The Reason Read online

  "Dude, you look like crap," I say, knowing she won't take it as a personal affront.

  Celia lifts her dark eyes at me momentarily and then shifts them back to the stack of papers in front of her. Her laptop is off to the side, and I can see several browser windows opened.

  "No time for sleep. Too much to even tell you right now."

  Clay Price, her boyfriend, plops down and slides a grilled cheese and bacon in front of her. He loops his long arm around the back of her chair and glances over her shoulder without Celia even blinking. "What's this secretive research project you've got her working on, K?"

  "It's not a secret, Clay," she corrects him. "It's my new obsession to find these answers for Kendall."

  "Such as?" Taylor asks, uncharacteristically talking with her mouth full. I better dig into my mac 'n' cheese before she Hoovers it all down.

  Fisting a handful of papers, Celia looks at Taylor, Clay, and then me, her eyes wide. "You wouldn't believe what-all I've been doing. I've been Googling the hell out of every published police report for the last twenty years from San Francisco to Bar Harbor, Maine."

  Taylor's fork stops midair. "You can do that?"

  "Oh, yeah," Celia says with a sly smile. "My cousin Paul Nichols is with the GBI and he's been helping me out."

  "GBI?" I ask.

  "Georgia Bureau of Investigations," Celia and Clay say in unison.

  "Oh." Who knew? "What's he been helping out with?"

  Celia tugs out the drawings that she and I have done of Emily. Celia's a whiz with a set of colored pencils and was able to capture Emily's image based on my description. "I faxed these to Paul and asked him to run it through the national databases."

  I'm riveted. "Of what?"

  "Missing persons. Jane Does. Things like that. I told him to be looking for a DOA from a car wreck at any hospital."

  "And don't forget that she was pregnant. There has to be a record of the child's death as well."

  "Why do you assume l'enfant died too?" Taylor asks with such clarity.

  I cock my head to the side. "I never assumed that the baby lived. You've got a point, Taylor."

  "Thanks!" She reaches her fork over. "Does that afford me more of your mac 'n' cheese?"

  Jason appears behind us and drops a five spot on the table. "Go get your own, Tay."

  She pockets the Lincoln and continues to dive into my rather large portion.

  "Hey, babe," he says, leaning down to kiss my cheek. He fist bumps Clay across the table before sitting next to me. "Whatch'all doing?"

  "Celia's trying to figure out who Emily truly is ... or was."

  Jason shakes his head. "I tell you, I wish she'd just leave you alone most of the time. Did Kendall tell y'all what Emily did to me?"

  "What?" Clay asks.

  I smack Jason hard on the arm, not wanting him to share our hot and heavy make-out session that ended with Emily giving him a wedgie. I'd be mortified if everyone knew that. "Never mind. Let Celia concentrate."

  She points her pen in my direction. "Do you have any inkling of where this car accident occurred?"

  I screw my mouth up. "Not really. Just that it was raining and there was a bad wreck and the car caught fire and the guy driving died."

  "God, that would be half the battle in solving this mystery," Celia says. She lets out a long breath of air and moves her hand through her long bangs. "Of course, it would be a whole hell of a lot easier if Emily would just tell you herself."

  After finally taking a taste of my own lunch, I swallow the creaminess and say, "Emily insists that I not pursue it."

  "You'd think with your psychic abilities, you could figure some of this out on your own," Taylor adds.

  No truer statement has ever been made.

  The bell rings, ending our lunch period, so we all scoop and cram our food, gather our books, and head out to our next classes. Jason gives me a quick kiss and promises to text me, telling me to be careful. Like what's going to happen to me at school?

  Taylor runs off to catch up with her boyfriend, Ryan. They're too cute. I can totally see them together forever, living in a house with a white picket fence and having a dog, a cat, and 2.3 children.

  As I walk toward calculus class, I wonder about poor Emily's child. Did it live? If so, whatever became of him or her? Was the baby adopted? Did it grow up in an orphanage? Do we even still have orphanages in America?

  Celia breezes by me, her backpack bulging with her computer and research material. "Let me know if you have any other visions or anything. My cousin Paul is supposed to call me tonight."

