The Shade Riders and the Dreadful Ghosts (4 page)

"You all right?”

"Yeah, I guess so." Nova took the flower and
sniffed. “Pretty flower. I thought it was real.” The gesture
cheered

her up a bit, but then she started feeling
uncomfortable. She handed back his flower. Max Kim turned it back
into a scarf and slipped it into his pocket again. Nova thought she
saw relief on his face.

Nova tried to meet Max Kim's eyes, but she
couldn’t. Why did she always have to be the damsel in distress? She
felt she was going to cry, but that would only make her look even
more damsel-like. She was just so angry.

She got down on the floor and began picking
up her books and papers. After a second, Max Kim got down and
helped her. She heard what sounded like the janitor's floor
scrubber running in the gym but then realized it was Benny’s
wheelchair. He was coming back with the dormant machine on his
lap.

"I chased them into the east wing girl's
bathroom.” Benny gave Nova and Max Kim a wink. “They were still
screaming.”

They all laughed- Nova a bit nervously. This
was awkward. If she just had more a little more courage, she
wouldn’t need other people to fight her battles. Now, what was she
supposed to do? Date them to thank them?

"Thanks, guys. Hmm...” Nova paused, looking
over the large autogyro. “Is that going to be your science
project?"

"Yeah, I'm going to enter it, just like you
said I should.” Benny shoved his hair out of his eyes. “That is if
we actually have a science fair this year."

"It worked today. Thanks." Nova patted Benny
on his back then crouched and examined the painted flames she
airbrushed onto his wheelchair a year ago. The paint job was
already chipped and flaking in places so you couldn’t tell what
they were.

“Benny,” She said, “those flames are messed
up. You have got to be more careful.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can’t have any fun.”
Benny could be a bit rough with stuff. He was always like that.
That’s how he had the dirt bike accident that put him in a
wheelchair. But he built his special wheelchair with a little help
from his dad.

The chair had a beefed-up battery pack, a
motor he got from an electric motorcycle, and a suspension system
that was just strange. It was on only wheelchair ever to show up on
the skate park ramps and hills.

Benny reached over and picked up one of her
books-the one on fortune telling. He glanced at it before handing
it to her.

“Are you kidding? Nova, I’ve told you,
magick, ESP, psychic stuff-- all that mumbo jumbo doesn't exist. It
never has. Libraries are for reading books and learning, about
stuff that’s actually real.”

"Fortune telling is real. Why else would they
have written a book about it?”

"But,” Benny said, “I’ll bet you that book
doesn't tell you

all the real secrets about the psychic
business. Do you know why?"

"No, but I'm sure you'll tell me."

criminal. They're con-men.”

Nova rolled her eyes and sighed. “Benny,
there are a lot of strange things in life that can’t be explained.
I’m hoping I’ll be able to explain them.”

"You okay?" Max Kim said again and touched
her arm. She

realized she was close to tears. She pulled
away, frowning, and brushed at her eyes.

"I need to get going." She practically ran
down the hallway before she really began to show her feelings of
hopelessness.

She yelled, "Damn it. I hate this stupid
school."

Nova rounded a corner that put her out of
their sight. She hoped they wouldn't follow her. Or maybe she hoped
they would.

She imagined Max Kim and Benny saying, “Wait,
Come back, Nova. We didn’t mean it.”

"No, that was gross.” Besides her family
thought she was too young to have a boyfriend, so why bother? For
now though that's what she had to stand by until she became a
little older. If her half-brother and half-sister ever found out
she liked a boy, they would never let her live it down.

Nova threw her raincoat over herself and
backpack, trudged outside and stood under the long roof. Various
bikes splashed through puddles nearby. Nova could see her breath,
she didn't shiver. The cold never seemed to bother her, not like it
bothered the rest of her family.

