Ben, Jac, and I were way ahead of the group by the time we emerged from the Antarctic ecosystem, where Jac had squealed with delight at the antics of the various penguins waddling with dignity and sliding on their stomachs into pools of water.
“They’re just like little people,” she exclaimed.
“Like which little people exactly?” I asked her, suppressing a laugh.
“Little… partygoers in formalwear milling about and frolicking,” Jac declared.
“Oh right, those little people,” I said with a grin.
We were waiting for Ben to finish up at the cash register. He had picked out a beautiful book about rainforests, which I would have wanted to borrow from anyone but especially wanted to borrow from him. (“Read it together,” Jac had already coaxed.) He had also purchased a small lump of rock thought to be thousands of years old that had actually come from Antarctica, where it was dug up by a geologist.
“I guess we can go back into the lobby,” I said. Brooklyn, having nothing better to do, had just wandered into the gift shop and was sullenly examining a display of sterling silver spider monkey earrings. I couldn’t relax around Ben when I knew Brooklyn was just waiting for another chance to jump in and berate me. Or worse yet, to breathlessly inform Ben that both my mother and I were mediums.
I didn’t need that.
“Let’s go grab some seats in the lobby or the café,” I said.
“Excellent idea,” Jac agreed. Her current plan was to agree with all my suggestions, to encourage what she had now apparently decided was just a long wind-up to Ben’s and my marriage ceremony.
“Good thinking,” Ben said. “I could use a break. I’m on sensory overload.”
We walked out of the gift shop and down the hall leading back toward the café and ticket counter. It was late enough in the afternoon that the lobby had cleared out. Everyone who was visiting the Biodome today was already inside.
As we walked, I got the distinct feeling we were being followed. Stupid, too-much-time-on-her-hands-not-enough-gray-matter-between-the-ears Brooklyn! But when I shot a look back, it was not Brooklyn Bigelow that was following us. In fact, it was not a person at all.
It was a penguin.
Okay. Take a deep breath.
I peeked over at Ben. He was holding the Antarctic rock up to show Jac.
“Gack,” said the penguin.
Another deep breath.
Since I felt I could assume that the Biodome was not in the habit of allowing its many penguins to visit the gift shop with guests, or to leave the Antarctic ecosystem at all, there were only two logical possibilities left. First, that through multiple system failures and human error, one of the penguins had managed to escape undetected. The second possibility was that this penguin was in fact a former penguin.
Which meant I was seeing my first real animal ghost.
Okay, yeah, I’d glimpsed a few pioneer-era oxen by the local history museum back when I first started seeing spooks, and there might have been a couple of horses, too. But I’d only seen them fleetingly, from a distance. They weren’t interested in me, just in pulling their covered wagon full of pioneers in the direction of the Oregon Trail.
“Gack,” the penguin repeated, flapping his little wings in the air for emphasis.
“What are we doing?” Jac asked. “Are we going back to the gift shop?”
“Hang on a second,” Ben said. He was still holding the rock in his right hand, but his gaze had gone distant. “Did anybody hear something funny?”
There was a long silence. My mind raced.
Jac caught my eye and mouthed “what’s happening.” I shook my head. I didn’t know yet.
“Gack gack,” the penguin said.
“There it was again,” Ben said.
“I didn’t hear—”
“Jac, about the gift shop…,” I said hurriedly. “I forgot to… I meant to—I was going to see if they had any, um, books.”
“They have books,” Jac declared.
“Specifically, though, about… glockenspiels.”
Jac’s eyebrows shot up.
“Oh my gosh, that’s wonderful!” she said. “I mean, a wonderful idea! They might have a really good glockenspiel book there. I’m going to go back and check right now.”
She dashed down the hall as if she were being chased by wolves.
Ben gave me a curious look.
“Why would the Biodome gift shop carry a book about glockenspiels?” he asked.
Yeah, I definitely should have asked Jac what a glockenspiel was before accepting it as a code word.
“Gack-uh-gack,” said the penguin. He looked at me intently, and his little penguin eyes glittered, as if he were enjoying our conversation.
I took a deep breath. I was developing a theory about Ben, and if it were right, it could mean everything. And if it were wrong, he might never talk to me again. But I had to take the plunge.
“I hear it,” I said. “The sound. I hear it too.”
Ben looked at me closely.
“You do.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes. It’s like… gack.”
“Gack,” the penguin confirmed, rounding his little white belly proudly and shifting from side to side on his yellow feet.
“Yes, it is,” Ben said. He cocked his head to one side, which I normally would have found adorable but right now I was too nervous to fully appreciate. “Jac didn’t seem to hear it, though.”
“Correct,” I said.
“Kat…,” Ben began. And I did take a good second or two to appreciate what a glorious thing it was to hear Ben Greenblott say my name with his very own lips.
“I feel like you’re trying to tell me something,” he said.
I looked at my shoes. I heard Brooklyn Bigelow’s voice inside my head, taunting me, threatening to inform Ben about my mother and me being mediums, so sure that when he found out what a freak I was he’d run all the way to the United States border and never look back.
But the fact was, some things were beginning to add up. When I first heard disembodied voices at the Notre Dame Basilica, Ben had been standing nearby with his hands pressed on an old wooden pillar. I was sure of that. It hadn’t seemed important at the time, but I distinctly remembered it because I distinctly remembered every single thing Ben Greenblott did or said in my presence.
Then in Mont Royal Park, when I’d heard more voices speaking in French, Ben had been standing with his hands on stone. And in the rainforest ecosystem, he had been pressing his palms against the big tree when I heard chanting. Now he was holding an Antarctic rock, and not only could I hear a penguin, I could see one.
My mother says there are no coincidences—only red flags that the Universe throws our way to alert us to something significant that is happening. Without knowing anything more, I could only make my best guess. And my best guess was that Ben Greenblott was clairaudient.
