Scaredy Kat (7 page)

When I got to my room, Jac was taking a seat by the computer.

“I thought you wanted to encounter spirit vibes,” I said reproachfully.

Jac turned to look at me. Her face was shining.

“Are you kidding? I totally did. That was
awesome
! Tank might not be able to speak to you, Kit Kat, but something is certainly trying to get your attention.”

“Then why did you zip back to my room at the speed of light? I thought you must have gotten freaked out.”

Jac shook her head firmly.

“I’m looking for the family,” she said, her fingers tapping on the keys.

“You’re just going to Google van Hecht?”

“Lexis Nexis,” Jac replied. “Practically every newspaper and magazine in the country is linked through this. If a child died
in that house, it probably made the local newspapers, right? I’m telling it to search this town, the name van Hecht, and giving
it a time parameter of the last five years.”

Jac seemed to know exactly what she was doing, and I was happy to let her take the lead. I walked to the window and looked
outside. The rain had stopped abruptly and the sun shone through a break in the clouds, illuminating the drenched landscape
in celestial light. Tank’s house stood silently. From the safety of my bedroom, I could detect no movement or energy inside.
The house itself seemed solid and almost friendly, the way really old houses sometimes do.

“Okay, got something,” Jac said ex-citedly.

I reached her chair in two huge steps.

“Where? What?”

Jac pointed to an article.

“I found a couple listings for your van Hechts that were dated three years ago. There was some kind of traffic accident.”

“Tank was in a traffic accident?” I asked.

Jac scrolled down the page.

“His brother was. Listen: ‘On Wednesday evening Julius van Hecht, son of Greta and Theodore van Hecht of Seth Avenue, was
struck by a car while riding his bicycle. Witnesses recount that the car, which fled from the scene, had driven through a
stop sign. Julius suffered severe head injuries and was airlifted to Philips Memorial Hospital, where he remains in critical
condition.’”

I tried to ignore the disturbing visual image of a little boy being struck by a speeding car from my mind.

“Well, this house is on Seth Avenue, and there’s only one stop sign. It’s just one block up, where you turn to get to the
bus stop. That must be where it happened. What else does it say?”

“Nothing much, but let me check the next article. It was written a few days later. It’s shorter. It just says that Julius
remains in a coma at Philips Memorial, and that the police are looking for the driver of the car that hit him.”

So the van Hechts had experienced two tragedies. Julius had been hit by a car and fallen into a coma. And at some point, Tank
had died.

“Okay, here’s the last article I found. It was written on the one-year anniversary of the accident. It says that Julius is
still in a coma, and that the doctors are uncertain whether he will ever recover. And it also says that the van Hechts moved
from their house on Seth Avenue and took an apartment over in Robertstown to be closer to the hospital. And that the mom still
sits with Julius every day, and talks to him. They never caught the guy who did it.”

“No wonder they left,” I said, staring in the direction of the van Hecht house. “Can you imagine losing two children?”

“They didn’t lose Julius,” Jac said. “I mean, he’s still alive.”

“You think he still is? Lying in a coma in that hospital?”

“No other articles came up,” Jac said.

“Maybe Tank died after they moved away,” I mused. “If he died in Robertstown that would explain why it didn’t show up in our
local paper.”

“And he’s come home. To the house he grew up in,” Jac said.

I nodded.

“Geez. This is depressing me.”

“Think how I must feel, Jac. I’m surrounded by dead people.”

Jac looked at me sympathetically. Then she looked at the space above my head, like she was trying to get a glimpse of a spirit
orb.

“I could take another picture of you,” Jac said. “We could see how many orbs show up now.”

“I’d really rather not,” I said.

“Well, let’s walk down the block, then,” Jac suggested. “The sun’s finally out. Maybe if we go to that stop sign, you’ll pick
up something more about the van Hechts. You know, maybe Tank was even there when it happened. Maybe the accident is what’s
keeping him in the house. He could feel responsible, or something.”

Jac was getting better and better at this ghost hunting game. It was a good suggestion. The thought of looking for the place
where Julius’s accident had occurred gave me the creeps, but I had to move on with Tank’s story or I wouldn’t be able to help
him. The only lead we had on Tank was what happened to Julius. Once again, Jac seemed to know the best thing to do.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s take Max. He’s already traumatized from the storm.”

