The Ghosts of Now (12 page)

Carol jabs her in the ribs with an elbow. “Shut up, Bobbie. She doesn’t want to hear about your grandma.”

“I just want to tell Angie I know how she feels.”

“But not like that.” She quickly looks at me from the corners of her eyes. “I mean like somebody dying and all.”

“But she didn’t! At least not then she didn’t.”

“Bobbie!”

I lean across the table toward them. “Don’t get unstrung. I understand what Bobbie’s saying. And Jeremy isn’t going to die. The doctor says his vital signs are good.”

They both make enthusiastic noises and get back to their macaroni and cheese.

“Have you ever heard of ghosts in the Andrews house?” I ask them.

Bobbie drops her fork with a clatter on her tray. Her eyes are wide. “What’s the Andrews house?”

Carol shakes her head and sighs. “Don’t talk about ghosts to Bobbie today. She stayed up late to watch that awful movie on cable—that thing with the ghosts who turned doorknobs into faces and stuff.”

“It was a good movie,” Bobbie says. “I saw it three times the year it came out.” She picks up her fork and licks off some gummy cheese strands. “So what’s this about the Andrews place? Is that in Fairlie?”

“It’s that old, run-down house at the end of Huckleberry Street. You know,” Carol says.

“Oh, yeah,” Bobbie says. “Some of the kids tried to do some witch stuff there last Halloween.”

“But the neighbors called the police and they ran them off,” Carol adds.

“I heard there were lights in the house, that people think there are ghosts there.”

“Really?” Bobbie’s eyes are as wide open as her mouth.

“Don’t talk to her about ghosts!” Carol says. “She gets scared in the middle of the night, and then she calls me and wakes me up, and I can’t stand it! There aren’t any ghosts in the Andrews house, Bobbie! I mean it!”

“Sorry,” I say. “I’ll change the subject.” I take a spoonful of yellow gelatin.

I guess I must have made a face, because Carol says, “It doesn’t matter what color it is. All of it tastes the same. If you don’t want it, I’ll eat it.”

But I’m hungry, and I eat everything as fast as I can. It goes down better that way. Finally I swing my legs over the bench and pick up my tray. “I have to go to my locker and get my books for this afternoon,” I tell them. “Thanks for asking me to eat with you.”

“Any time,” Carol says.

“Yeah,” Bobbie says. “Like tomorrow. We mean it.”

Carol tears an end off a piece of paper in her notebook, scribbles something on it, and holds it out to me. “Here’s our addresses and phone numbers. Mine’s at the top. Why don’t you come by after school today?”

“I better go to the hospital after school,” I tell them. “But thanks a lot. That really helps. I’d love to come some other day. Okay?”

“Sure,” Carol says.

“And if you find out any more about ghosts—” Bobbie begins, but Carol slaps a hand over her friend’s mouth.

I’m still smiling as I shove my tray of dirty dishes
through the collection window, but someone pushes a little too close, a body tight against my side. I try to move away, but a voice in my ear says, “I have to talk to you.”

I whirl to look directly into Boyd Thacker’s eyes.

He says again, “I have to talk to you. C’mon outside on the front steps.”

“Why not?” I follow him out of the cafeteria almost eagerly, as my excitement grows. I’m going to get some of the information I want. I know it!

He doesn’t say a word as we thread through some clusters of people in the hallway. He flings one of the front doors wide and goes through. I manage to catch the door before it slams in my face, and push through to join him.

Boyd stands at the side of the steps, next to a chipped pillar, and leans against it. He doesn’t look at me until I say, “Well? What’s on your mind?”

“It’s hard to talk about,” Boyd says. His eyes are on the houses across the street as though they’re the most fascinating things in his life. “It’s terrible to tell a girl something about her brother that she really wouldn’t want to know.”

“Boyd!” I move a little closer, grab his shoulder, and shake it. “Look at me when you’re talking to me!”

He turns, but his eyes are so dark I can’t attempt to read what’s behind them. “I didn’t want to tell you what happened to Jeremy Friday night, but—well, some of us think you ought to know, so you’ll leave Debbie alone. You’ve got her so upset she’s sick in bed.”

“Now, wait a minute! It’s not my fault if Debbie’s sick!”

He leans closer. “Do you want to hear what I’ve got to tell you or not?”

It’s hard to stay calm. “Yes.”

