The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney (21 page)

Chapter 27

After
what seemed like fifteen hours, although it was probably only ten minutes, I looked up to see that the snow was falling faster. The wind was blowing harder. I was shivering violently. My ankle was throbbing with pain. Jack still hadn't returned. And I felt totally, completely, utterly alone.

To cheer myself up, I began to curse Luke under my breath. After all, it was his fault that I was sitting on a mountaintop in a blizzard with a broken leg, wasn't it?

I mentally replayed all the events that had led up to this moment. Yes. Yes, it was.

I had just reached a quite satisfactory level of obscenity when I heard a whisper in my ear.

“The pain and the shivering are actually a good sign, Sparrow. Means you're still alive.”

I turned my head sharply to see Luke sitting on a nearby boulder.

“It's about time you got here.” “I thought I'd keep you company until Jack comes back. Which won't be long.” He crossed his legs and looked around calmly. “It's interesting to be on this trail again. I didn't notice much the last time.”

“Why not?” My teeth were chattering, and my face hurt from the cold. Any kind of conversation, even random and surreal conversation with a ghost, might keep my mind off all the different kinds of discomfort I was experiencing.

“Too caught up in my own thoughts. Worrying about this and that. You know what that's like.” He gave me a brief smile. “Listen, Sparrow, I think I have a Plan B—” He stopped and glanced past my shoulder. “Ah, here comes Jack. I think I'll leave you two alone for a while.”

“Wait!” I said. “We need your help.”

“You're doing fine, Sparrow. This is the way things have to happen. Trust me.”

He vanished just as Jack came back into view.

“I found a shelter,” he said. “Are you okay? Can you walk if I help you?”

“I'll try.” I stood up and leaned on his arm. We started slowly up the trail, with me hopping on my good leg and Jack awkwardly supporting me and moving me forward at the same time.

The trail twisted back and forth as we walked uphill. Finally Jack said, “Here.” To the left was a high out-cropping of rock. He pulled back a branch and revealed a shallow opening. I bent down, squeezed inside, and found myself in a small cave.

Jack watched me, his eyes dark with concern. “Okay?”

“Yes, fine. Well,” I amended, “better anyway.” I looked around at the rock walls and added, “At least it's not snowing here.”

“Hold on.” He ducked back outside. I could hear leaves rustling and wood snapping, and then he was back, his arms filled with twigs and branches.

He knelt and began piling the brush into a heap. “I'll make a fire. We should be warm enough. We have warm clothing, we're out of the wind, and there's enough brush here to keep a fire going for hours.”

I nodded, but I was thinking about Luke. Jack leaned over and put his hand on my forehead.

“Hey!” I jerked backward and felt a sudden flash of pain. I glared at Jack. “What are you doing?”

He pulled his hand away. “Checking to see if you have a fever,” he said in an injured voice.

“I'm perfectly fine!”

“Well, excuse me for caring!”

“Just leave me alone! It's
your
fault we're in this mess!”

“My fault? I'm not the one who made up some insane story about talking to a dead person!”

“Well, at least you're finally admitting that Luke is dead!”

I stopped abruptly, wishing with all my heart that I could hit a rewind button and scoot about thirty seconds back in time. Jack was staring at me, looking angrier than I'd ever seen him.

He opened his mouth, then seemed to think better of whatever he was going to say. He closed it again, shook his head briefly, and began stacking the twigs in a methodical Boy Scout fashion. I watched for several long, cold, silent minutes as he made tiny adjustments with the same level of concentration needed to dis-mantle a nuclear bomb. Finally he pulled a matchbook from his pocket. He took a match and lit it by snapping it on his thumb. As it burst into flame, I said, “That was actually somewhat impressive.” Then he dropped the lit match on the tinder. My tone wasn't exactly warm, but I thawed the icy edges just a bit, to show that we were still friends. If he wanted to be.

“Yeah, well.” He didn't look at me, but his voice was edging toward room temperature as well. “That's just about my only party trick.”

“At least it's better than flipping your eyelids inside out,” I said without thinking.

The next second Jack was on the other side of the cave, as far from me as he could get, his back pressed hard against the rocky wall. I could see the whites around his eyes as he stared at me.

“How do you know about that?” he asked hoarsely.

“Luke told me,” I said wearily. “Actually, he showed me. It was disgusting.”

“Ri-ight,” Jack said softly. He looked like someone trapped in a cave with—I winced at the thought—a strange and dangerous animal.

