The Mediator #1: Shadowland Page 6

I saw the corners of her lips twitch. Debbie had swept up her books and practically run for the door the minute Mr. Walden had dismissed us. She and a bunch of other girls, including the pretty tanned one who'd had the empty seat next to her, were whispering amongst themselves and casting me dirty looks over their Ralph Lauren sweater-draped shoulders.

  I could tell the albino girl wanted to laugh at my calling Debbie a troll, but she wouldn't let herself. She said, fiercely, "I can fight my own battles, you know. I don't need your help, New York."

  I shrugged. "Fine with me, Carmel."

  She couldn't help smiling then. When she did, she revealed a mouthful of braces that winked as brightly as the sea outside the window. "It's Cee Cee," she said.

  "What's Cee Cee?"

  "My name. I'm Cee Cee." She stuck out a milky-white hand, the nails of which were painted a violent orange. "Welcome to the Mission Academy."

  At nine o'clock, Mr. Walden had dismissed us. By nine-oh-two, Cee Cee had introduced me to twenty other people, most of whom trotted after me as we moved to our next class, wanting to know what it was like to have lived in New York City.

  "Is it really," one horsey-looking girl asked, wistfully, "as…as…" She struggled to think of the word she was looking for. "As…metropolitan as they all say?"

  These girls, I probably don't have to add, were not the class lookers. They were not, I saw at once, on speaking terms with the pretty tanned girl and the one whose fingers I'd threatened to break after school, who were the ones so well-turned out in their sweater sets and khaki skirts. Oh, no. The girls who came up to me were a motley bunch, some acned, some overweight, or way, way too skinny. I was horrified to see that one was wearing open-toe shoes with reinforced toe pantyhose. Beige pantyhose, too. And white shoes. In January!

  I could see I was going to have my work cut out for me.

  Cee Cee appeared to be the leader of their little pack. Editor of the school paper, the Mission News, which she called "more of a literary review than an actual newspaper," Cee Cee had been in earnest when she'd informed me she did not need me to fight her battles for her. She had plenty of ammunition of her own, including a pretty packed arsenal of verbal zingers and an extremely serious work ethic. Practically the first thing she asked me – after she got over being mad at me – was if I'd be interested in writing a piece for her paper.

  "Nothing fancy," she said, airily. "Maybe just an essay comparing East Coast and West Coast teen culture. I'm sure you must see a lot of differences between us and your friends back in New York. Whaddaya say? My readers would be plenty interested – especially girls like Kelly and Debbie. Maybe you could slip in something about how on the East Coast being tan is like a faux pas."

  Then she laughed, not sounding evil, exactly, but definitely not innocent, either. But that, I soon realized, was Cee Cee, all bright smiles – made brighter by those wicked looking braces – and bouncy good humor. She was as famous, apparently, for her wise-cracking as for her big horselaugh, which sometimes bubbled out of her when she couldn't control it, and rang out with unabashed joy, and was inevitably hushed by the prissy novices who acted as hall monitors, keeping us from bothering the tourists who came to snap pictures of Junipero Serra being fawned over by those poor bronze Indian women.

  The Mission Academy was a small one. There were only seventy sophomores. I was thankful that Dopey and I had conflicting schedules, so that the only period we shared in common was lunch. Lunch, by the way, was conducted in the schoolyard, which was to one side of the parking lot, a huge grassy playground overlooking the sea, with seniors slumping on the same benches as second graders, and seagulls converging on anyone foolish enough to toss out a fry. I know because I tried it. Sister Ernestine – the one Adam, who was in my social studies class, it turned out, had called a broad – came up to me and told me never to do it again. As if I hadn't gotten the point the minute fifty giant squawking gulls came swooping down from the sky and surrounded me, the way the pigeons used to in Washington Square Park if you were foolish enough to throw out a bit of pretzel.

  Anyway, Sleepy and Doc shared my lunch period, too. That was the only time I saw any of the Ackermans at school. It was interesting to observe them in their native environment. I was pleased to see that I had been correct in my estimation of their characters. Doc hung with a crowd of extremely nerdy-looking kids, most of whom wore glasses and actually balanced their lap top computers on their laps, something I'd never thought was actually done. Dopey hung with the jocks, around whom flocked – the way the seagulls had flocked around me – the pretty tanned girls in our class, including the one I'd eschewed sitting beside. Their conversation seemed to consist of what they'd gotten for Christmas, this being their first day back from winter break, and who'd broken the most limbs skiing in Tahoe.

