Nothing had changed. Same river. Same swamps. Same fog. Same gray sky. Except somehow summer had passed me by in a drug-induced haze while I recovered from the surgeries that had put my shattered hip back together. Now I was home to face my shattered life.
The last winds of summer rustled through the treetops, the leaves dancing in the morning light. We passed the Garden District Psychic Office, the one people in our neighborhood called when the federal psychics were backlogged or didn’t respond. We finally passed Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 where Mom was buried—intricate sigils burned and twisted into the wrought iron of its massive gates. There were no new graves at Lafayette, but Dad’s great-grandparents had a family tomb there for us to use. Just what I’d always wanted—to be buried in a city of the dead. Not.
I shivered and looked away from the haunting gates. I was the only one in the family who hadn’t visited Mom’s grave. Dad had. Aunt Trudy had. Aunt Elena had. Even my weird cousin Hannah had. Dad said I shouldn’t feel guilty, and that I needed to focus on healing. Well, I’d had three months to heal, yet I was still in constant pain. I still felt utterly broken inside.
Dad turned his car down our cobbled street and pulled up to the garage. We sat in the driveway for a few minutes not saying anything. What could we say? Home was here, but Mom was gone and my old life was over.
“Looks like they repainted the wards.” Dad’s voice cracked.
I looked at the glowing Arabic and Hebrew Seals of Solomon that covered our garage door. He was right. The paint was fresh. The city’s Office of Psychic Intervention, or OPI as most of us called it, repainted exterior doors every three months to decrease the likelihood of spirit attacks. If only the spiritualists back in 1900 hadn’t opened the door to the other side that no one could close, then we wouldn’t have to worry about ghosts and the whole world would have stayed normal. We’d had more than one hundred years to heal, and still most of the Untouched considered psychics little better than criminals for that one unforgivable sin. That first outpouring of spirits had cost people their lives. Now the psychics were a necessary evil, a dry, brittle hedge against a second scourge. Dad said they were like the IRS, only worse. Whatever that meant.
I glanced back at the sigils on our house. They’d been repainted the week before Mom and I had left for the ghostball championship. I hated ghostball. If I hadn’t been in that stupid championship game, the accident would never have happened. Mom would still be alive.
Dad carried my small suitcase into the house, leaving me to trail behind him. The front room looked exactly as I remembered it. Except darker. And cold. Maybe autumn would arrive early this year.
He lit the furnace, which came to life with a rumbling moan. The curtains were drawn and I ran my finger along the dusty side table, stopping before I touched Mom’s reading glasses. The last book she’d been reading lay there, still marked at the halfway point. “It looks like no one’s lived here for months.”
“No one has.” Dad’s voice was cold, dead. “I’ve spent nearly every night at the hospital with you. Now that your aunts and Hannah live next door, they’ve checked in on the place when I was at the hospital—picked up the mail, watered the plants, checked the sigils, renewed the wards, but I told them not to move anything.”
“Why’d they come here, anyway?” I snapped, wishing they’d stayed in Boston. “It’s not like you were ever really close.” I didn’t want anyone intruding on me—trying to “help” me get over the accident when it wasn’t something I was going to get over.
Dad scowled, but ignored my tone. “Trudy and Hannah’ve had a hard time since your uncle David left them, which is why Elena moved in with them. Besides, Elena needed to save money to grow her—business, which should thrive here.” He shrugged. “Anyway, living near each other seemed like a good idea.”
“Really? Crazy Aunt Elena? She’s living next door?” Dad had told me that Aunt Trudy and my cousin Hannah moved from Boston to help him when Mom died, but had failed to mention Aunt Elena. I couldn’t imagine Dad had planned on having his wannabe psychic sister living so close.
Mom had been an academic. She’d studied the history of everything that had happened in the psychic realm. But Aunt Elena. Aunt Elena was the black sheep of our entire family; she had embraced the psychics and the supernatural. We barely ever saw her and now she was our neighbor. I wondered what Mom would think.
I tried to ignore the gnawing pain that Mom was gone when I half expected her to burst through the kitchen door with a batch of chocolate chip cookies. I wouldn’t have wanted to stay here alone either. Maybe having them close would help Dad. Maybe.
“Things’ll be fine, Alex. You’ll see.” Dad forced a smile onto his tired face and batted at his favorite throw pillow, sending a cloud of dust into the air. He coughed. “Needs a bit of tidying up, is all.”
