Two
He was gone when I woke up the next morning, and I was relieved. I stumbled downstairs with only a few minutes to eat and get ready, as usual. I wasn’t much of a morning person, and neither was my dad. He didn’t usually get up until the crack of noon, but he could do that because he was self-employed.
My mom, on the other hand, was the most painfully perky morning person ever.
Amy was sort of in-between. This was one of her bad morning days. She munched her Cheerios in silence as I flipped one of her pigtails and took my seat at the table.
“Hey, Miss Belle. You’re going to be late if you don’t hurry,” Mom said, handing me a cup of tea in my favorite mug with the butterflies on it. My name was Annabelle, but my mom liked to turn it into all sorts of funny nicknames that irritated the crap out of me.
“I know, I know,” I said as I sipped my tea. She hadn’t added enough honey, so I got out the jar and spooned some in. Mom was allergic to anything that involved cooking, heating, baking, boiling, or food in general.
“Anything exciting going on today?”
“Nothing more existing than another day at Eagle Academy.” It sounded like a preppy rich-kid school, and it used to be, back when my grandparents went there and it was private. Now it was Hicksville, USA public school.
Actually, it was Smoke Hill, Maine. No one really knew why it was called Smoke Hill, but it might have been a rough translation of an old Native American name.
It could have been worse. We could have gotten stuck with something like Passagassawakeag, which was a real river, believe it or not. As it was, Smoke Hill was a one-stoplight town where everyone waved to everyone else as they drove by. And there were more lobstermen in waders than businessmen in suits.
Mom checked her watch.
“Shoot, I’m going to be late if I don’t rush. See you later, Bells, Bug. Don’t forget it’s your turn for pizza.” She smoothed her pencil skirt and picked a bit of lint off her jacket. She always dressed like she was going to a meeting, because she usually is. As a hospital administrator, she always had to look professional and put-together. I couldn’t stand to dress so conservatively every single day. I’d go nuts if I couldn’t wear jeans and shirts with sarcastic things on them.
“You almost ready, Bug?” I said when she’d left.
Amy pouted. “Don’t call me that.” Strike One.
“You want to stop somewhere before I drop you off and get a Pop Tart?” Mom had this thing against artificial fruit, so we never had them in the house. Amy loved them almost more than she loved blue and bunny rabbits and playing soccer.
“No thanks.” Strike Two. She stared into her cereal bowl as if it was a crystal ball. I took it from her and threw it in the sink. It was the only way to get her attention.
“Okay, what’s up?”
“It’s nothing.” The teenage whine had started to creep into her voice as of late. Fantastic.
“No way, you don’t use that voice with me. You’re not even thirteen yet. Come on. Spill.”
“It’s nothing.” Amy stormed out of the room like a true teenager.
“You’d better be ready in five minutes,” I yelled.
She was. In fact, she was waiting in my rusting Subaru before I’d even gotten my hair up. Dad was still snoring when I threw my backpack over my shoulder, so I didn’t bother to say Good-bye.
I let Amy pick out our driving music. Of course, she picked Taylor Swift, which was awesome. We didn’t have much in common when it came to music, but our love for Taylor Swift breached the barrier. I dropped her off a suitable distance from the school so her friends wouldn’t see my lame car. The CD ended, so I turned on the radio. I was trying to choose a station when I felt him again.
Turn it back, I like that song.
Jeez, he was demanding. I deliberately didn’t turn it back, and turned up the volume on the song I wanted to listen to on the pop station, singing loudly.
“You didn’t say ‘please,’” I said over the music.
Turn it back.
“This is my car. If you want to listen to music, go hover over someone with the same tastes.”
I’m with you now.
The words didn’t make sense, and I had a feeling he was talking about more than just the music. He was an odd one.
“Okay, but I’m going to school and it’s going to be boring.”
The living have no concept of what boring is.
“Suit yourself,” I said and went back to ignoring him.
I found a parking spot at the very back of the bottom lot, and I had to squish my car in. Bessie had wide hips, but I could maneuver her into a spot like nobody’s business.
