2 Empath (4 page)

My friends were silent for a moment. “So…” Tara began finally, then stopped. Her large blue eyes were bloodshot; her voice tense. She hadn’t said much since I’d told them both about the shadows. I had kept my freakishness a secret from them the same as everyone else, but there was no way to explain about Zane now without telling them the whole truth. And besides, for some strange reason, I kind of wanted to. I had always shared everything else with them; if I was going to finally be honest with my parents, it seemed only right that they should know, too.

Kylee, predictably, took all the creepy stuff in stride and moved right on to wanting to know anything and everything about my relationship with Zane. But Tara’s reaction — which was
no
reaction — concerned me. Kylee lived half her life in a fantasy world anyway, but Tara was the daughter of two no-nonsense cops. She liked her world to be logical, orderly, and free of weirdball crap like ghosts and shadows. “So, you didn’t even try to see him again?” Kylee finished.

“How could I?” I answered, the disappointment of that moment still smarting. “He pretty much told me not to come back.”

“That sucks,” Kylee sympathized. “You sure the lawyer was telling the truth?”

I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t he?” Zane wanted to go with him; I know that. I just wish he hadn’t been in such a hurry.”

“You can’t blame him for wanting out of a nursing home full of old people,” Tara said reasonably, pulling the band off her long blond ponytail, then putting it back in again. “He took charge and found a quick solution — you’ve got to respect that.”

“That’s true,” I agreed, studying her. Tara never,
ever
wore her hair down. Readjusting the band was a nervous habit. She’d been doing it every five minutes all night.

“Tar?” I asked tentatively. “You haven’t said much about… you know. My seeing the shadows.”

Her troubled eyes met mine only briefly. “What can I say? I mean, it is what it is, right?”

“She needs to know that you believe her,” Kylee said, her dark eyes blazing.

I felt suddenly uncomfortable. I appreciated Kylee’s unqualified support more than I could say, and her and Tara’s bickering was a constant of the universe, but I hated it when they argued about me.

“Of course I believe her!” Tara defended hotly. Then she turned back to me. “Look, Kal — if you say you see dead people, I believe you see dead people. You’re not the kind of person to make up something like that.” She shot an accusatory glance at Kylee. “But I
am
allowed to freak out about it. You know I’ve never believed in ghosts.”

“What she sees are not ‘ghosts.’” Kylee corrected. “Ghosts are the souls of people who’ve died but haven’t moved on yet, or ones who have moved on but then come back again for some special purpose. Zane was never a ghost because he never actually died. The other things she sees aren’t ghosts either.”

Tara raised an eyebrow at her. “And you would know this how?”

Kylee stiffened uncomfortably for a moment, then lifted her chin with a determined gesture. “I know things because my
ba noi
is an expert on this stuff. Seriously. She reads the books, she talks to people… she just knows. It’s always been a thing with her. And I’ve—” she broke off. “I think it’s pretty cool, too.”

Neither Tara nor I needed to ask who Kylee’s
ba noi
was; we knew she was referring to her Vietnamese grandmother. Kylee had always been close to her paternal grandparents, even though they had long since disowned her deadbeat father, who had abandoned Kylee’s mother when she was pregnant.

“Well,” I asked nervously. “What is it you think I
do
see?”

Kylee’s forehead creased with thought. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “In Zane’s case, I’d say his spirit was wandering from his body, but it didn’t separate completely, because he was still alive. I think the term for that is a wraith — a spirit that’s hovering, not knowing which way to go, because the body is very near death but the outcome still isn’t sure. But these other things… these shadows of historical people… I’ve never heard of that before.”

I had to laugh. “Fabulous. Even people who actually believe in this stuff think I’m weird!”

“Don’t say that,” Kylee soothed. “Just because I haven’t heard of it doesn’t mean nobody has. I bet my
ba noi
would know.”

“Do you see shadows now?” Tara broke in gruffly. “I mean, like right here in Kylee’s room?”

I looked around. Kylee’s bedroom was small, barely big enough for her twin bed and two sleeping bags on the floor. I didn’t see anything except the two of them. “No,” I answered, “at least, not now. I see them over and over in the same place, but they’re not there all the time. It’s like watching a video that loops, but with more downtime than playtime. Does that make any sense?”

