“Yes. I don’t think they wanted to hurt me—they just looked at me—but they were kind of scary. I think maybe they were people who rode the train in olden days. Have you seen ghostie people? You have, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but not for a very long time.” And some that were a lot more than ghosts. Ghosts didn’t leave residue on toilet seats and shower curtains. “Abra, how much do your parents know about your shine?”
“My dad thinks it’s gone except for a few things—like me calling from camp because I knew Momo was sick—and he’s glad. My mom knows it’s still there, because sometimes she’ll ask me to help her find something she’s lost—last month it was her car keys, she left them on Dad’s worktable in the garage—but she doesn’t know how much is still there. They don’t talk about it anymore.” She paused. “Momo knows. She’s not scared of it like Mom and Dad, but she told me I have to be careful. Because if people found out—” She made a comic face, rolling her eyes and poking her tongue out the corner of her mouth. “Eeek, a freak. You know?”
(yes)
She smiled gratefully. “Sure you do.”
“Nobody else?”
“Well . . . Momo said I should talk to Dr. John, because he already knew about some of the stuff. He, um, saw something I did with spoons when I was just a little kid. I kind of hung them on the ceiling.”
“This wouldn’t by chance be John Dalton, would it?”
Her face lit up. “You know him?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. I found something once for him. Something he lost.”
(a watch!)
(that’s right)
“I don’t tell him everything,” Abra said. She looked uneasy. “I sure didn’t tell him about the baseball boy, and I’d never tell him about the woman in the hat. Because he’d tell my folks, and they’ve got a lot on their minds already. Besides, what could they do?”
“Let’s just file that away for now. Who’s the baseball boy?”
“Bradley Trevor. Brad. Sometimes he used to turn his hat around and call it a rally cap. Do you know what that is?”
Dan nodded.
“He’s dead. They killed him. But they hurt him first. They hurt him so bad.” Her lower lip began to tremble, and all at once she looked closer to nine than almost thirteen.
(don’t cry Abra we can’t afford to attract)
(I know, I know)
She lowered her head, took several deep breaths, and looked up at him again. Her eyes were overbright, but her mouth had stopped trembling. “I’m okay,” she said. “Really. I’m just glad not to be alone with this inside my head.”
8
He listened carefully as she described what she remembered of her initial encounter with Bradley Trevor two years ago. It wasn’t much. The clearest image she retained was of many crisscrossing flashlight beams illuminating him as he lay on the ground. And his screams. She remembered those.
“They had to light him up because they were doing some kind of operation,” Abra said. “That’s what they called it, anyway, but all they were really doing was torturing him.”
She told him about finding Bradley again on the back page of The Anniston Shopper, with all the other missing children. How she had touched his picture to see if she could find out about him.
“Can you do that?” she asked. “Touch things and get pictures in your head? Find things out?”
“Sometimes. Not always. I used to be able to do it more—and more reliably—when I was a kid.”
“Do you think I’ll grow out of it? I wouldn’t mind that.” She paused, thinking. “Except I sort of would. It’s hard to explain.”
“I know what you mean. It’s our thing, isn’t it? What we can do.”
Abra smiled.
“You’re pretty sure you know where they killed this boy?”
“Yes, and they buried him there. They even buried his baseball glove.” Abra handed him a piece of notebook paper. It was a copy, not the original. She would have been embarrassed for anyone to see how she had written the names of the boys in ’Round Here, not just once but over and over again. Even the way they had been written now seemed all wrong, those big fat letters that were supposed to express not love but luv.
“Don’t get bent out of shape about it,” Dan said absently, studying what she’d printed on the sheet. “I had a thing for Stevie Nicks when I was your age. Also for Ann Wilson, of Heart. You’ve probably never even heard of her, she’s old-school, but I used to daydream about inviting her to one of the Friday night dances at Glenwood Junior High. How’s that for stupid?”
She was staring at him, openmouthed.
“Stupid but normal. Most normal thing in the world, so cut yourself some slack. And I wasn’t peeking, Abra. It was just there. Kind of jumped out in my face.”
“Oh God.” Abra’s cheeks had gone bright red. “This is going to take some getting used to, isn’t it?”
“For both of us, kiddo.” He looked back down at the sheet.
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