You see?
I wished that Professor Trimble, Floyd, and Prajeet were here to witness my direst predictions coming true.
And it's actually worse than I thought. Jack isn't just laughing at me. He's afraid of me.

Jack poked at the fire with a long stick. The flames jumped up, sending wavery shadows across the walls.

I eyed the pile of branches that he had put to one side to feed the fire as it died down. “Is that enough wood to last the night?”

“Probably.”

Probably?
I tried to suppress a vivid image of us freezing to death.

“And if it's not, there
is
a forest right outside.”

I eased my sleeve back to look at my watch. Morning wouldn't come for hours and hours. In the meantime, the silence in our cave deepened until I imagined that I could hear snowflakes landing on the trail outside.

“I left a note,” I said finally. “On my bed. So my family would know where I was. People are probably on their way right now—”

But he was shaking his head. “Not at night. Too dangerous. You don't want the rescuers getting hurt. That's just more people to worry about.”

“Oh.” I hadn't thought of that.

We both were watching the flames, but I could see that Jack had relaxed a little. He was sitting on the ground now, his legs crossed.

But he still had his back to the wall.

I jerked awake and looked at Jack.

“Jack?”

He was staring at the fire. “Yeah.”

“Maybe we should talk or something.”

He didn't look up. “Why?”

“Well, to keep from falling asleep,” I said. “You know, from hypothermia? And it could scare away the bears.”

Now he looked at me. “Bears? What bears?”

“You know. The ones that prowl around in the woods, looking for stranded hikers to eat.”

He rolled his eyes. “Sparrow. Most bears are getting ready to hibernate right about now. And if a hungry bear did happen to find us, a little light conversation is not going to scare him off.”

“Still.”

He sighed, but he wasn't gazing at the fire anymore. “Okay, sure. What do you want to talk about?”

“Well . . . can you explain something to me?”

“Depends.”

“What's up with all the
Star Wars
references?”

Jack blinked. Whatever question he was expecting, it wasn't that. “What?”

“Every time Luke tried to do an impression, it was always something from
Star Wars
.” I mimicked Luke. “ ‘Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope.' ‘Feel the Force, Luke!' And that reminds me—” I glowered at Jack. “Why in the world did he want me to pass on that stupid message? ‘The farts are with you'? What's up with that?”

Jack was laughing.

“No, really,” I said, trying to maintain my outraged expression. “That's not the kind of dignified image that Lily Dale mediums are supposed to project. Not
at all
.”

“His dad loved
Star Wars
. His dad who died, you know. My uncle.” Jack glanced over at me to make sure I understood. I nodded. “When he came back from Vietnam, he was all depressed and angry for a few years. Then
Star Wars
came out, and something about it . . . gave him hope, I guess. Anyway. He even named Luke after Luke Skywalker.”

Jack shook his head. “That movie was Luke's blueprint for life, I swear to God. We must have watched it once a week. He could recite all the dialogue from heart. So, one time when we were nine or ten years old, we were watching it for the ten millionth time and, instead of saying, ‘May the Force be with you,' he said, ‘May the farts be with you.' We thought it was hysterical.”

Apparently Jack still did. He fell all over himself, laughing. I just waited with, I was sure, an expression of patient forbearance on my face.

Finally my lack of reaction sobered him up. Well, a little. He shook his head. “You are such a
girl
.”

“Nice of you to finally notice,” I said.

“Oh, I noticed,” he muttered, staring at the ground.

His face looked slightly flushed, but he was looking into the fire again. It could have been just a reflection of the flames.

I hurried on. “Are you afraid of me?”

Once again Jack looked up, confused. “What are you talking about?”

“You seemed scared. Earlier.” Now I was the one staring at the fire, refusing to meet his gaze. “So I just wondered. Does it, well, bother you that I talk to ghosts?”

“Not that you talk to ghosts in general, no,” he said slowly. “But talking to my brother . . . I mean, if he can come back—”

He stopped. I could see a muscle jumping in his jaw. “I mean, we were tight.”

“I know. Luke said you guys never even fought.”

“He did?” Jack sounded uneasy.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Nothing.” He still looked unsettled.

“How is that even possible?” I asked, thinking of the battles that my sisters and I waged for days, weeks, even months at a time. They were the stuff that epic poems were made of, if anyone still wrote epic poetry. “What were you, saints?”

“Hardly,” he said dryly. For a second he sounded just like Luke. Then he shrugged. “Maybe it was because he came to live with us when I was three. I was old enough to remember the time before Luke and the time after. People always say that kids hate it when a new baby is born because they're not the center of attention anymore. Of course, not too many people get an
older
brother. Anyway, I don't remember being jealous at all. It was more like—” He paused, then smiled to himself. “It was like, there was the grown-up team, that's Mom and Dad. And there was me. But when Luke came, it was like, hey, finally I got someone on
my
side, you know?”

