Sight - Chapter 1

Title: Sight

Genre: Teen horror/paranormal

Rating: T (for some language)

Story Type: Novel - complete

Word count: (chapter) 6,767 - (novel) 71,000

Summary:  The women of Mini's family have always been able to see ghosts, and while her mother, grandmother and sister have made it their life's mission to help the spirits, Mini wants nothing to do with it.  After a horrific attack when she was younger, Mini has sworn off all things ghosts.  That is, until Keaton walks into her life.  He has a ghost problem, and somehow Mini finds herself back behind the Veil, facing a ghost that is far more dangerous than anyone originally thought.
Author's Note: This is part of a complete manuscript.

Chapter 1

             

My sandwich looked like it had been attacked by Michael Myers.  I stabbed it again and the fork didn’t even make holes.  There wasn’t enough actual bread in the middle for holes.  The tines hit the bottom of the plate, and I stabbed it again.  As I glared across the cafeteria, I imagined it was him that I was stabbing.  I didn’t have it in me to stab an actual person, but the sandwich made a good substitute.  I had suffered through a lot of crappy school years, but this one was turning into the worst, which was all kinds of screwed up considering it was my senior year.  Senior year was supposed to be the best, it was supposed to be a breeze.  Yeah, looks like someone forgot to tell the Fates that I was a senior.

             

I started each school year thinking that I was finally doing it, I was keeping a low profile, I was going to have a nice, quiet, normal year.  Then October rolled around and I realized that, yeah, there was no way that was going to happen; not when my mom ran an occult shop downtown and my sister conducted overly theatrical seances for the month.  The month was over, finally, but the damage was done.  The rest of the school year, I would be the ghost girl.  It was like, over the summer, everybody forgot except for the hardcore.  Then October hit, and BAM, there I was again, back to being ghost girl.

             

“You can stop now.  I think it’s dead.”

             

I pulled my eyes away from Marco and looked up.  I knew Keaton James.  Everyone knew Keaton James.  He was on the basketball team, and in his downtime, he made being in drama cool.  He had this personality that attracted people.  He had a laugh that said something was wrong if we didn’t find that joke funny and a smile that felt sincere, even if it wasn’t.  He was a straight B student, and he sat three rows over and two seats up from me in chemistry.  Yeah, we all knew Keaton, but that didn’t mean I knew him enough to expect him to show up at my lonely table in the cafeteria.

             

“Can I sit down?”

             

I shrugged and jerked my head toward a chair to the side so I could continue to shoot daggers at Marco.  Keaton sat directly in front of me.  If he wasn’t so cute, I would have snapped at him for it.  His looks had to be another reason that everyone knew Keaton.  He was pretty, the kind of pretty some boys have where, if you’re the type that likes makeovers, you want to dress him up like Audrey Hepburn.  Pretty will get a guy really far, especially a guy in a high school where the girls outnumber the guys almost three to one.

             

“Wilhelmina, right?”

             

“Mini,” I said with only the barest of winces.  I didn’t care that my mom named me after some super awesome great aunt or whatever.  Wilhelmina wasn’t the kind of name that you stuck a kid with these days.  It was a lot to say and even more to hear.  Having the last name Harker made the name even worse.

            

“Like, Mouse?”

             

I snorted.  “Like Me.”  Keaton rose an eyebrow and I shrugged.  “It’s a long story,” I told him.  “Well, maybe not long, but I don’t really feel like telling it.”

            

 “Some other time, then?”

Yeah, right.   I turned away from him and put my eyes back on Marco.  Someone must have told him that I had been staring at him, because he was looking in my direction.  I gave him the finger anrd he laughed.  I gave him the double bird and the rest of his buddies laughed.

             

“What’s the deal with that?”

             

My shoulders sagged and my head dropped until my chin hit my chest.  I swung my head around and stared at Keaton.  I hadn’t even known we had the same lunch period until he showed up at my table, which made me think that we didn’t, actually, have the same lunch period.  He had made an effort to talk to me, and he kept turning my attention to him.  He wanted something. 

