That evening, I grew increasingly uneasy as the sun began to set. The sky turned from pink to gold and then began to darken, and I suspected that since Mr. Cotton had put events in motion to bring Candace to an area where she could potentially drown in deep waves just as Violet had predicted, Olivia's spirit was going to turn violent. It was making sense now to me why Olivia had wanted me to be alarmed at Homecoming by the song she had singled out: I was supposed to have prevented Candace from attacking Violet. Because the attack had led to her trip to the psychiatric ward, and her hospitalization had inspired her dad to book a vacation. I saw it all clearly now, but wished that Olivia had been able to find a clearer way to communicate her expectations to me.
"Turning in soon?" Mom asked in the living room after bringing Maude inside from her last wild frolic in the back yard for the night. Her tone suggested that I should turn in, seeing as how it was a Sunday night and I had school in the morning.
I was pretending to be thoroughly engrossed in a television news program about a serial killer who had lived in La Crosse. "Yeah, I just want to see the end of this," I assured her.
"Are you sure you should be watching something so troubling right before bed time?" she nagged me. "You've been tossing and turning a lot lately. You don't want to give yourself bad dreams."
Avoiding eye contact with her, I said, "I'm not having nightmares. I'm sleeping just fine."
"Then why have you been sleeping out here on the couch?" She raised an eyebrow skeptically at me before disappearing down the hall. "Goodnight, sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite," she called.
When the show finally ended, I pushed myself to watch another half hour of a late night talk show, and then turned off the television. I was startled by the immaculate quiet in the house after the low murmur of voiceovers on commercials had been silenced. I turned on the light in the hallway and switched off the lamp in the living room, already creeping myself out with thoughts about what might await me in my bedroom. Since Maude's arrival, I had started keeping my bedroom door closed because she had a relentless hatred for all of my shoes and socks. While keeping the door closed spared my footwear, it created a moment of panic for me each and every time I had cause to open it and peer inside. In that fraction of a second before I was able to flip on the light switch, my heart always stopped beating in distressed fear of what might await me on the other side.
I leaned forward, putting my ear to the door to listen for any strange sounds coming from my bedroom, and then, hearing nothing suspicious, I reached for the doorknob. My hand recoiled and snapped back to my chest before I even realized what had happened; I gasped in surprise because the doorknob was scalding hot to the touch. My fingertips felt singed, but when I looked down in the darkness expecting to see blisters rising, they appeared to be fine. There was nothing about the appearance of the doorknob that would have suggested that it was hot. I tapped it again lightly with the tip of my index finger, and finding it still to be alarmingly hot, I weighed my options.
I considered trying to sneak out the front door and over to the Emorys' house, but the front entrance of our house would definitely be too noisy. The back door, with its squeaky storm door, would also create a noticeable amount of noise. There was no way out of the house through the garage unless I used the automatic door opener, which would definitely wake my mom out of a deep slumber. Before I even took a look in my bedroom, I knew there was no way I could sleep there for the night, and the thought of sleeping exposed, on the couch, and irking my mother more, was also not appealing. If it was Olivia playing games with me, simulating a fire in my bedroom just a few hours after I'd been terrified by a fiery movie scene was downright cruel.
So I made the decision to cross my bedroom as quickly as possible, slip out the window and dash over to Trey's. Using the bottom of my t-shirt to protect my hand, I turned the knob and threw the door open, finding my bedroom to be suspiciously quiet and cool. I quickly closed and locked the door behind me, tiptoed across the room as fast as I could, climbed through the window and lowered the screen again. Wearing only socks on my feet, I unlatched the gate in the fence surrounding our back yard and opened the gate to the Emorys' yard. I knocked on Trey's window lightly with my knuckles, hoping he was still awake. The room behind the blinds was already dark. Just as I began to panic because he wasn't answering and a cold wind was blowing, the window lifted, and he smiled at me.
"McKenna Brady! Why, what a nice surprise," he joked.
"Can I come in?"
