Eternal (8 page)

No. No…
I couldn’t have a panic attack right here at school—not on my third day in a new school.

Shaking, I struggled to remember the techniques my therapist had taught me. Slow, deep breaths. Calm thoughts. Count slowly to ten.

One…two…three…

“You don’t look so good, ghost chick.”

My eyes snapped open and I whirled. Briar and her two Goth toadies blocked my way out of the locker row.

I froze.

In her platform boots, she loomed at least three inches taller than me. Her unnaturally red hair, knotted on each side of her head, showcased the piercings along the sides of both her ears.

There was no point in trying to be nice to her or trying to fake her out. Arms crossed over her chest, her stance was aggressive. Challenging. Her black lips stretched into a long, taut line.

The other students were wrong to think Briar only
thought
she was psychic. So very, very wrong. She did indeed possess the gift and I wondered just how deep her ability ran. My heart sank. I was about to find out.

Her eyes narrowed into vicious slits. Her gaze flicked to the side of me and then back to my eyes. “Don’t bring that haint back to school with you if you know what’s good for him,” she warned. “I know what he did to my car, yesterday.”

My breath stopped in my chest. I wanted to protest or to tell her I did not know what she was talking about but all I could think was that Jeremiah had been with me. But if that was true, how come I hadn’t felt or seen him?

And how had Briar known about him?

“H-haint?” I stammered.

“The ghost. I know you’ve seen him,” Briar said. “And I know you put him up to wrecking my car.”

“No, I—”

One of the toadies’ hands found her hips. “Briar knows,” she said hatefully, her dyed blue strips of hair glowing strangely in the fluorescent lighting.

I didn’t have much experience with bullies. Before the accident, I’d been well-liked at my other school. My initial fear transformed into anger. What right did she have to give me orders? Or to invade my private thoughts? She’d started it yesterday bombing me with her nasty telepathic thought projectiles in the hall. I took a brazen step toward her. “Or what?” Conveniently, I’d forgotten my earlier panic.

Her eyes widened. Her mouth dropped open. She hadn’t been expecting me to defy her. Perhaps she wasn’t as gifted a psychic as I had originally thought.

A wicked smile twisted on her lips. “You don’t know what we do, do you?”

As if on cue, her Goth buddies took a step closer.

The panicky feeling churned in my gut again and I fought not to shrink back from them.

“You should ask around, Wren.” She said my name with such contempt it made me shiver.

The tardy bell rang and she and her entourage spun and stalked away without looking back.

Scrambling, I wrestled with my lock, trying to turn the dial, trying to remember the combination, all to no avail. Just before I admitted defeat, the locker door swung open with a creak.

I sucked in a ragged breath. “Jeremiah?” I whispered but again, I felt and saw nothing that alerted me to his presence. But I didn’t have time to waste. Snatching my book for my next class, I slammed the locker shut and broke into a half-run.

My trigonometry teacher gave me the hairy eyeball when I finally skidded into class so I muttered something about there being a line in the bathroom and then, under my breath, about it being that time of the month and her look softened immediately. I felt bad lying to her but I didn’t want detention during my first week of school.

Trig consumed all my concentration to the point it made my head pound. No chance existed to talk to anyone and besides, none of my new friends were in this class so nothing prevented my mind from wandering back to the encounter with those three witches in the hallway.

Ask around.

Laura had already admitted Briar thought she was psychic. What more was there?

My gut told me there was a lot more and that I should be wary of Briar—not for my own sake but for Jeremiah’s. But how could he be hurt by her? After all, he was already dead. And if he had the ability to put the whammy on her car, then what else could he do?

Still, I couldn’t shake the awful sense of impending doom that gnawed relentlessly at my insides.

* * * * *

Fish sticks.

The odor hit me before I even walked in the double doors to the lunchroom.

My least favorite.

I really didn’t like fish of any kind and thankfully, I could get a salad instead, but that would mean getting in the salad bar line and for some reason, it took the students longer to fix their salads than it did to toss a couple of fish sticks onto their plates.

Craning, I searched the sea of faces for Laura.

