I don't even really know how it happened. I was being way careful, you know? Careful not to fall in love with Jesse, I mean.
"That's the problem with love," Andy said dreamily, "it sneaks up on you."
He and Helen stared into one another's eyes. "Urgh, someone fetch me a bucket," Brad grumbled.
David decided for his own sanity's sake he should keep reading.
And I'd been doing a really good job. I mean, I was getting out and meeting new people and doing new things, just like it says to do in Cosmo. I certainly wasn't sitting around mooning over him or anything.
The three brothers snorted at the idea of Suze sitting around and mooning over someone.
And yeah, okay, the majority of guys I have met since moving to California have turned out either to have psychopathic killers stalking them, or were actually psychopathic killers themselves. But that's really not a very good excuse for falling in love with a ghost. It really isn't.
"I don't know," Jake shrugged, "Suze's taste in men has been terrible until Jesse."
But that's what happened.
I can tell you the exact moment I knew it was all over, too. My battle to keep from falling in love with him, I mean. It was while I was in the hospital, recovering from that severe butt-kicking I mentioned before, the one I got courtesy of the ghosts of four RLS students who had been murdered a few weeks before school let out for the summer.
"Thanks for the reminder," Helen shuddered now broken from her love sick enchantment. Andy also grimaced at the thought of Suze almost being murdered. Why couldn't she have been maths genius like David? Life would have been so much easier.
Anyway, Jesse showed up in my hospital room (Why not? He's a ghost. He can materialize anywhere he wants) to express his get-well wishes, which were extremely heartfelt and all, and while he was there, he happened, at one point, to reach out and touch my cheek.
That's all. He just touched my cheek, which was, I believe, the only part of me that was not black and blue at the time.
Big deal, right? So he touched my cheek. That's no reason to swoon.
But I did.
"Girls," Brad rolled his eyes.
Oh, not literally. It wasn't like anybody had to wave smelling salts under my nose or anything, for God's sake. But after that, I was gone. Done for. Toast.
I flatter myself I've done a pretty good job of hiding it. He, I'm sure, has no idea. I still treat him as if he were . . . well, an ant that has fallen into my pool. You know, irritating, but not worth killing.
"Susannah!" Helen shrieked, appalled at her daughter's behaviour.
"Sounds like how she treats Brad," Jake smirked.
"Shuddup! You get the same treatment to!"
And I haven't told anyone. How can I? No one, except for Father Dominic, back at the Academy, and my youngest stepbrother, Doc, has any idea Jesse even exists. I mean, come on, the ghost of a guy who died a hundred and fifty years ago, and lives in my bedroom? If I mentioned it to anyone, they'd cart me off to the loony bin faster than you can say Stir of Echoes .
"No we wouldn't," Andy smiled fondly, "we would have consulted Father Dominic and then probably send her to therapy while looking into medication."
"Not the reassurance I think Suze was looking for, Dad," Jake rolled his eyes.
But it's there. Just because I haven't told anyone doesn't mean it isn't there, all the time, lurking in the back of my mind, like one of those 'N Sync songs you can't get out of your head.
Everyone shuddered at that. 'N Sync, urgh.
And I have to tell you, it makes the idea of going out with other guys seem like ... well, a big waste of time.
"It is," Helen agreed, "especially since Jesse is the one!"
So I didn't jump at the chance to go out with Paul Slater (though if you ask me, having dinner with him and his parents and his little brother hardly qualifies as going out).
"It doesn't," Jake agreed, "but somehow I can't see it stopping that creep classing it as a date."
Instead, I went home and had dinner with my own parents and brothers. Well, stepbrothers, anyway.
"What?!" Jake shouted indignantly. "Dad gets the parents label but the moment Suze calls us brothers she corrects herself! How is that fair?!"
"Hey, chill out," Andy ruffled his eldest's hair, "she still called you a brother. It's progress. If there's one thing we've learnt about Suze it' how difficult it is to reach her emotionally."
"Still," Jake mumbled, "I think of her as my sister..."
"I know, and she thinks you're annoying, so you're halfway there," Andy said cheerfully.
"Dad, you're not funny!"
