A Curious Tale of the In-Between (6 page)

Felix stood below them, arms crossed, scowling.

“Don’t be angry,” Pram said. “I’ve brought Clarence because he’s my friend, and he’d like to be yours, too.”

“Who are you talking to?” Clarence said.

“
Felix,” Pram said. “He’s a ghost.”

Clarence stared at the empty space below the tree. “Oh,” he said. “Are you sure?”

Pram laughed. “Very,” she said. “He’s in a mood today.”

Felix dived backward into the pond. The splash was extraordinary, but Clarence didn’t see it. Felix was in charge of whether or not the living could see his tricks. Any other schoolboy would have doubted Pram at this moment. Seeing ghosts wasn’t a common talent, and young girls were known for their imaginations. But Clarence had come to know Pram in the time they’d spent together, and he believed her.

“Felix,” she said to the pond crossly. “Please come out of there.”

Felix bobbed to the surface. “What does it matter?” he said. “Your boyfriend can’t see me.”

Pram’s face turned red. “He isn’t—he’s not—just let him know you’re here.”

Clarence waited with more patience than Pram, who was fidgeting. But then her face broke into a smile and she pointed to the sky. “Clarence, look,” she said.

In the fall sky, the clouds shifted and took on the shapes of ballroom dancers twirling about.

Clarence was astonished. “You’re doing that?” he said.

“
Felix is.”

The scene melted back into clouds. An ill-timed blink, and Clarence might have missed it entirely.

“Shall I sing and dance for you as well, Your Highness?” Felix grumbled.

Pram looked overhead to where he was sitting in the tree. “Thank you,” she said. When she smiled, he found it hard to stay angry, but he didn’t want to admit it, and so he disappeared from sight.

Clarence looked at the clouds as though they might perform for him again. He wasn’t very surprised that they had danced. There was something about Pram; when he was with her, he felt that anything was possible.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Clarence said.

“I didn’t know how you’d react,” Pram said. She sat in the grass with her legs folded, and she smoothed her skirt pleats. “Felix says that people like me get sent off to the circus if they’re found out.”

This hadn’t occurred to Clarence, but now that he thought about it, the circus did seem to be a home for people with surreal talents.

He sat next to her. He stared at her bare knee, admiring the fine blond hairs that glinted in the sun. He didn’t see the ghost ladybug that she saw flutter and land there.

“I also thought you would be angry because I couldn’t
help
you find your mother,” Pram said. “Sometimes people don’t become ghosts. Sometimes they just move on.”

“Where do they go?” Clarence asked.

“I don’t know.” Pram shrugged. “Just . . . on. I used to look for my own mother, but she’s never answered me. She’s moved on, and maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe she’s happier wherever she is and she wouldn’t want me to come find her.” She looked at him, sympathetic. “It doesn’t mean we have to stop looking for your mother,” she said. “Maybe she’s still hiding somewhere.”

“She wouldn’t hide from me,” Clarence said. “She might hide from my father; she was angry with him for being gone most of the time.”

He looked up at the clouds, and so did Pram.

Even though Pram hadn’t asked him to, Felix made the clouds dance again.

CHAPTER

8

A
fter school the following day, Pram visited Clarence’s house for the first time. It was a majestic Tudor house surrounded by gardens that had gone to sleep until the springtime. Stone gnomes and angels filled the gardens, and it seemed that they were also sleeping, as though a witch had cast a spell on them.

Pram thought a dozen people could have lived in that house and still not have filled all its rooms. But no one was home, aside from a woman in a black dress and white apron, who took their coats and offered them crackers and tea.

“No, thank you,” Clarence said. “We’ll be upstairs.”

The staircase was thrice as wide as any Pram had ever seen. Even the banister was extra thick.

“
Who else lives here?” she asked.

“Just my father and me,” Clarence said. When they reached the top of the staircase, he said, “My mother’s room is that one.” He nodded to the only door that wasn’t brown. It was painted light blue, with the chipped silhouette of a bird in the center, its beak open like it was calling for something that would never come.

“She had her own bedroom?” Pram said. She didn’t know very much about parents, but she knew that they shared bedrooms once they were married.

“It’s not a bedroom,” Clarence said, turning the knob.

There was a window on the far wall—not a large window but big enough to fill every corner with light. The walls were yellow, but Pram could see parts along the floor and around the radiator that showed they had once been dark green.

There was a daybed in one corner, and bookshelves along two of the walls, and trinkets everywhere. There was a dresser covered in combs and bottles, and pictures laid under a square of glass.

“Which things have moved?” Pram asked.

“Nearly all of them,” Clarence said.

Pram’s hand hovered over the dresser. She was mindful not to touch anything. She wasn’t entirely sure if this would lead her to any ghosts, but she thought it couldn’t hurt.

“
Was your mother friendly?” Pram asked.

“Very,” Clarence said. “She wouldn’t mind that you’re here in her room. You can say hello, if you want.”

“What was her name?”

“Sarah.”

“Hello, Sarah,” Pram said. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk to me. You don’t have to. But I’m a pretty good listener.”

Pram’s hair was like the light, Clarence thought. She nearly disappeared in the brightness of the room. She closed her eyes to listen for his mother, and he was able to stare at her. She had freckles, but they weren’t obvious. They could only be seen in the right lighting, and only if he was close enough.

Her lips were light pink, and the room was so silent that he could hear them parting. She was just about to say something when a noise interrupted them.

She opened her eyes. Clarence realized how close they were standing, and his cheeks turned red.

They both heard the front door close and the footsteps coming up the stairs. Clarence’s eyes were wide. “Quiet,” he whispered. “Come on.”