  I give her the thumb's-up sign and walk into my classroom only to hear the teacher say, "Get settled as quickly as you can. We're having a pop quiz."

  The groans and moans of thirty students echo throughout the room.

  I can't worry about Emily right now. I've got vectors to battle.

  Twenty-two minutes into the quiz, my eyes start blurring over at the figures on the paper in front of me. I can no longer make out the questions, even though I blink wicked hard to try to focus. No matter how hard I squint, I can't see any of the test questions. Great ... how do I explain this to the teacher?

  A hazy fog fills my vision and then clears as quickly as it came.

  I see Emily. She's trapped in the burning car, one hand on her distended stomach and the other pounding on the passenger-side window. I can't do anything to help her or get to her. But I do get a look at the car. It's a white Monte Carlo from, like, the mid-1980s. I've seen old cars like that around Radisson because their owners are too frugal to invest in a newer hybrid or what have you. In my mind's eye, I move around to the back of the car for a look at the license plate.

  I concentrate hard on the image.

  A red barn.

  Birds.

  A sailboat in the upper right-hand corner.

  America's Dairyland comes into view.

  Wisconsin. It's a Wisconsin plate.

  And I see the tag plain as day.

  Dark red letters: WKA-111.

  Immediately, I'm jolted out of my haze. Forgetting my pop quiz, I reach for my cell phone and text Celia:

  >We have our break.

  Chapter Five

  THAT NIGHT, MY DREAMS ARE FRAUGHT with myriad disturbing images that I have no control over. Emily's car wreck. Emily going into labor. Emily's boyfriend slumped over the steering wheel while the car crackles and sizzles away under the intense fiery blaze. My mother with Emily. What? My mother with Emily? WTF? Now I'm just going insane. Then Jason is there telling me to be careful, begging, in fact.

  Suddenly, people surround me on my left and my right with a chant that everything will be okay. It will? What isn't okay, that they have to tell me that? And then there's a guy there. Not Jason ... someone else. He looks like he might be my age or maybe a year older. Who even knows in dreams? He's got delicious chocolate brown eyes, jet-black eyebrows, and longish, shaggy black hair that's actually peppered with grays around his temples. Grays? At our age? There's something about him, though. A knowingness that we're part of each other's lives. Or will be. He's familiar, yet not. He calls out to me with a deep voice I don't recognize. Is this someone who's coming into my life? Or merely a figment of my imagination? Or is he another spirit guide, like Emily?

  The images shift quickly, thoroughly erasing Hershey Eyes and flashing back to me lying on the floor, clutching my side in excruciating pain, knowing without a doubt that I'm bleeding to death internally. Stop it! Someone help me! I scream out though no words leave my lips. The pain is frenzied and intense, like thousands of fire ants crawling all over my body. Not that that's ever happened to me, but Celia recently told me a story about when she was nine years old and visited her cousin's farm and sat in a pile of them. They had to strip off her clothes and spray her down with the hose to get the stinging creatures off her. Am I merely empathizing with that long-ago story or is this really happening to me?

  Death permeates my nostrils as spirits rise from the ground
to surround me. They call out to me and welcome me to their ranks. Ghostly fingers curl around my limbs, tugging and pulling and coaxing. But I won't go! I'm too young to die. Someone do something!

  I wake up screaming, tangled in the sheets like they're octopus tentacles. Sweat dots my upper lip and also trickles down the back of my neck, drenching my hair into frizzy curls that will need massive products to calm them down. I hear panting like there's an exhausted dog in the room, but then I realize the windedness is coming from me.

  "Mom!" I cry out, wanting nothing but to be held close in her arms with her whispering words of love and comfort to me.

  Emily sits quietly in the rocker, tipping it back and forth like she enjoys doing. She's humming a soft, sweet melody, something reminiscent of a lullaby. The tune seems familiar to me, only not.

  "Shhh ... Kendall ... close your eyes..."

  "But the dreams. The visions. The nightmares," I say in a gasping whisper.

  "Go back to sleep."

  "I can't." The words leave me in nearly a whimper.

