UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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OUT ON THE PORCH, over a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and biscuits and gravy cooked by Carson’s mother, aka the best cook this side of the Mississippi, I finally decide to spill it. The Prism, the Guides, Thatcher, my mission to heal my loved ones—Carson included—by haunting them in a subtle way, a soulful way.
I don’t tell her how I felt, how I feel, about Thatcher. I can’t put that into words yet—it’s too painful. And I’m not sure now is the right time to talk about Reena’s possession, and what she and Leo and the rest of the poltergeists were up to. I don’t know how Carson would handle it. She has always believed in an afterlife but not necessarily one where people here could be actually threatened by those who have left the physical world.
“I was looking for signs from you everywhere,” says Carson, her eyes glowing with excitement. “I knew you weren’t trapped in that hospital. I could feel it.”
I smile at her. I’m a little afraid to be sharing all of this, but it is so nice to be able to tell someone. And she takes everything I say as absolute truth, which is a relief since some of it sounds downright cuckoo.
“Were you hanging around with me a lot?” she asks. “Even when I went to the bathroom and when I was reading that romance novel I have tucked under my mattress? Oh! Were you with me when I googled my face crossed with Ryan Gosling’s to see what our baby would look like?”
I laugh and throw my balled-up greasy napkin at her. “Of course not! I didn’t have time to watch your every move. I would just visit you . . . sometimes.”
Like Thatcher does with me now.
“Let me think,” she says, and I know she’s trying to recall the moments when she felt my presence.
“When I went on the ghost tour . . . And the radio station changed without me touching it . . .”
I nod. “I was there. But that wasn’t the way I was supposed to haunt. Another ghost did that for me, changed the station, and Thatcher got really mad.”
I think back to that night, to Leo interrupting Thatcher’s teaching and stealing my energy to connect with Carson. In that moment I thought Leo’s way was more fun and exciting. But I came to realize how wrong I was.
The poltergeists lure people with their charm, but all of it was just an act to reel me in and then use me for what they’d never have again.
A life force.
“Wait, why did Thatcher get mad?” asks Carson.
“Because there are Guides, and Thatcher’s one of them. They teach you about real haunting—the kind that helps people truly move on from someone’s death. It’s soul to soul; it isn’t physical.”
Carson nods like she understands. “That night made me so sad,” she says. “I thought you were there, but maybe trapped in some dimension and trying to escape or something. I didn’t know what to do or how to help.”
“That’s just what Thatcher taught me—that kind of haunting can do more harm than good,” I say. “It doesn’t ease the Living; it makes them more anxious about your passing.”
“The Living.” Carson says it with a shiver. “But you were alive that whole time.”
“I didn’t know. I thought I was dead.”
Carson reaches out across the table and touches my hand. “You should talk more about this—think of how many grieving people you could help. You could tell them that their loved ones want them to be okay. You’ve seen how it works!”
I pull my hand away quickly. “Don’t start this again. It’s private. I mean it. You have to promise me you’ll keep all this to yourself.”
She looks down at the table, but I see her nod.
“Seriously,” I say.
“I promise. But I still think you should let people know what you saw.”
“Your opinion is noted.” I shove a forkful of grits into my mouth.
Carson looks back up at me. “The stuff about the haunting to help people move on is really beautiful. It makes perfect sense to me.”
I nod as I chew, wanting to change the subject, now that she’s pressed me more about making my story public.
“Your mom did that,” she says.
I look up at her sharply.
“She haunted me,” says Carson, not backing down.
Carson always told me how my mother would come see her when we were little, after she died. She said she felt Mama’s presence, that Mama wanted me to know that she was okay. But we were little girls, just six years old, and no one would listen to Carson. Not even me.
Maybe deep down I believed her, but I was jealous. I guess I still am.
“Why didn’t my mom haunt me that way?” I ask her.
“I don’t know. Maybe she tried but you weren’t open to it so she had to have me give you the message.”
Carson says this gently, sweetly.
I take another bite of breakfast, and Carson asks, “So what kind of powers do you have now?”
I nearly spit out my eggs. “Powers?”
“Yeah, like can you still move things without touching them? Are you still . . . telekinetically inclined?”
I roll my eyes. “No,” I say. “I don’t think so.”
“You haven’t tried?” Carson shrieks in disbelief.
Her mom comes over to bring us more warm butter and we quiet down for a minute until she walks back to the kitchen.
“Go on, make that butter tray move,” whispers Carson.
“That isn’t how things work.” I realize that I sound like Thatcher responding to me when I wanted him to teach me energy tricks in the Prism. How ironic is that? “Besides, I’m back in my body now. I don’t think I can tap into energy the same way.”
“I bet you can.” She grabs my arm and closes her eyes, starting a deep hum.
“What are you doing?” I move away quickly.
