Revived Spirits (14 page)

Caylie
is doing her best not to flinch away from him. I clear my mind and concentrate. I’m not supposed to just be people-watching. I’m supposed to get inside Daryl’s mind. It takes a couple of minutes to get the willpower to do it. I don’t even like sitting across from this man, let alone digging around in his head.

But I get there.

Being inside Daryl’s mind is unlike being in anybody else’s. His thoughts buzz like a hummingbird’s wings, settling for only a second before they zip off to light somewhere else. Some of his thoughts are arrogant:
Of course
Caylie
June wants to see me. I was more of a daddy to her than her real daddy ever was
. Some are paranoid:
What’s that fat woman over there looking at me for? I wonder if she knows I done a couple of bumps before I got here.

It’s not until that last thought that I understand why being in Daryl’s thoughts is so strange. It’s because he’s high on meth.

I’ve never been in a drugged brain before, and I can’t say it’s a fun place to be. I wonder why Daryl and so many other people like to put themselves in this condition.

Trying to follow any of Daryl’s trains of thought is like trying to follow a high-speed train on foot. I try to dig deeper into images from his past. I see
Caylie’s
mom holding the trailer door open, motioning him to get out. He gets in her face, spits, and says, “Mark my words. You’ll live to regret this.”

If I could just find a memory of him planting the drugs in
Caylie’s
mom’s car, then we would know. We wouldn’t be able to prove it, but at least we would know.

But before I can dig through more of his memories, I hear him think:
That little redheaded girl looks like she’s staring right through me, like she’s putting a curse on me or something. Little girl, get out of my head!

“He told you to get out of his head?” Abigail says. She’s sitting on the edge of my bed with her knees hugged to her chest.

“It was the weirdest thing,” I say. “Do you think he could have the Sight too?”

“It’s possible,” Abigail says, “but if he did, you probably would have sensed it about him right away. Did you say he was under the influence of some sort of stimulant?”

“Yes. His mind was racing, and he thought about having taken meth before he met us.”

“Well, that probably explains it then,” Abigail says, playing with her ringlets. “Stimulants do strange things to a person’s mind. They cloud thoughts, but they also make the person extra sensitive. But only temporarily, of course.”

“So you think he sensed me in his brain because of the drugs?”

“Perhaps. Or maybe he didn’t really sense you at all. Maybe you just heard his paranoid thoughts which made you paranoid too. I once had a similar experience using the Sight with a man who had taken cocaine. Of course, that was back when people thought of cocaine as a medicine, not a dangerous drug.”

Abigail had told me once that when she was alive Coca-Cola had contained small amounts of cocaine, and nobody thought a thing of it. “From what
Caylie
says, Daryl stays high pretty much all the time. How can I get inside his head when it obviously freaks him out?”

“Hmm.” Abigail flips onto her stomach, swinging her high-buttoned shoes in the air. “This requires some thought.”

“That means you have no idea, right?”

“It sounds much worse when you say it that way.” Abigail sighs. “Miranda?”

“Yes?”

“You know there’s a full moon next Saturday?”

“I know. I’ve been checking Granny’s
Farmer’s Almanac.
”

“You’ve not changed your mind about going to see Minnie, have you?”

I feel unsure about a lot of things right now, but Abigail isn’t one of them. “We’re definitely going.”

“Hey,”
Caylie
says, catching up to Adam and me as we’re walking out of school.

“Hey,” I say, my heart sinking because I know she wants us to tell her good news and I have none to tell.

“Any ideas?” she asks, and I hear the hope in her voice.

“None yet,” I say. “I don’t know how to get into his mind if he can sense me there, and I can’t talk to Mom and Granny about it because they’ll know I’m up to something.”

She nods, her jaw set like she’s trying not to cry. “It’s okay. I appreciate you both. For caring. And for trying.” Her voice breaks, and she blinks hard. “I...I’ve got to go catch my bus.”

As soon as she runs away, Adam says, “Well, I feel terrible.”

“You feel terrible?” I kick a rock in my path. “This is my failure, not yours.”

“Hey, it’s not your fault the guy can sense your presence. The meth makes him so paranoid he can probably hear bugs crawl.” He looks at the ground. “You want to come over and hang out for a while? Maybe there’s some other way to think about this.”

But now that we’re in Adam’s room he doesn’t seem to be doing much thinking. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, controller in hand, eyes on the TV screen, playing some game where he shoots zombies.

I watch the zombie zapping for a few minutes, but it’s gross so I find my attention wandering into Adam’s head, where his profound thoughts are
Kill zombies...kill zombies
. “Hey,” I say, “I thought you were going to think about how we can help
Caylie’s
mom. But you’re thinking about zombies.”

He presses the pause button and turns around. “Sometimes if I do something else for a while, an idea will pop into my head.”

I feel a prickle of annoyance. “So
Caylie’s
mom can just sit in jail another year or two while you play video games.”

He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Jeez, Miranda, what’s your problem all of a sudden?”

As soon as he says it, my face crumples, and I feel a sob rising from deep in my chest. Hot tears pool in my eyes. How can he ask me what my problem is when I have so many problems I couldn’t possibly narrow them down to one?

“Uh...you’re crying.” He jumps back off the bed and moves to the opposite side of the room like I have a contagious disease.

