Revived Spirits (10 page)

“No. I saw him offer it to her, but she said no and called it poison.”

“It is,”
Caylie
says. “It poisons your whole life. You don’t even have to use it yourself. Just being where it is
is
enough.”

“The thing that confused me,” I say, “is that when your mom got arrested what the police found in the car just looked like soda bottles. Mountain Dew. If possession of Mountain Dew is a crime, half the people around here would be in jail.”

“I know about the soda bottles,” Adam says. “People make meth in them—they call it the shake ’n bake method. My dad was talking about it because he was reading this series of articles on meth in the Lexington newspaper. Dad’s been reading up on meth because he sees lots of meth-related cases in the hospital. People who are addicts, people who are all burned from accidents in labs.”

“Daryl did the shake ’n bake thing in our house,”
Caylie
says. “He tried to hide it but he couldn’t because it made the whole trailer stink like cat pee. That and him using all the time was why Mama kicked him out.”
Caylie
hasn’t touched her lunch. “The stuff made him crazy. One time he started seeing all these spiders that wasn’t really there. And after Mama broke up with him, he got even worse. He’d show up in the yard yelling about how he knew Mama had the FBI following him—crazy, crazy stuff. Mama was gonna get a restraining order against him, but then the law showed up with a search warrant, and she was the one who ended up going to jail.”
Caylie
looks me in the eye. “Do you think she’s innocent?”

“I think if she had been doing meth and making it, I would’ve seen it in her memories,” I say.  “People lie to each other, and sometimes they lie to themselves. But sometimes I can get into somebody’s head so deep I dig deeper than the lies. And I’ll tell you something I did see. Well, I didn’t see it so much as I felt it.”

“What’s that?”
Caylie
asks, leaning forward.

“When I was in your mom’s memory of getting arrested...you were screaming, and I felt her love for you...how much she didn’t want to leave you, didn’t want you to be hurt like this.”

Tears leak onto
Caylie’s
cheeks. “Thank you. That was what I needed to know.” She wipes at her face. “I’m sorry, Adam. I’m sure the last thing you want to see when you’re trying to eat your lunch is a girl crying.”

“That’s okay,” Adam says. He reaches across the table to hand her a tissue. “It’s clean, I promise.” Once
Caylie’s
had the chance to wipe her eyes and blow her nose, Adam says, “So you think this Daryl jerk set your mom up?”

“That’s what I’ve thought for a long time,”
Caylie
says, finally starting to pick at the spaghetti on her lunch tray. “But I
ain’t
got a way to prove it.”

“You don’t have a way yet,” Adam says. “Maybe I can dig up some dirt that might be useful. What’s the dude’s last name?”

“
Chumley
,”
Caylie
says. “C-H-U-M-L-E-Y.”

Adam writes it in his notebook. “And his first name is spelled D-A-R-Y-L?”

Caylie
nods.

“Got it.” He snaps his notebook closed with a flourish.

Adam invited me over after school to see what we could find out about Daryl
Chumley
. Now I’m on the bed in Adam’s room, flipping through a copy of
Rue Morgue
magazine while he types furiously on his laptop. “Hmm,” he says. “I don’t suppose the Daryl
Chumley
we’re looking for would be Daryl
Chumley
, PhD, professor of medieval studies at Montclair State University?”

“I’d be surprised,” I say, putting down the magazine after seeing one too many grisly horror movie stills.

“Here’s a Daryl
Chumley
who was arrested in June for driving under the influence in Morgan,” he says.

“That’s our guy,” I say, leaning in to get a look at the computer screen.

“There’s more stuff on him too,” Adam says. “He was also jailed for failure to appear in court, and look—here’s his mug shot from when he was busted for possession of meth.”

The man in the picture is thin to the point of emaciation. Sharp cheekbones jut out over his sunken cheeks. His skin is fish belly white and splotched with angry sores and scabs. His eyes are two black holes.

“See those spots on his face?” Adam says. “That’s because meth heads itch all the time. They scratch and pick at themselves until they get sores.”

“Gross.”

“Yeah. I wonder why
Caylie’s
mom ever wanted to be with this guy.”

“Well, if what I saw in her memory is right, he was much better-looking when they met.”

“Maybe so, but this DUI arrest goes back six years. The guy already had problems, and it’s a matter of public record. And I didn’t even have to look hard to find this stuff. All I did was Google him.”

“I guess
Caylie’s
mom didn’t feel like she needed to do a background check before she went out with the guy.”

“Well, she should’ve,” Adam says, closing out the mug shot of Daryl
Chumley
. “When I’m an adult and there’s a woman I want to go out with, the first thing I’m gonna do is Google her.”

I roll my eyes. “How romantic.”

“Hey, better safe than sorry.”

“Do you see anything about where Daryl
Chumley
is now?” I say.

“Not yet.” He scrolls down the list of Google results. “Hey, wait, he has a
Facebook
page. It just goes to show you, everybody’s on
Facebook
. Even criminals.”

“I’m not.” You can’t be on
Facebook
if you don’t have a computer.

“Yeah, but you’re different. You’re a cave girl.”

Adam logs onto
Facebook
, and I smile at his picture on the screen. He’s in the arms of the giant inflatable Frankenstein he keeps in his room, and he’s gritting his teeth like he’s fighting for his life. “Okay,” he says, “let’s type in Daryl
Chumley
.”