Max had gotten off my bed and was standing by my bedroom door. I had grown accustomed to Max knowing when I was going to suggest
a walk before the thought actually entered my mind.

We went downstairs and I grabbed his leash from the hook in the hallway. My mother’s door was still closed, though I could
hear voices now. What was going on in there? Nobody ever showed up for a session without a car. Maybe they’d taken a taxi?

Max pulled me gently toward the door. Jac brushed past me, bent to kiss Max on the nose, and opened the door, bounding lightly
down the steps to the walkway. Max and I followed, almost colliding with Jac, who had come to a dead stop where the sidewalk
began.

“Cripes, Maestra, make up your mind—are you running or standing still?”

Jac said nothing. I felt her stiffen, or more like I sensed her energy freezing. She was staring down the street in the direction
of Julius’s stop sign.

“Don’t tell me you actually see something,” I said cheerfully. “Just because you’ve quit the cello doesn’t mean you can start
seeing ghosts. That’s my unique brand of insanity. Jac?”

She wasn’t smiling. Looking down the street in the direction of her gaze, I immediately realized why.

A car was approaching. I could see the driver’s face—Jac’s mother. The car pulled up alongside our driveway. The door opened,
and Jac’s mother stepped out of the car. She was thin and red-haired like Jac, but much taller. She was dressed in her usual
conservative fashion: khaki pants, a pale pink oxford shirt, and a sweater draped over her shoulders. Pearls. Espadrille shoes.
Her face was white, frozen, and her expression was one of silent and dangerous anger.

“Get in the car, Jackie,” she said in a low voice.

“Hi, Mrs. Gray—Jac’s actually partnering with me on the basic communications project. We’re doing a mixed media history of
that —”

“Get in the car now,” Jac’s mother repeated. It was as if I hadn’t spoken. It was as if I wasn’t standing there at all.

There was this moment when everything was frozen. Nobody spoke. Even Max didn’t seem to be breathing. Anything could have
happened. I braced myself for an explosion.

But what happened next was the last thing I expected.

Without a word, Jac climbed into the back of the car.

Seconds later, Jac’s mother started the ignition, and they sped off down the street. Jac’s face, small and white, peered out
the rear window at me. I stood there, speechless. It was absolutely quiet, like the world was trying to adjust to what had
just happened. The silence was interrupted by the sound of my front door closing. I turned around to look.

Someone was coming out of my house.

It was the shaggy-haired man that I’d stalked with my camera.

We stared at each other. His face was pleasant and open, lips turned up in a smile that accentuated the lines on his face.
I don’t know what my expression said. What I was thinking was—
What in the world was that guy doing in my mother’s office? A guy? A . . . somewhat hot guy?

My father left Mom and me abruptly three years ago. You hear a lot about a thing called a “mid-life crisis,” and it sounds
totally hokey. But I’m here to tell you it is real. There’s just no other excuse for what he did to us. My father was really
different than my mom. He didn’t believe in God, let alone spirit guides and trans-dimensional communication. But I guess
they cared about each other. Once. They had fun. Until they stopped having fun. And the mid-life crisis started.

First it was an earring. My father, who worked for an accounting firm and was pretty much a suit-and-tie guy, came home with
a silver stud in his ear. Mom and I thought it was great. Then he started running every morning. Lifting weights. Went to
a tanning salon. Bought a motorcycle. That was about the time he started working late. And even though he seemed to be totally
indulging his every whim and desire (it was a very big motorcycle), he went to my mom one day and told her he wasn’t happy.

That was it. One minute he wasn’t happy, and the next week he was packing his bags. We were supposed to believe that the woman
who came to pick him up the day he moved out, a perky blonde named (I kid you not) Chickie, was just a friend. Whatever. They
live together now, in Florida. He doesn’t send birthday cards or Christmas cards. Or money.

