The Spirit Keeper Read online

  “Sure,” I said, with as much nonchalance as I could muster. I thumbed over my shoulder. “I’m in that house over there. The one behind the fence. The gate’s always unlocked, so feel free to come over whenever. Or you can circle around back to the greenhouse. That’s where I work.”

  “Adrian! Get in here now!”

  Adrian rolled his eyes and made a face that only we could see before finally sprinting back to the house. His dad continued to stare at us even after Adrian had disappeared inside. I raised my hand and waved to him, but he didn’t wave back.

  Chapter 3

  When we got back to the house, Meg was standing in front of the refrigerator with the door wide open, complaining loudly to David that his turn to clean out the leftovers had come and gone. Now there was a container of molded something-or-another and a terrible funk that would probably stink up the entire house for the next week.

  David was doing an excellent job of ignoring her.

  “So those people who just moved in,” I said, before Meg had a chance to really get going on her tirade.

  “Uh-huh,” she answered, giving me only half her attention as she pulled out expired yogurt containers and tossed them into the sink.

  “Honestly,” she said. “Why do I buy this stuff if no one eats it? I swear you two would eat cereal three times a day if I let you.”

  “I told you I don’t like the kind with chunks,” I said in my defense. “Anyway, listen to this. The new neighbors are Indian.”

  “Oh. That’s interesting,” she said, checking the expiration date on a bottle of ranch salad dressing. “Where in India are they from?”

  “They’re not from India,” I clarified. “They’re like us. Only, they came from some reservation up north.”

  I picked up one of the plastic containers Meg had just placed on the counter and peeked inside, only to regret it instantly. The stench practically knocked me over. I coughed, waving my hand in front of my nose, and set it down in a hurry.

  Meg stopped what she was doing and turned to me, her dark brows pulled together. “They’re American Indian, you mean?”

  I nodded. “Adrian, he’s the son, goes to our school. He’s in our grade. I guess it’s just him and his dad.”

  “Cranky old tool,” Priscilla muttered under her breath.

  Meg stood staring at me, almost as if she hadn’t heard a word I’d said. Then she blinked and said, “That’s great. That’s really great.” But I got the impression she didn’t think it was that great at all.

  She turned to David. “Can I speak to you?” And then she looked meaningfully at Priscilla and me. “In private.”

  “Is it just me,” I said to Priscilla, once we were alone, “or was that really weird?”

  “Totally weird,” Priscilla agreed. “Come on. Let’s eavesdrop.”

  We trailed my aunt and uncle where they’d fled into the dining room. They were whispering at each other, their heads bent close together in confidence. All I managed to hear was David say, “I’ll check it out.” Then they saw us, and they immediately jumped apart and pretended like they hadn’t been swapping secrets at all. David stalked off toward the kitchen, his face stony and unreadable.

  “What’s up?” I said, inclining my head after David.

  Meg just shook her head and muttered something unintelligible. She pushed a bundle of cloth napkins into my hands and told me to finish setting the table, and then she marched off, presumably after David.

  “Whatever,” I said, handing two of the napkins to Priscilla.

  When we had finally managed to sit down, Meg began the conversation by asking what the new neighbors were like. I had to give her credit for trying to be casual about it, but I could tell she was a lot more curious than any normal person would be if they didn’t have a good reason. And of course that made me curious.

  “Adrian is super hot,” Priscilla said. “And I think he has a thing for Sarah.”

  I had just swallowed a mouthful of tea, and I coughed and sputtered as it went down the wrong way. “We talked to each other for all of ten minutes,” I said, though I couldn’t erase the stupid grin that had spread across my face at the mention of his name. “I highly doubt he has the hots for me.”

  David pointed his fork in my direction. “I don’t want any boys coming around here. You’re too young to date.”

