The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney (14 page)

He very politely took two steps to the left so that I could reach out and show him the county map pasted just over my bedside lamp. “Here's Lily Dale,” I said.

He traced a route with his finger, then stopped at a wilderness area about thirty miles south. “And here's Zoar Valley. That's where I died.”

Neither one of us moved. We both stared at the map. I tried to focus on the details—elevation, nearby towns, highway numbers—but my vision was too blurry. I had to blink several times in order to see again.

I glanced sideways at Luke. His jaw was clenched, but his voice was calm as he said, “I need you to pick up a more detailed trail map.”

“Okay. Why?”

“Later.” He ran a hand through his hair, looking uncharacteristically edgy. “Can we get out of here? I need to see some sky.”

We sat in the far end of the backyard under the branches of an enormous maple tree, safely screened from the house by overgrown bushes and knee-high grass that no one had bothered to cut for weeks. I sat cross-legged, my back against the tree trunk. Luke was stretched out at my feet, his legs crossed at the ankles, his hands behind his head, his eyes closed. By unspoken mutual agreement, we had moved on to lighter topics, carefully avoiding the subject of Luke's death. I knew we would get back to it eventually, but not now. Not yet . . .

“I love it when the warm weather lasts until September,” I said, watching as the shadows of leaves shifted on my legs. “This summer was way too short.”

“Summer always is,” he said. “And winter is always endless.”

The mere thought of dark days and slushy streets made me scoot out of the shade and lay down on the grass a little distance from Luke. “Aah.” I sighed in satisfaction. “That feels good.”

Luke watched me wistfully and said, “I wish I could feel the sun again.”

“You can't?” I asked, surprised.

“Faintly. More like the memory of sun.” He shrugged. “Of course, on the upside I don't feel the cold.” He held up his right hand and started ticking off other points. “I don't have to worry about losing my keys. I am always appropriately dressed for any occasion. And I don't have to watch my weight.”

“Must be nice being a ghost. No worries.”

“Well, different ones anyway.”

I closed my eyes, enjoying the sun on my face and trying to imagine never feeling it again. I shivered and sat up. “So what kinds of worries do you have now?”

“Oh, I don't know. How to get reluctant psychics to help me pass on a message of vital importance—ow!” He grinned as the pinecone that I threw at him went through his head.

“Don't try to act like that hurt you. I know it didn't.” I flopped back down on the ground.

“You're the one who worries too much,” he commented.

“I worry exactly the right amount,” I protested.

”Given all the many troubles in your life,” he said dryly.

I felt vaguely resentful of his tone but too lazy to react with any force. “Is this what ghosts do?” I asked idly. “Make fun of the living and their problems?”

“What problems do you have exactly?”

“My family is nuts, your brother is driving me crazy, and I see dead people.” I reeled the list off promptly.

“Your life is a little more complicated than most,” he conceded.

“No kidding,” I said gloomily. Now that I had laid out all my worries end to end, I felt the weight of them pressing down on me.

“Sparrow.” His voice sounded serious. Surprised, I turned my head a few inches to look at him. “A complicated life is an interesting life.”

“That sounds very enlightened. Do you have all the answers to life now that you're dead?” I tried to sound sarcastic but didn't quite make it.

“Hardly.” He laughed. “But you do see things in a different way. And you realize that all the stuff you thought you had figured out when you were alive was completely wrong.”

“In what way?”

He thought a bit. “Like . . . the things you think are your weaknesses are often really your strengths. The things you think are your strengths are what trip you up. Everything you take seriously doesn't really matter in the end. Everything important in your life is the stuff you're not even noticing right now. And”—he paused until I opened my eyes again and looked at him—“you
really
don't have to worry so much. Everything's going to be fine.”

I watched a cloud drift by. Easy for you to say, I thought.
You
don't have to figure out what to wear to school tomorrow.

But as the minutes ticked by and I listened to the faint hum of bees, and smelled the sun-warmed grass, and watched the leaves move lazily in the breeze, I felt myself relax and found myself thinking that it would be wonderful if what he said was true. . . .

The cloud moved over the sun. I sat up, rubbing my hands on my arms in the sudden chill.

“Why did you go hiking by yourself all the time anyway?” I asked, remembering the newspaper article. “That seems like asking for trouble, even if you did let people know where you were going.”

He gave a slight laugh that ended with a sigh. “You're right about that,” he said ruefully. “At least that's the way it turned out in the end. But I loved to be by myself in the middle of nowhere. It's great just to be quiet, you know, and think about things without other people telling you what
they
think or what you
should
think or what
most
people think.”

“So,” I asked, “what did you think about?”

He balanced his right heel on top of his left toe and waggled his foot back and forth. “Oh, you know. School. Girls. Football. The meaning of life.” He hesitated. “And my parents. I thought about them a lot.” He glanced at me and added, “I mean, my real parents.”