             

“What’s the deal with you?” I asked him. 

             

“I don’t know what you mean.  I’m just trying to be friendly.”  He needed to do more work in drama, because his acting was bad. 

            

“In case nobody told you, Keaton, October is over, and even if it wasn’t, I don’t offer the same services as my sister.  I stay the hell away from candles on a regular basis, as a matter of fact.”

             

“Has anyone ever told you that you are really antagonistic?  You’d have more friends if you weren’t, ya know.”

             

“Actually, I’ve been told both, thanks.”  My sister said it a lot, using herself as an example.  I countered with the fact that she has no idea if those people are really her friends or if they just think she’s cool because she’s a ghost girl.  She always blew me off, and I just told her to wait until she needs to move and then see how many friends show up to help.

             

I went back to glaring at Marco.  It wasn’t doing any good.  I considered finding a ghost that would be willing to torture him for a while like he’d tortured me, but deals with ghosts didn’t go that well.  It wasn’t like I could do much to stop them from going back on the deal.  Besides, the ones that were willing to do it always wanted something in return that people on this side couldn’t give them, like a new life.

             

Not to mention, making a deal with a ghost meant that I’d have to consciously go near a ghost.  I had made it my life goal to stay as far away from ghosts as possible, and not even revenge against Marco was going to make me change my mind.  Sometimes, ghosts couldn’t be avoided, but this was not one of those times.  So yeah, a deal with a ghost was out.

             

Marco stood up and left, making sure to toss me a finger-waggling wave on his way out of the cafeteria.  I glared until my eyes were squinting, then turned back to Keaton.  “I’ll have you know that I do have friends, by the way.  I have the obligatory one person that I trust more than the random cute guy that sits at my table, but we have different lunch periods.  I also have people in this cafeteria right now that I could sit with if I wanted.  I just chose to sit by myself.”

             

“Sit by yourself and glare at Marco.”

             

“Exactly.” 

            

I thought about following Marco, but decided against it.  I knew where he was going.  Marco and his friends ate their lunch, and then left halfway through the period to hang out in the library.  Marco’s grandmother was the school’s librarian and she always got him and a couple of friends passes to come and “help” in the library during lunch.  They didn’t actually help, though.  I’d been there with them a few times, and usually they just sat around and waited for the next period to begin.  I could have followed and made a big scene, but there were better things I could do, like get his passes revoked.  My uncle, the principal, outranked his grandma, the librarian.

             

Having an idea of how to get back at Marco without going anywhere near a ghost, a way to make his life suck just a little, made me feel better.  I didn’t feel so great that I welcomed Keaton to my table and apologized for being rude, but I did look at him with less than a death glare. 

             

“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry.  I mean, about saying you don’t have any friends.  Obviously, you do, or did, because we both know you used to go out with Marco.”

             

“We didn’t go out,” I said with a snort.  “Not like I was his girlfriend or anything.  We sometimes hung out at the same places at the same time with the same people.”

             

“Uh huh.” Keaton ran a hand through his hair.  He dropped his hand to the table and tapped his fingers against the table.  He looked incredibly bored.  “Okay.”

             

“Fine, we went out, but that lasted just long enough for me to realize why I should have hated him all along.  Hell, I should have known better, anyway,” I said.  “He slid in under the radar.  He asked me out the first time in September.”

             

“And?”

             

“And, like Diana pointed out to me, it was a week and a half before September ended.  I don’t usually trust anyone that close to October.”

            

“Then why did you trust him?” Keaton asked me.

            

I shrugged.  “I’ve had a crush on him for a while, I guess.  Diana knew that, and I’m pretty sure that’s why she didn’t say she told me so when I called her to come get me.  I learned my lesson about crushes.” 

             

It was okay to talk about crushes with Keaton because I had nothing even resembling a crush on him.  I thought he was pretty.  Every girl in school thought he was pretty.  And yeah, I guess if he asked me out and it was nowhere near All Hallow’s Eve, I’d probably say yes, but I wasn’t sitting around hoping he would ask me out. 

