“Just stopped by to say hi,” I said with a shrug. It was chilly enough that when I spoke, I could see my breath fog up in front of me.
This didn’t happen when Jesse spoke, however. Because, of course, he has no breath.
“At three in the morning?” The dark eyebrows shot up, but he looked more amused than alarmed. “On a school night?”
He had me there, of course.
“Father D. asked me to pick up some cat food,” I said, brandishing a bag. “I didn’t want Sister Ernestine to see me smuggling it in. She’s not supposed to know about Spike.”
“Cat food,” Jesse said. Now he definitely looked amused. “Is that all?”
It wasn’t all and he knew it. But it also wasn’t what he thought. At least, not exactly.
Still, when he pulled me toward him, I didn’t precisely object. Especially not considering that there’s only one place in the world I feel completely safe anymore, and that’s where I was just then… in his arms.
“You’re cold, querida,” he whispered into my hair. “You’re shivering.”
I was, but not because I was cold. Well, not only because I was cold. I closed my eyes, melting in his embrace as I always did, reveling in the feel of his strong arms around me, his hard chest beneath my cheek. I wished I could have stayed that way forever—in Jesse’s arms, I mean—where nothing could ever hurt me. Because he’d never let it.
I don’t know how long we stood like that in the vegetable garden behind the rectory where Father Dom lived. All I know is that eventually Jesse, who’d been stroking my hair, pulled back a little, so that he could look down into my face.
“What is it, Susannah?” he asked me again, his voice sounding strangely rough, considering the tenderness of the moment. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I lied, because I didn’t want it to end… the moonlight, his embrace, any of it… all of it.
“Not nothing,” he said, reaching up and pulling a strand of hair from where the wind had blown it, so that it was sticking to my lip gloss. I always seem to have that problem. “I know you, Susannah. I know there’s something the matter. Come.”
He took me by the hand and pulled. I went with him, even though I didn’t know where we were going. I’d have followed him anywhere, even into the bowels of hell. Only of course he’d never take me there.
Unlike some people.
I did balk a little when I saw where he had led me, though. It wasn’t exactly hell, but…
“The car?” I stared at the hood of my mom’s Honda Accord.
“You’re cold,” Jesse said firmly, opening the driver’s side door for me. “We can talk inside.”
Talking wasn’t really what I’d had in mind. Still, I figured we could do what I had had in mind just as easily in the car as in the rectory’s vegetable garden. And it would be a lot warmer.
Only Jesse wasn’t having any of it. He seized both my hands as I tried to slip them around his neck, and placed them firmly in my lap.
“Tell me,” he said from the shadows of the passenger seat, and I could tell by his voice that he was in no mood for games.
I sighed and stared out the windshield. As far as romance went, this was not exactly what I’d call a prime make-out spot. Big Sur, maybe. The Winter Formal, definitely. But the rectory parking lot at the Junipero Serra Mission? Not so much.
“What is it, querida?” He reached out to sweep back some of my hair, which had fallen over my face.
When he saw my expression, however, he pulled his hand back.
“Oh. Him,” he said in an entirely different voice.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. That he’d known, I mean, without my having said anything. There was just so much I hadn’t told Jesse—so much that I’d decided I didn’t dare tell him. My agreement with Paul, for instance: that, in return for Paul not removing Jesse to the great beyond, I’d meet with him after school every Wednesday under the auspices of learning more about our unique skill… although truthfully, most of the time it seemed all Paul wanted to do was get his tongue in my mouth, not study mediator lore.
Jesse would not have been particularly enthused had he known of the lessons… less so, if he’d had an inkling of what they actually entailed. There was no love lost between Jesse and Paul, whose relationship had been rocky from the start. Paul seemed to think he was superior to Jesse merely because he happened to be alive and Jesse was not, while Jesse disliked Paul because he’d been born with every privilege in the world—including the ability to communicate with the dead—and yet chose to use his gifts for his own selfish purposes.
