“RISE AND SHINE, MY DEAR family,” Mom called from downstairs. The unmistakable scent of bacon wafted into my nose, and I immediately hopped out of bed and ran downstairs.
“Bacon?” I asked Mom, and she smiled and pointed to the kitchen table.
“And eggs, and pancakes,” she said. “We’re going to need all our energy today!”
I stopped halfway to the table and turned back around.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s the day before Thanksgiving,” she said. “You know what that means.”
Of course. I’d forgotten because I try to block out this day from my memory every year.
“It’s cleaning day!” she exclaimed. I couldn’t tell if she was actually excited to clean or if she was just faking it.
I sighed. I should have known the bacon was a trick. Every year my mom forces the entire family to clean the house from top to bottom before our extended family shows up for Thanksgiving. Except that, really, it winds up being me and my dad who do all the work since Mom is usually busy prepping the food for the next day, and Jack and Ella aren’t exactly the best cleaners.
My dad stalked into the kitchen and we looked at each other like soldiers entering a battlefield. We were resigned to our fate.
After breakfast, armed with Mom’s very detailed instructions, we set out cleaning all sorts of places we usually never think about—beneath the fridge, along the baseboards, on top of doorframes, and even behind the toilets. Honestly, who on earth looks there for anything? Everyone knows that if something falls behind a toilet, whether it’s a piece of toilet paper or a retainer, it’s best left forgotten about for all of eternity.
Hours later, our elbows and backs screaming in agony, we passed out on the couch, completely exhausted. Before I knew it I’d drifted off to sleep again and found myself back on Loved Ones’ Lane. Oddly, it wasn’t as dark as usual. In fact, it was more of a peaceful sky blue, and it looked like only a sporadic few of the shooting stars were lit up. That made enough sense; just about everyone I knew would be awake this time of day.
I walked to the end of the lane to see if the ocean was there, and to my shock, the sun was out, and the water stretched as far as I could see.
Just there in the distance I could see the white capsized boat clearly, the two dark figures on top.
It was there again? Who kept having this bizarre dream? And why could I access it this way?
I dove in and swam through the water, which glittered so beautifully in the afternoon sun, like diamonds were encrusted in the waves.
Before I reached the boat, I heard singing. It was the guy, his voice smooth and velvety as he belted out “Amazing Grace.” He clearly had a lot of practice.
I once was lost,
but now I’m found
’Twas blind,
but now I see . . .
“Hello?”
The singing immediately stopped.
“Who’s there?” he said, his voice devastatingly hopeful.
“It’s me, Baylor,” I said, climbing to the top of the boat. “We just met the other day.”
“Oh,” he said, disappointed. Blisters covered his lips, all sore and bloody, and I found it amazing he could sing through that pain. “I thought I dreamed that.”
“Well, you did,” I said. “And I’d guess you’re dreaming this now, too.”
“Seems more like a nightmare.”
“Your singing was great,” I said. “Nothing nightmarish about that.”
“I dreamed I was singing to my baby sister,” he said. “She loves when I sing that. She plays peekaboo whenever I sing ‘but now I see.’ ” He paused, and when he spoke next, his voice was heavy and cracking. “And now I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I’m stuck on this boat,” he shouted, “in the middle of God knows where.”
“But it’s just a dream.”
“It’s not,” he said, tears rolling down his dry, cracked skin. “It’s not a dream. It’s real.”
And he must have woken up, because I suddenly popped back to the edge of the lane, the ocean scene gone once again.
* * *
When I woke up from my nap, I ran up to my room so I could tell Kristina everything.
“It doesn’t make sense, though,” she said. “Even if he was dreaming, you don’t know this person. You shouldn’t be able to visit his dreams.”
“But I’m not really visiting them, not the way I do with everyone else. He comes to me.”
“Even weirder, though. You can only channel spirits whose loved ones are nearby. We’re not exactly close to the ocean.”
“Right. I can only channel spirits whose loved ones are nearby. Maybe it’s different with living people, though!”
She stared hard at the wall. “Right,” she said. “Living people . . .”
“What is it?” I asked.
“I just think I need to chat with Fleetwood and some of the others about this,” she said. “You’re not really supposed to be channeling living people, just as a gentle reminder. It’s not like anything I’ve heard of before.” She eyed my shirt. “Make sure you keep wearing your amulet.”
“Don’t you think the amulet is what’s causing this to happen, though?”
“Regardless, you’re better off wearing it. Who knows what might happen if you wander off into this ocean without it?”
I turned the amulet over in my fingers. I was going to keep wearing it, but I couldn’t help but feel concerned that a little stone was the one thing to keep me safe from any lurking dangers.
* * *
“All right,” my mom said after walking through the house and running her finger along random surfaces to check for dust, “it’s looking good, guys. Nice work.”
My dad and I were sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for her seal of approval. We looked at each other and shook our heads.
“Every year,” he mumbled.
“I’m actually impressed too,” Kristina said, walking nearly lockstep with Mom. “There’s a real shine to the place.”
“Kristina also thinks we did a good job,” I said.
