Ghost Island (5 page)

CHAPTER 8

Ms. Gates came in right after Grace had left. With her long, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and her jeans and tee, she could have been our age.

Johnny moved next to me at the table.

“Are you two related?” he asked me. “You could be sisters.”

I had heard that before, from kids who liked me and from those who thought that Ms. Gates, by refusing to treat me like a freak, favored me.

Maybe she did. Maybe she just felt sorry for me because she had also been raised in foster homes. Her dark eyes had the same shape as my b
lu
e ones, and although we were both short and slender, our posture was straight and, to me, at least, proud.

“What were you saying, Johnny?” She sat down beside me at the table with her mug of coffee.

“I was asking
Livia
if you were related to her.”

“Only in spirit.”
She smiled at me.

“Spirit is as good as blood,” I said. “Sometimes, better.” I did love this teacher, and I wondered if she had any idea how much she had saved me from what might have happened to my life without her.

The weather was even worse, so we spent the day at the hotel trying to find out more about the storm and how long it would last. Every cell phone was dead, and so was the one television.

“What about the cruise ship?” Johnny asked. “Isn’t it supposed to arrive today?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know.”

Daniel, wearing the same navy pea coat and watch cap, found us in the late afternoon. He drove a cart up the hill, joined us in the main room, and, after hesitating for a moment, took the cup of coffee Ms. Gates offered him.

Once he was seated at the table, with all of us gathered around him, he said, “I wish I had better news, but I didn’t see your boat at Two Harbors.”

“What does that mean?” Ms. Gates asked.

“Maybe nothing,” he said.
“Lots of small craft there.
Everyone appears to be safe, for now, at least.” His face seemed even more weathered, and I could only imagine how many hours he had been taking his boat out since he had first delivered us to the island.

“Please keep trying,” Ms. Gates told him.

“I probably won’t be going out again.” He folded his long fingers around his coffee cup and looked out into the rain. “I’m so exhausted that I’m seeing things.”

“What kind of things?” I asked, and the others turned their attention to me.

“Go without sleep for three days, and you’ll know what I mean.” He rose from the table, and I could see his weariness in the way he moved, as if he had aged since we had first encountered him.

“I appreciate your keeping in touch,” Ms. Gates said.

“You all stay put inside,” he told her, then stepped back out into the downpour.

After he left, I asked Ms. Gates, “Do you think the others are okay?”

“If they weren’t, I’m sure we would have heard.”

We sat in the kitchen, the room dim, and the sky outside solid gray. Ms. Gates was the one person I could confess anything to, but I couldn’t find the words to tell her about the dreams. I didn’t understand them enough, and I knew she wouldn’t believe me.

“I’m sorry,
Livia
,” she said. “I wanted this trip to be a good experience for you.”

“I know.” The words choked out of me. This might be just a storm and a bunch of freaky dreams, but it was better than what I’d left behind.

“You know that the cruise ship most likely won’t be picking us up. We probably won’t be able to go to Mexico today. Once the storm moves on, though, we’ll be okay. Right now, we just have to find the rest of the kids.”

“Right,” I told her, but nothing was right.

We were all having crazy dreams. The storm was turning into something seriously dangerous. We needed a way out.
A way for the weather to clear, so that we could connect with a cruise ship and continue on to Mexico.
That was what I wanted, wasn’t it? Of course it was. And when we did leave here, I wondered, would the dreams stay behind? Would Aaron?

***

By nine p.m., Grace still hadn’t come to my room. Maybe that was all right. Maybe she was with Charles, but probably not. She was stubborn, and the promise of finding her sister overrode anything I could say. I understood how she felt. If something could lead me to my mother, I would be as reckless as Grace. I wouldn’t care.

I braided my hair, which was the easiest way for me to ignore it when I slept. The wind and rain were out of control. Rain banged against the windows of my room as if trying to break in. I wanted sleep, craved it like a drug. Most of all, I needed to find out what was going on in the theater, and I could tell by how Aaron had acted earlier that he didn’t want me down there.

The scented sheets felt safe. Yes, I needed a way to see the theater without Aaron knowing. Since I had no television in the room, I made up movies in my head.

Aaron and I dancing, his lips ready to kiss me, his warm hand on my back.
My mom and I planting herbs, the sparkle in her b
lu
e eyes.
The weird connection of those two dreams and those two people who now meant the most to me.

How had Aaron made himself matter so much? Why was it impossible for me to think about my mother without thinking about him?

Mom.
Aaron.
Herbs.
Dance.
Warmth.
Everything on this cold, storm-battered night, warm and safe.
Please let me stay safe. Please let me figure out a way to get into the theater the way I did the first night before I had even stepped onto this island.

