Mercy (12 page)

“Dad? Could you come and—”

“Nathan?” Elaine, with Eddie on one hip and a glass of orange juice in her hand, handed the toddler to her husband. “Take him, would you, honey? I have to find that contract.”

“Dad? I wanted to ask you—”

“Hey, monster, come on.” Dad got up from the table, bouncing Eddie gently in his arms as the little boy squirmed to get down.

“Dad?”

“Oh, great, oatmeal on the contract.” Elaine sorted through papers on the table. “
That
looks professional.”

“Dad!”

Haley's father and Elaine both turned to look at her.

“What is it?” her dad asked.

“You don't have to shout,” Elaine added.

Obviously she
did
have to shout to get anybody's attention, Haley thought, but she didn't say it. “Could you just—come here and look at something? Please.”

She led her father, still holding Eddie, into the living room, leaving Elaine bending over the kitchen table, trying to blot oatmeal off her papers with a damp dishcloth.

“So what's up? What am I looking at?” Haley's dad settled Eddie on his hip.

“Just look. Over here.”

Haley's gaze fell on the TV screen.

Where, last night, there had been the faint but legible writing, there were now two small handprints in the dust, and streaks and smears across the glass. The letters she'd seen last night had been rubbed out. Haley ran her fingers across the screen, unable to believe it, and stared at the gray smudge on her skin. Eddie had wiped the message away.

“Are you complaining about the quality of the housekeeping?” her father asked. “Because if you are, I'd venture to suggest that you know where the duster is kept.”

“No. Uh.” Haley knew she sounded like an idiot. “It's just—I thought there was something wrong with the TV. Last night.”

Her father reached down to turn the TV on. A commercial for zit cream blared out into the room. He flipped through a few channels.

“Works okay now, anyway.” Her father gave Haley an inquiring look. “Is that what you wanted to show me?”

Haley felt her face growing hot. “Uh, yeah, I—okay, fine,” she mumbled.

Maybe it had never been real. Could she have dreamed that she'd woken up and seen the headlights slicing through the room, seen the warning in the dust? The memory was sharp and clear, not fuzzy at the edges, like a dream remembered in the morning. But once she'd dreamed that she'd gotten out of bed to finish some uncompleted homework, and it had seemed so real that she'd been sitting in math class looking down at a blank worksheet before she'd realized that she hadn't actually done the problems.

It was stupid, anyway. She shouldn't have tried to tell her dad anything. Because if she wasn't going crazy, if she hadn't
been dreaming, and if somebody was trying to send her some kind of message, then there obviously wasn't much she was supposed to do about it.
Patience. Beware
. All that seemed to be saying was that she should keep alert and wait.

Her dad was still looking at her funny. Thankfully, Elaine provided a distraction. “Haley?” she called from the kitchen. “Do you have that stuff ready?”

“What stuff?”

Elaine appeared in the door, her briefcase in one hand. “I asked you twice already this morning,” she said, amused and irritated. “Here, Nathan, I'll take him.” She held out her arms for Eddie. “If you've got that stuff ready to take back to your aunt's, I can drop it off before I take Eddie to playgroup. But I'm leaving as soon as I've got his coat on.”

That stuff for Aunt Brown? The newspaper clippings, the family tree, Mercy's glove.

“Oh. Oh yeah!” Haley backed toward the hallway. “Thanks, Elaine, I'll get it right now; thanks, really!” She bolted up the stairs.

The glove, Haley thought. The first spooky thing that had happened had been those bloody stains on the glove. Then the sound like the heartbeat, the writing in the dust—it had all happened since she'd brought Mercy's glove into the house.

So she'd just get that glove
out
of the house. And even if there was nothing to be afraid of—which Haley was sure there wasn't, because it would be crazy to think like that, and she didn't exactly need to go crazy now, not with everything else that was going on—even if there was
nothing
creepy about having a dead vampire's glove in her room, she'd feel a lot better once it was somewhere else.

Haley was prepared to look all over her room for the red box with the glove inside, prepared to have it trying to hide itself under her pillows or in her dresser drawers, but there it
was, sitting meekly on her desk, on top of the envelope with Aunt Brown's papers. She snatched both up.

Underneath was the family tree, the one she'd messed up and had to redraw.

Hadn't she thrown this away? She thought she had. But it was smooth and un-crumpled now, sitting on her desk.

There was Mercy's name. Mercy and her sister, Grace, also dead, and little Edwin. And one other name. Mercy's sister, the only child who'd survived.

Patience Brown.

Underneath Mercy's name were the dates of her birth and death. Edwin's and Grace's also. Patience had a birth date too. 1868. She'd been five years older than Mercy.

But no date of death.

Patience wasn't only a virtue, Haley thought, staring down at the family tree. It was also a name.

A
ll day long, the feel of the piece of paper in her pocket nagged at Haley. She'd folded the family tree up small, and the sharp corners poked her leg every time she moved.

In each class she eyed the trash can by the door. But somehow she could never quite make up her mind to throw the thing away.

In History, the reports on ancestors were over. Mr. Samuelson was droning on about the War of 1812. Haley slipped the paper out of her pocket and flattened it on her desk.

