Vesper (8 page)

Get into more trouble that I'd have to face when I woke up the next morning, normal once more.

She shook me. "Hello?" she said. "So we have a plan then?"

"Yeah," I said. "Sounds like a plan."

"Hey there, Leelee, how was school?"

I dropped my backpack by the front door as it slammed shut behind me, and forced myself to give my dad a smile. There was a loading screen on his monitor, so he actually bothered to swivel around in his chair to greet me, his bifocals crooked and a headset clinging atop his balding head. He waved me over for a hug.

"It was fine.”

I bent and hugged him, burying my head in his neck. He smelled so very dad-ish, like Old Spice and a little bit of sweat and a whole lot of reassurance.

I clung to him a little too long, I guess, because he whispered in my ear,

"Hey, kid, something wrong?"

I let him go and forced another smile. What was I supposed to tell him?

Yes, Dad, there's a whole lot of wrong going on, because the last two nights
I seem to have developed a split personality that made me leap around like
I had my own ninja wire stunt team, which—honestly?—felt completely
awesome and exhilarating, but which still freaked me out in the morning.

And now Megan thinks I
´
m sick, and I´m afraid the angry spirit of a dead
classmate has taken me over, and the school nurse seems to think I´m
either pregnant or mentally unstable. Care to run me to the hospital—or the
local psychic—to see if any of those are the case?

"No, nothing's wrong, just had a long day.” He continued to look at me quizzically, not quite sure if I was telling the truth, so I asked, "And how was
your
day?"

His face lit up. "Oh, busy, busy. The guild had a raid earlier and we totally kicked butt, but I completely ran out of potions and needed to hit the auction house."

"Oh. Sounds ... neat." I started to turn toward the stairs, then bit my lip and turned back. "Mind if I watch a little?"

"Yeah! Grab a seat."

Our front door opens up into the dining room and the little foyer where my dad has his computer, so I dragged over one of the dining chairs and scooted in close. Patting me on my back, Dad turned back to his game and started pressing keys to highlight monsters and kill them.

I sat there for a while, watching him play, not really understanding what exactly he was doing but not really wanting to go up to my room and be by myself, either.

It had been ages since I'd hung out with my dad. I mean, we used to, a lot.

For a long time it was just me and him—Dad and his little Leelee staying up late watching TV, going out to movies every weekend, reading Alan Moore comics to each other as bedtime stories. He religiously took me to practice when little me was sure that dance was my calling in life, never missing a recital no matter how crappy my part or how late he had to work at whatever construction job he may have had that week. When I dropped out of that, he let me take tae kwon do classes until I realized that I wasn't meant to be an action hero either. He seemed relieved when all I asked for on my next birthday was a new bookcase and a bunch of DVDs of old horror movies.

But I got older, and he got older. He met my stepmom, and she and Dawn moved in. I started having more homework and ended up spending most of my free time with Megan or up alone in my room—I mean, I'd started to, y'know,
develop—
and though he was my dad, there were a lot of things that were easier to talk to Megan about. Not that it much mattered, since my stepmom took my place for evening TV, and when Dad didn't have a construction job to go to, he now had his game to occupy his time.

So it was nice to just sit there with him, the two of us alone at home sharing in the fun of pixels fighting other pixels on a screen with glowy effects swirling around.

I thought again about everything as I watched him jab at his keyboard, eyes darting back and forth as he moved his character around. I wanted so, so bad right then to be just me and him again, back before junior high and high school, back before Megan and Dawn and my stepmom.... Maybe then I could have asked for his help.

Instead I coughed. When that failed to get his attention, I jabbed at his shoulder.

"Hmm?" He darted a glance at me briefly before focusing once again on his monitor.

"Yeah, so, Megan wanted to come over tonight. Is that okay?"

"No!" Smashing his index finger over and over on the number one key at the top of his keyboard, he muttered a swear under his breath. I saw his character fall down dead on-screen and everything go gray as he turned into a little animated ghost.

"I hate gnomes." He lowered his headset and turned to me. "What was that? Something about Megan?"

"Yeah," I said. "Can she come over, maybe stay the night?"

