room.
“Joonie, wait,” I said.
She didn’t answer, nor did she stop, and the door to the nurse’s office slammed shut after her.
I turned to Alona, who now leaned back against the nurse’s desk, her arms folded across her chest and a smug look on her face. “How did you do that? How did you know it was in there?”
Alona shrugged. “I’m dead. I know everything now. Like how you look for a little personal time every morning before—”
“Stop,” I snapped, trying to pretend my face wasn’t turning red. “Death doesn’t make you, or anyone else, omniscient.” Which meant she was an alarmingly good guesser or I was shockingly predictable. “Try again.”
“You are no fun.” She sighed. “The edge of the board stuck out for a second when she dropped her stupid, ugly bag on me. Took me a second to recognize it is all.” She shrugged. “What’s the big deal anyway? Other than it’s total proof of her freakiness that she carries that thing around with her.”
I shook my head. “It’s more than that.”
“You don’t think that thing actually works … do you?” She arched an eyebrow at me.
“Around me, it does.”
“Right.”
“I’m serious.” I lowered the ice bag from my face so I could see her more clearly. “For regular people, it’s no big deal, but for me …” I paused. “Okay, imagine you’re trying to make a call to someone in another country, but you don’t have a phone.”
“Am I stupid in this example? How do you call without a phone?”
“Just shut up for a second. I’m trying to explain.” I took a deep breath. “You want to call, you’re concentrating all your efforts on communicating, but with no phone, nothing happens.”
“Duh,” she muttered.
I ignored her. “Give someone a Ouija board, and you have a phone but no service.”
She nodded.
“Use a Ouija board around me and suddenly, you’ve got a phone with the megaservice package. Except instead of just sending voices, it’s like opening a doorway between the two places. The Ouija board acts as a focus, helps you concentrate and send your energy, but it can’t go anywhere without me. Me, whatever I am, I give it power and a place to go, a conduit to travel. Remember, I’m caught in the middle just like you, but I can interact with both sides. Energy on either side is just energy until it finds me, and then it has weight and substance and form….” A trickle of ice water leaked from the bag and ran across my hand, and I shivered from more than the cold.
“So Joonie calls up a couple of dead relatives to come through the doorway for a chat.” She shrugged. “What’s the big deal?”
“No,” I said firmly. “People who are gone, really gone, can’t be reached. And reaching out like that … you never know who you’re going to get. Just because you’re dialing a particular person, so to speak, doesn’t mean it’s going to be that person who answers.”
She frowned.
I sighed. “It’s like the telephone is ringing, and anyone walking by can pick it up. And some of those who are stuck in between are not people you want to be messing with.” Sometimes people were crazy before they died. Sometimes dying made them crazy … or crazier. Grandpa B., Liesel, and the rest of them, they were annoying sometimes, but not particularly harmful. That was not the case with others I’d seen and been careful to avoid.
She gave me a scathing look. “I get what you’re saying. I’m not stupid.” She paused, lifting one hand to her mouth to nibble at her thumbnail before she caught herself and pulled her hand away. “I was just wondering … how many times have you seen Gloomy Gus? I mean … you know who.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said dryly. “Ten, twelve times, maybe.”
“What makes you think that’s … your dad?”
I let out a slow breath, lifting the watery ice bag up to my face. “Because I’ve seen a few suicides come through here, and they’re sort of like that, not whole.” I gave her a sideways glance. “That’s how I knew you didn’t hurt yourself intentionally, no matter what Leanne Whitaker is saying.”
“Bitch,” Alona muttered.
“What were you doing that day anyway?” I asked.
She cocked an eyebrow at me. “My question came first. Why do you think it’s your dad?”
I watched her for a long second, and she met my gaze steadily. I opened my mouth to tell her to forget it, but the story of that last morning with my dad poured out of me instead. It was the first time I’d told anyone, except Dr. Miller and Joonie, and I regretted it even as I was still speaking. But Alona just nodded thoughtfully.
“That still doesn’t explain why you think it’s him, though. Surely there are other people who’ve …” She made a face.
With a sigh, I continued. “It … he seems particularly focused on me. Whenever he shows up, he always comes straight after me.” I lifted a shoulder, wincing at the pain in my ribs. “He’s the only suicide that I’ve known personally.”
“They all look like that?” She pressed. “Big black clouds of smoke or whatever?”
“No, I’ve never seen one like this before. He’s … more waves of emotion than anything else. But I’ve seen lots of different things over the years. What are you getting at?” I asked impatiently.
“Your dad died, like, three years ago, right? That’s what you said.” She stared at me, daring me to challenge her.
“Yeah, so?”
“When did you start seeing Gus?”
Suddenly, I didn’t like the direction this was heading. “That doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes it takes a while for spirits to find their way—”
“When?” She kicked at my shin lightly.
I bent down and rubbed my leg with my free hand. “I don’t know, about eight or nine months ago, I guess.”
Actually, I knew exactly when I’d seen him the first time. It had been the first night the doctors would allow Joonie and me to visit Lily after her accident. My mom had come with us. And after I’d seen Lily and what my gift had indirectly caused, that’s when I’d realized I couldn’t stay.
“Right after I told my mom I wasn’t sticking around after graduation.” She’d fled the hospital in tears. That was more than enough probably to call my father from wherever he’d been residing. I’d promised to take care of my mother — it was the last thing I ever said to my father.
“So you’re saying that your dad, who knew you were a ghost-talker, was just hanging around waiting for
When she put it that way, it sounded ridiculous, but Alona didn’t know how things worked. Hell, sometimes I didn’t even know how they worked. Besides, who else, or what else, could it be?
“You ever see it when Joonie is not around?” Alona asked quietly.
I froze. Against my will, my mind played back all my encounters with the angry ghost and every time, sure enough, Joonie was nearby, if not standing right next to me. “No,” I said firmly. “Not possible.”
“Why not?” Alona stood up. “Because she’s your friend? Did you not see her in the caf today?”
I hadn’t realized Alona had noticed her, too. Joonie could have been praying, like I thought. Or maybe she was trying to concentrate on the Ouija board in her bag … No. I shook my head. I wouldn’t allow Alona’s prejudice to taint my thoughts.
“And I don’t even want to tell you the weirdness I witnessed from her in your room yesterday. She’s, like, in love with you or something, but …” Alona frowned. “No, that’s not quite right, either. Something is really wrong with that girl.”
“Stop it,” I snapped. “You don’t know her. You don’t know anything that we’ve been through in the last year.”
“Oh, what, the mysterious Lily?” She folded her arms across her chest. “Why don’t you tell me? I’ve asked enough times.”
