Chapter 7

Getting to Know You

Monday morning Wyatt was waiting for me, next to the only empty seat in History class. As soon as I sat down, he whipped out a towel and tossed it over my head. Laughing, I rubbed my damp hair with it.

Thus began our paranormal business association slash friendship. Since that Saturday night in my basement, with the movie and the Lonesome Boy, we’ve been spending more and more time together. Between classes, in the hallways, in the cafeteria, after school. We’re constantly whispering about him. I haven’t seen the ghost since that night at Wild Wood, so I always have to ask Wyatt what he’s doing. The Lonesome Boy isn’t with me all the time anymore. He follows Wyatt, too. We share him.

In our tiny little high school world with its huge social limitations, Wyatt Silver and I become a couple. Rumors fly around faster than they can be swatted down by the truth. According to those members of the senior class who are “in-the-know,” we’ve hooked up on many occasions at many parties when, in reality, the only thing we have in common is our ghost. We’ve never gone on a date. We’ve never kissed. But at school, people have noticed that we’re always together and the gossip goes wild.

Everyone’s saying that we’re dating each other exclusively and sleeping over at each other’s houses all the time. That part’s hilarious. Over my dead body. Like my parents would ever allow it. Like I would ever do that anyway.

Lots of girls have crushes on him and some of them are mean to me, but I don’t care. The same girls were mean to me when Matt Riley and I were together. None of them have ever been my friends. None of them know anything about me.

Not everyone admires Wyatt, though. Some people believe the rumors about why he left New Hampshire and moved here. I still don’t know the truth. We’ve been hanging out constantly for a few weeks now, but I haven’t asked him yet. I’ve been trying to think of a way to bring up the subject. Maybe today after school I’ll get an opportunity.

Leaning against my locker, sipping from a bottle of red Gatorade, I scan the crowded hallway. No sign of Wyatt yet. Because of his height he’s pretty easy to spot. Finally, I catch sight of him, jogging toward me, wearing a huge smile. He stops his momentum by slamming his hands into the lockers on either side of my head, seriously invading my personal space. Then he grabs the Gatorade out of my hand. Half of it’s gone before he stops chugging and burps; an inch away from my face.

“Wyatt! Ugh!”

A passerby yells, “Watch out! You don’t want to catch anything, Annabelle.”

“Is she a friend of yours?” Wyatt asks me.

“I don’t even know her. She’s not a senior. Maybe a sophomore or a junior.”

“Why would she say that to you? Is she talking about me?”

“You know. There are some nasty rumors about why you left your hometown. There’s one about you being a drug dealer.”

He rolls his eyes. “I’ve heard that one. I swear I’ve never been arrested.”

“There’s also one about you spreading an STD around your old school.”

“Completely false.” He holds his hands up, palms out, as if he can stop the rumors with them. His face reddens and he looks away from me. While we’re on the subject, I figure I should get the worst of the stories out there.

“Do you find that rumor more disturbing than the one about you getting a girl pregnant?”

He doesn’t even laugh. “Yes! More disturbing and more false; where do people get this crap?”

“I think they start out wondering why you would transfer here for your senior year. Then people start coming up with ideas and they say them out loud. The people who hear these lies repeat them and your legend’s born.”

“Can’t my legend be like Batman or something? Can’t I keep my really cool car in a cave and drive around fighting crime? Do they have to make me into a drug-dealing pornographer?”

“Ignore it. Your real friends will believe only the truth about you.”

He puts one big, warm hand on my shoulder and moves in so close I can smell him. He smells clean, like the first breath full of sunny air the morning after a rainstorm.

“Are you my real friend, Annabelle?”

I turn away and close my locker. “I’m late. I have to get to practice. Call me later.”

Then I pivot and run out the door, toward the big yellow bus that’ll take the team over to the Town Forest. As I run, I can feel his gaze on my back so I pick up the pace. Good thing I got voted best butt in the whole school.

At about ten o’clock, when I’m already in bed, Wyatt finally calls me. I’m practically in a coma because the coaches worked us so hard today. But I want to know why he really moved to Eastfield, so I make an effort to wake up and talk to him.

“Sorry, Annabelle. Were you sleeping?”

“Yes, but that’s okay. I asked you to call me.”

“So I did. What’s up?”

“After school today, we were talking about why you moved to Eastfield. I know none of the rumors are true, but you’ve never explained the real reason.”

“I’m not running away from anything bad. I just like living with my uncle better than living with my mom and he invited me to come to Eastfield.”

