Chapter 29
Arden: We’re going to need a buttload of candles.
Matt: I don’t know this measurement terminology. Is it part of the metric system?
Arden: Yes. It’s millimeters, centimeters, meters, kilometers, then buttload.
Amity: I feel like a buttload would be volume, not distance.
Arden: Amity, you’re better than this. Don’t encourage him.
Theo: From what I’m reading, it looks like our best bet to make contact with Mercy will be as close as possible to the final moments of her life.
Matt: So before midnight on the 7th?
Theo glances over at me and cringes. “Sorry.”
I shrug. “Nothing says happy birthday quite like a good ole spirit summoning.”
He chuckles. “Hopefully, that will be the end of things.”
“If not,” I say, snuggling deeper into his side, “I’m not sure how we’re going to convince my mother that you need to move in here permanently.”
She was very clear as she made up the couch for him after dinner that this was a one-night occurrence. Then, on the way out of the room, she looked me dead in the eye and said, “I’ll see you in the den at eleven.”
Because apparently when a boy sleeps over, I have a curfew while in my own house.
“According to the government, you only get to boss me around for two more days,” I yelled at her back. Not that I think for a second she’ll stop being a mom once I turn eighteen.
The television murmurs in the background as Theo and I continue to scroll through our phones, finding out everything we can about séances. Our group chat pings with message after message from Arden and Matt as we swap information and put a plan in place.
Taylor, Nadya, and I will handle the preparations the night before. From what Matt was able to find out, we have to cleanse the house and light candles at various intervals throughout the night. We already have a cover story ready for my mom thanks to Nadya.
Then, apparently, it’s about welcoming the spirit and being open to hearing them. Whatever that means.
Matt: And timing will be everything. We want to speak to her as close to the end of the day as possible without it slipping past midnight.
“Do we have to, like, do a spell?” I ask Theo.
“No. This isn’t witchcraft. It’s about communing with the other side.”
I prop my chin on his arm so I can see his face. “Is that what Loretta means by the veil?”
I’ve heard that term used before. Mostly in movies and shows, but it seems almost believable that there would be some kind of solid divide between life and death. That those two parts of our experience shouldn’t meet.
He nods.
“If our plan works, where will Mercy go?”
Theo kisses the top of my head. When he answers, his voice is so painfully soft, I wonder if he’s thinking about his mom. “Somewhere good, I hope.”
The next morning, Mom and I sit on the porch, each nursing a second cup of coffee.
Theo left about an hour ago to help his dad prep for an upcoming project.
To keep him from trying to stake out the house again, Mom made him promise that he would let her protect me from now on.
At least some of the time. I think they both need to recognize that I can protect myself, but that’s a conversation for another day.
“When do we need to leave for the airport?” I ask.
Taylor and Nadya got on a red-eye last night and should land later this morning.
Mom leans her head back and closes her eyes, letting the chair rock gently. “We’ve got time.” I can’t remember when she last looked this relaxed.
I take another pull from my mug as I watch Dale bounce around in the tree out front. I’m so used to every minute being filled with renovation noise that I forgot how peaceful a late summer morning can be.
“Honey, are you doing okay?” Mom asks.
I jerk my head toward her. “Why?”
“You’ve seemed…tense this past week.”
Who could blame me? Over the course of eleven days, I’ve had a ghost moving my stuff around and trying to possess my friend, had a complete meltdown over my sexual inexperience and almost ruined things with Theo, and found out my dad is going to marry someone else.
My stomach twists at that last one. Somehow, in all the chaos, I managed to put it out of my mind, but the minute I remember, a hollowness yawns open in my chest.
“I talked to Dad last week.”
Her mouth pulls tight. “I heard.”
I let out a long sigh. “What if…I can’t…” I shake my head. I’m not sure how to phrase my feelings about my father anymore. “I think I’m done with him, Mom. At least for now.”
I can see how hard she’s working to not react to my words. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to talk to him anymore. I don’t want him to pay for stuff.
I don’t want him in my life. Do you know how little I’ve heard from him since we moved?
I’ve had to be the one to reach out every time, and when I do, he always makes me feel like I’m bothering him.
It’s like, he’s got this new life, so he has no need for me anymore. ” If he ever wanted me to begin with.
That hole in my chest shrinks a little after saying this out loud. It feels real now. A decision I have committed to.
“It sounds like you’ve thought a lot about this.”
