Reunion (3 page)

“Ah,” Father Dominic said. “The RLS Angels.”

I didn’t even glance at him. I was slumped in one of the chairs he keeps in front of his desk, playing with a GameBoy one of the teachers had confiscated from a student, and which had eventually found its way into the bottom drawer of the principal’s desk. I was going to keep Father Dom’s bottom desk drawer in mind when Christmas rolled around. I had a good idea where Sleepy and Dopey’s presents were going to come from.

“Angels?” I grunted, and not just because I was losing badly at Tetris. “There wasn’t anything too angelic about them, if you ask me.”

“They were very attractive young people, from what I understand.” Father Dom started shifting around the piles of paper he had all over his desk. “Class leaders. Very bright young things. I believe it was their principal who dubbed them the RLS Angels in his statement to the press concerning the tragedy.”

“Huh.” I tried to angle an oddly shaped object into the small space allotted for it. “Angels who were trying to lift a twelve-pack of Bud.”

“Here.” Father Dom found a copy of the paper I’d looked at the day before, only he, unlike me, had taken the trouble to open it. He turned to the obituaries where there were photos of the deceased. “Take a look and see if they are the young people you saw.”

I passed him the GameBoy. “Finish this game for me,” I said, taking the paper from him.

Father Dominic looked down at the GameBoy in dismay. “Oh, my,” he said. “I’m afraid I don’t —”

“Just rotate the shapes to make them fit in the spaces at the bottom. The more rows you complete, the better.”

“Oh,” Father Dominic said. The GameBoy binged and bonged as he frantically pushed buttons. “Oh, dear. Anything more complicated than computer solitaire, and I’m afraid —”

His voice trailed off as he became absorbed in the game. Even though I was supposed to be reading the paper, I looked at him instead.

He’s a sweet old guy, Father Dominic. He’s usually mad at me, of course, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like him. I was, in fact, growing surprisingly attached to him. I’d found that I couldn’t wait, for instance, to come rushing in and tell him all about those kids I’d seen at the Quick Mart. I guess that’s because, after sixteen years of not being able to tell anybody about my “special” ability, I finally had someone to unload on, Father Dom having that same “special” ability — something I’d discovered my first day at the Junipero Serra Mission Academy.

Father Dominic, however, is a way better mediator than I am. Well, maybe not better. But different, certainly. See, he really feels that ghosts are best handled with gentle guidance and earnest advice — same as the living. I’m more in favor of a sort of get - to - the - point approach that tends to involve my fists.

Well, sometimes these dead folks just won’t
listen.

Not all of them, of course. Some of them are extremely good listeners. Like the one who lives in my bedroom, for instance.

But lately, I’ve been doing my best not to think about him any more than I have to.

I turned my attention to the paper Father Dom had passed me. Yep, there they were, the RLS Angels. The same kids I’d seen the day before in Jimmy’s, only in their school photos they weren’t dressed in their formal wear.

Father Dom was right. They were attractive. And bright. And leaders. Felicia, the youngest, had been head of the varsity cheerleading team. Mark Pulsford had been captain of the football team. Josh Saunders had been senior class president. Carrie Whitman had been last season’s homecoming queen — not exactly a leadership position, but one that was elected democratically enough. Four bright, attractive kids, all dead as doornails.

And up, I happened to know, to no good.

The obituaries were sad and all, but I hadn’t known these people. They attended Robert Louis Stevenson School, our school’s bitterest rival. The Junipero Serra Mission Academy, which my stepbrothers and I attend, and of which Father Dom is principal, is always getting its academic and athletic butt kicked by RLS. And while I don’t possess much school spirit, I’ve always had a thing for underdogs — which the Mission Academy, in comparison with RLS, clearly is.

So I wasn’t about to get all choked up about the loss of a few RLS students. Especially not knowing what I knew.

Not that I knew so much. In fact, I didn’t really know anything at all. But the night before, after coming home from “ ’za” with Sleepy and Dopey, Gina had succumbed to jet lag — we’re three hours behind New York, so around nine o’clock, she more or less passed out on the daybed my mother had purchased for her to sleep on in my room during her stay.