What did it tell her? Nothing.

She ran her finger along Patience's name. No date of death. What did that mean?

Probably nothing. A mistake. Aunt Brown forgot to write it down.

Aunt Brown forgot? Haley was pretty sure Aunt Brown never forgot anything.

Well, then, Haley had made the mistake. That was much more likely. It wasn't like it
meant
something.

It wasn't like Patience had never . . . died.

Somebody kicked her foot. Hard. Haley jerked her head up.

Mr. Samuelson was standing at the whiteboard, a marker in his hand.

“Francis Scott Key,” whispered a voice from behind her.

“Francis Scott Key?” Haley repeated hopefully.

“Correct.” Mr. Samuelson gave her a slightly suspicious look and wrote the name on the board. “And yes, thank you, Kevin,
what
exactly was Mr. Key so famous for?”

Haley glanced back over her shoulder. Alan O'Neil met her eyes and grinned.

Haley crumpled the family tree up. When the bell rang, she got to the door as quickly as she could. A blue recycling bin was by her knee. She would just throw the family tree in there and forget about it. Right now.

“So what was so interesting?” Alan's voice was at her shoulder. “Can I see?”

“No!” Haley squeezed the piece of paper into a tighter ball, crushing it in her hand. “I mean—nothing. It's—um. Thanks. For back there.”

“You okay?”

“Fine.” Haley didn't dare throw the family tree away now. Alan might see it, or anyone might pick it up, and then—“Sorry, I have to go somewhere. Else.” Embarrassment was about to crush her. She'd collapse in on herself, a little black hole of humiliation.

“But you've got lunch, don't you?” Alan looked bewildered.

“Haley? You okay?” Mel was at her other side.

“Fine!” Haley yelped. It had been bad enough looking like an idiot in front of her dad this morning, but now, in front of Alan O'Neil?

“Have to take some pictures,” she gabbled. “For the paper. You know? Just outside, just around, the lunchroom, that kind of—”

Nobody in all those horror movies ever mentioned
embarrassment
as a peril of being haunted, she thought, as more meaningless words spurted out of her mouth. Monsters who rip you limb from limb, vampires who suck your blood, demons who steal your soul, sure. But nobody tells you about the possibly fatal danger of looking like an idiot.

She fled. She stayed carefully out of sight, even though it meant eating her sandwich perched on a windowsill in the girls' bathroom.

This was ridiculous. She had to
do
something. Something to get all of this out of her head.

Swallowing the last bite of her turkey sandwich, licking mustard off her upper lip, Haley made up her mind. After school was over, she killed time in the office for the school newspaper, fiddling around with the layout as if she actually had some new photos to put in. She finally met up with Mel again once Mel's Amnesty International meeting was over. They stood on the steps in front of the school, Mel pulling on her gloves and Haley zipping up her jacket. And, in her head, Haley heard the conversation they were about to have.

Mel, would you come back to the cemetery with me?

Why?

To see if somebody named Patience is really dead
.

It wasn't going to go well. But Haley couldn't help herself. The words were lifting off her tongue and nudging against her teeth. No matter how stupid it was going to sound, she wanted some company. She wanted her best friend.

“Mel, listen . . . ”

“Hey. You going anywhere?”

Alan O'Neil, a pair of soccer cleats hanging over his shoulder, had turned back from a group of his friends. He'd definitely turned back, Haley thought, analyzing the moment. Spun around quickly, as if he wasn't giving himself too much time to
think, and taken a couple of steps so he could talk to them. It wasn't like he'd just said hi in passing. He'd made an effort.

“Hey, no, we're not doing anything, really.”

“Actually, we—”

Mel and Haley spoke together. Mel looked over at Haley in surprise.

“We're going over to Starbucks,” Alan said, jerking his head at the friends waiting for him on the sidewalk. “You want to come?”

Was he asking one of them out and the other one just to come along? But he was talking to both of them, looking at both of them. If the invitation was meant more for one than the other, it was impossible to say which.

Mel was addicted to Frappuccinos. She grinned widely. “Yeah, really? Sure, let's go.”

“I can't.”

They both looked at Haley.

“I mean, there's something I have to—”

Haley stopped. Maybe she could have said something to Mel. No way she was going to look stupid twice in one day in front of Alan.

“What do you have to do?” Mel had walked down a couple of steps, but she turned to look up at Haley.

“Just—something.” Haley shifted her backpack on her shoulder. “You guys go on, though. Go without me.”

“Are you going over to Jake's? Again?”

“No.” Too late, Haley realized that she ought to have said
yes
. That would have been the perfect excuse.

But it would also have been a lie. Another lie. To Mel, who'd been her best friend since second grade.

“What is it, then? Come on. You never—wait a minute, okay?” Mel said to Alan. Then she ran back to Haley, grabbed her arm, and pulled her up a couple more steps.

The conversation that came next happened in hot, angry whispers.

“You never do
anything
anymore, Haley!”

“I do so. I was going to the mall!”

“But you didn't.”

“That wasn't my fault!”

“And yesterday you just disappeared. I waited for you after school. You never said—”

“So now I have to check in?”

“I know stuff's going on, but—”