I put my hands in my face and sob harder.

Adam backs out the door, but in a couple of minutes he’s back carrying a roll of toilet paper. He holds it out to me, stretching his arm full length so he doesn’t have to get too close to a crying girl. “I...uh...wasn’t sure how much you’d need.”

I take the toilet paper and tear off a few sheets. “I doubt I’ll need a whole roll. But thanks.”

I blow my nose, and Adam stands at a safe distance watching me. I dab at my eyes and take a deep breath.

“I’m sorry. I know you’re not good with emotions and stuff. Things have just been hard lately. Everything’s changing so fast, and I feel really bad about not being able to help
Caylie
. And then”—I realize I’m probably telling Adam way more than he wants to hear— “never mind.”

“It’s okay,” he says, not moving from his spot across the room. “You can talk if you need to.”

The words don’t come out at first, but when they do, they’re so soft it’s a wonder Adam can hear them. “I’m scared,” I say. “Saturday’s a full moon, so it’s time to go see Minnie for the ritual that might let Abigail and me stay together. I’m not scared because there’s supposed to be blood and pain. I’m not looking forward to that part, but I’m not scared of it. I’m scared because it might not work. I might lose Abigail and lose the me that I’ve always been.”

Adam sits on the bed next to me. “Are you sure you want to do it?”

“It’s my only choice. I can’t do nothing.”

Adam sits for a minute in silence. “Hey, do you think I could come with you?”

“I don’t know. I guess that would be up to my mom and yours. Are you curious to watch or something?”

“I’m curious,” Adam says. “But that’s not the real reason. I just thought if something goes wrong it might be good for you to have your other best friend beside you.”

He’s being so nice I have to fight the urge to cry again. “Thanks. And I’m sorry I cried in front of you. And that I was snotty about you playing your video game.”

“It’s okay.”

“You seem so calm all the time,” I say. “Isn’t there ever a time where you get so sad you just want to scream or cry?”

“Sure.” He scoots back to the foot of the bed and picks up his video game controller. “That’s when I kill zombies.”

Mom is shaking her head at the sad produce selection at the
Piggly
Wiggly. She finally sighs, picks up a head of lettuce, and tosses it into the cart. “When will people in this town figure out that there are other kinds of lettuce in the world besides iceberg?”

“There are a lot of things people in this town need to figure out,” I say as a woman goggles at us and then puts her arm around her little boy to shield him from any evil spells we might throw his way.

“True,” Mom says. “We need to grab some bottled salad dressing too. I know we usually just make vinaigrette, but Dave likes the creamy stuff.”

Dave is coming over for dinner tonight since our trip to see Miss Minnie will interfere with his and Mom’s usual Saturday night date.

As we turn down the salad dressing aisle, I see another mother—this one skin-and-bones thin with heavy makeup that doesn’t hide the dark pouches under her eyes. She’s pushing one of those shopping carts that looks like a car for little kids to ride in. Two toddlers are strapped into the car’s seats, both of them with curly blond hair and blue eyes that make them look like baby angels. I expect the mother
to turn the cart around once she spies the Witch Women in her aisle, but instead she smiles and says, “Hey, Sarah!”

“April!” Mom hugs the woman, then squats down to play
peekaboo
with the babies, who grin and giggle. When she stands back up, she says, “So have you been doing okay?”

“Pretty good,” the woman says. “I’m working part time over at the
Git
’n Go by the interstate. Mama watches the babies while I work and spoils ’
em
real good.” When she smiles, her teeth—what’s left of them—are a mess, broken, jagged, discolored. It makes my mouth hurt to look at them.

“And you’re still going to your group meetings?”

“Yeah,” she says. “And I’ve got an appointment to see that dentist you told me about in the health department.”

Without really meaning to, I pop inside April’s head. Her gratitude toward my mom is real, and so is her love for her kids. Even as she’s chatting, she’s thinking about the food she still needs to buy for them: bananas, peanut butter, goldfish crackers, apple juice. But deeper in her brain, underneath the gratitude and responsibility is the thought
I wish I could get high just one more time.
It spooks me so much I jump out of her head just in time to hear Mom say, “This is my daughter, Miranda.”

“Nice to meet you,” I say.

After April has said goodbye, Mom half-whispers, “Aren’t those children beautiful? I hope she’ll be able to keep doing right by them.”

“Did she use meth?” I say. “Is that why her teeth are so bad?”

Mom nods. “The babies had to be put in foster care while she was in jail and
detoxing
. At work we’ve done all we can to help her get on her feet. I hope she stays there.”

In the car on the way home I say, “I’m pretty nervous about Saturday night.”

“I know you are,” Mom says. “Are you still sure you want to do it?”

“I’m sure. I’m just nervous. And I was thinking...I might feel better if Adam came with us.”

Mom lets out the sigh that means she’s doubtful of something I’ve said. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think he’d be in any danger, but I also don’t know what kind of scene he’d be witnessing. We don’t want to traumatize the poor boy.”

“Adam’s already seen plenty of weird stuff just from being my friend. He’s not been traumatized yet.”

“True. But still, I’m not quite sure how to spin the idea to his parents.”

“Couldn’t we just say we’re visiting some relations in Tennessee?”