"Jack," I said. "You're no more a freak than anybody else."
"No," he sobbed. "I am. Don't you get it?" Then he lifted his head, looked me straight in the eye, and hissed, "Suze, don't you know why I don't like to go outside?"
I shook my head. I didn't get it. Even then, I still didn't get it.
"Because when I go outside," Jack whispered, "I see dead people."
C H A P T E R
2
I swear that's what he said.
He said it just like the kid in that movie said it, too, with the same tears in his eyes, the same fear in his voice.
And I had much the same reaction as I had when watching the movie. I went, inwardly, Freaking crybaby.
Outwardly, however, I said only, "So?"
I didn't mean to sound callous. Really. I was just so surprised. I mean, in all my sixteen years, I've only met one other person with the same ability I have – the ability to see and speak with the dead – and that person is a sixty-something-year-old priest who also happens to be principal of the school I am currently attending. I certainly never expected to meet up with a fellow mediator at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort.
But Jack took offense at my "So?" anyway.
"So?" Jack sat up. He was a skinny little kid, with a caved-in sort of chest, and curly brown hair like his brother's. Only Jack lacked his brother's nicely buff shape, so the curly hair, which looked sublime on Paul, gave Jack the unfortunate appearance of a walking Q-tip.
I don't know. Maybe that's why Rick and Nancy don't want to hang around him. Jack's a little creepy looking, and apparently has frequent dialogues with the dead. God knows it never made me Miss Popularity.
The talking to the dead thing, I mean. I am not creepy looking. In fact, when I am not wearing my uniform shorts, I am frequently complimented on my appearance by the occasional construction worker.
"Didn't you hear what I said?" Jack was depressed, you could tell. I was probably the first person he'd ever told about his unique problem who'd been completely unimpressed.
Poor kid. He had no idea who he was dealing with.
"I see dead people," he said, rubbing his eyes with his fists. "They come up, and start talking to me. And they're dead."
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.
"Jack," I said.
"You don't believe me." His chin started trembling. "No one believes me. But it's true!"
Jack buried his face in his towel again. I glanced in Sleepy's direction. Still no sign that he was aware of either of us, much less that he found Jack's behavior at all odd. The kid was murmuring about all the people who hadn't believed him over the years, a list which seemed to include not only his parents, but a whole stream of medical specialists Rick and Nancy had dragged him to, hoping to cure their youngest child of this delusion he has – that he can speak to the dead.
Poor little guy. He hadn't realized, as I had from a very early age, that what he and I can do … well, you just don't talk about.
I sighed. Really, it would have been too much to ask, apparently, for me to have a normal summer. I mean, a summer without any paranormal incidents.
But then, I'd never had one of those before in my life. Why should my sixteenth summer be any different?
I reached out and laid a hand on one of Jack's thin, quivering shoulders.
"Jack," I said. "You saw that gardener just now, didn't you? The one with the hedge clippers?"
Jack lifted an astonished, tear-stained face from the terry cloth. He stared up at me in wonder.
"You … you saw him, too?"
"Yeah," I said. "That was Jorge. He used to work here. He died a couple days ago of a heart attack."
"But how could you – " Jack shook his head slowly back and forth. "I mean, he's . . . he's a ghost."
"Well, yeah," I said. "He probably has something he needs us to do for him. He kicked off kind of suddenly, and there may be stuff, you know, he left unfinished. He came up to us because he wants our help."
"That's …" Jack stared at me. "That's why they come up to me? Because they want help?"
"Well, yeah," I said. "What else would they want?"
"I don't know." Jack's lower lip started to tremble again. "To kill me."
I couldn't help smiling a little at that one. "No, Jack," I said. "That's not why ghosts come up to you. Not because they want to kill you." Not yet, anyway. The kid was too young to have made the kind of homicidal enemies I had. "They come up to you because you're a mediator, like me."
Tears trembled on the edges of Jack's long eyelashes as he gazed up at me. "A … a what?"