             

“What did he do?”

             

I took in a deep breath and held it until my chest hurt, then forced it back out.  I looked down at my plate.  That sandwich probably would have been really good, but now it was just a mess of soggy pulp in the center.  The outer parts around where I had butchered it was okay, but with that crater in there, the sandwich was just not appealing at all, anymore.  I took my can of Dr. Pepper from the tray, then pushed it to the other side of the table.  I took a long drink with my eyes closed, then looked at Keaton as I set the can down.  “He took me to a real haunted house.”

             

“You mean like…”

             

“Like ghosts,” I said, “yes.  And he knows… I mean, he KNOWS!”  I think that’s what was making me really mad.  Keaton had an idea, everybody had an idea based on what my mom and my sister did for a living, not to mention just the way my family history had a way of floating around town even though we lived in a major city and not a little town out in the middle of nowhere.  Keaton hadn’t grown up here, though, so he didn’t really know, not like others knew.  Marco fucking knew, though.  We had grown up together, and he had seen what happens when too many ghosts were around and  wasn’t prepared.  He knew, and he took me there, anyway.

             

“Marco and I used to be friends, okay?  I mean, yeah, I had the crush and all, but that crush was from years of being his friend and watching him go from being the dorky kid that ran around in a Superman costume for most of a year when we were little to being, well… You’ve seen him.”

             

Keaton gave me that eyebrow again.  He didn’t ask questions when he was confused, apparently.  He just raised his eyebrow.  I sighed and said, “What?”

             

“I… don’t…”  He shook his head.  “Okay,” he said, “I get it.  He’s attractive to those that find that kind of person attractive.”

            

 “What kind of person is that?”

             

“Guys?”

             

I couldn’t help but laugh.  I was trying to stay serious and angry and he just… This was the reason that Keaton James had a ton of friends, even though he was relatively new to the school.  He transferred in last year, and within two months, he had everyone talking about what an awesome guy he was and blah blah blah.  What made it worse was that it was obvious that Keaton didn’t always know what he was doing.  He stared at me with his eyes wide for a moment before he cracked his own smile and that was enough to tell me that he didn’t even know that what he had said, the way he had said it, equaled funny.

             

When I could open my mouth without laughter coming out, I said, “Okay, I get it.  And you get it.”

             

“Yeah, I get it.”

             

“Well… okay, then.”  I stopped and bit my bottom lip.  I still hadn’t told my mom exactly what had happened on Devil’s Night, and I didn’t know how I felt about telling it to a relative stranger.  But, still, maybe if I told someone… 

That was kind of an excuse to talk to Keaton about it, though, wasn’t it, because I already planned to tell Uncle Eric about it as soon as I got the chance.  He would want to know the whole story when I asked him to revoke Marco’s special lunch passes.  He would bend the rules for me and do me favors, but he had to know I had a pretty damn good reason for asking him.

             

“Marco said we were going to a haunted house,” I said with a sigh.  “Some kind of haunted farmhouse.  Considering he knew what happened when I got around ghosts, you’d think that it’d be safe, right?  You’re seeing why I trusted him?”

             

“I’m seeing.”

             

“And you’re seeing, then, why I’m so pissed at him.”  I hadn’t even really told him anything, just given him bits and pieces to satisfy him and lull him into a false sense of security.  He wanted something from me, I knew it, but he was beating around the bush, taking his slow, sweet time getting around to telling me what it is that he wanted.  So, I share, then he shares, and then I tell him hell no and go back about trying to fix my senior year.

             

“It was—“  I shook my head.  “They talk to you,” I told him.  “They swarm and they—“  I shook my head again, not shaking away the words but trying to shake away the memory, maybe even shake away the entire event.  I had only been swarmed one other time in my life and Marco had been there, he’d seen it.  He had watched them pull at my clothes and hair.  He couldn’t see the actual ghosts, of course, but he could see what they were doing to me.  It was like the air was pulling at me, and he had run to get my mother.  She had made them go away, and I had decided that I had had enough of this ghost bullshit.

