“Okay,” I begin as Deo slides the computer into his lap. “Britain was at war with France and we tried to stay neutral, but then the Brits started grabbing sailors off of our ships to force them to fight their war.” I continue along those lines for a few minutes, pausing every now and then for him to catch up.
When I was nine years old, a good Samaritan delivered a large box of school supplies to my elementary school—just some stuff he found when cleaning out the house after the death of his mother, a retired history professor. That’s how I picked up the last No. 2 pencil that eighty-two-year-old Emily MacAlister used to work her daily New York Times crossword puzzle. That’s also how I picked up Emily, who was with me for nearly two years. She didn’t finish her puzzle before she died, and Emily hated leaving loose ends. Having Emily in my head was like having your grandmother follow you around 24/7—tuck in your shirt, you’ve misspelled the word especially, pull your hair back so everyone can see your pretty eyes, dear, and are you really wearing that to school? She was a sweet old lady, but I was glad when we finally located the unfinished puzzle and she decided it was time to move on. Even now, there are a few swear words I simply cannot say without that tiny, residual ghost inside me shuddering in disgust.
Thanks to the various people like Emily that I’ve hosted, I’ve tested out of a lot of high school subjects. I still have a few gaps that the State of Maryland wants me to fill before they’ll grant me a diploma however, so I’m at JFK High in the mornings, and I’m taking college classes online. That means I’ll have more than two years of college completed when I graduate from JFK at the end of this year. Online is nice—it’s kind of difficult to pick up psychic travelers from our computer keyboard, and if I need to zone out a bit to access the memory banks, no one but Deo is here to see my goofy expression.
I used to feel a bit guilty about using information left behind by Emily and the others, but Dr. Kelsey pointed out that it’s really no different than someone who is blessed with an extraordinarily good memory or any other special ability. I finally decided to simply accept the silver lining, because I don’t think I could fully separate all of the bits of trivia that I know from the bits that they knew, even if I tried. Using the info to help Deo rather than making him read the book is probably crossing some sort of academic integrity line, but, hey—it’s not like I’m sneaking him the answers in class. He still has to learn it.
I wrap up and then add, “You might also want to check the textbook. Emily graduated in 1955, so . . .”
Deo rolls his eyes. “It’s history, Anna, not science. History books don’t change.”
I open my mouth to disagree, but we’re talking about ninth-grade US history, so I suspect he’s mostly right. He asks a few more questions, then I finally open my English lit text, looking for something that I’ve read before or that I might have squirreled away in my psychic version of SparkNotes. I finally settle on Langston Hughes—I like his poetry, and it will be interesting to talk to Deo about him. Gay, black, and communist had to have been a killer combo for someone living and working in the 1930s.
Deo still has the computer tied up, so I unplug my phone from the charger on his desk and turn it on to check for messages that came in while my phone was kidnapped. There’s one message from Joe, but Deo’s already told me what that’s about, so I click delete. Dr. Kelsey’s number is next, and I wonder whether she was calling me about Porter poking around in my business, but it’s only her virtual receptionist app with a reminder of my appointment tomorrow.
The third number isn’t familiar. There’s a short pause, then a guy comes on. His voice is low-pitched, and it’s kind of hard to hear him through the heavy traffic in the background.
“The van’s a warning, Anna. Stay away from Porter if you want to keep safe.”
I play it back again to make sure I understood him correctly, and then I just stare at the phone for a minute. A van that barely missed us was a warning? Porter was a bit of a jerk, but I really hadn’t pegged him as homicidal.
“Um, Deo?” I say, tossing him the phone as he turns toward me. “I think I found the downside to keeping our mouths shut.”
He listens to the message, then replays it before dialing the number. We wait but no one answers.
“Even if it’s a landline, who doesn’t have voice mail these days?” Deo asks.
“Pay phone?”
“Do those still exist?” He picks up the phone again and stares at the display. “Anna—your shift was supposed to start at six fifteen, right? And you got to the deli at, what, six thirty?”
“I wasn’t that late. Six twenty-five, at the latest.”
“So the incident with the van was, say, six forty?”
I nod. “Why?”
“Check the time stamp,” Deo says, sliding the phone across the carpet. “The call came in at three twenty-three. How weird is that?”
CHAPTER THREE