Let's go home.
It had a very cozy feel to it, that "Let's go home."
Except, of course, that the house we shared didn't quite feel like home to me yet. How could it? I'd only lived there a few days.
And, of course, he shouldn't have been living there at all.
Still, ghost or not, he'd saved my life. There was no denying that. He'd probably only done it to get on my good side so I wouldn't kick him out of the house entirely.
But regardless of why he'd done it, it had still been pretty nice of him. Nobody had ever volunteered to help me before – mostly because, of course, nobody knew I needed help. Even Gina, who'd been there when Madame Zara had first pronounced me a mediator, never knew why it was I would show up to school so groggy-eyed, or where it was I went when I cut class – which I did all too frequently. And I couldn't exactly explain. Not that Gina would have thought I was crazy or anything, but she'd have told someone – you can't keep something like this secret unless it's happening to you – who'd have told someone else, and eventually, somewhere along the line, I knew someone would have told my mother.
And my mother would have freaked. That is, naturally, what mothers do, and mine is no exception. She'd already stuck me in therapy where I was forced to sit and invent elaborate lies in the hopes of explaining my anti-social behavior. I did not need to spend any time in a mental institution, which was undoubtedly where I'd have ended up if my mother had ever found out the truth.
So, yeah, I was grateful to have Jesse along, even though he sort of made me nervous. After the debacle at the Mission, he walked me home, which was gentlemanly and all. He even, in deference to my injury, insisted on pushing the bike. I suppose if anybody had looked out the window of any of the houses we were passing, they would have thought their eyes were playing tricks on them: they'd have seen me plodding along with this bike rolling effortlessly beside me – only my hands weren't touching the bike.
Good thing people on the West Coast go to bed so early.
The whole way home, I obsessed over what I'd done wrong in my dealings with Heather. I didn't do it out loud – I figured I'd done enough of that; I didn't want to sound like a broken record or player piano, or whatever it was they had back in Jesse's day. But it was all I could think about. Never, not in all my years of mediating, had I ever encountered such a violent, irrational spirit. I simply did not know what to do. And I knew I had to figure it out, and quick; I only had a few hours before school started and Bryce walked straight into what was, for him, a deathtrap.
I don't know if Jesse figured out why I was so quiet, or if he was thinking about Heather, too, or what. All I know was that suddenly, he broke the silence we'd been walking in and went, " 'Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.' "
I looked at him. "Are you speaking from experience?"
I saw him smile a little in the moonlight. "Actually," he said, "I am quoting William Congreve."
"Oh." I thought about that. "But you know, sometimes the woman scorned has every right to be mad."
"Are you speaking from experience?" he wanted to know.
I snorted. "Not hardly." A guy has to like you before he can scorn you. But I didn't say that out loud. No way would I ever say something like that out loud. I mean, not that I cared what Jesse thought about me. Why should I care what some dead cowboy thought of me?
But I wasn't about to admit to him that I'd never had a boyfriend. You just don't go around saying things like that to totally hot guys, even if they're dead.
"But we don't know what went on between Heather and Bryce – not really. I mean, she could have every right to feel resentful."
"Toward him, I suppose she does," Jesse said, though he sounded grudging about admitting it. "But not toward you. She had no right to try to hurt you."
He sounded so mad about it that I thought it was probably better to change the subject. I mean, I guess I should have been mad about Heather trying to kill me, but you know, I'm sort of used to dealing with irrational people. Well, okay, not quite as irrational as Heather, but you know what I mean. And one thing I've learned is, you can't take it personally. Yeah, she'd tried to kill me, but I wasn't really sure she knew any better. Who knew what kind of parents she had, after all? Maybe they went around murdering anybody who made them mad....
Although somehow, after having seen that add-a-pearl necklace, I sort of doubted that.
Thinking about murder made me wonder what had gotten Jesse so hot under the collar about it. Then I realized that he'd probably been murdered. Either that or he'd killed himself. But I didn't think he was really the suicide type. I supposed he could have died of some sort of wasting disease....
It probably wasn't very tactful of me – but then, nobody's ever accused me of tact – but I went ahead and just asked him as we were climbing the long gravel driveway to the house, "Hey. How'd you die, anyway?"
Jesse didn't say anything right away. I'd probably offended him. Ghosts don't really like talking about how they died, I've noticed. Sometimes they can't even remember. Car crash victims usually haven't the slightest clue what happened to them. That's why I always see them wandering around looking for the other people who were in the car with them. I have to go up and explain to them what happened, and then try to figure out where the people are that they're looking for. This is a major pain, too, let me tell you. I have to go all the way to the precinct that took the accident report and pretend I'm doing a school report or whatever and record the names of the victims, then follow up on what happened to them.
I tell you, sometimes I feel like my work never ends.
Anyway, Jesse was quiet for a while, and I figured he wasn't going to tell me. He was looking straight ahead, up at the house – the house where he'd died, the house he was destined to haunt until … well, until he resolved whatever it was that was holding him to this world.
The moon was still out, pretty high in the sky now, and I could see Jesse's face almost as if it were day. He didn't look a whole lot different than usual. His mouth, which was on the thin-but-wide side, was kind of frowning, which, as near as I could tell, was what it usually did. And underneath those glossy black eyebrows, his thickly-lashed eyes revealed about as much as a mirror – that is, I could probably have seen my reflection in them, but I could read nothing about what he might be thinking.
"Um," I said. "You know what? Never mind. If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to – "
"No," he said. "It's all right."
"I was just kinda curious, that's all," I said. "But if it's too personal…"
"It isn't too personal." We had reached the house by then. He wheeled the bike to where it was supposed to go, and leaned it up against the carport wall. He was deep in the shadows when he said, "You know this house wasn't always a family home."
I went, "Oh, really?" Like this was the first I'd heard of it.
"Yes. It was once a hotel. Well, more like a boarding house, really, than a hotel."
I asked, brightly, "And you were staying here as a guest?"
"Yes." He came out from the shade of the carport, but he wasn't looking at me when he spoke next. He was squinting out toward the sea.
"And …" I tried to prompt him. "Something happened while you were staying here?"