I swallowed and limped forward, the ache in my leg a constant companion. “I just want to go to my room.”
“I understand.” He gripped my suitcase hard and led me up the stairs, one painful step at a time.
My door was closed, the colorful sigils Mom had painted last spring still vivid. She was gone, but lingered everywhere.
Dad set my bag down inside the door to my room, and I sat on my bed. We stared at each other.
“Let me know if you need anything?” Dad looked at me, then the room. “And check your sigils. They haven’t been renewed in months.”
Right. Just what I wanted to do first thing back home. “I will.”
He nodded and backed out the door, closing it behind him.
The sigils on my bedroom windows looked solid enough. They could wait. What I needed was a nap. I lay back on the covers and let the softness of my own pillows, my own bed, my own room wrap around me. But there was a huge hole in my chest that wouldn’t let me enjoy it. No matter how much I’d missed home, I missed Mom more.
I rolled onto my side facing my nightstand and looked at the picture I kept there. One of me and Mom and Dad at the least haunted beach in America last summer. What a fantastic trip. No extra wards to worry about. Sun. Sand. Fun.
I grabbed an extra pillow and hugged it tightly, refusing to acknowledge the tears that streamed down my cheeks. It seemed like I lay there for hours before I finally fell asleep.
A cool breeze wafted across my face and ruffled my hair. “Alex . . . Oh, Alex.” The woman’s voice was soft, hollow. At first I thought it might be Mom. But then I remembered: Mom’s dead.
I peeked from beneath the covers. The curtains in my bedroom window fluttered in the moonlight. But there was no breeze. The window was closed. A cold sense of dread gnawed at my gut. I’d forgotten to check the sigils.
Closing my eyes tight, I prayed no ghosts had gotten inside.
“Alex.” She was closer. Right over the bed. Right next to my ear. “I’m so excited to finally get a chance to talk to you after all these years.”
Years? Cold seeped into the covers, and I shivered. I felt her staring at me.
“Sit up and talk to me, child. I’m so glad you’re home. You gave your father a scare,” she prattled on. “I know you’re awake.”
This wasn’t happening. I wasn’t a psychic and there’s no way I could hear or see ghosts. It had to be some sort of trauma-induced psychosis like Dr. Midgley had talked about before I left the hospital.
“Alex.” Her voice punched through my feathery pillow with a cold blast.
Oh. My. Gosh. No way. She can’t be real.
“I know you can hear me,” she cooed. “Come, now, talk to Mrs. Wilson.” She reached over to pat my arm, but her hand passed right through me, leaving a chilly slug-like trail on my skin.
I clenched my teeth and tried not to scream. Could someone feel a hallucination?
“Oh, goodness. You must still be tired. How silly of me.” I felt her float past my bed toward the window. “It’s the middle of the night and tomorrow’s your first day back at Rey, isn’t it? They released you in time for a new school year.”
The lump of fear thickened in my throat. How’d she know I went to Henry Louis Rey Middle School? She must’ve been living—er, residing—in our house without us knowing. I shivered to think of what she knew about us, then laughed at myself. Nonsense. It was all in my head. Only Class A and B Psychics could hear and see ghosts. I wasn’t even a Class C. I had no psychic abilities.
“You know, I attended middle school here back in . . . let’s see . . .” I could almost see her counting back the years. “Must’ve been, oh, sixty years ago now. Lots of changes since then.” She clicked her tongue. “Lots of changes.”
I shut my eyes so hard that tears squeezed out. What was I supposed to do? Talk to her? Ignore her? Maybe if I ignored her, she’d stop talking. And if she stopped talking, then I’d know she wasn’t real.
“Well, if you’re going to be rude and ignore me, I suppose I’d better head back to the living room,” she huffed.
If she wasn’t real, I wouldn’t be able to see her. I peeked between a gap in my pillows and swallowed my gasp. Not two feet away floated a translucent tub of a woman, moving away from me through a box of old ghostball trophies.
“Perhaps your father is watching something good tonight. That man . . . he usually only keeps on those crime shows.” She floated into the whitewashed wall, her voice muted, and then faded altogether when she disappeared.
I leapt from my bed and rummaged around my drawer of ward supplies. Maybe I was going crazy, but just in case I wasn’t, I needed protection. So there I stood at two o’clock in the morning in my underwear repainting every ward in my bedroom. It took hours before I finally drifted back to sleep.
