Title: Kaleidoscope
Summary: Once upon a time, there lived a girl who loved a ghost, and they lived happily ever after. This is not (quite) that story. Ghost!Suze, Human!Jesse. AU. JS.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never mine, and I promise to put them back when I'm done.

AN – I turned 21 over the weekend. And I'm writing Mediator fanfiction. I'm just that cool.

Chapter 2 - Hello Goodbye

I guess I should explain. I'm not exactly your typical seventeen-year-old guy.

Oh, I seem normal enough, I guess. I don't do drugs, or drink, or smoke. I don't have anything pierced, I don't have any tattoos. I've never dyed my hair. All in all, I am a pretty average, slightly bookish, American teenage guy.

Except, of course, for the fact that I can talk to the dead.

I probably shouldn't put it that way. The more accurate thing to say is that the dead talk to me. I mean, I don't go around initiating these conversations; in fact, I try to avoid the whole thing as much as possible.

It's just that sometimes they won't let me be.

The ghosts, I mean.

I don't think I'm crazy. At least, not any crazier than the rest of the population. I guess I might seem crazy to some people - I've been caught talking seemingly to myself more than once, and have, a couple of times, been spotted manhandling thin air. I've had the school counselors sicced on me a couple of times, and sometimes I even think it might be

simpler just to let them lock me up.

But even on the ninth floor of Bellevue – which is where they lock up the crazy people in New York – I probably wouldn't be safe from the ghosts. They'd find me.

They always do.

I still remember my first. Well, I remember it as clearly as any of my other memories of that time, which is to say, not very well, since I was about two years old. I didn't know then that ghosts were something to be afraid of. Which is why, fifteen years later, they still don't frighten me. Startle me, maybe, sometimes. Annoy me, a lot. But frighten me?

Never.

The ghost was little, gray and helpless. To this day, I don't know who she was. I spoke

to her, some baby gibberish that she didn't understand; ghosts can't understand two-year-olds any better than anybody else. She just looked at me sadly from the top of the stairs of our apartment building. I guess I felt sorry for her, and wanted to help her, only I didn't know how. So I did what any uncertain two-year-old would do. I ran for my mother.

That was when I learned my first lesson concerning ghosts: only I can see them. Well, obviously, other people can see them too - how else would we have haunted houses and ghost stories and Unsolved Mysteries and all of that? - but there's a difference. Most people who see ghosts only see one. I see all ghosts.

All of them. Anybody. Anybody who has died and for whatever reason is hanging around on earth instead of going wherever it is he or she is supposed to go, I can see. And let me tell you, that is a lot of ghosts.

I found out the same day that I saw my first ghost that most people – even my own mother – can't see them at all. Neither can anyone else I have ever met. At least, no one who'll admit it.

Which brings us to the second thing I learned about ghosts that day fifteen years ago: it's really better, in the long run, not to mention that you've seen one. Or, as in my case, any.

I'm not saying my mother figured out that it was a ghost I was pointing to and gibbering about that afternoon when I was two. I doubt she knew it. But she looked gamely up the

stairs and nodded and said, "Uh-huh. Listen, Jesse. What do you want for lunch today? Grilled cheese? Or tuna fish?"

It wasn't the reaction I'd been expecting. I was given explanations for virtually everything else I encountered on a daily basis, from fire hydrants to electrical outlets, and so I had expected at least an acknowledgment of the thing floating at the top of the stairs. But as I sat munching my grilled cheese a little later, I realized that the reason my mother had offered no explanation for the gray thing was that she hadn't been able to see it. To her, it wasn't there.

At two years old, this didn't seem unreasonable to me. It just seemed, at the time, like another thing that separated children from adults: Children had to eat all their vegetables. Adults did not. Children could ride the merry-go-round in the park. Adults could not. Children could see the gray things. Adults could not.

And even though I was only two years old, I understood that the little gray thing at the top of the stairs was not something to be discussed. Not with anybody. Not ever.

And I never did. I never told anyone about my first ghost, nor did I ever discuss with anyone the hundreds of other ghosts I encountered over the course of the next few years. What was there to discuss, really? I saw them. They spoke to me. For the most part, I didn't understand what they were saying, what they wanted, and they usually went away. End of story.