“What happened between you and your mom?”

“Nothing awful. My parents are divorced. She has a boyfriend now and we get along and all, but, you know, he’s in a relationship with my mom. It’s awkward. Besides, my uncle and I like the same things. I love History and he’s the head of the History Department and the president of the Eastfield Historical Society. He’s fun. He’s interesting. She’s boring and she’s in a relationship. Because she’s my mother that’s weird for me.”

“What about your dad?”

“My parents divorced when I was fifteen and my father moved to California, remarried and started a new family. I don’t want to live with my father and his twenty-five year old bride and their baby. I have a stepsister I’ve never met. She’s almost two years old. Besides, Dad never invited me to live with him anyway.”

Whoa, that’s awful.

I don’t know what else to say, so I change the subject.

“Is Mr. Finn your mother’s brother?”

“Yeah, but it’s hard to believe they’re from the same family. They’re so different.”

“In what way?”

“He’s less judgmental.”

“Judgmental about what?”

“I’m interested in the paranormal, you know: ghosts. Uncle Oliver thinks it’s cool. My mother gets annoyed with me because she doesn’t believe in ghosts. She wants me to get serious about something like engineering because I’m good at math. I prefer history, philosophy, stuff like that. We’re always arguing about my future.”

“When Meg and I made that movie last year, your uncle sat through two interviews with us. He was an excellent primary source, really helpful. He never acted annoyed or anything.”

“Yeah, he’s a great guy. I think he gets kind of lonely sometimes. He’s not married. He has no kids. He has tons of friends, but I’m family. He wanted me to live with him. He asked me more than once before I finally decided to come.”

I believe him, but I have a feeling he’s holding something back. I don’t think he’s told me the whole story. According to Wyatt he transferred to a new school for senior year because he wanted to try living with his uncle instead of his mother. I’m not buying it. There has to be another reason. But it’s late and I decide not to push it right now.

Wyatt starts working a little too hard to convince me he’s telling the truth. He goes on to explain that he’s never felt more accepted than when he’s with his Uncle Oliver. That part I believe because Mr. Finn really is an awesome guy but I’m still suspicious. Finally we hang up and I fall back into a deep sleep immediately.

* * * *

Saturday night Wyatt calls and wants to get together so we can talk about the ghost again. I don’t have any plans because I’ve sworn off boys and dating, so I invite him over.

He wants to know if it’s okay to bring a DVD. “Maybe we should pretend to be watching a movie, just in case your parents ask any questions about what we have planned.”

He’s right. They might ask and a movie would be a good cover. I’m not ready to explain to them that Wyatt and I are conducting a paranormal investigation.

When he arrives, we’re both starved and I’m in the mood for pizza so we decide to go out first and then come back later to supposedly watch a movie together. Even my parents think we’re dating.

Wyatt chooses a popular pizza place. We walk into the restaurant and it’s crowded with groups of high school kids. From the moment we enter the warm, garlic-scented atmosphere, the stares from dozens of gawking eyes follow us. He orders a large cheese pizza and as soon as it’s ready I grab it, along with some paper plates and a handful of napkins. Wyatt fills two big paper cups with root beer from the dispenser and we squish our way through the crowded room, looking for an empty table.

He leans down to my ear and whispers. “Shh! Listen! What do you think they’re saying about us?”

I laugh then pause to listen.

Our classmates release a whoosh of gossip. Rumors about Wyatt and me fly all around the restaurant like birds heading south for the winter, squawking and pooping on all the surfaces below. I feel like ducking and covering my head with a pizza pan.

Wyatt steers me over to a table where six boys from the soccer team are devouring multiple pizzas and large heaps of mozzarella sticks. He says hi to them and for a couple of minutes they exchange noisy opinions about Friday afternoon’s game, the yellow cards, the red cards and the blindness of the refs. Laughing, Wyatt squeezes my shoulder gently, to signal that we should move along and find our own table.

I spot an empty booth, over in a corner near the window, and sit down across from him, with only a small rectangle of shiny red and white checked table-top between us. Suddenly self-conscious, I edit the wideness of my smile down to a small grin. But then, when I look into his eyes, brilliant like a sunlit ocean, I give up and hit him with the real thing. Two thousand dollars worth of braces worn all through seventh and eighth grade have made my teeth even and perfect and they’re framed by shiny, strawberry-flavored lips. Wyatt tilts his head back and laughs. It’s not easy to chew and swallow pizza when you’re grinning like a couple of dumbasses, but we’re hungry and we manage.