I nodded and eased myself into a different position, which was a mistake. I winced as my ankle began throbbing again. Jack didn't seem to notice. He was frowning at me, but it was a confused frown, not an angry one.

“So if Luke can come back,” he said again, “why wouldn't he come back to me?”

I sighed. “Don't take it personally. Not many people can see ghosts. You have to have a special—”

I stopped in mid-sentence. After I had avoided that word for years, it was surprisingly hard to say.

“Special what?”

“Um, talent,” I muttered, finally giving in.

Somewhere I knew, my spirits were smiling.

Then I heard a voice whisper, with great satisfaction, “That's my girl.”

Luke was sitting cross-legged in front of the cave's entrance. “I wondered where you were,” I said.

Jack followed my gaze and saw, of course, absolutely nothing.

“It's Luke,” I said, answering his unasked question.

Jack sat very still. He was pale, and his eyes didn't move, as if he thought he could manage to see Luke again through a force of will.

“So, about that Plan B . . .”

I turned back to Luke, who was watching Jack with an expression of such intense compassion that I couldn't look away. I felt butterflies in my stomach and suddenly knew, without a second of doubt, that I was going to be asked to do something extremely difficult and unpleasant.

“Sparrow,” Luke said, without looking at me.

“Yes?” My voice was shaky, just above a whisper.

“I know I've already asked so much of you—”

Oh, dear.

“—but if I could impose on you for just a bit longer.” He turned to smile at me. I couldn't help myself. I smiled back, even though I knew I wasn't going to like what I was about to hear.

Chapter 28

“You're
kidding.” I was aghast.

“Not at all.” Luke was calm.

“I can't do that!”

“You've never tried.”

“What are you talking about?” Jack was still nervous, but that was quickly being overcome by irritation as he listened to one side of an increasingly heated argument.

I ignored him. “In fact I've never heard of any medium being able to do that,” I said to Luke. “Ever. Even the ones who fudge the truth a little bit, even
they
never claim that spirits can take over their bodies.”

“It is a rare talent,” he admitted. “But we know you can do it, Sparrow.” He raised one eyebrow. “After all, you are the seventh daughter of a seventh—”

“Oh,
please
stop right there.”

He chuckled.

“Why can't I just pass on your messages the way I did before?”

He glanced at Jack, who was running his hands through his hair and looking rather wild-eyed.

“Quit fooling around, Sparrow!” Jack said. “This isn't funny.”

“I'm not trying to be funny!” I snapped at Jack. I turned back to Luke. “That was good enough for you a few hours ago,” I pointed out.

“Good enough for me, but not for Jack. I think we need to try something more convincing.”

Oh, I liked that “we” part.
He
wasn't the one who was going to be invaded by another person's consciousness.
He
wasn't the one who was going to have someone else speak through his mouth.
He
wasn't the one who was going to relinquish control of his body.

I shivered.
We
indeed.

“But we're going to find your body!” I protested. “I'd say that's pretty damn convincing. And what if I try to do this and it makes me go crazy or something?” He smiled, and I said indignantly, “It could happen!”

“I think it already has,” Jack muttered. Fortunately I was becoming quite good at ignoring him.

“I won't let any harm come to you,” Luke said. “I promise.”

I crossed my arms and stared at him. One of my great talents, I reminded myself, was a deep and abiding stubbornness.

I opened my mouth to say no, absolutely not, no way, not a chance. . . .

“Sparrow. I need to talk to my brother.”

And I heard myself say, rather begrudgingly, “Yeah, all right, okay.”

He smiled at me—a warm smile without a trace of mockery—and said quietly, “Thank you.”

“What's going on?” Jack was getting freaked out now. “Sparrow?”

Then I explained to Jack what we were going to do.

Ten minutes later Jack and I were sitting next to each other, our arms almost touching. Luke crouched in front of me.

“Ready?” he asked calmly.

I licked my lips nervously and nodded.

He reached forward to touch my face. . . .

The freezing cold came first. I caught my breath as my lungs went into shock. On the plus side, I could no longer feel the pain in my ankle. On the minus side, I couldn't feel anything else either. I felt as though I had been turned into a frozen statue.

