“Grandmother, it’s obvious that he loves you and wants to help you however he can. Though I don’t know why, when you’re so mean to him.”
I walked down the hall and looked in the front parlor. “You were awful last night,” I went on. “Matt has a learning disability. It has nothing to do with intelligence, but it makes school hard. You had no right to embarrass him the way you did.”
Grandmother raised her head, like a cat picking up a new scent. “Well, now, instead of going after Matt with that smart little mouth of yours, you’re defending him.”
“I can do both.”
“Have you become friends? I believe you have,” she said before I could answer. “You’re working together, aren’t you?
He’s siding with you now.”
I shook my head in amazement and passed her in the hall, crossing over to the music room.
“You two are playing tricks on me!”
“No, Grandmother, we are not.”
“Where is the clock?” she asked.
My eyes surveyed the room one more time. “1 have no idea.”
Fortunately, I had agreed to work for Ginny from ten to three that day and could get away from the house for a while. I didn’t mention to her the strange things that had been happening, afraid that she might call my mother or insist I stay with her. I was spooked, but determined to figure out what was going on, which meant I had to stay at the house.
Before I knew it, it was three-fifteen and Ginny was shooing me out the door of Yesterdaze. I walked up High Street and had just passed Tea Leaves, when I heard a girl’s voice calling to me.
“Megan. Hey, Megan. Up here!” From a second-story window in the next building, Sophie’s ponytail dangled like a fiery flag. “I want to ask you something. Can you come up?”
“Sure,” I replied. “Is this where you live?”
Sophie laughed and I stepped back to look at the brick building. It was long, with a porch roof running from end to end, extending over the sidewalk. Next to the front door was a brass lantern and sign: The Mallard Tavern, 1733.
“It’s a B and B, bed and breakfast,” Sophie explained.
“Mom cleans it and I help out after school. Door’s open.”
I entered the front hall and climbed the carpeted steps, following the sound of a vacuum cleaner. When I arrived on the second floor, the machine shut off and Sophie stuck her head out a door. “The weekenders are gone,” she said.
“Mom’s down washing sheets and towels. Come on in.”
The room she was cleaning was homey, with red and white wallpaper, a canopy bed, and chairs pulled close to a small fireplace.
“I looked for you at the dance Saturday night,” Sophie said.
I figured she had invited me up to ask about my cousin.
“I’d like to have gone, but Matt doesn’t want me hanging around his friends. Like I said before, there’s really not much I can tell you about him.”
“Her,” Sophie corrected me.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a her I want to ask about.” She shook out a clean bottom sheet. “Avril Scarborough. Do you know her?” She watched my face and waited for my response.
“You mean the ghost?”
“Have you seen her?” she asked.
I walked to the other side of the double bed, caught the edge of the sheet, and slipped it over two corners of the mattress. “Have you?”
“I asked you first,” she said, then laughed. “Once I did.”
“When? Where?”
“Back in sixth grade,” she replied, tugging down her corners and smoothing the sheet. “1 was still hanging out with Kristy then and she had a sleepover. We paid her older sister to drive us to Scarborough House at four in the morning. Avril usually shows up just before dawn in the back wing.”
My breath caught. Then I reminded myself that people would expect to see a ghost in an abandoned part of a house, and people saw what they expected. I had seen what I expected after hearing Alice’s story.
“It was a bust,” Sophie continued. “Everybody got tired and whiney. Kristy’s sister got mad, piled us back in the car, and headed toward town again.”
“So when did you see her?”
“That same night, when we were crossing the bridge over Wist Creek.”
Sophie shook out a top sheet. We worked together to slip it under the lower end of the mattress and pull it up evenly.
“How do you know what you saw?” I asked. “How do you know it was Avril, or even a she?”
Sophie tossed me a pillow, then thought for a moment. “I guess there was something about the shape. It was thin and moved in a graceful kind of way. She seemed more like a girl than a woman.”
“Did anybody else see her that night?”
“Nobody. I got teased a lot,” Sophie added, then shrugged. “I’ve always seen things other people don’t, now I just don’t tell anyone.” We pulled the spread up over the pillows. “I guess you know how that is.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re psychic, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Me? No!”
Sophie’s wide blue eyes studied me. “I was sure you were. I felt a connection.”
I frowned and saw the color deepen in her cheeks. She picked up her tray of cleaning supplies and reached for the vacuum. “I’ve got another room to do.”
I followed her across the hall to a room that had different wallpaper but a similar arrangement of bed and furniture.
Sophie snatched up a feather duster and began whisking it over frames and mirrors. She didn’t look at me.
“I would never have said anything,” she explained, talking a little too fast, “except I thought you were like me. That’s why I hoped you had seen the ghost. Psychics seem to attract other forms of spiritual energy-they’re like magnets to ghosts. And-well, that’s all,” she said.
I caught her peeking at me.
“Are you sure you’re not?” she asked. “You’ve never been aware of things that other people aren’t? You’ve never had an experience you can’t explain?”
“No,” I lied.
She shook her head. “1 read you wrong.”
“Except,” I said, “some, uh, strange dreams.”
“Miss Lydia says that dreams are shadows cast by truth shining on our darkest secrets.”
“Well, mine aren’t all that mysterious,” I replied. “1 can explain them-most of them.”
I told Sophie about my childhood visits to a house that looked like Grandmother’s and my recent dream of the dollhouse, along with my theories about seeing photos of Mom with the miniature house.
“You could be right,” Sophie said, sounding unconvinced.
“You have a better explanation?”
“You’re psychic-telepathic. When you were little, your mom was watching you play and thinking about herself as a kid at home. You picked up the images and made them your own.”
“I like my theory better.”
“Okay by me,” Sophie said agreeably. She lifted a sheet from a pile on a chair, and we went to work making the bed.