He does, and Daryl’s face appears on the screen. But it’s the handsome, cowboy-
hatted
Daryl from Lisa’s memories, not the scrawny, scabby Daryl from the mug shot. When Adam clicks on his profile, Daryl’s current address is listed as Morgan, Kentucky.

“Well, he’s close,” I say.

Adam points the mouse to the icon asking if he wants to send Daryl a friend request. “That’d be a great idea,” Adam says. “Hi, Daryl, I’m a twelve-year-old Asian kid who inexplicably wants to be your friend. P.S. My psychic pal wants to know if you framed your ex-girlfriend for meth.”

“That would be smooth, all right,” I say, laughing.

Adam snaps his laptop shut. “I guess that’s as far as technology can take us for now.”

“Yeah, I don’t think we should do anything else until we talk to
Caylie
.”

“Me neither. Especially since I don’t have a clue what we should do next.”

“Neither do I.”

I know time is of the essence, as they always say in old books, when it comes to talking to Mom about the road trip to east Tennessee. But I also know that when it comes to asking Mom something, it’s all about timing. If I ask her at the end of a stressful day when there’s too much on her mind, she’ll say no. It seems like a lot of Mom’s days have been stressful lately, so I’ve been waiting for a good time. But waiting is risky.

Tonight I decide I’ve waited long enough. When I approach the door of her room, I hear her talking and laughing, which confuses me for a minute and makes me wonder if she might have a ghostly companion in there herself. But then I remember her cell phone that she uses to talk to Dave. Only in my house do ghosts seem more normal than cell phones.

I give her five minutes to wrap up the conversation, then come back to knock on the door.

“Come in,” she says. Her voice sounds pleasant and calm, which I take as a good sign.

Mom is propped up on pillows in her brass bed, a half-drunk cup of tea on the nightstand beside a copy of
Pride and Prejudice.
The walls of her room are painted a soft lavender, which makes me feel like I’m walking inside a giant flower.

“I was just talking to Dave about Jane Austen,” she says. “She’s his favorite writer, so I’ve been rereading some of her books. I had forgotten how funny she is.” She smiles. “You’ve got to give credit to a man who’s confident enough in his masculinity to admit that Jane Austen is his favorite author.”

“I guess so,” I say. I’ve not read any Jane Austen yet, but I know her books always have women on the cover. But I’m not here to talk about Jane Austen. Or Dave either.

Mom pats the spot on the bed beside her. “I’m sorry we’ve not had much time to talk this week. Work has been crazy. I had to place three sets of kids in foster care this week, all because their parents were cooking or using meth. It made me think of your friend
Caylie’s
situation.”

“Yeah, I guess she was lucky she could live with her grandparents, even if they are stricter than she’d like.”

“She is lucky,” Mom says. “Comparatively speaking, of course. None of the kids whose parents use meth are lucky.”

“The thing is,” I say, “I don’t think
Caylie’s
mom uses it. Her boyfriend did, and I’m pretty sure he set her up after she dumped him.”

Mom gives me a stern look. “You’re not getting involved with
Caylie’s
family problems, are you? Because you’ve got to stay away from anything involving meth. It makes people dangerous and crazy, and even being near it can make you sick. I used to think strip mining was the worst thing that ever happened to Appalachia. But with what I’m seeing at work every day, I think meth might be.”

“I’m not getting involved,” I say, hoping Mom doesn’t take a peek inside my head. “I actually came to ask you something.”

Mom smiles. “But I got on my soapbox, didn’t I? Sorry. Ask away.”

“So Granny thinks there might be a way for me not to lose Abigail,” I say.

“Really?” She sounds doubtful.

“Yeah. Apparently there was this woman in east Tennessee in the early nineteen hundreds who was a famous moonshiner. She was a member of some kind of race that starts with an M—Mull something—”

“
Melungeon
?”

“That’s it. Well, she was a moonshiner, and she had a ghostly companion—a little boy—who helped her and stayed with her even though she was an adult.”

“Okay,” Mom says, like she’s not sure where I’m going with this.

“And so”—I figure I’d better get to my point soon— “this woman’s ghost is supposed to haunt what’s left of her old log cabin. Granny says maybe if we could go there and I could talk to her, I could find out how she managed to keep her ghostly companion and then maybe I could keep Abigail.”

Mom sighs and strokes my hair. “That’s a lot of maybes. You realize this could be a total wild goose chase, right? We could drive all that way and find ourselves staring at the empty ruins of a log cabin. Or we could find the spirit and she might not want to help us. She might even want to hurt us. Has it occurred to you that she might not be a very nice ghost?”

“I thought about that,” I say, then I’m surprised to feel my eyes fill with tears. “But I feel like I have to try something. I know I can’t do anything about losing Adam, but if I don’t have to lose Abigail I don’t want to. I feel like I’m losing so much these days.”

“And you’re losing your childhood, which is the hardest loss of all,” Mom says, still stroking my hair. “So you came here to ask if I’ll drive you to this spot in east Tennessee where this ghost supposedly is?”

“Yes. I’d want Granny and Abigail to go too.”

“And it would have to be at night for the spirits to come out,” Mom says. “Did your granny say how long a drive it is from here?”

“She said around an hour and a half.”

Mom shakes her head. “This is going to be a pain. I hope it’s not for nothing.”

My heart flutters in my chest. “So you’ll do it?”

“Yes, but not on a school night.”