Walk of the Spirits Read online

  “It’s socially oriented, right? It involves historical research . . . we’ll have to learn more about the community . . .”

  Gage nodded. “I like it.” He glanced over at Roo, who merely shrugged. A shrug that could have been either pro or con, Miranda couldn’t tell.

  Ashley, however, was still bubbling over. “Miranda, this is so wonderful! You’ll have to tell us more about it! How to get organized, what we need to do, where we need to start—”

  “Whoa! Hold on!” Backing up a step, Gage lifted both hands. “Give her a chance to breathe, why don’t you?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you’re right. Miranda, do you want us to explain the project to you some more? I mean, maybe we haven’t filled you in enough on the details? Or the schedule or how it’s graded and stuff? Or maybe you have some questions?”

  “I have a question,” Roo announced, before Miranda could even open her mouth.

  The girl draped herself over her desk. Frowning slightly, she fixed Miranda with a solemn, dark-ringed stare.

  “So,” Roo said. “How does it feel living with a lunatic?”

  2

  “WHAT?”

  At first Miranda thought it was a joke. Some private, inside joke the group had decided to play on her, just to see how she’d react.

  Except she didn’t get the joke. She didn’t understand the joke. And slowly it began to dawn on her that Roo’s stare wasn’t wavering, that Roo wasn’t smiling. And that the others had gone silent, that they were watching Roo with strange expressions on their faces, and there was an undercurrent in the air, like cold electricity.

  “What?” she managed to say again. “I don’t understand.”

  She wanted to say more, but her voice stuck in her throat. She wanted to walk away from them, but her stomach had gone queasy.

  “Roo,” Ashley whispered.

  “What’s wrong?” Seemingly puzzled, Roo glanced at each of them in turn, then back again at Miranda. “You know,” she said matter-of-factly, “Jonas Hayes—your grandfather. I mean . . . what’s it like? Aren’t you scared?”

  Parker snorted a laugh. “Jesus, Roo.”

  Gage said nothing, only folded his arms across his chest. He leaned back against the wall and focused on something outside the classroom window.

  “Scared?” Miranda’s mind was whirling. Her head was beginning to pound. “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing!” Ashley broke in. Reaching for Miranda’s hand, she gave it a quick squeeze. “Look, Roo gets everything mixed up. Don’t pay any attention to her.”

  Miranda’s head pounded harder. Lunatic? My grandpa? Why are they all watching me like that? I can’t stand it—

  “Miranda,” Ashley sounded alarmed. “Are you okay?”

  But Miranda couldn’t answer. It was Roo’s voice that answered instead, toneless, coming from some far-off place. “I thought she knew about her grandfather. I thought she knew, or I wouldn’t have said anything.”

  “You’re so pale.” Ashley’s hands were on Miranda’s shoulders now, patting gently. “Do you want some water?”

  “Maybe she’s going to pass out,” Parker said. “Maybe you should slap her or something.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Parker!”

  “Well, I didn’t mean hit her hard—”

  “This isn’t the football field. Nobody’s going to hit anybody.”

  “I’m fine.” Miranda nodded. “Honest. I’m fine.” But her stomach was churning, dry heaves almost, at the back of her throat. She should have had something for lunch, should have eaten breakfast like Mom told her to do. “What about my grandfather?”

  But it was as if she hadn’t spoken.

  “She is pale,” Gage insisted. “Do you think she’s gonna be sick?”

  Parker was instantly on his feet. “Turn her the other way!”

  “I told you I’m fine,” Miranda snapped back at him, at all of them. Why couldn’t they just mind their own business? Wasn’t she already going through enough without adding more people and problems to her train wreck of a life?

  The classroom, the study group, everything blurred in a hot rush of anger. She wanted to escape, but she couldn’t see the door.

  And if only it were that easy, Miranda thought. If only there were some magical door I could just escape through, and be happy again . . .

  Not enough that the hurricane had struck. Everything lost, everything gone.