  I glance over at the clock, which reads some ungodly hour. Surely my parents are sound asleep and unaware of my troubles. Part of me wants to walk down the hall and crawl into bed with them, like I used to do when I was little and had a stomachache. I'm too old to do that, though, and the worry over the truth of what's going on with me would no doubt disturb my mom and dad no end.

  "I don't want these dreams anymore."

  "I'm watching over you, Kendall. Just like I always have. Even when you couldn't see me."

  Somehow these words soothe me enough to lull me back into a dreamless sleep, the gently hummed lullaby serenading me.

  The peace is short-lived though.

  Wednesday morning my senses are at a Homeland Security threat level of red.

  On the way into the bathroom, I trip over Kaitlin's soccer shoes and go sprawling forward in the most spasmodic way. The cast-iron claw-foot tub anchored to the bathroom floor seems to be coming toward me at a tremendous velocity. I cringe as I do a tuck and roll like I learned in gym class in elementary school. A sigh rushes out of my chest as I come this close to cracking my skull open on the base of the tub.

  Mom peeks her head into the bathroom as I lie on the rug catching my breath. "Kendall, what are you doing?"

  Surviving? Avoiding my death? Losing my mind?

  "I tripped on Kaitlin's farging shoes in the middle of the floor."

  Mom tsk-tsks me. "Such language, dear." Then she calls out, "Kaitlin! What have I told you about leaving your soccer equipment all over the place?"

  After my shower, even the sounds of Snap, Crackle, and Pop in my cereal bowl skeeve me out. Is everything out to get me? Is there such a thing as death by Krispies?

  Dad reaches over and touches my arm. I jump in my seat like I've been electrocuted.

  "Nervous much?" he says with a sweet laugh.

  "Oh, sorry. I was just, um, thinking about school stuff."

  "I asked if you're going to Loreen's after school today."

  Am I? Do I even want to? I mostly want to come back home, strap myself into my bed, and ride out this wave of fear of the unknown.

  "I'll probably go over to Celia's," I finally eke out. "We're working on a project together." There, that sounds legit. Parents always want to hear that their kids are concentrating on school stuff. I dare not tell them what's possibly on the horizon for me. If I did, I'd be locked in the attic and homeschooled until I was through my graduate degree.

  "Sounds good, kiddo." Dad gets up, puts his coffee mug in the sink, and then bends down to kiss me on the forehead. "Have a great day at school."

  "Sure thing, Dad."

  Can I really, though?

  Thursday after school, Celia texts me to come over to her house. I push aside my assignment for calculus—which I'm starting to loathe—and tromp across the backyard, trying not to step on anything poisonous that's out to get me.

  Paranoid much?

  I slip through the gate and over the small road to the Nicholses's mansion. Alice, their housekeeper, greets me at the door, as does Seamus, Celia's snarly yet lovable bulldog. He leads me up the stairs to her room as if I've never been here before.

  "Dude! Get in here," Celia shouts when she hears me coming.

  "What's up?"

  "That plate number you came up with gave us a hit."

  "Gave who a hit?"

  Proudly, Celia reports, "My cousin Paul, with the GBI, found a record from 1992 in Wisconsin. The car was registered to an E. J. Faulkner."

  "E ... as in Emily!"

  "Paul's checking it. But it looks like we've at least got a last name for her," Celia reports.

  "Emily Faulkner." I let the name trip over my lips as well as slosh around in my head for a bit. "That's great, but it doesn't put me anywhere closer to knowing about her past or her baby or anything." I slump down onto Celia's bed and stare up at the ceiling.

  "I thought of that," Celia says, confident as ever. "I asked Paul to run the name through the national database of missing persons. Give him some time, Kendall, he'll find our ghost."

  I've found her, though. Emily is standing next to me.

  "Why are you doing this, Kendall?"

  "Doing what, Emily? Finding out who you really are?" I ask out loud.

  Celia turns her head in my direction. "Is she here with us?"

  "Isn't it enough that I'm here to help you contact other spirits and work through your own problems? Why do you have to dig up my past?"

  "Because, Emily Faulkner," I say with emphasis, "you told me that my future was tied to your past. I think that's a pretty important sticking point."

