Spookygirl - Paranormal Investigator (17 page)

Wait, this wasn’t going the way I’d expected. “So you’re not just making some questionable fashion statement?”

“No. I mean, I like the jacket and all—”

“Beth was always a tomboy,” Brenda added.

“—and you’d have to kill me to get me into a skirt with a stupid poodle on it, but I dressed like this because these were the only clothes I had.”

“I tried to give her some of my things,” Brenda said, “but she was always too proud to accept them.”

“You didn’t have much, either,” Beth protested. “Besides, it was no one’s business what I wore. I don’t know why it made those girls do what they did.”

“What did they do?” I asked.

Beth didn’t answer right away. She crossed her arms and stared into one of the showers, so Brenda spoke instead. “A bunch of girls cornered us in here one afternoon. They beat us up and scratched Beth’s cheek pretty badly. They said some awful things, and ripped up our clothes. Then they held us under the showerheads and pulled our hair so that our faces were right in the spray.”

“I couldn’t breathe,” Beth said softly.

“I couldn’t take it anymore after that,” Brenda said. “I dropped out. Beth’s parents pulled her out of school.”

“My family moved soon after that,” Beth said. “Dad found a better job out in Arizona.”

“Beth and I lost touch. We were best friends, but after everything that happened…”

“We wrote back and forth a few times, and that was it.”

“And you both ended up back here after you died?” I asked.

Beth nodded. “I went to sleep when the anesthesia kicked in on the operating table, just before my open-heart surgery, and woke up here. That was…over ten years ago, I think. It can be hard to keep track. At first I was horrified to be stuck back in this room, but over time I realized I’d gotten what I wanted. I was invisible. Everyone just left me alone. Then Brenda came back earlier this year, after she died. We’re finally together again. I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to leave.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m not here to shove you into the afterlife. I really don’t care where you go or what you do. I just want you to leave me alone. I know you said you’re happy to be back here because you’re together, but it doesn’t seem like either of you are at peace. I don’t know how you could be happy spending eternity in a place with so many bad memories.”

“See?” Beth said to Brenda, her voice growing shrill and upset. “It’s just like I said!”

“Beth panicked when you showed up,” Brenda explained. “We could tell you sensed us. She doesn’t want your help.”

“And what do you want?” I asked Brenda.

“Well…I don’t like being stuck here,” she admitted.
“What happened here was awful, and I’m forced to think about it every time I look at those showers. I wanted to talk to you. Beth didn’t. We’ve been fighting about it.”

That explained the mixed messages I’d been getting in the locker room, the strange EVP, the alternating hot and cold spots.

“Beth wouldn’t let me talk to you,” Brenda said. “That’s why I pushed you into the lockers. I needed you to find our names. Beth scratched them there back in 1956.”

Beth said, “That’s the last time we were together. What if we go, and I never see Brenda again?” Beth asked. “She’s the only friend I have.”

“I don’t know what will happen when you move on,” I said, “but I can’t imagine any version of an afterlife that would split up best friends.”

Beth frowned. “How do we even go, if we decide we want to? We’re kind of stuck.”

“Yeah. That’d be your unfinished business—which in your case is probably all that anger you’re holding on to over what happened here. That’s why you ended up back in the locker room after you died.”

Brenda lifted her chin. “You can’t blame us for being mad.”

“No, I don’t. But…” I remembered the times I’d been teased or bullied. None were nearly as bad as what
had happened to Beth and Brenda, but it was hard not to let that anger stew and fester. “Here’s the thing. You have every right to be mad, but at some point, you’re going to have to let that go. Otherwise, you’re just giving the bullies more power. It’s not like they can hurt you anymore. Not unless you let them.”

“But I’m so freakin’ pissed!” Beth said, slamming her translucent foot against the tile floor. The shower curtains started flapping again. “Do you know how humiliating it was, being held under the showers like that? I felt like I was drowning.”

“I can only imagine.” Actually, I had a pretty good idea, since that was how being in the locker room had made me feel at times. “But what good is that anger doing you now? It’s just keeping you here, in a place where you were always miserable.”