His words were so casual and uninflected that it took me a few seconds to remember that Mr. and Mrs. Dawson were actually his aunt and uncle.

“So you'd think about your—” I hesitated. “Other” parents sounded too weird. “Real” parents sounded too disrespectful to Mr. and Mrs. Dawson. “Biological” parents sounded too clinical. . . .

“My parents,” Luke rescued me. “That's the way I always thought of them. I don't remember them very well, but I had a photo of them holding me right after I was born. The way they looked in that picture, that's the way I imagined them looking forever.”

“Oh.” I couldn't think of anything else to say.

So for a while we stayed like that, quiet, Luke humming a little tune, me watching the clouds drift, both of us thinking our own private thoughts.

Then a second-floor window flew open, and Raven leaned out to scan the backyard as if she were a prison guard on the trail of an escaping inmate. “Sparrow!” she yelled. “You were supposed to clean the bathroom!” I could see her squinting against the sun, trying to spot me. “I'm not doing it for you this time! It's your turn!”

Luke grinned up at her. “But soft!” he said. “What light through yonder window breaks? It is Juliet, and she sounds pissed.”

“What else is new?” I muttered, trying to edge deeper into the shade of the tree.

“I can see you, Sparrow! And if you're not inside in two minutes, I'm coming down to get you!” The window slammed shut.

“I think I'd better go before your sister gets here,” Luke said.

“Coward.”

He laughed. “Always.”

“Wait.” I took a deep breath and said in a rush, “Have you seen your parents now that all three of you are, um”—I hesitated, then finished tactfully—“on the Other Side?”

“Not yet. But my spirit guide assures me that once I take care of that unfinished business we've been discussing”—he flicked a crooked smile my way, then turned serious again—“and I move on to wherever it is that I'm going . . . well, that's when I'll see my parents again.” He lifted one eyebrow and said, “And that's argument number three for why you should help me. In case you weren't keeping track.”

I stared back at him for a few seconds. Then I said, “That's not fair.”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “What's a little emotional blackmail between friends?”

“Not fair
at all
.”

“Well, you already knew that life isn't fair, right?” he said. “I guess death isn't either.”

Chapter 18

“Did
you know that Arthur Conan Doyle believed in ghosts and fairies?” Jack shook his head in amazement. “The guy who created Sherlock Holmes, the most logical and rational detective of all time! You'd think that he would have more sense.”

“Yes, I did know that,” I said shortly. It was a study period, and we were sitting opposite each other at a library table. Fiona sat at the next table, her nose buried in her history textbook, trying to pretend she wasn't listening to every word we were saying. “Doyle's son died in World War One,” I pointed out. “He was desperate to make contact with his spirit—”

“Okay, but
fairies
?” He looked so outraged that I grinned and shrugged in agreement.

“Fairies are a little out there,” I admitted, with a silent apology to Mrs. Winkle.

“I'll say. You might as well believe in hobbits,” he muttered before going back to his reading.

Fiona caught my eye and gave an encouraging little nod. She had been delivering pep talks for several days about how I should use my study time with Jack to build a relationship of trust and mutual respect that would allow him to open up and share his feelings about his brother's disappearance and perhaps help him reach some sort of closure, which is so vital to the grief process and absolutely necessary for future psychological growth . . . or something like that. My mind usually started to drift after about thirty seconds.

I flipped through a history of western New York State but found nothing on Lily Dale. That book went into my reject pile, and I picked up the next one with a sigh. Our table was stacked high with books. I had grabbed every book on local history from the library shelves. They all had titles like
The History of Western New York State from 1700 to the Present Day
. And if the titles sounded boring, the actual books were even worse.

The books on Jack's side all had titles like
Spiritualism Exposed: A History of Frauds and Cons Among Mediums, Psychics and Channelers
. For the last fifteen minutes he had been reading out tidbits of information to demonstrate that any rational, thinking, sane person could never believe in ghosts.

“Listen to this,” he said. He had opened a book titled
The Skeptic's Guide to Psychics
. “‘Most psychics start a reading by quickly running down a list of general facts, such as “I see an older woman, perhaps a grandmother or aunt,” or “I sense that you've recently had a time of trouble.” These statements are so general that there's a good chance that at least some aspect of them is true. Most people over the age of twenty, for example, have an older female relative who has died. The medium then watches for subtle body signals, such as eye movements, facial expressions, and unconscious nodding or shaking of the head. The medium then tailors the rest of his comments accordingly.' ”

I looked at Jack through narrowed eyes, trying to interpret his “subtle body signals.” Hmm . . . a gleeful grin as he read about a medium who used ventriloquism to impersonate spirit voices. An eager glance as he pushed
Spiritualism Exposed
across the table to me. A sarcastic roll of his eyes as he flipped through an old copy of
Fate
magazine (cover story: “Ghosts Made Me a Millionaire!”). If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say that maybe he was, oh, I don't know . . . a skeptic?

