Crossing Over (4 page)

“This is so great,” Jac said. “We’re, like, getting school credit for eating. I wonder if they have cake here?”

Jac had inherited her mother’s tiny frame, though I knew from close personal observation that she ate more than any human
being I had ever encountered and was especially partial to food groups in the chocolate family.

“We check into the hotel after this, right?” I asked.

“I think so,” Jac replied. “Ben—do you have a copy of the schedule on you?”

What? Why was Jac talking to Ben? Because I hadn’t told her not to, I thought. I hadn’t told her that the plan was to pretend
Ben didn’t exist, because he had seen me talking to an invisible friend.

“Yep,” he said. He reached into the pocket of his jeans, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and scanned it. I snuck a look
at his large brown eyes while he read, then held on to the table while the room lurched a bit.

“After dinner we check in at the hotel and have unpacking and free time; nine o’clock we have to be in our rooms for the night;
and ten lights out.”

“And tomorrow? Kat, are you listening?”

Why wouldn’t I be listening? How did my best friend in the world suddenly develop a thick sponge of mush between her ears?

I nodded. Ben hadn’t taken his eyes off the schedule.

“I’m listening,” I said, so quietly I barely heard myself say it.

“Tomorrow is pajama breakfast, then Mont-Royal and surrounding sights, and in the afternoon the Biodome.”

“Which one are you looking forward to most, Kat?” Jac asked.

Why had Jac chosen this time and place to become Oprah? Her perky questions and conversation-making were beginning to freak
me out. I was saved by the arrival of the bombshell waitress.

“Mexican poutine, large, please,” Jac declared. “And a Coke.”

“Italian small poutine, please,” I said. “And a root beer.”

I examined the waitress’s gladiator boots as she directed her attention at my soul mate. And suddenly couldn’t stand her.

“Regular medium,
s’il vous plaît
,” Ben said. “
Et aussi un
root beer.”

“
Bon, merci
,” said the bombshell, and floated away, presumably powered by the sheer force of her good looks.

I was getting ready to ponder whether Ben
ordering the same soda as me was a) coincidence; b) a secret message; or c) subtle
mockery, when a man in a black suit approached our table and stood directly behind Ben, scowling. He had the thickest, darkest
eyebrows I had ever seen, and they were pushed together to emphasize his expression. He leaned forward, half through and half
around Ben, and spoke directly to me, pounding his fist on the table to emphasize each word.

“
Je n’aime pas le poutine
,” he declared emphatically.

Fool me once, shame on you and all that—but I wasn’t going to make the mistake again of thinking this guy was among the living.
I was sure there was no visible reaction on my face to his declaration that he did not like poutine. The guy whumped the table
with his hand one more time, then stood up
straight and took a step back. I gave him a look that said, “Back up off me, bro.”

And Ben Greenblott turned in his seat and for the briefest of moments directed his gaze to the precise spot where the man
was. When the poutine-hater abruptly turned on his heel and stalked away, Ben turned back at the table and gave me a strange
look.

Apparently I was not as clever as I thought. Ben had seen me react to the man after all. Correction—he had seen me react to
someone who for all practical purposes was not there.

“I need to find the restroom,” I mumbled, standing up clumsily. Before Jac could offer to go with me, which she usually did,
I walked away. Fortunately the little shape-in-a-dress symbol that means ladies’ room in America looks the same in Montreal,
so I located
it easily. As I walked across the restaurant, I noticed that the man in the dark suit was visiting every table
in the room to declare his disdain for the only dish on the menu. Nobody seemed to see him. Big surprise.

I paused by the bathroom door and shot a look over to the adults’ table. My mother was watching the phantom poutine hater
with a small smile on her lips. As usual she seemed to feel me looking at her. She met my gaze, widened her smile, then nodded
toward the poutine hater and gave a small “Whatcha gonna do with these crazy ghosts?” shrug. I felt unaccountably mad at her,
and turned away without acknowledging her. As I walked through the bathroom door, I felt a rush of guilt and a bad heat rising
in my stomach.

I had pretended not to see my mother.

Not okay.

“Is that all? Kat, I thought it was something really serious. I thought you were dying or expelled or maybe you’d made friends
with Brooklyn.”

