Revived Spirits (13 page)

“But how do you know?” Mom says, her voice getting high-pitched. “How do we even know we can trust this ghost? How do we know she doesn’t want to hurt Miranda?”

“We can’t know for sure,” Granny says. “But if she had wanted to hurt us, she could’ve done it tonight. Abigail, what did you think of her?”

Since Abigail is the ghost of a girl with the Sight she can see things about other ghosts that the living can’t.

“She isn’t exactly a nice lady,” Abigail says. “But I sensed that she meant us no harm—that she felt a kinship with those who shared the Sight. She is dangerous to her enemies, but she didn’t think of us as enemies.”

I relay Abigail’s words to Mom and Granny.

“Okay,” Mom says, “Miranda, while the
mother
side of me wants to forbid you from doing this, I also know that you’re growing up and have to learn how to make your own decisions. You and Abigail figure this out, and I’ll honor whatever decision you make.”

“I think it has to be Miranda’s decision,” Abigail says. “If things go wrong, I have nothing to lose except what I was going to lose anyway. Miranda could lose everything.”

At first I think Abigail’s statement is an example of her tendency toward Victorian melodrama, but then the truth of it hits me. If the ritual goes wrong, I could lose not just Abigail but the Sight too. And without the Sight, I wouldn’t be my real self anymore. By being so changed, I couldn’t relate to my family the way I used to. Even my friendship with Adam could be lost since the Sight is the reason he told me I was the coolest girl he ever met. I make a list in my head: Abigail, the Sight, Granny and Mom, Adam.

Abigail’s right. I could lose everything.

I’ve never slept as late as I slept this morning. Well, I can’t really call it morning. When I opened my eyes, the alarm clock said five after twelve. My first thought was that my visit with Miss Minnie must’ve really taken it out of me. My second thought was that Adam would be proud. It was my second thought that got me moving. I knew what I had to do.

I threw on clothes and brushed my teeth, hollered to Mom that I’d be back in a couple of hours, and grabbed an apple on my way out the door.

And now I’m sitting on the edge of Adam’s bed. He’s propped up on pillows wearing a skull T-shirt and sweatpants I’m pretty sure he slept in. He might not have been awake for long, but after what I’ve just told him, his eyes are wide.

“So let me get this straight,” Adam says. “You met the ghost of a Mull—what was that word again?”

“
Melungeon
.”

“The ghost of a
Melungeon
moonshiner who hangs out with a creepy little kid ghost and she says she might be able to help you and Abigail stay together but only if you undergo a painful ritual?”

“That’s about the size of it,” I say, hugging my knees to my chest.

“Whoa,” Adam says. “I wish your mom would’ve let me go too. The only cool stuff that ever happens to me happens when I hang out with you.”

It’s like there’s a rock in my throat. What Adam just said touches on my fear that he’s only my friend because I have the Sight, that I’m sort of a gateway to supernatural phenomena. “Yeah,” I say, “I
kinda
wanted to talk to you about that.”

“What do you mean?” He’s heard the break in my voice, and when I glance in his head, he’s thinking,
Uh-oh. Emotional stuff
.

“If something were to happen so that I didn’t have the Sight anymore, would you still be my friend?” The words tumble out in a rush, like I’m in a hurry to get rid of them.

Adam’s eyebrows go up. “How can you even ask me that? It’s like asking me if I’d still be your friend if you lost an arm or a leg. Sure, you’d be missing a part of yourself that you used to have, but you’d still be you. And you’d still be my friend.”

Tears well up in my eyes. I lean forward to hug him, but when he looks like I’m approaching him with a knife instead of open arms, I back off and just say thank you instead. And then I hear myself saying, “I have to go now.”

“Okay,” Adam says in a humoring-a-crazy-person tone.

I start running as soon as I’m out of Adam’s house and don’t stop until I’m in my own front yard.

I can’t believe I was agonizing about my decision when the answer seems so obvious. The Sight is part of me, but like an arm or a leg, I could learn to live without it. And truth be told, I don’t always love having the Sight in the first place. But I do love Abigail, and if there’s a chance we can be together always, it’s a chance I’m willing to take.

It’s a long Monday. When the bell finally rings, I make a stop at my locker, then wait for Adam in our usual spot under the tree. When Adam shows up,
Caylie’s
with him. “Hey,” she says, “I was just telling Adam that I finally got a chance to talk to Daryl.”

“Oh, yeah?”
Caylie
had been wanting to call Daryl for over a week, but her grandparents had kept too close an eye on her to give her the opportunity.

She grins. “Yeah. Last night I faked a bellyache and said I didn’t feel good enough to go to church.
Mamaw
gave me some medicine and put me to bed and her and Papaw went to church without me. It’s probably a real bad sin to fake sickness to get out of church, but since I done it to try to get Mama out of jail, I figure it’s worth it.”

“Definitely,” I say. “It’s for the greater good.” I sit down on the grass under the tree, and Adam and
Caylie
join me. “So what did Daryl say?”

Caylie
rolls her eyes. “He said he was tickled to hear from me. He said he missed me something fierce and that he’d never got over my mama. Sometimes after he’s been doing meth a long time, he drinks for a few days to come down. I figure he was drinking and that’s why he got all mushy.”

“Did you ask him about getting together?” Adam asks, picking through the clover on the ground. Adam can never sit still. He always has to be messing with something.

