Crossing Over (8 page)

Now Ben’s mouth dropped open, but he closed it right away.

“That’s right,” he said.

“You tune into the energy of a physical object, and when you touch it, you get sensations or sounds or even voices associated
with the history of that object.”

He was leaning toward me, listening very intently. It was kind of distracting.

“That’s exactly right,” he said. “How can you know that?”

And he waited, expectantly. And I knew now that it was okay.

“I’m clairvoyant, Ben,” I told him. The sentence sounded so weird coming out of my mouth, like I was quoting some cheesy science
fiction space opera. “I see spirits, and I can communicate with them.”

Ben whistled under his breath. He did not make a move to bolt for the U.S. border.

“I knew there was something,” he said. “I could tell that when I was picking up on something from an object that you somehow
heard something too. I just didn’t know how, or if you were consciously aware of it. Or how it could be happening.”

“I was surprised, too,” I said. “I’ve never heard just voices before. When it happened in the cathedral, I couldn’t figure
out what was
going on. Between you and me, I was starting to wonder if I was losing it.”

Ben laughed.

“I can imagine,” he said. “So if I’m picking up something and you’re standing nearby, you can actually hear the same thing?”

I nodded.

“And in this case not just hear it,” I said, pointing at the penguin, which gave me an inquisitive look and opened its beak
slightly.

“What? Do you see something there?” he asked, looking back and forth from the place the ghost penguin was standing to me.

I laughed.

“Yep. It’s a penguin. A really cute one, too. You don’t see it?”

Ben shook his head, looking sorely disappointed.

“Let’s try something. Put the Antarctica
rock in your backpack or your pocket—somewhere you won’t actually be touching it.”

Ben took his navy blue backpack off, unzipped it, and tossed the rock inside.

The penguin blinked, gave me a quizzical look, then disappeared.

“It’s gone,” I said.

Too bad, too. It was a really cute penguin.

“Wow,” Ben said. “It disappeared from your sight as soon as I broke contact with the rock?”

I nodded.

“And so you’re clairvoyant? Kat, that’s amazing. I’ve never met an actual clairvoyant before. When did you—how did you… I’m
sorry. I’ve just never…”

His voice trailed off, but I knew exactly what he meant. He’d never met anyone that
was different in the way he was different
before. Until now.

Until me.

“But if you can hear what I hear, why can’t I see what you see?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe you can, and we just don’t know how to make it happen yet.”

Ben looked at me expectantly, like he was waiting for a suggestion. And actually, I had one.

I looked at my watch.

“We have fifteen minutes before we’re supposed to meet up with the group,” I said. “I have an idea. Can you come out to the
bus with me?”

I know. It sounded crazy—me asking a boy to sneak out to an empty bus with me. It was totally and completely against field
trip rules; Sid had made it very clear we weren’t
supposed to leave the Biodome without the group for any reason. But this
was no ordinary situation, no ordinary boy. Not even the bus, at this point, was ordinary.

“Sure,” Ben said.

My heart jumped a little.

“Hi!” came Jac’s voice.

“Hey,” I said.

“I couldn’t find the, uh, book I was looking for, but look what I got!”

Jac held out a small stuffed penguin with a sweet face and a stylish tuft of hair on the top of his head.

“I couldn’t resist buying him. Isn’t he adorable? His name is Osbert; it says so right here on his name tag.”

“He is adorable, Jac,” I said. “Listen, Ben and I need to run outside for a second. Alone.”

Jac’s eyebrows practically shot clear off her forehead like little rockets.

“It’s not… we just need to… it isn’t,” I stammered.

Jac pulled me to one side. “Does this involve ghosts?” she whispered.

Oh.

See, if I said yes, Jac would want to come. If I let her think perhaps this was more of a glockenspiel moment, she would send
me off alone with Ben with her handprints firmly on my back.

“No,” I said. Could she hear the guilt in my voice? I was lying to my friend.

Jac raised one hand in the international “stop” position.

“I don’t require any explanation,” she said primly.

I took a breath. I’d explain later, but right now there was no time.

“If Sid does a head count and we’re not back, tell him we…”

“One of us dropped a cell phone and we went back in to look for it,” Ben suggested.

