Rush (11 page)

Chapter 9

Caroline

She wore a halter top in bright red and
a pair of hip-hugger jeans that barely clung to her narrow hips. Her long, pale
hair was held back by a leather headband tooled in a floral pattern and dyed
red. A beaded Indian-style choker in red and blue wrapped her neck. She looked
like a poster girl for Woodstock.

The air in the room felt icy cold.
Outside, a songbird called in the tree by my window.

The girl leaned over me where I lay on
my back in bed. My heart zoomed out of control. I couldn’t move. All I could do
was stare up at the young woman leaning over me, her hair slipping forward over
her bare shoulders.

Her mouth opened and her lips moved. Was
she trying to say something? I couldn’t make out the word. I was no good at
lip-reading. She made the same motions again, and again there was no noise. It
was like watching TV with the sound turned off.

A look of frustration came over her. She
frowned at me and repeated the word, her face contorted as she said it again.
She seemed to be silently shouting at me.

Sweat trickled down my sides. I wanted
to tell her I couldn’t hear her, but I couldn’t move my lips. I couldn’t move
my arms. My whole body seemed to be frozen in place.

The girl pressed her lips together,
still frowning. She shook her head, her eyes traveling back and forth across
the wall      next to my bed like she was trying to think of some other way to
get through to me. Her hands came up to her head.

She was really upset that she couldn’t
make me hear. I tried to force my mouth to open, but my muscles refused to obey
me. The girl turned her head to look back over her shoulder at something behind
her. The only thing I could see was my dorm room, so I had no idea what she was
looking at.

She turned back to me with regret and
frustration in her blue eyes. Then she disappeared.

The instant she was gone, I could move
again. I sat up in my bed, shivering. What the hell was that? Outside, the
little bird still sang.

Had I been dreaming? That was the
logical explanation, but it had seemed so real. Much more real than any dream I’d
ever had. And there was no sense of awakening, of transitioning to the ordinary
world. It felt all of a piece.

Could Max be right? Maybe Retro-girl
wasn’t a figment of my imagination or a dream character, but a real ghost. Of
course, I didn’t believe in ghosts...but I did believe in trusting my own
experience and intuition. And my intuition told me I’d just seen a true
apparition. A ghost.

Either that or I was following in Aunt
Jo’s footsteps. I wasn’t sure which possibility was worse.

***

The River House was a pricey restaurant
on the second floor of a nineteenth-century building downtown. A long bank of
windows looked out on the Willamette River, which was bounded by trees and
brush, a few leaves in varying shades of orange, brown, red and gold still
clinging to mostly bare branches. My parents had taken me and Trent there for
lunch, since they were on their way down to Eugene to visit my grandma. We’d
taken a table right at the window.

It was the beginning of dead week, the
week before finals, so I couldn’t go with them to Eugene. I had to study. And
study. And study.

My mom has hair like mine, except she
spends what seems to me like hours every day making it so straight and smooth
you can almost see your reflection in it. I guess I could do mine the same way,
if I could get the hang of it, but as with high heels, I don’t have the
patience or motivation to master the technique. Instead I bumble along with my
wild curls vining around my head like Medusa’s snakes.

My siblings, Lily and Landon, chattered
almost nonstop to anyone who would listen. They always got overexcited when
they came to campus to visit me. Maybe it was something about the idea of a
school the size of a small town that got them going. They were fascinated by
all the buildings and the fact that I lived
at the school.

“I wish I had a room like yours,” Lily
told me, bouncing in her seat. “I’d paint the walls pink. Or maybe purple.”

“We’re not allowed to paint our walls,”
I said.

“Oh.” She pouted for an instant, then
smiled. “Can you put decals on them? I’d use decals.”

“You’d put a bunch of girly stuff up,”
Landon said with withering scorn. “Unicorns. Gag. I’d have Superman decals.”
Superman was his current obsession.

My mom smiled at me as we picked up our
menus. “I could swear your hair is getting curlier every day.”

“Not really, Mom. It’s pretty much the
same.”

She looked at her menu instead of
answering.

“How are your classes this term, Trent?”
my dad said in the hearty tone that meant he was trying to keep things
pleasant.

“Good so far,” Trent said in a neutral
voice.

“Getting ready for the day you take over
Kincaid Construction?”

That was the construction company owned
by Trent’s stepdad. Max’s father. It hit me suddenly that Trent was going to
inherit the business that should have gone to Max, if he’d stayed with his
family. How did Max feel about that? Not that I cared.

“I’m not looking forward to my stepdad
retiring,” Trent said. “But I am anticipating being able to work for the
company full time.”

“I’ll bet,” my dad said.

“I haven’t heard anything about your
career plans lately, Caroline,” my mom added.

I stifled a sigh. “That’s because I don’t
know what I want to do yet.”

“You know, now is the time to get in all
those extra-curricular activities that can help you get a job after you
graduate.”

“I know, Mom.”

“Employers look for young people who are
involved in things besides their studies and partying.”

Another sigh attempted to escape me. “I
know that. I’m not a partier.”

“You’re not a joiner, either.”

I looked at Trent, hoping for a bit of
support, but he just smiled at me. Maybe he agreed with my mom.

“I’ll look into it, okay?” I said,
hoping to placate her enough to get her to leave me alone.

“I hope you do,” she countered. “You’ll
meet new people, too.”

“I met someone new this morning,” I
said. “She was standing over my bed.”

What on earth had made me blab that all
over the lunch table? Now everyone was staring at me and I had to explain.

