“Good boy,” I said, rising to my feet. Wren slipped out of me as easily as she’d entered. I felt her loss like someone had taken my eye or a limb. It never got any easier. She had physical contact now, sorta, and it was better if I didn’t stick around. “You just sit there a minute. There’s someone who wants to meet you.”
Andrew lifted his gaze to mine as I gathered my things. He didn’t look so smug now. “Wh-who?”
“My sister,” I told him, smiling just a little when he looked down at his wrist, still in Wren’s ghostly grip. He had to feel the cold fingers biting into his skin even though he couldn’t see them. “You know—my dead sister?”
I walked to the door, Wren’s low voice following my every step as she whispered words I couldn’t make out. I hesitated when I heard Andrew whimper.
“Go,” my sister told me.
I didn’t look, I just kept walking.
* * *
A few minutes before the end of first class I got summoned to the principal’s office. I was surprised they waited that long. Andrew was absent, and people had been looking from his empty seat to me since we were let back into the school after the alarm.
Not like they could blame me for anything. After all, I’d been outside with everyone else. If not for Roxi I would have been standing alone, with an invisible boundary around me that no one dared cross. Seriously, no one had come closer than two or three feet. It was like I had pink eye or something.
With a sigh, I packed up my books and left the classroom. Even though I’d been gone since almost the beginning of the previous year, I knew exactly how to get to the office. I’d spent a lot of time there before what my mother called the “incident.”
Incident. Somehow it didn’t have the same punch as “attempted suicide.”
I was one of those teenagers categorized as a problem or “troubled.” I got it. Last year I was troubled, and I had lots of problems. The biggest one of which was that I let myself believe the people who called me crazy, and I stopped believing in Wren.
So, yeah. I was messed up and I did some things that I really regret doing. Things that I refused to think about as I made my way down the hallway to the main staircase near the office.
I had to check in with the guy at the desk and tell him who I was. I could tell from the way he looked at me that he already knew. He pointed at the waiting area and told me to have a seat. Principal Grant would be with me in a minute.
A few seconds later a guy sat down in an empty chair across from mine. He was tall and lean, wearing jeans and a gray shirt. He had a young Keanu/Ezra Miller thing going on. Very cute, despite having a bit of a black eye.
“Rough morning?” I asked.
He grinned as he slouched in his chair. Yeah, he was really cute, even though he seemed surprised that I had spoken to him. “This?” He pointed to his eye. “This was yesterday. You should see the other guy.”
Corny, too. I smiled back. “If it happened yesterday why are you here?”
He lifted his chin toward Principal Grant’s office. “Waiting.”
I was saved from trying to figure out something witty to say by the opening of the principal’s door. A girl a year or so younger than me walked out. She took one look at Keanu and her brown eyes narrowed. The resemblance was obvious. She tossed her long, straight hair. “What are you doing here?”
He stood up, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I’m supposed to take you home.”
The girl glanced at me, and for a second her eyes widened. Then she smirked at her brother. “I can go back in if you want to wait a little longer.”
What was that supposed to mean? Keanu’s cheeks flushed, but he didn’t look away from her. And he didn’t look impressed. “Let’s go.”
She flashed that smirk at me before flouncing past. Her brother gave me an apologetic look. “Sorry you have to follow that.”
I laughed. “And here I was feeling bad for you.”
He smiled. “See you around, I guess.”
I nodded, and he was gone.
The door to the principal’s office opened again. “Miss Noble, please come in.”
Principal Grant was about six feet tall and imposing. I wouldn’t call her pretty, but she had an interesting face and curly dark hair. I was nervous as I crossed the threshold into her office.
“It’s only your second day back, Miss Noble,” she said as she closed the door behind me. “It’s not good that you’re in my office already.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I told her.
She gestured to a stiff-backed chair in front of her desk. “Sit, please.”
I did.
She sat down behind the desk and folded her hands on the top. She looked like a judge with her black suit and severe expression. I tried to keep my attention focused solely on her. “You were allowed to return to this school because of your grandmother’s ties to the community and her promise that you wouldn’t be any trouble. Are you going to make her break that promise?”
The mention of Nan yanked on my temper. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Then why did a young man have to leave school after an altercation with you?”
My eyebrows shot up. “What?”
She wasn’t buying it. “Do not play coy with me, young lady. What did you say to Andrew?”
“He was the one doing all the talking,” I replied hotly. “He insinuated that I was a lesbian, and then he made every joke he could at my expense. I told him to shut up. Then the fire alarm went off and we all left the room. Ask Roxi Taylor. I was with her the whole time.” Except for those few minutes with Wren...
“I will,” Principal Grant promised. And then she surprised me. “He called you lesbian?”
I shrugged. Again, I tried to keep my gaze focused on her, and not what was behind her. “A dyke. He was just being a jerk.”
“I take that sort of harassment very seriously, Miss Noble. This school has zero tolerance for bullying.”
“When did that happen?” I asked before I could stop myself. “Because it certainly didn’t the last time I was here.”
