I knew the feeling. It was how E and Mickey made me feel. It was the sense of calm that Rod’s scene shop gave me. The warm vibe of joking around with Uncle John or sitting in Meems’ kitchen as she cooked. Clare wanted that, needed it but hadn’t yet found it. Her desperation pierced through my fear straight to my soul.

  “Is this the place for auditioning? For the show?” I asked the girls in Clara’s voice. The words just came out of me. I was Clara Gallo through and through. I wasn’t just watching; I was living what she had lived, seeing what she’d seen.

  They turned to look at me. One of them, a blonde, regarded me with disgust. She wrinkled her delicate little nose as if I were a cluster of spiders. But, the others just looked through me, like I hadn’t said anything at all, which was somehow worse.

  “It is, yes,” the blonde said, “but the auditions are for actresses not sad little wop grommets. Look at her. She’s like a drowned alley cat.”

  All of the girls laughed. I felt my face get hot. Then something swept over me, a swell of rage so strong, I shook. “I just want to try out! I have a right!” I said in Clare’s voice, standing up straight, my hands balled in tight little fists at my sides. It was a familiar posture, the one I’d used to yell at Reverend Lesser the other night.

  “I am quite sure there’s a train leaving right now with your name on it, dear. But do try to clean yourself up first or you will make it go off the rails,” the blonde said, waving her hand in front of her nose. This sent the rest of the girls into hysterics. The laughter washed over me and made me throb with frustration. I wanted to kill them all. I felt Clare’s anger from that moment and a strange satisfaction that felt like it was coming from the present moment.

  “I watched her until she died in the 1970s. The cancer. It was very bad,” Clara’s voice said in my head. I tried to respond to her and found that I couldn’t.

  “Are you still here? Get out of here. Go back to where you came from, scram!” the blonde girl said, turning her back on me and continuing her conversation as if I (as if Clara) didn’t exist and had never existed.

  The girls’ laughter and the blonde’s cruelty wrapped around me and made me feel like I couldn’t breathe. It had been hard for Clara, I saw, for her whole family. But now the war was over and they were looking for a place to stay and make a life. Clara had set her heart on Bluebonnet as soon as she learned it had a theater. She’d been waiting for this town. She’d been counting on it being the one they could finally stop and settle in. And now these girls had treated her as if she was nothing, confirming her deepest fear, that she would never belong anywhere, that it didn’t matter where she went, she didn’t matter and she never would. I felt her emotions tighten around my heart as if they were my own. She was so wrapped up in her rage that she wanted to disappear. She wanted to get away from the girls, she had to. So she, I, we ran.

  The house was dark but the lights on stage were bright and blinding. I caught sight of a way out so I ran without stopping toward the exit sign at the back of the house that was lit up like a beacon. I heard laughter behind me and then someone screaming for me to stop. Well, I wasn’t going to stop. I was getting out of this horrible place and getting back to my parents. We’d find a better town with a better theater and better people! I ran with tears streaming down my face and sobs stuck in my throat like I’d swallowed all of their hatred and disgust for me. I ran as fast as I could and then suddenly I was falling, plunging down into the depths of the orchestra pit. My head struck something hard. I felt warm wetness on my forehead and then nothing.

  When I woke up, I looked around for Papaw or Charlie but all I saw was the night sky. It was very cold. I could see big black birds flying overhead against the dark blue brilliant sky. A sky with so many stars, so bright that they didn’t seem real. I tried to speak but I couldn’t. I tried to move but I was paralyzed. I heard voices.

  “This one has been closed for a bit. We will be filling her up with concrete right soon. Big enough, I reckon,” a man said.

  “So be it,” another voice said.

  And then I was lifted. I tried to scream but nothing happened. Then I was falling yet again, my body bouncing off one side of the narrow hole and then the other like I was a pinball instead of a little girl, until it got too narrow and suddenly I was stuck. I looked up from where my wrecked throbbing tiny body was wedged; I’d fallen about thirty feet I guessed. I could still see the stars, though, and I could feel how important that was to Clara. I tried to focus on them. Then I saw nothing but blackness.

  From out of the darkness I could hear voices coming from far away.

  “Do something! Do what she did! Charlie, try harder!” Papaw’s faded voice screamed.