             

I barely even heard myself as I whispered, “He left me there.”  I should have known better.  When I saw that there was no one else at the farmhouse, I should have known that it wasn’t a real haunted house.  I could have stayed in the car, but he had made it clear that he wasn’t going anywhere until I went inside.

             

“I figured that I’d get out of the car,” I told Keaton, “run in, run out, and be done with it.  Hell, part of me figured the place wasn’t really haunted, anyway.  Most of you wouldn’t know a real haunted house if a ghost pushed you down the stairs.”

           

“What did he say?  I mean, he had to be acting normal until he left you there, right?”

            

 “Yeah,” I said.  “He started apologizing, saying he knew that if he had told the truth, I wouldn’t have gone.  He said that he just wanted to see if anything was there, that a friend told him something was there, but he didn’t believe it.”  I shrugged.  “I didn’t think Marco would do something like that.”

            

 “He got you inside and…”

             

“And he took off.  I went inside first, and after a minute, I realized that no one else had come in with me.  They were… they were everywhere and I paid more attention to them than I did to the asshole that had brought me out there.”

             

I paused in the story and realized that it was unnaturally quiet in the cafeteria.  On the outer fringes, people were still having their conversations that gave a low hum to the room, but on the inside, people were getting closer to me.  I must have started the story louder than I thought, because people were listening, and they were pulled in.  They had that look of expectation on their faces, eyes wide and jaws slack.  A few were on the edges of their seats, and I was tempted to yell out, “Boo!”  It would have been worth it to see them fall on their asses.

            

 I closed my eyes and I could see them.  They were afraid and finally, FINALLY, someone could see them and might talk to them, might tell them what was going on.  I could hear their questions like whispers going through my mind.  How did I get here?  Can you help me get back?  There was one that raised her fists and pounded the air like it was a wall and shrieked, Please, let me back in!

             

That’s what always scared me most of all.  The anger I could usually fend off.  The mean bastards of the ghost world took a little time to build up the kind of energy that was needed to really hurt you.  I usually wasn’t around them long enough for them to get that kind of bad will raised up against me.  The fearful ones, though, they were nothing but their fear.  Panic builds all on its own without any kind of general focus in ghosts, and that will just burst right out at you, and that’s what it did to me on Devil’s Night, in an old farm house, where only the dead lived.

            

 They pawed at me, and it wasn’t too bad, at first.  I thought this must be what my kitty feels like when I stroke his back and sides.  I felt at calm and felt my eyes starting to flutter.  They started to stroke harder and that must have been what the kitty felt like when little kids got hold of him and didn’t know they were hurting him.  No more soft pads of fingers.  They started to grab.  Some grabbed my hair and others my clothes.  They pulled at me as they pleaded with me to help them.  It was time for tug of war and I was the rope.  I screamed and pleaded and begged for them to let me go.  I told them that I was sorry and I didn’t know what to do to help them.  I didn’t know how they had ended up in the farmhouse.  I couldn’t even search for the rip they had made because they wouldn’t let me go long enough to actually do anything.

            

 I fought them as hard as I could.  I jerked back and forth, dropped to the floor and rolled.  I managed to scramble away from them and I scuttled out the door.  On my hands and knees, I crawled until I was away from the farmhouse.  I crawled until I was all the way to the edge of the road and that was when I realized that Marco et al were gone.  I was alone out in the middle of nowhere and they were still coming, crying and falling all over themselves because I could help them.  I saw them, I spoke to them, I heard them, so obviously, I could help them.

             

It was just a good thing that I had my cell phone in my pocket, and even better a thing that, when I had fallen to the floor, I hadn’t broken it.  Even as I ran across the street, I was dialing Diana.  I ran into the deep dark woods that no sane person would ever run into on their own.  I had ghosts behind me and I was just begging for some psycho killer to come out and get me.  Part of me, though, was sure that’s where Marco was hiding.  This was just a prank, and it was a shitty prank, but still just a prank and he’d apologize and it would be okay.  He wasn’t in there, though, and I was just able to get a call through and tell Diana how to find me and beg her not to tell my mom or sister, and if she had ever loved me, ever, not to call Uncle Eric. 

