"Don't you clean your ears, girl? Or is that a part of your diet as well?"
"My name's Brenda."
"How long are you planning to stay, Brenda?"
"I... I don't know."
"Well, the rate's a dollar a day. You can give me a week in advance and I'll refund what you've got coming back to you if you don't stay that long."
This was insane, I thought, but under her steady gaze I found myself digging the seven dollars out of my meager resources and handing it over to her.
"You need a receipt?"
I shook my head slowly.
"Well, have yourself a nice time," she said, standing up. "Plumbing's out, so you'll have to use the outhouse at the back of the field."
I hadn't got around to thinking much about that aspect of the lack of bathroom facilities yet. When I'd had to pee earlier, I'd just done it around the corner near some lilac bushes that had overgrown the south side of the motel.
"Wait," I said. "What about the well?"
She paused at the door. "I'd tell you to stay away from it, but you wouldn't listen to me anyway, would you? So just don't make a wish."
"Why not?"
She gave me a tired look, then opened the door and stepped out into the night.
"Listen to your elders, girl," she said.
"My name's Brenda."
"Whatever."
She closed the door before I could say anything else. By the time I had reached it and flung it open again, there was no one to be seen. I started out across the parking lot's pavement until I saw headlights approaching on the highway and quickly ducked back into my room and shut the door. Once the car had passed, I slipped out again, this time shutting the door behind me.
I walked all around the motel, but I could, find no sign of the woman. I wasn't really expecting to. I hadn't found any recent sign of anyone when I'd explored the motel earlier in the day, either.
That's when I started thinking about ghosts.
So tonight I'm waiting to see if Ellie's going to show up again. I want to ask her more about the well. Funny thing is, I'm not scared at all. Ellie may be a ghost; but she's not frightening. Just a little cranky.
I wonder how and when she died. I don't have to guess where. I've read enough ghost stones to be able to figure out that much.
I also wonder if the only reason I saw her last night is because I'm so light-headed from my diet. I'd hate to find out that I've suddenly turned into one of those people that Jilly calls "sensitives." I've got enough problems in my life as it is without having to see ghosts every which way I turn when I'm awake as well as when I'm asleep.
Besides, if I'm going to meet a ghost, I wouldn't pick one from the wishing well. I'd call up my dad— just to talk to him. I know I can't bring him back to life or anything, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to know why he quit loving my mom and me.
18
Brenda's apartment was the second story of a three-floor brick house with an attached garage in Crowsea. It stood on a quiet avenue just off Waterhouse, a functional old building, unlike its renovated neighbors. The porch was cluttered with the belongings of Brenda's downstairs neighbor, who appeared to use it as a sitting room-cum-closet. At the moment it held a pair of mismatched chairs— one wooden, one wicker and well past its prime— several plastic milk crates that appeared to serve as tables or makeshift stools, three pairs of shoes and one Wellington boot, empty coffee mugs, books, magazines and any number of less recognizable items.
Jilly and Wendy picked their way to the front door and into the foyer which was, if anything, even more messy than the porch. The clutter, Jilly knew, would drive Brenda crazy, she who was so tidy herself. At the second landing, Wendy pressed Brenda's doorbell. When there was no answer after Wendy had rung the bell for the fifth time, she fished her key ring out of her pocket and unlocked the door. Jilly put her hand on Wendy's arm, holding her back.
"I don't think we should be doing this," she said.
"It's not like we're breaking in," Wendy said. "Brenda gave me a spare key herself."
"But it doesn't seem right."
"Well, I'm worried," Wendy told her. "For all we know she fell in the shower and she's been lying there unconscious for days."
"For all we know she's in bed with Jim and doesn't want to be disturbed."
"We wish," Wendy said as she went in ahead.
Jilly followed, reluctantly.
It was, of course, as tidy inside Brenda's apartment as it was messy on the porch. Everything was in its place. Magazines were neatly stacked in a squared-off pile on a table beside Brenda's reading chair. The coasters were all in their holder. There wasn't one shoe or sock off adventuring by itself on the carpet.
Her desk was polished until the wood gleamed, and the computer sitting dead center looked as though it had just come out of the showroom. If it weren't for the corkboard above the desk, bristling with the snarl of papers, pictures and the like pinned to it, Jilly might have thought that Brenda never used her desk at all.
"Brenda?" Wendy called.
Jilly's sympathies lay with the downstairs neighbor. Tidiness wasn't exactly her own strong point.
As Wendy went down the hall toward the kitchen, still calling Brenda's name, Jilly wandered over to the desk and looked at what the corkboard held. It was the only area that made her feel comfortable. Everything thing else in the room was just too perfect. It was as though no one lived here at all.
Old newspaper clippings vied for space with photographs of Brenda's friends, shopping lists, an invitation for an opening to one of Jilly's shows that Brenda hadn't been able to make, a letter that Jilly dutifully didn't read, although she wanted to. She liked the handwriting.
"This place gives me the creeps," she said as Wendy returned to the living room. "I feel like a burglar."
Wendy nodded. "But it's not just that."
Jilly thought about it for a moment. Being in somebody else's apartment when they weren't always gave one a certain empty feeling, but Wendy was right. This was different. The place felt abandoned.
"Maybe she really has gone out of town," Jilly said.
"Well, her toothbrush is gone, but her make up bag is still here, so she can't have gone far."
"We should go," Jilly said.
"Just let me leave a note."
Jilly wandered over to the window to look out at the street below while Wendy foraged for paper and a pen in the desk. Jilly paused when she looked at Brenda's plants. They were all drooping. The leaves of one in particular, which grew up along the side of the window, had wilted. Jilly couldn't remember what it was called but Geordie had once given her a plant just like it, so she knew it needed to be watered religiously, at least every day. This one looked exactly like hers had if she went away for the weekend and forgot to water it.
"This isn't like Brenda," Jilly said, pointing to the plants. "The Brenda I know would have gotten someone to look after her plants before she left."
Wendy nodded. "But she never called me."
"Her phone's been disconnected, remember?"
Jilly and Wendy exchanged worried glances.
"I'm getting a really bad feeling about this," Wendy said.
Jilly hugged herself, suddenly chilled. "Me, too. I think we should go by her office."
***
"She didn't tell you?" Greg said.
Both Jilly and Wendy shook their heads. Jilly leaned closer to his desk, expectantly.
"I don't know if I should be the one," he said.
"Oh, come on," Jilly said. "You owe me. Who got you backstage at the Mellencamp show last year when you couldn't get a pass?"
"We could've been arrested for the way you got us in!"
Jilly gave him a sweet smile. "I didn't break the window— it just sort of popped open. Besides, you got your story, didn't you?"
Greg Sommer was In the City's resident music critic and one of its feature writers. He was so straight-looking with his short hair, horn-rimmed glasses and slender build that Jilly often wondered how he ever got punk or metal musicians to talk to him.