It was disorienting to be in Trey's bedroom in the dark. He bashfully cleaned up a pile of dirty underwear on his floor and tossed it into the back of his closet. The room had a salty, safe smell about it, like dirty sheets or old gym shoes. As we crawled into his narrow bed and he lowered his flannel sheet over me, he warned, "You definitely have to wake up and go home early in the morning. If my parents find you in here, your mom will kill you, and then you'll be a ghost who haunts me."
"I think she's growing stronger," I confessed. I told him about the hot doorknob, and about how Candace would be flying to Hawaii with her father in two weeks, right after mid-terms.
"Well, that makes sense. The book says that the more acclimated a spirit becomes, you know, as a ghost, the more comfortable they become with their powers," Trey explained matter-of-factly. "She's probably testing out new skills. But I wouldn't bet on her being good enough yet to track you down over here."
He buried his head between my neck and shoulder and began kissing my neck softly, making my toes curl with delight. Suddenly, I was distracted by a strange scratching noise coming from his closet, and I sat straight up in fear.
"What's that noise?"
"It's the litter box. Patches and her family have relocated."
I crept out of Trey's bed and yanked the string dangling from the exposed light bulb in Trey's closet to turn on the light so that I could take a look. The mother cat and her kittens from the Emorys' yard were curled up on a discarded bathroom towel. With her golden eyes, the mother cat looked up at me and blinked patiently. The chubby ball of fur which had just used the litter box trotted across Trey's discarded running shoes back to its mother where it nuzzled into its place among its siblings.
"Trey, your mom is going to freak! These cats probably have fleas and all kinds of other stuff."
"Yeah, I know," Trey said softly where he sat up, shirtless, in bed. "I don't let my mom's cat in here just in case she can catch some kind of bad illness from these outside cats. Just one of many, many reasons why my mom would have reason to be upset with me."
I snuggled beneath Trey's blankets again alongside him and said suddenly, "Violet tricked me into seeing a movie today with her and Tracy, and there was this scene with an out-of-control fire that really upset me. Okay, maybe she didn't know this scene was going to be in the movie, but I think she did know. Am I totally paranoid?"
"Maybe a little paranoid," Trey told me, wrapping one arm protectively over me. "Lots of movies have scenes with fires in them."
"Yeah, but this particular scene just seemed too real. It made me have a real panic attack. I had to leave the theater and collect myself, and all afternoon I've been wondering this same thing, this same thought again and again: why me and not her?"
Trey studied me for a moment, concerned, and asked, "Why Jennie and not you?"
I nodded, unable to say anymore, afraid that I'd cry.
"Don't you remember anything about the night of the fire?"
I didn't know how Trey thought he might remember details from that night that I didn't. I was the one who'd been engulfed in flames, who'd choked on smoke and watched the roof cave in.
"The reason you weren't killed in the fire with Jennie?" He searched for some kind of recognition in my expression.
"You actually remember that night?" I asked. It wasn't completely impossible that Trey would have remembered it; after all, it had happened at the end of his street and was probably the only noteworthy thing that had happened in our small town during his entire childhood.
"I remember a lot about that night," he insisted. "My mother woke me up because she smelled smoke. I remember watching her run through the front door and down the street in her robe, and the night sky above your house was glowing because of the flames. She had told my dad to keep me in the house, but after a few minutes he put my coat on me and we followed her to the corner, where your old house used to be. You were standing outside in the street with your dog, barefoot, in your nightgown, just watching the flames climb higher and higher. The dog was going nuts. She was barking her head off, and wouldn't let anyone near you. I remember thinking it was just so weird to see you standing there alone. I'd always thought of you and Jennie like a pair, you know? Like two socks that go together."
"You knew it was me, standing there, and not Jennie?" I asked, surprised.
Trey nodded. "Of course. I could always tell you apart. Jennie's posture was different. Her eyebrows were a little heavier. She bit her fingernails down to the quick."
Unbelievable, I thought to myself, that Trey had known instantly that I'd survived and Jennie hadn't, but my own parents hadn't been able to tell the difference between us.
"I don't think I'd ever seen one of you without the other before that night. You could ask my mom about it, if you want. Back then she used to tell anyone who would listen that the dog must have gotten you up and led you outside."