“Okay. Then listen. We had a party.”

“Where?”

“Just listen to me. I’ll tell you what I can.”

“Okay. Go on.”

“Some of us got together for a party, and don’t ask me who was there, because I won’t tell you. And don’t ask where it was, because I won’t tell that either.”

I clamp my teeth together to keep from saying a word.

“Anyhow, it was at this girl’s house, because her parents were out of town, and a lot of us had too much to drink, and somebody took Debbie’s car.”

I can’t help it. “Who?”

“We don’t know. There were some kids from another town at the party—word got around—and we think it was one of them.”

“Jeremy was at the party too?”

“Yes. Only he got real moody. He had some stuff to drink, and maybe he couldn’t handle it. In any case he’s not much fun at a party, or maybe you know that. He started talking about how life didn’t mean much to him, how it would be a lot easier if he were dead.”

“No!”

“I told you that you wouldn’t like the truth. Now you’ve got to hear it. Anyhow, Jeremy ran out of the
door and down Avenue G toward Huckleberry, and I didn’t—”

“Which direction on G?” He looks blank for a second, so I say, “South or north?”

‘What difference does that make?”

“I need to know.”

He frowns. “Okay. He was running toward the north, I suppose. Anyhow, if you’re through interrupting, I’ll tell you that I didn’t want to go after him, but I felt responsible, because I brought him to the party, so I did. He acted like he didn’t know what he was doing. And he ran right into the street. Didn’t even look. This car was coming fast down Huckleberry, toward Avenue G.”

I interrupt. “From the dead end block of Huckleberry?”

He scowls at me. “No. Of course not. The other direction. I guess the driver didn’t see him in time, because the car didn’t stop.”

“Debbie’s car?”

“No. I don’t know whose car it was. I heard that the guy who took Debbie’s car cracked it up against a tree. This was someone else, and I was so busy trying to find out if Jeremy was killed or not I didn’t pay attention to the driver or the license plate or anything.”

“Are you the one who phoned me?”

He shakes his head sorrowfully. “No. I just ran back to the house and called an ambulance.”

“You should have stayed with him.”

“I came back to check on him again. He was breathing all right. Look, some of those kids were pretty
drunk. Some of them were stoned. We couldn’t take any extra chances. We turned out the lights and waited for the ambulance to show up. We knew they’d do anything for Jeremy that could be done.”

“You were home when I called you.”

“That’s right. Most of us got home as fast as we could manage.”

“And you lied to me. You said you didn’t know where Jeremy was.”

“I wasn’t thinking. I was scared. I didn’t know what else to do at the time.”

“But you’re telling me this now.”

“Because you’re pushing. A lot of kids could get hurt if you keep this up, Angie. Some of them might lose scholarships, or get kicked off the team.”

“You think I believe that you care so much about them?” I glare at him with pure hatred.

“We stick together,” he says. “We’ve known each other all our lives.”

A bell over the front entrance clangs jarringly. Boyd shifts his weight to the balls of his feet as though he’s ready to leave, but I block his way. “One more question. What do you know about a watch?”

His eyelids give the faintest flicker, but his gaze is steady. “I don’t know anything about a watch. Did Jeremy lose his watch? Is that what you mean?”

When I don’t answer he puts a hand on my shoulder. “Angie, I don’t think you understand what I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s pretty obvious to me that Jeremy wanted to commit suicide.”

“I don’t believe you!” But some of the lines of Jeremy’s lonely, desperate poetry bounce off the walls of my mind and send shudders down my backbone.

I push them away and take a step closer to Boyd, my face almost against his, but he doesn’t flinch. “There’s something else you’re not telling me. I think you put a man’s wristwatch in Jeremy’s desk. It was stolen in a robbery, and you have to be the one who put it there. I don’t know why you did that. So tell me!”

“Where is the watch?”

“Back where it belongs.”

“What are we talking about then? A watch that doesn’t exist?”

“I found it in Jeremy’s desk drawer.”

He smiles. “But now you can’t prove there was a watch, can you?”

“I—I guess not.”

He sidles away from the pillar, moving back. “I told you what you wanted to know. What’s the matter with you, Angie? Why dream up a lot of other junk?”

Suddenly he looks upward, to someone beyond me,
and a strange look flickers across his face so rapidly that I can’t read it.