“Hey, Wren!” Waylon greeted, sliding in line behind me, bowl in hand. In his other hand, he balanced a plate piled high with fish sticks and crinkle cut French fries all smothered in oozing globs of ketchup and tartar sauce. I wrinkled my nose.

“Uh…hi,” I said. “Have you seen Laura?”

“Laura checked out. Orthodontist appointment or something.”

Disappointment surged. My shoulders sagged.

“Did you get a chance to finish that article?” he asked hopefully.

I flashed him a smile. “Yes. Thanks again. I learned a lot about my house I wouldn’t have otherwise known.”

His pale face flushed with pride. “I thought you’d like it.”

I seized the tongs and filled my bowl with lettuce.

Briar and her two minions strolled into the lunchroom. I flinched.

“What’s up with them?” Waylon asked.

I made a mental note that Waylon could be extremely observant.

“Briar bothering you?” he asked, his posture immediately stiffening as if he was ready to do battle.

I debated. I couldn’t tell him the whole story. He didn’t need to know about Jeremiah. No one did. More to the point, I doubted if Waylon would believe me and I didn’t want to get the reputation as a bigger weirdo than people already thought.

“She…just gives me the creeps is all,” I managed, turning my attention back to building my salad.

“She gives everybody the creeps,” he said, still glaring at the Goth girl.

Pumping ranch on my salad, I glanced up at him. “Why?” I wished he would stop scowling. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing her threats worried me.

“She’s always telling people they’re going to break a leg or be in a wreck or that their dog is going to die.” He loaded a mountain of shredded cheese onto his salad.

She hadn’t predicted anything for me. She’d only told me I’d better not have my
haint
back at school. Worse, she’d zeroed in on my guilty secret.

“Does…do any of her predictions ever come true?” I asked, moving toward the check out.

“That’s why she creeps everybody out,” Waylon whispered, leaning in so close I detected the scent of some sort of masculine cologne. “Most of the time, her prophecies do come true.”

No surprise to me. Still, her credibility didn’t give her the right to threaten me. What was she going to do? Tell everyone I brought a ghost to school who tinkered with her car?

All I had to do was deny it.

Down deep though, I sensed she’d do far more than that. Still, I couldn’t control what Jeremiah did. It wasn’t as if I had asked him to accompany me to school—or to screw up Briar’s car. He hadn’t brought it up the night before and I really had no reason to believe he’d done it, other than Briar’s bald-faced accusation.

“I…think she has it in for me,” I ventured, fishing for more information. “I mean, why would I be a threat to her?”

Waylon nearly laughed out loud. “Because you live in the most haunted house in town other than the funeral home.”

My gaze shot to his.

“She’s just a dorcas who thinks she’s the local ghost expert,” Waylon explained.

Waylon was not the simple country boy I’d originally thought. Well-spoken and perceptive, he hid a thoughtful intelligence under his muscled, jock exterior.

Holly waved excitedly from our table so Waylon and I joined her. He kept pace with me although, with his long, thick legs, he could have reached the table in half as many strides as it took me. The table shifted under Waylon’s sheer size when he sat.

“Briar’s giving Wren the stank eye,” he said nonchalantly to Holly and Frank.

Holly smirked and glanced at the Goth table. “She gives everybody the stank eye.”

I shrugged as if I couldn’t comprehend it at all.

Waylon took a bite of the apple he’d picked up. “I told her,” he said, his voice muffled by the food in his mouth, “it’s because she lives in a haunted house.”

“Is it true?” Holly leaned forward in her seat. “Is it really haunted, Wren?”

From across the room, I felt Briar’s eyes boring into me. I wished I knew how to block her—to keep her from reading my thoughts. Unfortunately, I didn’t. I couldn’t even control the few psychic skills I had.

“Yes, Wren, is it?” Waylon asked pointedly. Somehow or other, he’d already scarfed down half his mound of fish sticks.

I searched their gazes. Both seemed genuinely interested and it was on the tip of my tongue to tell them my house might be haunted when Frank rolled his brown eyes.

“There are no such things as ghosts,” he said adamantly.

“You’re just too scientific.” Holly shoved a playful elbow into his ribs.

Frank skirted the jab. “There is no empirical data proving the existence of ghosts.”

