MOST GIRLS PROBABLY DREAMED about shiny new cars for their seventeenth birthday, but I’d settle for getting back my old life. Ten more days, and I’d be as wonderfully boring as everyone else. Thank God. Since the accident, normal had been a distant memory, but it was so close now I could almost taste it, whatever normal tasted like.
“Maybe like fried chicken, or apple pie, or—” I muttered.
“Hey, Earth to Bridget,” Valerie, my older sister, said from across the quiet cemetery, rudely interrupting my reverie. “You planning to do this sometime today?”
Val perched like a preening cockatiel on the edge of a tombstone that read Newbold: 1915 - 1963. Rude or not, she had a point, so I snapped back to reality and put my happy anticipation on the back burner. For ten more days, I’d be on a steady unappetizing diet of crazy.
It was a sunny fall day in Parkland, Georgia, cool enough that you knew winter was on its way, but typical Georgia was clinging on to summer as long as it could. We sat in a deep pocket of shade in an overgrown cemetery behind the charred skeleton of the old Creekview Baptist Church. The air was thick with the stink of a Bradford pear tree dripping white petals like snow to the weedy grass beneath.
I sat in front of a flat grave marker veiled in thick green moss. A crinkling, cellophane-wrapped bouquet of grocery store flowers lay in my lap, dripping on my tattered jeans. Mom had tried to throw the jeans away a dozen times, which only made me like them more. They were once Valerie’s and I intended to wear them until they disintegrated.
“Here goes,” I said as I laid the flowers gently on the moss-carpeted stone. “Anna, are you there? It's Bridget again.”
A cool wind raised the fine hairs on my forearms in a tingling rush. I lifted my chin slowly to see the spectral figure of Anna Cole. She had been a beautiful woman before she died, and she was still pretty…at least from this angle. Her brilliant red hair was teased into one of those bouncy sixties styles, embellished by a jeweled green hairpin that matched her dress. But when she turned to face me directly, I remembered exactly how Anna became a ghost. My best friend Emily, who was high priestess of the Selfie Sisterhood, claimed everyone had a good side. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that both sides looked the same.
Anna Cole? She definitely had a good side, and with it, a very bad side.
The left side of her face was misshapen and bruised, giving her an oddly asymmetrical look. As her swollen left eye fell on me, I winced—I always did, I really couldn't help it—and she turned away in shame. I instantly felt like a huge jerk. She was a ghost, and it wasn't her fault that she looked like a horror movie extra.
Not helping, I thought.
“It's all right,” I said. “You don't have to hide, remember?”
Anna didn't speak to me, but I could feel the longing and sadness from her like she was broadcasting on my own exclusive radio frequency. I wasn't psychic or anything, though I'd gotten more perceptive over the last few years. But you didn't have to be psychic to read Anna. It was written all over her, in the downturned eyes, the sad droop to her lips, the slump of her shoulders, bent under the heavy weight of so much despair. It was so intense it made me squirm, unable to meet her eyes for more than a few seconds.
There was also the fact that she was violently and thoroughly dead. After the initial shock, it didn't really bother me much these days. You'd be amazed at what you can get used to over time.
“I found something for you,” I said, jamming my hand into my purple backpack. Like my jeans, it was a battered hand-me-down from Valerie. It still had the letters V.R.Y. scrawled on the rough canvas in silver marker.
The backpack held all my stuff for my haunted hobby. Most of the time, I kept it shoved way under my bed. The last thing I needed was to have to explain it to my nosy little brother or, God forbid, my mother. Somehow, I didn’t think it would be a relief to Mom that the plastic baggie full of dried herbs was just sage.
While I dug in the bag, Anna flickered and sat next to me. Some ghosts seem to disappear and reappear, but I figured it was that they really moved too fast for my mere mortal eyes to follow. Watching it too closely made my head spin, like when you cross your eyes too far and make yourself dizzy.
Anna's skirt spread out in a perfect circle, disappearing where it passed through my outstretched leg. It was unsettling to see half of her skirt on one side of my leg and half on the other, with no fabric actually draped over my leg. I felt a chill run up my thigh where she made contact, raising prickling hairs against my jeans. But Anna was on the friendlier end of the ghost spectrum, so it wasn't unpleasant, just a bit chilly. There was a faint pleasant smell around her, like an old dry book with flowers pressed in its pages. This was a marked improvement over many of my spirit encounters, which brought odors no amount of Febreze could fix. Anna hunched over as I spread out a folded sheet of paper on the grave next to the cheap white daisies.
The paper was a photo of a family reunion, about two dozen people in identical turquoise t-shirts. Most had the same shocking red hair as Anna. Hers was muted in death, a dull dried-blood color that almost blended into the torn flesh on her face. It would have been breathtaking when she was alive, if her family was any indication.
“This was a few weeks ago,” I said. “I found it on their Facebook group.” Anna just stared at me blankly and tilted her head as if to say, I’m not following you. “Never mind.” If you think trying to explain new technology to old people is hard, try explaining Twitter to a sixty-year-old ghost. “They're so happy.”
I pointed to a woman at the front of the group, hoping I remembered all the details. “Katherine misses you, but she has her own family now. Her husband is in the Army. He just came home from Afghanistan and got some award,” I explained. “I think they said the Army Commendation Medal? And these are her children, Annabeth, Julianne, and Mary Anne,” I said. “All named for you.”