“Sure,” Kylee said with enthusiasm. “Have you seen any in my room other times?”

“I can’t remember any,” I answered.

She frowned with disappointment.

“If it makes you feel better,” I added with a grin, “whenever we used to go water sliding on the slope in your backyard, I’d see a really old, faint shadow of a Native American boy jumping up on a horse.”

Kylee’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”

I nodded. My eyes turned toward Tara. She was staring blankly back at me. Should I, or shouldn’t I?

What the heck? It did feel good to come clean after all these years. “One of my favorites is in your driveway,” I told her. “Right by the basketball goal. It’s a teenaged girl with one really long braid down her back. She’s wearing a long skirt, but it’s not fancy; all her clothes are pretty ragged looking, and she’s barefoot. She’s falling from somewhere or something up high — I’ve never been able to tell what. And this guy catches her, right before she hits the ground. He’s wearing these shapeless trousers and a tattered shirt, and he has this bizarre floppy hat on. I’ve never even seen a picture of one like it — I swear I think he sewed it together himself! But anyway, every time he catches her, she looks up at him and she just beams… it’s so obvious she’s in love with him! And when he looks at her, he has the oddest expression on his face. Like he can’t believe she’s looking at him like that, but it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him. But at the same time, I can feel his fear, too. Like he was afraid he wouldn’t catch her!”

I stopped only because I had run out of breath. My cheeks were flushed. Talking about the shadows had always seemed so risky and personally exposing that doing it for the first time with Zane had felt like parading around school in my underwear. Yet here I was, babbling on… and I didn’t ordinarily babble, about anything. What had gotten into me?

I looked anxiously at my friends. Kylee’s eyes were wide, her mouth open slightly. Tara stared back at me with an expression that was unreadably blank. Almost like she was in shock.

“Sorry,” I said weakly. “Too much information?”

They both stared at me another moment. “No way!” Kylee said finally, her face lighting up. “That is so totally freakin’ cool I can’t stand it!”

I smiled back at her, then turned to Tara. Her expression was still completely blank. She sat unmoving for a good five seconds. Then she gave her head a shake and looked around the room. “Is there any more dip?”

Kylee and I exchanged a glance. “No,” Kylee answered. “We finished it off hours ago.”

“Oh, right,” Tara responded, not looking at either of us. She smoothed out her sleeping bag, plumped up her pillow, and laid down. “Sorry, guys, but I’ve got to crash. It’s been a long day.” She pulled a sheet over herself, then buried her head in her pillow facing away from us.

I opened my mouth to say something, but was stopped by Kylee’s hand on my arm. She shook her head, her dark eyes sending me a silent message.
Not now. Give her time.

I decided to take her advice. I’d only lived in Cheyenne a few years, but Kylee and Tara — despite their very different personalities — had been best friends since elementary school. I suppose that was why they fought so much. They felt like sisters.

“Yeah,” I agreed, my voice sounding almost as hoarse as Zane’s had. “I’m pretty tired, too.” I stretched out on my own bag, and Kylee crawled into her bed. “Goodnight,” I offered.

“Night,” she returned.

“Samesies,” Tara mumbled.

I grinned hopefully. “Samesies” was one of Kylee’s favorite made-up words, the kind of cutesy nonsense that Tara ordinarily rolled her eyes at.

She would be all right with it. With
me.

Eventually.

Chapter 4

“I don’t know what you’re so nervous about,” Kylee said brightly, practically shoving me up the steps toward the back door of her house. “You’ve met my
ba noi
like what — three times already? Chillax!”

“That was different,” I insisted. “Then I was just some random friend of yours, not a freak of nature.”

“Will you stop with that?” Kylee chastised. “I haven’t told her anything about you yet — you can do that yourself. Besides which, what makes you think you’re so special? My
ba noi’s
dealt with some seriously weird people in her lifetime, believe me. It’s like she attracts them. You and your shadows are
not
going to shock her.”

I reached the door, but refused to open it.

“Kali,” she said with a groan. “Just
what
are you afraid of? My
ba noi
is not some creepy third-world medicine woman who’s going to exorcise you with a bloody rooster — she’s from San Jose! She’s lived there since the seventies, and aside from being into supernatural stuff, she’s a perfectly normal person!”