  I rolled my eyes. Nothing irritated me more than when David pulled rank, especially considering he was only nine years older than me. Meg was a few years older than David, and it was generally she who laid down the law. But I wasn’t your typical troublemaker, and I usually did my best to fly under the radar. I was a good girl.

  “I saw you roll those eyes,” David said. “I mean it. No boys.”

  “FYI, you’re not my dad. And anyway, I’m almost seventeen. That’s definitely not too young to date. Half the girls at school have boyfriends. And just because you and Meg are currently unattached doesn’t mean I have to be, too.”

  David’s eyes got all wide and psychotic-looking at that. “FYI, I am one of your guardians. And if I say no boys allowed, I mean no boys allowed!” He looked around then, clearly embarrassed. “And my love life is none of your concern.”

  I laughed. He had to be joking about the no boys allowed thing, right? But then I realized no one else was laughing, and my temper got the better of me. I seldom lost it with my uncle, or with anyone else, but when I did it was because he was being an unreasonable jerk. Not me.

  “Are you saying you don’t trust my judgment?” I said through my teeth. “Even if I were interested in Adrian, it’s not like he’s some big bad wolf waiting to pounce. Seriously, he’s harmless. He’s nice.”

  “No boys, and that’s final.” David said. “I don’t want one sniffing around here uninvited or for you to,” he bent his head at this part, “to wind up in trouble.”

  My face felt suddenly hot, and my cheeks tingled as though I’d just been slapped. I couldn’t believe he was even suggesting such a thing.

  “Is that some polite euphemism for getting knocked up? I can’t believe you, David! You have no right to . . . ugh!”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and looked at my aunt, too flustered to say what I was even thinking. “A little help here, please?”

  Meg cleared her throat and shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I happen to agree with David. You’re, uh, a little too young to date.”

  “This is ridiculous,” I said, now furious with Meg. I could usually count on her to be on my side about most things. “How about when I was fourteen? You let me go to the movies with Marcus Grable.”

  “That was a group date. And it was Marcus Grable,” she added with a suppressed grin.

  She was obviously remembering how I’d been majorly peeved that Marcus had let his nerves get the better of him. He ignored me the entire time. He wouldn’t even look at me, much less hold my hand.

  Meg knew I was right, though, and yet for some reason she wouldn’t admit to it. She couldn’t even look me in the face when she said “That’s just the way it is,” and “You have to respect our rules.”

  All I could do was shake my head and bite back the rude comments threatening to escape. The last thing I wanted was to pick a fight—a real fight—with my aunt and uncle. But they were being so unfair about this!

  Meg looked at David as if she wanted him to say something to smooth things over, but all he did was throw his napkin on the table and stalk off without a word. He’d barely eaten anything on his plate.

  “I’m going to be seventeen soon,” I said as calmly as I could. “I’m not a kid anymore, so please stop treating me like one.”

  Meg reached across the table to stop me from tapping my fork against the edge of my plate out of irritation. “I know,” she said. “But you’re just going to have to trust that we know best.”

  I glanced at Priscilla, hoping to convey the can-you-believe-this-crap look on my face, and found that she was hunched over and convulsing with pent-up laughter. Her head w
as bent so that her hair hid her face, but her shoulders were shaking. I ignored Priscilla and forced a tight smile for my aunt’s benefit.

  “Fine, Meg. If you say so.”

  She squeezed my hand and let go, and then she sighed heavily and told us we could be excused. She got up and began clearing away the dishes. Priscilla got up to help, too, her face red with the effort of not laughing out loud.

  But all I could do was sit there and twist the napkin in my lap and try to figure out what the heck was really going on.

  I couldn’t sleep.

  Priscilla and I had set up camp in front of the TV in the living room, and I lay sprawled on top of my twisted blankets, wide awake. The humidity felt like a solid weight pushing down on my body, and I was damp and sticky all over. I grabbed a magazine from the stack on the coffee table and fanned myself, muttering curses under my breath about the heat wave and lack of central AC.