            

 “Mini?”

            

 I blinked a couple of times and realized that while I had been telling myself the story, I hadn’t told my waiting audience.  I looked around the room and there were more people watching me, now.  I heard a chair tumble a few feet behind me and some laughter, and I knew that someone had fallen off the edge of their seat without me doing anything at all to help them. 

            

 “Um, what was the last thing I said?” I asked Keaton.

            

 “Uh, you were running,” Keaton told me.

            

 He looked over my shoulder and someone behind me said, “One of them was banging against the wall.”  The voice was soft, but it was also deep.  I turned around and it was one of the janitors that floated through the cafeteria cleaning up after us.  I knew him, but I couldn’t think of his name.  I knew his pale face, though.  I knew that my mom had helped him with something before.

             

Even worse than telling myself the story and leaving them in the dark, I had only told bits and pieces to those listening and now they would be begging me for more.  On the plus side, I had told them enough that I was pretty sure that Marco was going to catch hell.  He had done one hell of a shitty thing, and unlike when he normally did shitty things to others who wouldn’t talk, I had turned it into storytime in the school cafeteria.

            

 I decided that telling them the rest probably wasn’t for the best, or at least, not the parts that would require more information.  “I slipped them,” I said, “and eventually, Diana showed up and took me home.”

            

 “You… slipped them?  They’re ghosts!  How do you slip ghosts?”

            

 The girl who asked was tall with black thick-rimmed glasses and I didn’t know her at all.  I rolled my eyes.  “I hid from them and they didn’t find me.  That’s how hiding from something works, you know?”

            

“But, they’re ghosts,” the girl beside her said.  “They can just… find you.”

             

“No,” I said, “they actually can’t.  They need to be able to see us, and I was in some dark ass woods and they didn’t know where I was.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I was talking to him, and you all were eavesdropping.  How about you let us go back to talking?”
             

The audience grumbled and griped but slowly they went back about their business.  Some tossed me looks of disbelief, while others looked like they wanted to hug me because what I had been through was just so horrible.  Still others just had that usual look of wanting to believe, but having something deep inside that told them that they had never seen a ghost, and so it was really hard to believe what I had just told them.

             

When it was just us again, or as close to just us as we were going to get, I asked Keaton, “So?”

             

“So…”

             

“What do you want?  If it’s a story from the ghost girl, then you just got it.  If it’s to tour the Villisca house, you’re out of your mind.”

             

He gave a low laugh, barely even a chuckle.  “People seriously ask you to do that?”

             

“Ghost hunters have asked me to do that.  I keep trying to tell them that there’s no point in hunting.”

             

Keaton was quiet for a moment.  His eyes went around the room, landing on each person in his line of sight.  I followed his gaze and we both came to a stop looking at one another.  His eyes were a bright, brilliant blue, the color of painted sky, that color that’s a pain in the ass when you’re working a puzzle and all the pieces start to look the same.  He blinked and I noticed that his eyelashes were long.  Guys always had great lashes, probably because they didn’t put as much junk on them and torture their lashes like girls did.  Looking at his lashes made me want to stop using mascara just to see if they would start growing again.

            

“I have a problem,” he finally said.

             

“A problem,” I echoed.

             

“Yeah.”  Keaton nodded and leaned in closer.  He lowered his voice.  He didn’t feel like having story time in the caf the way that I had just done.  “Something’s messing with me,” he said.  “A lot.”

            

“Uh huh.”  I looked closer at him, stared everywhere but his eyes.  That was when I noticed the lines around his eyes and the skin starting to sag.  His skin looked smooth from a distance, but up close it had all the telltale signs of someone who wasn’t getting enough sleep.  “So, you figured you’d go to ghost girl.”

