Uncertainty (12 page)

"Okay. I promise. It's really kind of weird to have people care about me. It's not bad weird, it's just...different."

"I get what you mean."

"How have you been doing? It seems like you're feeling better," Theo said.

"Well, I think the drug withdrawal is all over with. I haven't had nightmares in a while. I don't feel like I have a charred head anymore." I didn't say a word about Jenna.

Theo's phone rang as Hugh put in his awaited call. She jumped and then held a finger to her lips as she answered.

"Hi, Hugh. Are we a go?" she asked, listening intently. I watched as she spoke to him. When she shut off the phone, she grabbed her car keys from the counter, the fifty keychains hooked to it clinking together.

"Don't leave me in suspense!" I complained.

"The mystery buyer has landed at Erasmus," she reported. "We gotta get a move on."

All day we had referred to the buyer that way, because we couldn't recall which man it could have been. The one with the knitted cap on a hot night, maybe, or the one with an unironic handlebar mustache.

It turned out to be the mustachioed fellow, who was wearing a suit with little violet pinstripes and a matching purple tie. Beneath the suit was a t-shirt, the only part I could read being Save the. He spoke in a unusual voice, almost with an accent, that I figured was affected. He accentuated weird syllables, like "payunting" instead of painting.

Theo talked with him for a while, told him her plans for art school and the future. It made me kind of sad to hear her say she wanted to go to an out-of-state school, the Art Institute of Chicago. It wasn't that far away, two years, and we could be scattered all over the country.

Then he cut the check, signing his name with a flourish.

"I believe this is a fair price," he said. He handed it to Theo, whose face didn't betray any emotion. She tucked it in her pocket.

Shaking his hand, she nodded and said, "Thanks for believing in me."

Mustachio left with a kind of funny salute.

"I didn't want to interrupt, Theo,' Hugh said. "But hopefully you got a good deal."

I assumed at least a hundred dollars. Theo slyly slid the check out and unfolded it so we could read. Four thousand dollars & 0/100.

We both started jumping up and down like sugar-high kindergarteners.

A familiar car rolled past the front windows, casting a little rainbow of refracted light on the wall. It was Henry's father's Lexus.

All of the excitement I felt for Theo exploded through me in one burst, and I was left with curiosity. Like all my attention was directed at the car. I didn't know what they would be doing in this part of town, but then I remembered that Thornhill owned the old ballroom now.

I excused myself, as Theo and Hugh chatted about Theo's next moves, and wandered outside. I could feel the hot sidewalk through the soles of my shoes, the unrelenting sun in the azure blue sky blasting down.

The Lexus had parked at the end of the block, in front of the ballroom. The smell of fresh paint and pine planks carried over to me. Construction scaffolding had been set up around the entrance, and the roof had been tarped off.

As I neared the entrance, I heard hammers and drills resonating from inside. The ballroom had been popular at one time for dancing lessons and occasional bingo meets. It seemed like a lovely old place, but also an old-timer hangout.

The tinted windows were filthy, but I could still make out the people inside. I peered in through the grime. Henry stood next to his tall, intimidating father, who was deep in discussion with one of the construction workers.

Henry had apparently inherited everything but Phillip Rhode's height; even their posture was the same. Phillip was handsome, but in a more severe way than Henry, and he obviously knew he could use it to his advantage.

Turning his head suddenly, it was as though Henry could feel me spying. I felt caught, but didn't budge. He held up one pointer finger to his father and the man they were talking to, and excused himself outside. As he began walking towards me, I prepared myself for my usual run. But I was tired of the games, and the urge fled before I could.

He eyed me unsteadily as he walked out, his hands shoved into his pockets. He was wearing a suit, something I'd never seen him dressed in before, and looked weirdly formal. Complete with a shiny red tie that looked like a blood smear. A bruise was fading beneath his right eye.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi. I saw your dad's car," I said, gesturing meekly to the Lexus. "Did you walk into a doorknob?"

"Just wasn't paying attention," he said.

"Oh. I was just wondering what you two were doing in this part of town."

"Thornhill is renovating this place to be their central office," Henry explained with a shrug, unaware that I was already informed and just looking for an excuse. He looked uncomfortable, like he was sweating.

I'd never realized that Henry's dad was so involved with Thornhill, although it made perfect sense. He was one of the richest men in town, a successful criminal lawyer.

"You mean an evil lair?"

"Same difference," Henry said, the phantom of a grin passing his lips. After a pause, he said, "So you changed your phone number, huh?."

"No. It's the same. I just didn't know what to say." My own hands found my pockets, and I rocked up on the balls of my feet. "You kind of started talking to me out of the blue."

"I know. After the past few months, cutting off ties like that. I didn't know how else to try and get a hold of you."

"Why are you suddenly talking to me?" I blurted out bluntly. I couldn't take wondering anymore. "After all the tie-cutting and ignoring and oh, telling me to pretend you didn't exist, and to go back to my side of the trailer park."

He kicked a split chip of wood on the ground and it scuttled into the rain gutter. "I don't want you to hate me. You have every reason to, I know. But I don't want that to be the end of our story."

I tried resisting the emotions that were flooding me. I hated the fact that his words filled me with hope, like I could just throw myself into his arms. Being a girl sucked. "Well, unless my dreams came true and Lainey got hit by a bus, I think that was the end."

I was going to turn and walk away, but my body was immobilized by the fact that he laughed. He ran his hand through his carefully coiffed hair, looking almost shy and incredibly handsome, his features having matured in the months since I'd been close enough to pay attention.

