Whispered Magics (9 page)

When I landed, I had a coughing attack. After I caught my
breath he said, “You sound sick. This will make it worse.”

“Who cares?” I said. “They don’t. Be glad to get rid of me.
And since she already killed my dad and got away with it, why not me?”

“What?”

“My mother.” I snarled the word so nastily it made me start
coughing again. “Killed my dad.”

“Geez!” Ben exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “Why is it some
people have all the luck?”

“That my dad is dead?” I said, really angry now.

“No, no,” he said quickly. “But here’s you, sit all period in
math and English doing nothing, and nobody notices. Me, now, I look at one of
them wrong, and it’s back to Detention. Then when I get
home . . .” He gave one of those shrugs again. “So how’d she do
it? And get away with it?”

“Dumped him,” I said, a year’s worth of bitterness making my
voice shake. “He moved out and that disgusting idiot moved in with us. With
her. Anyway, Dad started—” I hesitated, then said quickly, “—she made him start
drinking, but he wasn’t some old drunk. So one night, something happened to his
car . . .” I stopped, and closed my mouth hard. I sure wasn’t
going to cry in front of some boy and have him laugh at me.

“Some people have all the luck,” he said softly. “Hey, let’s
see if the ghosts come out in rain.”

The ghosts were there, clothes streaming and fluttering as if
the rain were nothing but wind. They seemed delighted to see us.

Ben and his crowd went up to the bridge again. I didn’t feel
like doing much, so I mostly sat and watched Sarah and two other little ones
playing some kind of game. Was it something kids had played a hundred years
ago? I hugged my arms close, and as the silvery little kid ghosts clapped
soundlessly and hopped and twirled, I thought about how wonderful it would be
to just hang out in a park for a hundred years, playing and playing. How lucky
the ghosts were! The weather didn’t have any effect on them, for some of them
were in summer clothes, but they just danced about like leaves in the wind,
light and uncaring.

A movement by my leg made me look up, and I saw my little
Sarah-ghost. She really did remind me of Sarah, I thought. My sweet little
cousin Sarah, whom I hadn’t seen since Dad’s funeral.

The little ghost looked into my face, her eyes and mouth sad.
I reached out to pull her into my lap, like I used to with Sarah, but my hands
went right through her. The air was so cold I shivered.

She stood there looking at me, sad and still and cold and not
breathing, and I shivered again, without knowing why, except I missed Sarah
horribly. She’d been kind of a little sister to me. Though I hadn’t seen her
for six months—hadn’t really thought about her—I thought now,
What if she died, just like this little
girl?
I would never see her again.

The screech of tires sounded like a scream this time.

I whirled around, saw from the glitter of lights through the
rain that the car had turned completely around. A couple minutes later, there
was Ben, wheezing with laughter.

“We better go,” he said, still grinning, as around us, the
ghosts laughed and danced. “Cops’ll be here in a minute.”

Just as we reached the edge of the park, revolving red lights
up on the bridge made us turn and look. The ghosts winked out, like candles
being snuffed. There was nothing to see but swings and slides and play
equipment, with water running down it all in streams.

We started to run, but my chest hurt too much. I faltered, and
Ben slowed again.

“That was fun,” he said. “
God
those drunks are stupid . . . I think I’d like to try
faking’ em out. Just once. And if I end up playing forever in Neverland, who
cares? Damn drunks,” he said. And laughed again.

“Damn drunks,” I said. But I didn’t feel like laughing.

o0o

“Is Sarah there?”

“Who is this?”

I thought for a moment about lying. “Hi, Aunt Margaret. It’s
Anna.”

“How are you doing, dear?” My aunt’s voice was soft and
careful.

“Okay. Is Sarah there?”

“Well, she’s at her piano lesson. But we could call you
back . . .”

I tried to think of something to say, but my throat closed up
and my eyes burned.

“Anna? Anna?”

I hung up.

o0o

“I don’t think you should do it,” I said to Ben on the way
to the Park.

The air was bitter, with that funny smell, like a
refrigerator, that usually means snow is coming.

“Do what?”

“With the cars. Something might happen.”

“They’re just drunks,” he said in his angry voice. “Drunks are
mean, nasty, and they mess up everyone around them and don’t give a damn.”

