"No, she won't," Shelley argued. "Statistics show that homicides related to eyewear breakage are actually down this year."
Cute. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and guessed she was trying to make me feel better. I said, "My mother is excitable."
Shelley looked skeptical. "Your dad seems calm and reasonable—he won't let her actually kill you."
"You mean my mother's current husband," I said. I reminded her, "At the moment my dad is living in Hong Kong with the woman formerly known as his secretary."
Shelley rolled her eyes. I think. I was sitting close enough that I'm fairly sure I saw correctly. She said, "Whatever."
Before I could complain that a best friend should be more sympathetic, we were all suddenly thrown forward, with a terrible screech of brakes, and the bus swerved, and we were flung left, then right.
I braced myself for a collision.
Nothing—beyond startled gasps, squeals, and yells, then thuds as assorted kids, backpacks, books, and portable CD players hit the floor.
I bounced between the back of the seat in front of me and my own seat as the bus came to a stop.
"Everybody all right?" the driver shouted.
People were picking themselves up off one another and off the floor.
Those in front were standing to see over the heads of those with seats near the front right-hand windows.
The bus driver didn't wait to see if we all answered that we were okay. "Pedestrian accident near the corner of East and Elmwood," he announced into his two-way radio. He didn't wait for the dispatcher, either, but flung the door open, yelled, "Nobody leave the bus!" then ran outside.
Shelley pushed me out of the seat, and we joined the press of kids at the front.
"What happened?" I asked. By squinting I could make out a crowd of people on the street corner, all looking in the direction of the intersection, where there was a smaller cluster of people crouched or kneeling on the asphalt. The bus had stopped in the middle of the street, at a diagonal. "Did we hit someone?"
Somehow I'd ended up near Gia, the wicked stepsister, and she answered, "No, somebody else did."
I squinted harder but really couldn't make anything out, which was probably all for the best.
Those at the windows leaned out and shouted to the people on the sidewalk. The story, as near as I could make out from too many people talking at once, was that a car coming from the opposite direction had tried to beat the bus through the intersection to make a left-hand turn—apparently not seeing the lady crossing the side street.
Our bus driver shoved his way back onto the bus, past the kids who were crowding the doorwell. He ignored all the questions, grabbed the first-aid kit, then warned again, "Nobody leave the bus."
After five minutes that seemed like forever, sirens approached, first a couple of police cars, then an ambulance.
"Is she going to be all right?" Gia called out to our bus driver as he came to stand by the bus now that the ambulance guys had arrived.
"I'm sure she'll be fine," our driver said. "But the police want to talk to me as a witness, so I need to get you another bus."
We pointed out that we were two short blocks from school, but he ignored us and got on the radio to speak with the dispatcher. We were all crowding the front of the bus, so we all heard the dispatcher say that another bus could pick us up, and we all heard him say it would be in about twenty minutes, depending on traffic. Judging from how the traffic around us wasn't moving, we all knew we could add at least another ten minutes to that estimate. Even with the windows open, we were beginning to get sweaty and cranky in the May heat. We complained, loudly, that we were within two minutes' walk of school, with only one side street to cross, and the youngest of us were in ninth grade.
Our logic, or our whining, finally worked, and our driver told us we could go, if we all stuck together and went straight to school. We all vowed on our honor.
"Think you can make it without your glasses?" Shelley asked me as the bus emptied around us, everyone having already forgotten that sticking-together promise.
Walking around without glasses in your own home is totally different from walking around on the street without being able to see, but what choice did I have?
Which was when inspiration struck. "Hold on," I said, suddenly remembering my mother saying she'd put yesterday's sunglasses in my backpack. "Wait till you see these."
I found them in the little front zippered section, tracking them down by sniffing for the scent of Lysol.
"Whoa!" Shelley said, knowing that mirrored sunglasses—with or without the smell—weren't my usual style.
"But they're prescription lenses," I told her. I put them on, and once again everything took on a pink glow. Still, everything came into focus, too. "Shelley!" I exclaimed, feigning sudden recognition. "It's you!" Then I asked, "Do they look too awful?"
Shelley shrugged.
Okay, well then, I'd take them off as soon as I got to school and wasn't in danger from traffic.
The bus was empty now, except for the two of us, and I glanced out the window to assure myself that Parker Henks wasn't in the vicinity. He was halfway down the block already, with a group that included my wicked stepsister. The closest kid was Julian York, who'd paused just beyond the crowd of accident onlookers to readjust his backpack. Nobody had stopped to wait for him, either. Julian was new this year, and I'd never really talked to him beyond "Hi" and "Mind if I move this chair to that table?" and "What page did Mrs. McDermott say to turn to?" He'd struck me, back in September, as too tall and too skinny, but now after eight months of not really looking at him, I said to Shelley, "Hmm, Julian's not half bad looking," trying to sound Shelley out to see what she thought.
Shelley raised her eyebrows at me. "Maybe you better not depend on those glasses too much," she suggested.
In any case, he had moved on by the time we stepped off the bus. Shelley asked, "Do you really think that lady will be all right, or was our driver just telling us that because we're kids?"
