Haunt me, p.1
Haunt Me, page 1
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Epilogue
About the Author
Follow Me Sneak Peek
Copyright
For the longest time, I thought I’d do anything to hear Isabella’s voice again.
I would cut off all my hair and donate it to charity. I’d mow every lawn in the neighborhood, I’d get straight As on every test and piece of homework, I’d even eat all my vegetables at every meal.
Anything.
All I wanted was to hear her laugh again as we hid from our parents in our blanket fort, or have her braid my hair, or lie in our bedroom until way too late at night, talking about which teachers we thought were aliens or what we wanted to be when we grew up.
Isabella never got to grow up.
I thought I’d do anything to bring her back. To give her another chance at life. To have her be my sister again.
And then, with the help of my friends, we did bring her back …
… or at least we brought something back.
“More hot chocolate?” my mom asked from the top of the stairs.
My friends giggled. We’d probably already had enough sugar to fuel a small country, but it was cold outside and it felt like it could snow at any minute, even though it was only the beginning of October. More hot chocolate was a no-brainer.
“Yes, please!” I called out.
My friend Tara giggled again and hid her face behind her hands; she was just admitting which classmate she had a crush on, and my mom’s timing couldn’t have been worse. Mom definitely heard what we were talking about, but, thankfully, she didn’t say anything. She just turned and went back into the kitchen to make our third pot of hot chocolate.
“I don’t know,” Lauren continued once the door shut. “Avery’s kind of funny-looking.”
“I don’t care!” Tara blurted out. “What do you think, Maria?”
I didn’t answer right away. Not because I didn’t think Avery was cute. But because I hadn’t really thought of Avery—or anyone—that way in a long time.
Clearly, Tara could tell where my mind was headed, because she quickly changed the subject.
“I know!” she said. “We should play a game!”
“Yeah, great idea,” Lauren said. “Do you have any board games?” she asked me.
I nodded. “They’re upstairs. I’ll go grab them.”
Tara and Lauren and I had been friends since third grade. We met playing soccer, and when it was clear none of us were very good at it, we became fast friends—mostly because we could laugh at how bad we were. Two years later, they were still the best friends I had. We’d done everything together, from water parks to sleepovers to matching Halloween costumes.
Tara was always the daring one. Passing silly notes under the teacher’s nose in class. Making prank calls from the school. One time, she even hid a tiny mouse in our teacher’s desk drawer. The teacher never found it, though—the mouse must have escaped.
Tara probably would have gotten us in trouble many times if not for Lauren’s quick thinking. Lauren wasn’t the bravest, but she was definitely the smartest of our group, and she could make teachers or parents believe anything. Most of the time, she was convincing people that Tara was innocent of something Tara most definitely did. It was never anything bad, really. But sometimes Tara’s view of fun was a little too intense.
Tara and Lauren were the closest people to me in the world … although that still wasn’t nearly as close as I’d been to Isabella. At one time, all four of us had been besties. Now it was just Tara and Lauren and me.
I tried not to dwell on this as I made my way out of the basement fort and up the stairs to the kitchen.
I’d converted the entire room of our finished basement into an awesome fort: Sheets hung between chairs and from the ceiling to make a roof, and LED lights were strung about for stars, and I plugged in some cinnamon air fresheners so it smelled like baking and not like damp mold, which it sometimes did if Mom didn’t keep the dehumidifier running. Tara and Lauren had helped make it homier, adding in scarves and twinkle lights and tapestries scrounged up from their own houses. Initially, we had just built it for a night of telling ghost stories, but it was so comfortable that we didn’t take it down the next day. Or the next. My mom always said we needed to take it down, but then …
Then Isabella passed away, and my parents knew deep down that the fort made me feel connected to her. They hadn’t asked me to take it down since.
Just the thought was a spear to my heart, and I stumbled on a step and nearly fell.
“You okay?” Tara asked from below.
“Yeah,” I replied. But the truth was, no, I wasn’t okay. I wasn’t okay at all. That’s why my friends were here. They were supposed to help me forget that I wasn’t okay. Because forgetting felt like the only way to feel better. School had been going for a month. That should have been enough to keep my mind off things, to help me move forward, just like my new guidance counselor always said.
But even though Isabella had been gone for months, I still couldn’t stop thinking about her. Everything I saw or did reminded me of her. Even hanging out with my friends was different. Emptier. It used to be all four of us telling stories or playing sports or going on adventures. Isabella’s absence was almost its own presence, a huge empty space none of us could fill, no matter how loud we talked or how often we laughed.
It was clear I wasn’t the only one who still felt her absence. Ever since Isabella had died, my parents were like completely different people. Or at least Mom was. Dad was barely there at all.
My mom hummed away at the stove, stirring a big pot of milk and shaking in cocoa powder.
