Chapter 21
When Asha answers the door, I can only see her face. She’s dressed all in black and it’s pitch-dark behind her.
“Good, you’re here, you’re here!” She air-kisses me on both sides. “We’ve been waiting for you to start.”
“Start what?” I step into the hall. “Why is it so dark in here?”
“Here, take my arm.” Asha doesn’t know my official diagnosis, but she’s so freaking perceptive that she’s been clued in to my sucky night vision for a while now. Sometimes she seems to anticipate how well I’m going to be able to see in a situation better than I do. “Two steps down here.”
“Is the power out or something?”
“I’m just creating a mood.” We turn the corner into the den and my stomach drops.
There are tea lights on every surface, and cushions set up around the coffee table.
In the center of the table sits a Ouija board, the glass orb of the pointer thingy flashing the reflection of wavering candlelight. “Ta-da!”
“Asha, I thought we talked about this. How we weren’t going to do it.” My armpits have started sweating like I’ve sprung a leak or something, so I strip my sweater off over my head before my T-shirt underneath gets visibly wet.
“I know, you said, but everyone else was into it. Come on, I promise it’s not going to be creepy.
We’re going to do good vibes only. I think it’ll be cathartic for everybody.
” She leaves me standing by the cushions, and opens one of the French doors to the backyard.
The rest of the group’s voices come streaming in with the cold air.
“Guys! Come in! Hatts is here and I want to get started.”
Lucia appears in the room almost immediately, pausing on the mat by the door to pluck at her shirt. “My gem of a boyfriend just stuffed half a snowman down my back,” she says. “I swear, he’s lucky he’s so cute.”
“Aw, thanks, babe,” Jeff says, coming in behind her. “I think you’re cute, too, even when you’re a little moist.” He grins, kicks off his hiking boots, and plops down on a cushion. “Now come be cute over here.”
“Hey, Hatts,” says Nolan, coming up and giving me a lazy side hug. “How goes it? Where do you want to sit?”
“I don’t. I don’t want to sit.” My voice sounds a little panicky. How do I stop them from taking Mason and changing him into some character from a cheesy horror movie? “Asha, can’t we just hang out? We can make popcorn, find something bingeworthy—”
“Sure. After. Let’s do this first.”
“But we agreed—”
“Actually, just you agreed. With yourself. The rest of us voted after you left and it was a unanimous yes for séance. We’ve got a lot of questions that only Mason can answer.” Her voice is breezy, but her words cut through me.
“Don’t you want to at least try it?” asks Lucia, with so much hope in her eyes I hesitate. Am I being selfish, just trying to keep him all to myself? No, he’s not some generic ghost of the occult, he’s our friend.
“I’m sorry, L, but I don’t. It seems, I don’t know, disrespectful,” I say. Then I try another tack. “Besides, I doubt it’ll work.”
Asha takes a deep breath. She’s looking at me like she can’t decide whether to forget the whole thing or tie me to a chair and stuff a sock in my mouth.
She settles on a third option. “Look, Hatts, if you don’t want to join us, you don’t have to.
It’s probably only going to take like fifteen minutes anyway.
So make yourself a snack, hang in my room, whatever you want.
But I did some research today, and there’s supposed to be only positive energy when you start so you don’t bring in negative spirits.
I already burned all the incense. Therefore, anyone staying in this room has to be all in. ”
I don’t want any of this to happen, but it looks like I’m not going to be the tiniest bit successful at stopping it. Having smart, successful friends with “perseverance” and “follow-through” means they also have a lot of “bullheaded stubbornness.”
Maybe I will escape upstairs so I don’t have to think about this anymore. “I guess I’ll be in your room, then,” I say, and I shuffle toward the door.
“Aw, and miss all the fun?” Mason’s voice. I whip around. He’s sitting on the last empty cushion, the one that was supposed to be for me.
“Did you change your mind?” asks Lucia, seeing me turn.
“Yeah, you can sit on my lap if you want,” says Mason helpfully. No one else bats an eyelash.
I open my mouth and close it. It seems fake to pretend Mason isn’t here, but what would my friends do if I started talking to thin air? Would Asha think I was mocking her? I sit on the arm of the couch, a couple of feet back from the coffee table. I don’t want to leave Mason here without me.
“Actually, maybe I’ll just watch,” I say. Asha shoots me a look. “With positive energy.”
Nodding, Asha takes Lucia’s hand on one side and Nolan’s hand on the other. Then Lucia grabs Jeff’s hand. After a beat of chortling about it to show how masculine they are, Nolan and Jeff grab hands, closing Mason out of the circle. He pouts at me.
Asha closes her eyes. The rest of the circle does the same, and suddenly, all the smirking is gone.
“Tonight we are here to contact a friend on the other side. We call upon Mason Leary to come and talk with us.” Mason touches his own chest in faux shock as if they’ve just announced he won an Oscar.
Asha seems to be thinking of what to say next.
She tilts her head slightly. “You are welcome here. Cross over and keep us company.”
Mason scans the circle, eyebrows raised, as if he is just as curious as everyone else about what will happen next.