Over the heads of the crouching ambulance attendants, I saw the accident victim sit up. "Well, I guess that answers that," I said.
"What?" Shelley asked.
"She's sitting up."
Shelley stood on tiptoe but must have been at a bad angle, because apparently she still couldn't see. She asked, "Really?"
The woman got up.
"Geez," I said. "You'd think they wouldn't let her do that."
"What?" Shelley asked.
Though the woman looked about sixty or so and was wearing a flowered dress, maybe Shelley mistook her for one of the ambulance attendants, because Shelley was still craning her neck, trying to get a better look at the stretcher the ambulance guys had set down, while the woman was walking away.
I was amazed that no one tried to stop her, to tell her, "Let us check you out, just in case you're lightheaded or something." But they weren't even looking at her. Everyone ignored her totally. She walked through the crowd, right up to me.
"Are you an angel?" she asked, which seemed proof to me that she was confused enough to need medical attention.
"No." I was too surprised to ask her if she was sure she should be walking. Her dress was smudged from lying in the street, and her knees and one elbow were scraped, but that was the only blood on her.
Except, I suddenly noticed, for a slight red dribble from her right ear that stuck a wisp of her gray hair to her cheek.
"What?" Shelley asked, distracted, still facing the intersection, as though she had not heard the woman's question but only my answer.
The woman looked around. "Oh," she said. "Sorry. My mistake." She started walking toward a patch of light on the sidewalk so bright that even with my sunglasses I couldn't look straight at it. The woman walked into the light, then turned to wave good-bye to me, smiled the most beautiful smile I've ever seen, and dissolved. A moment later the light also dissolved.
I grabbed Shelley's arm. "Shelley"—my voice, once I got it to work, was qua
vering—"did you see that?"
"I'm afraid so," she answered. But she didn't seem nearly as freaked out as she should have been. In fact, she still wasn't even looking in the right direction.
I looked back at where the ambulance attendants were lifting the stretcher to put it back into the ambulance—the stretcher, with a blanket covering a still form beneath it.
"Wow," Shelley said in a shaky whisper, "she must have died while we were standing here watching."
3. Vroom, Vroom
I whipped those glasses off my face faster than if there had been a cute boy in the vicinity.
"What?" Shelley asked me, but she was still mostly watching the ambulance guys. She probably thought I was trying to avoid seeing any details, not realizing I'd already seen way too many.
The thing was, I knew what I'd seen. There was no use in trying to convince myself that I was dreaming or that the glasses had caused some sort of distortion. I had seen a ghost, a spirit, whatever you want to call a dead person who's up and walking. Talking, too, though apparently Shelley hadn't heard. Whoever heard of glasses improving your hearing?
But seeing the dead lady wasn't the worst of it.
When I took the glasses off, the person standing next to Shelley disappeared. I don't mean, disappeared as in "became too fuzzy to make out." Shelley had become fuzzy, but I could still see her well enough to be able to know it was her. I could even make out the movement of the paramedics putting the stretcher that held the body of the dead woman into the ambulance. But there was no trace of the person who'd been standing right next to Shelley.
I couldn't help myself. Scared as I was, I put the glasses back on. Looking, when my better sense warned me not to. Like poking at a zit that you just know is only going to get worse for the poking, but you stupidly can't resist.
Yep, someone was definitely there who wasn't there when I wasn't wearing the glasses.
He was dressed in a suit and carried a briefcase—a youngish business executive or lawyer is what he looked like. While I had the glasses on, he was just one of the many walking to work who had paused to rubberneck an accident.
He turned, slowly, as though he'd become aware that I was staring at him. He kind of leaned in and gave a little wave at me, the way you do when you're trying to get the attention of someone you suspect is too distracted to notice you.
I backed away.
"You can see me!" he said, sounding delighted.
I must have looked scared because he asked, "What, am I beginning to leak or something?"
He'd been fine a moment before, but as soon as he asked, the left side of his head caved in, and the front of his shirt grew bloody.
My breath escaped in an involuntary hiss.
He set the briefcase down and readjusted his head. The blood faded and disappeared. "Sometimes," he explained, "when I forget to concentrate—"
I took the glasses off again, and he disappeared and I could no longer hear his voice.
Which was no good, because I knew he was there, whether or not I could see him. You can't undo knowledge.
I put the glasses back on.
"...fast cars," the man was saying to me, "vroom, vroom. Everybody in a hurry. That's what happened to me. Except, of course, in my case I was the one doing the hurrying. A bit of advice for you: Never get into an argument with an SUV. Just the same," he went on, "it's fascinating. As they say: Like not being able to take your eyes off a car wreck." Then, sounding just like Shelley, he asked, "What?" and patted himself on the chest area. "Is the steering wheel column sticking out again?"
I was having trouble breathing. If it hadn't been for all the now-you-see-it/now-you-don't nonsense with the glasses, I would have assumed that the reason I was able to see dead people was because I, myself, was currently on the boundary of life and death, dying of a heart attack. Not, of course, that I would be having a heart attack except for what I was seeing. I managed to squeak out, "Why are you still here?" since the lady had walked into the light only moments after dying.
