I found Jack huddled on a deck chair, sobbing into his towel. Fortunately, it was still early enough that there weren't many people at the pool yet. Otherwise, I might have had some explaining to do.
But the only other person there was Sleepy, high up in his lifeguard chair. And it was pretty clear from the way Sleepy was resting his cheek in one hand that his shutters, behind the lenses of his Ray Bans, were closed.
"Jack," I said, sinking down onto the neighboring deck chair. "Jack, what's the matter?"
"I ... I't-told you already," Jack sobbed into his fluffy white towel. "Suze . . . I'm not like other people. I'm like what you said. A ... a ... freak."
I didn't know what he was talking about. I assumed he was merely continuing our conversation from the room.
"Jack," I said. "You're no more a freak than anybody else."
"No," he sobbed. "I am. Don't you get it?" Then he lifted his head, looked me straight in the eye, and hissed, "Suze, don't you know why I don't like to go outside?"
I shook my head. I didn't get it. Even then, I still didn't get it.
"Because when I go outside," Jack whispered, "I see dead people."
CHAPTER 2
I swear that's what he said.
He said it just like the kid in that movie said it, too, with the same tears in his eyes, the same fear in his voice.
And I had much the same reaction as I had when watching the movie. I went, inwardly, Freaking crybaby.
Outwardly, however, I said only, "So?"
I didn't mean to sound callous. Really. I was just so surprised. I mean, in all my sixteen years, I've only met one other person with the same ability I have - the ability to see and speak with the dead - and that person is a sixty-something-year-old priest who also happens to be principal of the school I am currently attending. I certainly never expected to meet up with a fellow mediator at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort.
But Jack took offense at my "So?" anyway.
"So?" Jack sat up. He was a skinny little kid, with a caved-in sort of chest, and curly brown hair like his brother's. Only Jack lacked his brother's nicely buff shape, so the curly hair, which looked sublime on Paul, gave Jack the unfortunate appearance of a walking Q-tip.
I don't know. Maybe that's why Rick and Nancy don't want to hang around him. Jack's a little creepy looking, and apparently has frequent dialogues with the dead. God knows it never made me Miss Popularity.
The talking to the dead thing, I mean. I am not creepy looking. In fact, when I am not wearing my uniform shorts, I am frequently complimented on my appearance by the occasional construction worker.
"Didn't you hear what I said?" Jack was depressed, you could tell. I was probably the first person he'd ever told about his unique problem who'd been completely unimpressed.
Poor kid. He had no idea who he was dealing with.
"I see dead people," he said, rubbing his eyes with his fists. "They come up, and start talking to me. And they're dead."
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.
"Jack," I said.
"You don't believe me." His chin started trembling. "No one believes me. But it's true!"
Jack buried his face in his towel again. I glanced in Sleepy's direction. Still no sign that he was aware of either of us, much less that he found Jack's behavior at all odd. The kid was murmuring about all the people who hadn't believed him over the years, a list which seemed to include not only his parents, but a whole stream of medical specialists Rick and Nancy had dragged him to, hoping to cure their youngest child of this delusion he has - that he can speak to the dead.
Poor little guy. He hadn't realized, as I had from a very early age, that what he and I can do ... well, you just don't talk about.
I sighed. Really, it would have been too much to ask, apparently, for me to have a normal summer. I mean, a summer without any paranormal incidents.
But then, I'd never had one of those before in my life. Why should my sixteenth summer be any different?
I reached out and laid a hand on one of Jack's thin, quivering shoulders.
"Jack," I said. "You saw that gardener just now, didn't you? The one with the hedge clippers?"
Jack lifted an astonished, tear-stained face from the terry cloth. He stared up at me in wonder.
"You ... you saw him, too?"
"Yeah," I said. "That was Jorge. He used to work here. He died a couple days ago of a heart attack."
"But how could you - " Jack shook his head slowly back and forth. "I mean, he's . . . he's a ghost."
"Well, yeah," I said. "He probably has something he needs us to do for him. He kicked off kind of suddenly, and there may be stuff, you know, he left unfinished. He came up to us because he wants our help."
"That's ... " Jack stared at me. "That's why they come up to me? Because they want help?"
"Well, yeah," I said. "What else would they want?"
"I don't know." Jack's lower lip started to tremble again. "To kill me."
I couldn't help smiling a little at that one. "No, Jack," I said. "That's not why ghosts come up to you. Not because they want to kill you." Not yet, anyway. The kid was too young to have made the kind of homicidal enemies I had. "They come up to you because you're a mediator, like me."
Tears trembled on the edges of Jack's long eyelashes as he gazed up at me. "A ... a what?"
Oh, for God's sake, I thought. Why me? I mean, really. Like my life's not complicated enough. Now I have to play Obi Wan Kenobi to this kid's Anakin Skywalker? It so isn't fair. When was I ever going to get the chance to be a normal teenage girl, to do the things normal teenage girls like to do, like go to parties and hang out at the beach, and, um, what else?
Oh, yeah, date. A date, with the boy I actually like, would be nice.
But do I get dates? Oh, no. What do I get instead?
Ghosts. Mainly ghosts looking for help cleaning up the messes they made when they were alive, but sometimes ghosts whose sole amusement appears to be making even bigger messes in the lives of the people they left behind. And this frequently includes mine.
I ask you, do I have a big sign on my forehead that says Maid Service? Why am I always the one who has to tidy up other people's messes?
Because I had the misfortune to be born a mediator.
I must say, I think I'm way better suited for the job than poor Jack. I mean, I saw my first ghost when I was two years old, and I can assure you, my initial reaction was not fear. Not that, at the age of two, I'd been able to help the poor suffering soul who approached me. But I hadn't shrieked and run away in terror, either.
It wasn't until later, after my dad - who passed away when I was six - came back and explained it that I began to fully understand what I was, and why I could see the dead, but others - like my mom, for instance - could not.
One thing I did know, though, from a very tender age: mentioning to anyone that I could see folks they couldn't? Yeah, not such a hot idea. Not if I didn't want to end up on the ninth floor of Bellevue, which is where they stick all the whackos in New York City.
Only Jack didn't seem to have quite the same instinctive sense of self-preservation I'd apparently been born with. He'd been opening up his trap about the whole ghost thing to anyone who would listen, with the inevitable result that his poor parents didn't want to have anything to do with him. I'd be willing to bet that kids his own age, figuring he was lying to get attention, felt the same way. In a sense, the little guy had brought all his current misfortunes down upon himself.
On the other hand, if you ask me, whoever is up there handing out the mediator badges needs to make a better effort to see that the folks who get awarded the job are mentally up to the challenge. I complain a lot about it, because it has put a significant cramp in my social life, but there is nothing about this whole mediator thing I do not feel perfectly capable of handling....