“What are you doing up here, pumpkin?” she asked. “I was going to bring the cocoa down for you.”
“Gonna get some board games,” I replied.
She smiled warmly. This was the first time I’d had friends over since school started, and I knew she was glad to see me actually being social. But even though she was smiling, it didn’t really touch her eyes. I don’t think I’d seen her truly smile since Isabella passed. Now Mom was constantly cleaning or organizing or cooking. Trying to fill up the silence left by my sister.
“Games sound fun,” she said. “Just try not to stay up too late, okay?”
“We won’t,” I replied. Though I knew we would. Especially if we were about to drink even more hot chocolate.
She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Now, how spicy should we make the cocoa?”
My mom made the best hot chocolate. She mixed in cayenne pepper and honey and real dark chocolate and cream, so it was smooth and silky and spicy.
Isabella never liked it spicy, but I did.
I always let Isabella pick.
“Spicy,” I said. I forced myself to smile.
You have to forget and move on, I thought, even though that felt like the hardest possible thing to do. Everyone said I should move on, like it was easy, like changing your clothes. But it felt like no matter how hard I tried, everything reminded me of my sister. Forgetting her seemed impossible, and besides, I loved her too much to want to forget in the first place.
“All right, then,” Mom said. “You grab your games, and I’ll bring these down when I’m done. I might even have some cookies hiding in the cupboard, if you’re lucky …”
My smile turned real, and I went over and hugged her waist.
“I love you,” I said.
She reached down and gave me a squeeze with one arm, her other stirring the cocoa slowly. “I love you, too,” she said. “Now go have fun with your friends!”
I nodded and bounded up to my room.
The upstairs was dark, and even with the night-lights, it gave me chills. My room was at the end of the hall, past my mom and dad’s—I could hear Dad in his office, watching TV. He rarely came out anymore, and when he did, he looked older than I’d ever seen him. Older even than my grandfather. I think it was part of the reason my mom kept so busy—she was trying to drown out the silence left by my dad as well. Before Isabella died, Mom and Dad would blast music and laugh at the top of their lungs or dance randomly in the living room. They were, to quote Tara, disgustingly, cutely in love.
It only made Dad’s sudden isolation more jarring.
Even though I knew he was up there with me, the hall felt empty. Ominous. Shadows seemed to seep from around my door. I hesitated. Because right next to it, the door just slightly ajar, was Isabella’s room.
I hadn’t gone in there since she passed away. But I thought Mom and Dad always kept it closed? Maybe Mom had gone in to clean and didn’t click it shut, and a draft had opened it?
&
No, it was just my imagination.
Just a draft carrying the perfume of Isabella from her room into the hall. That had to be it. Had to.
I quickly flipped the switch on in my room and looked about. It was perfectly clean, just as I liked it. The bed made, corners tucked in tight. All my stuffed animals lined up along the pillows. My dolls in a neat row, from tallest to shortest, along the window. I went over to my closet, to the perfectly ordered clothes hanging from the rack, all arranged by color so it was a perfect rainbow when I opened the door. I loved rainbows. They made me happy.
I grabbed a step stool and took down the board games from the top shelf of my closet.
Something slipped off the top box and landed in the clothes hamper with a thump I felt in my chest.
I climbed down and set the boxes to the side. Then,with shaking hands, I went over and grabbed the upside-down photo from the hamper.
I turned it to face me—
Isabella smiled back.
Well, me and Isabella. Both of us standing in front of a fountain, our arms around each other’s waist. Isabella, my twin sister, with her short black hair and dark brown skin and deep brown eyes. We each held a stuffed animal that our parents had gifted us that morning: her, a brown teddy bear, and me, a white rabbit. We even wore matching dresses, mine in white and hers in light pink.
We couldn’t have been happier. Her smile was as bright as sunshine, just like mine.
Little did we know that a month after the photo was taken, I would never see her smile again.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the photograph. I’d whispered it a hundred thousand times before. Sorry didn’t change anything.
Sorry didn’t make her death any less my fault.
With shame clenching my heart, I gently hid the photograph in a stack of folded jeans.
“You have to move on,” I told myself again.
I wiped the tears that had begun to form. I had to move on. I had to.
I couldn’t bring her back.
I grabbed the games and made my way downstairs to my friends, trying my best to leave the memory of Isabella behind me.
She was everywhere. She was everywhere, yet I could never, ever get her back.
“Ooooh,” Tara said, glancing at her watch. “Guess what time it is? It’s midnight!”
“What?” I asked, looking up from the final game piece I was neatly putting back in the box. “That’s impossible.”
“Yeah,” Lauren said, flopping back on a mound of pillows. “I thought it was like five a.m. That last game took forever.”
Tara threw another pillow at her.
“Yeah,” she said, “but only because you kept changing your mind when it was your turn.” She smiled deviously. “But you know what midnight means, don’t you?”
