The Summoning (18 page)

“Mrs. Talbot?”

“Yes, dear?” she said, peeking back in.

“Can we call Liz yet? I’d really like to talk to her. To explain about that last night.”

“There’s nothing to explain, dear. Liz is the one who feels horrible about it, frightening you like that. I’m sure you can call her on the weekend.”

“This
weekend
’?”

She slipped into the room, shutting the door behind her. “The other doctors tell me Liz is having some difficulty adjusting.”

Rae popped up from bed. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s called post-traumatic stress. That last night here was very difficult for her. The doctors in her new hospital don’t want her reminded of it.”

“What if I don’t mention it?”

“Even talking to you will be a reminder, dear. By Sunday, they say she should be fine. Next week at the latest.”

Fingers of dread plucked at me.

Not now, dear
.

Maybe next weekend
.

Maybe next week
.

Maybe never
.

I glanced at Rae, but pictured Liz instead, perched on the edge of the bed, wriggling her toes, purple and orange giraffes dancing.

Dead Liz.

Ghost Liz.

That was ridiculous, of course. Even if I could dream up a reason why Lyle House would want to kill kids, what about their families? These weren’t street kids and runaways. They had parents who would notice if they vanished. Notice and care.

Are you so sure
?
What about Rae’s parents
?
So attentive, always calling and coming by to see her
?
And Simon and Derek’s dad
?
The Invisible Man
?

I rolled onto my side and wrapped my pillow around my ears, as if that could stifle the voice.

Then I remembered what Simon had said earlier. Astral projecting. There was a race of supernaturals who could leave their bodies and teleport. Could necromancers see those teleporting spirits, too? I bet they could—that spirit would be the part that left the body, at death or during this astral projecting.

So that’s what Liz was. A … what did he call it? Shaman. She was astral-projecting here and I was seeing her. That could explain why I could see and hear her, but not the ghosts. It might also explain the poltergeist. Liz was doing that projecting stuff without realizing it, and throwing things around.

That had to be the answer. It
had
to be.

***

“Here,” Derek whispered, pressing an empty Mason jar into my hand. He’d pulled me aside after class and we were now standing at the base of the boy’s staircase. “Take this up to your room and hide it.”

“It’s a … jar.”

He grunted, exasperated that I was so dense I failed to see the critical importance of hiding an empty Mason jar in my room.

“It’s for your urine.”

“My what?”

He rolled his eyes, a growl-like sound sliding through his teeth as he leaned down, closer to my ear. “Urine. Pee. Whatever. For the testing.”

I lifted the jar to eye level. “I think they’ll give me something smaller.”

This time he definitely growled. A quick glance around. Then he reached for my arm before stopping short and waving me onto the steps. He took them two at a time and was on the landing in a flash, then glowered back at me, as if I was dawdling.

“You took your meds today, right?” he whispered.

I nodded.

“Then use this jar to save it.”

“Save …?”

“Your urine. If you give them some of today’s tomorrow, it’ll seem like you’re still taking your meds.”

“You want me to … dole it out? Into specimen jars?”

“Got a better idea?”

“Um, no, but…” I lifted the jar and stared into it.

“Oh, for God’s sake. Save your piss. Don’t save your piss. It’s all the same to me.”

Simon peeked around the corner, brows lifted. “I was going to ask what you guys were doing, but hearing that, I think I’ll pass.”

Derek shooed me down the stairs. I tucked the jar into my knapsack. I’d really rather not use it, but if I squirmed at the thought of stockpiling urine, it would only prove I was the flighty girlie girl he expected.

I DID USE THE JAR, as gross as it was. I’d already provided my “sample” for that day, so the next time I had to go, I did it in the upstairs bathroom, in the jar, hiding it behind the cleaning stuff under the sink. Cleaning the bathroom was one of our chores, so I hoped that meant the nurses never went under there.

We didn’t do much work in class that day. We tried, but Ms. Wang wasn’t cooperating. It was Friday and she saw the weekend looming, so she just set us up with our assignments, then played solitaire on her laptop.

Rae spent most of the morning in therapy, first with Dr. Gill, then in a special session with Dr. Davidoff, while Tori went for hers with Dr. Gill. That meant when Ms. Wang let us out early for lunch, I was left to pass the time with Simon and Derek, which was just fine by me. There was still so much I wanted to know. Asking wasn’t nearly so easy, especially since it wasn’t stuff we could discuss in the media room.