I thought of the little ghost, and Sarah, and back to the
little ghost who would never be warm again. Would never be hugged. But I
couldn’t say that out loud to a guy like Ben.

“What if the car goes over next time? And there’s, like, a
baby in the back seat? Or a grandmother? Or a kid like us?”
What if the drunk is someone like my dad?

“That’s the breaks,” Ben said, still in that hard voice.
“Drunks—”

“It’s not the kid’s choice to be there, and die,” I said. My
voice got hard as well. Better than crying.

“So the kid gets saved a whole lot of grief,” he said, then he
stopped, squinting at me. His face looked thinner than ever in the bleached
light from a store window. It looked old. “What kid are you yakking about
anyway, dork?”

“Anyone who didn’t choose what was happening,” I said. And
because my voice went shaky—I didn’t know why—I added, “Dork yourself. Stupid,
selfish, loser dork.” And I ran ahead, as fast as I could, arriving at the park
alone.

Keeping my back to the bridge, I pushed all the swings high,
and the ghost kids had a great time swinging up and jumping. They didn’t fall
like we would. They fluttered down, light and pale as ash after a fire.

When I got tired of that, I spun the carousel. A swarm of
ghost kids jumped onto it, soundless except for the creak of cold steel.

Then my little Sarah ghost came up next to me, with her curly
hair and pinafore and her long skirt with a ragged hem. She looked at me with
her black eyes, blacker than the sky.

And I remembered that Internet thing. “Do you see the light?”

She blinked, looking right at me, so I said it again. By now I
felt pretty stupid as I pointed at the nearest street lamp. “Do you see the
light?”

She turned around in a slow circle. It meant she had heard me.
The first time any of them had really made it clear they could hear us, and not
just see us. It gave me a weird feeling.

She faced the other way for a time, then glanced back at me
with her head tipped in question. “Find the light,” I said, and she turned
around again.

I squinted in the direction she was facing, but all I saw were
trees bounding the park, and beyond them, a row of stores.

But as I watched her, the expression on her face changed.
Surprise, wonder. She looked up, unblinking, and this time I saw reflections in
her eyes. Bright, silvery light—silver, gold, blue, all the colors, but
brighter than stars.

It sent a prickly feeling through me, not fear—not quite—and I
spun around, hoping I could see what she saw. Surrounding me were just the
usual street-lamps and the store-windows, their neon lights looking weaker than
ever in the bone-cold darkness.

When I turned again, Sarah was walking slowly past me. She
held her arms up, like someone was going to carry her, and again I spun, but I
didn’t see anyone there. And when I looked back, Sarah was gone.

The other ghosts went right on playing.

I was alone. It was my own fault, there I was, alone. Again.

Alone, and my head ached and my arms were cold. I didn’t even
look toward the bridge, but turned and ran home.

o0o

“Anna?”

I jumped off my bed. Too fast. I stopped, coughing hard.

“Anna?” My door opened, and Sarah peeked in.

She was real. Her face was flushed, her eyes brown and
smiling. I hugged her hard, felt her warm cheek against mine, and her solid
little body in my arms. I could hear her heartbeat, and mine, past my ragged
breathing.

“Anna? Don’t cry,” she said. “Mom said if you want, I can come
over and we can play. Or you can come to my house. Want to? I started
collecting porcelain ponies, just like you.” She grinned proudly. Her front two
teeth were missing. “I have six now. Want to hear their names?”

I looked over at my collection, still lined up on the shelves
that
he
had made. I hadn’t even
looked at them in months. “Sure,” I said. “Tell me all about them.”

o0o

At midnight, I was alone again. Ben hadn’t come.

I couldn’t sleep, even though I felt rotten. I kept thinking
about Sarah’s visit. How happy she was to see me. If I hadn’t called, how long
would I have gone without seeing her again? How careful all the adults were at
dinner. Sarah didn’t notice. She just gabbled away like always, but anytime I
spoke, all the adults smiled and agreed, just like a row of robots. Like I was
a bomb and might explode if they moved wrong. When Sarah and my aunt left, my
mother thanked them for coming, and when the door was shut, he said, “Thank you
for joining us this evening, Anna.”