It probably would have gone on like that indefinitely if my father hadn't suddenly up and died. Really. Just like that. One minute he was there, cooking and making jokes in the kitchen like he'd always done, and the next day he was gone. And, people kept assuring me all through the week following his death – which I spent on the stoop in front of our building, waiting for my dad to come home – he was never coming back.

I, of course, didn't believe their assurances. Why should I? My dad, not coming back? Were they nuts? Sure, he might have been dead. I got that part. But he was definitely coming back. Who was going to help me with my math homework? Who was going to wake up early with me on Saturday mornings, and make Belgian waffles and watch cartoons? Who was going to teach me to drive, like he'd promised, when I turned sixteen? My dad might have been dead, but I was definitely going to see him again. I saw lots of dead people on a daily basis. Why shouldn't I see my dad?

It turned out I was right. Oh, my dad was dead. No doubt about that. He'd died of a massive coronary. My mom had his body cremated, and she put his ashes in an antique German beer tankard. You know, that kind with the lid. My dad had always really liked beer. She put the tankard on a shelf, high up, where the cat couldn't knock it over, and sometimes, when she didn't think I was around, I caught her talking to it.

This made me feel really sad. I mean, I guess I couldn't blame her, really. If I didn't know any better, I'd probably have talked to that tankard, too.

But that, you see, was what all those people on my block had been wrong about. My dad was dead, yeah. But I did see him again.

He was the one who finally explained it to me. So I guess, in a way, it's a good thing he did die, since I might never have known, otherwise. He called me a mediator: the contact person for just about anybody who dies leaving things … well, untidy. Then, if I can, I clean up the mess. That's the only way I can think to explain it. I don't know how I got so lucky – I mean, I'm normal enough in every other respect. I just have this unfortunate ability to communicate with the dead.

Not any dead, either. Only the unhappy dead.

He hung around for a few years after he died, my dad. I was thirteen when he moved on; to this day I've never really worked out why. I always just figured he stayed to help me out with the whole ghost thing until he thought I was old enough to take care of it myself.

And mostly, I manage. It's not piece of cake, mind. Imagine, being haunted – literally haunted – by the dead, every single minute of every single day of your life. It is not pleasant. You go down to the deli to get a soda – oops, dead guy on the corner. Somebody shot him. And if you could just make sure the cops get the guy who did it, he can finally rest in peace. And all you wanted was a soda.

Or you go to the library to check out a book — oops, the ghost of some librarian comes up to you and wants you to tell her nephew how mad she is about what he did with her cats after she kicked the bucket.

And those are just the folks who know why they're still sticking around. Half of them don't have any idea why they haven't slipped off into the afterlife like they're supposed to.

Which is irritating because, of course, I'm the schmuck who's supposed to help them get there.

I'm the mediator.

I tell you, it is not a fate I would wish on anybody.

There isn't a whole lot of payoff in the mediation field. It isn't like anyone's ever offered me a salary, or anything. Not even hourly compensation. Just the occasional warm feeling you get when you do a good turn for somebody. Like telling some girl who didn't get to say good-bye to her grandfather before he passed away that he really loves her, and he forgives her for that time she trashed his El Dorado. That kind of thing can warm the heart, it really can.

But for the most part, it's cold shivers all the way. Besides the hassle – constantly being pestered by folks nobody but you can see – there's the fact that a lot of ghosts are really rude. I mean it. They are royal pains to deal with. These are generally the ones who actually want to hang around in this world instead of taking off for the next one. They probably know that based on their behavior in their most recent life, they aren't in for much of a treat in the one they've got coming up. So they just stay here and bug people, slamming doors, knocking over things, making cold spots, groaning. You know what I mean. Your basic poltergeists.

Sometimes, though, they can get rough. My mother raised me to be polite and courteous at all times, especially to girls, but though I tried, they were not always strictures I could follow. I mean, some ghosts, they try to hurt people. On purpose. That's when I usually get mad. I've been in more than my fair share of fights over the years; unfortunately, none of them have been with an opponent anyone but me knows exist.

Which was what my mom meant when she said, "Oh, Jesse. Not again."

Because, every now and again, things have a tendency to get a little … messy.