Of course, their mutual disdain for each other might also have had something to do with me.
Back before Jesse had come into my life, I used to sit around and fantasize about how great it would be to have two guys fighting over me. Now that it was actually happening, though, I realized what a fool I’d been. There was nothing funny about the grounding I’d gotten the last time the two of them had gone at it, destroying half the house in the process. And that fight hadn’t even been my fault. Much.
“It’s just,” I said, careful not to meet his gaze because I knew if I looked into those twin dark pools I’d be lost, as usual, “Paul’s been… worse than usual.”
“Worse?” The glance Jesse shot me was stiletto sharp. “Worse in what way? Susannah, if he’s laid a hand on you—”
“Not that,” I interrupted quickly, realizing with a sinking heart that the speech I’d been up half the night rehearsing—the speech that I’d convinced myself was so perfect, I needed to hurry right down to the rectory to say it now, at once, even though it was the middle of the night and I’d have to “borrow” my mom’s car to get there—wasn’t perfect at all…. In fact, it was completely wrong. “What I mean is,lately, he’s been threatening… well, to do something I don’t really understand. To you.”
Jesse looked amused. Which was not exactly the reaction I’d been expecting.
“So you came rushing down here,” he said, “in the middle of the night to warn me? Susannah, I’m touched.”
“Jesse, I’m serious,” I said. “I think Paul’s up to something. Remember Mrs. Gutierrez?”
“Of course.” Jesse had translated the dead woman’s frantic message for me because my Spanish is pretty much confined to taco and, of course, querida. “What about her?”
Quickly, I told him about having met Paul in Mrs. Gutierrez’s backyard. Even though I skimmed over the bit about Paul having stolen the money before I’d been able to get my hands on it, Jesse’s outrage was obvious. I saw a glint of steel in his eyes, and he said something in Spanish that I couldn’t understand, but I’m guessing it wasn’t complimentary to Paul’s parentage.
“Father D’s going to take care of it,” I hastened to assure him, in case Jesse was getting any ideas about trying to take Paul on—something I’d warned him repeatedly would be foolhardy in the extreme. I didn’t say that Father D. was unaware of Paul’s theft… only that the Gutierrezes were in need. I knew what Jesse would say if he found out I’d left Father Dominic in the dark about Paul’s latest transgression.
I also knew, however, what Paul would do if he found out I’d narced on him.
“But that’s not what I’m worried about,” I added hastily. “It’s something Paul said when I… when I tried to get him to give the money back.” I thought it better to leave out the part about when I’d gone for Paul’s solar plexus. Also the thing Paul had said earlier in the day, about how his plans for Jesse were more humane than my own plans for himself. Because I had a feeling now that I knew what he’d meant by that. Though he couldn’t have been more wrong. “It was something about you and what he was going to do you. Not kill you—”
“That,” Jesse interrupted dryly, “would be difficult, querida, given that I’m already dead.”
I glared at him. “You know what I mean. He said he wasn’t going to kill you. He was going to… I think he said he was going to keep you from having di
ed in the first place.”
Even in the darkness of the car’s interior, I saw Jesse’s eyebrow go up.
“He has a very high opinion of his own abilities, that one” was all he said, however.
“Jesse,” I said. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t taking Paul’s threat seriously. “He really meant it. He’s said it to me a couple of times, now. I seriously think he might be up to something.”
“Slater is always going to be up to something where you’re concerned, Susannah,” Jesse said, in a voice that suggested he was more than a little tired of the subject. “He’s in love with you. Ignore him, and eventually he’ll go away.”
“Jesse,” I said. I couldn’t, of course, tell him that I’d have liked nothing better than to turn my back on Paul and his manipulative ways, but that I couldn’t because I’d promised him I wouldn’t… in return for Jesse’s life. Or at least his continued presence in this dimension. “I really think—”
“Ignore him, Susannah.” Jesse was smiling a little now as he shook his head. “He’s only saying these things because he knows they upset you, and then you pay attention to him. ‘Oh, Paul! No, don’t, Paul!’”