I gape at her. “You’re not going to fight with me?”
“This is your relationship with your father. You navigate it the way you need to.”
I don’t know why, but her words make me feel defensive. “When has he ever been a father to me, really? He doesn’t know me. And he doesn’t seem to want to.”
Mom’s eyes are glassy, and she sucks in a ragged breath. “I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“I picked a shitty dad for you.”
“But you picked a pretty awesome mom.” I tug at a loose thread on my T-shirt. “I feel like I wasted so much time here angry with him and the situation, and I don’t want to be angry anymore. This is our life now, so I want to live it.”
“Honey, you know you have been, right?” She rests her hand over mine and squeezes. “After the way those kids made you feel freshman year, I was worried what moving to a new place would do to you. That you’d isolate even more. But you went out and got a job and you’ve made friends—”
I drop my chin to my chest and whisper, “And a boyfriend.”
I’ve been afraid too. And it’s not like my social anxiety has just disappeared.
I’m still constantly worried that I’ve said the wrong thing.
I still have to psych myself up to talk to strangers.
But if my old friends made me want to give in to that feeling, Arden and Theo and Matt have inspired me to try instead.
“Mm-hmmm.” Mom’s eyes survey me. “Are things okay there too?”
That part of me that will probably always be thirteen wants me to say I’m fine and be done with this conversation. But if our family is just going to be me and Mom now, then I need to make sure that I’m doing my part to keep us close. Especially as things start to change.
“I’d been afraid to tell him that I had no experience in this kind of stuff. And then things went a little further than I was ready for—”
Her eyes shoot wide, and I wave my hands at her in surrender. “Not what you’re thinking by a long shot,” I promise. “But I freaked out anyway and left and was avoiding talking to him.”
“Theo does not strike me as someone who would let you disappear.”
In this case, it was really the house more than Theo, but she’s not wrong. I’m sure if Mercy hadn’t been intent on showing herself that day, Theo would have found some other way back to me.
“He is not.” I tuck my hands under my thighs and sway back and forth to get the rocker moving. “But we talked and we’re good.”
“Good.” She stares out at the grass for a minute and then clears her throat. “So, your birthday?”
“What about it?”
“We’re going to that pancake place—”
“Nobody Puts Pancakes in a Corner,” I correct her.
She shakes her head at the ridiculous name. “With Taylor and Nadya and your friends”—she eyes me with a little too much enthusiasm—“and your boyfriend.”
“Yeah…”
“And then what?”
“I figured we’d come hang out here. Watch movies or play a game or something.” And have a perfectly normal séance. Which I do not plan to tell her about until the last possible second. If we get lucky, she’ll fall asleep and we won’t even have to inform her what we’re doing.
“So if I went to see a French film with a colleague in Providence, you’d be okay with that?”
I try to keep my eyes from lighting up too much at her proposition. Perfect. I won’t have to tell her about the séance at all. “The last thing I want to do is keep you from the boring things you love.” I grin at her.
She smacks me in the arm, but her face holds nothing but joy.
I smile back at her. It’s like she knows she can let go a little and I’m not going to fly away. Or fall.
The best part is, for the first time in maybe forever, I know it too.
I don’t know how Taylor and Nadya smuggled balloons on a plane.
Yet here they are, running toward the Pilot from the airport terminal, with at least five in various shades of purple and pink trailing behind them.
I jump out of the SUV and throw my arms around my friends while Mom grabs the balloons before they cause an air traffic control disaster. There are a lot of hugs and yelling and the three of us are crying, and all I can think is that I never want to let these two go ever again.
I squeeze in the back seat with them for the ride home. Taylor’s in the middle, and we all have our arms linked, and she keeps interrupting her stories about the nightmare snorer sitting beside her on the plane to turn to me and yell, “You’re here!”
“No, you’re here!” I holler back.
We’re a few minutes away from the house when Mom gets serious. “Girls,” she says, her eyes cutting to us in the rearview mirror, “I’m sure that Amity has told you, but our house is still a work in progress. The downstairs is mostly livable, but please be careful all the same.”
“Also Theo’s dad and his crew will be back Monday to work on the second floor, so there will be no sleeping in for us. Well, except for you.” I nudge Taylor. “You’ll sleep through the apocalypse.”
She holds up her hands like fists ready to fight. “And I’ll be well rested and ready for those zombies.”