“I walked away without a scratch.”
“ ’Cause I had on my seat belt. And was in the back.”
“Sometimes I still miss her. Tommie was funny.”
“We talked about being together forever, and I never told my friends ’cause they would have laughed.”
“I thought she was terrific.”
“Sometimes, when I glance at your bedroom window, I think I see her.”
I twisted in my seat. Stared at Buddy.
“How do you know which room is mine?”
He sort of shrugged.
“I’m guessing. There’re only four bedrooms in the house, and I thought . . .”
Nothing was mine alone.
“What?” he said. “I’m not a voyeur or anything. I mean, I’m not peeking in your window. I just guessed you’d have her room.”
I swallowed. “I do.”
He could see her. At my window. Or was it hers? I was confused.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Okay.” I stared out my side of the car instead.
“No! You can look at me . . . just . . . damn it! Big deal! You have her room. I don’t care. Even though I miss her. I’m . . . I’m glad you’re here.”
I let out a sigh of relief but kept staring outside the car.
“I tell you everything and I still can’t say or do it right,” Buddy said.
“What are you talking about?”
He shook his head. “Girls are so hard to figure out. Memories and the real thing.”
Were we still arguing?
“Guys are the ones hard to figure out,” I said.
But Buddy refused to even glance in my direction, so we drove the rest of the way home with not a sound but the traffic around us.
Yes, death plays dirty tricks on the living. And so do ghosts.
76
Buddy walked me to the front door.
“I hope,” he said, looking somewhere near his feet, “you and me can be more than friends.”
My stomach squeezed.
“I don’t see why not,” I said. But what I meant was, I know your dead girlfriend and that could be a reason you and me can’t be here together. ’Cause she’s seen us at school and she might see us here at my house. Er. Her house. Uh. Whatever.
Maybe we couldn’t be together anywhere. What did I know?
“Really, Evie?” Buddy looked out from under his lashes.
“Really,” I said. He looked so cute, staring at me that way. So cute, and a little sad. His eyes were so clear I could almost see myself in them. And that little pout . . . he leaned toward me . . .
“No!” I said, putting my hands against his chest. I felt his heart beating.
“What?”
“We can’t . . . you know.” I lowered my voice, glancing over my shoulder and then his. “Kiss. Out here.”
Did Tommie watch from my bedroom—or was it her bedroom—right now?
“Why not? We have before. Wait. Did your parents see us?”
I shook my head.
“Then . . . what are you thinking?” Buddy looked serious. Like he really thought we could figure things out. But how can you do that with a ghost in the mix? “Do you want to give us time? Like to start over or something?”
A mockingbird cried out from a tree in the front yard. Aunt Odie drove past in slow motion. She gave the I’m looking at you hand signal. I shook my head at her. Gosh. There was no privacy from the living or the dead.
“I think,” I said, pulling him by the hand, “we need to just go over to your place. Unless you and Tommie spent a lot of time there.”
He nodded. “We did. My mom loved her too.”
Well, then.
“Okay.” I thought a moment. Aunt Odie’s. I had to work there anyway. Had Tommie ever been down to her place before she died? Only one way to tell. “Come on.”
77
“So what you’re saying is, you don’t know.”
Buddy was long gone. After only one kiss—an almost-not-there kiss—a ghostlike kiss—on Aunt Odie’s front porch.
“I’m scared of this one,” he had said.
“My aunt?”
He nodded. I stood on tiptoe. Put my hands on his warm face.
“Bye, Evie.”
Sheesh.
Now Aunt Odie shrugged. We stood in her kitchen, well-lighted from the sinking sun and all the bulbs burning.
“We never know,” she said. “Part of the Gift is exploring what the Gift is to you.”
I looked at her. I could smell dinner baking. Chicken and something spicy. Rolls, too. We would eat and then work until I had to get home and do homework.
“Lookit, I can’t have ghosts showing up all the time,” I said, like there was more than one. What would I do if that happened? If throngs of ghosts showed up on my doorstep? Like they did with Paulie. Or in my room like Tommie had. The thought was almost paralyzing.
“She’s everywhere,” I said. “And now this. Her boyfriend is the guy I like.”
I gestured at the door as if Buddy stood there and hadn’t gone on to his place.
“You like him?” Aunt Odie said. She grinned like she’d had something to do with us getting together.
I didn’t answer.
Aunt Odie shrugged. She wiped her hands on her apron. “The call is different for us all. You happen to have a pretty amazing . . .” She glanced at the ceiling. Was she searching for the words up there? We were silent for a good minute.
This was embarrassing. My aunt couldn’t even come up with a compliment or a criticism.
“Responsibility,” she said at long last.
Okay then.
The timer went off. “Saved by the bell,” she said.
I sat at the kitchen worktable, where I would soon be hand-packing Aunt Carolina’s Parker House rolls. With love.
Aunt Odie scooped a huge portion of a cheesy meal onto a plate where angels flew around the border, dished up a side salad, and handed it to me.
“Say a prayer in your heart,” she said, “blessing the food and this newest recipe.”