  But the heat wasn’t the only reason why I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about Adrian. I couldn’t help it. Priscilla and Meg and David . . . it was their fault for putting the idea of him and me—together—in my head.

  I turned on my side. Adrian was easily one of the cutest guys in the junior class. All that thick, wavy hair, black as night and super shiny. And his eyes. And those dimples! You could trip and fall into them, and you’d need a very long ladder to climb out. I closed my eyes and pictured the two of us walking into school together, maybe even holding hands. I would give anything to see the look on Katie’s face if that ever happened.

  I supposed my attraction to him was due, in part, to the fact that we were like each other in a way I wasn’t like anyone else. I’d been the only kid at any of my schools to ever tick the “American Indian” box, but now there was someone else like me. I wanted to know more about Adrian, which meant I’d have to make my move before Katie could sink her catty claws into him and poison him against me.

  Forget what David and Meg said. I was more than old enough to date, and there was nothing they could do to stop me.

  Priscilla coughed once in her sleep and rolled over so that her mop of orange hair covered her face. I watched as she pushed the hair away and then fell into a deep sleep once again. I wished she would wake up so that I could talk to her about Adrian and the very distinct possibility that I might have a crush on him, but no matter how hard I stared at her and yelled Wake Up! in my head, she refused to open her eyes.

  I groaned out loud in one last-ditch effort to “accidentally” wake her up, which didn’t work, and then I gave up and padded to the kitchen to pour myself a bowl of cereal. I kept the lights off so I wouldn’t wake anyone else, trying to be as quiet as possible as I rummaged through the cupboards and drawers. But the late hour and relative stillness of the house made every sound I made seem loud enough to wake the dead.

  I took my cereal and sneaked out the front door for some fresh air. Unlike many of the newer neighborhoods that had the extra security of street lamps and even a neighborhood watch, ours was older and stood in near-complete darkness. Only the moon and occasional porch light acted as a ward against the things that went bump in the night.

  I sat down on the concrete step, cool and damp with dew, and took slow, methodic bites of my cereal as I let my eyes adjust to the darkness. But my eyes were playing tricks on me, and I kept thinking I was seeing things in the shadows that weren’t really there. It was weird out there in the dark, all by myself. Of course the more I thought about it, the more freaked out I started to get, until I was half convinced there was a prowler waiting to jump out from behind some bush and attack me.

  An unexpected click and creak of unoiled hinges made my heart leap into my throat. Without thinking, I dove onto my belly under the juniper bush, completely spilling my bowl of cereal all over the ground. I wiggled as far as possible under the dense growth, trying to ignore the prickly needles scratching my arms and legs.

  I strained to hear the sounds of someone approaching, but all I could hear was the blood pounding in my ears. I thought about Meg and David and Priscilla asleep inside, totally unaware of the danger on the other side of the walls, and I wondered what I should do. What could I do? Only cowards hid in bushes, and my first impulse had been to hide! But I couldn’t make my body move, not even if their lives depended on it.

  And then I heard them: footsteps.

  I held my breath and closed my eyes to get a better sense of where the sound was coming from. The crunch of shoes against stone grew steadily louder as the intruder came near. My skin prickled, and I instinctively pressed my body closer to the ground, wishing that it could somehow absorb me like the puddle of spilled milk.

  Without warning, the intruder yanked me up by a fistful of my shirt. I screamed once, and immediately a hand went over my face, blocking my nose and mouth so that I couldn’t breathe. It was a strong hand; a man’s hand.

  I thrashed my arms and legs in wild, uncoordinated arcs in an attempt to land a few solid punches, but it did no good. I opened my mouth as wide as I could despite the hand in the way, and I bit down hard on a salty finger. I felt the nasty crunch of skin between my front teeth and tasted the warm tang of blood on my tongue. My attacker cried out and immediately released me, and I took off running down the path, heading straight for the gate.

  “Sarah, stop! It’s me!”