I gave my friend an amused look. She was lying on one of the two double beds, munching on a Twix bar between slurps of some
sort of Canadian canned chocolate drink. Our hotel room was small, the TV worked, there was free stuff in the bathroom, and
it all seemed blessedly unhaunted. Good times.

“Isn’t it enough? Jac, in one breath I just confessed to liking a boy and being mad at my mom for no reason. Throw me a bone
here.”

Instead, she threw me a piece of her Twix, which I bit into.

“Okay, well, let’s start with Ben Greenblott. I think he’s perfect for you. I actually thought so even before you told me
you liked him. Didn’t you notice how I was trying to get a conversation started at dinner?”

“I noticed,” I said, ruefully. “I was trying to pretend he wasn’t there.”

“You shouldn’t do that,” Jac said. “He’ll think you don’t like him. He’s a nice guy—you should talk to him. And it’s not like
he’s hanging out with anyone else on this trip.”

It was true. Ben was friendly to everyone, but he didn’t seem to be friends
with
anyone in particular. He was hard to categorize.
Though I knew he was a straight honor roll kid, he was not clearly a geek,
a brain, or another brand of outcast. People seemed to like him well enough. But he kept a low profile at school, and kind
of kept to himself.

“Okay, but what about the part where he saw me talking to an empty seat?”

“Saw you talking to
yourself
,” Jac corrected. “Plenty of people do that. Einstein talked to himself—and so does Shoshanna Longbarrow.”

Wow. It was a sure bet this was the first time in recorded history Shoshanna Longbarrow had ever been mentioned in the same
sentence with Einstein.

“It still isn’t good,” I said.

“It isn’t a reason to write him off either,” Jac insisted. “And you need a little encouragement sometimes. Did you ever e-mail
that guy from the Mountain House?” she asked.
Jac enjoyed bugging me about the not-so-cute boy I’d met at the massive old
hotel we’d been to that spring.

“Just the one time,” I said. “Jac, I wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to become Mrs. Ted Kenyon. The guy’s going to end
up working at the most haunted mountain resort ever.”

“He liked you,” Jac said, licking the inside of the Twix wrapper fastidiously. “That’s allz I’m saying.”

“That doesn’t mean Ben Greenblott likes me,” I declared.

“It doesn’t mean he
doesn’t
like you,” Jac countered. She reached below the bed and produced a Mars Bar. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“What? They’re like Milky Ways but better. Everybody says so.”

There was a knock on the door. Jac shoved
the Mars Bar under a pillow, so she obviously felt it was her mother stopping by.

I got up and opened the door, confirming Jac’s unspoken suspicion.

“Oh, Kat,” Mrs. Gray said, sounding surprised to see me, like she didn’t realize I was along on the trip. “I need a word with
Jacqueline.”

“I’m right here,” Jac said, sitting up, but she made no move to stand. Jac was usually either openly at war with her mother
or in an uneasy truce. This qualified as an uneasy truce.

“This ee-phone…”

“iPhone,” Jac corrected. “Like I Spy.”

Mrs. Gray took a not-quite-patient breath and held the offending piece of technology out.

“This eye-phone is not working,” she said. “I was told it was the very best, and it doesn’t
seem to work at all. I can’t make
a simple phone call.”

“Well, did you call to enable international dialing?” Jac asked.

Mrs. Gray looked mystified.

“It was on the trip memo,” Jac said. “Here—if you need to make a call, just use my phone for now. And if you want your iPhone
figured out, talk to that kid Phil. He figures out everybody’s phones.”

She tossed her phone at her mother, who not only didn’t catch it but barely managed to be hit in the head by it. I retrieved
the phone off the floor and handed it to Mrs. Gray.

“Thank you,” she said, to one or both of us. “Oh, and we’re meant to announce that there is a quick meeting everyone has to
attend at eight forty-five by the soda machines.”

She left, closing the door quietly behind her.

“Jac,” I said. “You shouldn’t throw things at your mother. You could have put her eye out.”

Jac shrugged.

I opened my mouth to suggest that Jac consider being a teensy bit nicer to her mother but remembered how angry the same suggestion
had made Jac during our trip to the Mountain House. So, I decided to file away my comment for later.

“I’m going to brush my hair before the meeting,” I said, walking into the bathroom.

“Here,” Jac said, appearing suddenly behind me with her flowered cosmetics bag. “Have a squirt of this.”

