Unhappy Medium (4 page)

“Yeah, I thought you might, too,” I said, grinning. “So you went to this reception thing?”

Jac nodded excitedly. “Come on, I’m famished. I’ll tell you all about it over dinner. I hope this place goes heavy on the
desserts!”

I grinned and followed Jac to the elevator.

Still, I couldn’t help but worry, just a little, about Mrs. Gray, alone with her sudden headache in that cold, eerie room.

We ate in record time, me because I was starving and Jac because that’s just the way she ate. Between heaping forkfuls of
steaming lasagna, she detailed her experience with Colin at the welcome reception. There wasn’t that much to tell, except
that she and Colin stuck together for the entire reception, and that when they parted he told her he would “catch her later.”

“Because you don’t say ‘catch you later’ if it’s something you don’t want to happen, right?” Jac asked.

“I wouldn’t think so,” I replied.

“I mean, you could just say ‘good-bye.’ If you think about it, ‘catch you later’ could be like a statement of intent, you
know? Like, I intend to catch you later.”

“Could be,” I said.

“Just in the way that, you know, he’s letting me know that this could happen.”

“Right, right,” I said.

“Unless it just
is
something he says. Maybe ‘catch you later’ is just Colin’s version of ‘good-bye.’”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said.

“Really?” Jac cried. “Because the thing is, we did stick together for the entire reception. He never went off on his own.”

This was the fourth time Jac had offered this detail to me. I looked around at the other tables. The buffet area was in a
small room off the main lobby, which opened onto a wide screened-in porch overlooking the lake. We’d chosen to sit on the
porch. About half the tables were occupied. Several of the diners were our age, but if they were fellow YNMC members, Jac
didn’t acknowledge them.

“Right, I know,” I said.

“If you think about it, seriously, if he was just being polite by asking if I wanted to go to the reception, it’d be the easiest
thing in the world to just split off once we got there. Don’t you think? I mean, nobody would think anything of that, or get
their feelings hurt. Right? But he didn’t, Kat. Am I wrong to think that that’s significant? Then he makes this comment about
catching me later, and did I mention that he looked —”

“— you right in the eye and smiled when he said it? Yeah,” I said. I had a square of lasagna left on my plate, and I began
to stab my fork into it repeatedly.

“Because if it was just that comment, okay. Maybe it wouldn’t mean anything. But the thing is, Kat, he stuck right by my side
for the entire reception. Every single minute of it!”

Stab. Stab. Stab.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry,” Jac said suddenly.

I looked up at her expectantly.

“I’m going on and on about this like some cheerleader groupie,” Jac said. “I’m boring you silly trying to hyperanalyze everything
that happened. I’m guessing you’re pretending that lasagna you’re mutilating is me.”

I laughed, relieved that Jac herself had noticed how irritating the conversation had grown.

“It’s okay,” I said, putting down my fork. “I mean, yeah, I was getting a tiny bit tired of it. But at the same time, I understand.
The guy looked totally obsession-worthy to me.”

“We were going to figure out how to track down Madame Serena’s story,” Jac said.

Yay. She had remembered my problem after all.

“Right! There doesn’t seem to be any such thing as computer access here — that’s the thing. So we can’t do the usual thing
of searching archived newspaper articles.”

“Maybe you could call your mom and ask her to do a search on her computer?” Jac said.

“I don’t know. I really don’t want to get my mom involved. Then I’ll be, like, expected to keep her in the loop. We’re supposed
to be on vacation, right?”

“Absolutely,” Jac declared.

“And the thing is, Jac, it isn’t just Madame Serena. There’s something else, something really bad, that I have to tell —”

“Oh my god, there he is!” Jac hissed, grabbing my arm.

I looked in the direction she was looking.

Colin was standing in the buffet room with another guy. He seemed to be filling a large travel mug with soda from the dispenser.
Maybe he felt our eyes on him. He glanced in our direction, and his face brightened when he saw Jac. He waved and started
walking over.

“Oh my god, he waved,” Jac whispered. “Kat, he’s
walking over here!
”

Thank you, yes. My eyeball-to-brain connection is working just fine.