Personally, I thought that was a little weird, as had my sister when I told her. But Anna smiled, and making her happy was precisely why I was here. One point for Bridget and her interpersonal ghost skills. I was much better at relating to the dead than the living these days. “And your son Andy,” I said. “He hasn't married, but he seems…nice.” I mean, as far as I could tell from a good Facebook stalking.
I went on for a few minutes, telling her everything I had learned about her descendants, the living legacy she left behind. According to the papers, Anna died of severe head trauma after her worthless husband beat her to death with a whiskey bottle. His excuse? He thought she was cheating on him, and that was enough reason for him to leave two small children motherless. Anna was a lot better than me, because I would have wanted him dead. And barring that, I would have haunted him until he begged for mercy. Full poltergeist treatment. Instead, he’d served just five years of a life sentence before choking on a lima bean in prison.
But Anna didn't want revenge. She didn’t even seem angry about it, and believe me, some spirits are seriously pissed off. Anna was just sad and faded, too weak to even speak to me. The best I could do was a game of ghostly charades, which I’d gotten good at over the last two years, and figured out she wanted to know about her children. I got as close to them as I could without being creepy. And the Internet was practically invented for creeping from afar. Hopefully what I’d found was enough for Anna.
When I finished my story, I slid the picture under the flowers and met her mournful eyes. “Are you ready to go on now? You can tell me if you're not. I'll be happy to get more pictures.”
“Watch your time, Idget,” Valerie whispered. I glanced up to see her pointing to her watch. Mom was hardcore about the sanctity of dinner time, and I’d cut it close too many times recently.
And besides, I really didn’t want to go look for more pictures and family stories. I was ready to close this case and hopefully not find another before my birthday. I wanted my work to be done. It was the kind of offer you made to be nice, secretly hoping the other person would say no.
She hesitated, her cloudy eyes drifting down to the picture again. Come on, I thought. But she finally nodded, faded hair bouncing slightly. Phew.
“You deserve to rest, Anna,” I said, feeling a bit guilty at my overwhelming relief. “Your family will always remember you, and you'll see them again one day.”
I had no idea if that was true. There's no instruction book on this stuff. Trust me, I tried Amazon. Here and there I found some folklore, but I’d mostly been figuring it out on my own for the last two years. My sister Valerie had insider knowledge and filled in the blanks.
One of the most valuable things I’d realized is that the words were much less important than the feelings behind them. The dead and living had that in common. “It's time to finally rest.”
I held my hands out, and she placed hers in mine. I couldn't feel anything but cold, like I had plunged my hands into ice water. But for a moment a spark of connection twanged in my head, like an unexpected but absolutely brilliant idea.
Closing my eyes, I began to sing. My voice was a little scratchy, and no one was going to recommend me for American Idol, but it was passable. “My latest sun is sinking fast, my race is nearly run. My strongest trials now are past, my triumph is begun. Oh come, angel band, come and around me stand. Oh bear me away on your snowy wings, to my immortal home.”
When the song was finished, a warm wind kicked up, whipping my hair around my face. A whispered no rose on the breeze and in the back of my mind. Something was gathering, and the air pressure spiked. What would I do if she refused to go on? It had never happened, but I knew enough to cut the word never right out of my vocabulary. There was a long sigh of what had to be relief, and the trees around me whispered their goodbyes in the dying wind.
I opened my eyes. Anna Cole was gone.
“Nice song,” Valerie said, her voice distant as she gazed up at the sunny sky without blinking. The sun didn’t hurt her eyes like it did mine. Had she seen Anna go? Did she feel whatever had pulled Anna beyond this world? If she did, she didn’t say anything, just fiddled with her ragged nails while I rummaged in my backpack.
“Thanks,” I said. “Her daughter said she used to sing it when they were little.”
“Cute,” Valerie said.
“You picked something out yet?”
“Not yet,” she replied, her green eyes downcast. “Don't forget the sage.”
There was a baggie of herbs in my bag for spiritual cleansing. Based on my highly scientific research, which entailed a lot of Google and Wikipedia, sage was a purifying plant. I set the bundle burning and wafted the smoke around to clean out the lingering sadness and negative energy from Anna’s long stay here. Step two was a dash of holy water, smuggled out of the Catholic Church downtown. Hey, I did leave five bucks in the donation box, figuring that probably went a little ways toward forgiveness for blasphemy, or sacrilege, or whatever you would call the sin of stealing holy water.
Once I had blown around enough smoke to make me cough, I extinguished the sage in a damp muddy spot and scuffed out the smoldering remains with my shoe.
“You think that stuff you said to her is true?” Val asked, watching as I slung the strap of my backpack over my shoulder.
“I hope so,” I said without meeting her eyes. The warm fuzzies of helping Anna Cole evaporated. With me and Val, there wasn’t an elephant in the room—try the whole freaking zoo.
“Me too,” Val said. She glanced at her smashed wristwatch and shook her head. Its cracked digital face still read 9:37 p.m, like it had ever since the accident. Even so, she somehow always knew what time it was. “You're gonna be late.”
I took out my cell phone to verify the time and groaned. “She's gonna kill me.”
“If you’re lucky. I’m pretty sure she's not going to buy it if you tell her you were singing old church hymns to a ghost.”
“Can't you tell her?” I said, forgetting for one idiotic moment that she couldn't get me out of trouble like she used to.
“Wish I could, Little Bit,” Valerie said. “Wish I could.” She had once been the master of talking Mom out of being mad, somehow doing it without ever telling a lie.
But everything changed two years ago, when Valerie died.