“Got it. Cell phone.” Jac said. Then she winked at me.

The girl was relentless.

“We better hurry,” Ben said.

We darted out the front door together, me and Ben Greenblott.

Voices, spectral penguins, and pouring rain notwithstanding, it was turning out to be an outstanding afternoon.

Tim the Motor Coach Operator was fast asleep in the front seat with a huge cup of coffee balanced between his knees. We had
to stand in the rain banging on the door for about a minute before we could wake him, by which time we were soaking wet. Tim
opened the door and closed it after us, took a slurpy sip of his coffee, and immediately went back to sleep. He seemed completely
unconcerned with what we were doing there, and that was fine with me.

“Come back here,” I told Ben, leading the way down the aisle. “To where your seat is.”

When I got to Ben’s row, Britches stared up at me expectantly.

“
Hochelaga
?” he asked.

Beige Girl gave me a brief glance, then resumed staring out the window.

“Okay,” I said, stepping to the side to make room for Ben and gesturing toward the spirit seats. “Do you see anything there?”

Ben looked carefully.

“No,” he said. “Is there something there?”

“Two people,” I said. “Spirits. The first one, I call her Beige Girl because, well, her skin and her sweater and her hair
are all kind of that color. She got on the bus at Notre-Dame. Hasn’t said a word. There’s a big guy sitting next to her, who
looks about eighteen or nineteen and is wearing sort of old-fashioned
beat-up clothes. He started tagging along at Mont-Royal
and then followed us down to the bus from there. I call him Britches.”

Britches looked up when I said that.

“
Hochelaga
?” he asked. Britches looked like even he was getting tired of hearing that word come out of his mouth.

“He keeps saying the same word, and I don’t know what the word means,” I said. “Sometimes he says other stuff, but it’s in
French, I think. I can’t really make it out.”

“I didn’t hear it,” Ben said. He looked genuinely disappointed.

“I guess it’s because these two are purely spectral,” I said. “There’s nothing physical from that time period that you could
touch now to connect with them.”

“So you can see them, and they can see you. Can they see each other?” Ben asked.

“From what I can tell, no,” I said. “Either
they don’t see each other at all, or they register each other sort of lumped in
with the rest of the people on this bus, the ones who can’t see them. They seem to divide the world into two types: regular
people, and mediums. Well, not just mediums. People with abilities. Like you. They’re aware of you too—they seem to know you
are picking them up somehow.

“Britches showed up at Mont Royal when you were touching a rock up on the overlook. I heard other voices there too, also speaking
in French. But these two are apparitions—they don’t have anything physical with them. But they seem drawn to you, Ben. I mean
both of them have come and sat near you. How long have you known you were clairaudient?”

“All my life,” Ben told me. “My mother called the voices my ‘imaginary friends’ when I was little. I thought all kids heard
the same voices. Then my mother went from
being amused by my imaginary friends to scared. When I got older I learned to keep
what I heard to myself. I didn’t learn there was a name for what I was, or that there were other people like me, until I was
twelve.”

We stood together, dripping in the aisle.

“There must be some way…,” Ben began.

I heard voices outside the bus, saw Tim sit up and lean forward, and heard the hiss of the bus door opening. I made a guilty
jump away from Ben, but my wet sneakers connecting with the slick aisle while I was off balance caused me to lose my footing
and slip forward, toward Ben. He reached out and grabbed my hands with his, stopping me mid-fall. I yelped with surprise.

Britches drew back from the commotion.

“
Hochelaga
,” Britches muttered, sounding irritated.

Ben did not let go of my hands right away.
The sensation of his palms on mine was electric. For a moment I forgot that the
bus door had opened. I wanted to tell Ben I was okay, that he could let go now.

But I didn’t want him to let go.

“
Hochelaga
,” Ben whispered.

“What? You heard it?”

“Is that what Britches has been saying?”

I nodded. My face was hot, and I didn’t need a mirror to know it was bright red.

“I heard it!” Ben exclaimed. “Just now—”

“What in the world is going on?”

Ben and I let go of each other’s hands and spun to face the front of the bus.

Mrs. Gray was standing there with her hands on her hips, and she looked, in a word, scandalized.

