The Ghost In The Girl, page 9
Weird as shit, because Riley wasn’t positive he was running, even though his body felt like it was running.
He got to his dumbass beach cruiser. He got on the bike. He rode his bike, but the whole time had the sensation that he wasn’t the one riding at all.
Holy shit, he thought. AM I HAVING A STROKE? AM I DYING? This thought repeated again and again.
HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT!
The bike picked up speed, flew down a hill, went faster than cars, careened in and out of traffic. Riley could do nothing to stop himself, dudes.
HOLY SHIT! OH SHIT JESUS OH MY GOD! he cried in his head.
Then the bike, seemingly of its own accord, pulled to the side of a busy street. Riley’s body breathed deep. A girl’s voice said, “Just relax. You’re fine.” But, Riley couldn’t see this girl.
Who said that? he thought. What the hell?
“Shh,” the girl’s voice said.
ARE YOU IN MY HEAD? he thought. DOESN’T THAT MEAN I’M DEFINITELY HAVING A STROKE? HELP! he cried silently.
“Let’s do some stuff, okay?” the girl’s voice said. “Some super stuff.”
NO! WHAT’S GOING ON? HELP!!!
“Shhhhh . . .”
And there was no saying no. Suddenly our boy was along for a ride on an adventure he did not want to be on. During the afternoon, his body jumped higher than it possibly could (from the curb to up on top of a strip mall for instance). His body broke stuff in stores, stole stuff in stores, scared old ladies on the street, all while this girl’s voice shrieked in delight. He vaguely remembered showing up at a park and shouting at Wiz, Mouse, Mattheson and me. He also remembered his body flipping us the bird. Right after that, Riley got so upset—inside his body, he’d tried to shout to us, to beg us for help—he believes he lost consciousness. He doesn’t know what his body did the rest of the day (bad stuff for sure —he got in the school and burned shit), while his soul stayed fast asleep . . .
This is the next thing he knows for sure: he woke up in the morning lying on the couch in Hoover and Memaw’s living room. Again, he figured he’d just had an epically bad dream. He wasn’t exactly sure what day it was. Then his body got up without him doing any work. His body peed and a girl’s voice said, “Standing and peeing is the best!” He biked to school without feeling the sensations of biking. SHE was in control.
It was at school that the girl inside him started getting super upset. He could hear her mumbling. “Charlie Wilkins better find that book or we’re done. Riley Riley Riley we better get that book that guest book or the earth will get shaky and they’ll cut you like a chicken and turn me to shreds.”
What? Riley asked. What book? A guest book?
“We need the guest book!” Riley’s mouth screamed.
Kids in the hall stared at him in total horror.
“Only the fat man can teach us what to do!” Riley’s mouth shrieked.
WHAT? WHAT? Riley screamed in his thoughts.
Then the girl began to smack his head into a locker over and over until a teacher came, grabbed his hand, walked him to the principal’s office, where, oddly, the girl was on her best behavior. She called Principal Griffith “sir,” and apologized for creating a ruckus—said she was trying to make a dumb joke—and asked to go back to class. Principal Griffith accepted this apology. (He wouldn’t have if he had seen the security camera videotape—again, there was one old-school VHS camera that had functioned properly that had captured “Riley” breaking into the school during the night and setting a fire in Ms. Farhaven’s room.) Riley, and the girl who animated him, made it out of the principal’s office just in time to get to Earth Science, to meet up with us, to say those scary-ass things.
Scary-ass things that continued to fall out of his mouth when we met outside after school.
Riley sat on the lawn. We all surrounded him. Again he said, “Me or you, Charlie Wilkins.”
“Yeah. I get it,” I said.
“Unless we find the guest book,” Riley said.
Wiz kneeled down next to him. He spoke softly. “What do you know?” Wiz asked.
“Everything?” Riley’s mouth said. “Except some stuff. That stuff is in the guest book at Charlie’s house.”
“How do you know about that book, Riley?” I asked.
Riley’s face flushed. He swallowed. “I’m very hungry,” Riley said. “I want a cheeseburger.”
“Are we in danger?” I asked. “For real? Do you know that?”