I have this ocean of rage toward my dad. I hate not having a father. I hate that we were so disposable to him. I hate that
I look much more like him than I do my mother. But what burns me the most is the way he just cast my mother off. She’s much
cooler with it now than I am. Don’t get me wrong, she’s not happy about it. She doesn’t speak fondly of him, or make excuses,
or pretend like it was partly her fault. But after a year or so, she accepted what had happened.

She said she’d carried it around long enough, and she just cast all her hurt and resentment into the Universe, and moved on.
And even though I was still mad as all get out, I was glad that she was able to get back to her present and her future. After
all, we still had each other. And we were fine, just the two of us. I was happy with the way things were.

But I wasn’t the least bit prepared to see a cute guy coming out of her office.

All this was going through my mind as I looked at the shaggy-haired guy. Which is why I have no idea what my expression looked
like. And why I had no idea what to say.

“Hey,” said cute shaggy guy.

I could have come up with that.

“Hey,” I replied. I tried to look casual, but I could feel my brow furrowing in sus-picion.

“You must be Kat,” he said. He took a few steps toward me, then stopped about three feet away. Close enough for me to see
that his eyes were a brilliant, sparkling blue.

I nodded. I felt absurdly lucky to be Kat at that moment.

“I’m Orin,” he said.

I had no response for this magnificent piece of information. Max pulled on the leash a little until I gave him some slack.
He walked right up to Orin, sniffed his knees, then curled up at Orin’s feet. I felt a stab of peculiar jealousy. This was
a strange guy who had been in my house. Why was Max cozying up to him? It’s not like we knew for a fact he wasn’t an axe murderer.

“Your mom and I did a few energy and healing seminars together a couple years ago,” Orin continued. “I was in the neighborhood,
and I just happened to see her out by the driveway this morning, walking someone to their car. Couldn’t believe it was her.
We’ve been sort of going over old times.”

I nodded again. Mom sometimes went to seminars and conferences of a spiritual or metaphysical nature. I couldn’t remember
her mentioning Orin, but she might have. I could have forgotten the name. The face, I would not have forgotten.

“I do energy work,” Orin continued, since I was doing nothing to hold up my end of the conversation. “Reiki, polarity work,
healing, stuff like that.”

“Right,” I said, nodding. Like he’d gotten an answer correct or something.

In spite of myself, I kept glancing over at the van Hecht house. When I had first seen Orin, he’d seemed to be watching that
house. Or maybe he was just lost, or he saw a red-tailed hawk on the roof or something. But the thing is, he noticed me looking
at the house. Because he started glancing over at it, too. I wanted to get away from Orin all of a sudden. I wanted to go
back into that house.

“Anyway,” I said, looking pointedly in the opposite direction from the van Hecht house, “I should probably get back inside.”

Orin nodded. He gave me a smile that left me slightly weak in the knees.

“I expect I’ll see you around,” he said.

“Yeah,” I replied. Part of me wanted to shout it—pump a fist in the air. YEAH!!

He started to turn, then he looked back at me.

“I teach, too, you know. I was actually just talking to your mom about that. I don’t take on too many students, but when I
find someone who . . . well, if there’s a person who seems to have an unusual ability, somebody particularly gifted . . .”

“Right,” I said. Was he talking about me? Had he and my mom been talking about my spirit sight?

“Yeah. Anyway. Something to keep in mind.”

“Right,” I said again. I was an A stu-dent in English. I’d aced every spelling and vocabulary assignment of the year. Why
couldn’t I think of any other English words except for right?

“Right,” Orin repeated. “Your fifth chakra is blocked, by the way. See ya ’round.”

He walked past me and crossed the street. His bike was leaning up against the face where it had been yesterday. Max stood
up and took a few steps after him. Traitor dog, I thought, tightening my grip on the leash.

And what the heck kind of thing was that to say to somebody? Your fifth chakra is blocked, by the way—see ya ’round.

I knew a little about the chakras, but they were more my mom’s thing. They’re like little spinning spiral disks of energy
in our bodies. We have seven of them. Each one represents a different thing. And when one is blocked, the energy can’t flow
through your body right. It’s like throwing a tree down into a stream—it gunks up the works. The fifth chakra was the throat
chakra. It was connected with being true to yourself, connecting with your divine source, and stuff like being who you’re
supposed to be.