“What are the two of you doing here? You’re breaking the rules! Is Jacqueline with you?”

I shook my head miserably.

“No, it’s just the two of us,” I said.

Plus these two dead people.

“We weren’t doing anything. I mean, we weren’t doing anything wrong. Bad. We were just…”

“Just what?” Mrs. Gray gestured with her head as she asked the question, sending her velvet headband slightly askew.

“There was something on this bus I really needed Ben to see,” I said.

“And that was what?”

Ben and I exchanged a quick look.

“I can’t tell you,” I said.

“And you expect me to—”

“Mrs. Gray, please,” I said quickly. “You and I spent a whole week together at the Mountain House. Which I really, really
appreciated. You said I was a good friend for Jac. I think you even started to like me. I’m not a
troublemaker, or a liar,
and neither is Ben. I just can’t be more specific about what we were looking for on the bus. There’s sort of, other people
involved. Who can’t speak for themselves.”

Someone else had gotten onto the bus behind Mrs. Gray. It was my mother. I wasn’t sure whether to feel elated or mortified.

She looked back and forth between Ben and me and Mrs. Gray. Tim the Motor Coach Operator was sitting in the front row unabashedly
watching what unfolded, his gaze bouncing back and forth between us and the chaperones like he was at a tennis match.

“What’s going on?” my mother asked.

“This boy was in the back of the bus with your daughter,” Mrs. Gray said. “Kat says she is unable to give an explanation for
what they were doing here. This violates school policy.”
She turned back to Ben and me. “You could both be suspended if your
teacher finds out about this.”

What? First of all we weren’t in the back of the bus, we were just beyond the middle of the bus. And Mrs. Gray was going to
snitch on us? It was pretty clear we weren’t doing anything. The Motor Coach Operator was right there the whole time.

“Let me find out exactly what’s going on first,” my mother said. “Give me a moment.”

She walked toward me, clearly confused. When she got to the place where I was standing, she glanced over to the seat where
Britches and Beige Girl were sitting. Her eyes widened just a tiny bit, then she took my elbow.

“Come sit in the back with me for a sec. Will you excuse us?” she asked Ben. He nodded, his face flushed scarlet. We moved
past him to the very last row—the heart of
Shoshanna-land. She made a gesture, and I sat down next to her.

“Kit Kat. I think I understand, sweetie. I think I know exactly what’s happening.”

I felt an odd surge of relief. My mother knew me better than any person in the world other than Jac, and Jac had known from
the outset that I really liked Ben. Why wouldn’t my mother have noticed, too? We could have normal mother-daughter stuff after
all, about boys for once instead of ghosts.

She would understand. I liked a boy and I had gone somewhere with him I technically wasn’t supposed to go for totally innocent
reasons. We’d talk it out. Just like a normal mother and daughter. Normal.

“You’ve attracted several apparitions that seem to be drawn to you and are currently haunting this bus,” she said very quietly.

Welp. Forget normal.

“True,” I said, looking at my shoes.
Please don’t let Ben be able to overhear this conversation
, I thought.
I’d like to be the only clairvoyant he knows, even if it’s just for the day
.

“And Ben, he’s picking up something, too, isn’t he? They both seem to gravitate to him,” she said, running a hand through
her damp hair. Her hands were thin, I noticed. All of her was very thin. Another way in which we were not alike.

Fine. The conversation would be about the supernatural side of the situation, not the way I felt about Ben. Phantoms before
feelings and all that.

“Yes,” I replied. “We were trying to figure out if there were any conditions under which he could see them, too. We had just
walked out here. Then Mrs. Gray showed up.”

Like the Secret Police, I added as a silent afterthought.

My mother nodded thoughtfully.

“I think I can smooth this out,” she said. “Let me talk to Jac’s mom.”

“What were you guys doing, anyway?” I asked.

“Getting coffee.”

“You. And Jac’s mom. Just shooting the breeze?” I asked. It came out more sarcastic than I meant it to. My mom was wearing
faded jeans and an ancient oversized cashmere sweater with a hole in the elbow that I think once belonged to my grandfather.
Jac’s mom was wearing pleated khaki pants, a white and pink pinstriped oxford shirt, and a belt with a gold shell as a buckle.