The windup alarm clock rang, dancing across my bedside table. I smashed the obnoxious thing to silence it. Mom and Dad wouldn’t allow us to have electric clocks. Mom said there was too much chance of a ghost getting through the electrical currents, and that having a TV was bad enough. I saw the ward supplies on my nightstand and almost laughed. I must have had a nightmare. That made sense; it was my first night home after all that had happened. My first night home without Mom.
I shivered. I should have died in that accident. Not Mom. I clenched my teeth, not sure which nightmare was worse—the one I had when sleeping, or the one I was living while awake. I forced myself to think of something else entirely.
Throwing back the covers, I limped over to my dresser, pulled a pair of clean boxers over the still-red scar that curved from my left butt cheek down to my thigh, tossed on an old ghostball T-shirt, and shimmied into a pair of jeans.
Why did I have to go back to school today? Ugh. Dad would have let me stay home for a few weeks if Dr. Midgley hadn’t insisted that a “return to normalcy” was the best thing for me.
“Alex?” Dad called up the stairs. “Ready to go, champ?”
No. I wasn’t ready. I’d never be ready again. If it were up to me I’d have stayed in the hospital indefinitely. I didn’t want to be home, and I didn’t want to go to school. I’d managed to push off visits from my ghostball teammates, but now I wouldn’t have a choice. I’d have to talk to them, even though all I wanted was to be left alone.
I slung my backpack over my shoulder and shuffled down the stairs.
Fresh squeezed OJ and a bowl of granola waited for me on the table. Dad took a bite out of a bagel. “I’ll bet your team can’t wait to see you. You know Jason called at least seven times yesterday. He’s so excited you’re finally home.”
He probably was excited. Jason and I had spent nearly every day of our lives together since we were five. I missed him, too. But what if I wasn’t the same Alex as before?
“Jason wanted to come over and visit, but I told him you’d be back to school today. It’ll be great.” Dad bit a large chunk out of his cream cheese–slathered bagel. “Back to normal.”
“Yeah, great.” I tried to fake a smile, but I could barely force one onto my face.
“School’s only been in session for a week. You’ll be fine.” Dad popped the last bite of bagel into his mouth and picked up his briefcase. “I’ve got to show a house in fifteen minutes, but I’ll be home early so we can pick up the place a bit. Maybe watch a movie?”
“Sure.” I shrugged, but I really wanted to crawl into my bed and never get out.
“Oh, and I talked to my sister today. She’s having a birthday party for Hannah on Saturday.”
“A what?” I stopped eating and pushed the bowl of granola away from me with disgust. I’d stopped having birthday parties at ten, like most kids. After we turned ten and went through our psychic testing to determine if we were psychic, there were no more birthday parties.
“She’s new at Rey and doesn’t have any friends yet. I thought it’d be good for you both. She’ll help you get back into the swing of things, and you can introduce her to your friends.”
I studied Dad and took a sip of orange juice. Could he actually be serious? Truly? Hannah was weird. An outcast. She always did her own thing, no matter if she looked like a freak. There was no way I was going to introduce her to anyone I knew.
Dad tried on his most winning smile. “I said we’d go.”
Orange juice almost sprayed out of my nose, but I sniffed it back in one burning snort-swallow. “No way. I’m not going.”
“Alex.” Dad set his briefcase down and sat beside me. “You pushed away your teammates while you were in the hospital.”
“Not Jason,” I growled. “I let him visit me.”
Dad held up his hands. “Jason’s different, I know . . . but you can’t push away family. And they moved here for us. Besides, the doctors think it’s best for you to get back to your normal routine as soon as possible. I thought a party and time with family might help you get back to your old self.” Dad tussled my unbrushed mop of blond hair. Who knows the last time I had a haircut; probably when Mom took me.
My old self? I would never be my old self again. I scowled and crossed my arms over my chest.
“I miss your mother, too. Always will. But we have to keep moving forward.” Dad squared his shoulders. “It’s what she’d want.”
Anger flooded my chest. Was he kidding? I’d just gotten home and he wanted me to forget about Mom and go to my bizarre-o cousin’s birthday party? Not happening. He may have heaved off the weight of Mom’s death in the past three months, but I hadn’t. I never would.
I shouldn’t even be alive. I should be dead—just like Mom. I didn’t have time for friends, new or old. I was too busy trying to heal my leg. Too busy trying to deal with a life without Mom. Too busy trying to figure out if the woman I’d seen in my bedroom last night was real or in my head. Because if I was seeing dead people, there was a lot more wrong with me than a busted hip.