Meeting (18 page)

Helen flipped through the pages and then nudged Maya. “Find your ghost yet?” she whispered.

Maya shook her head. “Nope.”

“Here’s an idea for you. Twin ghosts.”

Twin ghosts! Maya thought about it and liked it. “How did they die?” she whispered.

“Their mother locked them in the car and pushed it into a lake.”

“E w w w!”

“That really happened,” Helen whispered. “Well, not the ghost part, and not the twin part, but a mother locked her kids in the car and drowned them.

“Why aren’t you using that one?”

“I don’t believe in ghosts. But I’ve already decided to write something else. You can use that one.”

“Okay,” said Maya. “What are you writing?”

Helen folded the ghost rules and tucked them into her messenger bag. “A girl and her brother’s ghost,” she whispered.

Maya thought about Peter as a ghost. He probably knew all the ghost rules from the books he had been reading, so he’d know how to be a good ghost. But—no, she didn’t want to think about Peter dead.

“Reuben, thanks again for sharing this interesting information,” Ms. Caras said. “Here’s the way some people divide up ghosts.” She went to the white board and wrote, “Dead People,” “Recorded Events,” “Poltergeists,” and “Fake Ghosts.”

Ms. Caras said, “Some people think ghosts are dead people who can talk and think and act as though they were alive.” She tapped the words “Dead People.”

“Other people think there’s kind of a ghost recording of a traumatic event that happened in a particular place that replays. Like if someone was murdered in the bedroom, you might see that murder replayed once a night.” She tapped “Recorded Events.” “In that case, there’s nobody there, really, it’s just a replay. Some kind of psychic energy makes an imprint on a place, and you hear someone singing the same song in the hallway every night, or footsteps going down the staircase to the basement every time it rains. It can be spooky, but you can get used to it, and it won’t hurt you.”

She tapped the next label. “The third kind of ghost is a poltergeist, or noisy ghost, something that throws things, breaks things, turns faucets or electronics on and off, or generally makes mischief. These might be ghosts or dead people, but a lot of people think this energy comes from troubled teenagers.” She looked at each student in turn. “You are all probably lovely people for whom everything goes right—no poltergeists in this class. But maybe you know somebody weird things happen around.”

Helen looked sideways at Maya. Maya smiled and looked sideways at someone else.

I could move something right now
, Rimi thought. The eraser on the ledge below the white board twitched.

I don’t think that’s a good idea
, Maya thought.
We’re supposed to be keeping our own secrets.

Salla.
You’re probably right.
The eraser settled.
Though how would they know it’s
our
secret?

“And finally,” said Ms. Caras, “Fake Ghosts. Sometimes these are tricks people set up to fool other people, like séances where fake mediums pretend to communicate with the dead. Other times it’s all in a person’s head: they think they’re seeing and hearing things they aren’t.”

She leaned against the whiteboard and smiled at the class. “You can use any of these ideas, or others if you have them. Now, everyone, start your storytelling.”

Maya wrote her name and the class and date at the top of a piece of paper, then sat with the tip of her pencil on the top line where she would put a title.

Let me
, Rimi thought, gently tugging at the pencil. Maya let go of it but kept her hand loosely cupped around it, moving her hand as the pencil moved. When it stopped, she had to move her hand to see what Rimi had written.

The handwriting was neater than Maya’s, but looked enough like it to pass for Maya being extra neat. “What the Water Taught Us,” it said.

Eww
, Maya thought.
Good one.
Maya drew twin girls, about five, pigtails sprouting from both sides of each head. Instead of eyes, they had dark pits. One smiled, and the other had a blank expression. Mostly, she thought, they were probably mad at their mother. She started the story.

When the bell rang at the end of the period, she looked up, surprised. She’d written four pages, complete with illustrations, and was at the part where the mother was going insane because of the twins’ haunting.

“Finish up and turn them in tomorrow. Good luck,” said Ms. Caras as everybody rose and clattered and collected their things and made for the door.

Maybe I
can
tell a story
, Maya thought.
Maybe that’s how Steph can haunt me. Help me come up with stories. Thank you, Steph.