Brenda reached out and touched Beth’s arm. “She’s right.”

“Look, you don’t have to move on into whatever afterlife there is,” I said. “You’ll probably want to eventually, but you don’t have to go yet. I know you’re scared about what might happen if you do. But wouldn’t it feel better to just get out of the locker room? Maybe there’s somewhere else you’d rather be. Somewhere you used to hang out? Somewhere that made you happy?”

“Birch Street Park,” both girls said in unison.

“We used to live on Birch Street,” Beth said, as though she didn’t trust me to figure that out from the fact that they called themselves the Birch Street Badasses. “There’s a park at the end of the road. We used to play there when we were little. When we got older, we still went back sometimes and sat on the swings when the weather was nice. I missed it so much when we moved.”

“So let go of this crap and go there instead!” I said. It seemed like a no-brainer to me.

Having finished smudging the room, Coach Frucile returned to the alcove and handed me a smoldering bundle of sage. I held it up, waving it all around, letting the smoke curl and billow. There was a new calmness in the locker room now. The weight of the air around me disappeared. It was like the relief of a cool breeze on a hot, sticky day.

“But what if someone else gets harassed in here the way we were?” Beth asked.

“Well, we have this awful dress code,” I said, pointing to my shirt. “And there are more rules to protect us now.”

“That’s not enough,” Beth said. “I’ve kept an eye on things while I’ve been here. If I caught a girl picking on anyone in the locker room, I spooked her a little. Just enough to get her to stop. I don’t want anyone else suffering here the way we did.”

“Oh, but it was just fine to torture me,” I muttered.

“That was different,” Beth said.

Ghosts. Sheesh.

I thought for a moment, then an idea hit me. “You know, I may be able to recruit someone to keep watch here. Would that work?”

Beth and Brenda glanced at each other and nodded.

“Then I think we can go,” Brenda said. “I don’t want to dwell on that day anymore.”

Beth reached out and clasped her hand. “It’s over. Come on. Let’s go to the park.”

The Birch Street Badasses disappeared.

Everything was quiet and still and…normal.

Well, normal except for the haze of smoke that was starting to burn my eyes a little.

“Are they gone?” Coach Frucile asked.

I nodded. “We did it. No more haunted locker room.”

Not gonna lie—I felt pretty freakin’ proud of myself for handling the situation the way I did. Okay, so Coach Frucile helped. A little.

I had exactly three seconds to reflect on my victory before the fire alarm started shrieking, and the emergency sprinklers overhead switched on, drenching us and putting out what was left of the smudge sticks. The smoke began to dissipate, but there’d still be a lot about that moment to explain away to the authorities.

“You go,” Coach Frucile said, as though she’d read my mind. “I’ll take care of this.”

I ran to retrieve my bag from her office, and tried not to let it get too wet from the sprinklers on my way out.

“Hey!” I called from the main doorway.

Coach Frucile was heading to her office, presumably to call the front office about the “malfunctioning” alarm.

“What?”

“That thing you said before? The office aide position? I’m totally taking you up on that.”

“Fair enough!”

Oh, awesome. Not only had I just cleared out my first serious haunting, but I’d also found a legit way to get out of gym class.

The fire alarm shut off as I squelched into the hall, shoving my wet hair out of my face. It wasn’t until then that I remembered Tim. He’d been out here this whole time, but there was no sign of him now. I headed to the nearest exit to look for him.

He was waiting outside, on one of the covered walkways, and he looked even paler than usual. When he saw me, he ran up and hugged me so violently that the impact knocked the sunglasses right off his head.

“Omigod! You’re okay!”

“Yeah. And now you’re all wet.”

“I don’t care. I was so freaking out when the fire alarm went off! What happened? Your face is bleeding!”

“Just a scratch. No big deal.” I couldn’t imagine what
I looked like—soaked through and wild-eyed with blood on my face, probably. “I’ll tell you the whole story, but let’s go somewhere I can dry off first. Maybe we can get up on the roof.”

“Okay, but…” He paused, looking even more worried. “First I have something to tell you. Don’t get mad, okay?” He handed back my cell, an expression of apology on his face.

