The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney (10 page)

Chapter 13

On
the Saturday that I was supposed to meet Jack, I got up. I got dressed. I looked at myself in the mirror. And I sighed. A deep, heartfelt, despairing sigh. I looked awful.

“You do not look as bad as you think, Sparrow.” I turned around. Prajeet was sitting cross-legged on the bed, looking at me appraisingly. “In fact your appearance is delightful.”

“I look like a troll,” I moaned. I jerked open a dresser drawer and began rummaging through my clothes. “And I have absolutely nothing to wear!”

He leaned over the drawer and looked inquiringly inside. “Really? And what are those fabric things that used to be folded so neatly in that drawer?”

I pulled out some shirts. “Horrible, horrible,” I muttered. I held up a tank top and looked appraisingly at myself in the mirror. No, it was too cold outside. I kept going.

“You just threw a perfectly clean shirt into the laundry hamper, you know,” Prajeet said mildly.

I snatched it back and asked, “Why do all my sweaters look like something that only middle-aged women in England would wear?”

“Mmm.” Prajeet surveyed most of my meager wardrobe, now spread across my bed and the floor. “You make a good point.”

I strode across the room and flung open the closet door. “Look!” I cried. “It's a tragedy!”

He wafted over to the closet and hovered there, about six inches off the floor. “I see why you are a bit flummoxed,” he murmured. His eyes slid over to meet mine. “But perhaps you do not have to be?”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked as I went back to staring hopelessly into the depths of my closet.

“I mean,” he said, in a crisp voice that sounded remarkably like Professor Trimble's, “that the universe is a friendly place, Sparrow. Learn to ask for help.”

I rolled my eyes—did spirit guides have to use
every
moment as an opportunity for a life lesson?—then tilted my head toward my disaster of a closet. “Okay. There's my problem. Can you help with that?”

A quick, gleaming white smile; then he pretended to look serious. “Of course,” he said, bowing his head. “May I suggest that perhaps your sisters' closets could offer some attractive options?”

I gave him a long, considering look. “Pra-jeet. Have you been snooping?”

He opened his eyes wide, as if shocked,
shocked, I tell you!
at the very idea. “Sparrow, what can you think of me?” he protested. Then he grinned and said, “Well, maybe a little. I was something of a fashion plate in my day, you know. I do like to see what young people are wearing these days.” He looked rather prim. “The standards are a bit lower now, I must say.”

And so as Prajeet and I spent a happy and fruitful half hour raiding my sisters' closets, I asked him to help me a little more.

Our plan was simple: Arrive at the museum early. Get Miss Robertson, who was on museum duty, out of the way for an hour. Meet Jack, whisk him through the one room of exhibits, and usher him out without— fingers crossed—seeing anyone who knew me.

I had told Jack that I could meet him at one o'clock, which I calculated would be the safest time of day. Most of my family went to Fredonia to run errands on Saturday afternoon. The coast was clear—or at least as clear as I could hope for.

I started walking toward the museum, frowning down at the cracked and uneven sidewalk and thinking about how I could steer Jack away from certain displays, such as the chalk and slate that my great-grandmother had used to transmit spirit messages or the trumpet that my great-aunt June had used to amplify spirit voices.

“
Please
watch where you're going,” a cultured voice said. My head snapped up just in time to see two women, wearing the flowered hats and long dresses fashionable in the 1890s, walking majestically toward me.

“Oops, sorry,” I said, quickly stepping off the sidewalk to let them past. They strolled on, heads held high, the scent of lilac perfume trailing after them.

“Did you see the way that girl was dressed?” I heard one whisper to the other.

“She looks like an urchin,” the other said. “Poor dear.”

So much for Prajeet's fabulous fashion sense. Well, they weren't the ones I cared about impressing anyway.

When I got to the museum, I was relieved to see that there only two people there, a middle-aged tourist couple wearing matching purple sweatshirts and blue baseball caps. So far so good. Then Miss Robertson caught sight of me and scurried over.

