel just a tiny bit warmer with him near, and I resist the urge to lean into him, like I'm in an old cabin and he's the fireplace.

“Of course it is?”

He grins. “Sure. Only a fool would expect the paranormal world to be simple.”

I can't tell if he's making fun of me or not, so I keep my mouth shut.

“I mean, my grandfather—”

Oh my gosh. What an idiot. Me, I mean, not him. Here I am, talking about ghosts to someone whose beloved grandfather passed away a few months ago. He must hate me. “Nolan, I'm sorry, I didn't mean—”

“Didn't mean what?”

“To, I don't know. Make light of . . . I don't know. You know. Death.” Butterflies flutter in my stomach when I say the word
death.
I must have said that word a thousand times before: you know,
Jeez, Mom, you scared me to death
(when she snuck up on me from behind back home in Austin),
Golly, Ashley, I'm bored to death
(every time she made me go to the mall with her). I don't think I ever fully appreciated what the word meant before. Now, it seems to me that it's the kind of word that
should
give you a jolt of adrenaline when you say it out loud.