I looked at him in horror. “Was that supposed to be an imitation of me?”
“Don’t gratify him by paying attention,” Jesse continued as if he hadn’t heard me, “and he’ll grow tired of it and move on.”
“I don’t sound anything like that.” I chewed my lower lip uncertainly. “Do I really sound like that?”
“And now, if that’s all,” Jesse went on, ignoring me exactly the way he’d told me to ignore Paul, “I think you should be getting home, querida. If your mother should wake and find you gone, you know she’ll worry. Besides, don’t you have school in a few hours?”
“But—”
“Querida.” Jesse leaned over the gearshift and slipped a hand behind my neck. “You worry too much.”
“Jesse, I—”
But I didn’t get to finish what I’d started to say—nor, a second later, could I even recall what I’d meant to tell him. That’s because he’d pulled me—gently, but inexorably— toward him, and covered my mouth with his.
Of course, it’s impossible when Jesse’s lips are on mine to think about anything other than the way those lips make me feel… which is unbelievably cherished and desired. I don’t have a whole lot of experience in the kissing department, but even I know that what happens every time Jesse kisses me is… well, extraordinary.
And not just because he’s a ghost, either. All the guy has to do is lower his lips to mine and it’s like a Fourth of July sparkler going off deep inside me, flaming brighter and brighter until I can hardly bear the white-hot heat anymore. The only thing that seems as if it might put the fire out is pressing myself closer to him….
But, of course, that only makes it worse, because then Jesse—who usually seems to have a fire of his own burning somewhere—ends up touching me someplace, beneath my shirt, for instance, where, of course, I want to be touched, but where he doesn’t think his fingers have any business roaming. Then the kissing ends as Jesse apologizes for insulting me, even though insulted is the last thing I feel, something I’ve made as clear to him as I can, to no apparent avail.
But that’s what I get for falling in love with a guy who was born back when men still treated women as if they were dainty breakable figurines instead of flesh and blood. I’ve tried to explain to him that things are different now, but he remains stubbornly convinced that everything below the neck is off-limits until the honeymoon….
Except, of course, when we’re kissing, like now, and he happens, in the heat of the moment, to forget he’s a nineteenth-century gentleman.
I felt his hand move along the waistband of my jeans as we kissed. Our tongues entwined, and I knew it was only a matter of time until that hand slipped beneath my sweater and up toward my bra. I uttered a giddy prayer of thanks that I’d worn the front-closing one. Then, my eyes closed, I did a little exploration of my own, running my palms along the hard wall of muscles I could feel through the cotton of his shirt…
…until Jesse’s fingers, instead of dipping inside my 34 B, seized my hand in a grip of iron.
“Susannah.” He was breathing hard and the word came out sounding a little ragged as he rested his forehead against mine.
“Jesse.” I wasn’t breathing too evenly myself.
“I think you’d better go now.”
How had I known he was going to say that?
It occurred to me that we would be able to do this—kiss like this, I mean—a lot more often and more conveniently if Jesse would get over the absurd idea that he has to stay with Father Dominic, now that we are, for want of a better word, an item. It was my bedroom, after all, that he’d been murdered in, way back when. Shouldn’t it be my bedroom he continues to haunt?
I didn’t couch it in those terms, though, since I knew Jesse, who’s an old-fashioned guy, doesn’t exactly approve of couples living together before wedlock. I also put resolutely from my mind the warning Father Dominic had given me, just before he’d left for San Francisco, about not giving into temptation where Jesse is concerned. It’s all very well for Father D. to talk. He’s a priest. He has no idea what it’s like to be a red-blooded teenage mediator. Of the female variety.
