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Twenty-six
I DID USE THE JAR, as gross as it was. I'd already provided my “sample” for that day, so the next time I had to go, I did it in the upstairs bathroom, in the jar, hiding it behind the cleaning stuff under the sink. Cleaning the bathroom was one of our chores, so I hoped that meant the nurses never went under there.
We didn't do much work in class that day. We tried, but Ms. Wang wasn't cooperating. It was Friday and she saw the weekend looming, so she just set us up with our assignments, then played solitaire on her laptop.
Rae spent most of the morning in therapy, first with Dr. Gill, then in a special session with Dr. Davidoff, while Tori went for hers with Dr. Gill. That meant when Ms. Wang let us out early for lunch, I was left to pass the time with Simon and Derek, which was just fine by me. There was still so much I wanted to know. Asking wasn't nearly so easy, especially since it wasn't stuff we could discuss in the media room.
Going outside would have been the obvious choice, but Miss Van Dop was working in the garden. So Simon offered to help me finish the laundry. Derek said he'd sneak down later.
“So this is where our resident ghost lurks,” Simon said, circling the laundry room.
“I think so but—”
He held up a hand, then lowered himself to the floor and started sorting the last basket. “You don't need to tell me there might not be a ghost here, and I'm not going to make you try to contact it. When Derek comes down, he might. Don't let him push you around. ”
“I don't push her anywhere. ” Derek's voice preceded him around the corner.
“If I tell someone to do something and they do it?” Derek said, rounding the corner. “That's not my problem. All she has to do is say no. Her tongue works, doesn't it?”
Great. The guy can manage to make me feel stupid even when he's telling me I don't have to let him make me feel stupid.
“So if they decide to transfer you, what are you going to do about it?”
Simon balled up a shirt. “For God's sake, Derek, they're not—”
“They're thinking about it. She needs a plan. ”
“Does she?” Simon pitched the shirt into the colored pile. “What about you, bro? If word comes down that you're next to go, do you have a plan?”
They exchanged a look. I couldn't see Simon's face, but Derek's jaw set.
I stood and gathered a load for the washer. “If they do, I don't see that I have a lot of options. I can't exactly refuse. ”
“So you'll just give in? Go along like a good girl?”
“Ease up, bro. ”
Derek ignored him, scooped up the laundry I'd missed, and dropped it into the washer, moving beside me as he did. “They won't let you talk to Liz, will they?”
“Huh—what?”
“Tori asked this morning. I heard. Talbot told her no and said she'd told you the same thing when you asked last night. ” He grabbed the soap box from my hands, lifted the measuring cup from the shelf, and waggled it. “This helps. ”
“They said I can call Liz on the weekend. ”
“Still, seems a little odd. You barely knew the girl, and you're the first one wanting to call her?”
“It's called being considerate. Maybe you've heard of it?”
He batted my hand from the dials. “Darks, cold. Or you'll end up with the dye bleeding. ” A glance back at me. “See? I'm considerate. ”
“Sure, when it's mostly your stuff in there. ”
Behind us, Simon snorted a laugh.
“As for Liz,” I continued, “I just wanted to be sure she was okay. ”
“Why wouldn't she be?”
He'd scoff at my stupidity, thinking Liz was dead, murdered. Oddly enough, that's exactly what I wanted. Reassurance that my head was stuffed too full of movie plots.
I got as far as the part about waking to see Liz on the bed, chattering away.
“So…” Derek cut in. “Liz returned from the great beyond to show you her really cool socks?”
I told them about her “dream” and her attic appearance.
When I finished, Simon sat there, staring, a shirt dangling from his hands. “That sure sounds like a ghost. ”
“Just because she's a ghost doesn't mean she was murdered,” Derek said. “She could have had a completely unrelated accident on the way to the hospital. If that happened, they wouldn't want to tell us right away. ”
“Or maybe she's not dead at all,” I said. “Could she be astral projecting? Shamans do that, right? It might also explain how she was moving stuff around. It wasn't a poltergeist spirit—it was her spirit or however it works. You said our powers kick in around puberty, right? If we don't know what we are when that happens, this is just the kind of place we'd end up. A home for teens with weird problems. ”
He shrugged. But he didn't argue.
“Would being a shaman explain what she was doing? Throwing stuff around? Could she have been popping out of her body without knowing it?”
“I… don't know. ” The admission came slowly, reluctantly. “Let me think about it. ”
* * *
We were halfway through dessert when Mrs. Talbot reappeared.
“I know you kids have free time after lunch, and I hate to interfere with that, but I'm going to have to ask you to spend it in this end of the house, and give Victoria and her mother some privacy. Please stay out of the classroom until it's time for classes, and don't play in the media room. You can go outside or in the living room. ”
Now, last week, if anyone told me to give someone privacy, I'd make sure I stayed away. That was only polite. After a few days at Lyle House, though, when someone said “Don't go there,” I didn't say “okay,” but “why?”… and decided to find out. In this house, knowledge was power, and I was a quick learner.
The question was: How to get close enough to Dr. Gill's office to overhear Tori and her mom, and learn why we had to give them privacy for a friendly mother-?daughter chat. I could ask the guy with the supercharged hearing, but didn't want to owe Derek any favors.
Mrs. Talbot said the girls were allowed upstairs, but not the boys, because getting to their rooms meant passing Dr. Gill's office. That gave me an idea. I went upstairs, crept into Mrs. Talbot's room, through the adjoining door into Miss Van Dop's, then down the boys' hall to the stairs.
My daring move was rewarded the moment I crouched on the stairs.
“I cannot believe you did this to me, Tori. Do you have any idea how much you've embarrassed me? You overheard what the nurses said about Chloe Saunders when I was here Sunday, and you couldn't wait to tell the other kids. ”
It took me a moment to realize what Tori's mom was talking about. So much had happened this week. Then it hit—Tori telling the others I thought I saw ghosts. Rae had said Tori's mom had some business connection with Lyle House, so when she'd dropped off that new shirt for Tori on Sunday, the nurses must have mentioned the new girl and her “hallucinations. ” Tori had been eavesdropping.