“Why, Sparrow Delaney, I haven't seen you in ages!” she trilled. “How is that darling Mordred doing?”

“He's fine,” I said, blinking a bit at the use of the words
darling
and
Mordred
is such close proximity. Miss Robertson was the only person in Lily Dale—and possibly in the entire world—who harbored an affection for our cat.

“I must tell you about the amazing reading I had last night with a parakeet who Crossed Over a month ago,” she went on merrily. “The communication was quite clear, which, as I'm sure you know, is rather unusual for parakeets. . . .”

“Uh-huh.” I glanced at the clock. Five minutes to one.

The pungent smell of incense wafted through the room, and my shoulders relaxed.

Prajeet drifted over until he was only inches away from Miss Robertson. “You should perambulate home,” he murmured in her ear. “There is a distressing situation in the making.”

She stopped talking abruptly. “Why, that's strange.”

“What?” I asked. The tourists were interested too; I saw the woman nudge her husband, her attention caught by the strange note in Miss Robertson's voice.

“I'm getting an impression from the Other Side right now,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “It's just a feeling, but a very strong one, that I need to go home for some reason.”

The tourists edged a little closer and tried to look as if they weren't eavesdropping.

“Never ignore a message from Spirit!” I said.

“One of your pets is in trouble,” Prajeet said. She frowned and tilted her head as if she couldn't quite hear. He sighed and tried again. “Pet.” He enunciated as clearly as possible. “
Trouble.
” He watched for a response and, seeing none, yelled, “Snowball! In a tree!”

She jumped. “Oh, no. I think Snowball is up in that elm tree again!”

Prajeet grinned at me and pretended to wipe sweat from his forehead.

Miss Robertson was rattling on. “I don't know
why
she keeps climbing up there. She
knows
she can never get down; you would think she would
learn
—”

“You'd better go!” I said quickly. “She's probably hysterical by now.” Three minutes to one.

The tourists' mouths were hanging open. They exchanged delighted glances. Clearly they were getting their money's worth from their visit to Lily Dale.

“Oh, dear, but I'm on duty!” She glanced wildly around the room. “If something was stolen—”

The tourists sniffed, offended. Two minutes until one.

“I'll keep watch until you come back,” I said hastily. “Take your time.”

“
Would
you? That is so
thoughtful
. I'll be
right
back, thank you
so
much.” She dashed out the door.

Now that the show was over, the tourists left as well. “I hope our astral travel workshop is half as good as that,” I heard the husband say as they walked out the door.

“Nice job,” I said to Prajeet.

“All part of the service,” he said with a courtly bow. “Fortunately it was not difficult to urge Snowball to a very high branch indeed. I think you have forty-five minutes at least. Perhaps an hour.” He looked out the door. “Ah, I see your friend approaching, so I shall leave you now.”

He disappeared just as Jack slouched up the sidewalk, his hands thrust into the pockets of his army jacket. I opened the door.

“Hey,” he said.

I gave him a relieved smile. “Hey, yourself.”

At first Jack just wandered around the room, looking at the various photos and displays. He lifted one eyebrow at the spirit trumpet. Both eyebrows went up as he peered at the slate with a chalked message from Abraham Lincoln. He gave a small snort of laughter at the pastel portraits of Native American spirit guides, most of them wearing full-feathered headdresses. Then he spotted one of the spirit photos on the wall and leaned in to look at it more closely. I braced myself for what he would say.

The spirit photos always made visitors, even the true believers, laugh a little, in a smug twenty-first-century can-you-believe-people-ever-fell-for-
that
kind of way. And they are pretty lame, if you know even the slightest thing about photography.

One photo, an obvious double exposure, shows a woman with her eyes half closed in a trance, a ghostly face floating over her left shoulder. In another photo a man with a handlebar mustache is frowning intensely, his arms outstretched, as he makes a chair float in the air. A third photo shows a flare of light in a bedroom window. Most people would assume this is a reflection of car headlights or the setting sun, but the attached caption claims that, no, it's an actual photograph of an actual ghost. No wonder people giggled and joked when they came to this exhibit.