Careful, polite. More of the bomb business.

But I felt like a bomb, I thought as I stared at the softly
falling snow out my window. Like all my feelings about the divorce and Dad
might blow up, and no one cared.

Except Sarah cared. And Aunt Margaret. Otherwise why would she
bring Sarah over, even though Mom divorced her brother?

My thoughts circled round and round, like the ghost kids on
the carousel. Anger and happiness and sadness all fluttered and streamed, just
like their clothes, leaving me feeling cold inside.

I thought about Ben again. Was he out there?
And if I end up playing forever in
Neverland, who cares?
he’d said. Had he been playing alone in Neverland
Park at night, until the ghosts came?

I thought of those cars going right through the ghosts. They
wouldn’t go through Ben. Why hadn’t I thought of that before, when I was
yelling at him about drunks and cars and kids? That he was in danger, too?

Ben doesn’t care, I thought. My thoughts whirled round the
carousel again. He doesn’t care if anyone dies—including himself.

o0o

I pulled on my coat. In the pocket was the cell phone that
he
had given me, when I started going to
school by myself. I’d never touched it. I was going to throw it on my bed, but
shrugged. It could stay in the coat.

The snow fell softly. It was cold and silent and scary in the
Park. Not even a ghost in sight. I toiled through the soft mounds of snow
toward the bridge, coughing as I struggled up the embankment. Flickers of white
seemed to dance between the trees, but I couldn’t tell if they were ghosts or
snow, or tricks of my aching eyes.

When I got to the top, black spots smeared my vision. The
ghosts were there, all of them, but my attention went straight to the skinny
figure in the middle of the street, his thin hair and baggy sweatshirt and old,
worn jeans outlined in the harsh beam of oncoming headlights. His face pale as
the ghosts’.

Gasping, I floundered toward him, kicking up snow in all
directions.

He stood still and straight as the car wavered through the
snowdrifts; the light veered away, then lit him again, then veered, and he was
no more than a shadow in the dark.

Then the lights swung back, and the car was close. Closer.

And Ben didn’t move.

All my spiraling feelings—Sarah, and the little dead
girl-ghost, and my dad who’d said he loved me but went away, and the step-dad
who didn’t say anything but made me things—it all blended into one thought,
straight as those headlights aiming at Ben.

“No!” I yelled.

Ben’s head jerked. For a moment I saw his face.

“Jump!” I screamed, with all my strength.

The sound mixed with the screech of car tires. Lights swung,
the car roared away, and my smeary vision found the thin dark figure, limp as a
rag doll, lying in the snow.

I flung myself down beside him. A dark stream came out of his
mouth, looking black in the streetlight. Blood.

“Ben,” I cried. “Don’t die. Don’t die.”

“Anna.” It came out like a groan. His eyes were open, black,
the streetlamp gleaming in them. And in my mind I heard his voice the other
night, almost as pain-filled as now, but I’d heard the pain as anger.
Who cares? Who cares?

“I was mad at you for not coming,” I babbled. “But then I
missed you, and so here I am. I was going to walk you back.”

“Better go . . .” he whispered. “Get in
trouble.”

I was about to say I don’t care but suddenly I was sick of
those words. I looked around. We were alone. Even the ghosts were gone. “I’m
getting help.”

The phone! I pulled it out of my pocket and clicked it on. To
my surprise, it held half a charge, still. I stared down at the phone, knowing
I’d been dead wrong about Ben. He cared, but it seemed like no one else in his
life cared about him.

I punched 911 and reported the accident. Then I stared at the
phone for a long second, knowing that if I called home, my secret life would be
gone forever—that because my mother did care, that she’d be very angry.

He had programmed our number into the Favorites. I hit HOME.

“Anna?” Mom sounded terrified. “Anna, where are you?”

“At the bridge above Neverland Park. Mom, after this is over
you can ground me till I’m fifty, but now I gotta stay here. There’s somebody
who needs me.”

I heard her take a deep, shaky breath. “I’m on my way.”

I pocketed the phone and bent over Ben.

“No light,” he muttered, groping weakly with one hand. “Can’t
see . . . Are the ghosts gone?”