Shadowed Summer (2 page)

My feet sank into the soft ground before I realized I’d moved, and I scrambled toward Collette. “Did you hear that?”

Sitting up, Collette made a face at me. “You’re supposed to—”

“I’m serious!” Grabbing her arm, I yanked her up farther as I craned around, looking for the boy. I didn’t see more than a spot of pale, but it seemed like he should be long and tall, slipping fast through the stones and into the woods.

“What’s wrong with you?” Collette huffed.

The sky started to groan, promising rain anytime, but it was still light enough that Collette should have seen him or heard him, and I got a fresh chill when it was plain she didn’t.

Swallowing hard, I let go of her arm and turned around and around, searching for proof I didn’t have. We’d done so much pretending that I didn’t know how to convince her that this time, something
had
happened. My daddy would have said that was the curse of a liar.

Giving up, I said, “It’s fixing to rain; we better go.”

Collette could fill up a sigh with more disgust than anybody I knew, but she slid from Jules’s slab even as she rolled her eyes. With a flourish, she started for the gate without looking back, as if I wouldn’t have known how put-upon she was without the big exit.

Anyway, I didn’t care, because my ear still tingled from that secret whisper, and I wanted to go home.

After we abandoned the cemetery, Collette and I tried to figure out what to do next. For a while, we stood on my back porch and watched the Delancie brothers blow up the creek again.

Through the trees and scrub, we saw two auburn heads bobbing. They’d stay put for a second, then run off before a wake of white water exploded toward the sky.

I scratched my cheek and made a guess. “Sounds like cherry bombs.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, they ain’t as loud as them M-80s they got last summer.”

The thick air rippled with another explosion. I felt the snap in my ears and on my skin and followed the sound as it rolled away in the rain.

Way off, a siren started, and the Delancies bolted for their house, cussing. I’d learned some of my best words from them.

With the show over, Collette raised her umbrella and hopped a step. “Let’s go to the Red Stripe and get some RCs.”

My stomach sank. “I don’t have any money.”

Collette shrugged. “I do. I’ll lend you.”

“Well, I do have some! But your mama gives ’em to us free!” Right out of the fountain at the diner, as much as we could drink.

“And then we have to bus tables,” she reminded me. “And put up with Rooster and Mama digging into our conversations whenever she wants and taking out the trash and whatever else. I don’t think so.”

I frowned. “But they’re free.”

“Uh-uh, they just don’t cost
money.
”

Since she’d made up her mind, she started walking. I scrambled after her, circling and dogging her steps. Slow with the weight of dread, I yanked her attention back to the cemetery.

“I really did hear something,” I said. Sweetening the pot, I added, “I saw something, too.”

Collette’s brows disappeared under a fringe of frizz. “You did not!” But the rain had washed the snit off of her. I crossed my chest with my fingers three times: one for God, one for Jesus, and one for the Holy Ghost. “Swear I did.”

“Well?”

“I saw a boy, and he asked me how I was.” I shrugged, ducking when she whipped around to walk in front of me. “Which wouldn’t be anything, I guess, except then he wasn’t there.”

“What’d he look like?” Collette sounded exactly like I did when I was just going along, only in my opinion she wasn’t as good at it.

I brushed past her. “Brown hair, brown eyes. I only saw him for a second, but he was there, Collette. He leaned right in and said”—for demonstration, I leaned, too, trying to imitate the voice still ringing in my head—“ ‘Where y’at, Iris?’ ”

Shaking the umbrella, Collette stopped in front of the Red Stripe. “That’s a dumb thing for a ghost to say.”

She knew I could make up better stories than that, and I waited about forever for her to admit it. When she finally did, she didn’t bother saying sorry or anything, she just shrugged and leaned back against the door to open it. “He didn’t tell you his name?”

I shook my head.

“He was probably scared,” Collette said, then walked inside.

The Red Stripe didn’t have any air-conditioning, just an old black fan on the front counter and the back door open all the way. Going in there felt like putting on a cloak of steam and dust.

I headed down the narrow aisle toward the soda coolers. “Didn’t seem like it to me. He sounded like anybody. I bet he woulda talked more if I hadn’t spooked.”

With a suffering sigh, Collette followed. Every other step, she raised up on her toes, peering over the tops of tin cans arranged by color.

The owner, Mr. Ourso, had a lot of time on his hands, so sometimes he’d stack the groceries alphabetical. Sometimes he did them by size—you never knew until you got there.

“What were you scared of, anyway? It’s not like we ain’t been looking for haunts since we . . .” She stepped up, peeked, then finished her sentence with, “Shhh!”

“I’d like to see you—”

“Shh!” Collette plastered her hand on my head to keep me out of sight as she turned the corner. “Hi, Ben.”

I crabbed away, making faces at a bag of butter-flavored pretzels. Just to be annoying, I called out, “Hey, Ben!”

She was making goo-goo eyes at Ben Duvall, the whole blond reason we had to come to the Red Stripe. Until he started working there two days a week, the fountain at the diner had been good enough.