Dinner in the Ackerman household was always this very big deal ... until Andy started working on installing the hot tub. Since then, he has slacked off considerably in the culinary department, let me tell you. And since my mom is hardly what you'd call a cook, we've been enjoying a lot of takeout lately. I thought we had hit rock bottom the night before, when we'd actually ordered from Peninsula Pizza, the place Sleepy works nights as a delivery guy.
"There's nothing wrong with Peninsula Pizza," Jake sniffed indignantly.
"I think it was just that I made Suze tip you that made her think it was rock bottom," Andy smirked. "Though I do agree with Suze, takeout is a terrible idea, I should ensure next time I do a project like this I have prepared proper meals to cook in the future."
"We're not getting another hot tub," Helen said firmly.
Although it would be nice to have one without Brad's hair in it.
But I didn't know how bad it could get until I walked in that night and saw a red-and-white bucket sitting in the middle of the table.
Helen rolled her eyes.
"Don't start," my mother said when she noticed me.
I just shook my head. "I guess if you peel the skin off, it's not that bad for you."
"How can she not like the skin?" Brad demanded. "That's the best part of the chicken."
"She's just fussy and a rather health conscious," Helen said. "She's not big on greasy food."
"Give it to me," Dopey said, glopping semi-congealed mashed potatoes onto his plate. "I'll eat your skin."
"Ew," David gagged.
I could hardly control my gag reflex after that offer, but I managed, and I was reading the nutritional literature that came with our meal - "The Colonel has never forgotten the delicious aromas that used to float from his mother's kitchen on the plantation back when he was a boy" - when I remembered the tin box, the contents of which had also been advertised as having a delicious aroma.
"Weird," Brad muttered.
"Not really Brad," David said, "after all the two containers had two shared words on it. It would of course trigger the memory as the suggested context is similar."
"I can tell you now," Brad yawned, "that I did not dig up a box of KFC."
"Hey," I said. "So what was in that box you guys dug up?"
Dopey made a face. "Nothing. Bunch of old letters."
"I despair of you," David said.
"I'm not interested in that stuff," Brad shrugged, "Now if it was gold, we would be talking."
Andy looked sadly at his son. The truth is, I think even my stepfather has begun to realize what I have known since the day I met him: that his middle son is a bohunk.
"Susannah!"
"I wasn't thinking that," Andy said exasperated with his children's petty insults, "I was thinking how it was a waste of Brad's potential that he wasn't to show interest in these academic finds."
"I'm not David," Brad grumbled.
"Not just a bunch of old letters, Brad," Andy said. "They're quite old, dated around the time this house was built - 1850. They're in extremely poor condition - falling apart, actually. I was thinking of taking them over to the historical society. They might want them, in spite of the condition. Or" - Andy looked at me - "I thought Father Dominic might be interested. You know what a history buff he is."
Father Dom is a history buff, all right, but only because, as a mediator, like me, he has a tendency to run into people who have actually lived through historical events like the Alamo and the Lewis and Clark expedition. You know, folks who take the phrase been there, done that to a whole new level.
"Must be so fascinating," David said dreamily.
"I'll give him a call," I said as I accidentally dropped a piece of chicken into my lap, where it was immediately vacuumed up by the Ackermans' enormous dog, Max, who maintains a watchful position at my side during every meal.
"Max," David mumbled fondly.
"I do wish Suze wouldn't feed him so often," Andy said, "the vet is worried about his weight again."
It was only when Dopey chortled that I realized I'd said the wrong thing.
"Git," Jake glared at his middle brother.
"Oh come on! It wasn't normal!" Brad protested.
Never having been a normal teenage girl, it is sometimes hard for me to imitate one. And normal teenage girls do not, I know, give their high school principals calls on any sort of regular basis.
"True but Father Dominic isn't exactly a normal high school principal," Helen pointed out, "after all he hears all his students' confessions."
Brad paled dramatically as he realised that meant Father Dominic knew about the first time he...well did stuff...urgh, he wanted to die.
I glared at Dopey from across the table.
"I was going to call him anyway," I said, "to find out what I'm supposed to do with the leftover cash from our class trip to Great America."
"Sure," Andy said in a jokingly disbelieving voice.
"I'll take it," Sleepy joked. Why did my mother have to marry into a family of comedians?
"I suppose I was bored," Helen smiled while the Ackerman men grinned at one another.
"Can I see them?" I asked, pointedly ignoring both my stepbrothers.
"We noticed."
