Someone to Love

13

13

The next day, Jasmine kept an ear out for the mail carrier, and when she heard the clack of the mailbox, she dashed outdoors. The brightness of the afternoon blinded her, and she made her way to the box, swaying like some poor soul lost in the dessert. A letter from Peace Corps topped the stack. She ripped it open and glimpsed the words Guatemala and Projects in Health and Youth Development. She was in!

She ran back into the house and flung open the door. "Guatemala!" she yelled.

Charlotte peered down from the second-story balcony, confusion baffling her face. "Miss?" she said. "Are you all right?"

"Oh, hi, Charlotte. You are looking fan-tastic!" Jasmine half-waved and danced her way into the kitchen. She hadn't seen Andre all morning.

A moment later, Charlotte appeared behind her. "I'll be heading out now, ma'am. Grocery shopping to do." She reached for the list sitting beside the telephone. "Looks like you have a message."

The telephone's red button was doing its best to get some attention. Jasmine pressed it. "It's me," said the excited voice of her father. "I've taken a job as a caddie, and we're going on the Senior Tour! Can you believe it? My dream has finally come true. I'll be gone a month or two. Three or four at the most."

"His dream?" Jasmine said with a groan. What the hell was wrong with him? Her thoughts on the subject blurred, then skirted away like a coin that rolls under the couch just out of reach. The simple act of focusing was such a struggle lately.

Andre's voice appeared like a gnat whizzing into her ear: "We're not going." A slide of smoke fell from the ceiling, and he materialized in all his cigarette-smoking splendor, man-sized and dressed nicely in a suit.

"But I've been accepted to the Guatemala program," she whined, opening the cabinet and finding the Ovaltine. "You need to get some new clothes, by the way. Something appropriate for the jungle."

"I forbid you to go." His chin unhinged and he spoke with such force, her hair blew back as if intent on uprooting itself.

"Don't yell at me," Jasmine said, shaking a spoon at him. "Makes me cold."

She poured a glass of milk and stirred the powder into it. As she placed the spoon in the sink, something whooshed past her like an electrified breeze, and her glass of milk toppled over, spilling to the floor.

"Really? Now that's just ... " She threw a dishtowel over the puddle. "It's a big world out there, Andre, and you need to see it. All these years you've lived in this mansion, haunting anyone who happens by. It's time you did some good in the world! You don't have to be afraid."

He swooped back into the room, rearing up from the ground like a horse on hind legs. Jasmine backed away and watched his head reach the ceiling and then bend forward into that awkward curve as he quadrupled in size. This was frightful Andre, the one with the ragged hair and pock-marked skull. The crooked, gap-ridden teeth. The one who scared the crap out of her the first time they came face-to-face.

Perhaps she'd overstepped.

His deep baritone shook the cabinets like the rumble of a train. "Specters fear nothing."

Jasmine cringed, but tried to uphold a brave front. "Then why haunt only one house? Why not spend some time down the block—or overseas. In Europe, or—" She turned away from him, grabbed a can of Coke from the fridge and popped it open with a trembling hand.

"There are rules, madam, of which you are not privy."

His huge smoky aura burned her eyes. "Fine. Don't come with me. I don't care. See you in three years."