DEAD GOOD (20 page)

From the quiet of my bedroom I can hear low murmurs of adult-speak, then the front door shuts. Immediately after this, Leo is beside me, his ghostly eyes big and gleamy. And if he had weight, then I’d have been shot halfway to the ceiling the way he leaps down onto my bed.

‘Your dad’s just left for the restaurant,’ he grins, bouncing a little. ‘Uncle Victor only put the notice up an hour ago apparently – now that’s what I call co-incidence.’

I must still look suspicious.

‘Seriously, Maddie, this is good – isn’t it? I mean this is what we wanted, wasn’t it? A way of getting closer to my parents – maybe work out why we’re all still here – and as an added bonus, your Dad might even get his Mojo back if he’s back at work again, yeah?’

My brain registers what he’s saying. My fears start to dispel a little and I look into Leo’s eyes. He looks so excited, like the big, sparkly present has something he’s always wanted inside it.

twenty-six

Amber is at our front door even before I have a chance to turn to Leo and say ‘how the hell do you know that?’ but then I guess that it’s probably all a part of his bat-sense or something. Maybe it makes up for his lack of one of the basic living senses (i.e. breathing).

I’m actually pretty happy to see her as well, and on the way back upstairs, I give her a brief re-run of what’s happened since I bunked off school earlier. I leave out the fact that Dad was pretty drunk, though. I tell her about Mrs Hale, the key plan and the bewilderingly co-incidental job that Leo’s Uncle put up in his restaurant at the same time we were discussing trying to get closer to Leo’s family.

‘But don’t you think it’s a weird co-incidence?’ I try on her.

‘Why?’ Amber says now as we sit on my bed listening to Fall Out Boy. ‘Chance and co-incidence can be very closely related if you think about it. I’d see it more as luck than co-incidence.’ She smiles all-knowingly.

Seriously? Amber being philosophical – since when?

A chuckle disturbs me from my meandering thoughts of placing Amber into care without the knowledge of her parents and I turn to the corner of my room that is piled high with boxes of crap that I need to sort through before trying to find somewhere to put it in this… this…

‘Shit-hole?’ Leo helps, grinning and sitting forward on the boxes, his arms flopped over his knees. He is staring at me through his fringe again and my belly tries to leap stupidly up into my mouth but I won’t let it. I refuse it’s admission due to the fact that it is seriously underage and doesn’t have an ID card. Leo is smiling even more broadly now and I can’t help but grin back.

‘What?’ Amber spins to see what I’m looking at. ‘Oh my god, he’s here, isn’t he?’ she squeals and bounces on the bed. ‘Oh my god – your face, Maddie… your face!’

‘What?!’ I slap a hand on the side of each cheek and frown angrily. ‘What’s wrong with my face?’ It does feel hot and I think I know what she’s getting at. I just wish she hadn’t said it quite so loud. And if she says “Oh My God” just one more time, I swear to god…

‘So… well… you know!’ she trails off, clearly not having a suitable come-back for that. ‘Just that… you’re blushing at a ghost!’ she whispers the last three words.

My frown increases but thankfully my blush is subsiding. I daredn’t even look at Leo. He’s probably dying with embarrassment. I hear a snort and then have to look over at him. He’s rocking back on the boxes and laughing like a drain. My frown returns but then I realise what I’ve just thought. Ah…

‘Oh My God!’ Amber shrieks shrilly, pointing at the corner where Leo is sitting. ‘Oh My God, look! Those boxes are moving – is that where he is? Is it? Oh My God, Maddie – Oh My…’

I lurch over the bed and slap a hand across Amber’s stupid mad mouth and shush her as loudly as I possibly can without raising any alarms in a parents-downstairs direction.

‘Would you just try and shut it?’ I snarl. Her head nods under my hand and so I start to release her mouth very slowly. If she so much as says a single “Oh” I shall stuff a pair of socks inside her stupid crazy mouth and silence her forever. Or at least until she has to go home anyway.

I turn to the corner and Leo again. He’s trying not to roll off the boxes with laughter. Oh good. I’m glad I’m the entertainment for the evening. Makes me feel so much better about everything.

‘Yes, actually,’ I tell her, trying to ignore him. She breaks free from my release. ‘That is where he’s sitting. He’s having a lot of fun over there in fact,’ I say and then snarl in his direction. ‘At my expense – thank you very much!’

Amber sits back upright, brushing herself down of what I don’t know, but she’s sitting spine-straight like a proper lady on my bed now and just staring in the corner at the boxes as they continue to dent and wobble under his hilarity.

‘Should I say something?’ she half-whispers at me.

I roll my eyes in the back of my head. ‘If you like,’ I sigh, sounding quite bored now with the whole stupid thing.

‘Hel-lo?’ she says as if she’s speaking to either an idiot, a partially deaf person or an alien. She leans forward slightly and I try to hold back a snigger at her attempt to make contact. ‘My name is Am-ber.’ She stretches out an arm in greeting and I clap a hand over my own mouth now as I watch Leo rock about even harder with laughter. Then he clears his throat and leans forward, extending one of his own arms to reach hers. I gaze in wonder, still grinning, as I watch his hand swing straight through hers and then back out again a few times.

‘Hel-lo Am-ber,’ he says in a dumb Dalek voice, ‘I will ex-ter-mi-nate!’ and I can’t hold back a loud snort. Amber spins round wildly to face me.

‘What?’ she pales. ‘What happened? What did he say? Did he speak to me?’