Riley nodded. “Me or you, Charlie Wilkins of the sixth generation. Me or you.” Riley stood fast then fell over backwards.
“Whoa!” Mouse said.
“Cheeseburger now!” Riley said, sitting back up. “The energy is low. Very low.”
Wiz moved close to Riley again, spoke quietly again. “Are we speaking to Riley or to someone else?” he asked.
Riley smiled, “I am someone.”
Wiz pointed at Mouse and Mattheson. He said, “Did you happen to meet these guys before? Tuesday night, maybe?”
Riley’s eyes stared at the dudes. His head slowly nodded. “Oh dang,” he said. “It was supposed to be Wednesday, but I sucked the batteries too soon. Those boys . . .” he pointed at Mouse and Mattheson “. . . felt like Riley, but they weren’t Riley when I found them.”
Wiz turned to me. He nodded. I nodded back. We were thinking the same thing. He turned back to Riley’s body. “Is your name Paula, by any chance?”
Riley’s head lit up like a beach fire. I mean, what a freaking crazy grinning pumpkin head, okay? “Yes!” he shouted. “You know me! I’m me! I’m here! I’m Paula!”
“Oh whoa,” Mouse muttered. “Balls, dude.”
“She’s the ghost girl? She’s in Riley?” Mattheson said. “That is so sick.”
“Paula? You’re Paula?” I thought of Rooster, what he said. “You’re Paula of the fifth generation? The one Rooster was talking about,” I whispered.
Suddenly the light drained from Riley (Paula). He trembled, sank to the ground. “Do you have people food? A cheeseburger?” Paula inside Riley whispered. “The energy is going low.”
Wiz reached into his bag and pulled out an energy bar. Then he said to me, Mouse, and Mattheson, “I’m going to give Riley . . . I mean Paula this. That should get him off the ground. Then we better make plans.”
“Cheeseburger,” Riley’s mouth whispered. “I have a tongue.”
“Soon,” Wiz said. Then Wiz opened the energy bar, broke off a chunk and stuck it in Riley’s mouth. Riley’s mouth chewed and chewed.
“More?” Riley’s mouth said.
Wiz pulled out the rest of the bar and put it in Riley’s hand. Riley’s hand jammed the whole thing into Riley’s mouth. The mouth chewed more. “Pretty good,” he (she) said, mouth completely full.
“Let’s go to my gramps’ workshop. I need to build a ghost zapper,” Wiz said. “We can figure out what’s next from there.”
Suddenly, there was the sound of static coming from my backpack. A voice, probably the hippie’s, said, “Got the guest book? Over. Guest book, Charlie?” There was more static. I just didn’t want to talk to Cortez. I really didn’t like the hippie, you know? I made no move to get the walkie-talkie out.
“Jesus! Dude! What is that noisy shit that keeps coming from your pack?” Mouse said.
Riley’s body sat up off the ground fast. “Guest book!” Riley cried.
I looked over at Wiz. “Do you happen to have any lock picking tools or maybe skeleton keys in your bag, dude?”
“Uh, yeah?” he said.
I had to look in Mom’s drawer for the guest book before I did anything else. No, I didn’t like Cortez and I didn’t want to do what he wanted me to do. Riley stared at me, eyes wide. Paula knew about the guest book, too. I just knew I had to find that damn book.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We decided to split up. Mouse and Mattheson went with Wiz back to his place. Apparently Wiz’s gramps had given him some instructions for reverse engineering a cow prod into a ghost zapper. Seemed as reasonable as anything. We might really have to do battle with ghosts before the coming dawn, right? That was like fourteen hours away! I decided to take Riley with me, because I figured Paula might be able to sense if we were getting close to the guest book. She was definitely attuned to the notion we needed to find it, right? Before we left the school, Riley (Paula) begged Mouse to use his skateboard. “I was the best skater in my neighborhood,” she (he) said.
“Uh, I would not like to say yes, but I’m scared of you,” Mouse said.
“Okay!” Riley’s face said.
Then Riley skated like he was disco dancing on a 1970s TV show. He was smooth as shit, to be honest.