Not that I had any intention of messing up my new room, or the new life my mom was trying to build for us out here. Which is why I turned my back on the ghost sitting on my window seat and said, "Never mind, Mom. Everything's fine. The room is great. Thanks so much."

I could tell she didn't believe me. It's hard to fake out my mom; I guess I put so much effort into keeping my one great secret from her that everything else can't help but slip through. I know she suspects there's something up with me, she just can't figure out what it is. Which is probably a good thing, because it would shake up the world as she knows it in too major a way. I mean, she's a television news reporter. She only believes what she can see. And she can't see ghosts.

I can't tell you how much I wish I could be like her.

"Well," she said. "Well, I'm glad you like it. I was sort of worried. I mean, I know how you get about …well, old places."

Old places are the worst for me because the older a building is, the more chance there is that someone has died in it, and that he or she is still hanging around there looking for justice or waiting to deliver some final message to someone.

"Really, Mom," I said. "It's great. I love it."

Andy, hearing this, hustled around the room all excitedly, showing me the various other gadgets he'd installed. I followed him around, expressing my delight, being careful not to look in the ghost's direction. I was determined, because it was evident Andy wanted it so much, to be happy. At least as happy as it's possible for someone like me to be.

After a while, Andy ran out of stuff to show me, and went away to start the barbecue, since in honor of my arrival, we were having surf and turf for dinner. Mel and Georgie had long ago disappeared into the depths of their rooms, and Sarah, muttering mysteriously about an "experiment" she'd been working on, eventually drifted off to another part of the house, leaving me alone with my mother … well, sort of.

"Is it really all right, Jesse?" my mom wanted to know. "I know it's a big change. I know it's asking a lot of you – "

"It's fine, Mom," I said. "Really."

"I mean, it's selfish of me, I know. And you've been so good about it."

"Mom, honestly. I don't mind. I'm starting to like it here already."

"Oh, Jesse…what did I do to deserve you?"

It was a question I had asked myself on a daily basis for the past fifteen years. My mom was a great woman, who definitely didn't deserve to have a mediator for a son. God knows I've caused her enough worry over the years. While I've never actually been convicted of anything, I've spent any number of hours in my mother's therapist's office, being assured that this tendency I have to talk to myself is perfectly normal, but that my propensity to talk to people who aren't there probably isn't.

Ditto my dislike of any building not constructed in the past five years. Ditto the amount of time I spend in graveyards, churches, temples, mosques, other people's (locked) apartments or houses, and school grounds after hours.

But I was going to do my best to make sure that things would be better here. I had already resolved not to do anything that was going to end up getting me arrested.

"I do love you, you know."

"I know, mom." I shifted uncomfortably, very aware of the ghost who was now watching us with undisguised interest. "I love you too."

My mom beamed at me, reaching over to engulf me in a brief, tight hug.

"Well," she said, releasing me. "I guess you won't want help unpacking. I'll go see how Andy is doing with dinner."

Andy, in addition to being able to build just about anything, was also an excellent cook, something my mother most definitely was not.

"Yeah, Mom, you go do that. I'll just get settled in here, and I'll be down in a minute."

My mom nodded and got up – but she wasn't about to let me escape that easily. Just as she was about to go out the door, she turned around and said, her blue eyes all filled with tears, "I just want you to be happy, Jesse. That's all I've ever wanted. Do you think you can be happy here?"

"Sure, Mom," I said. "Sure, I'll be happy here."

"Really?" My mom was sniffling. "You swear?"

"I do."

And I wasn't lying, either. I mean, there'd been ghosts in my bedroom back in Brooklyn all the time, too.

She went away, and I shut the door quietly behind her. I waited until I couldn't hear her heels on the stairs anymore, and then I turned around.

"All right," I said, to the presence on the window seat. "Who on earth are you?"

To say that the girl looked surprised to be addressed in this manner would have been a massive understatement. She didn't just look surprised. She actually looked over her shoulder, to see if it was really her I was talking to.

But of course, the only thing behind her was the window, and through it, that incredible view of Carmel Bay. So then she turned back to look at me, and must have seen that my gaze was fastened directly on her face, for her eyes widened dramatically and a soft "Lord…" escaped her.

