THE REALM

"Okay, Cee Cee," I said, "I'll tell you. I'll tell you everything. But you have to SWEAR you won't tell anyone."

            Cee Cee raised her almost invisible eyebrows so high they nearly disappeared in her pale, blond hair. "Excuse me?" She asked, in a kind of Say-that-again-and-I'll-break-your-face tone of voice. "I'm a journalist. I only keep things secret if I want to."

            "Cee Cee," I said, "Come on. Don't even joke about it. No one can know."

            "Alright, fine," She snapped. "Now will you ditch the dirt already?"

            "Okay," I didn't know where to begin. How about, the truth, Suze? Well, could it hurt? I mean it wasn't like anyone would think I was crazy or anything. Not. Please, my own mother had sent me to a shrink thinking I was crazy. I guess it's not her fault, though. I mean, it must have sounded pretty strange.

            "I'm a mediator." Wow, that one kind of amazed me. I mean, it was so upfront and honest. Gosh.

            Cee Cee was raising her eyebrows again. For an albino, it's pretty noticeable when she wears invisible-feature expressions. And what's scary is that I can read every one of them. This one was clearly an Am-I-supposed-to-understand-that? Look.

            "A mediator," I repeated. "A liaison between the living and the dead. I can see, speak to, and even touch ghosts. I'm supposed to help them move on from this plane to the next. On to heaven, hell, their next life, or whatever there is up there." I gestured towards the sky.

            "Wow." Said Cee Cee, "I guess that explains a lot. I mean, about everything. Well, parts of everything, anyway. The reason you were getting that cat, the reason you had me do that article about the Diegos for the Carmel Pine Cone, and of course the whole hot tub party thing last week. All had to do with mediating, huh?"

            I grimaced. I had been trying to forget about the party my stepbrother Brad had thrown to inaugurate our new pool. Two ghosts had decided to show up and, well…vent.

            "But what I don't get," She continued, "is where that guy Jesse fits into all this. I mean, you said you liked him, and I know he's a ghost and all, but, where do he and Paul Slater come into the picture of this whole mediator thing?"

            Great, I thought. Just what I want to do. Go through all the fabulous details of that again. Not that I had gone through them many times, except once for Father Dominic, our school principal and fellow mediator.

            But I still did it. I told Cee Cee how Jesse had been living in my bedroom since I moved to Carmel, California from New York City. I told her how Jesse had been engaged to his cousin Maria (A fact that still grosses me out, cause having met Maria, I knew she was a complete bitch, and come on? I mean his cousin?? Ew!) and she had had him killed for breaking off the engagement (never mind that she was in love with another guy who happened to be the Spaz of the Year). I told her about Maria's return during the summer where she had nearly killed me three times. Once in my bed with a knife, a second time by having her boyfriend Felix Diego throw me off a roof, and a third by her exorcising Jesse and driving me to get myself exorcised so I could go get him. Then I told her how I'd found out about Paul being in cahoots with the two of them all along. And, oh yeah,                  the part where he pretty much left me and his own brother to die on the spectral plane. Then I told her how he'd appeared weeks later, in Carmel, in our school at the Junipero Serra Mission Academy. I decided to mention the part where he showed up at the party and provoked Jesse into beating the heck out of him. Not that I had minded, under the circumstances.

            "And, he says he knows all this stuff about mediating, and he can teach me, but I won't do it unless he leaves Jesse alone, and I know I shouldn't, but he seems to really regret what he did, only I can't believe that, and I kind of do want to learn what stuff he knows, and--"

            "Suze!" Cee Cee cut me off. Good thing, too, because I was babbling again. Why do I always do that? Babble, I mean.

            "Suze, I think you should steer clear of Paul Slater for a while. I mean, sounds like the guy is bad news. Real bad news."

            I nodded, silently. I figured if I opened my mouth again I might just spit out enough words to make a pot of alphabet soup the size of Nevada.

            "But you still haven't explained everything about Jesse," Cee Cee said slyly, "You liked him last time I checked, and you haven't said much about the topic of the two of you. Together."

            I sighed. This was the part I had been hoping to avoid. I trusted Cee Cee and all, but I wasn't sure that I was ready to spill my whole personal life to her. Especially, since it involves a ghost which she can't see. Still, I tried. I guess I was on a roll.

            "Well," I searched for the right words. "Jesse and I were just friends, up until around when Gina came to visit." Gina was my best friend since kindergarten from New York. She and my stepbrother David (or Doc as I like to call him) are the only ones with even a slight clue about the mediator thing. Jesse spoke to Doc once, and Gina doesn't even know about Jesse.

            "Anyway, when I was in the hospital," Thanks to a few rotten ghosts, "something happened and, I fell in love with him." Are you insane, Suze?? You're using the L word!! Why????

            "And then during the summer….we kissed." I gave a moment for that to sink in. I mean, it'd been a pretty big surprise to me, too, and I was living it!

            But it didn't seem to surprise Cee Cee, though her eyes had kind of glazed over with that look we girls always get when reading romantic novels or watching chic flicks where the guy and girl finally get together.

            "But then, he didn't want to talk much for a while, and he even apologized for the kiss. That's where the bad part comes in. You know when I disappeared at the thing got Father Serra last week? Yeah well, I went to Jesse's grave in the courtyard. He was there. And I found out that…he feels the same way about me that I do about him." I gave that longer to sink in, because I was really having trouble believing it.

            "Only now, he has to move into the rectory, because he told Father Dom he would, only he said that before we found out we were in love, and I don't want him to go, and he doesn't want to either, but Father Dom doesn't have a clue--"

            "SUZE!" I breathed I sigh of relief. This babbling thing will be the death of me. Anyway, the good thing was that Cee Cee always had a plan, and I definitely wanted to hear the one she had for stopping Jesse from having to move to the rectory.

            "All right," she said calmly, her purple eyes thoughtful behind the lenses of her glasses. I like Cee Cee's eyes. We make a cool team with all our differences. I have green eyes (like emeralds, my mom tells me) and she has purple, I have brown hair and she has pale blond, I live for fashion and Cee Cee…well, doesn't. Shhh…she's talking!

            "What you need to do, is….tell Father Dom the truth," she said it with a slight tone of resignation. I didn't like that tone. It was like we were giving up or something. I did not want to give up on Jesse.

            "But…" I stammered, "There has to be another way! I mean, come on, Father D's cool and all, but he's a priest, and he took a vow of celibacy…" I didn't mention that he had, in fact taken that vow because he had fallen in love with a ghost and things didn't really work out. If Jesse moved on or moved into the rectory, I wouldn't be able to love again either. And then I'll have to become a nun to show it. Oh, my God, no.

            "I'm sorry, Suze," Cee Cee replied, "But I really can't think of anything else you can do to save your…relationship with Jesse." I guess she didn't know what else to call it. Not that I did, either.