Thursday afternoon, Maya
had a piano lesson with the music teacher from the elementary school where Maya’s mother worked. Ms. Barge was one of Maya’s mother’s best friends at the new school. She lived a block from the Andersens. Maya had taken lessons from her mother in Idaho, but she liked the change in teachers, even though her mother still encouraged her to practice every day. That was just the way it had always been.

On the way to Ms. Barge’s house, Maya stopped at Penny’s Mini-Mart for a soda. The store was small, dark, and cool, on a corner not far from her house. She and Peter had gone there first thing when they moved into Spring House to check out the candy selection, which was minimal. The clerks watched them all the time they were in the store, just waiting for them to shoplift, and sometimes that made Maya so mad she went three blocks to the supermarket instead, but today she didn’t have time.

She was staring through the cooler’s glass doors at her choices when Sybil Katsaros edged up beside her. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” said Maya. At last, they had said something to each other. So far, so good.

What is this?
Rimi asked. Pattishaw
! This close, I can feel—this is, there’s a feel that—who—

“We should talk,” said Sibyl.

Rimi thought,
The scarf. The scarf. It is—from the nursery—one of my sibs.

Sibyl has a
sissimi
?
Maya asked.
Sibyl? OMG.

I
sisti
it. Sib!
Rimi reached for Sibyl and her
sissimi
, and then shock sizzled through her and into Maya. Maya staggered and grabbed the chrome handle to the cold case; it was all that held her up as her insides buzzed and jolted. Her legs shook, and her muscles felt like jelly. All Rimi’s extensions flexed and flopped wildly around her, brushing against Maya and bumping glass, shelving, floor, every direction but toward Sibyl. Maya gasped and gripped the handle and struggled to find her feet. Sweat beaded on her forehead.

Rimi!
she thought.
Rimi! Are you okay?

Ssssizzura! Sizz. Sizz
. Oh, that was bad. Oh! I’m—I’m—I’ll reintegrate.
Rimi pulled in close around Maya, wrapped her up in Rimi-stuff, loaned her muscle and stiffening so she could stand up straight. Maya swiped her forehead with the back of her hand, which came away wet. Her stomach jumped, then settled.

“Sorry,” said Sibyl. Her glasses gleamed. “We weren’t expecting you to try anything like that.”

“Try anything?” Maya felt as though she’d just been run over by a roughshod windstorm. “I didn’t try anything,”

“Sure you did. Yiliss doesn’t attack unprovoked.”

“Yiliss,” Maya repeated. “Attack.” Yes, she had been attacked.
Oh, Rimi!

“You know what I’m talking about. A
sissimi
. You got one, too, right? But I never saw you in the sand pits.”

“The sand pits,” Maya whispered.

“Are you going to go on playing dumb and repeat everything I say, or can we have some kind of a conversation here?”

Maya shuddered and pulled herself up straight. She stroked her hand across the invisible Rimi wrapping around her. “I’m not playing dumb,” she said. “I am dumb. I don’t understand anything you’re talking about.”

“You can do better than that. You can start by explaining why you ditched the Methry, why you’re hanging out with those creepy Janus kids and that loser Travis, why I never saw you in the sand pits—”

“What’s Methry?” Maya asked.

“Methry,” Sibyl said, waving her hand as though she could make Maya understand by nudging the air near her head. “The Kalithri trainers.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maya said.

Sibyl frowned at her. “This ignorance act is getting
so
old!”

“It’s not an act,” Maya said.
Rimi, I’m so sorry. I know we need to find out more about your brother, but I’m scared of him now. That hurt.

I echo your apprehensions. I—
Rimi did something that tightened across Maya’s skin.
I close myself to him. I don’t want to accept that energy again. I will not fuse. I don’t want him to hurt you, Mayamela! I need to access everything I’ve learned about protection from Kita and Vati. I can make our shield bubble next time he attacks if I have to. I will set myself to do that.

“God, you are too stupid to live!” Sibyl cried, anguish in her tone.

