Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board

Chapter 13

"McKenna Brady! Why, what a nice surprise," he joked.

"Can I come in?"

It was disorienting to be in Trey's bedroom in the dark. He bashfully cleaned up a pile of dirty underwear on his floor and tossed it into the back of his closet. The room had a salty, safe smell about it, like dirty sheets or old gym shoes. As we crawled into his narrow bed and he lowered his flannel sheet over me, he warned, "You definitely have to wake up and go home early in the morning. If my parents find you in here, your mom will kill you, and then you'll be a ghost who haunts me."

"I think she's growing stronger," I confessed. I told him about the hot doorknob, and about how Candace would be flying to Hawaii with her father in two weeks, right after mid-terms.

"Well, that makes sense. The book says that the more acclimated a spirit becomes, you know, as a ghost, the more comfortable they become with their powers," Trey explained matter-of-factly. "She's probably testing out new skills. But I wouldn't bet on her being good enough yet to track you down over here."

He buried his head between my neck and shoulder and began kissing my neck softly, making my toes curl with delight. Suddenly, I was distracted by a strange scratching noise coming from his closet, and I sat straight up in fear.

 "What's that noise?"

"It's the litter box. Patches and her family have relocated."

I crept out of Trey's bed and yanked the string dangling from the exposed light bulb in Trey's closet to turn on the light so that I could take a look. The mother cat and her kittens from the Emorys' yard were curled up on a discarded bathroom towel. With her golden eyes, the mother cat looked up at me and blinked patiently. The chubby ball of fur which had just used the litter box trotted across Trey's discarded running shoes back to its mother where it nuzzled into its place among its siblings.

"Trey, your mom is going to freak! These cats probably have fleas and all kinds of other stuff."

"Yeah, I know," Trey said softly where he sat up, shirtless, in bed. "I don't let my mom's cat in here just in case she can catch some kind of bad illness from these outside cats. Just one of many, many reasons why my mom would have reason to be upset with me."

I snuggled beneath Trey's blankets again alongside him and said suddenly, "Violet tricked me into seeing a movie today with her and Tracy, and there was this scene with an out-of-control fire that really upset me. Okay, maybe she didn't know this scene was going to be in the movie, but I think she did know. Am I totally paranoid?"

"Maybe a little paranoid," Trey told me, wrapping one arm protectively over me.  "Lots of movies have scenes with fires in them."

"Yeah, but this particular scene just seemed too real. It made me have a real panic attack. I had to leave the theater and collect myself, and all afternoon I've been wondering this same thing, this same thought again and again: why me and not her?"

Trey studied me for a moment, concerned, and asked, "Why Jennie and not you?"

I nodded, unable to say anymore, afraid that I'd cry.

"Don't you remember anything about the night of the fire?"

I didn't know how Trey thought he might remember details from that night that I didn't. I was the one who'd been engulfed in flames, who'd choked on smoke and watched the roof cave in.

"The reason you weren't killed in the fire with Jennie?" He searched for some kind of recognition in my expression.

"You actually remember that night?" I asked. It wasn't completely impossible that Trey would have remembered it; after all, it had happened at the end of his street and was probably the only noteworthy thing that had happened in our small town during his entire childhood.