Safe Landing (9 page)

Seth leaned forward and motioned to his locker door with his head. “Sucky seems to be the order of the day for me.” He pressed his back against the lockers again. “There are stables down at the end of the cove where you can ride on the beach. We should go sometime.”

“S—sure,” I stuttered, confused by his suggestion.

“I like the way you explain stuff,” he said after an awkward silence. “Not many people could put divorce, sucky events, and falling dominoes in the same sentence and have it sound exactly right.

I saw Gina slinking down the hallway toward us, so I stooped back down to my locker to avoid talking to her. I pretended to look for something, not sure what, but I made it look important.

“Babe, you aren’t mad at me, are you?” Gina’s voice was drippy sweet. “I’ll wait for you after detention and make it up to you.” The last words were whispered seductively yet loud enough to be sure that I heard. Now I wish I’d left the hall instead of hanging out at my locker shuffling my books back and forth.

Seth’s locker slammed shut. “You want to make it up to me? Then you sit in detention for an hour this afternoon.” He walked away.

“But, Babe—“

“I hate it when you call me that,” Seth said loudly into the air as he headed toward detention.

I heard her tiny shoes run after him, and I straightened from my crouch. At least the conversation with Seth had taken my mind off my ghost problem for a while. Did Seth just ask me out or was that wishful thinking? Pretty soon I was going to need a new rating system for my day. Instead of how bad it’s going, I’d have to factor in a weirdness rating. Today was definitely high on that scale. In fact I was pretty sure ten wasn’t high enough for a day that included a ghost.

Chapter 9

For three days I’d not seen or heard anything that resembled a ghost. I’d almost convinced myself that Sebastian Middleton was gone for good, or maybe he’d really been a figment of my crazy imagination. Seth’s interest in me had been a figment too. I’d hardly seen him for the rest of the week as if he was purposely avoiding his locker so he wouldn’t have to see me. But I’d seen more than enough of Hank. This morning I had backed up into him accidentally, and he’d groaned crudely in my ear. Actually, it had been more of a primitive grunt.

The boys were at baseball, Mom was at work, and the house was extra scary at dusk. Every noise made me jump. I’d tried to talk the animals into coming upstairs with me but when Mom’s not at home, they sit in front of the door and wait for her.

Sebastian’s letters sat perched in a neat stack on the old bookcase. There must have been at least ten. I stared at the brittle, yellowed envelopes for a long time and suddenly, it seemed horribly sad. He loved Emily so much, he kept on writing even though there was no response. I picked up one of the letters. The dried paper ripped open easily. It was Friday night and I had nothing to do and no friends to speak of. I’d been avoiding the computer because I still wasn’t sure what to say to Jen. I was still hurt by what she’d done, but I was more upset about not having her to confide in. And man did I have some stuff to tell. Not that I was totally sure that Jen would believe me either. I hardly believed me.

I picked up a letter. There was a cluster of limp, dead daisies painted in the corner which was more than a little disturbing. Maybe he had gone mad with heartbreak before he killed himself.

News of your death would be easier to bear than your wordless disdain.

Yours in anguish,

Sebastian

Geez, that was harsh. I read the words again. I could almost picture Sebastian hunched over his desk, writing feverishly, torn between anguish and rage. Those handwritten letters sure could put across a lot more emotion than a text message.  I tossed the letter onto the bookcase. “Emily was a bitch.” Bad choice of words.

The window in my room, which seemed as if it had been stuck shut for a century, flew open and the letters, my school notebooks, and every other thing lighter than the computer monitor blew across the room and to the floor. A frosty cloud of sea air blew into the room. I raced to the window and pulled with all my might but it wouldn’t budge. I gave one final, herculean tug, and it swung shut easily, sending me hard onto my butt. The fog cleared and Sebastian stood over me with his arms crossed and fury swirling in his brown eyes.

I rubbed my tailbone and scowled up at him. “You know I rode horses for ten years, and I don’t think I ever fell on my ass as often as I have since you started floating around.”

He shrugged his transparent but broad shoulders still draped with the white dropped sleeve shirt. “I guess it’s a good thing it’s so round then,” he quipped before vanishing and reappearing on my windowsill.

“So round?” I pushed to my feet and brushed off my backside. “What do you mean
so
round? There is nothing wrong with my butt.” I began snatching up my things. A knock at my door made me jump. Mom peeked inside. My gaze flashed to the window, but Sebastian was gone.

“Everything alright, Zilly?” She looked at the floor and opened the door wider. “What on earth happened in here? It looks like a tornado swept through.”

I continued retrieving my scattered stuff. “The window blew open.”

“I’m going to make dinner while you pick up. I have something to tell you about when you come down. Oh, and I need you to keep an eye on the boys tomorrow. We’re having a sale at the shop, so I have to be there all day.”

“Can’t wait.” It wasn’t like I had anything on my social calendar anyhow. I wished Sebastian would reappear while Mom was in the room so I could convince myself that I wasn’t losing it completely. But there was no trace of him. Apparently only I was the lucky one.

Mom closed the door behind her, and as I turned, I saw the letters neatly stack themselves and slide back into the drawer, which snapped shut with a bang.

“I don’t think you should read my letters anymore. I’m tired of your vulgar critiques.”

I spun to the window. He had returned. Or more likely, he had never left. “Vulgar? Who uses that word anymore?”

“Pardon me, if my proper 19
^th
century English is beneath your crude American mutterings.”

“I don’t mutter and my butt is not
so
round.” I plunked down at my computer and pretended to busy myself online. Maybe he would get bored and leave.

“She was not a bitch.” His voice was low and soft, not with anger but with sorrow.

