A Guide to the Other Side (22 page)

We pulled up in front of a stately brick building adorned with white shutters and white trim and white window boxes. The sign on the fence guarding the property read
WHITE FIELDS RETIREMENT HOME
.

It wasn't nearly as bad as I'd pictured. I had expected dead weeds everywhere and doors hanging off hinges, and I was surprised to see it actually looked pretty nice. The movies had warped my image of nursing homes.

Inside the lobby a teenage girl manned the reception desk, while several elderly people slowly milled about. I was desperately tuning out the huge throng of ghosts knocking to get through to me; this was no time to deliver messages. Instead I made a mental note to hold a healing session here soon.

“Hello!” said the girl at the front desk. Her name tag read
ASHLEE
.

“Hi, Ashlee,” I said. “I was wondering if you could provide some information about a resident for me.”

“I'm sorry, I can't give out resident information unless the resident is accompanying you.”

“Right, well, that's sort of impossible, since the resident I'm looking for is dead.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, information about any current or past resident is still confidential. I'm sorry.”

She frowned like she meant it.

“Excuse me, miss,” Reverend Henry said, brushing past me. “I'm sorry to cut off your conversation, but the father of one of my worshippers is near death, and I need to find his room as fast as possible.”

“Oh my,” she said. “Who is the resident?”

“Ken DeWong,” he said. “Please hurry.”

Ashlee typed something into her computer, and seconds later she said, “He's in room seventeen G. You're going to need to walk down the hall, turn left, and then go through the door on the right, which will lead you to the G wing of the—”

“I'm much too upset to remember any of what you're saying,” he said, talking at an impossibly fast pace. “Can you just lead me there?”

“I'm not supposed to leave my desk unattended, though,” she said, eyeing me nervously. “I can call someone to take you there.”

“I was just on the phone with Ken's son, and he told me every second counted,” Reverend Henry said so earnestly that I almost grabbed his arm to lead him to the room myself. “Please.”

She studied his face and sighed. “Okay,” she said, getting up. “Follow me.” She looked at me and said, “I'm sorry, I'll be right back if you don't mind waiting for a moment.”

She touched Reverend Henry's back and guided him forward, and he glanced back to give me a quick but pointed look. Once they turned the corner, I circled around the desk, took her seat, and examined the database she had open on the screen.

In the search bar on the top right she had typed “DeWong,” so I deleted it and typed “Parker.” I got six results back, and sure enough, one of them was “Parker, Alfred.”

I clicked on the name, and the first thing that popped up was all his basic information. I grabbed the notepad on her desk and began scrawling the information as fast as I could. I wasn't sure how much time I had, so I didn't bother looking down, hoping that it would all be legible later.

“Angela Mendoza-Parker,” I muttered to myself as I copied the emergency contact information. “There's your phone number. Let's hope it didn't change.”

I finished writing, searched for “DeWong” again, and then circled back around the desk and out of the door before Ashlee reappeared.

I ran to the parking lot and found Reverend Henry already in the car.

“How did you beat me here?”

“Ashlee took me to the room, and I told her to leave before I went in, since it was such a somber moment, and when she turned the corner, I walked out of the emergency exit and came right back here.”

“Sly move coming up with that story, Reverend,” I said. “I didn't know you had it in you.”

“Mr. DeWong's son owed me one, so it's all right,” he said.

“Well, I got a phone number, among other information,” I said.

“Call it!”

“And say what? ‘I know you're causing your dead husband to attack me, you gold digger!'?”

“Here, give that to me,” he said, taking the paper and pulling out his cell phone. He typed in the numbers and held the phone to his ear.

“Yes, hi, I'm looking for Angela? . . . Oh, this is she, good. Well, Angela, you made a donation to Keene Community Church recently, and we found an item of value in one of the pockets and figured that you might want it back, since it probably wasn't intended as a donation.”

My jaw nearly fell into my lap as I watched him lie so effortlessly.

“Oh, what item is it? I'm afraid I'm not permitted to say over the phone; it's something I can discuss only in person, unfortunately. . . . Yes, you're definitely going to want it. I may be a reverend, but I know an expensive thing when I see it.” He laughed heartily. “Tomorrow would be ideal, yes. . . . Noon? Is that the only time you're available?”

I shook my head vigorously. I couldn't miss school again.

“Ah, you're traveling tomorrow night. Got it. Okay, well, noon works. Just come inside the church and look for the office that says ‘Reverend Henry.' Okay, thanks, Angela. . . . Oh, it's
Ahn
-hell-uh? Great, thanks for letting me know. See you then.”

He hung up and looked at me with the strangest expression on his face.

“I keep sinning today,” he said. “It's ironic that such behavior is on behalf of the person with the most direct connection to the afterlife that I know of.”

“I can't miss school again tomorrow, Reverend Henry!”

“Listen, if I can lie to two separate people in the space of ten minutes, knowing it's for a good intention, then surely you can figure out a way to get to the church tomorrow during your lunch period.”

I HAD NEVER BEEN CHALLENGED
by a reverend before, and I figured if he could bend the rules a little bit, then so could I.

After getting dropped off at home, I debated whether or not I should just tell my mom and ask for a note to leave school early tomorrow, but I knew she would say no, go on a diatribe about the curse that was my gift, remind me that I was supposed to be grounded for all eternity, and then call the school tomorrow to check if I was still there.