             

“I guess.”  He took in a deep breath that sent the smell of peppermint wafting past my nose on the exhale.  “I just… I keep hearing things about your family.”

             

“What kinds of things?”

             

“That they’ve helped people,” Keaton said.  “Your mom stays out of papers, but the people she’s helped will tell anyone, and your sister—“

             

“My sister plays up the whole medium thing during October, and then she works at the shop during the rest of the year.”

             

“Your sister is trying to get her own Midwest ghost show, kinda like Paranormal State.”

             

“My sister has flights of fancy and delusions of grandeur,” I told him.

             

“I just… I thought you could help, is all.”

             

“If these people say my mom has done so much for them, why didn’t you go to her?  I’m sure she could help you, and if she can’t, my grandma probably can.  I may not want to go into the family business, but Gran has never turned someone down.  She’ll at least try.”

             

“I guess I’m not comfortable talking about this to adults.  I mean, you know how they look at us.  Teens make stuff up, right?  We want attention.  I’m the new guy, anyway, and I didn’t think your mom would take me seriously.  Maybe she’d think that I was just trying to get some gossip or something.”       

             

“And so you thought I wouldn’t think the same thing?”

             

“I figured you knew enough about me from school to know that I was legit.  Something’s going on, Mini, and I really need some help.  I can’t do this on my own.  Not anymore.”

             

I closed my eyes and sighed.  It was easier to blow him off when I didn’t have my own recent ghost adventures on my mind.  My night had been horrible, but at least I understood why they were doing it.  I could only imagine how bad it was for someone who had no idea why they were being targeted.  If something really was messing with Keaton, specifically, then he could have been in for a world of hurt.

             

I opened my eyes to see Keaton staring down at my ruined sandwich.  He should have gone to my sister.  Katy would have helped him, no problem.  Of course, she’d have made a big deal out of it, turned it into a production.  She was into flash and showmanship or some such bullshit.  The only reason I didn’t believe she was really trying to get a show like Paranormal State going for the Midwest was because Katy was more Ghost Adventures than Paranormal State.

             

I shouldn’t have asked, but I did.  “What’s going on?”

             

The second I asked, I wanted to take it back.  The whole point of avoiding ghostly situations was to avoid conscious contact with ghosts.  Putting myself in the position to listen to Keaton’s story didn’t help me consciously avoid ghosts.  That was my rationale for not striking a deal to punish Marco, so why wasn’t it enough rationale to take back to the inquiry?

             

His entire body showed his relief.  His shoulders sagged as he slumped down in his chair.  His head fell back and his chest rose and fell with huge breaths of relief.  Damn it.  Just one question, and Keaton already looked like life was going to be better.  So close to my own experience, knowing how much I had wished someone would show up and make it all go away, I couldn’t take it back now.  I had to at least hear him out.  My senior year was starting to look worse and worse.

Keaton sat up straight and looked at me.  “It wasn’t too bad when it started,” he said.

             

“When did it start?”

             

“Three or four months ago?”  He shook his head.  “I’m not entirely sure because I’m at the point where it feels like it’s always been this way.  But, whenever it started, it was just…”  He started to say something, then stopped.  He turned away from me and stared across the room, his gaze pushing past all the kids between him and the far wall and finding the window.  He stared out until I urged him on.

             

“Keaton?”

             

He sighed and turned back to me.  “I thought it was my mom,” he said.  “It was just like… Like someone holding me when I slept.  Sometimes it was a small pat on the cheek.  Other times, I thought I actually heard a laugh when I did something funny or when I got something good in school.  I figured it was my mom saying she was proud of me.”

             

I doubted it was his mother, though it sounded like Keaton had gotten over that idea, too.  I tried to be as sensitive as possible when I asked, “When did your mom die?”

             

He shook his head.  “It’s been years.  I was maybe nine or ten?  It’s kinda screwed, ya know?  I mean, I should be able to tell you exactly when my mom died, shouldn’t I?  I should be able to tell you the exact day.”