  Sleepy was perhaps the most interesting, however. Not that he woke up. Please. But he sat at one of the picnic tables with his eyes closed and his face turned to the sun. Since I can see this at home, this was not what interested me. No, what interested me was what was going on beside Sleepy. And that was an incredibly good-looking boy who did nothing but stare straight ahead of him with a look of abject sadness on his face. Occasionally, girls would walk by – as girls will when there is a good-looking boy nearby – and say hi to him, and he'd tear his eyes away from the sea – which was what he was staring at – and say, "Oh, hi," to them before turning his gaze back to those hypnotic waves.

  It occurred to me that Sleepy and his friend might very well be potheads. It would explain a lot about Sleepy.

  But when I asked Cee Cee if she knew who the guy was, and whether or not he had a drug problem, she said, "Oh, that's Bryce Martinson. No, he's not on drugs. He's just sad, you know, 'cause his girlfriend died over the break."

  "Really?" I chewed on my corn dog. The food service at the Mission Academy left a lot to be desired. I could see now why so many kids brought their own. Today's entree had been hot dogs. I am not kidding. Hot dogs. "How'd she die?"

  "Put a bullet in her brain." Adam, the kid from the principal's office, had joined us. He was eating Cheetos from a giant bag he'd pulled from a leather backpack. A Louis Vuitton backpack, I might add. "Blew the back of her head away."

  One of the horsey girls turned around, having overheard, and went, "God, Adam. How cold can you get?"

  Adam shrugged. "Hey. I didn't like her when she was alive. I'm not gonna say I liked her now just because she's dead. In fact, if anything, I hate her more. I heard we're all going to have to do the Stations of the Cross for her on Wednesday."

  "Right." Cee Cee looked disgusted. "We have to pray for her immortal soul since she committed suicide and is destined to burn in hell for all eternity now."

  Adam looked thoughtful. "Really? I thought suicides went to Purgatory."

  "No, stupid. Why do you think Monsignor Constantine won't let Kelly have her dumb memorial service? Suicide is a mortal sin. Monsignor Constantine won't allow a suicide to be memorialized in his church. He won't even let her parents bury her in consecrated ground." Cee Cee rolled her violet eyes. "I never liked Heather, but I hate Monsignor Constantine and his stupid rules even more. I'm thinking of doing an article about it, and calling it Father, Son, and the Holy Hypocrite."

  The other girls tittered nervously. I waited until they were done and then I asked, "Why'd she kill herself?"

  Adam looked bored. "Because of Bryce, of course. He broke up with her."

  A pretty black girl named Bernadette, who towered over the rest of us at six feet, leaned down to whisper, "I heard he did it at the mall. Can you believe it?"

  Another girl said, "Yeah, on Christmas Eve. They were Christmas shopping with each other, and she pointed to this diamond ring in the window at Bergdorf's, and was like, 'I want that.' And I guess he freaked – you know, it was clearly an engagement ring – and broke up with her on the spot."

  "And so she went home and shot herself?" I found this story extremely far-fetched. When I'd asked Cee Cee where we
were supposed to have lunch if, God forbid, it should happen to rain, she told me that everyone had to sit in their homeroom and eat, and the nuns brought out board games like Parcheesi for people to play. I was wondering if this story, like the one about rainy-day lunches, was an invention. Cee Cee was exactly the kind of girl who would get a kick out of lying to the new kid – not out of maliciousness, but just to amuse herself.

  "Not then," Cee Cee said. "She tried to get back together with him for a while. She called him like every ten minutes, until finally his mother told her not to call anymore. Then she started sending him letters, telling him what she was going to do – you know, kill herself if he didn't get back together with her. When he didn't respond, she got her dad's forty-four and drove to Bryce's house and rang the bell."