I tried so hard to remember that night, but my memories were what they always were: little more than the unbearable tightness of smoke in my chest, the roar of the flames, and a sense of urgency that I needed to get outside. Had Moxie awakened me? Had she run through the screen door, as she was fond of doing when she was a puppy—she'd figured out how to stand on her hind legs to press the handle with her front paws and open the door— to inspire me to follow her out onto the lawn? I really couldn't recall. I didn't remember much about even being in the street, other than the moment when I saw my mother's silhouette emerge in the doorway, the wall of orange fire behind her. If Trey's mom was right and Moxie had nudged me awake, then why me and not Jennie? Would Moxie have gone back into the house to rouse Jennie if the flames hadn't risen so quickly? There had been a gas leak in the basement, the fire department had determined during their investigation. That was why the whole house had gone up in such enormous flames so quickly, and it could have been started by anything, even a tiny spark from static electricity.
"So if you're wondering why you made it out and not Jennie, the answer is Moxie. For whatever reason, she was able to wake you up, but not your sister. It's as simple as that, McKenna. You can't question it."
I lay quiet for a moment, thinking about life and the energy of the universe and how something as simple as the sensitivity of my skin to a dog's wet nose had probably made the difference between life and death for me and my twin.
"We kept her here with us, you know," Trey told me. "Moxie. We had her here for two or three weeks while your family stayed somewhere else. I kept hoping you'd move away forever so that she'd just be my dog."
I shook my head in surprise. "I didn't know that," I admitted. The weeks following the fire were a blur for me. I recalled distinctly missing school. After our time in the hospital and Jennie's funeral, Mom and I went to Missouri to stay with my grandparents for a few weeks while Dad stayed in Willow at a motel and dealt with the insurance paperwork. I remembered very little about those weeks in Missouri other than the most random details: a red patchwork quilt spread over the brown plaid couch for me, turkey sandwiches prepared by my grandmother with thick mayonnaise, my mother disappearing behind a closed door to her childhood bedroom for hours on end to cry without my seeing it. But now that I was trying to remember it all, I was sure of it: Moxie hadn't been with us.
"Sorry," I apologized. "That we didn't move away forever."
"Don't be sorry about that," Trey teased, nudging me with his arm. "If you had moved away forever instead of into the house next door, I would have been watching someone else get undressed for the last few years."
My eyes shot wide open and my jaw dropped. "Trey!"
"Probably some gross, hairy guy," Trey continued tormenting me. He leaned over and took my face in both of his hands and kissed me right on my protesting frown.
Strangely, Candace returned to her old self that week at school. It was if the promise of a trip to Hawaii had pointed her mania a different direction. In the cafeteria, she rolled her eyes at Violet and didn't appear to be affected by the taunts and jeers of lower classmen who had heard about her Homecoming rampage. I continued to sit with Violet, Tracy, and Michael at lunch time, but made no attempt to hide my friendliness toward Mischa and Candace. With mid-terms just two weeks away and the leaves beginning to fall from every tree in town, I busied myself with preparations for our first junior class fundraiser of the year. It was my goal to organize a weekend yard clean-up service, which I had decided to call, "the junior class Rake Sale." I created a series of posters encouraging classmates to sign up for six-hour shifts to help our class "rake in the money" for the ski trip that Violet was organizing for January. The amount of money that we needed to raise by the end of January was fairly daunting. Wealthy kids at our school probably could have asked their parents to write checks to cover their costs, but everyone else could raise the majority of the cost of their trip by working their shift. No one liked doing manual labor, but I was hopeful that people would take advantage of the opportunity to pay for their trip with a few hours of hard work.
To my great surprise and relief, the sign-up forms were nearly full by Wednesday afternoon at lunch time after having been posted in the cafeteria for only three days. It definitely seemed like kids were open to working off their fee to go on the trip; the big remaining question was whether or not people in town would be interested in hiring high school kids to clean up their leaves, mow their lawns, and trim their hedges. We lived in a town where everyone's family had thousands of dollars' worth of lawn equipment in their garage, so it was a gamble whether or not anyone would be willing to pay for assistance.