I had a strong urge to crawl behind the nearby air-conditioning unit. “I know,” I apologized lamely. “I’m sorry. I’m just nervous about anybody else knowing.”

The flash of heat in Kylee’s eyes cooled. She knew my freak-out had nothing to do with her grandmother’s ethnicity. With me being one-quarter Hawaiian and Kylee being half Vietnamese, we’d always considered ourselves in the same multiracial boat. The only difference was that while her beautifully toned skin, hair, and eyes were unmistakably Asian, I didn’t look Hawaiian. My hair was dark and curly and my skin was a tad darker than average, but my gray eyes and long “Roman” nose made me look more like the Greeks on my mother’s side. “I guess what I’m really afraid of is…”

Kylee waited patiently.

“I’m afraid she really
will
know what’s wrong with me,” I admitted with a croak. “And I’m not sure I’m ready to hear it.”

Kylee reached out and gave me a quick hug. “Sure you are,” she said lightly. “And you can’t put it off anymore. She’s going back home tomorrow. Now get your wussy butt in there.” She reached around me, opened the door, and shoved my wussy butt inside.

Twenty minutes later, I found myself sitting in a lawn chair on Kylee’s deck, sipping a tall glass of salty limeade, her grandmother’s specialty. “It’s so much better when
you
make it,” Kylee said with a sigh as she drained her drink. “When I try, it’s just gross.”

“You have to start with good limes,” her grandmother responded, enjoying her own drink in the unusually warm spring sunshine. “Besides which, everything always tastes better when you’re not the one doing the work.” She threw a friendly grin at me, further wrinkling her wizened face.

I smiled back nervously. I had always liked Kylee’s grandmother, but I was also a little intimidated by her. Joan Dong was a small woman in stature, but the twinkle in her dark eyes showed wicked intelligence and a spirit as tough as nails.

“Kylee says you have something to ask me,” she suggested. “I’m assuming about something other than limeade. Well, don’t be shy. Whatever it is, I’ve probably heard it before.”

I hesitated. Why was this so terribly, bone-chillingly difficult? Didn’t I
want
to know the truth about myself? Wouldn’t it help to understand? Or would everyone be better off if I just stopped talking about it and went to back to ignoring the shadows and pretending to live a normal life?

Pretending.
That was the key. I could either deal with it, or I could pretend. Forever.

“I see dead people,” I blurted, before I could lose my nerve. “Lots of them, all the time.”

Kylee’s grandmother didn’t blink. She cocked her head slightly to the side. “How do you know they’re dead?”

I swallowed. It was a reasonable, if unexpected, question. “Well, they’re not solid; they’re transparent. And they’re wearing clothes from other times, and the older ones are fainter.”

The creases in Joan’s brow creased further. “When did you start seeing such things?”

“As long as I can remember.”

“And did you ever have a near-death experience? As a child? A baby?”

I considered. “No. Not that I know of. I thought I was drowning one time when I was little — that’s why I’m still so afraid of the water. But they tell me I was never in any real danger. Other than that, I’ve never even been that sick.”

She gazed at me a long time, her eyes searching. “Tell me more about these people. Tell me everything you see, and everything they make you feel.”

My stomach felt queasy. But I took a deep breath and started talking. I told her what it was like when I was a child, and how, more and more now, I was being affected by the shadows’ emotions. I explained that during my brief time in Hawaii, the whole crazy business had seemed to flip into hyperdrive, causing me to feel the emotions of a live human being I didn’t even know. I told it all like giving symptoms to a doctor, and I didn’t say one word about Zane.

I couldn’t bear to. It had been four days since he’d left Nebraska, and I hadn’t heard a word from him.

When I finished, I grabbed at my glass of limeade and buried my face behind it. Now Kylee’s grandmother would say something. She would tell me some horrible thing I didn’t want to hear. Like how I had a moral responsibility to buck up and do something good with my “talents.” Whatever it was, I knew I couldn’t bear it, not if Zane was lost to me forever. My ability to see his spirit had helped him survive the accident, and I would always be grateful for that. But from this point forward, the “gift” of seeing souls in need was one I could do without.