  No house anymore, no possessions. Mom’s business completely wiped out. Old friends, dear friends, never-seen-again friends. Some hopefully relocated to places unknown. Others left behind, helpless victims and heartbreaking fatalities of the storm.

  “We’ll go home again someday,” Mom had promised her, trying to sound both brave and comforting. “This is a temporary situation, Miranda.”

  Miranda had wanted so much to believe her. But deep down, she’d wondered if Mom really believed it herself.

  “Just till we get back on our feet,” Mom kept insisting. “Just till then. It’s not like we’ll have to live in St. Yvette forever.”

  St. Yvette. St. Yvette, Louisiana. To Miranda, who’d spent her whole life on the sparkling white beaches of Florida, they might just as well have been moving to the darkest end of the earth.

  “So why can’t we just get our own place?” she’d begged her mother. “Why do we have to live with relatives I don’t even know?”

  “Because.” And for just a heartbeat, she’d seen true panic in her mother’s expression, a look so foreign that it scared her. “Because,” Mom had repeated as the look vanished and her voice calmed. “We don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  Just hearing Mom say it made Miranda want to cry—and she hadn’t let herself do that since the disaster. Not since the brutal hurricane had ravaged the Florida coastline and their warm, sunny beach house and the only world she’d ever known. Not since they’d been forced to leave everything—and everyone— behind.

  She’d felt sick as they’d driven the rented car into St. Yvette five days ago. The sticky heat choking her breath away, squeezing sweat from every single pore. They’d had to stop at a drawbridge, where she’d caught a glimpse of shrimp boats in the murky water. And on the opposite shore, an old Catholic cemetery, its aboveground tombs rotting away between moss-draped trees. The air so thick and heavy, like being wrapped in wet gauze. The stench of dirty water. A cloying sweetness of flowers. An undercurrent of fresh oil and sweat, raw meat and fish guts.

  ST. YVETTE WELCOMES YOU.

  She’d stared at the weathered sign on the side of the road. She’d clenched her arms around her chest to keep from getting hysterical.

  I’ve survived everything else. But I’ll never survive this. Never. Not in a million years.

  “Well,” Mom had said cheerfully. Way too cheerfully, Miranda had been quick to note. “So here we are, huh? At last. And actually, it doesn’t seem that different from when I left.”

  That was a million years ago, and do I even care? Miranda’s shrug was equally grim. “How old is this place, anyway?”

  “It predates the Civil War. There’s a lot of history in this area.”

  “So where are all the plantations and stuff?”

  “There’re a few nearby. We’ll go see them, I promise—”

  “And what’s that weird smoke?”

  Mom had frowned at her, sniffed the air, frowned again. “I don’t smell any smoke. You mean, like an actual fire?”

  “No, never mind. It’s gone now.”

  The truth was, it had vanished almost as soon as she’d noticed it—more like a thought, really, than an actual smell. And not like a cigarette either, or charcoal, or burning leaves, or any other smoke Miranda was familiar with. Pungent and faint and at the same time . . . acrid and damp . . .

  “Don’t recognize it?” Mom had pressed her.

  “No.” But I should recognize it, Miranda had thought uneasily, without knowing why. I should recognize that smell . . .

 
; “Hey.” Mom was talking again. “Don’t be fooled by this side of town. The rest of it’s really beautiful.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Well . . . I remember that.”

  “Things change.”

  It was like an accusation hanging between them. Mom had been quick to try to dispel it.

  “But some things don’t. Like mystery. And romance. History and legends and old, old secrets—”

  “What secrets?”

  “I wasn’t being specific, honey. I just meant that all small towns have secrets. That’s part of their charm.”

  Miranda had watched more scenery go past the car window. Old neighborhoods. Old houses. Gardens. Civil War statues. Antique shops. Old churches. An elementary school. Another cemetery. An old train depot. A park. An old fountain. Another cemetery.

  “Charm’s not exactly the word I’d use,” she’d muttered. “Try dead. God, it can’t get any worse than this.”

  “Yes,” Mom answered quietly. “Yes, it can always get worse.”

  “Oh. Thank you, Mom. I really needed that positive outlook.”