“Hey, Iris,” he said. Then he started telling Collette about his new model.

I crept to the freezers in back to make sure I didn’t accidentally pinch Collette for being stupid over him. The way she nodded when he talked about his model of the Eiffel Tower, you would have thought he was building a life-sized one in his backyard.

We’d known Ben all our lives, and he wasn’t that interesting. He liked building models and reading comic books, and he used to pull our hair in church. The only thing worth knowing about him was that his mama named him after a Shakespeare character—Benvolio—and he took the job unpacking for Mr. Ourso when she came down with breast cancer.

Snatching a couple of Neapolitan ice cream sandwiches, I walked as loud as I could right past them. “Anyway, so I guess we can call up the dead tomorrow or something.”

A just-smacked blush darkened Collette’s cheeks. “Whatever, Iris.”

“Calling up the dead?” Ben stuffed a box knife into his red work apron and looked back and forth between us. He whispered, just loud enough for us to hear, “Y’all been witching?”

Collette opened her mouth, but I talked first, and louder. “Nope. We’re psychic. Lost souls talk the loudest in the graveyard.”

“Really?”

“It’s just a game we play,” Collette said. She squeezed a can of mandarin oranges so hard her knuckles went pale.

I waved my ice cream at them as I backed toward the register. “No, it’s for real. She just doesn’t want to brag, is all.”

Ben wavered; he had sense enough to realize Collette didn’t want to talk about it, but I guess curiosity won. He cut me a glance. “How about you show me sometime?”

At that, Collette’s blush faded and she nodded. Her voice went soft, and she took a deep breath, the kind that let her bra strap peek from under her shirt when she exhaled. “I will, if you want.”

“Okay, then,” Ben said, his face lighting with a sudden smile.

Rolling the mandarin orange can between her palms, Collette drifted toward me, smiling like a debutante. “You should come over to my house so I can teach you the right way to listen.”

I paid for my ice cream in change and left before she promised to teach him all our secret spells, too.

A wave of fried green pepper and onion perfume hit my nose as I came in the door.

Standing over the stove, Daddy held a pan out to keep it from spattering on his crisp blue work shirt. The back read
JESSEE
’
S TOOL AND DIE
, and the patch over his pocket said
JACK
.

When he made dinner, it was musical. Pots clanged, oil sizzled, and sausages whistled just a little when he popped them with the tip of a knife. Under it all, I could hear him humming.

Gathering forks and spoons for just two places, I swayed in time to his music. It was just me and him—Mama died in a car accident when I was three. And since he worked graveyard at the machine shop, he was a familiar stranger.

I stole looks at him while I set the table. He kept his hair slicked back, not so wet that light would shine on it, just enough to keep it neat. His hazel eyes sparkled, and when he stood up straight, I could tip my head back and see nothing but the silver scar on the underside of his chin. It wasn’t like I could forget what he looked like, but it never hurt to make sure. All my mama was to me was a memory of long brown hair and a red sundress.

When I finished setting the table, I sat down and worked on folding our paper-towel napkins into perfect triangles. He shifted pans back and forth; I kept my eyes down. I wanted to ask him about things belonging to the next world, but I needed to start with something solid.

“Collette’s sweet on Ben Duvall,” I said, carefully placing my spoon and knife on top of the napkin. “She says he’s pretty.”

“I reckon if I was Ben Duvall, I’d be insulted.” Daddy rumbled with a laugh, turning to put a big black skillet on the table.

Together we bowed our heads, and Daddy said a short prayer, picking up his napkin after the amen. “I hope you’re not of the same mind.”

I stuck out my tongue. “Nasty, Daddy.”

“That’s my girl.” He scooped a heap of fried potatoes onto my plate, then chased a sausage around the inside of the skillet to catch it for me. “Luke’s going to have his hands full if he ends up with a daughter-in-law like Collette.”

Making another, more horrified, face, I smeared some ketchup onto the edge of my plate. “She doesn’t want to marry him, she just likes looking at him.”

Daddy laughed and changed the subject. “Did you catch yourself any pixies today?”

I stopped, my fork halfway to my mouth, and shook my head. “No, but we weren’t trying.”

“Mind your elbows. It’s probably for the best,” Daddy said. “I’ve got enough cut out feeding the two of us.”

Most days, it made me glad that Daddy went along. I knew he didn’t like the magic games. He believed in God, and the church, and the devil, too, but he didn’t nag about it, not like Collette’s mama did. Course, he didn’t know we’d moved to the cemetery, either.

I finished my bite, then took a drink of lemonade to wash it down. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

Daddy waved his fork. “Everything I’ve ever seen had an explanation, but it’s a big world, and I haven’t seen everything yet.”

That didn’t help. I tried again. “So there
could
be ghosts. You just haven’t seen any.”

Daddy squinted at me. “What have you been up to?”

“Nothing,” I mumbled, and stuffed my mouth with sausage, taking advantage of manners to stay silent for a minute. “I just thought I saw something in the graveyard.”