“Oh God, Tim, you didn’t.” I checked the phone’s record of outgoing calls.

“I said I was freaking out, okay? I peeked in but I didn’t see you anywhere, and it was like you disappeared, and then the alarm went off, and I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You actually called my dad? What did you tell him?”

“Um, kind of…everything.”

I stared at him in dismay. Then I looked up and saw Dad rushing through the central courtyard, a panicked expression on his face. He spotted me, and his expression turned to relief, followed by total anger.

Oh crap.

We drove home in silence, dropping Tim off on the way. Tim, who was always begging to be allowed to ride in the hearse, didn’t even grouse about the fact that Dad arrived in his little sedan instead. The look on Dad’s face made it clear he wasn’t in the mood to put up with complaints.

At home, Dad told me to dry off, change my clothes, and wash my face. I blotted tenderly at the cut on my cheek; it was barely a scratch, but now that I was slightly removed from the situation, I couldn’t think about the fact that a ghost had drawn my blood without shivering a little. Then I met Dad back in the kitchen. Dad wasn’t usually much of a lecturer, but I could tell today would be an exception.

Tim had totally spilled the beans. He was so freaked out when the fire alarm went off that he had called Dad and started babbling about ghosts and hell gates and satanic rituals. He let it slip that I’d found Mom’s equipment, and he said I’d gone missing during an investigation.

I always figured Dad would be pissed if he found out what I was doing. What I didn’t realize was that it would also terrify him.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Dad paced over the faded linoleum in the tiny kitchen while I watched from a stool at the breakfast bar.

“Dad, just going near that room every morning was driving me nuts! Someone had to do something. I told you how much I hated gym!”

He ran his hands back through his mussed hair. It had always been black like mine, but now I realized how much gray had appeared at his temples. “I thought you were afraid of volleyballs, not of poltergeists in the showers!”

“I was with Coach Frucile, and I was careful!”

“You put yourself in danger, Violet! Why didn’t you come to me about this? Why didn’t you tell me?”

I glared. “You never want to hear about ghost stuff anymore. You just ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist.”

He stroked a hand over his beard, something he always did when he was anxious. “I would’ve tried to help you.”

“You would’ve told me to stay away from it and ignore it. It’s what
you
do!”

“It’s safer that way!”

“I can’t stay totally safe for the rest of my life, Dad. Sometimes I’m going to have to take risks.”

“You think I don’t realize that, now that I have ghosts flinging trays at me in the embalming room? None of that happened until you came back here full-time, and the longer you’re around, the worse it gets.”

As soon as he said it, his mouth clamped shut like he thought he could trap his words inside. But it was too late. I steeled myself, refusing to cry while he backtracked.

“All I mean is that you need to know you can come to me if you’re having trouble, no matter what kind of trouble it is.”

“I bet,” I muttered, staring at the scuffed floor.

“Also,” he said, “I’m not happy that you went behind my back and snooped through my things.”

“They weren’t your things. They were Mom’s, and she’d want me to have them.”

“She sure as hell wouldn’t want you putting yourself in danger over something like this. There were reasons she never went on investigations alone, Violet. It’s not safe.”

“She told me it was!”

“She lied, Violet.”

I thought back to that conversation I’d had with Mom about Sabrina Brightstar.

“Yeah, well, she also told me sometimes people have reasons for lying, and it’s easier to cut them some slack when you know why they did it.”

“That may be so, but it doesn’t change the fact that you put yourself in danger. Thank goodness your coach was there. That was just good luck. Your mother wouldn’t want you doing this. She never knew what she might encounter during an investigation, and she was smart enough not to risk finding out on her own.”

“What, so now I’m stupid?”

“No, of course not.” Dad’s tone went all weary and exasperated. “But you don’t have any experience with this kind of thing.”

“Because nobody will help me!”

“Is that why you’ve been talking to Sabrina Brightstar?”

“What? How’d you know about that?”

“Tim mentioned it.”

Oh, for Pete’s sake. Tim really
had
spilled everything.