I did while she got her own plate and Cokes for us both.
My aunt settled next to me with a bit of a groan. Her dress seemed to settle afterward. Then her hair. Like she was easing into place a bit at a time.
“What’s important, Evie?”
Blowing on a strip of saucy chicken, a bit of chili pepper at the end, I glanced at her. “What do you mean?”
“What’s it that you want in life?”
I popped the food into my mouth and chewed. My face turned pink.
Buddy.
No! He wasn’t what I wanted for good. Was he? “Oh, you know. The usual.”
Aunt Odie plowed into her salad. Nodded for me to continue.
“Do good in school. Go to college—for what, I have no idea. Meet a boy.”
I hadn’t thought about this before. Too many things had happened in the last couple of years. Things that kept me busy with life, living it, not worrying what I might do with it.
“That’s all?”
Saying the words out loud made my sort-of plans feel rather vague. “There’s more,” I said. But I couldn’t quite think of anything past true love and babies of my own in a house with a pool. Did I want to go to college? Build homes? Make baking mixes? Clean houses for other people? Do hair? I was confused.
“You used to know?” Aunt Odie ate good now. Dabbed at her lips with a real cloth napkin. A pearly-pink one.
“I’m not so sure.” I slathered butter on the Parker House roll. Split it open and dabbed a dribble of honey in the middle. “Do I need to even know now, Aunt Odie? I want to . . . breathe. Take my time. Be a kid.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew it was true.
I could wait one year. I could have one year to just have fun.
That seemed fair.
“I don’t know about that. The Gift has come into your life, Evie. Things have changed for you.”
My stomach seemed to fill on its own. I couldn’t even take another bite. Was everything expanding in there?
“What do you mean?”
“I mean”—Aunt Odie waved her butter knife around—“I may be old, but when I turned fifteen, life changed forever for me. I was a water-skier, slalom. A champ. You know that. Had thoughts of being a professional.”
This is true.
There’s a picture of Aunt Odie, blown up to eleven by fourteen and hanging in the living room, of her skiing. She’s bouncing over a wave. She’s slender and her hair’s pulled back in a ponytail and she’s smiling—maybe even like life could never get any better than that.
She stood and went to the refrigerator to grab another Coke. “I got a feeling I might need this. I don’t usually eat food this spicy. Then”—Aunt Odie settled in her chair again, in layers—“I was dreaming food. Smelling it everywhere. Knowing the ingredients of things I tasted. The amounts. How to add them to the bowl. Everything changed. For the better, yes. Because I let that happen.”
Wait. What? Really?
I swallowed. At nothing but spit. I should just lick at the butter and honey that melted and ran over my fingers. But my stomach refused.
“It took a little bit of time, but I figured out how to run my life and use the Gift at the same time. I suggest you do too, Evie. You can’t fight it. It will eat you up. No pun intended.”
78
Tommie was waiting when I got home. My food, untouched, filled the plastic Dixie plate.
“What do you mean?” she said before I had a chance to step all the way into the house. “What do you mean, I’m dead?”
I drew in breath.
I was wore out.
Too wore out for this.
But.
But if I paid attention to my Gift, it might go away. Aunt Odie had said as much. I just needed to be nice about it. Show some tact.
“I mean,” I said. “You. Are. Dead.” There.
I walked into the kitchen. In the family room I could hear the TV going. The news. Was Momma home? JimDaddy?
“That is so rude!” Tommie was hot on my heels. I could feel her close to my back. Her breath on my neck.
“Let me tell everyone I’m here,” I said to Tommie, slapping at her. She seemed ruffled, though nothing was out of place.
“That smells good,” she said.
I set the plate on the counter.
“Have some.” I walked out of the kitchen, past the formal dining room and down to the family room.
JimDaddy was propped up in a giant La-Z-Boy. Across the room, Momma and Baby Lucy were tucked into their own chair—not sharing with him like usual. My sister was sound asleep, her little mouth a perfect O.
“Hey, girl,” JimDaddy said. “You still mad with me for not telling you everything?” He muted the TV.
“No, JimDaddy,” I said. “Not mad at you, either, Momma.”
The real word was “disappointed.” But no need to say that. Kids can’t let parents know when they don’t act the way they should.
Momma reached her free hand up, and I leaned over so she could pet my face the way she always did before JimDaddy and Baby Lucy came along. “Love you.” Her words were soft as her touch. I felt a bit of healing leave her fingertips. Sink into my skin and cool the frustration away some.
“You want I should put her down?” I asked.
Momma nodded.
I scooped Baby Lucy up. “I got homework and”—I paused and thought of Tommie waiting in the room down the hall—“stuff to do. Then I’m off to bed.”
“Okay then,” they said. Together.
“We’ll be in a little later to say good night.” Momma.
I walked out of the family room to my sister’s room, where I lay Baby Lucy on her back. She let out a sigh. Then I was in the hall again, running my hand along the chair rail. My tennis shoes made squishy sounds on the marble. Wavering up ahead, outside my bedroom, I saw Tommie. She didn’t look too happy.