A voice interrupts my thoughts. “Angie,” Del says. “I saw you out here.” He puts an arm across my shoulders. “How you doin’, Boyd?” he asks.

Boyd says something, which is drowned out by the clanging of the bell, and hurries back into the building.

The hot breezes swirl little eddies of dust across the steps and against my legs. I rub my arms, feeling the sun and the grit on my skin. But I’m cold, and I shiver.

“Angie?” Del asks. “Are you okay?”

I can’t answer, and he turns me so that I’m facing him. “Did Boyd say something that got you upset?”

“I don’t want to talk about it now.”

“Sure,” he says. “But you’ve got to go to class. I’ll walk you there.”

He propels me inside the door, and somehow I get through the rest of the afternoon. As I leave my last class I find Del standing in the hallway outside the door, waiting for me.

“I’ll give you a ride home,” he says, taking my arm.

“Thanks, but I can walk.” I try to pull away, but he holds fast.

“Nope. Something’s bothering you, and I’d like to know what.”

“It’s my problem, not yours.” He waits, and I add, “I mean you know the way I feel about Debbie, and if you’re dating her—”

“Oh,” he says. “What Candy said about last night.”

A couple of people, hurrying in the opposite direction, elbow against me, pushing me into Del. I stumble,
but Del steadies me. With an arm around my shoulders he moves me through the hall, down the steps, and out to his pickup truck in the school parking lot.

He leans down, and his face is very close to mine. “I’ve known Debbie since we were in kindergarten,” he says. “And we dated for a while. It didn’t work out, but in a way we’re still friends.”

“It’s none of my business,” I stammer.

“Yes it is. It’s because of you that last night she called and asked me to come over. She wanted me to tell you to leave her alone. I said I already had. I told her you were kinda stubborn.”

His slow smile gets to me. Without any pretense I say, “When I heard that you were at Debbie’s last night I was jealous.”

Del doesn’t answer. He just takes my shoulders, pulls me toward him, and kisses me. It’s a light kiss, a quick kiss, one that kids moving their nearby cars out of the lot wouldn’t even notice. But it shakes me.

“Now,” Del says, “I’ll take you home.”

Something has been growing in my mind like a little fungus in one of those time-lapse films they show in science classes, and as I climb into the car I say, “Del, could you take me to the place where—you know—Huckleberry Street and Avenue G?”

Without asking any questions he simply says, “Let’s go.”

On the way to our destination I fill him in on what Boyd told me about the party.

“I can’t believe what he said about Jeremy deliberately running out in front of a car,” I tell him.

“Could be Jeremy didn’t know what he was doing if he had too much to drink,” Del says. “He’s under age. It may have been the first time he had any hard liquor. It could have hit him pretty hard.”

“But there’s something that’s bothering me.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

Del eases his pickup over to the curb on Avenue G, and I just sit there, staring at the intersection. According to what Boyd told me, Jeremy ran into the street at Avenue G, going north; and the car was coming down Huckleberry from the west.

It’s like the answer to an impossible question on a pop quiz suddenly coming into your head, or a puzzle with the pieces showing up in the right place. I open the door on my side of the truck and jump out, running to the spot. I hear Del following me.

“Angie? What are you doing?”

Now I’m sure. “Boyd was lying to me. If the accident had happened the way he said it did, Jeremy would have run across the street here and have been hit by the car from this side. Wouldn’t he?”

“I guess.”

“Then his injuries would have been on his left side. But it was his
right
side that was hurt so badly.”

Del frowns as he thinks. Finally he says, “Maybe. But what if Jeremy suddenly saw the car coming and turned around? Lots of things could have happened.”

“That’s not the way Boyd told the story.”

“He probably wasn’t too sure what he was doing either. Look, these parties happen, Angie. Jeremy
shouldn’t have been there, but that’s after the fact now. Why don’t we go to the hospital and see how he’s coming along? That makes more sense to me than standin’ here tryin’ to play detective with all the odds against you.”

“My brother didn’t want to kill himself.”

Del is talking to me, but I tune him out, because my mind is being tugged in another direction. I raise my head and stare down Huckleberry to the end of the street. There’s just a glimpse of yellow brick set back from the street behind the ragged curtain of overgrown, untended shrubbery, only a portion of the house that is overshadowed by its nearer, more tidy neighbors. The Andrews place.