Candace's mom checked Candace out of school from the principal's office on Thursday to drive her to Sheboygan to meet with my father's former colleague, Dr. Gonzalez. Candace had actually been looking forward to the examination, hoping that Dr. Gonzalez would take her side on the topic of the sedatives and anti-depressant drugs she had been taking for the last month. She was insistent that the drugs were dulling her senses and making her feel stupid, and was eager to be free of her prescriptions. Mischa and I walked Candace to the first floor before lunch time and watched through the slats in the blinds on the windows of the principal's office as she greeted her mother. They exchanged pleasantries with the office administrators before stepping back into the hallway. Mrs. Lehrer shifted her oversized sunglasses from the top of her head back down over her eyes as soon as she was back in the busy high school hallway in an attempt to avoid the stares of curious teenagers. Candace held perfect posture as she strode toward the high school's western exit, a set of double doors leading to the guest parking lot, not especially caring who observed her leaving school midday with her parent.
All afternoon, I was lost in thought during my classes, wondering if—when Candace resurfaced later that night—she would be able to provide some kind of logical, reasonable explanation for everything that had happened in the last few weeks. Even despite all of the proof that I'd gathered, I was still holding out for some kind of plausible reason for all of the weirdness I had witnessed. My father had taught me that logic was the greatest defense against doubt, and while I was certain that what I'd seen with my own eyes was real, I desperately wanted a reason for it not to be so.
Not surprisingly, Candace reconnected with Mischa that night before calling me. Mischa had already texted me the disturbing message, "She's in total denial," ten minutes before my phone rang. I smiled politely at my mom and crept down the hall to my room to speak in privacy.
"So, what's the word? Are you bonkers?" I teased.
"Totally not bonkers. Easily distracted and suffering typical symptoms of grief, but I'm afraid that's all," Candace sighed. "Sorry to disappoint."
I didn't want to press her for more information and risk upsetting her, but at the same time, I was desperate to hear more about the psychiatrist's assessment of the circumstances of Olivia's death. "Did he ask you about Olivia and the accident?"
"Duh. Of course he did. We talked for a while about the emotions people go through when someone close to them dies. All of it made total sense. I realized when I was trying to tell him about Olivia's party that I don't even really remember too well what happened that night. I still think Violet is shady. But I mean, how similar was her story about Olivia's death to what actually ended up happening?"
I couldn't believe my ears. It was as if Candace had been brainwashed.
She took a deep breath on the other end of the line. "I am open to the possibility that I may have imagined a lot of the details that were upsetting me most."
A million objections sprang to mind, but I kept myself calm, not wanting to disrupt whatever solace she had achieved during her meeting with Dr. Gonzalez. "I don't think you really imagined all of it," I commented gently. "Mischa and I were there, too, and we've both thought for the past few weeks that Violet was involved in Olivia's death. Did he say anything about the possibility that maybe we were all hypnotized into thinking weird things because of the game?"
Candace paused, and then said, "Honestly, McKenna, I don't think it's healthy for me to dwell on that game any longer. I just want to get my mid-terms over with, and fly to Hawaii. That's all I want to think about: getting a tan. And I don't think it would be such a bad idea for you to talk to a psychiatrist, too. Don't take this the wrong way, but you might very well have some unresolved issues from your sister's death."
Naturally I bristled at that, and couldn't stop myself from wondering if this was speculation on Candace's part or if Dr. Gonzalez, who I'd never met but who surely knew all about me, having worked with my dad, had formed that opinion of me. Our conversation drifted to a close and Candace asked if I was prepared for that weekend's fundraiser. I was surprised that the Rake Sale was even on her mind. Candace had been generally so checked out of normal high school life for the last few weeks, I doubted that she read the posters on the walls or listened to morning announcements.
As Candace seemed to be distancing herself from Violet's involvement with Olivia's death, the disturbance in my bedroom had been growing stronger all week. I had taken to keeping myself awake until the wee hours of the early morning with my lights on, waiting until I was absolutely certain my mom was asleep and that my trot down the hall with a blanket to the living room couch wouldn't wake her. Sleeping over in Trey's room on Sunday night had been enough to scare me out of attempting it a second time soon; either the alarm clock on his cell phone had failed, or Trey had absent-mindedly turned it off after its first ring, and we'd overslept. The sound of his mom knocking loudly on the door had sent me diving beneath the comforter, certain that a very uncomfortable and oddly baseless conversation with my mom about sex was in my not-too-distant future.
