A Guide to the Other Side (17 page)

NEEDLESS TO SAY, MY MOM
was not happy with me.

“Less than a day after your Boston escapades, you go over to Aunt Hilda's to apologize,” she said, her voice low and emotionless, “and you wind up not only telling her that she's not going to have another birthday, but that one of her best friends just died?”

“How was I supposed to know Marjorie had just died?” I said, throwing my hands up. “It's not like the ghosts walk around with a little calendar tied around their neck telling me when they crossed over.”

“And not only did you scar your great-aunt, your father seems equally traumatized.”

My dad had burrowed himself into a bunch of blankets on the sofa because the experience with Marjorie and Aunt Hilda had resurfaced the memory of me telling him about his father.

“This is not my fault,” I said. “None of it is! Be mad at the universe, or God, or Buddha, or Zeus, or whoever you want to be mad at for giving me this gift, but don't be mad at me. I can't help it.”

She shook her head, looking sad and defeated. “Can't Kristina help you more? Can't she help you just, I don't know, somehow make them stop? Set up some healing hours and say that you're available to heal only on Saturdays between eleven and three?”

My jaw tensed. “I'll see what she can do.”

  *  *  *  

That night I cracked open my Halloween candy and hunted for anything with chocolate. All the sweet, sugary stuff, like Smarties and Starburst and Skittles, got tossed aside. It was an old habit based on something Kristina said to me once. She had been watching me eat chocolate one day, and in a pathetic, puppy-dog way she said, “The one food I wish I could eat is chocolate. It's brown and strange-looking, but people get so happy when they eat it.”

“People get happy eating anything when they're really hungry,” I said.

“But chocolate is different. Chocolate is what people get for special occasions. People go out of their way to eat it, even if they're not hungry. Whenever people die suddenly, they never cross over and say, ‘I'm so thrilled I decided to eat that stalk of celery.' It's always, ‘I'm just happy I decided to eat that last piece of chocolate cake.'”

Since then I've always savored my chocolate, because even though I'm pretty sure I'm not going to die for a while, there's always a chance it could be my last time eating it.

As I chewed on a fun-size Milky Way, I wondered where Kristina was. I wondered whether she was uncomfortable being tied up with the Sheet Man, or if it even bothered her at all. It was probably just a minor inconvenience. It probably felt like only a couple of hours had passed. I was worried for her, of course, but I couldn't help but feel defeated by the fact that she was already dead. In books, TV shows, and movies the main drama always seems to involve death somehow, and how terrible it is.

Death was the least of my concerns. What more could the Sheet Man do to her, really? He could keep her trapped in that weird dimension he existed in. He could replace her eyes with black buttons to make her look like him. He could convert her to the Sheet Woman and make Sheet Babies. I shuddered. That was a terrifying thought.

I wanted to panic about her being gone, but all I could think about was how her absence affected
me
. Her duty was to assist me, and now that she was missing, it meant that a very important piece of my daily life was gone.

I swallowed the candy and reached for another as it dawned on me that this sort of thinking was the reason she had snapped at me that night after the Italian dinner. I was so worried about myself and how she could help me that I rarely thought about her.

But . . . she was dead! There was really nothing I could do to help her, and if she'd been having ghostly feelings about loneliness and missing out on the human experience, then she should have mentioned them rather than lashing out.

Right? That was a reasonable request. It was just hard to imagine her as a real person with feelings, but maybe I needed to do that nowadays. Her world was just so different from mine. Sure, we spent the majority of my waking hours together, but when I slept, Kristina was off in the Beyond living her secretive ghost life. I had no idea what happened over there except for the half hints and clues she gave me.

I sighed and grabbed yet another Milky Way. None of this would matter if she never got out of Sheet Man limbo. But I would get her out. I had the talisman. The Sheet Man would visit me again, and I would stop him and get Kristina back.

My phone rang suddenly, interrupting my thoughts. I didn't recognize the area code, but I picked up anyway, secretly hoping Kristina had somehow used her energy to communicate via the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Baylor?”

“Uh, yes, hi. Who's this?”

“My name is Isabella Parker.”

I shot up and jumped to my desk.

“Isabella!” I said. “I didn't expect to hear from you.”

“Will told me about your meeting yesterday,” she said. “It sounded pretty awkward.”

“Yeah, he didn't seem too eager to speak with me.”

“You probably caught him off guard,” she said. “To be honest, I was caught off guard too. But then I searched for you online and came across all sorts of information. Did you know you have fans, Baylor? There are a couple of websites devoted to you. One group calls themselves the Baylievers.”

I was thankful she couldn't see me blush. “That's embarrassing. I really don't Google myself too often.”

“And I found an article about you from just the other day. Apparently, you knocked over a lady and then held an impromptu reading at an Italian restaurant?”

“That . . . that, yes, that happened, but it was all an accident.”

“Whatever it was, it's amazing to read about, and I called you the instant I read the last word.”

“Well, thanks, I guess. It'll be helpful to learn more about your father.”

“Will told me Dad's visiting you and wears a sheet on his head the whole time? That's very unlike him. He was a social creature and wouldn't hide himself like that.”

“Could he have been involved with some bad deeds in his life?” I asked. “Maybe some dark stuff you don't know about?”

“I doubt it,” she said, speaking a little faster. “He was a great guy. Even toward the end, when he had his memory problems, he was so sweet and felt so bad when he forgot one of us.”