  Adam took up the narrative at this point, so I knew gore was probably going to be involved. "Yeah," he said, standing up so that he could act it, using a Cheeto as the gun. "The Martinsons were having a New Year's party – it was New Year's Eve – so they were home and everything. They opened up the door, and there was this crazy girl on their porch, with a gun to her head. She said if they didn't get Bryce, she was going to pull the trigger. But they couldn't get Bryce, because they'd sent him to Antigua – "

  " – Hoping a little sun and surf would soothe his frazzled nerves," Cee Cee put in, "because, you know, he's got his college apps to worry about right now. He doesn't need to have the added pressure of a stalker."

  Adam glared at her, and went on, holding the Cheeto to the side of his head. "Yeah, well, that was a gross error on the part of the Martinsons. As soon as she heard Bryce was out of the country, she pulled the trigger, and blew out the back of her skull, and bits of her brain and stuff stuck to the Christmas lights the Martinsons had strung up."

  Everyone but me groaned at this particular detail. I had other things on my mind, however. "The empty chair in homeroom. The one by what's-her-name – Kelly. That was the dead girl's seat, wasn't it?"

  Bernadette nodded. "Yeah. That's why we thought it was so weird when you walked past it. It was like you knew that that was where Heather had sat. We all thought maybe you were psychic or something – "

  I didn't bother telling them that the reason I hadn't sat in Heather's seat had nothing whatsoever to do with being psychic. I didn't say anything, actually. I was thinking, Gee, Mom, nice of you to tell me why there was suddenly this space for me, when before the school had been too crowded to let in another new student.

  I stared at Bryce. He was tanned from his trip to Antigua. He sat on the picnic table with his feet on the bench, his elbows on his knees, staring out at the Pacific. A gentle wind tugged at some of his sandy-blond hair.

  He has no idea, I thought. He has no idea at all. He thinks his life was bad now? Just wait.

  Just wait.

  C H A P T E R

  8

  He didn't have to wait long. In fact, it was right after lunch that she came after him. Not that he ever knew it, of course. I spotted her immediately in the crowd as everybody headed toward their lockers. Ghosts have a sort of glow about them that sets them apart from the living – thank God, too, or half the time I might never have known the difference.

  Anyway, there she was staring daggers at him like one of those blond kids out of Village of the Damned. People, not knowing she was there, kept walking straight through her. I sort of envied them. I wish ghosts were invisible to me like they were to everybody else. I know that would mean I wouldn't have been able to enjoy my dad's company these past few years, but, hey, it also would have meant I wouldn't be standing there knowing Heather was about to do something horrible.

  Not that I knew what it was she planned on doing to him. Ghosts can get pretty rough sometimes. The trick Jesse had done with the mirror was nothing, really. I've had objects thrown at me with enough force that, if I hadn't ducked, I'd certainly be one with the spirit world as well. I've had concussions and broken bones galore. My mom just thinks I'm accident-prone. Yeah, Mom. That's right. I broke my wrist falling down the stairs. Oh, and the reason I fell down the stairs is that the ghost of a three-hundred-year-old conquistador pushed me.

  The minute I saw Heather, though, I knew she was up to no good. I was not basing this assumption on my previous interaction with her. Oh, no. See, I followed the direction of Heather's gaze, and saw that it wasn't Bryce, exactly, that she was staring at. It was actually one of the rafters in the section of breezeway beneath which Bryce was walking that had attracted her attention. And as I stood there, I saw the timber start to shake. Not the whole breezeway. Oh, no. Just one single, heavy piece. The piece directly over Bryce's head.

  I acted without thought. I threw myself as hard as I could at Bryce. We both went flying. And good thing, too. Because we were still rolling when I heard an enormous explosion. I ducked my head to shield my eyes, so I didn't actually see the piece of timber explode. But I heard it. And I felt it, too. Those tiny splinters of wood hurt as they pelted me. Good thing I was wearing wool slacks, too.

  Bryce lay so still beneath me that I thought maybe a chunk of wood had got him between the frontal lobes, or something. But when I lifted my face from his chest, I saw that he was okay – he was just staring, horrified, at the ten-inch-thick plank of wood, nearly two feet long, that lay a few feet away from us. All around us were scattered shards of wood that had broken off the main piece. I guess Bryce was realizing that if that plank had succeeded in splintering his cranium, there'd have been little pieces of Bryce scattered all around that stone floor, too.