I didn’t exactly mind. The sun had pretty much wiped me out, so I was perfectly content to sit on my own bed, across the room from hers, and do the geometry homework I’d assured my mother I’d finished well before Gina’s arrival.

It was around this time that Jesse suddenly materialized next to my bed.

“Shhh,” I said to him when he started to speak, and pointed toward Gina. I’d explained to him, well in advance of her arrival, that Gina was coming all the way from New York to stay for a week, and that I’d appreciate it if he laid low during her visit.

It’s not exactly a joke, having to share your room with a previous tenant — the
ghost
of a previous tenant, I should say, since Jesse has been dead for a century and a half or so.

On the one hand, I can totally see Jesse’s side of it. It isn’t his fault someone murdered him — at least, that’s how I suspect he died. He — understandably, I guess — isn’t too anxious to talk about it.

And I guess it also isn’t his fault that, after death, instead of going off to heaven, or hell, or on to another life, or wherever it is people go after they die, he ended up sticking around in the room in which he was killed. Because in spite of what you might think, most people do not end up as ghosts. God forbid. If that were true, my social life would be so over…not that it’s so great to begin with. The only people who end up being ghosts are the ones who’ve left behind some kind of unfinished business.

I have no idea what business it is that Jesse left unfinished — and the truth is, I’m not so sure he knows, either. But it doesn’t seem fair that if I’m destined to share my bedroom with the ghost of a dead guy, the dead guy has to be so cute.

I mean it. Jesse is way too good-looking for my peace of mind. I may be a mediator, but I’m still human, for crying out loud.

But anyway, there he was, after I’d told him very politely not to come around for a while, looking all manly and hot and everything in the nineteenth-century outlaw outfit he always wears. You know the kind: with those tight black pants and the white shirt open down to
there.
…

“When is she leaving?” Jesse wanted to know, bringing my attention away from the place where his shirt opened, revealing an extremely muscular set of abs, up to his face — which, I probably don’t have to point out, is totally perfect, except for this small white scar in one of his dark eyebrows.

He didn’t bother whispering. Gina couldn’t hear him.

“I told you,” I said. I, on the other hand, had to whisper since there was every likelihood I might be overheard. “Next Sunday.”

“That long?”

Jesse looked irritated. I would like to say that he looked irritated because he considered every moment I spent with Gina a moment stolen from him, and deeply resented her because of that.

But to be honest, I highly doubt that that was the case. I’m pretty sure Jesse likes me, and everything….

But only as a friend. Not in any special kind of way. Why should he? He’s 150 years old — 170 if you count the fact that he’d been twenty or so when he died. What could a guy who’d lived through 170 years of stuff possibly see in a sixteen-year-old high school sophomore who’s never had a boyfriend and can’t even pass her driving exam?

Not a whole heck of a lot.

Let’s face it, I knew perfectly well why Jesse wanted Gina gone.

Because of Spike.

Spike is our cat. I say “our” cat, because even though ordinarily animals can’t stand ghosts, Spike has developed this strange affinity for Jesse. His affection for Jesse balances out, in a way, his total lack of regard for me, even though I’m the one who feeds him, and cleans out his litter box and, oh, yes, rescued him from a life of squalor on the mean streets of Carmel.

Does the stupid thing show me one iota of gratitude? No way. But Jesse, he adores. In fact, Spike spends most of his time outdoors, and only bothers coming around whenever he senses Jesse might have materialized.

Like now, for instance. I heard a familiar thump on the porch roof — Spike landing there from the pine tree he always climbs to reach it — and then the big orange nightmare was scrambling through the window I’d left open for him, mewing piteously, like he hadn’t been fed in ages.

When Jesse saw Spike, he went over to him and started scratching him under the ears, causing the cat to purr so loudly I thought he might wake Gina up.

“Look,” I said. “It’s just for a week. Spike will survive.”

Jesse looked up at me with an expression that seemed to suggest that he thought I’d slipped down a few notches on the IQ scale.

“It’s not Spike I’m worried about,” he said.

This only served to confuse me. I knew it couldn’t be
me
Jesse was worrying about. I mean, I guess I’d gotten into a few scrapes since I’d met him — scrapes that, more often than not, Jesse’d had to bail me out of. But nothing was going on just then. Well, aside from the four dead kids I’d seen that afternoon in Jimmy’s.