             

“Not necessarily,” I told him.  “Time isn’t the same for everyone, neither is memory.  Sometimes, we skip over the actual death, make it fuzzy in our minds so it doesn’t mess with our memories of the times they were here.”

             

“Thought about this a lot?”

             

“Not really,” I said with a shrug.  “It’s one of the lessons my mom tried to teach me when I was little and she was explaining ghosts and things.  I didn’t realize that it had stuck until I said it just now.”  Not exactly a lie.  My mom did say it, she just didn’t say it to me.  I overheard her once when Katy asked her why she couldn’t remember exactly when Dad had died.  Instead of just telling her it was because she had been too young, Mom turned it into a lesson.  I wasn’t ready to tell a virtual stranger about my dead father, especially since he had died before I was born, so what I gave him was close enough to the truth.    

             

Keaton grunted and nodded.  He ran a hand through his hair.  He stopped halfway back his head, held the hair for a second, then let it go.  His dark brown fell back into his face.  “Anyway,” he said, “it wasn’t too bad at first.  It was actually pretty good.  Then, I don’t know… I realized it wasn’t my mom.”

             

“How did you realize that?”

             

“It went after my aunt.  She’s my mom’s sister, my legal guardian. You know that thing you said about pushing down the stairs and not knowing?  That was pretty much my aunt.  She never really believed that I felt anything or heard anything.  She figured that, now that we were really settled here, I had some kind of guilt or something at being someplace, being happy, and my mom not being here.”

             

“That makes sense,” I told him.

            

“I guess.”  He shrugged.  “But it tried to push her down the stairs, and the only thing that kept her on her feet was that she was holding onto the banister pretty tightly.  She claimed she slipped.”

             

“But you don’t believe her.”

             

“I heard… something,” he said.  “I don’t know what it was, Mini, but it was… You know how you try to throw something in the trash, you miss the shot and you’re like, Damn!  That’s what it was like.”

            

I thought about it for a minute, tapped my finger against my lips.  So far, he did sound like he was being haunted.  “Anything else?”

             

“Her favorite stuff goes missing,” Keaton told me.  “Sometimes, she’ll stumble, but she denies that anything pushed her.  Lately, though, she’s just been acting weird, kinda spacy sometimes.  She doesn’t even argue things with me, now.  She just pats me on the head and tells me that it’s going to be fine.”          

             

That definitely didn’t sound good.  That sounded more like minor possession than it did just simple haunting.  Of course, I’d have to see for myself to be sure, and even then, I might not be sure.  I didn’t practice all the tricks and things my mom had learned from Gran, so I couldn’t say for sure that I would even know a possessed person if I saw one.

             

What was I saying!  I wasn’t going to know if it was a minor possession because I wasn’t going to see it.  I didn’t do this thing.  I had very vocally withdrawn from the world of ghosts.  Mom could see if it was just a haunting or a possession.  I told myself that I was only listening to Keaton’s story so I could relay it to Mom.  Obviously, my mind had already decided for me that he was telling the truth, so I just had to give Mom the details and she could deal with the rest.  Yup, that’s what was going to happen.  That was the only way that Keaton was going to get any Harker help with his ghost problems.

             

I looked at Keaton and his eyes were wide.  He was expecting me to give him a quick answer and an even quicker fix.  The problem was that there was no quick fix when it came to ghosts.  Too many TV shows gave too many people a variety of wrong ideas.  I couldn’t just talk a ghost into going into the light and a sprinkling of holy water wasn’t going to make it go away.  Before I could even fathom an answer, and even before I could go investigate things (I wasn’t going to), if I even wanted to investigate (I didn’t want to), I had to explain to Keaton what it even meant that a ghost was on this side of the Veil.  I had to explain to him what the hell the Veil actually was.

             

“Keaton, I…” 

             

…didn’t get to tell him anything, because the bell rang and lunch was over.   Everyone started getting up, tossing their trash and heading to their next class.  Chemistry was the only class that Keaton and I shared, and that had already passed.  I wouldn’t see him again until the next day.