  “I am being positive, honey. I’m just trying to show you how lucky we are. It could be worse. For lots of people, it’s worse. We didn’t have to be separated, you and I. We didn’t have to go into a shelter. We have each other. We have a home to go to.”

  “You call this a home?”

  “We have family here.”

  “But you don’t even love Grandpa.”

  “No, Miranda, that’s not true—”

  “The two of you haven’t seen each other or talked to each other in . . . how long? My whole life?”

  “It has nothing to do with you. It’s—”

  “I know, I know. Complicated. Why won’t you ever tell me?”

  Mom’s hands had gripped the steering wheel. “It’s nothing for you to worry about. Nothing for you to even think about. This is between Grandpa and me, okay?”

  “Fine, Mom. Just fine.”

  And then the long pause. That long anger-hurt pause before Mom finally spoke again.

  “Honey . . . for what it’s worth . . . our lives really will be happy again.”

  “It’s not worth much. And how can you even believe that?” Miranda shot back, then instantly felt bad at the flinch of pain on her mother’s face.

  “I have to believe that, honey,” her mother whispered. “I have to . . .”

  “—have to hand in your project ideas before you leave,” Miss Dupree was saying. “And I expect a rough outline on Monday.”

  Miranda snapped back to attention How long had she been zoned out just now? Seconds? Minutes? Noting the four intense stares aimed in her direction, she remembered her rude little outburst and felt her cheeks go hot.

  “Miranda, are you really, truly okay?” Ashley fretted.

  “Of course I am.” Trying to avoid Ashley’s gaze, Miranda focused on the front of the classroom.

  “You scared me,” Ashley went on. “I thought for a minute we might have to take you to the nurse.”

  “It’s nothing. I’m just—” As Miranda’s brain scrambled, she heard the sound of the bell, Miss Dupree shouting last-minute reminders, the chaos of students spilling out into the halls. Thank God it was last period. Thank God it was the weekend. Thank God she wouldn’t have to deal with any more people or conversations for a few days.

  Grabbing her things, she bolted for the door. She kept her head down, pushing her way along the noisy corridor, but Roo’s words echoed even louder in her mind.

  “How does it feel living with a lunatic?”

  So what haven’t you told me, Mom? And what haven’t you been telling me all these years?

  “Miranda, wait up!”

  Miranda walked faster. As a group of kids jostled her to one side, a hand closed around her elbow, steering her over to the wall and away from the Friday-afternoon stampede.

  “You passed your locker,” a voice said, and she found herself looking up into kind, brown eyes. Gage pointed in the opposite direction from where she’d been going. “Or . . . maybe you knew that.”

  “Look,” Miranda answered irritably. “I just want to get home, okay?” Then, as Gage quickly stepped back, she took a deep breath and started over. “I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for how I acted before. I’m having a terrible life right now.”

  “I understand. I’ve had a terrible life myself more than once.”

  “Yeah, well . . . you’ve probably never felt like throwing up in the middle of class.”

  Gage considered this a moment. “No . . . but Roo threw up on me once in second grade.”

  She noticed his dimples now, as he smiled. A totally melt-your-heart smile, shy but sincere.

  “—didn’t mean it,” he was saying, and Miranda focused back on their discussion.

  “Didn’t mean what?”

  “Roo.” He sounded apologetic. “What she said back there. About your grandfather.”

  “Look, I don’t know anything about my grandfather, okay? If you want to know something about him, I’m the last person you should ask.”

  “I’m not asking.”

  “We’re living in his garage apartment, but—thanks to my mom—I’m not allowed to meet him.” Miranda didn’t know why she was telling Gage all this. She certainly didn’t want to, but there was something so unthreatening about him that her words kept tumbling out. “I’ve never talked to my grandfather. I’ve been here in town five whole days, and I still haven’t seen him. Now I guess I know why.”

  Slowly, Gage shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, that makes us even.”

  Gage didn’t seem to mind her bad mood. “The thing is, Roo doesn’t mean to hurt anybody. She’s just . . . honest.”