My fingers rested over the keyboard, and I stared down at them. “I’m sorry I called her that.” I spun the chair around to face him. His face may have been incorporeal now, but it was clear that he was very handsome when he was alive. His dark, dead eyes showed far more emotion than any live guys I knew. And he had had one of those great movie star square jaws.

“What happened to her? Actually a better question—what happened to you?” Suddenly I realized I had this cool opportunity to find out what it’s like to be a ghost.

Without actually seeing him move, Sebastian was sitting across from me on the foot of my bed. His face turned to the window for a minute. He stared out at the misty, gray sky, then he looked back at me. “We moved here from England when I was fourteen.”         

“Ah, that would explain the hottie accent.”

His sheer forehead crinkled and he looked annoyed. “Hottie?”

I waved my hand. “Never mind. Continue.”

He shook his head at me. “My father had invested in a ship building venture near Chesapeake Bay, and the company was prospering. So we came here to Pelican Bay. My mother had died three years earlier, and my older sister had stayed behind in England with her betrothed. Sadly, my father died of heart failure soon after our arrival. My uncle came to live with me.”

Downstairs I could hear the twins arriving home with their obnoxiously loud voices and Mom yelling at them to take off their baseball cleats. “When did you meet Emily?”

Sebastian stopped and stared down at the ground. I wondered if he saw the same as I saw or if things were different through dead eyes. My brain overflowed with questions to ask him.

He lifted his head and smiled. “I was out for a swim in the ocean, and I heard a girl scream. It was a horrifying scream. I peered out over the waves certain that someone must be drowning or something equally mortifying. But I couldn’t see anything. Then I heard the scream again. It was coming from the beach. A young girl was having a tug-of war with a huge, brown dog that had its jaw clamped around the tip of her parasol. I dashed out of the water, pried the parasol from the dog’s teeth, and handed it back to her. As she took it from me, I looked into her face and the rest of the world melted away. She was the finest creature I’d ever seen.”

Apparently ghosts can day dream because, for a moment, this one had drifted off to another time. He closed his eyes as if he was trying to conjure a clear picture of Emily.

“I guess there really is love at first sight,” I said lamely.

He opened his eyes.  “Well, for me. But it took a while for Emily to love me. There were many men vying for her attention. Then one day she looked at me with those jewel colored eyes and told me she loved me and only me.”

“I hate to break the news to you but girls can change their minds quickly.” The words sort of shot out of my mouth, and suddenly, I understood why Dad used to scold me to think before I spoke. And I really needed to watch what I said to Mr. Sensitive sitting across from me. He shot across the room and perched angrily on my windowsill like an angry vulture perched on a tree branch.

“Emily loved me and only me. Back then love was real, not some superficial, pretend act so that two people can have a reason to fornicate.”

I pressed my hand to my mouth to suppress a giggle.

“What is so amusing?”

“Fornicate? You sound like my health teacher. Come to think of it, he looked like he could have been born about the same time as you.”

My stuffed animals flew off the bed and smacked into my dresser before plopping to the floor in a heap of polyester fur. “Since I have provided you with some entertainment for that silly, empty head of yours, I will be off.”

I stood and walked over to my critter collection. “Wait.” I picked up the rabbit and shoved it under my arm and pounded the hippo against the bear to get rid of dust and dog hair before arranging them back on my bed. “I won’t laugh anymore at anything you say.” I wanted him to stay and tell his story. And he seemed to need to tell it. “Please, I want to hear about real love. What does heartbreak feel like?” It suddenly sunk in like lead weights in my stomach; I had never been in love. Sebastian was right about the superficial part. I dated Blake just because he had a lifted truck and blue eyes. The more I thought about it, I realized I didn’t even like to kiss the guy.

Sebastian was at the bookcase. The drawer slid open and the letters floated out. The edges of the envelopes flipped as if an invisible thumb had run over them. “Heartbreak feels like unopened letters.”

Every time he wrote and received no reply, his despair must have grown. Yet he didn’t give up.

Sebastian hovered directly in front of me now. I hadn’t seen him move at all. His nearness made his image blur, yet instead of the usual chill around him, the air warmed. “If you want to know what heartbreak feels like, watch your mother some time when she does not realize you are looking at her. You’ll know then.”

“My mom? But she let my dad leave. She didn’t even try to stop him. And now he’s found someone else. She couldn’t have been too broken up about it.”

“Watch her.” He disappeared.

“Wait, Sebastian. You haven’t explained how you died.” No response. Damn and he was just about to get to the meaty part. The voices downstairs had quieted too, which meant the boys were doing homework and Mom was probably busy in the kitchen. I had no idea what he’d meant about Mom. She seemed extra sad for a long time after they’d decided to split up, but she was always resolute about Dad leaving. And how would a dead guy know anything about it?

The boys were downing glasses of milk, and Mom was putting away a bag of groceries as I stepped into the kitchen.

“What’s up?” I asked as if I’d just been upstairs studying.

Mom pulled her head out of the canned food cupboard and smiled at me. “I met someone down at the shop today.”

Now Mom was going to start dating too. Everything was getting weirder and weirder.

“His name is Moses Chandler, and he owns the stables on the other side of the cove.” She stacked two cartons of eggs in the refrigerator.

“That’s really exciting, Mom.”

“That’s not the exciting part, Zilly. Moses says he’s getting too old to work the horses. Something about arthritis in his hands.”

I doubted Mom had plans to take up with an old guy which could only mean one thing.

“He needs someone to work the horses for him.”

Bingo. “I don’t know, Mom. I can only imagine the broken down mares or unbroken ranch horses I guy with the name Moses would have.”