“Great,” said Maya. “On that note, I’m leaving.” Maya opened the cold case and pulled out a can of Dr Pepper. She pressed the chilled can to her forehead. The cold helped.

She glanced sideways at Sibyl. She had thought when she met another
sissimi
pair it would be a good thing. Her contacts with Ara-Kita and Kachik-Vati had convinced her it was all good, but Sibyl—

They had found one of the missing
sissimi
. She needed to let the Janus House people know.

Ms. Barge would be expecting her in a few minutes.

She was still shaken. She tightened her pack straps and headed for the front of the store. Sibyl had told Maya her secret, but Maya wasn’t prepared to deal with it. She needed to talk to Sarutha even more than she needed a piano lesson.

Yiliss,
thought Rimi.
His name wasn’t Yiliss when I knew him through the mothernet. He didn’t feel like—but he tastes—he is
sissimi
, he is my sibling, we are fruit of the same vine, but he is no longer the one I knew.

Are you the one he knew?
Maya asked.

Oh. No,
Rimi thought.
No. I am made of me and you and Bikos. I am part Ara-Kita and Kachik-Vati. I have hatched and intermixed and integrated, and all that has changed me. This one used to be near me on the vine when we were all unformed and intermixed, back home. A brother-self, a close love. When we were in the desert place, when Bikos and I were learning each other and bonding, I knew this brother, too, and I knew that Sibyl, but I was a seed, and I did not perceive her as I do now.

Sibyl said, “I’m doing this all wrong. I’m not supposed to insult you. I want to make friends with you.”

“Like that’s going to happen,” Maya said. “All you’ve done so far is shock me silly and call me names.”

“Wait,” Sibyl said. “Wait. Okay, so I didn’t get the diplomat training, okay?”

Maya paused. “No lie.”

“We’re special. We’re different. But we’re more like each other than anybody else, except for the Hasible, and he’s not really like us, either. He’s all gray and he gets mad a lot. And anyway, the Methry sent him to Shostrunim, so even if I wanted to talk to him, I couldn’t. But you and me—we should be able to relate. I’m so lonely,” Sibyl said. She reached for Maya’s arm.

Maya jerked back. “I don’t want another shock,” she said.

Sibyl held up her hands, palms front. “Okay, okay. Yiliss didn’t—I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t going to—please. Give me a minute to figure this out.”

“Take all the time you want.” Maya headed to the cash register.

“You okay?” said the skinny, pimply college-kid clerk waiting there. He was new. “I saw you in the mirror. Looked like you spazzed out. Did you have a fit?”

“I guess I did,” Maya said. She wondered why he hadn’t come to help her.

“You kind of got it back together,” he said, answering her unasked question, “and then it looked like you were just talking to that girl, so I figured you were okay. If you need help, give a yell, okay?”

Maya blew out a breath. So he might have helped her, if he had been able to figure out she needed it. “Yeah. Thanks.” She handed him money and he gave her change. Maya glanced at Sibyl over her shoulder. The other girl was lost in thought, but she looked up. Maya tightened her lips and pushed out of the store. Janus House or Ms. Barge’s? Sarutha should be first, but Maya needed to let her piano teacher know she had to skip. She went to the phone booth, looked up Ms. Barge in the phone book, and called her on the cell phone. “Ms. Barge, something’s come up, and I can’t make it to my lesson.”

“Are you all right?” asked Ms. Barge.

“Feeling a little rocky,” Maya said. “I’m going to check with the doctor next door. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to give you better notice.”

“That’s all right this time, Maya. Don’t make a habit of it. Take care of yourself.”

“Thanks, Ms. Barge.” Maya closed her flip phone. When she turned around, Sibyl was standing outside the phone booth staring in at her.

Maya edged the door open. “What?”

“Can we start over?”

Maya took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay. Hi. You have a
sissimi
. His name is Yiliss. I understand that part.”

Sibyl stroked her golden scarf. “This is Yiliss.”

Maya nodded.

“What’s yours named?”

Do we tell her? I
so
don’t feel safe here,
Maya thought.