Wraith (5 page)

"That was magnificent, Kali," Zane praised
as we went. "I can’t believe you stayed on your feet. Have you ever surfed
before? You’d be fabulous at it."

"I’m a dancer," I said shortly. I reached
the house and banged loudly on the door that was still closed.

"Are you all right?" Zane asked. He was
studying me with concern, even as he beamed at me.

I banged again, more forcefully this time. Somewhere
in the depths of the house, a light turned on.

"You look wiped out," he continued,
"but you deserve to. It’s not every night you get ripped out of a sound
sleep to save a drowning child."

Footsteps pounded down a staircase. More lights flew
on. A woman in her early thirties, wearing a cotton nightgown with a silk
kimono thrown hastily over one shoulder, looked out the French doors and, upon
catching sight of her soaking wet, squirming daughter in my arms, turned pale
and swayed on her feet. "Lauren?" came a man’s voice from the stairs
behind her. "What is it? Who’s there?"

The woman half stumbled, half ran towards me, and as
she approached the French doors I stepped inside and extended the toddler to
her, fearful she would otherwise crash into the glass. Once in her mother’s
arms, the child calmed a bit, but after only seconds of that woman’s
overzealous clasping, she began to struggle for freedom again.

"What happ—" the man, who wore nothing but
boxer shorts, had caught up with us. He looked from the child to me with wide
eyes, clearly imagining and guessing correctly the nightmare that had occurred.

"I found her on the beach," I confirmed,
my voice sounding oddly distant. "She was playing in the waves."

For a long moment, neither parent seemed able to
speak. The man lifted the struggling child from her mother’s grasp, hugged her
tight for a moment, then balanced her lightly against his chest with a strong
arm. They stared at me with equal measures of relief and wide-eyed horror while
the child, content with a lighter degree of restraint, began absently playing
with her father’s chest hair.

"Is she… hurt?" the mother said finally,
her voice a squeak.

"I don’t think so," I answered flatly.

"How did she—" the man began, but the
woman interrupted him with a stifled cry.

"I
saw
her playing with the doorknob
earlier," she admitted, her voice choking on every syllable. "But the
door was locked. I know it was. She must have woken up early and climbed out of
her crib… how she turned the lock I can’t imagine… she just had so much fun
playing outside yesterday—" her voice broke off completely, replaced by
deep, wracking sobs.

I began to feel uncomfortable. This was a private
moment; I wasn't needed anymore.

"I’m glad she’s okay," I said awkwardly,
stepping back out onto the deck.

"Wait," the man called. I turned to look
at him as he stood, clearly overwhelmed, one arm supporting his daughter, the
other around his wife. "We didn’t… I mean…
thank you
."

The woman found her voice again. "Thank
you," she repeated. "How we can we ever thank you enough?"

I took a step backward. My legs had begun to
tremble, I was drenched to the bone, and my teeth were chattering. I just
wanted to go home. "You’re welcome," I said simply. Before they could
say any more I turned and hurried down the stairs.

A sharp stab of pain in my left foot told me I had
probably picked up a splinter, but I didn’t care. I continued to race back
along the beach and across the yards and asphalt and did not slow my steps
until I had reached the deck of the condo.

Zane kept pace with me, as always, but because he
had fallen uncharacteristically silent I almost forgot that he was there. Only
when I stopped at last, hand on my own doorknob, did he step around to catch my
attention.

"Are you sure you’re all right?" he asked
again. The dawning sky was brighter now, and I could see that his concern was
genuine. That knowledge filled me with an unexpected warmth, but not enough,
unfortunately, to overcome the bone-chilling cold that now permeated every inch
of me.

"I’ll be fine," I answered, putting as
much warmth into my own voice as my frozen body could muster. "I just need
a hot shower. And a couple hours more sleep." I opened the door, let
myself in, and turned around. "I’ll see you tomorrow, Zane." I attempted
a smile. "In someplace
other
than my bedroom, if you don’t
mind."

He grinned broadly, then nodded. "As you
wish."