Then came the fog. My eyes blurred. Everything around me—the fire, the stack of wood, the flashlight lying on the ground, the drifts of leaves in the corner of the cave—was just indistinct shapes. I vaguely knew that I was someone and that I was somewhere, but nothing else. I could hear the fire crackling, but the sound was far away, and I could no longer feel the heat of the flames or the cold air that blew in from the entrance to the cave. Maybe, a remote part of my mind thought, this is what it feels like to be a ghost.

Then the fog lifted, and the cold went away, and I was looking at Jack, but it wasn't me gazing out at the world through this pair of eyes. It was Luke. I was Luke. The part of me that I think of as
me
felt like a small bee, buzzing around inside my head, watching and listening, an observer inside my own body. That tiny part that was still me could see Jack, but he seemed impossibly distant, as if I were looking at him through the wrong end of a telescope.

“Jack. It's Luke.”

Jack jerked away, looking more scared than ever.

I didn't blame him. Luke's voice was coming out of my mouth. I found it more than a little disturbing too, but it was too late to back out now.

“I did try to appear to you, you know. A couple of times I thought I was close, but in the end I just couldn't get through.”

Jack stopped looking quite so scared and started looking more interested. “When?” he asked.

“That night you dreamed about me hiking through the woods? And I told you not to worry about me, that I was fine? That was
supposed
to be a clue.” Luke shrugged. “A little cryptic, I'll admit. But I thought that when I kept moving that Luke Skywalker action figure around that you'd get the idea eventually. Especially since every time I was in your room, the temperature dropped by—well, by a lot. Didn't you ever notice that it was freezing?”

Jack looked stunned. “I thought I was just imagining things,” he whispered.

Luke touched his shoulder. “It's all right. That's why I had to come up with another way to talk to you.”

Jack moved away. Just a few inches, but it was enough. I could feel Luke's reaction—sorrow, under-standing—and wondered what it was about. Jack looked even more apprehensive, a feat that I would have thought impossible. He seemed to be bracing himself, folding his arms tightly across his chest, clenching his jaw, and staring directly into Luke's eyes with a slight air of defiance.

“So, you're here,” he said flatly. “Talk.”

I swooped and buzzed a little more, out of sheer confusion. Only half an hour ago Jack had been upset that Luke hadn't appeared to him. Now he sounded annoyed for some reason—and after I had agreed to have a ghost take over my body!

I buzzed a little louder in indignation. Luke pressed his hand to his forehead, as if to calm me down. “It's okay,” he murmured. “Just wait.”

“What does that mean?” Jack was scowling.

“I was talking to Sparrow,” Luke said. “She's pissed.”

Jack grinned and relaxed a tiny bit.

“You know I was in a terrible mood that night. I would have fought with anybody who tried to stop me from leaving. You just happened to be in the way.”

What was this?
I buzzed around a little more. Luke ignored me. All his attention was focused on Jack.

“We never had a fight before that night,” Jack muttered. “When you didn't come back, I thought—”

“None of this is your fault.” Luke's voice got softer. “None of it.”

Jack's jaw tightened. He shook his head and said flatly, “I threw a punch at your head.”

“I ducked,” his brother said.

“I tried to smash you to the floor! With a double-leg takedown!”

“Yeah.” Luke smirked. “Like you actually had a shot at making
that
work.”

Jack grinned a little. Then his smile faded, and he looked away. “I said—” He hesitated. “I said I hated you.”

“I didn't believe you,” Luke said firmly. “Not for a second.”

“Oh. Well. Good. Because, you know . . .” Jack's voice trailed off.

“Yeah, I know.” I watched from far away as my hand reached forward to touch his shoulder. “So listen. I'll still be looking out for you, okay?”

Jack gave a quick nod. “And when I offer a little brotherly advice, I expect you to take it, all right?” I could feel Luke being secretly amused about something.

Jack smiled faintly. Then he looked down to stare intently at a spider that was crawling toward his foot.

“Dude, you're not going to cry on me, are you?” Luke's voice was rough, teasing. “'Cause you know what happens when you cry. First, I get all choked up—”

Jack glanced up, his hair falling into his eyes. “—and then your voice starts quivering,” he said in a mock-weary voice.

“—and before you know it, I'll be crying, too—” Luke continued.

“—just like a
girl.
” They finished together.

“I know,” Jack said, smiling. “You are
such
a loser.”

Luke put his arms around Jack and whispered in his ear, “I love you too.”

Then I was myself again, back in my body, kneeling on the ground with Jack in my arms.

He had his arms around me too and was holding on as if he didn't want to let go.

So he didn't, and I didn't, and we stayed that way until morning.