Jac was dabbing furiously at her lips with a napkin, and I suspect she was thanking her lucky stars her plate wasn’t heaped
high with dessert items — if only because she had never stopped talking long enough to go load up.

“Hey, Jac, hey, Kat, wassup?” Colin asked as he reached our table.

In spite of everything, I couldn’t help but be flattered the guy had remembered my name. Dead people followed me around like
I was the Pied Piper of Tomb-lin, but living boys didn’t often take much notice of me.

“Hey, Colin,” Jac said. Her voice sounded higher than usual, and I resisted the impulse to kick her under the table.

“Austin and I are going to make the hike up to Sunset Ridge with Cleo — she’s the clarinet player from Cape Cod? Figured we’d
try to rustle up another couple musicians to come along. I mean, you’re welcome, too, Kat.”

“Honorary musician,” I said, pointing to myself.

Colin laughed, and I swear I felt my appendix do a 360.

“Honorary musician, yeah. That’s good.”

Whunk.

I shot Jac a look and rubbed my leg. What was up with that? Jac had just kicked
me
under the table. She looked at me quickly, then looked away.

Jac didn’t want me to go. She’d never say it, I knew. But she felt it. Jac wanted to go hike up to Sunset Ridge with Austin
and the clarinet player from Cape Cod, and she didn’t want me along to sidetrack Colin with my witty quips.

Or whatever.

“I’ve already hiked up to the fire tower today,” I said. “My hamstrings are killing me. You guys go ahead. I’ll tell your
mom where you went, Jac.”

“Are you sure? Okay,” Jac said.

“Cool,” said Colin. “I’ve got to catch up with Austin. Let’s meet at the trailhead over by the boat launch in ten minutes,
okay? The one near where you guys were sitting today.”

“Definitely,” Jac said. “I’ll definitely be there.”

“Excellent. Catch you later, Kat.”

I stifled a smile as Colin walked away. Jac didn’t seem as interested in analyzing the phrase “catch you later” when it was
addressed to me.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Jac said, when Colin was out of earshot. “Is it okay? I mean he kind of put me on the spot, just
appearing and asking me out like that. I don’t have to go. I could change my mind, you know.”

It didn’t seem like “rustling up another couple musicians” was the same thing as asking someone out, but I bit my lip. I was
being selfish, begrudging Jac her hike with Dream Boy. And I was big enough to admit, if only to myself, that I was a little
bit jealous of my best friend at the moment.

“No worries,” I said. “Of course you’re going, Jac. You’d be crazy not to.”

“I know, right?” Jac said, in something dangerously close to a squeal. “You’re the best, Kat. I promise to tell you every
single detail.”

Now, I just didn’t have that kind of time.

Before I had even realized the conversation was over, Jac was on her feet and through the door, leaving me to bus her plate.

“Catch you later,” I murmured.

I really hoped this was not an indication of how the next five days were going to be. But I told myself to be happy for Jac.
Other than me, Jac didn’t have any friends at school (which was fine, because I didn’t have any other friends, either). She
had a tough situation at home with her mother, who was pretty critical of her and who’d spent her whole life trying to mold
Jac into a world-class musician. And her dad seemed to fly off to California on business at the drop of a hat. In short, Jac
just didn’t have all that many things going right in her life.

What kind of friend was I not to be psyched that Dream Boy was paying her some attention? When the conference was over, everything
would go back to being not so right. As far as I was concerned, Jac could go to the moon with Colin. She deserved to be happy.

I dumped our leftover food and left the plates in the pick-up cart. It was only 7:45, way too early to think about curling
up in bed with a book. I decided to explore some of the main floor of the Whispering Pines Mountain House.

The building was a funny patchwork of huge rooms, like the formal dining room and the rambling sitting room, with corridors
that stretched out in odd directions, dotted with doors leading to little side rooms. I wandered around, poking into rooms
as I came across them. Many of them were just small sitting rooms with bookshelves full of dusty old volumes.

One of the rooms had been made into a little nature center, with photographs of local wildlife, and a journal where guests
could record what animals they saw, and where. I skimmed through it and was surprised to see that in addition to snakes, owls,
and otters, the occasional black bear was spotted on the mountain. One guest with suspiciously childlike writing claimed to
have seen the Abominable Snowman by the tennis courts just after breakfast.