She looked embarrassed. “That was before I took over as principal.” Yeah, she’d been the vice principal then. “Things are different now, I promise you. If Andrew returns to school, he won’t speak to you in that manner again.”
If? Huh. “You kicking him out for picking on me won’t make my life any easier. I don’t care if he comes back, so long as he leaves me alone.”
Ms. Grant stared at me for a few seconds—enough to make me nervous. “I’ll take that under advisement. You’d better get back to class.”
That was it? “Okay.” I stood up and made for the door.
“Oh, Miss Noble?”
I stopped, hand on the doorknob, and turned. “Yeah?” Don’t look. Don’t look.
“Victim or instigator, I don’t want to see you in my office again. Am I understood?”
I nodded. “No offense, Principal Grant, but I don’t want to see you again, either.”
Or the ghost of the former principal standing behind her, his brains blown all over the wall.
* * *
“What did you do to Andrew?”
I glanced up as Roxi fell into step beside me on the walk home that day. My heart gave a little skip. After my “talk” with Principal Grant I was paranoid that everyone was out to lynch me.
“Nothing.”
“Okay, what did your sister do to Andrew?”
Huh. Grant hadn’t thought to ask me that.
“Nothing permanent,” Wren answered from her place beside me. She had changed clothes since this morning and was wearing a long boho skirt, peasant blouse and a floppy hat. Her feet were bare. Who needed shoes when your feet didn’t actually touch anything?
I was going to mi
ss shoes when I died.
I barely looked at the living girl walking beside me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t seen him since the fire alarm this morning.” When we’d come back to class he was gone. I hadn’t asked Wren what happened and I didn’t want to know. My sister was normally quite gentle, but she was dead, and the dead took offense easily. Andrew had screwed himself when he’d suggested I should have been the one who died.
“Come on, Lark.” Roxi stopped on the cracked sidewalk. Weeds poked up through the concrete near my feet and I nudged them with the toe of my secondhand pink-and-red Fluevog shoes. “I’ve known you since we were five. I know you’re not crazy, and I know Wren is real. I’m not the only one, either.”
My eyes narrowed. “Could have used you when everyone else thought I was a liar...or nuts.”
Wren stood behind Roxi, studying her. “She seems sincere.” She didn’t care who I told about her. She only cared about me. But I cared about us.
“I told everyone who would listen that I didn’t think you were crazy.”
I looked her dead in the eye. “Gotta think that wasn’t too many people.”
Roxi blushed. She was even pretty with her face all red. “No.” She started walking again. I fell into step beside her. “Still, I wanted you to know I believed you.”
“A little late coming.” Wren walked on Roxi’s other side, still studying her as though the girl was a dress she’d like to try on. “Nice thought, though. I think she means it.”
“Thanks,” I said, looking straight ahead. My grandmother’s house was just down the block. I could feel relief loosening my shoulders. I’d only been out of some sort of care for the past few months, and being back to school had exhausted me with all the noise and bustle. All those bodies conditioned to respond to the sound of a bell reminded me a little too much of the “hospital” my mother had abandoned me to when I had refused to say that Wren was all in my head.
When I had tried to die to be with her.
I didn’t think Mom believed I was crazy, either, but it was easier than saying she hated me because Wren talked to me and not her.
“Is she with us now? Your sister?”
I cast a distrustful glance at her. Was she trying to trick me into saying something wrong? You give people messages from dead relatives, fight a few ghosts on school property, try to kill yourself and all of a sudden you’re Trouble. Huh.
“What do you think?”
I tried not to laugh as Wren jumped in front of her and shouted, “Boo!” My thoughts were getting too morose, and she knew it.
Roxi shot me a shrewd glance as she walked right through my sister—and shivered in the early September sunshine. “I think you’re not about to discuss her with someone you’re not sure you can trust.”
“I’m a fairly private person.”
“That’s just a pretty way of saying you’re antisocial.”
I grinned as my sister laughed. “That, too.” I liked this girl. I really hoped she wasn’t playing me.
“I like this girl,” Wren commented. “I really hope she isn’t playing us.”
That thing they say about twins being on the same wavelength, feeling the same thing, thinking the same thing? It was true, and the whole dead-vs-living thing just cranked it up to eleven. The only reason I was alive was because Wren had felt something was wrong and had come looking for me the night I’d partied with a bottle of vodka and a razor blade. Good times. And I felt her anguish the entire time I was locked up and she couldn’t do anything to help me.
She’d done more than anyone else. More than our parents or any sanctimonious doctor. And I had been so pissed that she’d played a part in saving me, because I had thought death would finally put us in the same world.
It wasn’t my time to die, she’d said—as if she had any way of knowing.
We walked in silence for a bit, my grandmother’s house coming steadily closer. I’d only lived there a few days—since Dad had dropped me off with a guilty look and my own credit card—but it already felt more like home than my old house had in a long time. We’d lived in this town since I was three, but after my...accident, my parents had moved to Natick up in Mass. Mom needed to run away, while they decided I needed to endure daily torture at the hands of my peers. Whatever. I wasn’t bitter. Much. And at least here I didn’t have to see the look on her face when my mother looked at me. Not that she looked at me very often.