***

Someone taps lightly on the door of my room. I drift toward the sound.

“Are you all right, Miss?” Peggy stands there in her husband’s rain-spattered jacket and a pair of furry gray mittens.

“I’d like to go to the theater tonight,” I tell her. “Can you take me there?”

“I’m not sure.” She smiles and puts out her hand. “It’s closed, you know.”

A blaze of stars blinds me. I squint through the light and realize that I’ve gone from my bedroom to the ground floor of the casino.

“Here we are, Miss,” Peggy says. “You know it’s shut down for repairs.”

“But we just saw a concert in there.”

She nods. “They closed it after that, I think. It really upset my Norm. I heard the theater won’t be back up and operating for several days, maybe longer. Do you really want to go in there?”

“Abso
lu
tely,” I say.

“All right then. Don’t tell Aaron I let you in. And please don’t tell Norm. He doesn’t want me here while it’s in this condition.”

“I won’t tell anyone.” I look up at her, but before I can ask her to join me, she shakes her head and moves away from the door.

That’s okay. Finally, I am where I want to be. This is only the second time I have seen it like this. Disembodied spirits fill the seats and stroll around the enormous red-and-gold room as if they own it, which perhaps they do.

“What are you doing here?” It is a girl’s voice, and it’s husky as if she hasn’t used it for a very long time. The girl is blond, tall, beautiful, and without one ounce of humor in her expression. Long bangs, although not as long as mine, almost cover her pale brows. Her tunic is short and lemon yellow. Around her neck is a black velvet ribbon with a cameo in front.

Felicia
. I know it in a cold and very certain way, but other than the hair, she looks nothing like the photo on Grace’s cell phone. She is about ninety percent visible. The rest of her is transparent.

“I’m looking for someone,” I tell her. “Is there a Nicole Hinson in this place?”

“Maybe.
The name is familiar. Let me try to find out.”

“Can you do that,” I ask. “Can you really find her?”

“I think I may have heard of a Nicole Hinson. Has she been here a long time?”

“Eight years. Something
like
that.”

“You’ll need to check farther back.” She points at the c
lu
ster of forms and colors closer to the stage. “I’m new, you know.”

I hate looking at her, at the way she is almost here, but not really, her features fading in and out, her unblinking light-brown eyes staring straight into mine.

“What’s your name?” I ask. “You’re Felicia, aren’t you?”

Her high-pitched laugher chills me to the bones. “Caitlin.” She spits it at me. “And who are you? Why are you looking for Nicole?”

“Olivia.” I say. “Nicole Hinson was
—
she
is
my mother.”

“Are you sure?” Her features grow brighter, as if she is struggling to be seen. “Are you here to search for her, or for something else?”

“I’ll do anything to find my mother,” I say. “Can you help me?”

“Not me.
Perhaps someone else in here.”

“Why not you?
Why can’t you help me?”

“I just got what I’ve been waiting for, and I won’t be around here much longer.” She lifts the scarf she’s wearing from her shoulders and pulls it over her hair. Feathery black fringe falls around her face.

I realize whose scarf it is, and I also realize she is taunting me.

“Where did you get that?” My voice is shaking.

So is the room. Tiny quakes vibrate around my feet.

“It’s mine.”

“No, it’s not. You took it from Grace, didn’t you?”

The floor shudders as if someone is hammering on it from below. I fight to keep my balance. The ghost girl doesn’t move.

“Maybe you’d better leave,” she says.

“Good idea.” I rip the scarf from her and run as fast as I can.

Her shouts follow me. The words are garbled, but their meaning is terrifying. I c
lu
tch the scarf in my hands and try to keep my balance as the room shakes even more violently. I run toward the light, then trip and begin to fall through a trapdoor of darkness.

“Aaron,” I scream. “Aaron, help me.”

CHAPTER 9

Bells chimed, and dim sunlight flickered into my room. Finally, I was free of the ghost girl’s curses and her voice. Yes. I was really here, breathing in the scent of rain and listening to the steady downpour.

Getting my bearings took a moment. I was on my back as if I had been dropped there, fully clothed in my jeans and jacket. My arms rested on my chest, wrapped around some kind of wadded-up blanket. I sat up in bed and realized it wasn’t a blanket at all. No, it was the fringed black scarf, still damp from the rain.
Grace’s scarf.