And, even though we went up hill for a good part of the way and I was on a bike, Riley/Paula had little trouble keeping up with me on the skateboard. It was like Paula’s ghost energy super-powered him. Or was he even him at all? I thought that as we rolled. Was Riley actually okay? I wondered if he was still inside of himself or if he’d been knocked out to hell or something? Going up a big hill, I asked:
“Hey, Paula? Where is the actual kid named Riley, you know? The owner of the body?”
“He’s here,” Paula said.
“Okay, good,” I said. That was a relief.
“I don’t want him to go away. He’s my friend. So he’s here to stay!” Paula said.
“Is he okay?” I asked. “Like comfortable?”
Paula paused for a second. She kicked on the board so she was in front of me. I caught up.
“Seriously. Is he okay?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll ask,” Paula said. “Hey, are you okay in there?” she said. She nodded like she was listening to somebody then said, “He’s pretty mad because I keep making him do crazy stuff and if I harm his body he’s going to be really, really mad at me, but yeah he’s okay sort of otherwise.”
“Ha! All right. Good,” I said. Not like I could do anything if Riley was in pain. It was a relief to know he wasn’t on fire or something.
We got to my house a few minutes later.
After I pulled in the garage, Paula said, “I think I lived near here. Where are we? What day is it?” She dropped the board next to my bike. “Is today Friday?”
“I lived in a house. I’m a girl.”
“I guess. True,” I said. I had to agree, but it was weird to be staring at big Riley while Paula said that.
Then she scrunched his eyes and looked up, like she was thinking really hard. “You know, I feel like I’m me, but then I’m not me, because I’m not just Paula the girl.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said.
She looked down and stared me in the face. “Charlie Wilkins, there’s a ghost in the girl.”
“There’s a ghost in Riley.”
“There’s a ghost in me. It’s me. Don’t be scared. There’s a ghost in the girl.” She nodded. She swallowed hard.
I don’t know how to explain it, but that was about the saddest thing I’d ever heard anybody say. Thankfully she had a hard time staying on track.
She looked past me. “Hey. Is this your house?” she asked.
I exhaled, nodded and motioned for her to follow me.
I nodded and motioned for her to follow me.
We entered through the garage door and went straight into the kitchen.
“It smells good in here. Like a family. Like a mom and kids. It doesn’t smell like a man. Is there no man? Wait, you’re Charlie Wilkins, right?” Paula asked.
“Yeah, you know that. You’ve been calling me Charlie Wilkins all day,” I said.
“I have? We’ve been together? What day is it?” Riley’s voice got louder and louder.
“Keep it down, okay? I don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”
“But if you’re Charlie Wilkins then your dad is gone. He’s not here, so that’s why I can’t smell a man in this . . .”
“Shut up,” I said. “Don’t say another damn word. I don’t know what you’re . . . what you’re even talking about.”
“Because Rooster wouldn’t come after you if your dad was in this world.”
It was like getting slapped. “Shut up!” I shouted.
So much for not drawing attention to us. Lindsey heard me from the living room where she was watching TV. “What’s your problem, Charlie?” she yelled.
I put my finger in front of my mouth then pointed at Paula. I glared. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you have to keep your voice down, or else. Do you understand?” I whispered.
“Yeah!” Paula said, pretty damn loudly. Then she pumpkin smiled, which made me want to kill her, because I was already trembling, because how did she know my dad was gone? And what did she mean he wasn’t in this world?
I had to get it together. I exhaled. I said, “Follow me.”
We got past the living room and Dez and Lindsey without any problem. They were both glued to the TV. The real trouble (if the guest book was even in the bureau in Mom’s closet) was Mom, herself. She would leave for work in an hour. Given that fact, it was pretty likely she was in her room or the attached bathroom getting dressed or showering, which would mean we’d have to wait, which would mean I’d have to keep ghost girl/bizarre boy from doing anything wicked crazy in the house for longer. I didn’t want that.
Even though Mom didn’t seem to be anywhere else, I knocked on her bedroom door. Riley’s body was right behind me. He leaned his nose into my neck and said, “You smell good.”
“Shh,” I said.
Mom didn’t answer her door, so I turned the knob and poked my head into the room. The radio (hits of the 80s and 90s!) played some evil sounding song about having a white wedding. I stretched out my neck and scanned. Mom wasn’t there. I took a step in. Riley followed. The shower went on in the bathroom attached to her room. “We can do this,” I whispered.
