“I’ve got a surprise for you upstairs,” Sophie said. “Grab some Snapple.”
I opened one of the giant refrigerators. A half-eaten turkey stared back at me.
“Not that one,” Sophie laughed. “In the beverage one.”
I went to the other refrigerator and swung its heavy door open. Top to bottom drinks: beer and seltzer and fancy root beer and all kinds of milk: skim, 2%, and whole. At my house we only drank skim milk and water from the tap. Finally I found the Snapple and grabbed a bottle.
“Come on,” Sophie said, her hands full of snacks for us.
I walked through the double parlors, with the furniture that begged you to sit on it, then into the foyer—foy-ay, Sophie called it—and up the big front staircase to the second floor and Sophie’s room. Sophie stacked all the food on a table and plopped onto her bed, which looked like a giant sleigh. I plopped next to her, imagining for a moment that we were in Russia, long-ago Russia when they still had a czar and people wore tall fur hats and ermine cloaks, and I imagined we were in a real sleigh, gliding across miles and miles of snow. I sighed. If I didn’t already have so many more important things to wish for, I would want to be Russian.
“Ready?” Sophie said.
I glanced over at her. Tonight she had on a lime green headband with one yellow stripe in the middle and small earrings shaped like seashells. My mother would not let me get my ears pierced until I was sixteen. She did not believe girls should think about things like earrings until they got older. I sighed again. I didn’t really like Sophie, but being near her always made me long for every single thing I could not have.
“If it’s smoking I’ve already tried it,” I said. “In New York with this girl named Lola who already has her belly button pierced and she’s only twelve.” I tried to sound nonchalant but it was hard. Smoking in New York City on a roof was too cool. Lola was too cool. So cool, in fact, that I was actually afraid of her. She lived in the loft above my father’s with just her mother, a performance artist. I wasn’t even sure what that meant, but it sounded very dramatic.
“This is better,” Sophie said.
Sophie thought everything she did was better but it usually wasn’t. She reached under her bed and pulled something out.
“Ta-da!” she said.
I gasped. “A Ouija board.” I had to admit it, this was better than almost anything.
I swallowed hard, running my hands over the board’s slick surface.
“We should turn off the lights,” I said.
Sophie went around the room flicking off lights, leaving just the small one beside the bed lit.
“Let’s concentrate first,” I said. “Try to connect with the spirits.”
We both put our hands very lightly on the mover and closed our eyes.
“Concentrate,” I said.
I thought about how I’d saved my father’s life, how I’d made that glass slide across the table. Out of the blue, I thought about Antoinetta’s dead mother. I wished Antoinetta were here so she could communicate with her mother.
Under our fingertips, the indicator moved ever so slightly.
“Are you doing that?” Sophie whispered.
“No,” I said, feeling all trembly. I peeked under my eyelids to see if Sophie was doing it. But she looked pretty worried.
“Should we ask a question?” Sophie said. “Like who we will marry or something?”
I rolled my eyes. I had bigger things on my mind, like miracles. I stared hard at the board. “Is someone with us?” I asked.
The indicator skidded in jerky movements across the board again.
I glanced up at Sophie.
“Are you doing that?” Sophie asked again.
“Why would I move it?” I said. I looked at the board again. “Who are you?” I whispered.
This time the movements were smoother. The small needle went first to G, then R, E, E, R, where it stopped.
We looked at each other. “Greer,” I said, so pleased I could hardly stand it. “It’s Mr. Greer.”
Sophie’s hands flew off the mover. “I don’t like this,” she said. “I thought it would be like the Magic 8-Ball. That we’d ask who we were going to marry and how many kids we’d have. Stuff like that.”
“Come on,” I said. “This is better.”
Sophie hesitated.
“One more minute,” I said.
Reluctantly, Sophie put her fingers back onto the mover.
But before we even asked a question it started to move, so fast that Sophie had to shout out the letters. When it finally stopped, she scribbled them onto a pad for us to interpret.
BEWAREM.
“‘Be warm’?” Sophie asked, confused.
But I couldn’t speak. The letters were all too clear to me. Beware M. It was a warning and it was directed right at me.
Chapter Seven
SAINT MADELINE OF PROVIDENCE