“So,” Roxi began, ending my pity party, “want to hang out later?”
My inner alarm went off, screeching “abort!” over and over. “Uh...”
“I’m going over to ’Nother Cup at eight. It’s open-mike night. Kevin McCrae’s playing. You know him, don’t you?”
Oh, yeah. I knew him.
“Yes!” Wren screeched in my ear. “Say yes! Say yes or I’ll bring Mr. Havers over to visit.”
Mr. Havers was the old dude who liked to haunt for the hell of it. He had few teeth and was as bat-shit crazy as a dead guy could be. And he smelled like a horse. “Yes,” I said through clenched teeth. “I know him. That sounds great. I’ll meet you there?”
“Sure.” Roxi grinned. “It will be fun.”
“Yeah. Big fun.” Could I sound any less sincere? An evening spent around more staring people with my sister rhapsodizing about Kevin McCrae—the one person other than me who could hear her. And the one person I wanted to see less than Mace. Woot. And I was such a fan of coffeehouses with blatantly unclever names.
But when was the last time I’d been out? When was the last time I’d spent time with people my own age who weren’t dead or mentally unstable? Or the last time I had to worry about curfew? Did I even have a curfew?
We stopped at the foot of my grandmother’s driveway. The smooth pavement led to a large slate-gray Victorian with eggplant trim. Large maple trees grew along both sides of the drive, forming a canopy that was just starting to show a hint of color.
“Your grandmother drives a Volkswagen Beetle?”
There was no missing the little car—it was purple. “Yes.”
Roxi squinted. “Are the taillights shaped like flowers?”
“They are.” I didn’t mention that the interior was green. Chartreuse. Nan had it custom done.
The dark-haired girl nodded. “Pretty.” She glanced down at her feet. “Listen, I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I’m really glad Mace found you.”
She forgot to add “lying in a pool of your own blood with your wrists sliced open.”
“Thanks.”
Roxi nodded as she lifted her head. “Okay, so I’ll see you at eight.”
“Sure.”
She grinned. “Great. See you then.” She turned to walk away, then stopped. She glanced over her shoulder with a lingering smile and looked somewhere over my right shoulder. “’Bye, Wren.”
My sister stood at my left, but the effect was the same. Wren’s eyes widened, and I wondered if Roxi would ever know how much those two words meant to her. How much the thought meant. Wren lifted her hand and waved, even though Roxi had already set off down the street.
We walked up the lane, finally alone.
“What did you do to Andrew?” I asked.
Wren shrugged. Her blouse slid down on her shoulder. “Scared him a little, that’s all. I told you, nothing permanent.”
“Then why wasn’t he in class?”
“He had to go home.”
“Why? And please don’t say he was bleeding from the eyes.”
She shot me an indignant glance. “He peed his pants.” Yes, the scariest person I knew said “peed.”
“That’s it?”
“Isn’t that enough?” she shot back.
I held up my hands. “Just making sure.”
My sleeves had fallen down
my arms when I raised them, and Wren grabbed my left forearm before I could lower both. Her thumb was like velvet against the satin of the scar that ran down the throat of my wrist. Tears filled her bright blue eyes.
“It’s all right,” I told her.
“Did it hurt?” she asked. Wren didn’t have much of a concept of physical pain, having never experienced it. She had no scars and she never would—not unless there was something in the afterlife that neither of us knew about. She’d never asked me about them before.
“Not as much as I thought they would.”
“I’d take them if I could.”
“But you can’t.” I gently pulled my arm away. “They’re mine.” And the only thing other than our hair that set us apart as two separate people instead of two halves of one.
WREN
Sometimes I watched Lark sleep, just to make certain nothing happened to her. She didn’t know that I did it or she wouldn’t have closed her eyes. She said I “creeped” her out when I did things like that. What else was I supposed to do? I didn’t sleep—I didn’t need to. I had tried to once, but I got bored. As a child I’d figured out—with Lark’s help—how to pass through books so that I could actually read them. Thankfully our grandmother had a fabulous library—not as good as the one in the Shadow Lands, but it was more than adequate.
When we were little, Lark asked me if I lived in Heaven. I told her I didn’t know. I still didn’t. It was an untruth that the dead had all the answers. We just had different questions.
The truth of where I “lived” was that it was big and peaceful and muted. No bright colors—except for my hair—no loud noises, no strong smells. Certainly nothing like the wave of deliciousness that greeted me when I phased through the door of our grandmother’s kitchen. My sense of smell wasn’t that developed, but spending time in this world had helped strengthen it, and what I smelled was good.
“Oh,” I said. “What is that?”
“Peanut butter cookies,” Lark told me. “Best smell in the world.”
“Can I have one?” I sounded so pathetic, and I was. We both knew the only way I’d ever taste that delicious scent was if Lark let me in, and I’d already violated her space once today.