Haunted (5 page)

Anne

My head aches. Ben almost drowned. Ben almost drowned, and Ethan is back, and whatever this thing is that keeps following me around has finally figured out a way to keep me from ignoring it. It’s talking to me. Ethan could hear it, and it tried to grab Ben. I don’t know why it let him go, and I don’t know what it wants from me. I only know that I’ve been pretending for months that none of this is happening, but now I can’t pretend anymore.

“Let me take you to the hospital,” I tell Ben over and over. It’s all I can think to say. I would drive him to the hospital, and they’d check him out. They’d tell me that he was okay, and then maybe I could forget the rest of it. Only he won’t go—even though the paramedics came in the ambulance because someone had dialed 911 while we were pulling Ben out of the water.

“I’m fine.” He raises his hands in a stopping motion. “God, Anne. Calm down. It was weird, but I’m fine. I mean, it’s not like it’s your fault. Why the hell did you jump in there anyway? Carter had my back.” Carter is the other guard on duty. “He knows what to do. Shit, Anne. You’re not even that good of a swimmer. Why would you do that? Plus, what’s the deal with your friend? Not that I didn’t appreciate it, but what the hell? He dives in fully clothed? Who is this guy, anyway? He looks sort of familiar. Did he go to Kennedy last year or something? It’s like I’ve seen him, but I don’t know where.”

“Ethan. His name is Ethan. He’s a friend of our family.” It sounds just as lame the second time as it did the first. But what else am I supposed to say?
Yeah, Ben, you’re right. I’m a big fat liar. You probably did see him last fall—right before the crazy witch chased us both out of the courtyard and my life turned upside down. Only for some reason, almost everyone seems to have blocked all that out. Like it’s just too hard to believe, so you don’t.

We’re standing in the little lifeguard office near the entrance to the pool. Ben had closed the door, but I can hear the muffled sound of Carter talking to someone outside—maybe one of the paramedics because they haven’t driven away yet.

“Anne.” Ben’s voice is low and serious-sounding. He pulls me to him. He’d put on his white Aqua Creek T-shirt, but I’m still just in my swimsuit, and I can feel the familiar warmth of him, which makes me happy. He’d been so cold when we’d dragged him from the pool. His damp hair smells of chlorine.

Suddenly, I feel like crying, and because I’m not sure why, I tip my head up and kiss Ben on the mouth. Kissing Ben always makes me feel safe—just me and Ben together, as close as possible. Everything focuses on just that, and I stop feeling like the world is caving in around me because of huge scary stuff I can’t control. I feel safe. I feel normal.

“You feel amazing.” Ben’s hands are in my hair then, and on my skin, and our tongues are tangled together.
You almost died
, I keep thinking.
You almost died, and somehow, it was my fault.
I’m pretty sure this is not what Ben wants me to contemplate while he’s slipping his hand under the top of my bikini and I’m letting him—in fact, encouraging him. This is the problem with being me. I could let Ben feel me up all day long, but it’s not going to change the fact that a Russian mermaid almost killed him. Telling Ben the truth isn’t going to happen anytime soon either.

Ben’s hand wanders in the other direction, flicks around my bikini bottom. I flick it away. It wanders back.

Two things occur to me. One is that if I don’t object a little more obviously—correction, if I don’t object even subtly—I’m about to have guilt sex with my boyfriend on the fake wood desk in the Aqua Creek office and possibly end up with lifeguard applications plastered to my back. The other is that even while Ben’s hands are exploring all sorts of interesting places, and even while I’m still freaking out mightily about the whole mermaid thing, I’m still thinking about Ethan.

This is definitely one wild swing of emotions, even for me.

“Not here, Ben.”

Ben seems to feel that here is just fine.

“Seriously, Ben. There are people out there.”

“And we’re in here.”

I swat his hands away a couple more times, and he finally gets the message, which is a relief, since I might still be terrified, but I’m not stupid.

“Let me drive you home,” I insist. “They’re closing the pool for the afternoon, Ben. That’s what Carter told you, remember? So let me drive you home before I go to work. Please, Ben?”

Ben is quiet then, but he blows out a breath, and I take it as a yes.

Ethan and Tess are standing by my car. They look like they’ve been arguing. This doesn’t surprise me. Someone—Carter, probably—had given Ethan dry shorts and a T-shirt to replace his soaked clothes. I try not to notice how low the shorts hang on his hips. I fail.

Tess all but leaps on me. “I need to talk to you.”