“Yeah?” I watched as Spike threw his head back in obvious ecstasy as Jesse scratched him underneath the chin. “What is it, then? Gina’s very cool, you know. Even if she found out about you, I doubt she’d run screaming from the room or anything. She’d probably just want to borrow your shirt sometime, or something.”

Jesse glanced over at my houseguest. All you could really see of Gina was a couple of lumps beneath the comforter, and a lot of bright copper curls spread out across the pillows beneath her head.

“I’m certain that she’s very…cool,” Jesse said, a little hesitantly. Sometimes my twenty-first-century vernacular throws him. But that’s okay. His frequent employment of Spanish, of which I don’t speak a word, throws me. “It’s just that something’s happened —”

This perked me right up. He looked pretty serious about it, too. Like maybe what had happened was that he’d finally realized that I was the perfect woman for him, and that all this time he’d been fighting an overwhelming attraction for me, and that he’d finally had to give up the fight in the light of my incredible irresistibility.

But then he had to go and say, “I’ve been hearing some things.”

I sank back against my pillows, disappointed.

“Oh,” I said. “So you’ve sensed a disturbance in the Force, have you, Luke?”

Jesse knit his eyebrows in bewilderment. He had no idea, of course, what I was talking about. My rare flashes of wit are, for the most part, sadly wasted on him. It’s really no wonder he isn’t even the tiniest bit in love with me.

I sighed and said, “So you heard something on the ghost grapevine. What?”

Jesse often picked up on things that were happening on what I like to call the spectral plane, things that often don’t have anything to do with him, but which usually end up involving me, most often in a highly life-threatening — or at least horribly messy — way. The last time he’d “heard some things,” I’d ended up nearly being killed by a psychotic real-estate developer.

So I guess you can see why my heart doesn’t exactly go pitter-pat whenever Jesse mentions he’s heard something.

“There are some newcomers,” he said, as he continued to pet Spike. “Young ones.”

I raised my eyebrows, remembering the kids in the prom wear at Jimmy’s. “Yes?”

“They’re looking for something,” Jesse said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know. Beer.”

Jesse shook his head. He had a sort of distant expression on his face, and he wasn’t looking at me, but sort of past me, as if there were something very far away just beyond my right shoulder.

“No,” he said. “Not beer. They’re looking for someone. And they’re angry.” His dark eyes came sharply into focus and bored into my face. “They’re very angry, Susannah.”

His gaze was so intense, I had to drop my own. Jesse’s eyes are such a deep brown, a lot of the time I can’t tell where his pupils end and irises begin. It’s a little unnerving. Almost as unnerving as the way he always calls me by my full name, Susannah. No one except Father Dominic ever calls me that.

“Angry?” I looked down at my geometry book. The kids I saw hadn’t looked a bit angry. Scared, maybe, after they’d realized I could see them. But not angry.
He must,
I thought,
have been talking about someone else
.

“Well,” I said. “Okay. I’ll keep my eyes open. Thanks.”

Jesse looked like he’d wanted to say more, but all of a sudden, Gina rolled over, lifted up her head, and squinted in my direction.

“Suze?” she said sleepily. “Who you talking to?”

I said, “Nobody.” I hoped she couldn’t read the guilt in my expression. I hate lying to her. She is, after all, my best friend. “Why?”

Gina hoisted herself up onto her elbows and gaped at Spike. “So that’s the famous Spike I’ve been hearing so much about from your brothers? Damn, he is ugly.”

Jesse, who’d stayed where he was, looked defensive. Spike was his baby, and you just don’t go around calling Jesse’s baby ugly.

“He’s not so bad,” I said, hoping Gina would get the message and shut up.

“Are you on crack?” Gina wanted to know. “Simon, the thing’s only got one ear.”

Suddenly, the large, gilt-framed mirror above the dressing table started to shake. It had a tendency to do this whenever Jesse got annoyed — really annoyed.

Gina, not knowing this, stared at the mirror with growing excitement. “Hey!” she cried. “All right! Another one!”

She meant an earthquake, of course, but this, like the one before, was no earthquake. It was just Jesse letting off steam.