“Isabella, his presence is shrouded in evil,” I said. “Something's wrong with this picture.”

“It's got to be something with Angela.” She said the name in the same exaggerated accent as her brother. “That woman! She was evil, Baylor. She probably did something to my dad, and the residue of it is affecting his afterlife.”

“What could she have done that was so bad?”

“Well, for starters, she only married the man for his money!” she said exuberantly, and I could picture her shaking her fist on the other end of the phone. “She was less than half his age when they got married, and they had dated for only a few months. It was so obvious! And then when he died, to find out that he'd left her all the money and didn't leave a dime for us? I don't buy it. She knew exactly what she was doing.”

“It still doesn't explain the sheet,” I said. “I can communicate just fine with people who've done far worse things.”

“I don't think she was treating him right,” she said. “Toward the end, whenever we visited them at their home, something felt . . . off. And I'm not just saying that because I don't like her.”

“I don't know,” I said. “It still doesn't seem serious enough for him to deserve this sort of fate.”

“Then Angela must have done something worse, and we don't know about it,” she said.

“Do you know where I could find her? To ask her some questions?”

“No idea,” she said. “Once my dad died, she disappeared. She recently had the estate sale, so I bet she's gearing up to sell the house and run off with even more money.”

“I hope not,” I said. “That sort of bad karma catches up with everyone eventually.”

“God, Baylor, this all makes sense in a weird way,” she said. “I've never felt my dad's presence in the years since he died. Not once, not even so much as a nightmare with him in it. It's like a void.”

“Well, hopefully, we'll be able to fix that soon.”

“I hope so,” she said. “I really do.”

We ended the chat with the promise to call each other should we learn anything more. I hung up and looked at the notes I had written down on my notepad.

Nothing. It was nice of her to call, but I got nothing concrete from her.

I sighed and lay back down on my bed. I was no closer to finding Kristina than before.

When we were kids, we'd get into such trouble sometimes. Well, I'd get into trouble, and she'd giggle on the other side. Having a clued-in dead sister as an accomplice was not good for my behavior. One time at school Kristina told me the code to get into the teachers' lounge, and I sneaked in and took some sodas. I did it a couple of times more, and then I got cocky and brought some friends with me. As we were raiding the fridge, a teacher caught us and marched us straight down to the principal's office, where all my friends promptly turned me in as the ringleader.

Imagine explaining to your principal that your invisible sister gave you the code and you didn't realize it would get you in trouble. That led to a couple of awkward meetings with my parents, and afterward they gave me the strict instructions never to mention my gift to anyone.

This was all before Kristina went away and learned more about her soul's purpose. After that she rarely goofed around at all. But I still thought of us as partners in crime, and the fact that I didn't know how to help her like she'd helped me a million times before was the only thing on my mind as I tossed and turned that night.

I DREAMED I WAS WALKING
through the cemetery and saw Tommy Thorne. He was standing under the giant tree, guarding his tombstone, his bright red hoodie shrouded in mist. When he saw me, he tilted his head, his jet-black hair sweeping to the side.

“You know where to find peace,” he said.

Then I woke with a start, unsure of when I'd fallen asleep in the first place.

It was seven forty-five on Monday morning, and I'd overslept big-time. I sprinted to the shower, rinsed off, brushed my teeth, and got dressed all in about three minutes.

Downstairs my mom was bouncing Ella on her hip.

“You're still here?” she said. “I thought you left twenty minutes ago.”

“Obviously not,” I said, grabbing a banana and heading out the door.

“Stay out of trouble,” she called as I shut the door.

It was too late for that. The street was swarmed with spirits. Did Kristina really block that many out for me? There hadn't been that many out yesterday, though, so that couldn't be it. I walked down the block toward school, pulling my hoodie over my head and keeping my eyes to the ground.

It's always disconcerting to see demons floating around that early in the morning, and I felt strangely vulnerable without Kristina there to act as my buffer and, as much as I hated to admit it, my security blanket. Even though the spirits weren't bothering me that morning, all I wanted was to go straight to the cemetery. Tommy clearly had a message for me, and I needed to hear it. Maybe it would help me get a step closer to finding Kristina.

Once I got to school, I realized I hadn't done my routine. I was so zonked out from thinking about Kristina and Tommy and rushing for school that I completely forgot to surround myself with positive energy. I ruffled through my bag, pulled out my emergency lighter, sparked the flame, and enveloped myself with light, immediately feeling better . . . until someone screamed my name.

“Baylor Bosco!”

I turned around to look for the source of anger and saw my vice-principal standing near the entranceway, glaring at me. Mr. Connell was a very thin man who wore clothes that were always too baggy for his body, like dress shirts that were trying to swallow him whole. His voice also happened to sound just like Kermit the Frog's.

“What do you think you're doing with that lighter? Come here, young man.”

I imagined a small amphibian scolding me, and I laughed as I walked up to him.

“Oh, you think it's funny, do you?”

“No, Mr. Connell, I'm sorry, it's all a misunderstanding.”

“I don't think so,” he said. “I saw you hold your lighter close to your face. You know there's no smoking allowed on school property, not to mention the fact that you're only thirteen! I'm going to have to search your belongings.”

I thought about my mom's words as I'd left the house:
Stay out of trouble
. Clearly, she was still mad at me, and the last thing I needed was for the school to call her and get me into more trouble.