“Gotta take Ben home.”

“I’ll call you.” This comes from Ethan. Ben tightens his grip on my hand, and I see him frown.

I tell Tess I’ll talk to her later. On the positive side, no Russian mermaids float into view—although that possibly might have cut the tension between Ben, Ethan, and me. Possibly not.

“Why does he need to call you?” Ben frowns again as he settles into the passenger seat of the Jetta that I’d gotten for my seventeenth birthday.

“Don’t know. It’s no big deal, Ben.” Except clearly, it is.

Ben’s tone gets a little edgier. “So you’re sure there’s nothing else I should know about this? He seems sort of shady.”

My lips twitch back a laugh. Of all the adjectives I’d use to describe Ethan, shady probably isn’t one of them. Ben’s brow furrows. He scowls at me.

“Something you’re not telling me? Seriously, Anne. The dude looks like he’s hiding something. Don’t you think?”

“No,” I tell Ben firmly. “I don’t think that at all.”

***

Having dropped Ben off, then gone home, showered, and changed into a denim skirt, layered tank tops, and my black “Yes, I’m a salesgirl in a vintage jewelry shop” cardigan, I sit in the back room of the Jewel Box, attempting to do my job, still totally clueless about what—if anything—I should do, other than tell more lies like the ones I just fed to Ben.

I slip a price tag around one link of a chunky turquoise bracelet—stones the size of small eyes embedded in heavy twists of gold—and listen to the chatter coming from the front of the store. We’re getting ready for a private show, and this involves arranging boxes full of pieces with special tags and signs. It’s costume jewelry, mostly—stuff from the 1950s and 1960s—but real pieces too, like the blue twists of flapper beads from the 1920s, long necklaces that catch the light and swing against you when you wear them. It’s boring work putting tiny jewelry tags on necklaces and bracelets and then cataloging them on the Jewel Box worksheets, but boring is okay right now—more than okay.

“Are you sure you don’t mind working in the back, dear?” Mrs. Benson had asked when I’d walked in the door almost twenty minutes late, hoping she wouldn’t notice. “I suppose I can continue to manage up here alone. But I do enjoy your company. Your mother could arrange the pieces tomorrow, you know.”

Her voice was nothing but polite, except that I know she’s angry. At me for being late, obviously, and at my mother for taking the afternoon off without enough notice, which is something she’s been doing a lot lately and something Mrs. Benson has chosen to ignore. At least to Mom’s face.

My mother hasn’t been the same since my brother David died of cancer almost three years ago. She goes out for hours and doesn’t tell Dad or me where she is. I actually followed her a couple of times once I’d realized that no one was going to do something about her frequent disappearing act. She doesn’t go far—usually just for a long walk or to a matinee at the little movie theater about a mile from the Jewel Box. But she’s dropped enough weight that she’s wearing a size double-zero, and even then, her clothes hang on her. She’d gotten better, but after last fall, when the Jewel Box roof collapsed on her, she wasn’t better anymore.

My dad pretends not to notice. But maybe that’s because while I was standing next to my mother—all doped up on painkillers in the hospital emergency room—he was still at the front desk, filling out paperwork. So he didn’t hear her whisper that she wished she was dead so she could be with her son. Only I did.

I don’t talk about this stuff with my dad because I don’t think he wants to hear it. I don’t tell Ben, even when we’re kissing and we’re pressed together close enough that I feel—if not safe, at least like a regular girl, and not one with a destiny. Most days, I don’t even tell Tess, although I know she’d listen. It’s the stuff I thought I might tell Ethan, because somehow, I thought he’d understand. Only then he left, and everything felt different.

But it surprises me that Mrs. Benson lets my mom’s behavior go. She’s usually not one to hold her tongue about things that piss her off, except that I guess with my mother, it’s different, since it was Mrs. Benson’s store roof that smashed into her when Baba Yaga followed us back from the forest.

Not that either my mother or Mrs. Benson seems to remember that this is what really happened. They both think it was a freak thunderstorm and possibly a tornado. Neither of them remembers the crazy Russian lacquer box—the one that’s currently shoved under my bed—that held the key to Baba Yaga’s hut. Only
I
do. It’s part of a long list of things that I’ve chosen to keep to myself. Things like: 1) Witches are real, and so, it turns out, are Russian mermaids called rusalkas who try to kill your boyfriend; 2) My mother and I are both descended from the Romanovs through the tsar’s wacky evil illegitimate son; 3) Tess is absolutely right. I haven’t lost any of the power inside me. In fact, it’s only gotten stronger. And the dreams of Baba Yaga have too.

