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Authors: Jennifer Allison

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BOOK: Gilda Joyce: The Bones of the Holy
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2
The Sleepover
I
dunno,” said Wendy. “It looks kind of clownish.”
Gilda and Wendy stared at Gilda's hair in the bathroom mirror. Wendy had been Gilda's best friend for years, and most often, Gilda appreciated Wendy's honesty. Other times, like now, it annoyed her.
The experiment with red hair dye hadn't turned out the way Gilda had hoped. She had imagined returning to school on Monday as a more interesting version of herself—a sultry, sophisticated, and intriguing redhead—and she figured her mother's absence for the weekend provided the perfect opportunity to attempt the experiment.
But this red looked far too bright, even for Gilda's adventurous taste. It looked as if she had dipped her hair into a pot of orange acrylic paint.
Wendy had bravely (and somewhat uncharacteristically) joined Gilda in the hair-dying experiment, but as it turned out, the red hair dye scarcely showed on her darker hair.
Gilda eyed Wendy's faintly auburn black hair with resentment. “Why isn't your hair red, too?” she demanded. “You must have cheated.”
“Cheated how?”
“I don't know. You didn't put enough hair dye on there or something.”
“I didn't realize we were having a contest to see who can look most like a Raggedy Ann doll,” Wendy retorted.
“Well, we
were
. So there.” Gilda considered her options: She could go back to the drugstore and buy a darker shade to cover the bright red. The problem was that she might not have enough money left in her purse to buy more hair dye after a weekend of movie theater and shopping mall excursions with Wendy.
“Hey,” said Wendy as she clicked through some Internet links on her cell phone. “It says here on this Dye Your Own Hair website that grape Kool-Aid is supposed to tone down red hair color. It also says that if it's temporary hair color, it won't lighten dark hair like mine.”
“Oh.” Gilda squinted at the empty package of hair color. “I guess it would have been a good idea to read the directions first.”
“You said you read them!”
“Well, I didn't read all the fine print. I read the quick 'n' easy steps.”
“It's a good thing you aren't planning to be a surgeon or something.”
“I doubt surgeons are sitting there reading the directions as they cut into people.”
“You know what I mean.” Wendy took the hair-color box out of Gilda's hand. “We're lucky this is temporary color.”
“See? I knew what I was doing.”
“It will wash out in about thirty shampoos.”
“Thirty?! I don't have that kind of time. We'll have to try the Kool-Aid.”
“So go down to the kitchen and get the Kool-Aid. Let's try it.”
“We don't have any toddlers around here, Wendy. Now I have to ask Stephen to drive me to the store. Which means I'll never hear an end to the jokes about this.”
“I could go with him,” Wendy quickly offered.
A bit too quickly,
Gilda thought, annoyed that Wendy still had a crush on her older brother.
Why does she even like him?
Gilda wondered
. Sure, he's tall and his skin has cleared up a lot lately. And I guess he acts more confident now that he's been accepted into college. Still, Wendy has no idea just how self-centered Stephen can be.
Stephen and Wendy had gotten to know each other better at a math camp over the summer. While Stephen had felt a very secret spark of attraction to Wendy during their conversations about quantum mechanics, he maintained that she was “too young” for him, since he was a senior and she was only a sophomore. Besides, Wendy was his little sister's best friend. Nevertheless, Wendy harbored hope that Stephen would change his mind and see her as a potential girlfriend.
“I mean,” Wendy added, “you could stay here so Stephen won't see your hair. I'll go with him and I can run into the store and pick up the Kool-Aid.”
“I should have known this whole sleepover was just a ruse to see my geeky brother,” Gilda complained.
“It's
not.
I'm just trying to help you solve this hair problem.” Wendy tapped on her cell phone again. “Stephen's at work now, right?”
“Probably just finishing.”
“So I'll just call him and see if he can help us get some Kool-Aid.”
Wendy held the phone to her ear and smiled broadly at Gilda's hair, struggling to suppress her laughter. “Hey, Stephen? It's Wendy! Hey, congratulations on getting into University of Michigan, by the way. That's awesome! The School of Engineering? Cool!”
Gilda sat on the edge of the bathtub. She hoped Wendy and Stephen wouldn't get into one of their long conversations about math.
“Well, I'm just here with your little sister—”
Gilda stood up.“‘Little sister?!' Hello! You're not my babysitter, Wendy!”