On Friday morning, my mother was waiting for me with her hands on her hips in the kitchen when I surfaced for orange juice after a restless night.
"When I got up this morning, one of the burners on the stove was on, and it looked like it had been burning all night," she said in a barely controlled, angry voice.
Already having a good idea of who was to blame for the oven being turned on, I feigned interest in the stovetop and noticed that an area around the burner in the front left corner was darkened from heat.
"Sorry," I said, not sure what to say. "I don't even remember the last time I turned the stove on."
I knew better than to flat-out deny my own involvement; there were only two of us in the house and if I blamed Olivia's ghost, my mother would cart me off to the insane asylum to have my head checked faster than I'd be able to say, "Just kidding." I was surprised that Olivia had managed to tinker with the gas stovetop, but not shocked, seeing as how she was probably annoyed that I was foiling her attempts to harass me in my bedroom. I had taken down all of the shelves and framed photographs in my room, and had boxed up my music boxes and CD's. In frustration, Olivia was obviously trying out her strength in different areas of the house, and it occurred to me that I should probably fear that she might try out her tricks in my mom's room.
"Honestly, McKenna," my mom said in wonderment, staring me down. "What is going on? You're up at all hours of the night, doing absent-minded things like this. Are you sleepwalking? And then there's the eating, and the weight loss... I am really concerned."
"I don't think I'm sleepwalking," I said, not sure how to get myself off the hook for this kitchen disaster. I also didn't think I'd lost any more weight since the summer, and attributed that comment to Violet's mom's involvement. "But I guess anything's possible. I honestly don't remember turning the burner on. I didn't cook anything yesterday."
Mom was not buying my act of innocence for a second. "Maybe this whole Student Government thing was a bad idea. If you're under too much stress, then something has got to give."
"It's not too much stress," I assured her quickly. "I'm enjoying it." But even as I was speaking the words, I knew I was trying to convince myself as much as her.
That night, Trey told his parents he was sleeping over at a friend's house, and crept through my window with his backpack. He looked around at my stark walls in wonderment, shaking his head. "It looks like you're moving out," he commented. Olivia's spirit was strangely quiet, not causing any disturbances at all. It was so eerie, I half-expected to open my bedroom door in the morning and find the rest of the house missing.
In the morning, my alarm clock sounded at dawn and I left Trey sleeping in my room when my mom gave me a lift to the shopping center where juniors would assemble for the Rake Sale. Violet and Tracy were already there, waiting and sipping lattes in Tracy's car. Mom and I had brought with us a table with folding legs and posters that Violet, Tracy, Michael, and I had made during the week, and Violet and Tracy walked across the parking lot to greet us as Mom pulled the table out of the trunk.
"Hi, Mrs. Brady," Violet said in a polite sing-song voice.
"Hi, girls," my mom said, unfolding the legs of the table. I could tell that she had no idea which girl was Violet and which girl was Tracy. I made fast, bashful introductions, eager for my mom to drive away before volunteers from school began to arrive.
"This was such a great idea of McKenna's. She's really a genius at thinking up ways to raise money," Violet gushed.
My mother looked at me with a quizzical expression. "I don't know where she gets it from. Certainly not from my side of the family."
Thirty minutes later, there were a handful of students roaming around the parking lot for their shift, and holding signs along the road side to catch the attention of cars passing by. It was nine in the morning, and our services were officially available for the day, at least according to the hours of service we'd written on our posters, and the story that had been written about us in the Willow Gazette. Kids had arrived carrying rakes, hoes, bush pruners, and gardening gloves as they had been instructed, and were now just eager for some customers. I tried to happily greet everyone who had arrived for our first shift and felt a little guilty as I saw Erica's mom's black SUV pull into the lot. Erica's mom greeted me by loudly announcing, "McKenna! You've lost so much weight! I never would have recognized you!" I blushed furiously and cringed, wishing that Mrs. Bloom hadn't reminded everyone in the parking lot that I had been thirty pounds heavier the previous October.