  “I can’t do anything. I’m sorry. She’s not letting me in. I don’t know how!” Charlie said.

  “Get out of her NOW, Clara Margaret Gallo! I command you to!” Jamie said, like a priest in a possession movie.

  I would’ve laughed if I weren’t trapped. Or dead. Or whatever I was. I didn’t know where I was but I wasn’t scared exactly. But I might possibly be hysterical, I thought. I couldn’t feel Clara anymore. She’d gone silent. I didn’t feel her rage or hear her voice. I just felt cold and lost in a dark place. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I decided to try and get out.

  Let me out, I thought. I saw what you wanted me to, now let me out.

  Nothing.

  I’ll tell everyone what happened to you. I’ll find the men who put your body down that, it was a well, wasn’t it?

  I felt something stir inside of me. “Yes. An oil well. A dead one for a dead girl. I stayed there for a while watching. Months or years. They filled it up with liquid cement. I do not care.”

  But the men? The girls who were cruel to you? I thought.

  “All dead,” she said. “I do not want them to be mean anymore. They should not be mean. She should not be mean. Bad things happen.”

  Kara, I thought. She latched onto Kara because Kara reminded her of them. Of the girls who’d unwittingly caused her death. She ran to get away from them and fell into the orchestra pit, I realized. So much falling. They thought she was dead so they stuffed her body where they thought no one would find it. Clare, I’ll tell her, I thought. I know how you felt and I understand. I will, I’ll tell Kara. And I knew that I’d do just that.

  Then from out of the depths of whatever hell I was suspended in, I felt Uncle John’s arms wrap around me. I don’t know how I knew it was him, but I did and I was sure. Arms I’m sure I’d felt lift me when I was a child but couldn’t remember, it was so long ago. I’d never felt his touch as a ghost, how could I have? Ghosts can’t touch you, as a rule. But the rules were different, here in the dark. Rules were being broken all over the place.

  “How did you?” I asked.

  “I just did it. I’m very good at things. I’m going to rescue you,” Uncle John said into my ear.

  “Can you get out?”

  Uncle John was silent for a while but I could still feel him. “Eh, yeah, that’s a big negatory,” he said.

  “Great. Now we’re both trapped in here,” I said to him in the darkness. It was like we were two souls floating in space, clinging to each other. It made me wonder if that’s what it was like where my parents were and I started to feel panic.

  Uncle John laughed. “I’m here and I love you, little niece. If we’re stuck in some haunter hell, oh well. We can spend our time rhyming!”

  He’d come for me. He’d done something that supposedly couldn’t be done because he loved me. Maybe Papaw and Jamie Waterman were right. Maybe I was special. Hadn’t I just seen something that happened decades ago? Maybe I could save us both. I thought about Bluebonnet, about the town that was so full of bigotry that it had made my uncle pretend to be something he wasn’t when he was alive. A town so full of hatred that poor Dallas Lovejoy killed himself to get away from it. People who were so scared of anything not like themselves that they’d murder a goat or throw a fake ghost at a car or beat up a high school student for being related to a suspected spectator. The girls who shunned Clara, unwittingly causing her death, were products of the same ignorance, the same blind acceptance. Uh-uh. I wouldn’t put up with it anymore. I was mad as hell.

  “Oh no, we’re getting out of here.” I concentrated really hard on the stage as I knew it. The theater of 1993. I thought of Papaw’s worried face, of Rod, of Jamie and Charlie standing around my body. I let myself feel how cold it was before she entered me. I conjured up the squeaking sound of the big swing. I made myself smell Papaw’s cologne and Rod’s personal mix of beer and paint. And then we were moving together through something. It felt like being sucked down a windy tunnel.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAND STAY OUT!” Uncle John screamed.

  I opened my eyes. I was curled in a ball on the ground of the stage, a stage that had, I noticed with relief, an apron and a cover over the orchestra pit. Uncle John’s arms were wrapped around me but I couldn’t feel them anymore. Papaw, Rod, Jamie Waterman, Mr. Masterson, and Charlie peered down at me.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “She Beetlejuiced you,” Uncle John said grimly. “Only she did NOT make you do any funny dances, you were just lying there like you were dead.”