“Sounds like a lot of work,” I commented.

“But worth it if you make a lot of money.” He flipped the page. “Did you know that Spiritualism started in Hydesville, New York? Two teenage girls—”

“The Fox sisters,” I said wearily.

He glanced up, surprised. “Yeah. You've heard of them?”

“Of course.” I sounded testy, and Fiona shot me a warning glance, but I was getting impatient. The Fox sisters were as well known to mediums as George Washington is to the average American. In 1916 the Fox family's house had even been moved to Lily Dale as an exhibit (it had burned down in 1955). “Back in 1848, a spirit started coming through to them with a message,” I continued, showing off a little. “He said he was a peddler who had been murdered and buried in the cellar. And then in 1904”—I gave Jack a significant look—“a skeleton was found in the cellar wall.”

“But Margaret later said she and her sister had faked everything,” he said triumphantly. “She showed people how she cracked her toes to make it sound like ghosts were rapping on tables!” He grinned at me in a friendly manner. “Think you could do that?”

“I have a lot of talents,” I said coolly. I wasn't feeling friendly. “Cracking my toes isn't one of them.”

Fiona cleared her throat loudly at this response, but Jack just shrugged. “Too bad. I'd pay good money to see that. In fact I bet a lot of people would!” He put on a booming TV announcer voice. “You too could have a lucrative career as a psychic!”

“I'd never try to fool people for money!” I closed my book with a bang. Fiona looked alarmed.

“I never thought you would,” Jack said, puzzled.

“I hate con artists! I hate fakes!” I could feel the pulse pounding in my temple and my face flushing with anger. In one small, distant part of my brain I realized that I was overreacting, but I didn't care. “But what I
really
hate are narrow-minded, judgmental people who call other people fakes—”

I was interrupted by the librarian, who was now standing over me. She looked as if she had a headache. “Perhaps,” she suggested with a forced smile, “we could keep it down to a dull roar over here?”

“Sorry,” I murmured. I sank down in my chair and opened another book, carefully not looking at either Jack or Fiona. I had found this book,
Guiding Spirits: The Life of a Medium,
propping up one leg of a kitchen chair at home. It was written in the early 1900s by a Lily Dale resident who had channeled spirits for hundreds of people, including a few minor celebrities. I leafed through it, hoping that my eyes would magically stop at an interesting paragraph. After a few minutes I realized that this was a futile quest. I'm sure Anna May Dodds had a fascinating life, but she somehow made the telling of it duller than . . . well, than
The History of Western New York State from 1700 to the Present Day.

I sighed deeply and turned a few more pages until I found a photo of the medium sitting in a spirit cabinet. Her hands and feet were tied so that she couldn't create mysterious noises by bouncing an apple on the floor, banging a tambourine under the table or snapping her fingers. Although, I thought bitterly, she could probably still crack her toes.

I heard a slight cough from the next table.

I turned the page and concentrated studiously on the text.

Another cough, this time louder.

I made a note to myself on a legal pad and kept reading.

Now there was a series of racking coughs that culminated with a book falling off the table and landing on the floor near my foot.

Resigned, I leaned down to pick it up. A piece of paper stuck out of the pages. I pulled the paper out and handed the book back to Fiona, who was unwrapping a cough drop with a look of utter innocence on her face.

I unfolded the note. “Be sweet!!!
Jack is reaching out to you!!!
Seize The Moment!!!” It was signed with an enormous initial
F
and a hasty sketch of two intertwined hearts.

I raised my eyebrows. Nine exclamation points. Clearly, attention must be paid.

Jack leaned over the table to whisper, “So, um, have you found anything more about why Spiritualism was so popular around here a hundred years ago?” He casually picked up the biggest, heaviest book—
Spirited Lives: Nineteenth-Century Mediums and Changing Views of the Afterlife
—and moved it to the side of the table closest to Fiona.

“Tons,” I whispered back, a little puzzled by this question. All I had been doing for the last hour, after all, was reading about that very subject. I watched as he took two more books and stacked them on top of
Spirited Lives
. “I think we need to find more dates, though. We don't have much of a time line yet.”

“No problem. I got a lot of stuff from this book,” he said, picking up another massive volume and putting it on top of the others.

I could see Fiona eyeing the growing wall of books. The stack was now a foot high.

Jack lowered his head toward the table so that the books blocked him from sight and gave a conspirator-ial wave to indicate that I should do the same.

“What?” I whispered as I leaned toward him.

“I think this library is far too crowded and noisy for serious research,” he said seriously. “Do you want to come over later to work on the project? We can do some Internet research on my computer, and I think we'll have fewer, um”—he shifted his eyes in Fiona's direction—“distractions.”

“That's a great idea,” I said.

There was a small coughing fit from the next table.

I ignored it.