Thanking Erica and Cheryl for coming so early and working the first shift was particularly hard for me, because I knew that neither of them really needed to earn money to pay for their ski trips. They were there to win back my approval, I knew. I was both embarrassed by their desperateness and also by my own reluctance to give in and accept their friendship again. Mischa wouldn't be there until the afternoon shift because she had a morning gymnastics meet, and Candace was too unpredictable to count on for either shift. In my head, a pesky voice told me you know who your real friends are, and I tried to block it out. "Thank you guys so much for volunteering," I told both of them. "I really wasn't sure how this was going to turn out this morning."
By ten in the morning, several cars had pulled into the lot to book services for the day. I staffed the reservation table with Tracy, and Violet kept track of which kids we would assign to each appointment. In pairs of two, kids accepted slips of paper on which we had written the address and phone number of the house where they were being sent, and drove off to mow lawns and trim bushes with strict orders not to venture inside the homes of anyone they didn't know. Fortunately, our town was small enough that we knew most of the people who requested our services by name. We sent Jeff Harrison and Tony Fortunado from the basketball team over to the Highlands' house to clean the gutters of the coach's in-laws. Sarah Chaney and Crystal Blomquist went to the home of the owner of our town's largest grocery store to plant orange chrysanthemums and marigolds. A husband and wife with a handful of young children stopped by and asked for three kids to come by, claiming they had an acre of property and could use all the help they could get. It felt like a gift to be actually busy and lost in thought in the warm morning sun, for once occupied with something other than ghostly business.
Forty minutes after Jeff and Tony departed in Tony's hatchback car, Jeff called Violet on her cell phone to inform her that there was a crisis. They hadn't brought with them green lawn refuse bags required by our town's sanitation department, and Coach Highlands' in-laws also didn't have any at the house. They were staring at a huge mountain of leaves and weren't sure what to do about them next.
"Bags," Violet called to me with her hand over her phone. "We need to send refuse bags over to Longfield Road!"
I looked around the parking lot helplessly. We had sent nearly all of our morning volunteers out on jobs already. Immediately I felt myself overheat with panic; I thought I had been so organized and thoughtful, telling all of the volunteers to bring their own lawn tools. It had never even occurred to me to arrange for refuse bags in advance. I felt foolish and ill-prepared for having overlooked something so fundamental. The shopping center where we had set up our operation for the day featured the ice cream shop, a donut shop, a dry cleaner, a beauty salon and a dog grooming parlor. None of those were establishments that would logically carry boxes of refuse bags. Before I even had time to formulate any kind of a plan, Erica was standing in front of me with a solution.
"I can get some bags," she offered. Her father was the manager of the large hardware superstore in our town's bigger shopping center a few miles away.
As usual, I only had a few crumpled single bills in my wallet, surely not enough to buy the expensive bags. "I don't have any cash," I said, wondering how my mom might react if I summoned her back to the parking lot from home, requesting that she bring money for my school project, especially since just the day before she had expressed concern about my role in Student Government.
"It's okay. I can take care of it," Erica said enthusiastically. Cheryl was already digging her car keys out of her purse, and the two of them walked toward Cheryl's small white car. They stopped by the Highlands' house on their way back to the shopping center and dropped off a box of refuse bags with Jeff and Tony. Upon their return, Erica informed me that the several boxes of bags she brought back with her were a donation from her dad. Relief pumped through my veins. I knew after that day, I was going to have to commit to spending more time with Erica, Cheryl, and Kelly again.
"Oh my god, that was so sweet of you guys," Violet gushed, taking Erica's hands in her own and smiling appreciatively. Unlike Olivia, Violet understood that the key to supreme popularity was making everyone adore her, even the nerdish girls like Cheryl and Erica. It wasn't that Olivia had been cruel to unpopular girls; she had just considered them unworthy of her attention. Violet's gratitude seemed genuine, even though I would have been surprised if she knew Cheryl and Erica's names.