He could hear supernatural sounds and voices that others could not. And somehow when he was channeling something, I picked up the sounds, and sometimes apparently the images, as well.
The question was, did he know it?
“Gack.”
Ben looked at me, and I nodded.
You have to tell him, I commanded myself. You have to tell him you see spirits. You have to tell him he’s gifted, too. You have to do it right now.
I looked full into his face. His lovely dark brows had pushed together in concern and confusion, and his eyes looked worried. He ran a hand over his hair, never once taking his eyes off mine. I had to tell him. I owed it to him.
If he didn’t already know about his gift, he might think he was nuts hearing those voices. What would I have given to meet another thirteen-year-old who saw ghosts when it started happening to me last year? If I cared about Ben Greenblott, and I think you’ve picked up on the fact that I did, I needed to be honest about who I was, and what I could do.
“Kat, do you know what a clairaudient is?” Ben asked suddenly.
My mouth dropped open. It’s a bad habit of mine when I’m speechless. I’m sure I looked hideous, but I just let it hang there for a second. Wide open. Total gaping maw. Attractive.
“Have you heard of clairaudients? I can’t even get into what you believe, not yet. Just if you know what I’m talking about. They’re, um… people who can…”
“I know what a clairaudient is,” I said, quietly. “A clairaudient hears spirit voices. You are clairaudient.”
Now Ben’s mouth dropped open, but he closed it right away.
“That’s right,” he said.
“You tune into the energy of a physical object, and when you touch it, you get sensations or sounds or even voices associated with the history of that object.”
He was leaning toward me, listening very intently. It was kind of distracting.
“That’s exactly right,” he said. “How can you know that?”
And he waited, expectantly. And I knew now that it was okay.
“I’m clairvoyant, Ben,” I told him. The sentence sounded so weird coming out of my mouth, like I was quoting some cheesy science fiction space opera. “I see spirits, and I can communicate with them.”
Ben whistled under his breath. He did not make a move to bolt for the U.S. border.
“I knew there was something,” he said. “I could tell that when I was picking up on something from an object that you somehow heard something too. I just didn’t know how, or if you were consciously aware of it. Or how it could be happening.”
“I was surprised, too,” I said. “I’ve never heard just voices before. When it happened in the cathedral, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Between you and me, I was starting to wonder if I was losing it.”
Ben laughed.
“I can imagine,” he said. “So if I’m picking up something and you’re standing nearby, you can actually hear the same thing?”
I nodded.
“And in this case not just hear it,” I said, pointing at the penguin, which gave me an inquisitive look and opened its beak slightly.
“What? Do you see something there?” he asked, looking back and forth from the place the ghost penguin was standing to me.
I laughed.
“Yep. It’s a penguin. A really cute one, too. You don’t see it?”
Ben shook his head, looking sorely disappointed.
“Let’s try something. Put the Antarctica rock in your backpack or your pocket—somewhere you won’t actually be touching it.”
Ben took his navy blue backpack off, unzipped it, and tossed the rock inside.
The penguin blinked, gave me a quizzical look, then disappeared.
“It’s gone,” I said.
Too bad, too. It was a really cute penguin.
“Wow,” Ben said. “It disappeared from your sight as soon as I broke contact with the rock?”
I nodded.
“And so you’re clairvoyant? Kat, that’s amazing. I’ve never met an actual clairvoyant before. When did you—how did you… I’m sorry. I’ve just never…”
His voice trailed off, but I knew exactly what he meant. He’d never met anyone that was different in the way he was different before. Until now.
Until me.
“But if you can hear what I hear, why can’t I see what you see?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe you can, and we just don’t know how to make it happen yet.”
Ben looked at me expectantly, like he was waiting for a suggestion. And actually, I had one.
I looked at my watch.
“We have fifteen minutes before we’re supposed to meet up with the group,” I said. “I have an idea. Can you come out to the bus with me?”
I know. It sounded crazy—me asking a boy to sneak out to an empty bus with me. It was totally and completely against field trip rules; Sid had made it very clear we weren’t supposed to leave the Biodome without the group for any reason. But this was no ordinary situation, no ordinary boy. Not even the bus, at this point, was ordinary.
“Sure,” Ben said.
My heart jumped a little.
“Hi!” came Jac’s voice.
“Hey,” I said.
“I couldn’t find the, uh, book I was looking for, but look what I got!”
Jac held out a small stuffed penguin with a sweet face and a stylish tuft of hair on the top of his head.
“I couldn’t resist buying him. Isn’t he adorable? His name is Osbert; it says so right here on his name tag.”
“He is adorable, Jac,” I said. “Listen, Ben and I need to run outside for a second. Alone.”
Jac’s eyebrows practically shot clear off her forehead like little rockets.
“It’s not… we just need to… it isn’t,” I stammered.
Jac pulled me to one side. “Does this involve ghosts?” she whispered.
Oh.
See, if I said yes, Jac would want to come. If I let her think perhaps this was more of a glockenspiel moment, she would send me off alone with Ben with her handprints firmly on my back.
“No,” I said. Could she hear the guilt in my voice? I was lying to my friend.
Jac raised one hand in the international “stop” position.
“I don’t require any explanation,” she said primly.
I took a breath. I’d explain later, but right now there was no time.
“If Sid does a head count and we’re not back, tell him we…”
“One of us dropped a cell phone and we went back in to look for it,” Ben suggested.
“Got it. Cell phone.” Jac said. Then she winked at me.
The girl was relentless.
“We better hurry,” Ben said.
We darted out the front door together, me and Ben Greenblott.
Voices, spectral penguins, and pouring rain notwithstanding, it was turning out to be an outstanding afternoon.