Several doors down from the nature center I found a room that seemed to be devoted to the history of Whispering Pines. The
walls were covered with old photographs, some of them old enough that the vehicles pictured were horse-drawn buggies. Other
than the size of the Mountain House itself, which seemed to have quadrupled in the last century, the lake and the mountainside
seemed remarkably untouched by time. I found a pamphlet with a brief history of Whispering Pines, and I curled up on the couch
and began to read it.

It was warm in the room, and the more I read, the drowsier I felt. I closed my eyes for a moment, savoring the heat and deliberating
whether I should actually let myself nod off. Then suddenly I was wide awake.

And I knew without a doubt I was no longer alone in the room.

I opened my eyes to find I was being observed by a guy wearing a Whispering Pines employee name tag. Definitely not dead.
He looked about the same age as me. Not to be mean, but his looks were … less than remarkable. He was on the short side,
with a slightly squashed-down nose, reddish brown hair cut too short, and gray-blue eyes set a little too closely together.
In fact, he reminded me of the Evolution of Man poster from the science classroom at school. His face was wide and flat and
his forehead and brow were heavy. Kind of like a Cro-Magnon guy. Basically, he was the anti-Colin.

“Oh — you’re awake. I’m sorry,” said Cro-Magnon Boy, rubbing his hands together nervously.

Why was he sorry that I was awake? Maybe he thought I was as uncute as I thought he was.

“I was reading,” I said, a little defensively. “It’s hot. The room, I mean. Not the … thing I’m reading.”

“I keep telling them these rooms need better circulation,” Cro-Magnon Boy said, taking a few steps toward me. “Hey — is that
the Mountain House history?”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure how I felt about encouraging the conversation to continue. Cro-Magnon interaction hadn’t been on my
wish list for this vacation, or ever.

“Yeah,” I said. “I was just flipping through it. The pictures from back in the 1800s are amazing. I sort of like it — knowing
that this place has been around so long. There’s got to be tons of cool stories and stuff.”

Cro-Magnon Boy’s face lit up. Clearly, I’d said something very right.

“My great-great-great-great-grandfather built this place,” he said.

“Great. I mean, seriously?”

CMB pointed at the couch I was sitting on. “Mind if I sit?”

“Sure,” I said.

I hoped I hadn’t made a mistake. Telling CMB he could sit down was kind of a commitment.

“And yes, seriously. My great-great-great-great-grandparents were Thaddeus and Clementine Kenyon. Thaddeus built this hotel
in 1841, and the Kenyon family has been running it ever since. Whispering Pines Mountain House is the oldest continuously
operating hotel in the country, and the only one that has never changed hands over the course of one and a half centuries.”

CMB talked like a brochure. But I have to say, I was kind of impressed.

“I’m Kat Roberts,” I said. “So you must be, like, a hotel heir or something.”

Ted burst out laughing. His flattish features looked much nicer when he smiled, and his gray-blue eyes glittered.

“Not exactly,” he said. “There are quite a few direct Kenyon descendants. I’m one of about thirty. My dad and two of my uncles
run the place, which their dad did before them for forty years. Between their kids and their cousins’ kids, there’s always
a good supply of Kenyons working the Mountain House on summers and holidays.”

“It’s nice of you to chip in,” I said.

“Oh, I actually look forward to it. One day, after college I guess, I’m going to work here full time. Maybe even run the place.
I practically grew up at the Mountain House. That’s why I dorked out when I saw you were reading the history pamphlet, which
my mom wrote, by the way. I’m going to write a book about it — the whole Mountain House story.”

“Really?” I asked, impressed for the second time in less than five minutes by Cro-Magnon Boy. The guy had goals.

Ted was doing the nervous hand-rubbing thing again. He was doing it with his feet too — grinding the toe of his left Reebok
over the laces of his right Reebok.

“So you probably know a whole lot about the Mountain House in the 1800s,” I said.

“Are you kidding? I know it all!” Ted exclaimed. “Okay. That didn’t come out the way I meant it to. But yeah, my grandfather
used to tell stories for days at a time.”

“Okay,” I began, “this might sound weird. But does the name Madame Serena mean anything to you?”