Going outside would have been the obvious choice, but Miss Van Dop was working in the garden. So Simon offered to help me finish the laundry. Derek said he’d sneak down later.

“So this is where our resident ghost lurks,” Simon said, circling the laundry room.

“I think so but—”

He held up a hand, then lowered himself to the floor and started sorting the last basket. “You don’t need to tell me there might not be a ghost here, and I’m not going to make you try to contact it. When Derek comes down, he might. Don’t let him push you around.”

“I don’t push her anywhere.” Derek’s voice preceded him around the corner.

“If I tell someone to do something and they do it?” Derek said, rounding the corner. “That’s not my problem. All she has to do is say no. Her tongue works, doesn’t it?”

Great. The guy can manage to make me feel stupid even when he’s telling me I don’t have to let him make me feel stupid.

“So if they decide to transfer you, what are you going to do about it?”

Simon balled up a shirt. “For God’s sake, Derek, they’re not—”

“They’re thinking about it. She needs a plan.”

“Does she?” Simon pitched the shirt into the colored pile. “What about you, bro? If word comes down that you’re next to go, do you have a plan?”

They exchanged a look. I couldn’t see Simon’s face, but Derek’s jaw set.

I stood and gathered a load for the washer. “If they do, I don’t see that I have a lot of options. I can’t exactly refuse.”

“So you’ll just give in? Go along like a good girl?”

“Ease up, bro.”

Derek ignored him, scooped up the laundry I’d missed, and dropped it into the washer, moving beside me as he did. “They won’t let you talk to Liz, will they?”

“Huh—what?”

“Tori asked this morning. I heard. Talbot told her no and said she’d told you the same thing when you asked last night.” He grabbed the soap box from my hands, lifted the measuring cup from the shelf, and waggled it. “This helps.”

“They said I can call Liz on the weekend.”

“Still, seems a little odd. You barely knew the girl, and you’re the first one wanting to call her?”

“It’s called being considerate. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

He batted my hand from the dials. “Darks, cold. Or you’ll end up with the dye bleeding.” A glance back at me. “See? I’m considerate.”

“Sure, when it’s mostly
your
stuff in there.”

Behind us, Simon snorted a laugh.

“As for Liz,” I continued, “I just wanted to be sure she was okay.”

“Why wouldn’t she be?”

He’d scoff at my stupidity, thinking Liz was dead, murdered. Oddly enough, that’s exactly what I wanted. Reassurance that my head was stuffed too full of movie plots.

I got as far as the part about waking to see Liz on the bed, chattering away.

“So…” Derek cut in. “Liz returned from the great beyond to show you her really cool socks?”

I told them about her “dream” and her attic appearance.

When I finished, Simon sat there, staring, a shirt dangling from his hands. “That sure sounds like a ghost.”

“Just because she’s a ghost doesn’t mean she was murdered,” Derek said. “She could have had a completely unrelated accident on the way to the hospital. If that happened, they wouldn’t want to tell us right away.”

“Or maybe she’s not dead at all,” I said. “Could she be astral projecting? Shamans do that, right? It might also explain how she was moving stuff around. It wasn’t a poltergeist spirit—it was
her
spirit or however it works. You said our powers kick in around puberty, right? If we don’t know what we are when that happens, this is just the kind of place we’d end up. A home for teens with weird problems.”

He shrugged. But he didn’t argue.

“Would being a shaman explain what she was doing? Throwing stuff around? Could she have been popping out of her body without knowing it?”

“I … don’t know.” The admission came slowly, reluctantly. “Let me think about it.”

***

We were halfway through dessert when Mrs. Talbot reappeared.

“I know you kids have free time after lunch, and I hate to interfere with that, but I’m going to have to ask you to spend it in this end of the house, and give Victoria and her mother some privacy. Please stay out of the classroom until it’s time for classes, and don’t play in the media room. You can go outside or in the living room.”

Now, last week, if anyone told me to give someone privacy, I’d make sure I stayed away. That was only polite. After a few days at Lyle House, though, when someone said “Don’t go there,” I didn’t say “okay,” but “why?” … and decided to find out. In this house, knowledge was power, and I was a quick learner.