I also knew full well that she would be equally mad if she found out I got caught skipping. It seemed doomed to be a lose-lose situation, and since Kristina wasn't there to offer advice, I chose the side of less confrontation.

Aiden was having confrontation troubles as well. He called me that night to give me the full report on what had happened.

“I found her in the nurse's office,” he said.

“And?”

“And that rat-faced, turd-lipped freak Andrew was there.”

“What? Why?”

“He didn't hear
why
she'd been attacked, just that some band nerd started beating her with a clarinet.”

“So what'd you do?”

“I ran!”

“Aiden!”

“I couldn't help it!” he said, distraught.

“Did she see you?”

“I don't think so. I just saw Andrew there petting her face with his scaly little hands.”

“Well,” I said, “that's no good.”

“What should I do?”

I tried to put myself in J's shoes and imagine what she would do in that situation.

“Aiden, you need to call her right now and tell her you want to go to the dance with her.”

“Isn't this sort of thing better in person?”

“Not when you have a cretin like Andrew hovering over her like an alien spaceship, ready to beam her up and away from you. Do it. Now.”

Before I'd finished speaking, Aiden started fiddling with some buttons on his phone.

“Aiden?” I said.

No response, more beeps, then ringing.

“Oh no,” I muttered. But I couldn't hang up. I should have, but I couldn't.

“Hello?” J said rather reluctantly.

“I love you!” Aiden blurted out. “I've loved you for a whole year and didn't have the courage to say it until today. Until you got beat up . . . for me.”

My jaw hit the ground.

“You . . . you love me?”

“Uh, yes,” he said, his voice nearly gone, replaced by a high-pitched squeal. “I think I do.”

“I got hit in the face today, and you didn't even come see me.”

“That's not true,” he said. “I did visit, but Andrew was standing there, and I didn't know what to do.”

“You should have knocked him out of the way, Aiden,” she said, clearly exasperated. “You couldn't man up for five measly seconds?”

“I . . . I . . . that's not what I thought you'd say.”

“I'm not trying to be mean,” she said, more frantic than I'd ever her sound before. “I'm confused. You
love
me? But you couldn't muster up the courage to come say a simple hello after I got slapped in the face and blindsided by a clarinet for you.”

“J, just say you love him back!” I yelled.

Radio silence.

“Baylor?” she said, sounding like she was trying to hold in vomit.

“You're still here?” Aiden shrieked, horrified.

“Uh,” I said, panicking. “Yeah. Ha, ha. You didn't disconnect my call.”

“And you didn't hang up yourself?”

“This isn't about me, okay? Let's get back to you two.”

“Well, I'd
love
to continue this chat,” J shouted, “but my mortification quota has been maxed out for the day, so . . . I'm going to go.”

“What? No!” Aiden said. “You can't leave me hanging after I just told you . . . all those things.”

“I need to process this, Aiden,” she said. “I hope you understand. And good night, Baylor.” Her voice sounded particularly venomous.

We heard a click, we sat for a moment in suffocating silence, and then Aiden said, “Good advice, dude.”

“Sorry, Aiden,” I said. “I really thought that was going to work.”

“Well, it didn't.”

And he hung up too.

  *  *  *  

School the next morning was somehow more uncomfortable than the phone call. Aiden wasn't talking to me, but then, he wasn't talking to anyone. He sat at his desk with his head pressed into his arms, which were forming a barricade to the outside world.

When I saw J, she tried to avoid making eye contact, but I grabbed her arm and pulled her aside.

“Listen, J, I've got a lot of things on my plate right now, and frankly, the last thing I need is any drama between you, me, and Aiden. Just tell the kid you'll go to the dance with him.”

“Seriously, Baylor?” She hiked up her backpack around her shoulders and made herself a few inches taller. “This isn't even about the dance anymore. He told me he loves me. First off, that's crazy. Second, normal people in love usually act like they're, you know, in love.”

“Right, J, but in case you haven't noticed, Aiden's never been too concerned with acting normal. He's shy, and an empty bucket has more self-esteem than him. Don't punish him just because he believes he's not good enough for you, okay?”

It was at this moment the tears chose to spill out as Kristina's words from our big fight spewed out of my mouth.

“He just wants to be with you, J. He just wants to love you and hug you and kiss you, and he really means it when he says he loves you. You can't hurt him, J.”

J shushed me and awkwardly smiled at all the people walking by and staring at us. “What's gotten into you, Baylor?”

“I just really miss Kr—”

But I stopped short. J didn't know about Kristina.

No one knew about Kristina except for a handful of people. It hit me how totally invisible and forgotten and extraneous she must have felt.

She didn't even have a tombstone in the cemetery as a small reminder that she was a person. She had her own personality and sense of humor and quirks, but no one knew her.

And she was the person I trusted the most out of anyone.

And she was missing in some ghost world and I might never see her again.

The tears weren't stopping, and J was on her tiptoes trying to block my face from everyone passing by.

“Baylor, who's ‘Kr—'? Who were you going to say?”

I puffed out my chest and looked her right in the eye.

“Kristina. My twin. My unborn twin, who walks with me through life and helps me manage all the spirits I can communicate with.”

J's frozen face told me I should have kept my mouth shut.

“Baylor, you had a twin?”

“I have a twin. Kristina's real, and Aiden is in love with you, and your grandma with crazy hoop earrings thinks you'd be a fool not to pick Aiden, and you're just going to have to deal with it.”

“He's such a cutie!” her grandma squealed as she tried in vain to push J's hair back.