  I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d intended to do, but the sound of David’s raised voice brought me up short.

  “Holy cripes, David!” I collapsed to the ground and lay flat on my back. I covered my face with my hands, panting hard to regain my breath and slow my tripping heart. I had a terrible sick feeling in my stomach, the cereal having congealed into what felt like a lead brick.

  David came jogging down the path, cradling his hand against his chest, and stood looking down at me. Although I could see the outline of his body, I couldn’t quite make out the features of his face.

  “Why were you hiding in the juniper bush?” he said, his voice accusing. Then he took a deep breath and sighed. “If you were trying to be inconspicuous, you failed miserably. And why did you bite me? You broke the skin.” He shook his hand to get the sting out. “You’re not rabid, are you?”

  I didn’t laugh. I didn’t find anything about the moment even remotely funny. “I thought you were an intruder.”

  He immediately stopped laughing. “An intruder? No. What are you doing out here, anyway?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I said. “It’s too hot, and I needed some air. I heard the gate, and . . . I don’t know. I just freaked.”

  David knelt next to me and patted my leg. “I’m sorry. I honestly didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Apology accepted,” I said with some reluctance. “Now it’s your turn. What are you doing out here?”

  David didn’t answer right away. “I guess I couldn’t sleep, either. I, uh, thought I’d go for a run. Sometimes I do that, you know, in the middle of the night.”

  I hadn’t forgotten about dinner or the fact that I was still majorly annoyed with him. “I did not know that,” I said. “So are you going to tell me what you and Meg were whispering about earlier, right before Priscilla and I walked in on you? Something was definitely up.”

  My eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness to see David’s face had gone blank at my questioning, and I wondered what he was thinking about. Something was definitely bothering him.

  David had been in his third year of college when his parents and my mother died. Though Meg was technically my legal guardian, he had agreed to move in with her and live rent-free in exchange for helping to take care of me. For the most part, they were both very easy-going people. It usually took something of Katie Cunningham-proportions to ruffle their feathers, at least where I was concerned, and I kept quiet about her as much as possible. I didn’t want them to worry.

  I recalled my one and only physical confrontation with Katie, which happened during recess in the fifth grade. Katie knocked me to the ground and stuck wads of chewed gum in my ha
ir as the Double Ds pinned me down. I suppose they had wanted to make me cry. But as upset as I was, I was determined not to give them the satisfaction.

  I didn’t fight back. I didn’t even tell on them when they finally let me go. If Priscilla hadn’t been home sick that day, they probably wouldn’t have done it. But I couldn’t rely on Priscilla to fight my battles for me, and so I had learned to deal with Katie in my own way, even if that meant keeping my mouth shut and not pointing fingers.

  When the teacher saw what a mess I was, she sent me straight to the principal’s office to tell my side of the story. Of course the principal called Meg, and together they forced the truth out of me. Meg was livid, and she called Katie’s parents that night to discuss the incident. But all that did was put me at the top of Katie’s hit list from that day forward. And even though Katie never laid another finger on me herself, it didn’t stop the abuse. She just got others to do it for her, whether it was tripping me in the hall, knocking the chair out from under me, or calling me names.

  “Come on,” I prodded, when I realized David wasn’t going to open up. “What’s up with you and Meg?” I knew that whatever it was didn’t have anything to do with Katie Cunningham. Not this time.

  David stood up. “Nothing. Besides, I’m taking care of it. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

  And without another word, he turned for the house, leaving me scrambling after him and wondering what the heck that meant.

  Chapter 4

  Laura Beth arrived to pick up Priscilla soon after breakfast.

  I had barely slept a wink and was really dragging and irritated with everyone, but Meg wouldn’t take any pity on me or give me the day off.

  “You know Saturdays are our busy days,” she said. “If you’re serious about saving up for a car, then that means being responsible even when you don’t feel like it. Now take the trash to the curb.”