             

Keaton stood up and looked down at me.  “I get it if you don’t want to help.  I just figured I’d ask, ya know?”

             

“It’s not that,” I told him.  “There’s just…  There’s a lot of explanation and things that need to be discussed before we can even start.”  What?  Who was this we that was coming out of my mouth?  “Before my mom can help,” I corrected.  I sighed and shook my head.  “Look, I’ll talk to my mom tonight, maybe even my grandmother or my sister.  I’ll let you know if there’s even anything I can do, alright?”  Seriously with the personal pronouns?  “They can do for you,” I corrected again.  “I’ll see if there’s anything they can do for you.”

             

“You’re going to hand me off,” he said. 

             

“Keaton, you don’t…”  I shook my head.  “You don’t get it.  I’ve sworn off ghosts.  My family will never swear them off, but me?  Yeah, I’m not up to it.  But, I’ll find out what I can, and I’ll be your go-between or something.  I mean, as long as it doesn’t mean that I have to go anywhere near a ghost.”

             

“Uh huh.”

            

“Keaton…”

             

“It’s fine,” he said.  He was quiet for a few seconds.  He watched more people file out of the cafeteria, then said.  “Tomorrow?  Not tonight?”

             

I didn’t want to get his hopes up, have him thinking that I was going to have some kind of definite plan in so little time, especially since I was still trying not to have anything to do with anymore ghosts this year, anyway.  At the same time, though, I didn’t want to be an asshole.  I wasn’t sure I could look at him every day for the rest of the year if I just did nothing. 

             

I also felt like shit for not personally helping him beyond being a mediator.  I had never had anyone actually come to me asking for help.  Sure, people wanted me to do some kind of ghost trick for them, or they would ask me what it was like to see ghosts, but no one had ever trusted me enough to ask me to help with their problem.  They always went to Mom or Gran, because they were the trusted ones.  Keaton was trusting me, and I was brushing him off on my mother.

Shit.  I wasn’t going to get my easy breezy senior year, at all.  And even worse, the way my mouth was running without any input from me, I wasn’t going to get my ghost-free year, either.  I could correct all I wanted, but something inside was telling me that it wasn’t going to be Mom or Gran, or even Katy.  Something was, unfortunately, telling me that it was going to be me. 

FML.

             

“I’ll see what I find out, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”

             

“I can meet you before school starts.”

             

“No,” I said quickly.  Depending on what I was told by those in the know, I might end up needing more time than that.  At the least, I’d need time to prepare what I was going to say to him.  I stood up and put my backpack over my shoulder and lifted my tray.  “I’ll get us passes to skip lunch tomorrow.  Meet me out in the parking lot.  We can talk without an audience.”

            

 “You can do that?” Keaton asked.  “Get us passes?”

            

I smiled at him.  Sometimes, surprising people can be kind of fun.  “Looks like you didn’t learn all there was to know about me.  My uncle is the principal.  I’m his favorite niece.”

             

I walked away and stopped at the trash can to dump my tray.  I plopped the tray on top and was headed to the door when Keaton called my name.  I turned and he was jogging up to me.  He was about three or four inches taller than me, enough that when he looked at me, he looked down.  “Thanks, Mini,” he said.  “Even if you can’t actually do anything, thanks for trying.”

             

I usually shot a “no problem” when I was thanked, but considering the work that might be involved, that just didn’t feel right.  Instead, I just said, “You’re welcome,” then turned and left the cafeteria.   I still had the rest of the school day to get through, and then I would have to face my family.  Katy was going to give me hell, I just knew it.  I had been adamant about getting out of the ghost business, and there I would be, asking for advice to get right in the middle of it.  She was going to give me all kinds of shit, but in the end, she’d help me, too.  So would my mom, and so would my grandmother, if it came down to that.  I just hoped that it didn’t come to that, because if I had to go that far up the line, that meant really bad things for me and Keaton, both.