Before, he would have asked me why, or maybe even offered to make a night of it for us, conveniently forgetting that we likely had homework so that we could stay up late having a
Nightmare on Elm Street
marathon.

"Oh, sure thing," he said. "You two have fun." With that, he returned to his game and started running his character's ghost back to its body.

And that was the end of father-daughter time.

Returning my chair to its place under the dining room table, I picked up my bag and went upstairs to my room. Then I sat at my computer, opened up the browser to Google, and typed in "Emily Cooke."

I scrolled through the search results, ignoring the links I'd already clicked on. I muttered to myself, "So, other Emily: Who were you?"

I found a few things I hadn't the day before, distracted as I'd been by Terrance Sedgwick's post about me on Emily Cooke's blog. But following a series of links revealed that Emily Cooke didn't just have a blog—she had her own web page. Nothing super fancy, probably made with one of those programs from a box, but it was classier than most high schooler web pages I'd seen.

The site was full of poetry and sketches and whimsical watercolor paintings. There was a gallery of black-and-white photographs that I weren't sure were ones she just liked, or ones she'd taken herself. Either way, I found them striking—photos in profile of people I didn't recognize, of interesting objects in a home, all in sharp contrast that seemed to reveal some flaw that made them so imperfect that they became ... perfect.

None of the stories or poems I read seemed to reveal any latent superpowers—though I guess if Emily Cooke was really the long lost daughter of the Incredibles family, she wouldn't broadcast it on the internet.

Mostly, her writing revealed that she had a pretty sly sense of humor. One story, a thinly veiled tale about an alien conspiracy nut going all Chicken Little that just had to be about Ms. Nguyen, left me in a giggling fit that, for a few moments, made me forget all about the craziness of the past few days.

I wasn't getting anything from this little excursion into Emily Cooke's virtual world that screamed,
Girl superhero that is puppet-mastering you
from beyond the grave!
Mostly, I just realized that maybe there had been more to Emily Cooke than I'd thought.

And now she was gone. All that was left of her was text and pictures on a computer screen.

"Is it you?" I whispered as I studied a self-portrait of Emily Cooke. "Are you doing this?"

Her eyes were pale in the black-and-white photo, and she was half smiling, like she did know all the answers but couldn't tell me. And as I studied her face—her slender nose, her arched brow, her stylishly cut blond hair—I felt a strange connection. Maybe it was just that she seemed to like words and interesting images the same way I did. Maybe it
was
that her spirit was still around, hovering over me for some reason I couldn't know.

Maybe it was something else altogether.

I stared at the screen for a long time. Then I closed the browser and got ready to sit around and wait for the change—the possession, the sickness, whatever it was—to come and make me into a whole new girl.

The red LED display on my alarm clock read 7:55 p.m.

After delving into the online world of Emily Cooke, I'd set about completing my homework and finished by six. I ate a quick dinner downstairs and was done by six thirty—or almost, anyway. I could barely get down half a sandwich, my stomach felt so tight with nervousness. I tried reading, browsing online, watching a DVD, but it was useless—I couldn't concentrate. Yesterday and the day before, my "mood swing" had come at a little after eight o'clock, when it was fully dark outside. That time was rapidly approaching, and there was no sign of Megan.

I was torn. I still longed to let go and become the Emily Webb of the night before. But I was also still unsure about the whole thing, deeply afraid of what this could all mean. The more nervous and conflicted I became, the more I knew: Megan needed to be here. Change or no change, she was the one and only person I could rely on.

I had called Megan five times between seven o'clock and 7:55. She hadn't answered once. Back against my headboard, legs spread out over my bedspread and Ein cradled firmly in lap, I stared straight ahead at nothing, waiting.

I peeked over at my clock. 7:59.

Taking a breath, I reached over to the cell where it rested atop my desk, flipped it open, and scrolled down to select "Reedy." The phone rang ... and rang ... and rang.

"You have reached the voice mailbox of... 'Megan Reed. ' Press one to leave a—"

I snapped shut my cell and tossed it back on my desk. "This was your plan, Megan," I muttered. "Where are you?"

The clock ticked over to eight o'clock.