“I’m trying to use your energy to connect with something!” She laughs lightheartedly, but I don’t join in. What she just did reminds me too much of the way Leo and Reena and the poltergeists drew on my energy and started targeting people on Earth I cared about, hoping to take over their bodies and eventually their lives.
My stomach churns a little, the urge to tell her about the possession she experienced getting stronger every second, but something inside keeps telling me to wait and talk to Thatcher first.
Only I have no idea when that will be. I haven’t felt the warmth of his presence since yesterday morning.
“Okay, fine, we can try to move something later,” says Carson, still smiling. “So what happens after you haunt everyone and help them grieve? Do you go to Heaven then?”
“Sort of. There’s a place called Solus that the Guides say is like Heaven. They call it merging, and it’s what every ghost is striving for.” Well, almost every ghost.
“How long does it take to get there?”
“I think it’s different for everyone. Thatcher can’t merge, because his little sister never got over his death.”
I look over at Carson and her face falls. “Wow, that’s so sad.” Then she perks up and I see her I have an idea face. “If his sister—what’s her name?”
“Wendy . . . Wendy Larson.”
“If Wendy accepted Thatcher’s death, then he’d be able to . . . what was it called?”
“Merging.”
“Right. So if his sister got over his death, then he could merge into the Heaven place?”
“Solus.” I pronounce it like solace.
“Solus,” Carson echoes. “He could go there if Wendy moved on?”
“I think so.” Carson’s interest in this is starting to make me nervous.
“Why don’t we help then?”
“Carson . . . no.”
“Why not? If we can talk to her and tell her that Thatcher needs her to get over it—I mean we’ll say it more nicely than that—she’ll understand! She’ll let go of him, and he can merge with Solus!”
Her face is shining—she’s so excited to find that there’s some truth to an afterlife, something she’s always suspected existed. But I can’t let her meddle—not with Thatcher.
“We can’t,” I say to her. “It’s none of our business.”
She looks at me sideways. “You don’t want him to merge.”
What? “Shut up. Of course I do!”
Her eyes light up with knowing. “You don’t want him to leave you. You’re in love with him,” she says. “That’s why you aren’t crazy mad about Nick and Holly, why your head is always somewhere else. You’re thinking of him. Maybe even talking to him! Oh my gosh, were you talking to him in your dreams last night? This is incredible. When you first met him, was it like you’d known him for a thousand years?”
Carson’s smile is huge—it’s like we’re discussing a new crush. But that’s not what this is. And I don’t appreciate it.
“Stop mocking me.”
“It was insta-love!” she says, missing my tone and clapping her hands together. “I guess that happens when you’re in some crazy world. I want to visit the Prism!”
I stand up quickly and my empty orange juice glass falls to the ground and shatters.
We both stare at the shards of glass that glitter across the wide wooden planks of her porch, and I take a deep breath in. “This isn’t a movie, Cars. This is my life, okay?”
She’s quiet for a minute, and then her eyes leave the mess and meet my gaze.
“You haven’t seen him since you woke up . . . ,” she says, the notion dawning on her as she gapes at me.
I can’t keep a flash of pain from working its way across my face.
“Only in a dream,” I say. “I think.”
“You’ve got to try to reach him again! Oh, Callie, if you help him haunt his sister it would be the ultimate act of love.”
“I said stop!” I whisper harshly as I step away from the table, piling our plates and taking them inside so Carson won’t be able to keep talking and try to convince me otherwise.
“Hi, Mrs. Jenkins.” I smile brightly as I walk into the kitchen. I don’t want her to know I’m upset.
“Callie, let me have those,” says Carson’s mom, taking the plates from my hands.
“I broke a glass out there; sorry.” I walk to the pantry, where I know they keep the broom and the dustpan. When I turn back around to head outside, Carson is standing in front of me. She grabs the broom.
“If you love him,” she whispers, so low that her mom won’t hear, “you’ll want to help him. You’ll want to help his sister.”
She places two small cloudy white crystals on the counter. “Here,” she says. “Use these.”
“What are they?”
“Selenite crystals—they’re good for connecting with spirits, and for dream recall.”
“This kind of thing doesn’t work,” I tell her. “It’s just silly kids’ stuff.”
“Like the sage you wouldn’t let me burn in your car that might have saved you from your accident?”
“Bad luck wasn’t what made that truck hit me. I was on my phone. I was going ninety miles per hour.”
“Still,” she says, picking up the selenite and pressing it into my hand. “Just keep it with you. It might help—you never know.”
I pocket the rocks so she’ll stop talking.
“And one more thing.” Carson puts her phone faceup on the counter and walks back outside.
I sigh and look at the screen, where Carson has found a listing for Wendy Larson. She’s a junior at USC-Beaufort. She lives just over an hour away.