She nods. “I’m supposed to meet him at the Pizza Hut by the movie theater in Morgan on Saturday night at six. I told him that since
Mamaw
and Papaw wouldn’t bring me, I might have some friends with me, and he said that was fine.”

“Okay,” I say, “but that doesn’t solve the problem of how to get there. My mom wouldn’t take you anywhere if she knew it was against your grandparents’ wishes. And believe me, she would know.”

“
Hm
,” Adam says, sill raking his fingers through the grass. “My mom would take us if she thought it was just pizza and a movie.”

“Yeah,”
Caylie
says, “but
Mamaw
and Papaw don’t know your mom, so they wouldn’t let me go with her. Besides”—her eyes avoid Adam’s— “I don’t think they’ve ever—” She trails off.

“Met any Asian people? Well, we certainly wouldn’t want to scare them with our ancient, mysterious ways.”

All of a sudden the pieces of the puzzle click into place. “I’ve got it.
Caylie
, you ask your grandparents if you can come home with me after school on Friday and spend the night. And by me, I mean your little Holiness friend, Ruth.”

“I think they’d agree to that,”
Caylie
says.

“And you, Adam,” I say, “can ask your mom if she’d drive us all to Morgan for pizza and a movie.”

“Okay,” Adam says.

Caylie
looks at Adam, then at me. “I just hope when we meet Daryl, he’s in a good mood. You never can tell. It just depends on what’s he’s using.”

“I don’t suppose there’s a chance he’ll just be using milk and cookies,” Adam says.

“Nope,”
Caylie
says, “not a chance.”

“This is awesome!”
Caylie
says, turning up the radio. She and Adam and I are riding with Mrs. So to our secret meeting with Daryl
Chumley
. “I don’t even remember the last time I listened to regular music on the radio.”

“I hope your grandparents won’t think I’m a bad influence on you,” Mrs. So says.

“They won’t if I don’t tell ’
em
,”
Caylie
says. “I’ve never rode in a car this fancy neither. It’s a Lexus,
ain’t
it?”

I can feel Mrs. So itching to correct
Caylie’s
grammar, but she resists the urge. “Yes, it’s a Lexus. Adam’s dad picked it out. I would’ve gone for something simpler myself.”

When Mrs. So drops us at the Pizza Hut she says, “I’ll pick you up outside the theater at nine thirty. Adam, my phone’s on if you need me.”

“There he is,”
Caylie
whispers as soon as we’re out of her car. I look in the direction she’s facing and see a man with a lanky body and lank hair leaning against the wall by the restaurant’s entrance. He’s smoking, and when he draws on his cigarette, his face looks impossibly thin, his cheekbones jutting out like ledges. It’s strange seeing somebody in real life when the only picture you’ve seen of him is a mug shot.

When we approach him, he grins at
Caylie
. His teeth are jagged and mostly brown, and I remember a term Adam and I read in our research:
meth mouth
. “Hey, baby girl,” he says. His grin doesn’t reach his dead-looking eyes. “When you said you’d be coming with friends, I never thought you’d be coming in no Lexus. And I never thought your friends would look like Carrot Top and Jackie Chan here.”

I hate being called Carrot Top. I guess all redheads do. And calling Adam Jackie Chan wasn’t exactly the height of sensitivity either.

“Uh, this is Miranda and Adam,”
Caylie
says. She sounds mortified. “And y’all, this is my, uh, Daddy Daryl.” Even without looking inside her head I can tell how hard it is for her to spit out this affectionate nickname.

Adam and I say hi and Daryl says, “So why don’t you kids let me buy
you’uns
a pizza and some Co-colas? I come into a little money the other day, so I’m good for it.”

We all say sure and thanks even though we know that however Daryl
Chumley
came into money, it probably wasn’t legal.

Inside the restaurant, the teenaged hostess leads us to a booth. Adam slides in next to me, and
Caylie
sits next to Daryl but doesn’t scoot in very close.

“So what’ll it be, kids?” Daryl asks. “I’m partial to pepperoni myself.” He grins, showing his awful teeth. “How about you, Jackie Chan? Do Chinese people eat pepperoni?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Adam says, his tone as icy as the Coke the waitress sets in front of him. “I’m Korean.”

“My
grandaddy
fought in Korea,” Daryl says. “Said you people was some mean little boogers.”

“I’m not mean,” Adam says.

“Well, shoot, you
orta
be,” Daryl says. “It’s a mean old world. You can’t hardly survive without a little meanness in you.” He turns to
Caylie
. “I see the holy rollers is buying your clothes now. I bet you’d rather have on a pair of blue jeans.”

“Yeah,”
Caylie
says.

“Them people treating you all right?” he asks.

Caylie
nods. “They’re nice. It’s boring there, though.”

Daryl nudges her shoulder, and she flinches. “It wasn’t boring when you was living with me, was it?”

“No,”
Caylie
says. For a second I’m in her head and see the screaming fights between her mom and Daryl, the drugs on the coffee table, the blue police lights. Boring would be better than that.

“So, I was wondering why it was you called me all of a sudden,” Daryl says. “I hope it wasn’t on account of money ’cause this pizza’s all you’re getting out of me.”

“I don’t want your money,”
Caylie
says. “I just called because”—she swallows hard— “I miss you.” She doesn’t sound very convincing, but Daryl doesn’t seem to notice that she’s not much of an actress and drapes his arm around her in a half-hug. I bet his armpits stink.

“I miss you too,
Caylie
June,” he says. “Can’t say I miss your mama much, but I sure miss you.”