I wasn’t neither. So there.
I eased into my room, squeezing past her.
“I like your baby,” she said.
I flopped on my bed.
“She sleeps in my momma’s craft room.”
Gulp.
Tommie sat down. The bed didn’t even move under her weight. I scooted over.
“Why are you here?” I said.
“I live here.”
I sat up. “Not anymore.”
Tommie blinked. “Tell me about her.”
“Who?”
“The baby.”
“Baby Lucy,” I said, “is Momma’s dream. She never thought she could have another after I was born. Then a miracle.” I remembered how excited Momma was when she found out. How she had Aunt Odie make a cake with the words WHAT ARE YOU EXPECTING? in pink and blue icing. It took JimDaddy only a moment to know what Momma was trying to say.
I flopped onto my back again and stared at the ceiling.
“A baby with my daddy,” Tommie whispered. She lay down next to me. Thank goodness I had a double bed or, well, this would be freaky. Lying in bed with a ghost. With a dead girl.
I nodded, all slow. Hadn’t thought of that. Her dad and my mom. Me and Tommie, we were related by Baby Lucy. And our parents. We were an odd-shaped star fruit.
Tommie clasped her hands over her belly. I turned on my side to look at her. Her eyes were filled with tears. Outside of that barely-there smell, she seemed like anyone else.
Come to think of it, so did all those other dead people.
How did I know the difference between those who were alive and those who had passed on?
It was . . . a feeling. I mean, now that I knew what I was looking for, it was easy to see this was about the way I felt. Not about what I saw. Even though it was what I saw.
Too confusing.
“I was sure you were lying,” she said. Her voice was a whisper.
“About what?” I tucked my pillow under my head better.
“About me. Being gone. Passed away. Up till now, I’ve just been . . . nowhere. In a dead space. . . .”
“What?”
“You know. Like that place before sleeping and dreaming.”
“Oh.”
The glow about her, pale pink, almost white, widened as she spoke.
“I remember the accident. I knew it was bad. Momma and me, we talked a moment or two after we crashed, and then there was a tap at Momma’s window and some guy came to get us.”
“Who?” I whispered the word.
“Some guy. He had this great smile. He told us to follow him. And I didn’t go. I stayed behind. Watched my momma leave. I had Justin to stay back for. So I did. Then I was talking to you at your party.”
Outside a bit of wind kicked up. Something tapped at my window. Another ghost? Probably. That was my luck.
“The dead spaces come when I’m all alone.”
My heart was in my throat, like that old cliché says.
“At first I thought I was in the wrong place. But there was my daddy. He refused to see me. Only you would talk to me. And when you told me I was gone and I thought about not being able to turn on the water or the hand dryer . . .”
I didn’t say anything. Because what do you say to a ghost who’s just realizing she’s dead? Dead but not quite gone.
When Tommie spoke next, her voice was almost not there. “Can you tell me what happened?”
And so I did. I told her about how JimDaddy still missed her and how he wished he had taken her to the picture show that day. I told her about the rain and that Buddy wasn’t hurt, not
physically anyway. I even told Tommie how Momma and JimDaddy had been seeing each other before she died. I told her everything, from start to finish, the best I knew how.
When I was done, it seemed Tommie had pretty much accepted my words as fact.
She was a ghost.
That light around her glowed so bright I wanted to ask her to leave the room and go sleep elsewhere.
But Tommie was crying.
So I let her stay with me.
79
You would think that a dead person would be satisfied to be hanging out.
No.
Tommie wanted more.
When JimDaddy and Momma came in to tell me good night, Tommie popped right up, wide-eyed, went straight over to her daddy, and slipped her arms around him. He started. Like he knew she was there. Then he leaned over and kissed me on the forehead.
“Night, girl,” he said.
“That’s what he used to say to me,” Tommie said. She stood beside her father, watching him. “Look at me, Daddy,” she whispered. And then, “He can’t see me.”
Momma plopped onto the bed where Tommie had lain. “You sleep good, sugar,” she said.
“Okay.” Maybe I would. If Tommie stopped her crying and went to sleep. Or whatever it was she did.
“Tell Daddy good night,” Tommie said.
“What?” I said.
“I said sleep good,” Momma said just as Tommie said, “Tell him!”
“No!” I said. Momma laughed and Tommie harrumphed.
“I mean, Momma,” I said, sitting up in bed, “I mean yes, ma’am, I will.”
Tommie got right in my face. “Do it,” she whispered. “Do it.” I could feel her breath on my ear. Sort of damp. Could smell that sour odor. “Please.”
“Ummmm,” I said.
JimDaddy stared at me. Ran his hands over his mouth. “For a minute you reminded me of my Tommie girl.”
“Oh, Jim,” Momma said. Only she didn’t seem sad for him. She seemed, what? Frustrated?
Tommie was gone. Shimmered away and then back again, like a lightbulb deciding it had more strength than it thought.
In her room down the hall, Baby Lucy let out a sharp cry. A long, heartbroken wail followed. My heart stopped beating altogether, and when it started again, it felt like a pounding fist.