She spritzed me with something delicious smelling, a mix of orange blossoms and cloves. Jac obviously really was pro-Ben.
I felt a little zap of nervousness in my toes. She pointed at my head.

“Dangly earrings,” she commanded.

“Really? The crescent moon ones? You don’t think they’re too much?”

“I think they’re perfect,” she said. “They’re very you.”

I found the earrings in question and put them on. I went into the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror.

Sometimes I looked so much like my father it made me furious. I didn’t like being reminded of him. But there he was in the
mirror. I had his good hair—thick and dark and glossy—and I wore mine long. I had his odd sea-green eyes, but my pale skin
and the shape of my face, nose, and mouth were my mother’s. Oh, and the whole “I see dead people” thing. That was all from
mom’s side of the family, too.

“We should probably go,” Jac said. “I hear people out there.”

I took a breath and gave myself a final once-over in the mirror. It wasn’t bad. I had grown two inches over the summer, and
my hair was getting to a decent length. I might not have a tiny waist and long, lean legs, like Shoshanna, but I was blessedly
zit-free, and as un-teenage as it might be, I secretly felt a certain sense of satisfaction with the way that I looked, in
spite of my flaws.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m ready.”

Our group was gathering, as advertised, in the alcove by the soda machines. Three of the Random Boys were tossing around a
miniature football made of something squishy. Phil was attempting to engage Mikuru in conversation but was being practically
body-checked by her brother, Yoshi.

Indira was chattering happily to Alice, who was examining the contents of the soda machine with great concentration. Shoshanna
was sitting cross-legged on the floor holding a Montreal guidebook, Lacy on one side of her and Brooklyn on the other, both
in identical poses. The other two Satellite Girls, Shelby and Stacy, were nowhere to be seen.

Perched on a wide windowsill with his legs propped up was Ben Greenblott, looking lost in a book. I quickly looked away, then
took another peek. He totally hadn’t noticed me. I adjusted my earrings, fiddled with my watch, and shifted my weight from
one leg to the other. Then I took another tiny peek. This time Ben was looking at me.

Oh my.

Mrs. Redd appeared suddenly, a wide smile on her face. I quickly gave her my full attention. She was wearing a brightly colored
sweatshirt that proclaimed
J’AIME MONTRÉAL!
in pink letters. Something very bad seemed to have happened to her gray, usually straight
hair. It looked as though she had
styled it with a table saw and a pitchfork.

“Now, where is… ah, there you are,” Mrs. Redd said. I looked down the hall and saw Sid rapidly approaching, clipboard in one
hand and walkie-talkie in the other. The missing Satellite Girls were meekly walking in front of him, looking slightly abashed.

“Okay, guys, so in case it wasn’t clear, which I’m guessing it wasn’t,” Sid said, shooting Shelby and Stacy a look, “the lobby
is off-limits without an adult, as is the gift shop, swimming pool,
bureau de change
, workout room, escalator, and any other location you can think of that is not your assigned room or this hallway. Got that,
guys?”

“We got it, Sid,” called Phil. This apparently sounded good, because it was immediately followed by a chorus of “We got it,
Sid” from the masses.

I peeked at Ben. Nothing. Mrs. Redd was looking very hard at Shelby and Stacy like she was trying to decide whether or not
to further pursue where Sid had found them. I didn’t think she needed to worry. For all his casual coolness, I had a feeling
nothing and no one was going to get past Sid on this trip. We probably didn’t even need the other chaperones.

Which reminded me: Where was my mother? Where, for that matter, was Jac’s mother?

“What happened to her hair?” Jac whispered, looking toward Mrs. Redd.

I shrugged. It took every ounce of strength I had not to sneak another look in Ben’s direction.

“It’s crowded. I think there’s more room over there,” Jac said, pointing in the direction
of the windowsill where Ben Greenblott
was, in my opinion, magnificently perched.

I smacked her hand down.

“Don’t point! Are you nuts?” I hissed.

“We should go over there.”

I turned toward her and grabbed her two tiny shoulders.

“Jac, please. Just leave it for now, okay? Please?”

Jac gave me a long look. Mrs. Redd was making a speech about the pajama breakfast. She sounded like a large fly buzzing to
and fro in the background.