  “I knew she wasn’t dead,” Mr. Masterson said. And then he started singing “That’s Your Funeral” from Oliver!

  “This is a terrible song. It’s really very bad, don’t you know any Wham?” Uncle John asked and I started giggling. I was still horrified by what I’d seen and felt and I was still super pissed off but I started laughing all the same. I don’t know why but the giggles erupted out of me. Uncle John joined in and we just laughed at each other, grinning ear to ear.

  “Are you OK, Samantha Jane?” Papaw asked, grabbing my hand.

  “I’m fine. But, Papaw, it was so sad. They thought she was dead,” I said and then I was sobbing. “I saw and felt everything. Her family was desperate for work. She thought she would try out for a show and if she got in, they’d have to stay here. She didn’t want to keep traveling from town to town. But then the girls were mean to her and she fell down into the orchestra pit when she was trying to run away from them. It was just a dumb accident. She didn’t die, though. Mr. Masterson was right about that. The men put her in an abandoned oil well because they thought she was dead but she wasn’t. She knew what was happening the whole time. Oh, Papaw!” I couldn’t stop crying.

  “What does she need us to do for some peace? Did she say?” Jamie asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “They’re all dead. There’s no one to prosecute. She’s just really really angry.”

  “Something about the body?” Rod asked.

  Everyone shook their heads no. “Ghosts don’t work that way. It’s an old wives’ tale. They’re not attached to their bodies like that,” Jamie explained to Rod.

  “We’re totally above that, hot stuff,” Uncle John said even though he knew Rod couldn’t hear him.

  “I think,” I said. “I think maybe she just wants girls to be nicer to each other.”

  “Seriously?” Uncle John deadpanned. “How Sweet Valley High of her.”

  I shrugged. “She was thirteen when she died. Nothing is more important when you’re a teenage girl, trust me,” I said, thinking about Ali and the others making fun of me right there on that very stage. “She thought the theater would be a place she could belong but they rejected her without even giving her a chance. The last thing she felt from anyone before she died was disdain. I think that’s why she targeted Kara. Disdain is Kara’s middle name.”

  And then Clara was there in front of me, right in the center of all of the people who had always loved and protected me. People she didn’t have when she needed them. She looked like a different little girl. She glowed with beauty and joy; all the rage was gone. “You left me and you took the funny dead man. But, you know. I feel better. I trust you to do what is right, Sam the Spectator. Excuse me, I think I will go now,” she said simply and then she broke off into hundreds of black birds, flew around the cavernous space, and then disappeared with a shimmer, leaving me bathed in a feeling of wellbeing and love instead of fear and sadness like before. I could feel that she’d gone for good. Look, I know what you’re thinking and I don’t know how I could feel it. I just could.

  “Did y’all see that?” Rod asked.

  “Yup,” Charlie said.

  “I did,” Papaw said.

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Yes,” Jamie Waterman said.

  “Visualize the earth descending on you clod by clod. You can’t come back when you’re buried underneath the sod! That’s your funeral!” Mr. Masterson sang.

  “Ugh, is it happy hour yet?” Uncle John said.

  Chapter 12:

  UNCLE JOHN AND CLOVIS were cuddled up in the big armchair. Papaw sat in a chair that he’d pulled in from the kitchen table; Meems, Rod, and Jamie Waterman were crammed onto the couch. Charlie sat on her stool in the corner. Everyone living had some sort of dessert on their laps. Everyone dead had a “cocktail.” I sat cross-legged on the floor drinking a Dr. Pepper in a plastic Dallas Cowboys mug. We’d done it. We’d conquered the haunter but our work was far from over. Somewhere out there, while we celebrated our victory, Reverend Lesser was mounting a full attack on spectators. It kept me from feeling festive.

  “Have you talked to anyone? In the network? Anyone seen anything like what happened last night?” Jamie asked Papaw.

  “No one has heard of anything like it. I wouldn’t believe it myself if I didn’t watch it happen. I made sure not to let on that it was my granddaughter who was inhabited by a haunter and survived, by the way. Folks were impressed and not just a little curious. I’m not letting this go. We need to figure out how she jumped into my granddaughter and make sure it doesn’t happen again. What if she hadn’t been able to get herself out?” Papaw said, a slight tremor in his voice.