“Super!” Riley/Paula said.
“We have to move fast, though.”
If I had a different mom, a more leisurely one, the timing might have been perfect. But Mom takes short showers. She thinks that people who take a long time in there are lazy or something. If I take a long shower, she always says, “I thought you went down the drain.” (That’s scary when you’re a little kid, by the way.) I was serious when I said we had to move fast.
I shot across the room, threw open the closet door, leapt deep into the back. Riley’s body followed. I told him to shut the door. He did. “Smells like a lady,” Paula said into the darkness.
“Don’t talk about my mom,” I said.
Then I pulled out my phone and tried to use the flashlight, but the thing wouldn’t turn on (smart phones don’t function around full-blown ghosts like Paula). Luckily, I knew that mom kept a flashlight in the closet. I’d seen it before when going in there to steal candies. I reached up, grabbed two little Snickers and the flashlight (right next to the candy bag, right where I knew it would be). I turned it on and handed one Snicker to Riley.
“Oh God, yes!” Paula shouted.
“You quiet down now, dude,” I hissed. I shined the light right in his/her face.
The pumpkin face nodded. “Sorry.”
“Dig around a little. See if you find the book, okay? I’m going to try to get into this old bureau.”
I stuck the back end of the flashlight in my mouth and illuminated the floor in front of me. I pulled the little box of Wiz’s skeleton keys out of my pocket then knelt down in front of the antique bureau where mom kept dad’s gun and her jewelry box and where I figured she might keep some weird, powerful book dad had asked her to squirrel away. I pulled open the box. There were a bunch of little screwdrivers and bobby pins clipped on one side. There were ten different skeleton keys piled on the other side. Wiz seemed to think that one of the skeleton keys would work.
While Riley ate more Snickers (he immediately found the bag), I pulled out a key. Shined the light on it. Shined the light on the drawer. I tried the key. It slid into the lock really easily and for a tenth of a second I thought maybe I’d hit the damn jackpot. Unfortunately, though, the key wouldn’t turn. “Shit,” I whispered. “Shit,” said a voice above me.
“Ahh!” Riley/Paula shouted.
“Ahh!” shouted the voice.
I leapt up. I shined my light around the closet. “Is there someone else in here?” I whispered.
“Is there someone else in here?” the voice said.
I raised the beam of the flashlight to the shelves. It landed on a stuffed, battery-powered parrot.
Remember when Cortez said that Dad had set up a cloak, something to do with a bird? In retrospect, I think this was it, this damn parrot. It had been a birthday gift for Lindsey a few years ago. The thing repeated what you said. But dad, or somebody, had done something to it. The parrot’s eyes began to glow red.
“Jesus,” I whispered.
“Jesus,” the parrot said.
“Is that alive?” Paula asked.
“Is that alive?” The parrot said. “Scanning. Scanning. Scanning.”
“Scanning?” I asked.
“Scanning complete,” the parrot said. “Wilkins. You are Wilkins and you are Kelly. Be careful. Be careful. Yankee Jim! Yankee Jim! Do not take the book. You be careful. Squawk!”
“Yankee Jim?” There was that damn name again! It made my stomach twist. I reached up, grabbed the parrot (it screeched), turned it over and pulled out the batteries. “Shut up, bird.”
“That bird said my name,” Paula said.
“No it didn’t,” I said.
I put the parrot back on the shelf then bent down and fiddled with the lock again. The second key fit in the lock, too, but didn’t work. The third was too big to go in the hole. The fourth was clearly too small, but I tried anyway. The fifth was, again, too big.
“It did say my name,” Paula said, chewing another Snickers.
“Be quiet,” I said.
I began to sweat, pals. Bird says Yankee Jim. Mom is almost done showering. I was running out of key options fast. But then the sixth key. I pulled it out of the box, shined the light on it, eyeballed the tip. It looked like the same shape as the drawer lock. I mean, I could see it! I stuck the key in, heard a click, the key sliding into some mechanism within. I turned the key and it worked. “Holy shit,” I whispered.
