AN: Visited some of the other Degrassi stories and found that I made a colossal error. Degrassi is set in Toronto and not Vancouver as was my educated guess. I am very, very sorry for that mistake. Unfortunately it would take more than a word change to correct the error, so I am going to leave it as it is. I hope it doesn't affect your enjoyment of the story.
The plane disgorged its passengers. Cole clutched his carry on bag. He had a folded up copy of the email his Aunt Abby sent, in which she informed him that his teenage cousins, Gavin and Kendra, would pick him up at the airport. It included a fuzzy picture so he could identify them.
It was not that hard to find the lone girl holding up a sign that bore his name.
Cole hesitated for the longest time. More than anything, he wanted to turn back around and fly home. But he had to get rid of his surge of fear. He had faced scarier situations than this, and his life was better for it. He could handle staying with these strange relatives for a few weeks.
He approached the girl with the sign.
"You're Kendra Mason?" he asked.
"Yeah," the girl gave him a uneasy grin.
He looked over her again.
"I'm the adopted one," she explained. "My Caucasian brother was supposed to drive us, but instead he's at home being lazy."
Cole looked down at his shoes. "Oh."
"It has nothing to do with you." Her attempt to reassure him sounded too crisp to comfort. "He's in a tiff about everything."
Again Cole wished he could go home. Almost anything would be better than imposing on this family, with the distant parents, an icy-tongued girl, and a guy who was in a "tiff" about everything. It was too bad his cousins were not closer than his age; then he would at least have a playmate during this long visit.
"So who's driving?" he asked.
"I am." Kendra tucked the sign under her arm. "Car's in the parking lot. Let's go."
He followed her outside. She walked too quickly, not letting him stop to look at the totem poles that adorned the airport.
A guy was waiting for them in the car. He was slightly older than Kendra. The guy waved to Kendra, then stepped out of the way while she chucked the sign into the trunk.
"Didn't you say Gavin was at home?" Cole asked, confused.
"We call him Spinner." Kendra was kind enough in correcting him "Yeah. Last I saw, he was in his rat's nest of a bed."
"Then the guy by your car, is he your boyfriend?"
Kendra stumbled.
"Guy?" she questioned.
"The one standing next to you. With the long hair and the glasses."
Cole realized he blundered as soon as the words left his mouth. The sour faced girl did not think much of him before, but now she would know about his freakish trait.
Kendra backed up. She leveled the same squinty stare he had given her inside the airport.
"You can see him?"
Kendra was completely boggled. She had never met anyone who could see the same ghosts that she always saw. Yet this eight-year-old just described Rick.
Rick took it upon himself to break the deadlocked silence. Figuring the "no talking" rule no longer applied, he said to the kid, "Hi, I'm Rick."
"I'm Cole," the kid echoed his introduction.
"So you can see him," Kendra confirmed, speaking more for herself than to the others.
"Yeah," Cole said. He deduced that if she was commenting that he could see this dead person, then that meant she could see him too. Cole had never met anyone with his same ability either. He, too, froze in unconcealed shock.
Kendra snapped to a decision. "We should get home," she ordered. She opened the door and reached over to unlock the car from Cole's side. Cole complacently climbed in and adjusted the carry on bag over his shoulder. Rick had already moved to the back seat.
"Can the others see him too?" Cole asked.
"Huh?" Kendra realized he meant her family, his distant relatives. She shook her head. "No. I'm the only one."
"Do they know?"
"No." Her parents and Spinner were usually too wrapped up in their own lives to notice her weird behavior.
She gunned the engine and steered out of the parking lot.
Cole's mind swarmed with endless questions. It would be nice to talk about it with someone who has experienced the same thing; he could compare his encounters with hers. He never disclosed much about them to anyone else, not even to his mom or Malcolm Crow. He trusted them unconditionally, but there were some aspects of his weird trait that they might never be able to understand; that no one would be able to understand unless they had been through the same thing.
Except Kendra was not as receptive to confiding to him.
Kendra drove in silence. She kept her eyes riveted to the road. Rick remained silent as well. Cole got the impression that the dead person was partly intimidated by her. If Cole guessed right, Rick and Kendra must have known each other before his death.
Even if they had gotten along before, Rick's death would have created a rift in their amicable relationship. It was strange enough in Cole's situations, when it has always been an older adult who died. Death upturned the entire order of the hierarchy achieved in life. But if the dead person from your life was someone your age . . . Cole had been fortunate not to go through that.
He watched out the window as Kendra entered the subdivision and pulled the car in the driveway of a two-story house with flaking paint. Cole studied the house, though it did not merit that much interest. He watched the front door, expecting that his uncle and aunt would come rushing out the door to greet him.
Kendra had already stepped out of the car. Only after she had jogged up half the steps did she remember to stop and wait for Cole to catch up.
"My parents aren't home," she explained, after he hurried out of the car. Cole turned around to see if Rick would follow them inside, but Rick had vanished.
She unlocked the door and led him into the kitchen, which was twice as large as the one at home. Cole dropped his bag in an empty chair.
"Have you had breakfast?" Kendra asked solicitously.
Cole glanced at the clock. It was closer to lunch time. "No."
Kendra opened the refrigerator. "Anything in particular you want?"
Cole shrugged.
Kendra pulled out a box of microwaveable burgers. "They're Boca Burgers. Meatless. I don't eat a lot of meat. I'm guessing you don't, either?"
Cole ate as much meat as anyone else he knew, but he said, "Right."
Kendra wrestled the burgers out of their wrappers and slammed them into the microwave. As the microwave droned, Kendra's shoulders sagged.
She assembled the burgers and sat at the table across from him.
"I'm sorry," she said. "This isn't you. It's-"
She left that unfinished.
"Does it have to do with Rick?" Cole asked.
"Sort of." Kendra bit into her burger, forestalling an inevitable question.
"Were you close?" Cole asked, working towards the boyfriend theory again.
"I've only spoken to him once or twice in his life," Kendra said. "You could say he was the friend of a friend. He only hangs around here because I'm the only one that can see him."
She had been debating the whole ride home whether to reveal how Rick died. She would have to; it was still big news in Degrassi and anybody could bring it up before she decided to.
"Rick brought a gun to school," she told him. "Some bullies were bullying and they pulled this prank . . . have you ever seen the movie Carrie?" She did not wait for an answer. "So he brought a gun to school. For revenge."
Cole's eyebrows raised. He understood what she meant. A school shooting.
"How many people did he shoot?" he asked.
"One." Kendra shredded the remains of her burger. "No one else died. The guy he shot is paralyzed for life. And when he died, he was aiming a gun at the girl he liked, but someone else jumped in and fought him. Rick ended up getting shot."
Cole looked down at his uneaten burger. There was little he could say about this. About Kendra's anger at Rick. She had every right to be angry. Especially if it were her friends who were involved.
"You're helping him, though." Cole finally said.
Kendra tightened her hands into fists.
"Well, the shooting . . . he's nice enough most of the time. We worked out a deal. If I help him, he leaves certain parties alone. He might be able to do things," she added unnecessarily. "If he gets angry or something. I mean, he didn't have all that much control over his anger when he was alive. It's a necessary precaution."
Cole nodded. It was true that dead people could harm the living, whether they wanted to or not.
"I don't think he'll cause any problems for you," Kendra reassured him. "Or me. It's just an issue of conflict of interest. But there's no one else to help him."