  "Come on, Emily." Celia looks around as if she can see the ghost. "Why don't you save my cousin and me valuable time and just dish all the info to Kendall now?"

  Emily glares at me.

  "She says it doesn't work that way," I relay. Then I turn back to Emily. "Stubborn."

  "Look, Kendall. We'll get the information in due time. Between Googling and my cousin's efforts at the GBI, we'll find out who Emily really is."

  "And then what?"

  Can Emily stop my future from happening? Can I? What good is any of this doing?

  "Then you can pass her into the light where she belongs," Celia says. "That's what all of this is about. Working with the earthbound spirits that only you can connect with."

  "Right ... helping the spirits," I mutter. I've been so wrapped up in my own dreams and visions that I've forgotten the whole goal of my team of ghost huntresses. It's not about me. Not. About. Me. It's not about what's in it for me. It's about helping the confused entities resolve whatever is troubling them enough to keep them from their eternal peace. I totally have to get over myself and quit wallowing around in self-pity because of some stupid dreams that may or may not come to be.

  I speak to Emily. "I know you're here to help me and teach me how to use my abilities to assist the living and the deceased. If you don't want to tell me who you really are and what your past is all about, that's fine. I've got plenty of other spirits who need my help. If you're around to whisper clues into my ear like you've done in the past, that's awesome, but I won't be held prisoner by fear or visions or ... whatever."

  "What visions?" Celia asks.

  "Just stuff."

  "Have it your way, Kendall..."

  Emily gently fades away, and a sense of overwhelming sadness coats me. I can't worry about Emily anymore. She's a grown woman. Well ... she was until she died.

  "Something you haven't told me?" Celia seems crushed that I'd hide anything from her. It's not that I'm being deceitful. I just don't want another person obsessed with worry about me. Jason's got that in the bag.

  I fib slightly—though is withholding information really lying? Semantics, I know. "I told you all about seeing Emily die. I'm going to step back and let you work on that. If you and your cousin find anything out about her, that's great. If not, I'm not going to worry about it. We've got an investiga
tion at Mayor Shy's house this weekend, and I need to get a handle on calculus." I'm supposed to be working on this side paper about Zeno, a Greek philosopher who is known for Zeno's paradox. What a narcissist, naming some stupid calculus theory after yourself!

  Celia salutes me like a good soldier and dives back to her computer. "Then, if you're telling me you're okay, I won't follow you around school anymore with the EMF detector."

  "What the—" I say, sitting up and shaking my head in disbelief. "Please tell me you're joking."

  "Hello! Have you just met me?"

  Only Celia Nichols would take to EMFing someone she thought was in trouble. I swat at her for good measure. "Let's call Taylor and Becca over and we can go through the details of Saturday night's investigation."

  "Sounds perfect." Celia whips out a set of blueprints from underneath her desk. "These are the schematics of the mayor's mansion. I thought they'd come in useful for us when we're setting up base camp and our equipment."

  I'm almost speechless. "Where on God's green earth did you get the blueprints?"

  She shrugs. "At city hall. They were registered with the city planner. Like, your dad, you know?"

  I giggle. "And he just gave them to you?"

  "Matter of public record, my friend."

  "You're brilliant, Celia. Frickin' brilliant."

  Celia dials up Becca to invite her over while I buzz Taylor. Her phone goes straight to voice mail, so she's either talking to Ryan and ignoring my interruption or the battery has gone dead. We really need the full team here to go over the deets of Saturday night, so I call Jason, hoping he's finished with basketball practice.

  On the fourth ring—so not like Jason to let the phone go that long—he picks up, winded and seemingly exasperated. "I can't talk right now, K. Not a good time."

  "That's okay, Jase. I was looking for Taylor. Do you know where she is?"

  "She's with me," he says shortly.

  Then there's a long pause. One of those pregnant pauses, the kind that crackles across a telephone line and can mean only that the person on the other end has bad news. My hand tingles where it's contacting the cell phone. Energy rushes through me like a lightning bolt, sizzling my nerve endings and activating my psychic vision in a sparkle of blue luminosity.