"It's no use calling on your higher power," I informed her, kicking off my shoes. "In case you haven't noticed, He isn't paying a whole lot of attention to you. Otherwise, He wouldn't have left you here to fester for – " I took in her outfit, which had a distinctly Little House on the Prairie look to it - "What is it, a hundred and fifty years?"

She stared at me with eyes that were as green as grass. "You can…see me?" she asked, in a voice that sounded rusty from disuse.

I rolled my eyes. "Obviously."

"I don't understand," she said, in tones of wonder. "I don't understand how it is that you can see me. All these years, no one has ever – "

"Yeah," I said, cutting her off. I hear this kind of thing a lot, you understand. "Well, listen, the times, you know, they are a'changin'. So what's your glitch?"

She blinked at me with those big eyes.

"Glitch?" she echoed.

"Yeah. Glitch. Problem. Why are you still here?"

She looked at me, her expression calm and interested.

I elaborated. "Why haven't you gone to the other side?"

She shook her head. Her hair was curly and black, and sort of bounced round her shoulders as she moved. "I don't know what you mean."

"What do you mean, you don't know what I mean?" I sighed, running one hand through my hair. "You're dead. You don't belong here. You're supposed to be off doing whatever it is that happens to people after they're dead. Rejoicing in heaven, or burning in hell, or being reincarnated, or ascending another plane of consciousness, or whatever. You're not supposed to be just…well, just hanging around."

She looked at me thoughtfully, head cocked on one side. "And what if I happen to like just hanging around?" she wanted to know. I wasn't sure, but I had a feeling she was making fun of me. Which I definitely wasn't in the mood for. I mean, I'd just traveled a gazillion miles for what seemed like days in order to live with a bunch of stupid girls, I still had to unpack, I had already practically made my mother cry, and then I find a ghost in my bedroom. Can you blame me for being, well, short with her?

"Look," I said, flopping down onto the bed. "You can do all the hanging around you want, senorita. Hang away. I don't really care. But you can't do it here."

"Susannah," she said, not moving.

"What?"

"You called me senorita. I thought you might like to know I have a name. It's Susannah. As in, 'Don't you cry for me.'"

I nodded. "Right. Well, fine. Susannah, then. You can't stay here, Susannah."

"And you?" She was smiling at me now.

"And me, what?"

I knew I was being rude. For once, I didn't care.

"What is your name?"

I glared at her. "Look. Just tell me what you want, and get out. I'm hot, and I want to change clothes. I don't have time for – "

She interrupted, as amiably as if she hadn't heard me talking at all, "That woman – your mother – called you Jesse." Her green eyes were bright on me. "I thought that was a girls name?"

"It's a nickname" I said shortly. My name was a bit of a sore point.

She just kept on smiling. "So this is your room now, is it, Jesse?"

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, this is my room now. So you're going to have clear out."

"I'm going to have to clear out?" She arched one eyebrow. "This has been my home for a century and a half. Why do I have to leave it?"

"Because. This is my room."

"It was my room first."

I spluttered at her childish argument in disbelief for a moment, and then took a deep, calming breath.

"Look," I said through gritted teeth. "Susannah. This is my room, understand? It might have been yours once, but you can't stay here. You've either got to let me help you get to

where you're supposed to go, or you're going to have to find some other house to haunt. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is."

"And who are you to decide that?"

"I'm the mediator. I deal with ghosts. You got a problem, you come to me. But I'm not the sort of guy who's going to share his room with a member of the opposite sex. Understand me? So either you move out, or I force you out. It's entirely up to you. I'll give you some time to think about it. But when I get back here, Susannah, I want you gone."

I turned and left. I had to. I don't usually lose arguments with ghosts, but I had a feeling I was losing that one, and badly. I shouldn't have been so short with her, and I shouldn't have been rude. I could already feel the guilt creeping up on me; my mother would have been horrified if she'd heard me. I don't know what came over me, I really don't. I just…I guess I just wasn't expecting to find the ghost of a girl in my bedroom, that's all. And after all the promises I'd made, to myself and my mother, about new starts and staying out of trouble…

I'd give her a bit of time, I decided. She'd come round; I was sure they were pretty against the whole girl-and-boy-cohabiting scenario in the 1800s, so surely she'd see, at least from that angle, how inappropriate it would be.

She'd come round. They always do.

To be continued...

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