“Freaks? What does she mean by—”
“—Suffering from delusions of grandeur.”
“Just ignore her. She doesn’t have any say here.”
This last bit was from my friend, the creepy janitor, who actually tried to shove me away from Killian while he was talking.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” I slapped at his hands. “Killian is mine. Mine, mine, mine. You want something from him, you come to me, first.”
Then the weirdest thing happened. As soon as the words left my mouth, all the ghosts…er, spirits, froze up. They just went totally stiff, no pun intended. Then this blast of wind came out of nowhere and knocked them all back, like they were dresses on a rack. They hovered, wobbling in the wind, about three feet back from us.
I shivered, but the wind didn’t move me. “What is going on?”
Killian didn’t answer.
I elbowed him in the back, and he grunted. “Ouch!”
“I asked you a question. Open your eyes and tell me what’s going on.”
His back moved against mine as he straightened up and looked around. He drew in a sharp breath. “That is so …”
“Weird? Freaky? Utterly random?” I tossed adjectives at him, hoping to keep him talking and explain what we were looking at.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. Except …” He paused.
“Oh, my God,” I snapped, “talking to you is like pulling a backflip into the splits.”
“What?”
“Awkward, painful, and not particularly useful in a routine.” I spun around to face him. “Except what?”
“Yesterday,” he said slowly. “In the hallway. When you got them to back off …”
I frowned, trying to remember. “Yeah, you’re right. This weird breeze totally kicked up from nowhere, but it wasn’t anything like this.” I waved my hand at the stiffened stiffs.
“What did you say?”
I stared at him. “I said, what happened yesterday wasn’t anything like—”
“No, I mean, what did you say yesterday when it happened?” Killian looked like a man with an idea.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. ‘Hey, you dead people, back off ’?”
He looked around as if expecting a wind, but nothing happened. He sighed. “What did you say today? Do you remember that?” he asked with some sarcasm.
I made a face at him. “Bite me.”
“I’m serious. What did you say?”
I rolled my eyes. “Nothing special. You were right there. You heard me.”
“Just …”
“All right, all right. I said that they’d have to come through me to get to you.”
A light wind kicked up again, blowing Killian’s hair back from his face. I held my breath, waiting for it to toss me away like the others, but the air simply flowed around me.
“That is so cool,” he murmured. He looked at me, his pale eyes lit with delight.
I folded my arms across my chest, taking in the frozen faces with a shiver. “Don’t thank me yet. What does it mean?”
He shook his head, turning in a circle to see them all. “I don’t know. I think it might—”
“Second thoughts, Mr. Killian?”
We both spun around to find Brewster striding up the sidewalk, a sullen Jesse McGovern in tow.
“Shit,” Killian muttered. Then in a louder voice, “No, sir, Mr. Brewster.” He looked over at me with a questioning glance.
“What?” I shrugged. “My work here is done. They aren’t going to bother you. Ever again, it looks like.” I frowned. “So, go to class or suspension or whatever. Find me when you’re done, and you can teach me more stuff.”
“You sure?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. At the same time, Brewster, now a few feet from us, asked, “Sure of what, Mr. Killian?”
Killian gritted his teeth and started toward the building.
Oddly enough, I felt a little … sad to see him go. Now that he wasn’t being quite so annoying and trying to run away from me, it was kind of nice to have him around, a relief to be not so alone anymore. Even if it was with weird Will Killian. He hadn’t even made me feel bad about what he’d seen at my house.
I edged around the frozen spirits to park myself on one of the wooden benches in the Circle. There was something just a little creepy about standing there by myself in the middle of all of them. Like they were just waiting for something to happen and …
The doors clanked shut behind Killian, and a ripple spread across the spirit crowd. One by one, they broke free of whatever had been holding them … and they all turned toward me. Some of them seemed, perhaps, a little angry. The creepy janitor guy was actually cracking his knuckles in anticipation.
I stood up, surprised to find my knees shaking. Hmmm. “You have to come through me to get to him,” I said quickly.
But … no strange wind, no freezing in place.
“Gladly,” the janitor said, advancing toward me.
I threw my hands up to cover my face and gave a much too girlie shriek. Though, if I’d had a chance to think about it, I would have wondered what they could do to me. I mean, I was already dead.
“What,” a disgusted female voice spoke up, “are you doing?”
I lowered my hands slowly and found them all forming a line, some of them pushing and shoving, but nonetheless, a line with me at the head of it. The polka-dot princess was second behind the janitor and leaning out around him to stare at me.
“Well … what are
She frowned at me. “Would you rather we take numbers?”
“Huh?”
“No question,” the janitor said, “this one is as stupid as she looks.”
“Hey!”
“Look, honey …” The young man I’d seen in the hallway yesterday with Will, the one in the old-fashioned blue military uniform, stepped out of line. “Save my spot,” he said over his shoulder to a young guy wearing a short stubby tie over his white dress shirt, before he walked toward me. A few boos emanated from the back of the line, but he waved them away. “I ain’t cutting. I’m just trying to help her. All of you shut up.”
He turned to me. “Sweetheart, we all heard you. We have to come through you to get to him.” His voice held tinges of a New York accent, but he looked familiar….
He must have seen me trying to place him, because he offered his hand for a handshake. “Robert Brewster the first.”
I shook his hand automatically. “Brewster as in Principal Brewster?” If the principal was being haunted, that would go a long way in explaining his pissy mood.
He beamed. “That’s my boy.”
“Your son?”
He frowned at me. “My grandson.” He waved a hand at his uniform. “This is World War II. Can’t you tell how old … Oh, forget it. You young people have no sense of history.” He shook his head.
I shrugged.
“None of that’s my point anyway. This is. You volunteered to be his guide, so you tell us how you want to hear from us.”
I stared at him. “I don’t … I don’t understand.”
“Told you. Stupid,” the janitor muttered.
“That’s enough out of you,” Grandpa Brewster said over his shoulder, and the janitor shut up immediately. Then he turned back to me. “Look, I’m sure you’re a real nice girl and you got no idea what you got yourself into back there, but you’re not leaving us any choices or helping us out at all.”
“Sorry?” I offered, still having no idea what he was talking about.