Taking me completely by surprise, Trey surfaced in the parking lot around one o'clock when the afternoon shift was beginning.
"Hey!" I exclaimed. "You're not even a junior."
He pecked me on the cheek and clarified, "Oh, I'm not here to work. Just to flirt with girls."
I blushed and reached out to hold his fingers. With the exception of me, I had never witnessed Trey flirting with any girls before.
"Your mom went into your room after she got back from dropping you off," he told me in a low voice, taking a step closer to me.
"Oh God, did she see you in there?"
"No, of course not, but she was going through your stuff," he continued, and waited for my reaction.
At first I was furious—who wouldn't be?—but then I remembered our conversation the previous morning, and realized she was probably being a diligent mom, making sure I wasn't hiding drugs in my room. I quickly tried to think through the inventory of stuff in my room to make sure there wasn't anything in there that might spark concerns. The Ouija board was hidden in plain sight in the Emorys' basement on their shelf of mildewing board games. I had never kept a diary at any point in my life, and since Trey usually crept through the window already in his pajamas, he had never accidentally left any possessions behind before returning home.
I sighed. "I guess there's not much I can do about that. I'm giving her plenty of reasons to be worried about me."
"That's not the part that's weird," Trey said. "She left the door open when she left, and Maude came in. This freaked me out so much: the dog sat down and just stared up at the ceiling, blinking and watching. She knows something's in there."
This chilled me; I so desperately wanted Maude to remain safe from the spirits trying to interact with me. "Was she barking?"
"Not at all," Trey said. "She just sat there, like she was watching TV. She barely even noticed when I left."
Mischa arrived not long after Trey bought an ice cream cone and walked home. She was dropped off by Amanda, almost half an hour late for her shift, and walked across the parking lot directly toward me, ignoring everyone else. "I'm here," she announced. "But please, please don't make me talk to her." She gave Violet an evil sideward glance across the lot, where Violet was grinning and having the time of her life talking with Jeff and Tony about their morning of lawn work.
I tasked Melissa with taking over my duties with Tracy at the card table, prepared to take the next job that came in and put in some manual labor, personally. Mischa and I both watched in agony, our conversation abruptly ending, as we noticed Pete's car enter the parking lot. As expected, he climbed out of the car and shyly approached Violet, placing one hand lightly on her shoulder and kissing her suspiciously close to her mouth.
"Unbelievable!" Mischa muttered, tightening her grip on the handle of her rake. "So, she really is after him. She even looks different than she did back in September. I remember on the first day of school thinking she was kind of shy and could work it a little more. She's wearing different clothes now, and more makeup."
I had noticed that, too. Maybe before Olivia's death, Violet had been holding back a bit, not wanting to overthrow the queen. But now that the queen was out of the way, she wasn't the least bit shy about batting her long eyelashes anymore, and making it abundantly clear that she was the cutest girl at Willow High School.
Pete's flirtatious interaction with Violet wasn't the only surprise of the afternoon. The very next car to pull into the lot was a black Mercedes driven by none other than Mr. Richmond. Olivia and Henry's dad was classically handsome, and he whipped off his aviator sunglasses in a practiced, smooth move as he stepped out of his car. He smiled directly at me and Mischa where we lingered near the card table, looking like a catalog model with his cleft chin and broad shoulders, wearing a classic navy cable knit sweater and khakis.
"Can you girls tell me where a fellow can get some help with yard work around here?" he asked us in a deep, playful voice that made me wish my own dad was more like him, and less like a beach bum having a severe mid-life crisis, teaching two classes a week when he wasn't repainting his boat.
"You came to the right place," Mischa said in her special, perky voice reserved for parents.
Since Mischa and I had already committed to taking on the next task that came in, we climbed into Mr. Richmond's back seat and made small talk about school all the way to the Richmonds' house. Mischa had been close friends with Olivia far longer than I had, and Mr. Richmond asked her a litany of questions about her parents, her sister, and far-off plans for college. I cringed when I saw Henry's pick-up truck parked in the driveway. Naturally, the Richmonds' had a perfectly landscaped front lawn, so the most we could due to earn our wages for two hours was rake the leaves that had fallen from the trees near the curb, and weed in between the bushes and fluffy goldenrod planted around the perimeter of the house. I cringed as I pulled weeds near the ground-level window on the side of the house through which Pete had kissed Olivia on the night of her birthday. I fought the urge to peer through the hazy window to the Richmonds' basement, not wanting to see the location where we had played Violet's game and relive those moments in my head.
