Unlocked (12 page)

I imagined a dead animal's eyeball threaded with a cord and strung around my neck.

“It's a stone called tiger-eye,” Plug said, as if he'd read my mind. “Its metaphysical properties will help protect you from uninvited spirits.” He pulled several smooth rocks out of his pocket. He selected a brown-and-gold-striped one from the bunch and held it up. It glimmered in the light, like a tiger's eye. He returned the other stones to his pocket, but kept out the tiger-eye and rubbed it with the pad of this thumb. Then he cupped it, closed his eyes, and huffed on it. He mumbled a few words, but I missed what he said. He repeated the process three times. Then he lifted my hand, set the stone in my palm, and folded my fingers over it.

“This is yours,” I said.

“Maybe I only carried it because one day you would need it from me.”

I was uncertain if I felt flattered or frightened.

“Thanks,” I said. “How do you know all this?”

“It's the occult, baby. I love this stuff. Well, I should say, I love researching this stuff. You've brought the first paranormal activity into my life.”

“Nice. You're not hanging out with me because of my great hair and fashionable clothes but because I have evil spirits stalking me.”

“Fringe benefits.” Plug beamed. “My idea of a perfect world includes mystery, art, and friends.” He had managed to lift my melancholy and introduce me to a new realm of possibilities. “Come on,” he said and motioned me toward the warehouse side of the building.

“No.” My mood changed instantly, and my heart beat faster. “I refuse to go back in there.”

“Trust me.” He tugged at my shirtsleeve.

“No. I can't do it.” I swatted his hand away and ran for the front door. Out on the sidewalk, I bent forward and clutched my knees, gasping for air. Plug followed and squatted in front of me.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to panic you. Let's go get Thai food or something.”

Before I could answer, Chelsea's hee-haw chortle rang out behind me. I spun around, but no one was there. I ran to the side of the building and searched the alleyway. A bottle broke somewhere in the unseen distance.

“What?” Plug asked.

“I heard Chelsea laugh.”

Plug rushed past me and down the alley. The sun went behind a cloud and cast the alley in a dusky gloom. My muscles went rigid, and I stood frozen. About fifteen feet down the alleyway, Plug closed a metal box mounted on the brick wall of the building. He removed something from the side of the box and came back to me, extending his hand to show me a broken padlock.

“Our breaker box,” he said. “Someone broke the lock and messed with the breakers.”

“Why is the breaker box on the outside of the building?”

“Old building. Old wiring. Someone popped the breaker for the warehouse lights and then put it back.”

“What about the cold air and the buzzing?”

“Could've been paranormal, but someone broke this lock. That's not paranormal.” Plug went back inside the tattoo parlor and gave the lock to Necro. Afterward, we headed to a nearby Thai restaurant and debated the occult versus psychiatry while we ate.

• • •

On the way to my house, Plug parked in the deserted lot of a strip mall. He hopped out of the El Camino and ran around to open my door.

“You know,” I said, “I am capable of getting my own door.”

“Right.” He waved me forward, and I followed him to a store called Nirvana. He tugged on the door, but it was locked. He peered inside the window, and I tapped the glass where the store hours were posted. He checked the time on his cell.

“Man. We talked at the restaurant a long time.” He rapped his knuckles on the door.

“Plug, they closed at five. It's after seven now. Let's go.”

“We need sage.” He fidgeted with his lip ring and worried me. “Do you trust me?”

“People ask that question right before they do something stupid,” I said.

“Keep an eye out.”

“No,” I said. “Besides, if you want some sage, we can get it from my neighbor's yard. Sagebrush grows all over the foothills.”

“Mmm. Not the same thing,” Plug said. “A common misnomer. Sage is from the mint family, and sagebrush is a woody shrub. Not to mention, if you accidentally pick the wrong kind of sagebrush and burn it, people will think you've been smoking marijuana—”

I started laughing. “Okay, I wouldn't want anyone to think we're smoking marijuana.”