Dad widened his eyes for a panicked split second before he composed himself. “Well, thank you, Kristina.”
“No question where Jack gets his bravery from,” she said sarcastically, sweeping past him and giving him a ghostly pat on the back, causing him to shiver.
Mom’s phone beeped. “Oh, it’s Glenn! Hello?”
Uncle Glenn is my mom’s brother. We spend every Thanksgiving with him, his wife (my aunt Cathy), and their kids, Gillie and Oli. Gillie was a year older than me and had just started high school, and Oli was ten.
“Oh, he is? Oh . . . did he really? No, no, th-that’s fine . . . Okay, we’ll make up a bed for him then . . . See you tomorrow.”
She hung up the phone and waited a moment before she said anything, like she was trying to figure out how to break terrible news.
“What’d he say, Connie?” Dad asked.
“Well,” she said. “Cathy’s dad missed his flight and now he doesn’t feel like dealing with the airlines, so . . . so he’s coming to dinner tomorrow.”
A chill swept through the room.
“Horty is coming to Thanksgiving?” my dad said slowly.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she said, “I know. What could I say?”
“How about, oh, I don’t know . . . hell no, Glenn, keep that monster out of my house! And that’s just off the top of my head, dear. Give me five more minutes and I’m sure I could get a lot more creative.”
“It’s Thanksgiving, Doug. I couldn’t say no. Why not keep an open mind this year?”
“What am I missing?” I said, not sure I’d ever been more interested in anything in my entire life. “Why don’t you like Horty?”
“That’s family business, Baylor Douglas Bosco,” my mom said sharply, “so don’t you dare bring this up to your cousins, uncle, or, God forbid, your aunt.”
I turned to Kristina and arched an eyebrow. She shook her head in equal confusion.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she said, flailing her arms around, as though she were swatting Kristina into pieces. “Don’t you look at Kristina. And Kristina, if you know, don’t you dare say a word, or so help me, I will remember this moment for my entire life, and when I finally meet you, first I’m going to hug you, but the second thing I’m going to do is ground you for the next eternity.”
I looked from a very confused Kristina to a very frustrated Mom, then to a very annoyed Dad, and threw my hands up. “Now you have to tell me,” I said. “What did he do?”
“We are going to have a nice day tomorrow,” my mom said, as much to herself as to the rest of us, “and we are going to enjoy ourselves, and the food, and the company, and we’re going to remember everything we have to be grateful for, even if it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot at the moment, and we’re going to have a very . . . nice . . . time.”
She stomped away, leaving Dad to fend off my questions. He was even more tight-lipped, though.
“Don’t,” he said, before I had the chance to say anything. “Just don’t. Let it go.”
Let it go? Did they not know me at all? I was going to find out what Horty did sooner or later, whether they liked it or not.
Kristina and I headed to the family room; I plopped on the couch, turned the TV on, and started rambling incessantly.
“How could we not know there was this weird dislike in the family. Horty? Don’t I call him Uncle Horty? I think I’ve only met him a couple times before. What could he have possibly done to Dad?”
“He’s not truly ‘in the family,’ though, is he? He’s Mom’s brother’s wife’s father. He’s not blood, and there’s no reason for you to ever see each other, really.”
“Do you think he’s got a door on Loved Ones’ Lane?
She considered it for a moment. “If you can’t think of any happy memories or significant moments with him, then I doubt it.”
“Rats,” I said. “I can’t even do some reconnaissance work ahead of time.”
“Well,” she said, “not that I support your continued dreamwalking, but if you’re going to do it anyway, tonight would be a good time to drop in on Mom and Dad. Maybe you’ll see something there?”
I smiled. “Nice one. Maybe you should join me tonight.”
She shook her head. “If they saw the two of us together, they would for sure know it was me, and not just some weird futuristic Ella.”
I shrugged. “They don’t know I can dreamwalk, though. They’ll just think it’s some weird dream if they spot us.” I looked at the portrait of Kristina hanging on the wall above the TV, next to the school pictures featuring me, Jack, and Ella. “And now that they have the picture of you, it’d make sense if they started incorporating the two of us together in their dreams.”
I’d made some friends at the police station after the whole Rosalie/Sheet Man debacle, and they’d hooked me up with a sketch artist who helped put together a solid composite of Kristina. It was only fair for Mom and Dad to have a reference point of what their long-lost daughter looked like.
“That’s not the dumbest thing you’ve ever said, Baylor,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”
Kristina was the kind of person—well, ghost—who complimented me via positive negatives, so I took her words as the highest form of praise.
I was feeling pretty good about myself and grabbed the remote to put on something funny, but when I looked at the screen, my heart nearly rocketed up my esophagus and out my mouth.
“The search-and-rescue mission for Helena Papadopoulos and Archie Perceval stretches into day five as the coast guard expands its search after weather experts say the volatile storm cells off the eastern seaboard may have carried any boat wreckage south . . . .”
The image on the screen flashed from the stormy waters off the coast of Florida to school pictures of Helena and Archie. Chills washed over my body.
“Kristina,” I said, my voice suddenly hoarse, “that’s them. That’s who I saw in my dream on the ocean.”