8:01. 8:02. 8:03.

A sudden clattering and buzzing from my desk made me jump. The cell phone was vibrating where I'd tossed it, the display screen lit up: 8:04.

Clutching Ein, I grabbed the cell, opened it, and put it to my ear. Before I could even say anything, I heard Megan on the other end.

"Sorry, Em, I'm sorry I'm not there. I tried to get away, but my mom is making us have some stupid family night."

"What?" I said. Dread billowed into my stomach. "Megan, you're supposed to be here, you said it was a plan."

"I said I'm sorry," she snapped. Her voice was crackly, and I could hear muffled traffic in the background. "My mom found out about Emily Cooke this morning, and she's been freaking out like it was me or Lucas who died.

She made us all go to dinner, and now I have to drive home and play Parcheesi or something with her."

Gripping Ein even tighter, I flopped over onto my side, away from the clock. "I really need you here. Please, Megan ..."

"I can't, Emily. I'm really sorry. You told your dad about this, right? Maybe ask him to watch you. Or chain yourself to the bed or something—just don't leave the house, okay?"

I thought about my dad, who was probably downstairs with my stepmom, watching reruns.

"Emily? You still there?"

"Yeah," I said, "I'm still here."

Megan sighed. "I'm almost home, so I need to hang up. Just please, please, please don't do anything stupid, okay? Promise me."

"I promise," I said.

"Okay." Megan sounded unsure. Another item on the rapidly increasing list of Ways Megan Never Sounded Before the Other Day. "Call me if you start to feel weird or anything, all right? I'll drop everything and come over there, no matter how much my mom complains. Talk to you later."

Before I could say good-bye, the phone clicked dead.

I sat there for a long moment, the phone still to my ear. I knew I should do something to prepare, just in case. Megan was right, maybe I needed to chain myself to my bed or something. I'd done some dangerous stuff without even thinking twice. I might do worse. I might get hurt.

Slowly I rolled over and peered at the clock.

8:11. 8:12. 8:13.

I held my breath, waiting. It had happened yesterday at 8:14. The cramps, or the seizure, whatever it was.

"So," I said aloud as I watched the clock, "it's just you and me now, other Emily. Uh, if it is you. It's probably not, is it?"

The clock still read 8:13.

I clenched my fists. "This is stupid. Of course this isn't you. Ghosts aren't real."

I squinted, making the clock's number blur before opening my eyes wide again. As before: 8:13.

"But just in case, if it is you? Try not to get me killed."

The room remained silent. Nothing rattled in response to my talking. No ghostly moans, no slamming doors. And then, finally, the clock changed.

8:14.

Nothing happened.

8:15. 8:16.

Still nothing.

I let out the breath I'd been holding, my body relaxing. It wasn't going to happen. I wasn't going to change.

"Not tonight, huh, other Emily?" I muttered.

I thought I'd be relieved. It was over. It wasn't going to happen.

But I wanted it too. I wanted to be her. I wanted to just escape the dreary, mundane life I'd buried myself in, even if it was only for one more night.

"No," I muttered. Holding up Ein so that we were nose to snout, I said, "I can't think like this. I can't want to be like—"

I gasped as the pain tore through my gut. Retching, I grabbed my stomach and curled into a ball on my bed, grinding my teeth and clenching my eyes closed as nausea swirled inside of me, that same poisonous, vomitous feeling I'd had the night before.

"Oh God," I wheezed. "Oh God ..."

Then it was over. Much quicker than before.

And as I lay there, surveying my surroundings through glasses that now made my room a blurry mess of beige and black, I said to myself, "Actually,
yes
to escaping a dreary, mundane life."

Sitting up, I reached my arms over my head, stretching. My body felt rigid, tight, like I hadn't used it correctly in hours. Since last night, at least. I stretched out my legs, kicking Ein to the floor, where he tumbled belly up in the corner.

As I moved my legs, my pocket crinkled. I reached in and pulled out a crumpled wad of pink paper. Smoothing it open, I took off my glasses so I could read the hideous mishmash of fonts on the invitation Spencer had pressed into my hand earlier that day.