“That it’s way past bedtime?” I asked.
“No,” she said, her grin widening. She reached over and grabbed her backpack. “It means the witching hour is upon us.”
“Witching hour?” I asked. The very phrase made me shudder.
Tara pulled something from her bag.
“Oh no, not another game,” Lauren moaned.
“Not a game,” Tara said. She held the box in her lap, tilting the cover toward us. “Definitely not a game.”
“The Mystic’s Oracle,” I read aloud. More chills raced over me.
I knew that Mom would not want that in the house. Too late now, though.
“What is it?” Lauren asked.
“It’s a spirit board,” Tara said. She moved aside the old game box and set the new one down between the three of us, then pulled out a large piece of thin wood covered in letters and stars. “I found it in my aunt’s house. It’s real old. You use it to talk to dead people.” She pulled out a circular piece of clear plastic with a silver star in the middle of it, about the size of a peanut butter jar lid. It looked like the lens of a big magnifying glass.
“What if I don’t want to talk to dead people?” Lauren pressed groggily. “I just wanna go to sleep. It’s late.”
Tara didn’t say anything, but I saw her eyes flicker toward me. Even though the three of us were best friends, Tara was the only one who truly knew how much I was still hurting from Isabella’s death. I’d cried on her shoulder so many times. But I hadn’t told her the full truth. No one knew.
Tara thought I was just sad because I missed my sister. She didn’t realize it was only worsened because of my guilt.
She placed the circular piece in the middle of the board.
“Come on, just try it,” Tara said. “And keep an open mind. Midnight is when the veil between the worlds is thin and it’s easier to contact the other side.”
“Where’d you hear that?” Lauren asked.
Tara shrugged. “It’s just common knowledge. Or are you chicken?”
“You just heard that on TV,” Lauren said. But, seeing that Tara wasn’t going to be dissuaded—she never was when she wanted to do something, especially if it was something mildly dangerous—Lauren groaned. “Fiiiiine.”
Tara looked at me for real this time. She was waiting for my approval. I nodded. I would try this. If I could talk to Isabella, maybe I could come clean. I could clear my conscience. If I could talk to her, it meant she wasn’t truly gone.
Suddenly, the basement seemed oppressive—the shadows in the corners of the fort pressed in on all sides, heavy and thick. Like the house was holding its breath.
Watching.
Waiting.
Knowing.
“Okay,” Tara said. “We all put the tips of our first two fingers lightly on the oracle globe.”
“The what?” Lauren asked.
“The plastic thingy,” Tara replied. “Lightly. Like you’re touching a butterfly wing.”
“You’re not supposed to touch butterfly wings,” Lauren said. “If you disturb the dust on them, they’ll never fly again.”
Tara glared at Lauren. “Are you in or not?”
“I’m in, I’m in,” Lauren said with a huge yawn.
Lauren put her fingers on the plastic piece. I shuffled closer to her and did the same. I couldn’t take my eyes off the board and its old-fashioned calligraphy letters. It looked like wood grain and black paint, not some cheap printed card stock like our other board games. For some reason, the fact that it was an antique made it seem more legitimate. My fingers trembled slightly.
Was Isabella listening? Could this really work?
I almost didn’t want to find out.
Now that I was facing the possibility of actually speaking to her, I was afraid of what she would say.
“Okay,” Tara said seriously. More serious than I’d heard her in a long time. “I’ll go first. We’ll each ask a question out loud, one at a time, and the rest of us will focus on that question until we feel the oracle globe move. You’re not supposed to try and move the globe. You need to keep a gentle touch and let the spirits work through you.”
Tara put her fingers on the plastic pointer and closed her eyes.
“I call to you, spirits,” she said in a hushed voice. “Come to our aid. We seek your counsel in these worldly matters.”
Outside the blanket fort, a pillow fell over with a soft thump. We all jumped.
Lauren giggled, but I could tell she didn’t really find it funny. She was nervous. Tara quirked open an eye. I nudged Lauren, and she stopped giggling. My skin felt like it was filled with static electricity—every single nerve was on fire. Waiting. Wanting to see what—if anything—would happen next.
Maybe it was my imagination, but the basement suddenly seemed a lot quieter.
The darkness above a lot heavier.
Despite having my closest friends beside me, my fingers began to shake.
It felt like there were more people here than just the three of us.
I could practically feel someone—or many someones—breathing down the back of my neck.
“I think they’re here,” Tara whispered. She closed her eyes again. “Okay, spirits. I ask of thee: What is the name of my secret admirer?”
We sat there for a long time. The pointer didn’t move.
Lauren snorted. “Maybe you don’t have a secret admirer, Tara.”
“Shh!” Tara said.
And then the pointer began to move.
Slowly, it slid across the board, the inner star finally landing and stalling on an O.