He plucked a leather case out of his back pocket. “Let me know if anyone comes.”

“Plug! We don't need the sage.”

“Don't worry,” he said. “I know the owners.” He slipped two small tweezer-like tools from the leather case. Then he held the leather between his lips and picked the lock of the door.

I plucked at his gray T-shirt. “Stop! Someone will catch us!” But the parking lot was still deserted. Apparently, all the stores in the strip mall had closed for the day. Plug snatched my hand and yanked me inside. Bells jingled against the door as it swung shut. I remained by the window and kept watch.

“A car turned into the lot!” I twirled around to see where Plug was, but in the darkened store, I barely made out his silhouette as he slapped something on the counter. Then he joined me at the front window.

Headlights illuminated the store. Plug yanked some weird bundled weeds off the shelf and tugged me toward the back of the store. The bells on the front door jingled.

“Hello?” a woman's voice called out, and the lights in the store came on. “Eugene?”

Plug trudged out of the backroom, and he dragged me with him.

“Hi, Grandma,” Plug said.

I whacked his shoulder.

“Eugene,” his grandma said. “Stop picking my locks.”

“Sorry, Grandma.”

“Who's with you?” she asked and stepped closer.

“My friend, Hannah,” he said.

New wrinkles formed as she narrowed her eyes at me. She wore a denim shirt-dress with cowboy boots and a leather vest trimmed with silver buttons. Her thick gray hair hung in two long braids, as it had at the fair.

Plug grinned at me. “This is my grandma, my mother's mother. And this is her store.”

I whacked his shoulder again. “You could have told me that before you broke in.”

He rubbed his shoulder.

“You knew my daughter?” his grandma asked me.

“No, ma'am.”

“A good woman,” she said. “You have the same vibrant eyes.”

I glanced at Plug, and he grinned.

“You do,” he said. “It was the first thing I noticed about you. Legends say pure green eyes belong to strong, courageous women.”

Plug's grandma spoke again. “Cherish your loved ones, Hannah. Time on this earth is limited. My daughter's been gone too long now. Seven years.”

“My dad died six years ago,” I said, surprised at my own frankness.

Plug's grandma clutched my hand and lifted it to her chest. “So you know this hole in the heart. You lost your father. Eugene, his mother. Me, my daughter.” My breath caught, and I nodded. She embraced me for a moment, and then she hugged Plug.

“Love you, Grandma,” he said.

“Then stop picking my locks.” She pulled his ear.

“Okay. We've got to go,” he said.

Plug and I walked side-by-side out to the parking lot.

“I can't believe you let me think you were robbing a store!”

“More of an adventure.”

“Would you have told me the truth if your grandma hadn't shown up?”

“Probably.”

“Plug!”

“I would have,” he said, “eventually. There was no harm—”

“You broke into the store and took something that belonged to someone else. That's illegal. And it was unnecessary.”

“I left money on the counter,” he explained. “More than the sage is even worth, and besides, the store belongs to my grandma. Now we can smudge your room, and you'll sleep better tonight.”

“Where did you learn to do that anyhow?”

“Summer job with a locksmith. It's a fine art to pick a lock without breaking it. You have to solve a mystery and overcome obstacles to release the lock.”

I studied his round face, his elongated earlobes, and his gray eyes. He barely knew me, but he had picked the lock to get the sage so he could do something nice for me. It baffled me.

• • •

Plug parked in my driveway. Mom's car was gone, probably still at work. He hauled the heavy art book, and I lugged my backpack to the front door. I huffed and dropped my bag on the porch.

“Waiting for me to open the door?” Plug grinned.

“No,” I said. “I lost everything when my car exploded, including my house keys.” I stepped into the flower bed.

“I can unlock it,” Plug said.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “No, thank you.” I found the fake rock behind one of the bushes, slid open the base, and plucked out a key. I opened the door and returned the key to its hiding place.

“So,” I asked, “do we smudge the whole house or just my room?”

“Let's start with your room, but we will need to do the whole house.”

