“At midnight, though?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Wasn’t the library closed?”
“Yup. I squeezed myself between the card catalog and the wall a few minutes before the library closed and waited until everyone was gone and it was locked up. Then, camped out at her shelf, I waited. Sure enough, right at midnight, there she was.”
My eyes widened. “You really saw her?”
Roland nodded. “Barely, but yes. She disappeared after maybe a minute, but I saw her. I definitely saw her.” He smiled and shook his head. “My mom grounded me for about a month, but I thought it was worth it. Until my brother came home that weekend—he was in college by then—and I told him about what I’d done, that I’d seen Ellie. He just started cracking up. Wanna guess why?”
He lifted Brunilda’s journal, and I frowned. “I don’t . . . oh. Oh.”
“Yep,” Roland said cheerfully. “There was no Ellie. No librarian had ever been crushed by a shelf of books. Just a dumb story he’d made up to scare his little brother. He had no idea I’d been obsessing over it for years. It was the family joke till I graduated high school.” He tossed the journal back on the pew. “After a while, I just went along with it. Went to prom alone and told everyone Ellie was my date, that sort of thing. The older I got, the more I wondered if maybe I had just imagined her. But a part of me still insisted she was real. It wasn’t until I got to college that I started to figure it out.”
“Why, what happened?”
“I met Sam,” Roland said simply. “Weirdo guy in my psych class who thought he could talk to dead people. I ended up telling him the whole story about Ellie. He said it was just like when he’d contact a dead person for some stranger and get a ‘message from the beyond’ that he couldn’t possibly know; he received it because the person believed in what he was doing, and so they got the message they wanted. Sam said not believing is just as powerful as believing, and if I believed in Ellie, then maybe she was real after all. And I . . .” He paused, grinning. “Thought he was nuts. But I also sort of understood what he was saying. That’s when I got into parapsychology.”
I sighed. “But the point is, your brain tricked you into seeing things. You saw Ellie, but she still wasn’t real.”
“No?” Roland arched an eyebrow. “Then why did Guzmán and the rest of us see that table float? We didn’t believe in Brunilda, but his students did. Their belief made her ghost real, and we saw proof.”
I sat back against the pew, frowning. It was starting to make sense now. All of it.
Roland was still watching me, brow knitted. “Kat.”
“What?”
“You’re crying.”
Startled, I touched my cheek, then wiped my face with the napkins. “Ugh, sorry.”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Girl stuff, you don’t want to hear about it.” Ignoring the skeptical look he gave me, I shoved the napkins into my pocket. “Looks like they’re finishing up.” I pointed at Jess, who was shaking Guzmán’s hand, camera hanging at her side. Roland glanced over, too, and I slipped out of the pew and down the aisle before he could ask me anything else.
“Mind if I jump in the shower first?” Dad asked as soon as we got back to our hotel room.
“Sure.” I flopped back on the bed and pulled my phone out of my pocket. Whistling cheerfully, Dad grabbed his pajamas and headed into the bathroom. The whole cast was clearly thrilled about how things had turned out with Guzmán. I’d spent the last hour pretending to smile and act just as excited. But I wasn’t.
I opened my inbox first, keeping my right finger off the screen. The cut wasn’t bleeding anymore, but it still stung.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Monica Has Invited YOU to a Bridal Shower!
For: Katya Sinclair
WILL ATTEND WILL NOT ATTEND
Please join us for a bridal shower in honor of
MONICA MILLS
Sunday, March 1, at 6:00 p.m.
Maison Bellerose, Chelsea, Ohio
Hosted by Edie Mills
I closed the e-mail quickly and opened my blog dashboard. No new comments.
Sighing, I tossed my phone on the comforter, then pulled off the Elapse, too. I wouldn’t be able to put off telling Mom I didn’t want to be in her wedding much longer. I should just call her before we left for New York the next day and get it over with. The thought made my stomach turn over.
I rolled onto my side and winced as something sharp dug into my thigh. Sitting up, I ran my hands over the comforter, then stuck my hand in my pocket. And pulled out a rock.
I stared at it, bewildered. It was about half the size of my palm, and flat, with one side tapered to a razor-sharp point. Smooth, dark gray with a marbled pattern . . . like the rocks under the willow tree. When had I put this in my pocket?
Unsettled, I stood up and walked over to the desk to examine the rock under the lamp. I remembered playing with one of these when we were filming the séance under the tree. But I hadn’t even been wearing these shorts. And I didn’t remember that rock having such a sharp edge. Sharp enough to carve words into tree bark. Oscar had said it looked like that’s what I was doing tonight. But I hadn’t.
Had I?
A sudden movement in the mirror made the blood in my veins freeze.
I carefully set the rock down on the desk, keeping my eyes averted. But I could see her in my peripheral vision: the girl standing next to me in the mirror. Not transparent anymore—just as solid, just as real as me. And I knew who she was before I even looked up at her
