Revived Spirits (4 page)

“No,” I say, but my voice cracks, and my eyes are welling. People always ask me if having the Sight means I can see into the future, and right now I’m glad the answer is no. A future without Abigail and Adam is too awful to think about.

“You’re going to the dentist, not to your execution,” Mom says. We’re in her car on the way to Morgan, the next town over, so I can get my teeth cleaned.

“I don’t mind the dentist,” I say, looking out the window at a field of grazing cows. “I’m sad because of something Adam told me.”

Mom’s forehead wrinkles like it does when she’s worried about something. “What’s wrong?”

“This summer Dr.
So’s
contract for working at the hospital here will be finished. He got a job in Louisville starting in the fall.”

Mom takes one hand off the steering wheel to reach over and squeeze my arm. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for you, but I’m sorry for me too. I’m very fond of the
Sos
.”

The tears I held back when Adam told me the news came spilling out now. By the time we arrive at the dentist’s office, my face is blotchy, my nose is red and my eyes are swollen. Mom gives me a tissue, and I wipe myself off, but I’m still a mess.

When the cleaning is over and the elderly dentist pronounces me cavity-free, he hands me a sugar-free lollipop and says, “There. That wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be, was it?”

I realize, to my embarrassment, that he thought I’d been crying because I was terrified of going to the dentist.

As we leave the office, I show Mom the lollipop and say, “Well, that was humiliating.”

She smiles. “Don’t take it personally. Doc Mills is so old he treats everybody like kindergarteners. The last time I had a cleaning, I got a lollipop too.”

Whenever we go to Morgan to the doctor or the dentist, we always stop at this drive-in called The Root Beer Stand. The Root Beer Stand doesn’t have a very imaginative name, and it’s just a concrete shack painted an ugly orange, but the root beer is delicious. It’s been in business forever. Mom used to come here when she was a kid.

A
teenaged
girl on roller skates stops at the car window to take our order. Soon she skates back balancing a tray with two chilled mugs and a basket of onion rings.

“I don’t see how they can skate without spilling,” I say after our waitress has left.

“Me neither,” Mom says, handing me a frosty mug. “I never could’ve done it. I’d have been flat on my butt, covered in root beer and onion rings.” After mom takes a sip, she has a little foam mustache on her upper lip. I wipe my mouth, figuring I have one too.

“I was thinking,” Mom says, dipping an onion ring in ketchup. “Since Adam will be moving this summer and Abigail”—she pauses and looks down for a moment— “won’t be around forever, we should make sure you get to spend as much time with them as you possibly can. Why don’t you invite Adam over on Saturday night? Maybe I can take the three of you out to do something fun.”

For the longest time, Abigail wasn’t able to leave my room. If she tried, it was like there was an invisible barrier stopping her. But then by accident she discovered she can go inside mirrors. If she goes inside a hand mirror, she can leave my room. The down side is she has to stay inside the mirror, but she’s so happy to be able to travel in the world of the living that she doesn’t mind. “Maybe we can take Abigail down to the river to see Virgil,” I say. Virgil is Abigail’s boyfriend. If ghosts can be boyfriend and girlfriend.

“Sure,” Mom says, “and we’ll figure out some other fun things to do.” For a couple of minutes we’re quiet except for munching our onion rings, then Mom says, “I was also thinking...it would probably be a good idea for you to work on making some new friends.”

I can’t help feeling mad. I throw down a half-eaten onion ring. “What? I should just replace Abigail and Adam like an old pair of shoes that doesn’t fit anymore?”

Mom puts a steadying hand on my arm. “Of course not. You’ll still have Adam even after he moves. You’ll call and write and visit sometimes. And like I said, you’ll always have Abigail in your heart. It doesn’t mean you love your old friends less if you make some new ones too.”

I roll my eyes. “And you know how easy it is for me to make friends when most people run from me in terror.”

“Believe me, I know. Dave is one of the few friends I’ve made since you were born,” she says. I try not to be sorry to hear Dave’s name come up. “What about Isabella, though? You two are friends.”

“We are,” I say. Isabella’s family owns El Mariachi, the local Mexican restaurant, and Adam, Abigail and I helped them when they were being harassed by a bigot. “We’re lab partners in biology, and we talk. But Rosa is her best friend, and they’re so inseparable it’s hard not to feel like a third wheel.”

Mom nods. “Listen, I know making new friends is much easier said than done, but I just want you to think about it, okay?”

“Okay,” I say, adding “making new friends” to my already too-long list of things to think about.

It’s Saturday night. When Abigail scratches on the inside of the closet door, both Adam and I say, “Come in.”

Abigail flounces into the room and claps her hands. “Oh, Adam, it’s so wonderful to see you!”

“And it’s great to hear you,” Adam says. Unlike me, Adam can’t see Abigail. He can hear her voice, but all he sees is a cloud of vapor, like steam rising from a kettle.

“So are we going out somewhere tonight? Should I get in my mirror?” she asks.

“We are. You should,” I say. I take the fancy silver-framed hand mirror off my dresser and set it on the floor.

“I’ll just jump right in, shall I?” She stands with her button-shoe feet on either side of the mirror, then jumps up, bringing her feet together. When they land on the mirror, they disappear inside it, and the rest of her follows, her body narrowing like a funnel to fit.

“Is she all in?” Adam asks, and I nod and pick up the mirror.

We go downstairs to the kitchen where Mom is finishing the supper dishes and Granny is stirring a pot of something horrible-smelling on the stove. Granny dips up what looks like a rotten tree branch. “Would you
younguns
like a little snack before you go out?”