The rain slowed down a little, and Nova made
her way to the bike rack. She unlocked the bike and wrapped the
chain around the stem of the seat. Nova swung a leg over her
beat-up blue bike. She was supposed to wear a helmet, but she
couldn't find one to fit her big head. Cloth hats never stayed on
either, unless she used a chinstrap. Nova really wanted to explore
the paranormal, but Benny always seemed to burst her bubble. She
rode away from the school, up a steep hill, leading out of the
river valley where the town was until she was out of sight. She
pulled over. Then she broke down and cried. To her surprise, a
couple of cars packed with passengers passed her on the road, but
no one stopped to ask what was wrong. She breathed a sigh of
relief. Maybe they thought she had rain on her face. Nova looked
down into a puddle to check her reflection. Except it wasn’t her in
the puddle. It was the man with the closely cropped white beard.
Then it was gone, and it was just her in the puddle. Was that the
ghost from the library? She looked around. There wasn’t anyone near
her. She looked back at the puddle. Still nothing but her own
flat-nosed face.

It must have just been the clouds, reflecting
on her face in an odd way.

To get home, Nova had to go
through Bardsville and then through the suburbs, then out into the
countryside to her farm. It was kind of a long haul, so she pulled
over at the bike shop in the town square and bought a candy bar.
Why couldn't her mom be more like Takeesha's? Why did Nova have to
buy all the things she needed, like school supplies and
clothes?

Well, Takeesha was spoiled. Most of the kids,
she knew who were old enough worked in the fields during the
summer. Except Benny, of course.

The heavy rains had stopped, but it was still
sprinkling like the tears that trickled down her cheeks.

Why couldn’t she be stronger than this? She
wanted so badly to punch Brenda and Amanda’s lights out. She
imagined it all the time. But it always turned out that she
couldn’t stand up to the bullies and defend herself. She munched
her candy bar and scanned the various shops that had sprung up
since people had stopped traveling so much —little grocery stores,
a place that sold bedding, a shoe repair place.

The rain began to pour down again over the
green- striped, canvas awnings above the antiquated buildings that
lined the sidewalks. Across the road, past the tulips coming up
around the gazebo in the town square, she could see the

blacksmith/veterinarian shop where her mom
worked. Maybe she could ask her mom for a ride home. But no, the
vet truck could only be rented for special occasions, and besides,
her mom had probably already left for the day. She pocketed half of
the candy bar for later, picked up her wet bike and rode as fast as
she could toward home.

She fought the urge to stare at the other
businesses along the road that had sprung up lately--
fortunetellers, chiropractors, and acupuncture shops. Could Benny
be right? Could these business men be con-men?

She passed a lot of horses hitched to buggies
and tied to many posts in front of the various stores. She admired
them - she loved horses for as long as she could remember — as they
dosed with a back leg placed forward or nibbled at one another.
They were so clash. The only drawback was having to dodge all the
road apples as she rode. Where were the town’s street sweepers?

Bicycles of various shapes and sizes with
motors or pedals locked into stands on the sidewalk dripped water
as they waited for their riders. Someone yelled, “Nova, get out of
the rain!” When Nova looked back, a door was closing. She shrugged
and kept riding, her head hanging as she pedaled. Once she got out
of town, there would be less manure and Nova could pick up some
speed.

The rain came down hard in intervals. When it
did Nova couldn’t even hear herself swear. Even though she was
wearing her raincoat, her jeans clung to her skin and rain
overflowed her sneakers.

But she continued to ride with her face down.
A lone peditaxi splashed dirty water onto her pants. “What the…?
Hey, thanks a lot.” A motorcycle with two drenched people arguing
sped past. Nova laughed. Then the rain abruptly stopped. Moving
black and gray clouds revealed the sun. The road ahead was already
drying out except for a few small puddles. It looked almost as if
all the rain had fallen over the town itself, and the suburbs
didn’t get any.

Not the suburbs. She was out among the farm
fields that ran as far as the horizon. They were plowed after the
harvest last year and looked warm and inviting. She couldn’t wait
to gallop over them. If she fell off and landed in the dirt, it
would be like landing on a mattress.

But wait. She didn’t remember riding through
the suburbs.

Nova glanced down at herself. No yellow. Her
raincoat was gone. What’s going on? Her book bag seemed heavier
somehow. Nova pulled over and checked- there was her raincoat,
dried now, and packed neatly inside.