He took Pram by the wrist and hurried her across the room, under the daybed, where they were concealed by a blanket that hung over its edge. The blanket smelled of perfume.

“
Why are we hiding?” Pram whispered.

“I’m not allowed in here,” Clarence said. “Only the maid comes in, to clean the floor and the windows, and she’s careful not to disturb anything.”

He heard his father’s heavy shoes approaching and hoped he would assume the door had been left open by the maid, who was forgetful sometimes.

But to Clarence’s surprise, his father pushed the pale blue door all the way open and then stood there, looking at the way the light reflected from the bottles and mirrors, like bits of dust that had been set on fire.

Then he did something he’d rarely done when Clarence’s mother was alive. Something he had forbidden after her death. He entered the room.

The floorboards creaked loudly under his weight. Clarence’s mother had been a wisp of a woman, petite and unassuming. The floorboards were startled by her husband’s presence.

Clarence’s father stood at the dresser for a long time, and then he picked up a glass bottle of perfume and misted the air with it. In a ray of sunlight, the drops were visible as they fell amongst the other things. He held a picture frame next and ran his large, strong hands over the photo inside.

It felt like an eternity before he left, closing the door gently behind him.

Pram
was relieved that they hadn’t been caught, and she thought Clarence would be as well. But when she looked at him, there were tears in his eyes. And Pram understood, even before he said the words.

“It wasn’t a ghost at all.”

CHAPTER

9

T
o find her father, the only tools Pram had were some old photos, a compass (which she wore around her neck for safekeeping), and a name: Maxwell Baines.

And Clarence and Felix, of course.

The air was icy and held the promise of a first snowfall. And shorter days meant that the sky was already darkening by the time they’d made the hour-long walk to the ocean.

The boats were all docked and gently swaying. During the daylight, the boaters could mostly be found in a series of tall buildings that had once been ware houses or factories long ago. But now the only light came from a shanty tavern.

Pram hesitated. Her shoes were just beyond the reach of the tavern’s light, and she felt afraid.

But
Clarence wasn’t going to let Pram back down. He stepped into the light and took her hand.

Felix, who had been three paces behind Pram the whole time, cleared his throat. “Your aunts will wonder where you are,” he said.

Pram looked back at him. “You’ve never cared what they thought before,” she said. “You think they’re silly.”

“All living people are silly,” Felix said defensively. “Especially you, worrying so much about someone you’ve never even met.”

Pram spun away from him and joined Clarence in the beam of light. “Felix is being cruel,” she told him. “So he’s going to wait outside.”

“Fine by me,” Felix muttered. But it wasn’t fine. It very much upset him to watch his only friend in the world holding a living boy’s hand. She wasn’t the sad and lonely girl he’d known for years. It wasn’t that he wanted her to be sad and lonely—only that he’d wanted to be the one to make that sadness go away. But his light tricks and dancing clouds could never do the things a boy with a heartbeat could do. He couldn’t even remember what it had been like to have a heart beating in his chest.

Soon Pram would outgrow him entirely. This was only the beginning of things.

Felix watched at the window. If anyone tried to harm her, he could knock a few glasses from the shelves, at least.

Pram
squeezed Clarence’s hand. Together they pushed open the door to the tavern. A sign above the door read, the Oak Mermaid
.
Anything to do with mermaids couldn’t be that scary, Pram told herself.

The smell of cigar smoke and fish was the first thing she noticed. Also, the floor was filthy. There was a roar of laughter that rose up like a wave, and it hurt her ears.

“Excuse me,” she said. Her voice was immediately lost.

Clarence took a step forward. “Excuse me,” he said, much louder, and Pram was impressed. He’d gotten the attention of the men who sat at the bar. They were all broad-shouldered with thick arms.

The man behind the bar tossed a towel over his shoulder and laughed a little. “Have you two lost your way, then?” he said. “The playground’s a few miles back.” Another roar of laughter.

“We aren’t lost, thank you,” Pram said politely. “We’re looking for a sailor.”

“A little young to come here looking for that, love,” a waitress said, wielding a tray of drinks on one hand.

Pram didn’t understand what this meant, but Clarence had an idea about it.

“His name is Max,” Pram said. “Maxwell Baines.”

The name was too formal for this lot of sailors; it was regal and they were burlesque. They laughed again, and
Pram
began to see them as something other than human. Hyenas that she’d seen in picture books, maybe.

“Go home, sweetheart,” the barkeep said. “It must be nearing your bedtime.”

Pram couldn’t imagine that her father was anything like these men. None of these men would have written such kind letters to a woman they’d left at home.

She sighed, and when she breathed in again, she found that the weight of the entire world sat upon her chest. She turned for the door, and Clarence followed her.

Felix followed a pace behind as they walked home and continued to keep a watchful eye on Pram. He felt awful for how he’d acted, and felt worse to see his only friend so sad.

“What now?” Clarence said.

There was only one more place Pram could think to try when she needed answers. “Maybe next time we can try the library,” she said.

The sun had already set, and the lights of the two-hundred-year-old colonial house shone in the distance. As they passed the pond, Felix mumbled his first word since the docks. “Good night,” he said.

“Good night,” Pram said, not looking back at him. Hand in hand, she and Clarence walked the rest of the way home.

Even
before Pram could turn the knob, Aunt Dee and Aunt Nan threw open the door. They were about to scold Pram for being so late, but they had a change of heart when they saw that her hand had just broken away from Clarence’s, as though she meant to hide the embrace from them. She also wiped the frown from her face, again a moment too late.

“Come in, come in,” Aunt Nan said. “We were starting to worry, and dinner is about to go on the table.”