The blond ghost girl—all of those disembodied shapes—they weren’t dreams. That was only the way I connected with them. Although I had seen ghosts since I was a little girl, starting with my Grandma Marie’s, I had never feared them. If anything, being able to see something nobody else saw made me feel special. Now, as I sat on the side of my bed in the sane light of day, I was terrified of the entities in the theater and even more so by what they wanted. They did want something, too, from me, from Grace, maybe from all of us. They were far from passive souls attempting to pass over from this world into whatever lay ahead. I could no longer pretend otherwise. The proof was right there in my hands.

That morning at breakfast, Grace sat at the end of the long, wooden table. She looked worse than she had the day before, distracted and unfriendly, and she didn’t even seem to notice Emily flirting with Charles at the other end.

“Look what I found.” I handed her the scarf.

“Thanks.” Without changing her expression, she took it from me and placed it on her lap.

“Don’t you want to know where I got it?” I asked her.

“I said thanks. What else do you want?”

“She might want to know why you’re being so bitchy, Grace.” Johnny pulled up a chair on the other side of her.

He wore the navy hoodie that had become his uniform. His eyes were too glassy, too dull, and he smelled like a hangover.

“Don’t give her a bad time,” I told him. “She doesn’t need it today.”

“Stop defending me.” Grace c
lu
tched her coffee mug so fiercely I was afraid she was about to throw it at us. “Just leave me alone.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Johnny moved closer to me. “Come on,
Livia
.”

“Grace, please,” I said. “I need to know what’s going on. It’s important.”

“Important to you maybe.
Don’t you get that you’ve ruined everything?” Her eyes brimmed with tears.

“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “What have I ruined?”

“You know.” She took the scarf from her lap, slammed it on the table, and nodded toward Johnny. “Go with him. Get out of here. There’s nothing you can do to fix what you screwed up last night.”

“What
I
screwed up?” Now I was angry. “In case you haven’t figured it out, Grace, what I did was try to save you from whatever is trying to...” I realized Johnny was taking in every word of this and I forced myself to smile at him. “I’m sorry, but, as you can see, she and I really need to work this out.
In private.”

“That’s for sure,” he said. “I’ll leave, all right, but before I do, let me make something clear.” For the first time since he’d played eye-contact games with me in Los Angeles, he ditched the role of the friendly cool guy. “You girls are both a little off, okay? I’m not the only one to notice it, either.”

“How insightful,” I shot back at him. “Who else shares your brilliant observations?”

“Emily, for one.”

I laughed. “Well, maybe you should go hang out with her then.”

“Now there’s an idea.” He took off across the room.

Emily glanced up from her cozy little conversation with Charles and flashed Johnny her version of a sexy smile.

“Enjoy,” I said.

“
Livia
, please.”

Great! I was busted. Ms. Gates stood beside me. When had she slipped into the room? Her thick, dark hair was pulled back in a low ponytail. Even though she still wore cute jeans and was basically dressed like us, for the first time since we had started this trip, she was also wearing her teacher face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“We need to talk.”

What crap timing. I looked back at Grace. “I’m free right now, I guess.”

“Great. Let’s get some coffee and take a walk.”

We filled our mugs then went outside to the rocky hotel grounds. The rain had let up, but the roiling storm kept us from going far, and we stood on a steep drop protected by an overhang. Below us was the best view of the city of Avalon I had seen since we arrived. The tiny buildings below and the homes along the hills with their front yards of ocean would look peaceful if not for the towering palm trees blowing almost sideways in the rain.

Ms. Gates was talking about the Western writer who had built the place as his home. “They used to make movies on these grounds,” she said. “That’s why they still have buffalo here. I hope we have a chance to see some.”

Yeah, like we were really hanging out, barely sheltered from the wind and the rain, in the hopes of spotting buffalo.

Ms. Gates was never this distant and superficial. In my life of people who did not matter, she was one of the few who did. No other teacher would have paid for me to go on this trip. Most of them were far more interested in keeping their distance, as if they were afraid I’d turn into the murderer they believed my dad was. I tried to figure out what I had done to upset her.

“So, do you mind telling me what you really want to talk about?” I asked her.

“You don’t beat around the bush, do you,
Livia
?”

“A very excellent English teacher of mine says honesty is the only way to go.” I looked at her. “Not sure how that teacher would feel about your beat-around-the-bush cliché, though. She’s into originality.”

“Is she now?” Ms. Gates replied. “I hear she’s also into fair play.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I know what it’s like to get dealt an unfair hand in life. It doesn’t have to define you and the way you deal with others.”

I fought tears and glanced away from her for a moment, down at Avalon.

“That cool teacher of mine,” I said, “she probably wouldn’t approve of that dealt-an-unfair-hand cliché either.”

“Enough of this.”
Although she was not much taller than I, her stern voice made her seem larger than she was. “I wanted to do something good for you,
Livia
. I wanted to get you out of school and that foster home, away from what you have to deal with every day.”