Her bangs that were dripping wet a few
minutes ago were now dry. Nova’s jeans and sneakers were only a
little damp just enough to prove that they had been wet minutes
before.

She tried to say, “What’s happening to me?”
but something strange was happening to her tongue. It was dancing
in and out of her mouth. She grabbed it with her fingers, but it
didn't do any good. Nova felt a shiver go up her spine. What if she
couldn’t get her tongue to stop moving? She glanced around for
walkers, bike riders, motorcycles, any other kind of vehicle. There
weren’t any. She figured she had better go home where she could get
some help from her mom.

Nova checked her watch, 3:10 p.m. What the…?
She left the school at 2:43 and it said 2:52 when she entered the
store to get a candy bar. She knew she had been riding more than 18
minutes—it was at least a 45-minute ride to get this far out into
the country. But the second hand was still moving, and the watch
seemed fine.

Nova tried to talk but couldn't make a sound.
What was going on?

She was just about to hop back onto her bike
when suddenly Nova heard a tiny whisper in her ear. It said,
“Remember, ghosts ain’t exactly paranormal. Have a safe trip home,
mate. See ya.” The voice was feminine and sounded like a New
Zealand accent. She looked back and saw an enormous rainbow that
ended right on the road. She flipped her bike around to face it and
sat on the bike seat to gaze at the brilliant colors. She’d never
seen the actual end of the rainbow. It was - wonderful.

Nova tried to say, “Not paranormal? Then what
are they?” but what came out was "Psycho physical synthesis is the
booboo of the air nautical channeling cosmic energy field?"

What?

Nova could do nothing but stare at the end of
the huge rainbow. Nova studied it as she never studied anything
before. Soon she realized that behind the rainbow, it was still
raining in torrents.

The clouds were moving farther away down the
road, toward Bardsville. And she realized the rainbow didn’t arch
the way it was supposed to. It climbed straight up, getting smaller
and smaller until it disappeared. Maybe it was just so huge, Nova
couldn’t see the arch at the top. Each of the different colors
shimmered with wavy lines. There was a clear wavy place to the far
left-- even though it was clear, it rippled and waved like the
ocean tide. Next was a red place, then orange, yellow, a green
place where she rode her bike through, blue, indigo, violet and
then another clear wavy place. "So this is what a rainbow looks
like up close?" She realized she had control over her voice
again.

Each of the colors big enough to ride her
bike through, Nova guessed three yards wide.

“How incredibly clash!” It was like she
splashed through a car wash and came out the other side dry.

A bus passed her from behind, and the rainbow
disappeared. The white bus splashed through puddles of water as
soon as it drove over the place where the rainbow end had been.

A distinct wet line was on the road
perpendicular to the two yellows lines already there. On Nova's
side of the road, it was dry, but the side behind where the rainbow
had been, it was soaked. Trees dripped water, and puddles were
everywhere.

The bus owned by a vacuum manufacturing
business, named Final Frontier, according to the sign on its back,
was packed with people going to work on the second shift. They
clung for dear life onto the sides and back wearing suits and ties,
helmets, and elbow and kneepads. The lopsided bus, which was
heavier on one side, because there were more people on that side,
almost tipped over when it traveled around a corner on two side
wheels.

The passengers screamed. Nova cringed and
ground her teeth.

She’d heard about employees who got thrown
from the buses or who got crushed to death. But now the news media
no longer seemed to talk about it. Why was that?

Well, if her watch wasn’t working, she had to
figure out what time it was. She didn't want to ride home in the
dark.

She stretched her arm out as far as it could
go with her fingers horizontal above the horizon under the sun. The
number of fingers she could fit under the sun showed how much time
was left before the sun was all the way down. One finger
represented fifteen minutes. It was an old Indian trick. Her mother
told Nova her boyfriend, Nova’s father, had shown her how to do
this as they sat on a blanket in the grass and watched a romantic
sunset. Apparently, it was about 5:45 p.m.