  "Excuse me. Excuse me – " I heard Father Dominic's strained voice, and saw him push through the crowd of stunned onlookers. He froze when he saw the chunk of wood, but when his gaze took in Bryce and me, he sprung into action again.

  "Good God in heaven," he cried, hurrying toward us. "Are you children all right? Susannah, are you hurt? Bryce?"

  I sat up slowly. I frequently have to check for broken bones, and have found, over the years, that the slower you get up, the more chance you have at discovering what's broken, and the less chance there is you'll put weight on it.

  But in this particular case, nothing seemed broken. I got to my feet.

  "Good gracious," Father Dom was saying. "Are you sure you're all right?"

  "I'm fine," I said, brushing myself off. There were little pieces of wood all over me. And this was my best Donna Karan jacket. I looked around for Heather – really, if I'd have found her at that particular moment, I'd have killed her, I really would have … except, of course, that she's already dead. But she was gone.

  "God," Bryce said, coming up to me. He didn't look hurt, just shaken up a little. Actually, it would have been hard to hurt a guy as big as he was. He was six feet tall and broad shouldered, a genuine Baldwin.

  And he was talking to me. Me!

  "God, are you okay?" he wanted to know. "Thank you. God. I think you must have saved my life."

  "Oh," I said. "It was nothing, really." I couldn't resist reaching out and plucking a splinter of wood from his sweater vest. Cashmere. Just as I'd suspected.

  "What is going on here?" A tall guy in a lot of robes with a red beanie on his head came pushing through the crowd. When he saw the wood on the ground, then looked up to take in the gaping hole where it was supposed to be, he turned on Father Dom and said, "See? See, Dominic? This is what comes of you letting your precious birds nest wherever they want! Mr. Ackerman warned us this might happen, and look! He was right! Somebody might have been killed!"

  So this, then, was Monsignor Constantine.

  "I'm so sorry, Monsignor," Father Dom said. "I can't think how such a thing could have happened. Thank heavens no one was hurt." He turned to Bryce and me. "You two are all right? You know, I think Miss Simon looks a little pale. I'll just take her off to see the nurse, if that's all right with you, Susannah. The rest of you children get on to class now. Everyone is all right. It was just an accident. Run along, now."

  Amazingly, people did as he sai
d. Father Dominic had that kind of way about him. You just sort of had to do what he said. Thank God he used his powers for good instead of evil!

  I wish the same could have been said of the monsignor. He stood in the suddenly empty corridor, staring down at the piece of wood. Anybody could tell just to look at it that it wasn't the least bit rotten. The wood wasn't new by any means, but it was perfectly dry.

  "I'm having those bird nests removed, Dominic," the monsignor said bitterly. "All of them. We simply can't take these kinds of risks. Supposing one of the tourists had been standing here? Or, God forbid, the archbishop. He's coming next month, you know. What if Archbishop Rivera had been standing here and this beam had fallen? What then, Dominic?"

  The nuns who'd come out, hearing all the ruckus, cast looks of such reproof at poor Father Dominic that I nearly said something. I opened my mouth to do so, in fact, but Father Dom tightened his grip on my arm and started marching me away. "Of course," he called. "You're quite right. I'll get the custodial staff right on it, Monsignor. We couldn't have the archbishop injured. No, indeed."

  "God, what a pus-head!" I said, as soon as we were safely behind the closed door to the principal's office. "Is he kidding, thinking a couple of birds could do that?"

  Father Dominic had gone straight across the room to a small cabinet in which there were a number of trophies and plaques – teaching awards, I found out later. Before he'd been reassigned by the diocese to an administrative position, Father Dominic had been a popular and much-loved teacher of biology. He reached behind one of the awards and drew out a packet of cigarettes.

  "I'm not sure it isn't a bit sacrilegious, Susannah," he said, looking down at the red and white pack, "to refer to a monsignor in the Catholic church as a pus-head."

  "Good thing I'm not Catholic, then," I said. "And you can smoke one of those if you want to." I nodded at the cigarettes in his hand. "I won't tell."

  He looked down longingly at the pack for a minute more, then heaved this big sigh, and put them back where he'd found them. "No," he said. "Thank you, but I'd better not."