Nearing the end of our work at the Richmonds' I felt a nagging urge to use the bathroom. I hadn't gone since earlier that morning when I'd dashed into the ice cream shop. When Mr. Richmond stepped outside and said, "Looks like you girls are just about done out here," I seized the opportunity to ask if it would be okay for me to use their restroom.
Inside the Richmonds' home, I was overcome with emotion simply from the familiar potpourri smell in their front hallway. Even though Mr. Richmond had just welcomed me into the house moments earlier, I still felt like a sneaky intruder, trying to be as quiet as possible, cringing at the sound of my own footsteps. Just as I was about to reach for the light switch in the bathroom on the first floor, I wasn't sure what inspired me, but I felt a sudden and irresistible urge to sprint up the stairs to the second floor and use the bathroom adjoined to Olivia's room. The house seemed silent and empty, and although Henry's car was parked in the driveway, I thought it might be possible that he had gone somewhere with his mother. Once the notion of going into Olivia's room entered my head, I couldn't shake it. It was as if I was magnetically being drawn to that corner of the house. After standing in the bathroom in a state of suspended animation for at least thirty seconds, I finally spun on my heel and darted upstairs, my heart pounding.
I was surprised to find the door to Olivia's bedroom wide open. Late afternoon sunlight flooded the room through the windows, and I marveled at how unchanged it looked since the last time I was there. Olivia's white comforter was still spread across her queen-size bed. Her stuffed Gund teddy bears still flanked her pillows like guards. A bottle of amber-hued perfume waited patiently on her dresser, and I impulsively lifted the heavy glass bottle to my nose to indulge in a whiff of Olivia's sweet scent. Pictures of Olivia, Mischa, and Candace were tucked into the wooden frame around the mirror attached to Olivia's dresser. In one picture, Olivia smiled brightly in Pete's arms, and I realized it was a photograph taken at Homecoming the previous year. The piles of clothes that had been on the floor the night of Olivia's birthday had been put away, and a stuffed unicorn, the kind that could be won by throwing darts at balloons at Winnebago Days, was set on the white wicker rocking chair in the corner. Standing in the center of the room, it seemed as if Olivia was simply not home instead of simply not alive; as if she could walk through the door at any second and ask what I thought I was doing in her room.
Ignoring my bladder, I dared to open Olivia's closet to peek inside, and saw the eggshell-colored strapless dress that Olivia had bought at Tart hanging in a clear plastic wrap on the rack, singled out from the other familiar clothes as if no one had altered anything in Olivia's closet since the morning of the big game. I thought of Maude at my own house, staring up at the ceiling, and realized why it felt like Olivia might catch me red-handed in her room any second. Because it was very likely that her spirit knew exactly where I was.
"What am I supposed to do next, Olivia?" I asked aloud, quietly, looking around her bedroom. "I don't know how to prevent Candace from going on the trip with her dad. You have to give me some kind of sign."
I used the bathroom quickly, not even bothering to turn on the light. When I turned on the faucet to wash my hands, I observed that the squirt bottle of liquid lemon-scented soap that used to be in there had been replaced by a crystal dish of white soaps shaped like hearts. Then, the conundrum: wash my hands with a brand new, unused novelty soap and leave evidence that I'd been in Olivia's room, or simply not wash my hands. After two hours of raking leaves and digging through dirt, I genuinely wanted to wash up. On an impulse, I washed my hands quickly with one of the creamy little white hearts, and then, feeling like a criminal, I wrapped the remainder of the soap in a tissue and stuck it in the pocket of my jeans. I bolted down the stairs, really not wanting any of the Richmonds to catch me snooping in Olivia's room. Outside, Mr. Richmond already had the engine running, ready to drive us back to the shopping center.