But, well . . . I mean, I
did
see ghosts, and I knew— only too well—that they were real. So when people laughed, part of me wanted to say, Okay, these photos may be fake, but that doesn't mean that everything here is a hoax. Some of it is really true.

“Gross.” Jack had stopped in front of another photo that showed milky fluid pouring out of a medium's mouth. “It looks like she's throwing up.”

“That's ectoplasm.” He gave me a questioning look. “Some sort of gooey glop. Supposedly it used to come out of the mediums' mouths when they were in a trance. Sometimes it would form into pictures—you know, people's faces or bodies.” Too late, I realized that I sounded a tad too knowledgeable about this subject. “I've, um, read about that before,” I added lamely.

But Jack was staring critically at the photo. “How did people ever fall for this stuff? I mean, it's obviously trick photography! And look at this one!”

He pointed to a photo that showed a man sitting at a small table. A woman cloaked in a white cloth stood behind him, her arms raised in a classic spooky ghost-like gesture. The man looked blankly at the camera, clearly unaware of the spirit lurking just behind his right shoulder. “That's so fake it's not even funny.”

I shrugged. “Those photos are a hundred years old.”

“So?”

#x201C;So, photography was brand-new back then. Even a regular photo probably seemed like magic. Why wouldn't people believe that ghosts could appear on film?”

He pointed to the photo in question. “She's wearing,” he said, “a
tablecloth
.”

I leaned in for a closer look. He had a point.

“Still,” I said.

He tilted his head toward another photo. This one showed a spirit trumpet floating in midair in front of an amazed audience. Unfortunately the camera also recorded the string that was holding up the trumpet. “ ‘Spirit trumpets were used to amplify the voices of the dead,' ” he read from the sign. He gave a small snort. “I guess ventriloquists could make a pretty good living back then.”

“A lot of those mediums were fakes.” I conceded the point.

“A lot of them?” A small smile lifted one corner of his mouth.

“Most of them,” I admitted.

“But?” he began, teasingly.

“I think some of them were probably”—I hesitated over the word; I didn't want to say
real
for fear of Jack's scorn—“sincere.”

He seized on even that mild term with absolute delight. “You don't actually
believe
in this stuff, do you?”

“I don't believe these are really pictures of ghosts,” I said carefully.

He grinned. “Uh-huh. But do you believe that ghosts exist?”

“Well, I—” I stopped, flustered. “Do you?”

He gave a short, incredulous laugh. “Of course not.”

“Because you've never seen one?”

“Because it's a ridiculous concept. Dead is dead.”

“So you don't believe in an afterlife either?”

“Well, I—” Now it was his turn to look flustered. “I don't know,” he admitted. “I don't
think
there's anything else, but even if there is, I don't believe that people can come back for a cozy little chat with their friends and family. I mean, if they could, they'd do it all the time. And they don't. So there you go.”

“Okay,” I said, “but if you
did
see a ghost—”

“I wouldn't.”

“I'm just saying
if
—”

“And
I'm
just saying it would never happen.” He clipped off each word with finality.

I could feel my face flush with anger. I had opened my mouth to argue some more when I smelled incense and Prajeet's voice whispered in my ear, “Breathe, Sparrow. Count. Relax.”

I did, then tried again. “So,
nothing
could convince you?”

He threw his hands in the air at the utter ridiculousness of this question, but he did answer. “I'd have to see the ghost with my own eyes, not just take the word of some crackpot medium,” he said. “And the ghost would have to look
exactly
like the person it was supposed to be. Not just some misty shape. Someone I can recognize.”

I caught a whiff of a sharp, medicinal odor. “Oh, for heaven's sake! Take the boy over to look at that spirit painting on the far wall,” Professor Trimble snapped. “No, the big one in the middle! That's it.” She let out a huff of impatience. “
Then
let's see what he has to say,” she said, and disappeared.