  “Well, she did,” Jamie said. “She proved herself to be talented and cool in a crisis. I was impressed.”

  “Yes. Yes, I reckon that’s true as well. You’re incredible, Sam. Seriously, I had no idea. Your parents would be very proud of you,” Papaw smiled down at me.

  “Cool,” I said and shrugged, taking another gulp of sweet fizzy yumminess. I still hadn’t completely processed what happened and I didn’t even want to think about the possibility of it happening again. I’d leave that to Papaw and his pals. I was just relieved it was over.

  “Sam, don’t make light of this. You can do something no one else can do! It’s a gift. Your mom and your uncle were very powerful together but you’re powerful all by yourself,” Jamie said. “What did they say about what old Johnny did?”

  “There’s precedence of ghosts inhabiting people. Well, rumors anyway. But usually it’s a haunter jumping into a regular non-spectator vessel, someone who can’t control it and gets taken over. And those stories are few and far between. Old and watered down, you know, I don’t think any of us really believed any of them. But no one has heard of a regular ghost doing it or of a person hosting two ghosts at once. What Johnny did was amazing. I don’t know if we’ll ever know how he did it, but one thing we do know is that there’s a lot more possible than we’d ever thought. It’s really a very interesting time to be alive, y’all. Or dead,” he said, including the ghosts.

  “I WAS POWERED BY LOVE,” Uncle John yelled.

  “There might be something to that,” Jamie said. “Johnny says he was powered by love,” he explained to Meems and Rod.

  “That’s my boy,” Meems said, beaming, stroking her fancy cast with her good hand.

  Rod smiled down at his lemon bar, shaking his head.

  “Sam, you’re seeing Kara and Levi tonight, correct? Will you tell Kara what happened? I mean, leave out the possession and all that but will you tell her what Clara showed you? You can say she told Jamie. The story will be everywhere by tomorrow anyway.”

  “Yes, we’re filming tomorrow morning,” Jamie said, sitting up straighter. He balanced his plate of lemon bars on one leg and wiped his mouth with a blue paper napkin. “I’ve spoken to Mr. Sanchez at the combination gas station/convenience store/Mexican restaurant and we’re all set to go. It will be a closed set but everyone here is welcome to attend. I’m going for a cozy casual down home vibe. Chips and beers, candles in red globes, you know. My producer loves it.” Jamie ran his hand through his famous hair. I stared at it, waiting for it to flop over but it stayed sticking straight up as always.

  “Can I bring E and Mickey?” I asked.

  “Sure. You can bring your boyfriend and Kara too if you want.”

  “They’ll be packing, I’m sure. They leave tomorrow afternoon,” I said, picking at a stray thread on my jeans. I didn’t want to think about Levi and Kara leaving. At least I had tonight with them. I’d asked them to hang out with me, E, and Mickey at the orchard. It was my version of a going away party and a last-ditch attempt to make them all get along before it was too late.

  “We’ll be there, right, baby?” Uncle John said.

  “I would not miss a chance for morning margaritas,” Clovis said. “I love the nineties!”

  “I love you! And electronic pop music! And puppies and beer and pork rinds!” Uncle John said.

  I smiled up at my uncle and his ghost boyfriend. I hadn’t forgotten that Reverend Lesser was still a threat and I knew my own boyfriend was about to move a six-hour drive away from me but in that moment, I was pretty darn happy.

  THE HARDEST PART WAS deciding who I should ride with: E and Mickey or Levi and Kara. The second hardest part was deciding what to wear. What outfit says, ‘I’m a badass who got possessed by a ghost and survived’ but also ‘Look how cute I am, please don’t forget me when you move to a super cool city with super cool girls?’ I ended up wearing a grey baby doll dress with a black lace collar that Meems made me and my old trusty 10-eyelet oxblood Docs. I put on dark maroon Wet & Wild lipstick and black eyeliner. On my way out the door, I stuffed some tissues and the eyeliner pencil in my backpack. I never cried but it was my last night with Levi so who knew what would happen? I might turn into one of those crying types, like the woman who moves to Cape Cod to ease the pain of empty nest syndrome in one of those books with the pastel covers that Meems’ read. She starts a pottery studio because gosh darnitt she’s always wanted to do that and this is finally her time to shine!

 

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