He must have been serious about coming to school with me because he was still there when I put the car in park. I’d half expected him to leave when I cranked Nickleback. Most guys hated that.
I turned the radio off. “You’re really coming with me to school?”
Yes.
I shrugged, grabbed my bag and sloshed through the half-rain, half-slush that late April had decided to dump on us, to the main building. Eagle Academy had once been majestic with warm brick buildings and students traipsing from class to class in uniforms. It was kind of in shambles now, with a leaky roof and pipes that froze and you never saw anyone wearing a tie except the basketball players on game days.
He floated along behind me. At least I always imagined them floating, but for all I knew, they walked like normal people. Or maybe they were just wisps of vapor, like fog. I wondered what this one looked like. I still didn’t know his name, but he didn’t either.
“Hey, did you finish that math homework? I could not get the answer to number three,” said Nora as I walked to my locker.
She twisted her long brown hair, and picked at her black fingernails. Whereas Amy had a blue addiction, Nora’s one true love was black, which somehow she managed to pull off without looking emo.
She, Felicity and I had formed our little Trio of Weird back in the first grade sharing circle. Some people had an issue with the fact that Nora had two moms. But then some people still thought I was crazy, so there you had it. Next year our trio would be split up. Me to U of M to study education, Felicity to Yale for biochemistry and Nora to Middlebury for poetry and graphic design.
“Um yeah, the answer’s -1,” I said. I could feel him wanting to say something, but he didn’t. This was going to be an interesting day.
“Well crap, I already crossed out my answer too many times. I hope Mr. Varney is at least going to give me credit for trying.” I resisted the urge to tell her to stop picking her nails.
“Yeah, like that’s going to happen,” I said.
“You suck, Annabelle.”
I held my hands up in a peacemaking gesture. “Hey, I’m not the one who signed up for calc. It was your idea, remember?”
She sighed heavily and leaned against the locker next to me. “That was before I knew how hard it was.”
I tried to give her a sympathetic face as I crammed my books into my backpack.
She is your friend?
Why the heck did he care?
“Yes,” I said.
“What?” Nora said, staring at her nails.
“Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”
She does not know about us, does she? Secrets don’t make friends.
Why was he talking to me when I couldn’t answer him?
No, my friends did not know about the spirits. I’d tried talking to them about it before and it hadn’t gone over well, thank you very much. They were part of my normal life. My homework-and-Saturday-night-pizza-and trashy-movies, life. The spirits were part of a different life that I liked keeping separate. They had intertwined before, and it hadn’t ended well. I rubbed my arms, pulling down my sleeves.
Do I make you uncomfortable?
From his tone, I could tell he wanted me to be uncomfortable. Yup, he was messing with me. I swatted at the air, as if I was waving away a bug. So far, he had been.
r /> I am not a fly you can swat. I wished I could have shot a death glare in his direction.
Felicity came around the corner and waved at us. She was also not a morning person, as evident by the puffiness under her eyes and her slumped shoulders.
“Did you guys finish that math homework? I couldn’t believe how easy it was,” she said, tucking her red hair behind one ear. She’d recently got it cut, and I wasn’t sure if she was used to her new bob. It looked adorable on her. I thought she looked like she’d been ripped from the 1920s and plunked into the future. She loved vintage clothing and filmy fabrics. Most of the time, she looked like she floated instead of walked. One of these days it was going to give me a complex. Standing next to her, I felt both short and inferior in my skinny jeans and black t-shirt that read Zombie Response Team and had a hazard logo on it. I did have pretty clothes, but I looked like a dork in them.
Felicity had already taken calc, but was re-taking it for an extra math credit, so she could keep her perfect 4.0. Nora and I just looked at each other. The fact that she was freakishly smart was not one of the reasons why we were friends, but it helped.
The bell rang and we all dashed off to our separate classes. Me to AP English, Nora to band and Felicity to AP Spanish. The only class we had together was calc, which wasn’t until the afternoon, so I was pretty much alone for the whole morning. Except for him.
You are irritated with me.
“Shut up.”