“You should see the pictures my dad took at the Shiloh living history last year. There are orbs all around the Bloody Pond,” Waylon defended.

Frank’s expression remained unchanged as he picked at what looked like a pita sandwich he’d brought from home. “Raindrops or dust. Not ghosts.”

“You can think what you want but there are faces in some of them,” Waylon said before he loaded several tartar sauce drenched fries into his mouth. He chewed and then swallowed. “I’ll bring them and show you.”

Again, Frank’s position remained unmovable. “The human eye is trained to look for the faces of animals and other humans. It’s a survival instinct that dates back to the origin of man.”

I nibbled on a baby carrot, wondering how Frank would explain having a dead person sit on the side of his bed to have a conversation with him.

“That reminds me,” Waylon said, turning fully to face me with his body. “When I come to your house, do you mind if I bring my camera? I’d like to see if I can get some orb shots.”

How could I tell him no? “I wouldn’t mind at all.” I hoped my expression matched my words. What would happen if Jeremiah appeared in the photos? The whole school would know about him and I’d be bombarded with questions.

Briar wouldn’t be the only one calling me ghost chick if that happened.

Frank blew out a sigh and then, as if my thoughts had just traveled through the ether, he said, “Waylon, you’re starting to sound like Briar.”

“Briar?” My interest was piqued.

“She thinks she’s a big ghost hunter. You should see her Facebook page,” Holly said blandly.

I picked at my salad, hoping fervently that the Internet guys would come sooner than next week. My answer to Briar’s cryptic threat might lie in the telling information on Facebook.

Five

No such luck.

The Internet guys still hadn’t come.

Until doing without the net, I hadn’t realized how much I relied on my link to the outside world. Of course, I still had my cell phone but I really didn’t know Laura or the other new friends I’d made well enough to text yet. Besides, Briar’s Facebook page had been set to private.

No networks existed anywhere near my house and if I did happen to text anybody, I had to hold my phone near one of the chimneys to get the message to send. I would have asked Mom to take me to the library, but she was too busy to drive me and neither of us was ready for me to get behind the wheel again yet. I’d only tried to drive once since the accident and before I’d gotten the key in the ignition, I’d had a panic attack.

None of it really mattered right now.

I was home.

Inhaling, I approached the house with the excitement of reuniting with Jeremiah.

Mom greeted us, looking ridiculously small standing next to the towering front door. She wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and when she pushed the door open, I smelled the welcoming fragrance of peanut butter cookies. Despite the fact that we’d been uprooted, I knew baking was an attempt at pretending our lives hadn’t been turned upside down and that she wanted to make this feel like home.

Cookies were definitely a good start.

“Yay! Cookies!” Ella exclaimed, flying toward the kitchen.

Mom’s smile faded. “How was school?” Her gaze attempted to penetrate mine.

“Fine,” I said nonchalantly.

“Is your friend still coming tomorrow?” she asked. Her eyebrow arched and I didn’t have the heart to dash her hopes that I might have a boyfriend.

I shook my head. “That’s next Saturday.” My thoughts drifted to Jeremiah and at once, my skin tingle with ghostly energy.

Mom let out a sigh of relief. “Good. Maybe by then, we’ll be finished unpacking.”

“I think he’s more interested in metal detecting in the yard,” I retorted. My gaze drifted up the stairs. Where was Jeremiah? Would I see him today?

My wandering mind slammed back to the present when Mom suddenly reached out and touched my face—the side without the scar. I knew it bothered her. Probably more than it bothered me. Then again, it lingered like a sore reminder of the night I had died.

She cocked her head to the side. Her forehead knitted. “Are you sure everything’s all right?”

I forced a broad smile. “Fine, Mom. Really.”

She had no idea just how fine. I couldn’t wait to get upstairs to my room—to be alone with Jeremiah once more.

“Good,” she said. “Want a cookie? They just came out of the oven.”

“Maybe later.” Resisting the lure of homemade baked goods, I rushed up the stairs.

As I neared my room, my pulse accelerated with the anticipation of having another encounter with Jeremiah. Closing my eyes as I reached the threshold to my rooms, I willed him to appear.