He stayed where he was, and I began to close the
door. "Goodnight," I mumbled.

"Sleep tight, Hero," he returned.

The door clicked shut. I did not look back, but made
a beeline for my bedroom. I stumbled through the doorway and collapsed face
down on the bed, wet clothes and all.

Hero, indeed.

Despite the relative warmth of the room, my skin
felt cold and clammy, my every limb was shaking like a jack hammer, and I was
pretty sure I was going to be sick.

Zane should be calling himself the hero. If not for
him, I would still be sound asleep, and the little girl would almost certainly
have drowned.

But the next time he needed a lifeguard, he really
should pick someone who could swim.

Zane was true to his word. I did not see him the
next morning until I took my sesame bagel, fresh pineapple, and hot tea out
onto the deck. My father was with me, enjoying his toast and coffee, and Zane
kept his distance. I only caught sight of him occasionally, leaning against one
of the palm trees or sunning himself on a neighbor’s roof. He waited patiently,
not looking in my direction, but studiously scanning the ocean from a variety
of angles. I did notice that he managed to stay within earshot as my father
described to me, in typical dramatic fashion, some of the lesser known aspects
of the attack on Pearl Harbor that he had learned on his tours of the base.

Unlike me, my father actually did look Hawaiian,
taking very little of his appearance from my Minnesota-born grandfather. But
because my grandmother Kalia had died when he was a child, leaving him to be
raised on the mainland by an Irish Catholic stepmother, he was no more
culturally in tune with the locale than I was.

"Are you sure you don’t want to ride along with
your mother and me?" he asked again when his breakfast was finished.
"We won’t be at the base all morning. We can drive over to Waikiki after.
Or we could take that hike up Diamond Head."

I searched my mind for a suitable excuse. The hike
up Diamond Head sounded good; a day’s worth of killing time at the base did
not. Primarily because Hickham wasn’t just any base.

"No thanks, Dad," I said simply. "I’d
really rather just hang out on the beach some more and watch the surfers. I
thought maybe I’d check out that tube thing Tara was talking about. We can do
Diamond Head another day, can’t we?"

Zane had moved closer, and was now perched on the
deck railing. He had been doing an admirable job of pretending to ignore us so
far, but at the words "tube thing" he rolled his eyes with a groan.

"Sure we can," my father answered, his
expression turning thoughtful. "And by the way, I told Keith to let his
son know that you’d rather not do Pearl Harbor this afternoon. I told him you’d
already seen it."

I smiled back warmly. My parents might not believe
that I saw the shadows any more, but my phobia of battlefields was too intense
to be denied. After a few thoroughly embarrassing incidents in my elementary
years, they seemed to have accepted that, supernatural visions aside, there was
something about disaster sites that affected me deeply. Too deeply to fool
around with when the unpleasantness—and speculation as to its cause—could so
easily be avoided altogether.

"Thanks, Dad," I answered.

He turned to go inside, but looked back over his
shoulder with mock sternness. "And it’s the world famous
Banzai
Pipeline
, not ‘that tube thing.’ Show a little respect, will you?" 

I chuckled. He went inside and closed the door.

"I knew I liked that man," Zane announced
from my father’s vacated seat. "It’s about time you stopped dissing the
pipe and learned to worship it like everybody else in Oahu." He leaned
closer and smiled at me expectantly. "Let’s go surfing."

A flicker of panic made my stomach twist. Maybe it
was the mental image of me on a surfboard. Maybe it was the effect his smile
had on my insides. More than likely, it was both.

For the thousandth time, I reminded myself that he
was dead. "I don’t surf," I said flatly.

"Not yet, maybe. But you will. At least come
with me and watch? The waves are looking awesome."

He looked so eager, so energetic. He was dressed
like one of the pros this morning—wearing a skintight, one-piece, midnight blue
surf suit. I wondered vaguely how the whole clothes-changing thing worked for a
ghost.

I sighed. Befriending him like he was any other
human could not possibly end well for me. Then again, it wasn’t like there were
any other hot guys asking me to spend the morning on the beach with them, was
it? Last night’s killer wind had faded to a pleasant breeze. The sky was blue.
The air was warm.