Wendy pressed her finger to her lips, shushing Gilda. “Oh, no, we're at home—I mean, at your house—and everything's fine,” Wendy continued. “She just had a little mishap in the bathroom here and we need some grape Kool-Aid ASAP.”
“Give me that, please.” Gilda wrenched the phone from Wendy's hand.
“Stephen?”
There was a silence on the other end.
“Stephen? Are you there?”
“Yes. I'm just leaving work. What are you guys—like, seven years old? You better not be doing something dumb that will get me into trouble.”
Of course he's only worried that Mom will be mad at him,
Gilda thought. “There's no problem,” Gilda assured him. “We just need some Kool-Aid for a new recipe we're making.”
“What kind of recipe calls for Kool-Aid?”
“The one we're making.”
“Wendy said you did something in the bathroom.”
“Wendy gets confused about the names for different rooms in our house.”
“Don't believe her, Stephen!” Wendy shouted in the background.
“Stephen, it doesn't matter
why
we need it. Can't you just pick it up on the way home? I mean, I'm sure Mom wouldn't want me standing outside at the bus stop in the middle of the night just to go to the grocery store. She'd be pretty upset if she found out my older brother couldn't be bothered to help me finish making my award-winning Artificial Grape Surprise Soufflé recipe.”
Stephen sighed. “Oh—all right. I'll get you the Kool-Aid.”
 
An hour later, Gilda towel-dried her Kool-Aid processed and shampooed hair, which had now mellowed to a lighter shade of red-brown. “That's better,” she said, eyeing her reflection in the full-length mirror in her bedroom. “Now it's kind of caramel.”
“It is much better,” Wendy agreed. “But I'd say it's closer to the shade of Chicken McNuggets.”
“Which reminds me,” said Gilda, deciding to ignore Wendy's joke, “we need to think about our Halloween costumes.”
Halloween was Gilda's favorite holiday, since it involved dress-up and disguise, not to mention ghosts. She threw open her closet door and surveyed the combination of ordinary clothing, disguises, theatrical costumes, and vintage flea-market finds that made up her wardrobe. As a result of a clearance sale at a Halloween party store in Detroit, she had recently expanded her impressive collection of hats and wigs.
“Look,” Gilda said, donning a wig with long, messy brunette hair. She scowled. “Who am I?”
Wendy leaned back on Gilda's bed, propping her weight on her elbows. “A witch?”
“Please. I would never be something so obvious. I'm
you
! All I need now is a shoulder bag filled with math textbooks, calendars, and staplers.”
“That seems dumb,” said Wendy. “I don't carry around calendars and staplers.”
“It's a caricature, Wendy. The calendars and staplers symbolize your organizing tendencies.”
“Fine. Then I'll be a caricature of
you
.” Wendy searched in Gilda's closet until she found a feather boa and a leopard-print jacket. “Here,” she said. “Mismatched weird clothes plus typewriter equals Gilda Joyce.”
“Now you're just being mean. I would never wear that boa with leopard print.”
“You're the one who suggested doing caricatures!”
“Well, I just changed my mind.” Gilda tore off the brunette wig and tried on another option—a blond wig with sausage ringlets. “Maybe I'll be something totally different, like an old-fashioned Southern belle.” Gilda put a plumed hat over the wig and stared at herself in the mirror.
Gilda's ear suddenly tickled. An image flashed in her mind: She saw an old, yellow house shadowed by tall trees. An enormous porch surrounded the house. As she looked at the house in her mind, she felt cold.
“What's wrong?” Wendy asked.
“Wendy, I think I just got a psychic signal.” Gilda had spent more than a year working to develop her psychic skills. She had memorized
The Master Psychic's Handbook
by famed psychic Balthazar Frobenius, and her budding psychic abilities had already helped her solve several mysteries.
“Did you get a vision of a sheep?” Wendy joked. “Because you kind of look like Little Bo Peep right now.”
“Wendy, I'm
serious
. I saw a picture in my mind—a very clear image of a house. And there was something really spooky about it.”
“Was it a house around this neighborhood?”
“I don't think so.” Gilda took off the hat and wig. “It kind of looked like the Southern plantation house in that old movie—
Gone with the Wind
.”
“Well, that's probably because of your mom's trip to Florida, right?”
“Yes. . . . I have a strange feeling about that trip.”
“You really think she's secretly visiting some guy?”
“I told you: she was giggling like crazy on the phone before she left, and her suitcase was full of new outfits.”