"There's so much I want to tell you," he said with a sigh, looking up at the cloudless sky. His voice was low, almost mesmerizing. It had had that effect on me before, at our study sessions. "But I don't know how, or where to begin."

Phillip had noticed us talking. He was glaring at us — well, mostly me — from the other side of the tinted window. He called to Henry from inside Thornhill's lair in progress. Henry bobbed his head quickly in my direction and rushed back inside, as if he would get in trouble if he didn't run. I sighed, shutting my eyes briefly, and walked back towards Erasmus, back to my side of the block.

My phone vibrated just as I reached the gallery's doorway.

Can you meet up with me at the library next week? he'd written. After a moment of hesitation, I finally wrote yes.

CHAPTER 10

I DIDN'T GET
a chance to go to the library until the next Wednesday. Theo was glued to my hip after her debut at the gallery, and I didn't mind, as we made up for missed time. Jenna was still around too, coming in when I went to bed, cheerful as always.

It was strange to have them both in my life, yet unable to interact with each other. I couldn't even bring up their names with each other. Jenna wouldn't understand who Theo was, and Theo didn't know I saw ghosts.

I thought Henry would decline, or change his mind since I only gave him notice by texting him the night before. But he quickly agreed to meet up with me Wednesday afternoon. I had no idea what I was doing, and I tried not to think about it too much.

As soon as I went inside the library, I saw Nurse Callie talking to a well-dressed, handsome woman in front of the checkout desk. Her hair was the color of well-aged wine, wrapped in a bun so tight it looked painful. Her face appeared equally as tight, from fillers and the severity of her personality. If one were so inclined, they could have bounced a quarter off her forehead.

"Why was that paint color used on the back wall?" the woman asked. Her voice sounded so snobby and cartoonish, I couldn't imagine anyone really talked like that.

"I believe that's what the painters were instructed to use," Callie said cheerfully. Her good attitude only seemed to irritate the lady with the twisted undergarments further.

"Well, it's not taupe. I specifically said
taupe
. It's light beige. Far too pale. It's supposed to convey a three-dimensional sense to the space, you see what I mean?" The woman walked behind the counter, making a frame out of her arms. I had no idea what she was going on about, but I was riveted. Callie just continued to smile, although it appeared more and more forced, and nodded.

"Sure! Yeah, of course," Callie said.

"Well, make sure you call the painters to schedule a repair," the woman said. "It's your responsibility." She departed out the front door, her stiletto heels clicking loudly, probably to stomp on kittens in her free time.

"Who was that?" I asked Callie in a gossipy tone, depositing my returns in the drop slot.

Callie rolled her eyes and started laughing softly. "Cheryl Rhodes. The pickiest woman on earth. She's running her own beautifying subsection of Thornhill now, apparently. First our flowers were too "common", so we have to bring in Moccasin Orchids, which are going to die because the soil is completely wrong..."

She seemed to realize she was ranting, and smiled apologetically, bending to retrieve my books and checking them in with her hand scanner. "Sorry. She drives me bat crazy. But she and her husband have put so much of their own money into the library, we have to abide by every little nitpick she has. It doesn't help that they're both attorneys."

My mouth had gone dry. Cheryl Rhodes. Henry's mom. I'd never met her before, but I had heard enough to know she would dislike me. I'd had the strong suspicion that Phillip Rhodes had.

Callie leaned back so I could get a good look at the wall behind me. "Does that look like taupe or beige to you?" she asked, in a mimic of Cheryl's voice. I giggled.

"I can't tell. I must be colorblind," I said.

"You and me both, hon," Callie said, and went to the back.

I navigated to the paranormal section.
Other Worlds
was back in its hiding place on the top shelf. The library was busy as it always was during the week, but I found a comfy corner with a small table.

Outside, it was raining steadily, car tires sloshing in the streets and the echoing drops tapping on the roof. The lamp on my table made a little star of light on the wood. The aquarium look was in full effect again, and I could imagine colorful fish swimming just outside the glass, like the tank at Blind Devil.

I wondered if Henry would come, or ditch me. He'd been there even when I didn't want him. I tried very hard to concentrate on the book instead, at least to get my mind off of the boy.

The text was in some decorative font that looked like handwriting. It was full of cheesy, Aunt Corinne-approved words, like a unicorn care manual or a cult handbook. Any text with
astral
several times in one page made me suspicious.

The first few chapters just introduced the reader to the idea of life after death, as if they'd never heard of such a thing. Or more like what sounded like death after death. Either you passed on and were basically put to rest with no consciousness, or your "essence" lingered behind, if you were one of the unlucky ones.

At any moment, I assumed the book would start informing me about the importance of chakra cleansing. I settled on chapter three, titled
Limbo
, getting comfortable.

The world that is closest to our ring of consciousness is referred to in knowledgeable terms as
Limbo
. Limbo intersects our world from time to time, and those who have The Sight are able to see it. In Limbo's ring of existence, the Essence is caught in the state it was in before the human expired. The energy is unable to progress, or move forward, or change.

This was getting useful. I'd never read anything about ghosts that made much sense to my experience before, having never encountered moaning sheets or floating orbs. All of the traditional ghost information struck me as being false now, the product of fear or ignorance.

What ancient texts have referred to as
Purgatory
is the ring of Limbo. It is not an unpleasant existence, but it is never-changing, a flimsy replica of the main world. A world of swirling fog and hazy sleep. In this state, it can be nightmarish for any spirit that has the urge to move on. It is a state of forced denial.