The question was: How to get close enough to Dr. Gill’s office to overhear Tori and her mom, and learn why we had to give them privacy for a friendly mother-daughter chat. I could ask the guy with the supercharged hearing, but didn’t want to owe Derek any favors.

Mrs. Talbot said the girls were allowed upstairs, but not the boys, because getting to their rooms meant passing Dr. Gill’s office. That gave me an idea. I went upstairs, crept into Mrs. Talbot’s room, through the adjoining door into Miss Van Dop’s, then down the boys’ hall to the stairs.

My daring move was rewarded the moment I crouched on the stairs.

“I cannot believe you did this to me, Tori. Do you have any idea how much you’ve embarrassed me? You overheard what the nurses said about Chloe Saunders when I was here Sunday, and you couldn’t wait to tell the other kids.”

It took me a moment to realize what Tori’s mom was talking about. So much had happened this week. Then it hit—Tori telling the others I thought I saw ghosts. Rae had said Tori’s mom had some business connection with Lyle House, so when she’d dropped off that new shirt for Tori on Sunday, the nurses must have mentioned the new girl and her “hallucinations.” Tori had been eavesdropping.

“If that wasn’t enough, they tell me you’ve been sulking over that girl’s transfer.”

“Liz,” Tori whispered. “Her name is Liz.”

“I know her name. What I don’t know is why it would send you off the deep end.”

“Deep end?”

“Sulking in your room. Bickering with Rachelle. Gloating over that new girl’s setback yesterday. Is your medication not working right, Victoria? I told you, if that new prescription doesn’t help, you’re to let me know—”

“It
is
helping, Mom.” Tori’s voice was thick, muffled, like she’d been crying.

“Are you still taking them?”

“I always take them. You know that.”

“All I know is that if you’re taking them, you should be getting better and this week proves you aren’t.”

“But that doesn’t have anything to do with my problem. It’s—it’s the new girl. She’s driving me nuts. Little Miss Goody Two-shoes. Always trying to show me up. Always trying to prove she’s better.” She switched to a bitter falsetto. “Oh, Chloe’s such a good girl. Oh, Chloe’s going to be out of here in no time. Oh, Chloe’s trying so hard.” She switched back to her normal voice. “I’m trying hard. Way harder than her. But Dr. Davidoff already came to visit her.”

“Marcel only wants to motivate you kids.”

“I
am
motivated. Do you think I like being stuck here with these losers and freaks? But I don’t just want to get out—I want to get better. Chloe doesn’t care about that. She lied, telling everyone she doesn’t think she sees ghosts. Chloe Saunders is a two-faced little bi—” She swallowed the rest of word and said, “—witch.”

I’d never been called anything like that, probably not even behind my back.

But I
had
lied. I’d said one thing while believing another. That was the definition of two-faced, wasn’t it?

“I understand you don’t care for this girl—”

“I
hate
her. She moves in, gets my best friend here kicked out, shows me up with the nurses and doctors, steals my guy—” She stopped short, then mumbled. “Anyway, she deserved it.”

“What’s this about a boy?” Her mother’s words came sharp, brittle.

“Nothing.”

“Are you involved with one of the boys here, Tori?”

“No, Mom, I’m not
involved
with anyone.”

“Don’t take that tone with me. And blow your nose. I can barely understand you through all that blubbering.” A pause. “I’m only going to ask you one more time. What’s this about a boy?”

“I just—” Tori inhaled loudly enough for me to hear. “I like one of the guys here, and Chloe knows that, so she’s been chasing him to show me up.”

Chasing him?

“Which boy is it?” Her mother’s voice was so low I had to strain to hear it.

“Oh, Mom, it doesn’t matter. It’s just—”

“Don’t you ‘oh, Mom’ me. I think I have the right to be concerned—” Her voice dropped another notch. “Don’t tell me it’s Simon, Tori. Don’t you dare tell me it’s Simon. I warned you to stay away from that boy—”

“Why? He’s fine. He doesn’t even take meds. I like him and—Ow! Mom! What are you doing?”

“Getting your attention. I told you to stay away from him and I expect to be obeyed. You already have a boyfriend. More than one if I recall. Perfectly nice boys who are waiting for you to get out of here.”