“Uh,” Adam says. I can tell he’s struggling with politeness.

Granny laughs. “I’m just funning you. It
ain’t
food. It’s medicine for my friend Daisy’s rheumatism.”

Mom puts away the last dish and says, “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the movies with us?”

“Nah,” Granny says. “I
ain’t
been to the show since that one about the shark. It scared me so bad I never went back again.”

“Do you mean
Jaws
?” says Adam. “That means you haven’t been to the movies since nineteen seventy-five.”

“That sounds about right,” Granny says. It’s funny that most people in town are terrified of Granny, but she’s a
scaredy
-cat about movies.

“Well,” Mom says, “at least we don’t have to worry about sharks in Kentucky.”

“I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on some shark’s fin, though,” Granny says. “The Chinese believe it’s got some powerful healing. Do Koreans use shark’s fin?” she asks Adam.

“Not that I know of,” Adam says.

When Adam and I first started hanging out, I was embarrassed for him to come to our house. I was afraid he’d be spooked by my family and run away. But the weirder Granny is, the more he likes it.

“Well, are we ready?” Mom says. She takes the mirror and looks into it even though she can only see her own reflection in it. “Are you ready, Abigail?”

“Tell her yes,” Abigail says. Her voice sounds far away coming from inside the mirror, but I can tell she’s happy.

“She says yes.”

Instead of heading toward the movie theater where we usually go, Mom takes us to the Moonlight Drive-In Theater just outside of Morgan. “I thought it might be a nice change,” she says. She pays the old man in the ticket booth and parks in the field in front of the big screen.

I’m holding Abigail in her mirror on my lap. “So we watch the movie from inside the car?” Her voice quivers with excitement.

“Yes,” Adam says. “And there’s a concession stand if we want to eat in the car.”

“How terribly modern!” Abigail says.

“Not really,” Adam says. “There are hardly any drive-in theaters left. They were modern in the nineteen fifties.”

“To me, the nineteen fifties is modern,” Abigail says.

We—except for Abigail—eat popcorn in the car and watch the movie which is about giant robots. I know Abigail likes it because she’s thrilled by pictures that move on a screen, but the robots don’t do much for me. They don’t interest Mom much either because when I’m in her head she’s thinking about some poor family she’s trying to help in her job as a social worker. When I jump over into Adam’s head, he’s enjoying the movie. He thinks the story and the acting are pretty cheesy, but the special effects are cool enough to make up for it.

After the good robots have beaten the bad robots, Mom says, “Well, we could stay and watch some of the second movie but not all of it since we have to get Adam home by midnight. Or we could go to the lake for a while. Miranda, why don’t you ask Abigail which she’d rather do?”

I grin. “Which do you think she’d rather do?”

Abigail may love watching movies, but even that excitement doesn’t compare to how giddy she gets at the thought of seeing her ghost beau.

“Did your mother ask if I’d like to go to the river?” Abigail asks. “Because I would.”

“Guess which she chose,” I say, and Mom starts the car.

The river outside Wilder used to be haunted by three ghosts: the spirit of a woman and the spirits of two boys. But Adam, Abigail, Isabella, and I helped free the spirit of the woman, so now only the two boys remain. One,
Adahy
, is a Cherokee boy who speaks no English and is shy of the living. The other, Virgil, died as a boy soldier in the Civil War. He’s shy and sweet around Abigail. I think they’d both blush if ghosts could blush.

After Mom parks the car, she gets flashlights from the trunk. The path down to the lake is dark, and it’s easy to trip over a root or rock. “I’ll sit up here and keep an eye on you,” she says.

A mist is hanging over the water and it’s hard to see at first. Once my eyes have adjusted, I spot
Adahy
, who’s squatting on the bank using one stone to sharpen another into an arrowhead. He gives us these arrowheads as gifts sometimes. I have several on my mantel in my room, and Adam has made one into a pendant he wears on a rawhide cord.
Adahy
raises his hand in greeting, then runs up to take the mirror and smile for a moment at Abigail. The sight of a ghost girl moving and smiling inside a mirror must seem magical even to another ghost. Once he’s handed the mirror back to me, he yells, “Virgil!”so loud his voice echoes through the woods surrounding the river.

Within seconds, Virgil appears from behind a tree. Because of poor nutrition and health, Virgil looks like he was pale even before he was a ghost. His eyes are hollow, and his Confederate uniform is baggy on his scrawny body. It amazes me that Virgil died fighting in a war when he wasn’t much older than Adam and me.

When Virgil sees us, he grins, showing tiny, uneven teeth. “Well, good
evenin
’,” he says. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

“We were out and thought we might stop by and say hello,” I say in the formal way I have to speak so Virgil will understand me. “Abigail especially wanted to say hello.”

Abigail giggles from inside her mirror, then manages to say, “Hello, Virgil.”

Virgil doesn’t giggle, but he does smile. Then he takes off his hat and gives a little bow. “Good evening, Abigail. I’m mighty glad you came calling.”

“I’m glad, too,” Abigail says.

“Miranda, are you and your people keeping well?” Virgil asks.

“Yes, thanks.”

“And you, Adam?”

“We’re good,” Adam says.

“I was wondering,” Virgil says, still holding his cap in his hand, “if y’all would mind if I took Miss Abigail for a little walk around the riverbank. If she’d care to, of course.”

“I would like that very much,” Abigail says.