While the dead lawyer or accountant or whatever he was paused to consider, Shelley assumed that I was speaking to her. "You're right," she said with a heavy sigh. "We should be heading off to school. I wish we'd gone without seeing that, so we'd still think that poor lady had survived."
But the dead guy hadn't been considering: He'd been concentrating. "Listen!" he told me. "A siren. I bet there's been another accident. I'm going to go take a look." He picked up his briefcase and took off at a fast pace, not quite running, as though mindful of keeping a dignified appearance despite his excitement.
"Wait!" I said.
The dead guy ignored me, and Shelley said, "What is it, Wendy? You're acting weird, you know that?"
Yet again I took the glasses off. I tried handing them to her. "See that guy?" I asked.
"Which?"
Of course she wouldn't be able to see him until she put the glasses on, and in the time it would take me to explain, he'd be lost in the crowd. Then Shelley would look at me like I was crazy instead of just weird.
Maybe there were more dead people in the crowd, which I could find out by looking around with, then without, my glasses. That was assuming that dead people as a class were curious about car accidents, and that it wasn't just this one guy because that was how he'd died.
Or maybe there weren't any dead people at all. Maybe my mind had taken a sharp turn into a different time zone, the way my grandmother's had.
There are some things you can't tell, even to a best friend.
I wiped the sunglasses on the hem of my shirt, as though that was why I'd taken them off.
"Never mind," I said.
4. An Even-Worse-than-Usual Day at School
As I walked along with Shelley, pretending my world hadn't suddenly taken a detour into the bizarre, I tried to look attentive while she chattered about how we'd better hurry up because we were going to be significantly later than the other late kids. I was only half listening, thinking.
What I was thinking was that I had two questions: Who in the world had made these glasses? And why?
They had to be some kind of brand-new high-tech scientific breakthrough, I decided. Probably part of a secret government project, because there certainly hadn't been anything in the news about such a discovery. I knew that for a fact because Bill, my mother's current husband, thought world events made a suitable topic for supper-table conversation. He knew I never watched anything but movies and MTV, and Gia, the wicked stepsister, got her news from afternoon TV. Bill wanted us to be well-informed members of society. And he certainly hadn't mentioned anything about glasses that let you see dead people.
And wherever the glasses were originally from, how had they ended up on my front lawn?
Okay, okay, that's three questions—math isn't my best subject.
Whatever. The more I thought about that last question, the more I doubted my previous conclusion.
Those glasses didn't look like the kind of thing you would expect a bunch of scientists to make in their first attempt to peek into the afterlife. I would expect such a device to look like heavy-duty goggles, not like the kind of cheesy fashion attire you could find at the dollar store. Even as I saw Shelley looking in my direction to make sure I was paying attention, even as we passed other people on the street who didn't glance at me, I thought: These glasses were meant to avoid attracting attention.
I, of course, did not want to attract attention, either—and I most certainly didn't want to see dead people. I simply wanted to be able to make it through the school day without walking into walls or falling down stairs, neither of which was a sure thing with my own unaided vision. My mother would be mad enough about the broken frames if we had to go get a new pair after dinner; I did not want to call her at work and ask her to drop everything to come pick me up now because I couldn't tell which way faced front in my classrooms.
At the office, Mrs. Pincelli, the secretary, gave us late passes—after giving us her fishy eye for stragglin
g in after all the other kids on our bus had managed to come in within a couple minutes of one another. But Mrs. Pincelli isn't happy unless she's able to give the fishy eye to somebody about something, so I didn't take it to heart.
"You going to be okay?" Shelley asked as we left our backpacks in our lockers and got out the books we'd need for morning classes. She had English lit first period; I had to go to biology on the second floor.
"I'll be fine," I told her. "Actually, these lenses let me see just as well as my regular glasses." I still didn't mention the bonus special effects.
Shelley asked, "Even indoors?"
That was another question, now that she pointed it out: Why didn't the sunglasses darken the indoors the way normal sunglasses would have?
"I'll be okay," I assured her.
"Even with Mrs. Robellard?" Shelley pressed, though now she was grinning.
Mrs. Robellard, we had figured out long ago, must have inhaled the fumes of too many embalmed frogs over her thirty or forty years as biology teacher at James Fenimore Cooper High. There was speculation that the jar that sat on the back shelf and was labeled PICKLED PIG'S HEART really contained her own.
"See you at lunch," I said, and started toward the stairs. At least the halls were deserted, just in case I had to take the glasses off. Of course, I wouldn't be inclined to take them off unless I started seeing dead people again; and I assumed there wouldn't be too many of those hanging around the school halls.
Even on the second floor, where—with most of the classroom doors closed—it's creepily dim, I could see perfectly well.
Then I opened the door to room 237.
The windows were open because it was such a warm day, and my late pass fluttered on top of my books like it was seriously toying with the idea of flying away and sending me running off to chase it all across the classroom.
When I looked up after slapping down that skittish late pass so it couldn't get away, I saw the ugliest person in the world straightening up from leaning over the desk at the front of the room. I thought, Either something truly bizarre has happened to Mrs. Robellard or we have the Wicked Witch of the West as a substitute teacher today.