  “That’s a tactful way of putting it.”

  “She says things out loud before she thinks them through.”

  “Well, she obviously knows more about my family than I do. So what’s the story? Why don’t you tell me?”

  Hesitating, he lowered his eyes. “I don’t think it’s my place—”

  “Here’s the deal. I was ten years old before I even knew I had a grandfather. Alive, I mean. I always thought all my grandparents were dead, because that’s what my parents told me. Then one day I was going through my mom’s closet, and I accidentally knocked this box off a shelf. And this picture fell out—some man I didn’t recognize, with his arm around my aunt Teeta.”

  “Everyone around here loves your aunt.” Gage’s soft eyes lifted again to Miranda’s face. “In fact, she’s about the best person I’ve ever known.”

  “I’ve always loved her, too. I’ve talked to her on the phone since I was little; she’s never forgotten my birthday or Christmas. But the date on that picture I found? It was taken just two weeks before, and Aunt Teeta had written on the back: ‘Love from your family.’”

  “Wow. What’d you do?”

  “I confronted my mother, and that’s when she admitted I really did have a grandfather. Not only that, but I’d always had a grandfather, and not only that, but he lives with Aunt Teeta.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. She said they’d been out of each other’s lives for years, and that’s the way it would always be, and I should let it go.”

  “You never talked about your grandfather again?”

  “I tried to. But Mom just wouldn’t.”

  “What about your dad?”

  Miranda’s heart clenched. “My dad died before I could ask him. In fact, his funeral was that day—the day I found my grandfather’s picture.”

  “I’m . . . sorry—”

  “Don’t be. You didn’t know.”

  “So what about now?” Shifting his books, Gage leaned one shoulder against the wall. “Maybe your aunt Teeta could help you meet your grandfather. I bet she wouldn’t tell your mom.”

  “I’ve almost asked her a couple times.”

  “But . . . ?”

  But what if I finall
y meet Grandpa, and it all turns out wrong? She couldn’t tell Gage what her biggest wish had been since she was ten years old, what she’d hoped and prayed for so desperately. That someday, somehow, maybe she really could get to know her grandfather. That maybe Mom and Grandpa would settle their differences, whatever they were. And that maybe having Grandpa in my life could be like having a dad again . . .

  But before she could answer, voices shouted at the end of the corridor, and Parker, Ashley, and Roo came walking toward them.

  “They’re calling you,” Gage warned her.

  Flustered, Miranda started backing away. "Look, I don’t know what got into me just now. I never do things like this, I never act like this, I swear. So if you could forget it ever happened—”

  “Don’t worry.” Though his lips showed a trace of amusement, his eyes were warm and sympathetic. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. And if it helps any—that stuff about your grandfather is just town gossip.”

  She wished she knew what he meant. Wished he’d say more, elaborate, explain. But the others were here now—Ashley chattering, Parker arguing, Roo watching Miranda and Gage with sly curiosity.

  Squealing, Ashley threw her arms around Miranda, while Gage ducked swiftly out of the way.

  “You’ll get used to her, Miranda,” Parker sighed, pulling Ashley back.

  But Ashley broke free at once. “Miss Dupree loved your idea! She can’t wait to see how we put it all together. She says it’s the most original and creative topic in the whole class!”

  “Make that the most ridiculous,” Parker muttered.

  Miranda tried valiantly to resist Ashley’s hug. “Hey. It wasn’t my idea—”

  “Don’t be so modest! Of course it was!” Giving Miranda one last squeeze, Ashley got down to business. “Okay. So we’ll all meet at the library later and start our planning. You can come, can’t you, Miranda?”

  “Well, I—”

  Parker’s loud groan cut her off. “Oh please, not the library. All that whispering gives me a headache.”

  “You are a headache.” Roo yawned.

  “Let’s just go to The Tavern. I need background music.”

  “Too crowded. Too noisy.” Shaking his head, Gage leaned in toward Miranda. “It’s a restaurant,” he explained. “Not much to look at, but the food’s great. Everybody hangs out there.”