“Jesse,” I said, still a little breathless from all the kissing, “I can’t help thinking… well, this thing with Paul. I mean, who knows if maybe he really has come up with some new way to… to keep you and me apart? And now, with Father Dom gone for who knows how long, I… Well, don’t you think it might be better if you came back to my house for a while?”
Jesse, even though he’d almost just had his hand up my shirt, didn’t like that idea at all. “So you can protect me from the nefarious Mr. Slater?” Was it my imagination or did he sound more amused than, er, aroused? “Thank you for the invitation, querida, but I can take care of myself.”
“But if Paul finds out Father D. is gone, he might come after you. And if I’m not around to stop him—”
“This may come as a surprise to you, Susannah,” Jesse said, lifting his head and placing my hand in my lap once more, “but I can handle Slater without your help.”
Now he definitely sounded amused.
“And now you’re going home,” he went on. “Good night, querida.”
He kissed me one last time, a brief peck good-bye. I knew that any second he was going to disappear.
But there was still something else I needed to know. Ordinarily, I’d have asked Father Dominic, but since he wasn’t around…
“Wait,” I said. “Before you go… one last thing.”
Jesse had already started to shimmer. “What, querida?”
“The fourth dimension,” I blurted out.
He had begun to dematerialize, but now he looked solid again.
“What about it?” he asked.
“Um,” I said. I’m sure he thought I was just asking to keep him there for a few more precious seconds. And truthfully? I probably was. “What is it?”
“Time,” Jesse said.
“Time?” I echoed. “That’s it? Just… time?”
“Yes,” Jesse said. “Time. Why do you ask? For school?”
“Sure,” I said. “For school.”
“The things they teach now,” he said, shaking his head.
“Cat food,” I said, holding out the bag. “Don’t forget.”
No wonder we can’t seem to make it past second base.
He took the bag from me.
“Good night, querida,” he said.
And then he was gone. The only sign that he’d been there at all were the badly fogged windows, steamed by our breath.
Or rather, by my breath, since Jesse doesn’t have any.
Chapter
five
Mr. Walden held up a stack of Scantron sheets and said, “Number-two pencils only, please.”
Kelly Prescott’s hand immediately shot up into the air.
; “Mr. Walden, this is an outrage.” Kelly takes her role as president of the junior class extremely seriously… especially when it has to do with scheduling dances. And, apparently, aptitude testing. “We should have been given at least twenty-four hours’ notice that we’d be undergoing state testing today.”
“Relax, Prescott.” Mr. Walden, our homeroom teacher and class advisor, began passing out the Scantron sheets. “They’re career aptitude tests, not academic. Your scores won’t show up on your permanent record. They’re to help you”—he picked up one of the test booklets lying on his desk and read from it aloud—“‘determine which careers are best suited to your particular skills and/or areas of interest and/or achievement.’ Got it? Just answer the questions.” Mr. Walden slapped a pile of answer sheets onto my desk for me to pass down my row. “You’ve got fifty minutes. And no talking.”
“ ‘Which do you enjoy more, working while a) outdoors? or b) indoors?’” I heard my stepbrother Brad read aloud from across the room. “Hey, where’s c) heavily intoxicated?”
“You loser,’” Kelly Prescott chortled.
“‘Are you a ‘night person’ or a ‘day person’?” Adam McTavish looked mockly shocked. “This test is totally biased against narcoleptics.”
“‘Do you work best a) alone or b) in a group?’” My best friend, CeeCee, could hardly seem to contain her disgust. “Oh my God, this is so stupid.”
“What part of ‘no talking,’ ” Mr. Walden demanded, “do you people not understand?”
But no one paid any attention to him.
“This is stupid,” Adam declared. “How is this test going to determine whether or not I’m qualified for a career?”
“It measures your aptitude, stupid.” Kelly sounded disgusted. “The only career you’re qualified for is working the drive-through window at In-N-Out Burger.”
“Where you, Kelly, will be working the fryer,” Paul pointed out dryly, causing the rest of the class to crack up….