I laughed nervously. “I saw a ghost this
morning. She was in my dorm room.”

My mom laughed too. “Was she carrying
her severed head by the hair?”

“No. It was a real ghost. She looked like
a regular person.”

My dad pursed his lips. “How do you know
she wasn’t one of your dorm mates?”

“Because she disappeared right in front
of me.”

Trent looked at me with a puzzled and
disbelieving expression. “You never said anything to me about it.”

“That’s because I was in a hurry to get
ready.” And because the stupid urge to confide hadn’t hit me yet.

“I’m sure you were just dreaming, honey.”
My mom patted my hand.

In the past, my parents’ skepticism had
always kept me quiet on matters like these. In fact, I’d mostly agreed with
them. After all, being like Aunt Jo was my worst nightmare and I would have
done anything to deny my connection with my former favorite. This time, some
stubborn part of me refused to let go of my ghost. I knew what I’d seen.

“It wasn’t a dream. I was awake the
whole time.”

Both my parents raised their eyebrows.

“Don’t tell me you actually believe in
that stuff,” Mom said.

“I don’t know. I just know what I saw.”

“Caroline, you’re starting to worry me.”

And I was beginning to get upset. “You
know, there are intelligent people who believe in ghosts. Intelligent,
non-alcoholic, non-drug addicted people.”

“Well, I haven’t met any of them,” Mom
said.

My dad chuckled.

“I have a friend who goes here and he
believes in them.” Referring to Max as a friend was stretching things quite a
bit, but they didn’t know that.

Trent looked at me sharply, while my mom
and dad just continued to chuckle indulgently.

“Are you talking about Max?” he said.

I shrugged. “I know several people who
believe in ghosts. The point is, believing in them doesn’t make you an idiot or
crazy.”

“You made fun of me at Halloween once
because I was worried about them,” Landon said.

I gave my little brother an apologetic
smile. “I know and I’m sorry about that.”

“So ghosts are real?” Lily said.

“No, honey, ghosts are not real,” my mom
told her.

I gritted my teeth. She was undermining
me. I didn’t want Lily and Landon to feel unsafe, but it wasn’t exactly fair to
make me look like I was delusional.

“If you’re talking about Max,” Trent
said, “you should know he thinks he’s some kind of magician.”

I frowned at him. “Magician?”

“Yeah. Not a stage magician. I mean a
real magician. He thinks he can do real magic.” Trent snorted at this idea.

Max practiced magic. Why hadn’t he told
me? Probably because he was afraid I’d react just like my parents were, with
contemptuous laughter. Plus he didn’t know me all that well. To be honest, I
didn’t know what to think about this revelation. Magic wasn’t real, right? It
was make-believe, something you saw in movies or read about in books. It was
Disneyland stuff.

I thought about all those drawings in
his sketchbooks, all the dragons, demons, and skulls. He’d sure been fixated on
that stuff. God, maybe he was crazy. Delusional, like Jo. Maybe I should make
sure to stay far, far away from him from now on.

But then there was my ghost. If she was
real, maybe magic was real, too.

“Who is this Max guy?” my dad said. “He
sounds like quite a character.”

Trent rolled his eyes. “He’s my crazy
stepbrother.”

“I had no idea you have a stepbrother.”

I glanced at my mom, who raised her
eyebrows. That probably meant she’d told my dad about Max but he’d forgotten
the conversation.

My dad was now studying Trent as if he’d
never seen him before. “How does he feel about the business going to you
instead of him?”

“I have no idea,” Trent said. “But he
ran away when he was sixteen and he’s rejected every offer to come back to the
family, so I assume he doesn’t care.”

“Max isn’t crazy,” I said. I didn’t know
why I felt compelled to defend him. Maybe it was the broken ribs picture. Even
if he was crazy, he couldn’t have deserved that. Could he?

“You barely know him,” Trent said. “Unless
there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“I talked to him long enough to know he’s
not insane.”

“He’s unbalanced. He believes in magic,
Caroline. I mean, come on. Magic? He thinks he can cast spells and talk to
spirits.”

Maybe he really could. “That doesn’t
necessarily mean he’s nuts.”

Now Trent was looking at
me
like
he’d never seen me before. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

“Why not?”

“You’ve never told me you believe in
that crap and why are you defending Max? You know how I feel about him. Is this
about the box you found?”

This wasn’t what I wanted for our lunch
out together. I should have known better than to try talking to either Trent or
my parents about anything paranormal. They’d never understand. They wouldn’t
even make an effort to understand.

Max would. He’d get it immediately. But
Max wasn’t here, and Trent was looking at me with the same combination of
concern and bafflement as my parents.

“It’s not about the box,” I said. “It’s
about a real experience I had.”

“But you don’t believe in ghosts. You
know better than that. At least, I always thought you did.”

“I’m not sure what I believe. I only
know Max isn’t crazy.”

“He worships the devil,” Trent said.

My eyes must have bugged out, I was so
shocked. “He what?”

“You heard me. He worships the devil. He’s
a Satanist, a witch, a whatever they call themselves nowadays.”

“No.”

Trent smiled grimly. “Oh, yeah. You’ve
seen that pendant he’s got around his neck? It’s a pentagram. He wears it all
the time.”

“I think you’d better stay away from
Max,” my dad said.

“I can’t believe it,” I said.

“It’s true. He’s been messing around
with that sh—uh, stuff since high school, maybe even earlier.”

“Okay. Forget it,” I said. “I’m sure you’re
right. It was just a dream, ghosts aren’t real, and Max is crazy. Can we eat
now?”