“Careful with those stones, dear,” Mrs. Benson’s deep voice booms behind me. The bracelet slips from my hand and falls with a heavy thud onto the carpeted floor. I add
silent
and
sneaky
to my mental checklist of things that annoy me about my boss.

I bend quickly and scoop the bracelet from the floor. Mrs. Benson plucks it from my hand. “Sorry, dear. Didn’t mean to startle you. I had no idea you wouldn’t hear me come in.” She arches an already perfectly arched eyebrow at me and seems to be waiting for some kind of response. Unfortunately, I don’t have one.

“Turquoise is pretty sturdy,” she says after a few uncomfortable seconds. She taps one of the turquoise nuggets. “But the prongs are delicate. And no one wants to buy damaged goods.”

I ponder that tidbit. Seriously, I rarely know what to say to this woman. I love the stories behind the jewelry, love that everything in the store was owned by someone else at some point. But the whole place makes me uneasy these days.

Maybe it’s because I watched it get smacked to smithereens by lightning that day I brought Anastasia back. Maybe it’s because this is where my mother first handed me the Russian lacquer box that turned out to hold the key to Baba Yaga’s hut. Maybe it’s just Mrs. Benson—frosted, blond, chin-length hair never out of place, nails always manicured, pin-thin in her wardrobe of gray pantsuits, white blouses, and tasteful scarves that she always fastens with an antique cameo pin. The perfection of it just bugs me somehow.

Still, when she offered me a summer job, I snapped it up. Tess wanted me to teach beginning ballet with her at Miss Amy’s, where we’ve both taken dance since we were toddlers, but I took the Jewel Box job instead. I told Tess it was because it pays more—only that wasn’t the entire truth. Mrs. Benson is, in fact, paying me more per hour. But I’m here because it’s easier. Neither Mrs. Benson nor my mother chooses to have much conversation with me at all; Mrs. Benson because that’s just how she is, and my mother because that’s just how she is these days too.

At Miss Amy’s, I’d see Tess every day. She’d poke and prod at me and dig out the stuff I’d rather she not know. The stuff I think she’s safer not knowing. Stuff I’m just not ready to say—even to myself sometimes. Just the other day, she asked me if I loved Ben—and what kind of crazy girl doesn’t love a boy like Ben, who’s cute and smart and tells her over and over that he loves her? Who am I these days that I have to lie about something like that?

“I’ll be more careful,” I tell Mrs. Benson. “I’m sorry I dropped it.”

“So—your mother.” Mrs. Benson sets the bracelet on the work table and flicks at an imaginary speck of dust with one exactly oval nail. “What appointment did she have today?”

I shrug. “Don’t know. She doesn’t run her schedule by me for approval.”

“Dear girl, I’m sure she doesn’t. But perhaps you should pay better attention anyway.”

“I—what?” I’d been looking at the bracelet, but now I meet Mrs. Benson’s gaze. Her eyes are a really vivid green with these little flecks of gold. Both of them are fixed on me more sharply than I’d like. What’s the deal with this woman today?

“Anne, dear, I’m worried. Your mother has been with me since I opened this shop. Seven years now. I count on her, you know. She knows this business as well as I do.”

“She took the afternoon off. That’s all I know.”
And if you want to bitch at someone, bitch at her, not me.
Because personally, I’m sitting here willing my hands to stop tingling so I don’t melt this stupid bracelet when I tag it. Or maybe get my inventory pencil to poke you in the eye.
Then
maybe you’d have something to talk about with my mother when she finally shows up. “Laura, dear, do you know that while you’ve been off moping, depressed, and on the verge of an eating disorder, your darling daughter has developed powers she can’t control? Why, just this afternoon, she burned a hole in my Alfred Dunner slacks. It was horrendous.”

What I actually say is, “But I’ll see what I can find out.” I know I don’t really mean it, but she nods her head and graces me with a toothy smile, so I guess it’s what she wanted to hear.

I’m turning my attention back to the inventory sheet when the images slam into me like a wall of concrete. The rusalka. Mrs. Benson. My mother. Ben. Viktor. Anastasia. Their faces rush at me through a haze of color. A wave of nausea rises in my throat. “Steady, girl.” Baba Yaga’s voice echoes in my head. At least, I think it’s in my head. “Swallow the fear. Do not let it control you. You are stronger than that.”