“And I’m grateful,” I said. “It’s not your fault that we got on the wrong boat at the wrong time.”

“We’re all trying to make the best of it.” The wind tossed her hair, and I realized she must be as cold as I was.

“I’m trying too,” I said, “in spite of how that looks to you or anyone else.”

She zipped her jacket without taking her eyes from mine. “I understand how you feel, why you think you need to be tough. As I told you, I was raised in foster homes, and I know what you’re dealing with.”

“In part,” I said, “but I’ll bet
your
dad isn’t in prison for murdering your mom. The people in school—your own brother—don’t call
you
names because you think your dad is innocent.”

“The tragedy in your life doesn’t give you a license for cruelty. I might have expected it of Grace, but not you.”

A blast of wind hit. The city below us looked vulnerable, and so did this hotel. I reminded myself how many decades that both the city and the hotel had dealt with storms as
bad or
worse than this one.

“You’ve known me for two years,” I said. “Tell me you think I’m cruel.”

“Being cruel isn’t the same as acting cruelly.”

I searched my mind. Who would say that about me? Then I remembered.

“You’re talking about Emily, aren’t you?” I asked her.

“I know how easy it is to gravitate to the one in power, the beautiful one, the one with money.” She reached out and squeezed my arm. “But it won’t work for you in the long run, and hurting shy girls like Emily to show off for a new friend will only make you lonelier.”

I started to say I wasn’t lonely, but then I remembered who I was talking to. “I didn’t say much to Emily.”

“I know that. But Grace did, and you backed her up.”

“Hey, Emily started that war, and she’s not all that shy. What do you know about her anyway?”

“That’s not the issue here. It’s the way you acted.” She let go of my arm. “Sure, Emily comes from what you would consider a privileged home. But it’s her first trip away too. She’s come all the way from Arizona, and she’s as scared as you are.”

“I’m not scared,” I said.

“If you say so.”
She jutted out her chin, as if she were one street kid talking to another. The teacher face was gone. “Don’t be mean to her just to impress Grace.”

“That’s not what’s going on here.” I wished I could just leave it at that, but she believed in me, and I had to at least try. “You’re the only person I can trust, the only one who might know what to do.”

“What to do about what?”

“About what’s going
on.
Have you had any strange dreams since we’ve been here?”

“No, I haven’t.” She looked away from me, out toward the dark cloud coming straight toward us. “We should go find the others now, be sure no one is out in this.”

“Will you listen to me?” I said. “I’ve been having very strange dreams, Ms. Gates. So have Grace and Emily.”

“Strange like how?”

“Ghosts.”

“Oh,
Livia
.”

“You wanted the truth,” I said. “That’s it. Emily mentioned that she dreamed about her dead grandparents. Grace sees her sister. She ran away from home when Grace was seven. Except I don’t think it’s really her sister.” I thought of the transparent blond ghost and trembled.

“And you?”

“I keep seeing this guy.” I felt my cheeks f
lu
sh. “He works in the casino part-time and studies upstairs in the library room.”

“Sounds as if you got the better part of the bargain.”
She eyed the clouds again, and I knew she was thinking we needed to stop talking and get out of there. “We can discuss this later, if you like. In the meantime, please don’t let Grace inf
lu
ence you. Just try to make the most of the situation, and don’t tell her more about yourself than you’re comfortable with.”

“I didn’t go on this cruise looking for life-long friends,” I snapped a little too defensively, “Besides, I already told her about the foster home.”

“But not...”

“Not about my dad,” I said.

“It’s no one’s business,” she said. “On this trip, you can be anyone you want to be. You can have fun again.”

“Except I’ve never had dreams like the ones I’m having now. Are you sure you haven’t had any?”

“Not a one.” She shook her head. “I’ve dealt with insomnia all my
life,
and I can’t remember sleeping better than I have here.”

“Insomnia?”
I asked, and the hair rose along my arms. “My mom had it too. She had to take pills to sleep. Is that what you—
”

“Aren’t you getting a little personal,
Livia
?”

“The first day I walked into your class, you told me you were raised in foster homes,” I said. “That’s personal. All I asked is if you take something to sleep.”

“Okay, yes, I do. I have for almost fifteen years.” Her expression stayed solemn, but I could see the tiniest dimple in her cheek. “And just for the record, you need to polish your people skills.”

“This cool teacher of mine—” I began.

“Stop it.” She put her arm around my shoulders. “I hear you about the clichés, hon. I only hope you hear me about how to treat people.”

“And I only hope you heard what I said about the dreams.” I shook off her arm.
“And the ghosts.”