It’s the first day back after winter break, and around us our classmates chatter about their Christmas presents and tropical vacations, about the trees they trimmed and the candles they lit, about the movies they saw and how late they slept. Their voices fill the air around us, and, still thinking about the woman I just helped move on, I can’t decide whether or not I’m glad I’m so different from them.
“Nervous,” I finally answer Nolan, brushing my long, curly brown hair away from my face with my fingers and securing it with an elastic band. I don’t want anything obstructing the view for what I’m about to do.
“Don’t be nervous,” Nolan says as we walk across the parking lot. “You’re a natural. You’ve done it once already, right?”
“Yeah, but that was just a practice run. And I wasn’t alone then.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” he offers.
“No,” I say, digging in my bag for the car keys. “I have to do it by myself.” Part of me does want Nolan to come with me, though. He could grab the steering wheel if I suddenly have to help a spirit move on. But I don’t tell him that. I have to learn to be a luiseach and a functioning normal person at the same time. I unlock the door and toss my purple patch-covered backpack onto the backseat, then lean against our silver sedan beside Nolan. “I can do this. I can drive all the way to the hospital alone.”
Mom cringed when she handed me the keys this morning. I’ve had my license for months; I passed the test before we moved here from Austin, Texas, in August. But I haven’t been doing much driving. Before we moved, with my shiny new license burning a hole in my pocket, I thought I’d be begging Mom for time behind the wheel in our new hometown. But nothing’s been anything like I thought it would be since we moved here.
Mom works long hours, and I’m kind of trapped in the house when she’s not there. She finally offered to let me take the car to get myself to and from school—it’s a long walk, and January in Ridgemont, Washington, is flippin’ cold—but I had to promise to pick her up from the hospital whenever she needs a ride home. I’m happy to do it. I mean, it’s only fair, right? But the ride to the hospital isn’t exactly a nice straight line from point A to point B. I have to get on the freeway, and then I have to drive on the twisty road around the mountain that towers above our town. You’d think they’d have made the road to the hospital easier—I mean, ambulances have to get there at top speeds, right?
The truth is, it’s not really the twisty roads that have me worried; it’s the fact that my mentor/father, whose name I now know is Aidan, keeps sending lost spirits my way to remind me he’s waiting to talk to me. I wrap my arms around myself.
“Another spirit?” Nolan asks, lowering his voice to a whisper.
I nod, unable to speak because my teeth are chattering. I can’t see the spirit yet, but I know it’s near. Luckily, with Nolan standing close, I’m not too cold because being near him keeps me a little bit warmer. Still, I pull the too-long sleeves of my navy blue cardigan over my wrists because apparently when spirits touch me, my temperature plummets and my heart races. Which has happened way too many times in the forty-eight hours since I met Aidan. Well, met might be a bit of an overstatement. Met implies we shook hands, exchanged pleasantries, that kind of thing.
“You can’t avoid him forever, Sunshine,” Nolan says, leaning on the car beside me. He’s wearing a bluish-gray hooded sweatshirt with a scarf, gloves, and a rather silly-looking bright yellow snowcap with a red ball on the top. I’m still not entirely used to seeing him without his grandfather’s leather jacket. I’m not sure he even owns another coat. But on New Year’s Eve he gave me the jacket he loves so much and insisted I keep it even after all the craziness happened. It’s hanging in my closet at home now, still not entirely dry. “You should talk to him.”
“That would be a lot easier if I had the slightest idea of what I wanted to say to him.”
Okay, maybe that’s not entirely true. There are about a million things I want to say to him. Well, a million things I want to ask him: Why did you abandon me? How could you endanger my mother? Who is my birth mother? Where have you been all these years? Why haven’t you come forward until now? What made you think this was the right way to introduce yourself: Hi, I stood by silently while your mother almost died so I could test you while you figured out you weren’t the person you thought you’d been your entire life—that, in fact, you weren’t technically a person at all?