I can’t help it. I have to let out all the laughter which has been queuing up inside my stomach waiting for the doors of my mouth to be flung open, and I can’t stop. Leo is now rolling about on the floor holding his stomach and ghostly tears are streaming down his face. His mouth is so wide open I can see the nails from the floorboards through the back of his head.

Amber, though, looks thoroughly pissed off. Of course, all she can hear is me laughing. At her. But really there are two of us laughing and the whole room is filled with such a sense of fun that I think I might pee myself in a minute if I can’t regain my composure.

A few seconds later I miraculously do pull myself together after a couple of feeble-ish attempts. I mean, it’s not fair, is it? Amber can’t hear him, she can’t really see him – only the movements he makes when he contacts various objects at certain times. And that thought is enough to refresh my mind about what it was Leo and I were discussing earlier on – before. God, that already feels like weeks ago. Why does time feel like it’s going so slowly?

‘Okay,’ I say, trying to form my mouth into a sensible shape. I turn my attentions to Amber and ignore Leo who is now sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the boxes, just below where we’re sitting on the bed. ‘This is what we’ve thought might work…’

And I tell her more about the horrible re-enactment of the fire from last night – and then about the conversation that I had with Leo earlier about Nonno looking for the key; about what Mrs Hale told us, and she sits still and listens without any interruptions until I get to the end and realise her mouth is very unattractively open in morbid fascination. I grin. Good old Amber. She must be loving all this!

twenty-seven

‘So when will it happen again next?’ Amber asks as we both sit dolefully staring at the front door key on my bedroom windowsill which still hasn’t moved after… wait… forty-nine minutes. I scowl empathically as I watch Leo pull his eyebrows together in deep concentration, his fingers systematically lowering like one of those fairground gripper things in those glass cabinets that are stuffed with useless crappy cheap junk. Only he doesn’t want a cuddly pink rabbit – he wants – no, he needs to pick up the key that is still sitting untouched on the window ledge in my bedroom. ‘The reconstruction thingy,’ Amber continues. ‘Do you know when it might happen again?’

‘No,’ I tell her flatly. My heart is deflated, along with my hopes and Leo looks like he could be doing this for a super-long time. Isn’t he worn out or fed up yet, I wonder.

‘Ghosts don’t get knackered,’ he grins sideways over at me, his hand in a claw-type hold. ‘I could go on doing this forever.’ He turns back to his concentration and I sigh.

‘What?’ Amber urges. ‘What just happened.

‘De-er…’ I point to the stationary key. ‘Nothing – still.’

‘Did he say something though? Did he feel something? Something must have happened for you to have sighed like that, surely. What?’

‘He just said he could be trying to move this bloody key for-frikkin’-ever, that’s what!’ I scowl and throw my arms up in horror. ‘That’s all I bloody well need isn’t it? A ghost on a mission stuck in my sodding bedroom for the rest of my life!’

‘Well, judging by your face earlier on, I wouldn’t have said that was altogether a bad thing to happen!’ she trills back cheekily.

I force myself not to repeat my blush and Leo turns to look at me .

‘Back to work, ghost boy!’ I snap churlishly, waggling a very determined finger in his direction. Amber giggles.

‘Madeline?’ I hear Mum’s voice snake up the stairs. I stomp angrily to the landing. ‘Is Amber staying much longer?’ Mum says in a weird kind of strangulated half-whisper-half-shout.

‘I don’t know….’ I mimic her stupid voice back. ‘Why?’

‘Well, I thought we could have a bit of a chat, that’s all, lovey – just a mother-daughter thing, nothing too heavy!’ she does a funny little weavy dance which makes her look like a proper prat. Great. A mother-daughter thing. I l-u-r-v-e those. Not.

‘So d’you want to have it now then?’ I say irritably.

‘Well…’ mum consults her watch. ‘I’m not sure, it’s um….’

‘Mum it’s only seven o’clock. Amber’s just working on some things for me – she’ll be ages yet and I can’t really disturb her… she’s concentrating.’

‘But what about… oh well, okay then. Can you just pop and see if your brother’s woken up yet? With any luck he might sleep right through – it was a bit of an afternoon for him bless him, wasn’t it?’

‘Hmmmm, it was,’ I say automatically, not really meaning it. ‘I’ll be right down.’

I go back to my room to tell Amber that I have to endure some kind of stupid mother-daughter chat and she gasps.

‘Oooh… my mum and I had one of those recently. It was dead embarrassing. I think she thought I didn’t know the first thing about… ‘ Amber points vaguely about her belly and crotch area. ‘Y’know…’

‘Eeew!’ I pull back, revolted by the very idea of Mrs Ellis discussing ladyparts with anyone let alone poor Amber.

‘I know! Honestly some of the stuff she was telling me I’d known since Year 6! What is it with parents these days? Don’t they realise we’ve been having PHSE lessons for four years or what?’

Leo’s ears are radar-ing-in, I’m certain of it. Just because Amber can’t see him doesn’t mean he’s not here, does it? I make a “watch what you’re saying” motion with my eyes (at least I hope it looks like that and not that I’m about to have a seizure or anything) in Leo’s direction and she puts a girlish hand to her mouth, Jane Austen style and mouths “Oops, sorr-ee”.

‘It won’t take long,’ I tell her. ‘Mum thinks you’re doing some school stuff for me so just remember to keep the noise down, yeah? Oh, and let me know of any… developments, alright?’