“Are you with us, Mason?” Asha asks, opening her eyes. “We need some sort of sign.” She drops Lucia’s and Nolan’s hands and rests two fingers on top of the Ouija board indicator, and the others do the same. It starts to wiggle.
I look at Mason, and he holds his hands out innocently. “I’m not doing anything, I swear. It must be Elvis. Or Marie Antoinette. Or Jack the Ripper.”
The indicator slides to YES and Lucia gasps.
I find that I have abandoned the arm of the couch and have come to hover directly behind Lucia out of sheer nervousness.
Now, since Mason doesn’t seem to be suffering under any Ouija-related magic, I finally relent and sit on the cushion next to him.
I put my fingers lightly on the indicator and so does he.
Even though our bodies and hands are close, there’s no warmth coming from him.
If anything, it feels cooler on his side.
“Mason, can you tell us if you are okay?” Asha asks.
Mason laughs. “Huh, where is the ‘that’s always been debatable’ option?
” The indicator wanders the board for a moment, then slides back to YES.
“Still not doing it,” Mason says to me. I wonder who is.
Is it Asha? Or just the collective subconsciousness of the whole group wanting to make things nice and peachy?
“How can we see you?” Asha asks now.
This is not a yes-or-no question. The indicator seems to get that immediately and careens into the alphabet. After roaming for a few seconds, it stops on A. Asha takes her hand away and writes the letter on a small pad she’s placed on the table. S comes up next. Then K.
“Ask! That’s a whole word!” Lucia says, amazed. “But ask what?”
As if to answer her, the piece shifts again. H, a shudder, then A again.
Suddenly, I know what the Ouija board is going to say. I look at Mason. He looks like he’s enjoying himself far too much. He’s clearly stifling a laugh. No, don’t turn this on me, Mason! Don’t put my name down in black and white!
I feel the pointer moving toward the T so I try to steer it to the R instead. Maybe I can make it spell ASK HARDER without the rest of the Beaver Bunch noticing that I’m influencing it.
But a stronger force is pushing back against me.
The indicator seems to be quivering with pressure.
I’m losing ground. I give it one more hard push, and at the same time the resistance disappears, so the pointer goes flying off the table and skitters across the floor, coming to rest somewhere under a large armoire.
“Oops,” Mason says.
“Whoa,” Jeff and Nolan say simultaneously, then immediately start cracking up. Nolan grabs a throw blanket off the couch, puts it over his head, and starts staggering around making a series of ghostly ooooohs.
But Asha is not amused. “Hattie! What the hell?” She picks up her pad and slams it back down on the table in frustration.
“I didn’t do anything. I mean, I didn’t mean to do anything,” I say, glancing around for support.
But Jeff and Nolan are too busy horsing around.
Jeff is holding the blanket over Nolan’s head so he can’t get out, and Lucia looks like she’s trying to decide whether to intervene and scold her boyfriend or let him wallow in his immaturity.
“Yeah, Hattie doesn’t know her own strength. Her default setting is beast mode,” Mason offers, as if Asha can hear him.
“I said you could sit out. You didn’t have to go and ruin everything!” Asha says, like I’m a toddler.
This pisses me off. “Give me fucking break, Ash,” I say, standing up. “You can’t convince me that a smart girl like you actually thought this would be productive. It’s a dumb gimmick that screams trashy reality show. Which is why I told you it was a bad idea. Mason would never—”
“Don’t tell me what Mason would do!” she yells. Holy shit, she’s actually yelling. The boys drop the blanket and Lucia covers her mouth. “You don’t know what Mason would do, because Mason is dead!”
The force of her emotion has me dumbstruck.
I look at Mason and I can tell he’s just as shocked.
He shakes his head, like it’s all his fault.
It makes me feel guilty, too, guilty for not getting what she was going through and why she wanted to do this séance so badly.
I want to tell her that he’s here, right now, feeling for her, but before I can think of a way, she speaks again.
Her voice is hard and bitter. “You’re not the only one who lost a friend, you know.
I did, too. And so did everyone else here.
We’re all grieving. Just because you not-so-secretly wanted to get into his pants doesn’t mean you get special rights to him. ”
“Oh, snap!” Mason says, perking up.
“What?!” I squeak, my lungs struggling to breathe. “I didn’t want to get into his pants.”
“Sure. Of course not. And I suppose Richard isn’t your little consolation prize, either. Your rebound for a romance that never even happened.”
“What the hell does Richard have to do with any of this?”
She suddenly looks exhausted with all of it. “Forget it. It’s none of my business. You want to cope by pushing us away and losing yourself to some tool, you should be allowed to do that. Because everyone grieves differently. But stop acting like you’re the only one grieving.”
This conversation has gotten away from me at light speed. I feel disoriented. I barely recognize Asha like this, and none of her accusations seem fair.
“Maybe I should just go,” I say finally, at a loss.
“Maybe you should.” She stands up and I’m taken aback when I realize she’s still going to lead me back through the dark maze of rooms. I flinch and pull my elbow away.
“Can’t you just turn the lights on?” I ask.
Without a word, she walks toward the door and flips the switch, flooding the room with harsh fluorescents. I squint in the glare, then I’m out the door.
I don’t dare to look back.