Gilda suddenly felt sad as she looked at her closet filled with costumes, but she couldn't articulate what was wrong. It bothered her to suspect that her mother might be concealing the true purpose of her trip. She also had a premonition of some general instability—the sense that something very important in her life was suddenly out of place.
“I can't explain it yet,” she said. “I've just got a bad feeling about this.”
3
Darla
O
n a quiet street in one of the old neighborhoods of St. Augustine, a twelve-year-old girl named Darla sat on her sprawling front porch sipping sweet tea and staring at a page of her history textbook. She was supposed to be studying for a quiz on Florida history, but she couldn't concentrate on the descriptions of Spanish and French explorers in the New World. She felt sleepy as she listened to birds calling from branches in the mossy trees and the magical, sparkling sound of wind chimes as they moved in a warm breeze.
Suddenly Darla felt a presence.
I'm not alone,
she thought, sitting up straighter in her chair. She felt certain that someone was in the yard, watching her. Reluctantly, Darla raised her eyes from her book.
A woman wearing a long, white dress stood motionless under one of the towering oak trees. Her hair hung in long waves, but it did not move in the wind. She was beautiful, but oddly frozen there under the tree, and Darla did not
want
to look at her because she already knew this woman was dead.
Dropping her book, Darla abruptly jumped up from her chair and ran inside the house.
Once inside, she raced upstairs, slammed her bedroom door behind her, and immediately picked up her cell phone to call a friend.
I'll never sit out on the front porch by myself again,
Darla vowed.
It was best to keep busy and distracted—best to avoid the lonely hours during long, lazy afternoons around the house. After all, the ghosts always came looking for Darla when things got too quiet.
4
The Mysterious Gift
G
ilda burst into her bedroom and immediately sat down at her typewriter.
Dear Dad:
Mom has been acting weird since she came back from her vacation.
What do I mean by “weird”?
 
WAYS MOM IS ACTING STRANGE:
Okay, it isn't exactly a
shocking
change after we fixed it with the grape Kool-Aid, but MOM DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE ANY DIFFERENCE IN MY HAIR.
ITEM: Stain on the white bathroom mat from grape Kool-Aid used to adjust red hair dye. Mom didn't even comment about it.
No questions from Mom about what, exactly, we did while she was gone. VERY UNUSUAL.
NO SUNBURN. Whenever Mom goes to the beach, she burns and then peels like a snake shedding its skin. Actually, she and I both have this exotic trait in common. This time she only has a few extra freckles, and her skin is as white as ever. Was she hanging out with vampires? Did she even go outside??
NO SILLY SOUVENIR GIFTS!! Let's be honest: Mom has bad taste in gifts. I fully expected her to return with one of those T-shirts that says
My Mom went to St. Augustine, and all I got was this shirt!
So I was shocked (and yes, highly suspicious) when Mom gave me something genuinely beautiful--an antique crystal bracelet that's fragile, sparkly, and not like anything you'd see in a regular tourist shop. It looks like something you might find preserved in the jewelry box of a wealthy old lady who had some high-rolling times back in the olden days.
Then I noticed something else: Mom was wearing crystal earrings that perfectly matched the bracelet.
“I like your earrings,” I said, thinking it was a little odd to see Mom wearing such nice jewelry.
“My earrings?” She touched her earlobe as if she had no idea they were there.
“They match this bracelet, don't they?”
“Do they?”
What was Mom's deal? Was she just pretending to be spacey to avoid answering my questions? Or had her weekend trip to Florida resulted in some kind of brain damage?
I was about to confront Mom about her odd behavior when the doorbell rang: It was a girl delivering the box of Girl Scout cookies we ordered. This was a pretty big distraction because, as you know, Thin Mints are my favorite cookie of all time.
Dad, remember that time when we drove all the way down to Disney World for a vacation, and Mom and Stephen fell asleep in the backseat, and I sat up in the front seat to keep you company as we drove through the Great Smoky Mountains, and (here's the really fun part) we ate a WHOLE BOX of Thin Mints between the two of us while Stephen and Mom were asleep? I remember how you would pretend to doze off at the wheel, and then I'd stick a cookie in your mouth to wake you up. We agreed we wouldn't tell Mom about that game. Good times!
Okay, Dad--it looks like I have some sleuthing to do on the home front. I'll keep you posted!
I still miss you, just in case you wondered.
Love,
Gilda
BOOK: Gilda Joyce: The Bones of the Holy
8.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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