Five minutes later, we were strolling down the sand.

"Guess what?" he said cheerfully, when we
passed out of earshot of the few other people visible.

"What?"

His green eyes sparkled. "I remembered some
things." His face shone with suppressed excitement, causing an effect on
me that I can only describe as knee weakening, despite the ripples of
translucency—slightly wider than yesterday—that floated periodically across his
torso.  

I stopped walking and faced him. "Really?
Something about your past, you mean?"

He nodded. "Last night, after I left your
house, I was thinking about your family, and wondering if I was lucky enough to
have one like them. And then some things just came to me, like they were never
gone at all."

"Like what?"

He looked away. "Stuff from when I was a little
kid. That’s all I’ve got so far. But I know it’s real."

We walked for a while in silence, then I prodded him
for more.

"So tell me."

He smiled at me again, but this time the smile was
hesitant, almost sad. "My family was definitely
not
like
yours."

"What difference does that make?" I said
quickly. When it came to parental problems, I was a little sensitive to being
considered insensitive. My friends from dysfunctional families always seemed to
assume that because my parents were happily married, I couldn’t understand.
Maybe they were right. But I wanted to try.

Zane exhaled with a shrug. "I always lived with
my mom. I saw my dad every once in a while, but they were never married. It
seemed like they barely knew each other."

I nodded. "Did you have any brothers or
sisters?"

He shook his head. "No. It was always just me
and my mom." He turned and looked at me, an uneasy smirk on his face.
"Would you believe me if I told you that my mother was sort of famous?
That she was a television actress?"

The breeze ruffled his dark blond curls, which
glinted like gold in the strong sunlight. I resisted the urge to cast another casual
glance over his almost perfect form, keeping my gaze on his totally perfect
eyes instead. At least he came by it honestly.

"Yeah," I said with a laugh. "I can
believe that."

He smiled with relief. "I can remember watching
her on TV, and being really proud of her. She was a beautiful person."

I was distracted, suddenly, by the sight of another
woman, this one not so beautiful, who was already familiar to me. I was
interested in what Zane was saying; and when it came to the shadows, my natural
inclination was to ignore first and ask questions never. But something about
this particular, very old shadow, faint as a wisp of steam, drew my gaze to her
involuntarily.

She was short and relatively stocky, with a squarish
head and stringy black hair that hung well below her waist. A dull-colored wrap
skirt covered her from just under the breasts to a few inches above the knee,
while she clutched a similarly colored shawl around her shoulders. She was
pregnant, and heavily so, and appeared young—not much older than me. She stood
just as she had the last time I had seen her, watching out to sea, her gaze
glued to the horizon, with tears streaming down her cheeks and an occasional
wracking sob shaking her small body like a spasm.

It was not her anguish that drew me. I went to great
lengths to avoid any shadow that radiated pain, because I had to. Not only did
my inevitable empathy hurt me, too; but it was pointless. Whatever I was seeing
had already happened; I couldn’t change it.

Yet in this woman’s case, I knew what was coming,
and it was far from painful. I had watched it unfold a couple times yesterday
morning, but I was always too far away to catch the highlight. Perhaps today, I
would be luckier.

"Kali?" Zane’s voice asked me curiously.
"Where did you go?" He was waving a hand before my eyes. "Am I
boring you?"

"No!" I said emphatically, embarrassed.
"I want to hear all about your mother. I’m sorry." I drew my eyes
from the shadow with reluctance and set off down the beach again.

"Oh, I get it," Zane said brightly,
catching up to me. "You were seeing a shadow, weren’t you?" He looked
back at the place where I had been staring. "What was it?"

My stomach did a quick flip-flop. My heartbeat
quickened.

Covering up my rare moments of shadow watching was
something I thought I was good at. My parents never seemed to notice; they just
thought I spaced out occasionally. Same thing with my friends. Heck, Kylee
spaced out twice as much as I did, and no one ever thought she was seeing dead
people.