I led the way upstairs, and he set the art book on my bed.

“Matches?” he asked. “And maybe a metal pan?”

“Have you done this before?” I asked.

“I've watched YouTube.” He waggled his eyebrows.

I dropped my backpack to the floor.

“Hey,” he said, “I'm a researcher of the occult. Not a practitioner.”

“Right.” I jogged back downstairs to the kitchen and collected the matches and an old pan. When I returned to my room, Plug still stood in the exact same position. “Did you even move?”

“Didn't want you to think I was snooping.” He smirked and took the matches. He lit one and held it to the bundled leaves.

“Don't burn the house down,” I said.

Plug dropped the match into the pan and coaxed the sage into burning by gently blowing on it. A flame formed, and then Plug blew it out.

“Smokes better this way,” he said. “Flame is gone, but it still smolders.” He waved it in a figure eight, and the end of the bundled leaves glowed red, creating more smoke. He continued the motion and walked around the room. I followed right behind him with the pan, worried the sage would burst into a raging fire at any second.

“What if we set off the smoke detectors?” I asked.

“Not enough smoke.” Plug swept the sage around the clothes in my closet. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Open the window to let the negative energies and spirits leave.”

When I did, Mom pulled her red Toyota Prius into the driveway.

“We have to go downstairs,” I said. “Now.”

He tossed the sage into the pan on my bed.

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Leave it. Let it keep smoking while we're gone.”

“No way. It could catch my bed on fire.” I set the pan on my desk and grabbed a water bottle from my backpack.

“It will only smolder,” Plug said. But I suspected he was a rookie at this, and so I poured water over the burning weeds. It smoked more, and I coughed. I dumped the water into the pan and used the butt of the bottle to smash the embers down into the pool.

“Let's go.” I motioned him toward the door, and I closed it behind us. We reached the bottom of the stairs right when Mom entered.

Plug stuck out his hand. “Eugene Polaski.”

Mom shook his hand. “Beth O'Leary.”

“I should go,” Plug said, but then he paused at the door. “Need a ride tomorrow?”

“That'd be great.”

“See you at seven.” He closed the door behind him.

“New friend?” Mom asked and gave me a small plain brown sack.

“Only friend.” I opened up the sack and found a new set of keys. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Hungry?” she asked.

“No, we ate.”

She scrunched up her nose. “Were you two smoking?”

I sniffed my blouse. “Not the way you think.” How could I explain it without freaking her out? “We tried smudging my room with sage to get rid of the negative energies.”

She cleared her throat. “Let me get this straight, your new pal, Eugene, thought it was a good idea to go in your room while I was at work and light herbs on fire. To expel the negative energies?”

“Right.”

Mom's neck reddened like a glowing ember. “Instead of trying Native American rituals, which you know nothing about, you should wait to discuss these ideas with Dr. James.”

“I'm not crazy,” I said.

“Of course not.” She clutched my shoulder. “You hit your head in the accident, but whatever the cause, it's abnormal to hallucinate.”

“What if the things I'm seeing are real?”

“Then other people would see them, too.” The reddening crept from her neck to her cheeks to her ears.

I stopped myself from telling her what had happened in the art warehouse. It would've added fuel to her fire.

• • •

I lingered at the kitchen table with my laptop and checked e-mails and social media. There was nothing from Manny or Lily. I closed my laptop and carried it upstairs. The stench of burned sage filled every inch of my room. Hopefully, it had worked.

I flopped down on my bed and dialed Manny's home number.

“Hello,” Manny said.

I sat upright. “You're home!”

“About an hour ago.” The sound of his voice flooded me with relief.

“I texted you earlier,” I said.

“Still no cell phone.”

“Oh,” I said. “Have you heard how Lily's doing? Is there any change?”

“No change,” he said. “How was your first day?”

“Pretty bad.” I filled him in on everything that had happened at school and started to cry.

“People are probably just in shock over the accident,” he said. “I'll be back soon, and it'll get better.”