A girl with big hazel eyes, mousy brown hair, freckles, and the same prep school uniform that hung on Wendy’s closet was on the screen. “You’re sick?” she asked.
“I was, but I’m way better now. I slammed NyQuil and slept all day.”
“I was going to bring you some goodies, like those chewy red cough drops and ice cream. Still want?”
“Thanks, but that’s okay, Torrey. Gavin’s got the sick-girl food covered when he gets here tonight.”
“Got it. He didn’t work from home?”
“No, and I thought he’d be able to swing it.” Wendy huffed out a sigh, her gaze straying from the computer. For a second, her shoulders lifted, like a little of my coldness had traveled down from the wall to the back of her neck. But then she returned her focus to the screen. “He promised he’d try to be home more…”
“Wen, you and your abandonment issues, I swear. He’s not your dad, you know.”
Note to Jensen: Do a computer search on Daddy-O. Amanda Lee had said he was still alive and that he was constantly on trips away from home, but that’s all I really knew about him.
“Don’t tell me—I’ve got issues,” Wendy said, sinking into the couch.
“You’re such a nerd.” Torrey laughed, taking off a headband while she talked into the lens. In the background, I could see a bedroom, pink and frilly. “You’ve always said that your family’s nutty and thank God you were only adopted into it. Why you keep getting depressed when one of them is gone is beyond me.”
“You like Gavin as much as I do.”
“Because he’s hot.”
Oh, little girl, I thought. Look deeper than that.
Wendy was gagging at her friend’s comment.
“Anyway,” Torrey continued, “when we graduate, you can get out of that house, room with me, and Gavin can visit all you want. That way, you won’t have to ever see Farah or Noah or deal with your cuckoo family dynamics ever again.”
My ghost ears perked.
“Nobody’s cuckoo here,” Wendy said.
Except for maybe your brother.
Wendy added, “It’s just that I feel like they’re one family and I’m another. Except for Gavin. I’m not sure I know Dad well enough to include him.”
A touch of energy seemed to spin out of me, extending toward Wendy.
Lonely. A kindred soul. She wasn’t as glamorous as her older sister or as cool as Gavin or as seemingly party-popular as Noah.
They were one set of Edgetts; she was another. What a way to live.
A voice off-camera on Torrey’s side made her look away from Wendy. Then she turned back to her.
“The tutor’s here,” she said. “See you tomorrow?”
“I suppose.”
They signed off, but Wendy just sat there on the couch, like she didn’t know where to go now.
So it seemed that Wendy did have a few adolescent issues to work with, poltergeist-wise. Bottled anger at Gavin for not being around when he’d promised to be. Anger at Farah and Noah for not accepting her. Anger at the dad, wherever he was.
I felt so bad for Wendy that I even started to think dumb things—ways to show her that I was already sorry for the haunting that’d be taking place.
Empathy. Hallucinations.
I’d been so fixated on haunting Gavin this whole time that I hadn’t extended my thoughts beyond that. But with these powers Sailor Randy had told me about, couldn’t I do more than just scare someone?
Rashly, I floated away from the wall and touched Wendy on the cheek.
It’s okay, I thought.
A tiny lightning flash struck me, and it must’ve done the same to her, because she flinched. But she didn’t pull away.
And in that fleeting second, I got a peek into Wendy Edgett’s mind.
Looking up at the grand staircase of this house, a feeling of absolute anxiety splitting down the middle as a beautiful woman with long blond hair and clear blue eyes bent down, smiling, saying, “Welcome to your new home, Wendy.”
Then a grave marker shaped as a marble angel.
Then yelling from a room down the hallway, a girl’s voice…
Gavin yelling, too…
Then Wendy’s gaze looking around her new room with its new furniture. This room. A new place that made her feel safe…
By the time the last image faded away, I realized that Wendy had sensed that something was wrong around her now, and her thoughts had turned to questions.
What’s going on?
Why is it so cold?
I scrambled to distract her, and out of sheer panic, I did something really stupid.
You know how there’re some babysitters who give a crying kid booze from Ma and Pa’s liquor cabinet just to quiet him down?
Without thinking, I did the ghost equivalent of that, pressing more of my essence against Wendy’s cheek, intensifying the contact. It was almost like I was reaching past her skin and into her face, putting my energy into something that would mellow her out for now.
I started to think of something relaxing to get her mind off my presence.
Hallucinations, right? The beach. That would do it.
I wasn’t so sure what happened next.
I started to sink into her, tumbling, going past the act of just giving her a few light images to enjoy. Somehow I became a part of Wendy, feeling her experiences and her thoughts, as the room itself filled with…
Waves, washing up to our feet, lapping at them before the water retreats. A blue sky and warm sun take the place of the bedroom ceiling, sand covering the floor.
As the roar of the ocean calls out, we smell salt, feel its heaviness on our skin. Our heart thuds even as everything around us makes us think of summer vacation.
Waves pounding, hissing away from the shore until another comes to take its place… God, we miss summer. It’d meant we didn’t have to go to school, with all those assholes calling us a bore and an arty farty.
A seagull flies overhead, skimming the ceiling.
We bend down, digging our hand into the sand, coming up with a fistful and letting it sift away, blown by a coastal wind… .
When I strained out of Wendy’s conscious with a jarring pop, the room was back to normal—comic book art, school uniform hanging on the closet, girl sitting on the couch with an open mouth and wide, unfocused eyes. She was shivering, like my touch had caused a freeze in her.
Around me, there was no more beach. I definitely wasn’t in Wendy’s head anymore as I hovered nearby, my essence rushing back together as I became me again.
That had been more than weird. I’d known that I wanted to show her the beach, but I hadn’t been thinking about the images, just experiencing them as they came. And I hadn’t taken over Wendy’s body so much as…
What? Had I mind-melded with her? Become a part of what was going on inside her head even as those beach images played out in front of her in this very room? Because that’s what hallucinations are, right? Mirages?
It sure hadn’t been like using empathy, where I was fully in control while I watched what was going on in her head. With hallucinations, only a small part of me had been aware that I still existed while I’d been in her head. I had been implanted in there, experiencing the water, sand, and sun as they appeared in this room.
That’s right. I had experienced everything, right along with Wendy… .
She rubbed her arms, blinked her eyes, like she was only now recovering from what I’d created for her. She’d thought it was real. Her breathing was even beach-day smooth and peaceful until it starting speeding up as reality hit her.