"See what, honey?" Andy asked me.
For a moment I forgot what we were talking about. Honey ? Andy had never called me honey before.
"I hadn't?"
What was going on here? Were we - I shudder to think it - bonding ?
"Well, what's wrong with that?!"
Excuse me, I already have one father, even if he is dead. He still pops by to visit me all too often.
"I'm not trying to replace her father!" Andy shouted indignantly. "I'm just trying to be a good stepfather!"
"I know honey," Helen said soothingly as she patted Andy's arm, "Suze is just be over-defensive with her emotions again. She doesn't like to let people in remember?"
"I think she means the letters," my mother said, apparently not even noticing what her husband had just called me.
"Because it isn't that big of a deal," Helen rolled her eyes. Her daughter, the Drama Queen of Carmel.
"Oh, sure," Andy said. "They're in our room."
"Our room" is the bedroom Andy and my mother sleep in. I try never to go in there, because, well, frankly, the whole thing grosses me out. Yeah, sure, I'm glad that my mom's finally happy, after ten years of mourning the death of my dad. But does that mean I want to actually see her in bed with her new husband, watching West Wing ? No thank you.
"Teenagers," Helen and Andy muttered while the boys nodded in agreement with Suze's words.
Still, after dinner, I steeled myself and went in there. My mom was at her dressing table taking off her makeup. She has to go to bed very early in order to be up in time for her stint on the morning news.
"Oh, hi, sweetie," my mom said to me in a dazed, I'm-busy kind of way. "They're over there, I think."
I looked where she pointed on top of Andy's dresser and found the metal box Dopey had dug up along with a lot of other guy-type stuff, like loose change and matches and receipts.
"You should really clean those up," Helen muttered with a pointed look at her very sheepish husband.
"I will soon," Andy promised.
He won't. He never does, Helen sighed heavily.
Anyway, Andy had tried to clean the box up, and he'd done a pretty good job of it. You could read almost all the writing on it.
Andy puffed up in pride at that.
Which was kind of unfortunate, because what the writing said was way politically incorrect. Try new Red Injun cigars! It urged. There was even a picture of this very proud-looking Native American clutching a fistful of cigars where his bow and quiver ought to have been. The delicious aroma will tempt even the choosiest smoker. As with all our products, quality assured .
"And this is partly why the Native Americans were almost extinct," David grumbled, "And why even today they suffer a terrible reputation. Stupid propagandists."
That was it. No surgeon general's warning about how smoking can kill. Nothing about foetal birth weight.
"People didn't know back then," David said sadly, "they were terribly ignorant over these sort of things."
Still, it was kind of strange how advertising from before they had TV - before they even had radio - was still basically the same as advertising today. Only, you know, now we know that naming your product after a race of people will probably offend them.
"Probably."
I opened the box and found the letters inside. Andy was right about their poor condition. They were so yellowed that you could hardly peel them apart without having pieces crumble off. They had, I could see, been tied together with a ribbon, a silk one, which might have been another color once, but was now an ugly brown.
There was a stack of letters, maybe five or six in all, in the box. I can't tell you, as I picked up the first one, what I thought I'd see. But I guess a part of me knew all along what I was going to find.
Even so, when I'd carefully unfolded the first one and read the words Dear Hector , I still felt like somebody had snuck up behind me and kicked me.
"Why?" Brad asked stupidly.
"Jesse's real name is Hector, remember?" David reminded him.
"Oh yeah...wow, so that meant that body-"
"I really rather not think about that now," Helen interrupted, "David please continue."
I had to sit down. I sank down into one of the armchairs my mom and Andy keep by the fireplace in their room, my eyes still glued to the yellowed page in front of me.
Jesse. These letters were to Jesse.
"So she probably shouldn't have read them," Andy said.
"Suze?" My mom glanced at me curiously. She was rubbing cream into her face. "Are you all right?"
"She looked like she had seen a ghost," Helen smiled at the irony of her statement.
"Fine," I said in a strangled voice. "Is it okay ... is it okay if I just sit here and read these for a minute?"
My mom began to slop cream onto her hands. "Of course," she said. "You're sure you're all right? You look a little ... pale."
"I'm great," I lied. "Just great."
"Lies," Brad said, "you should stop believing her, Mom."
Dear Hector, the first letter said. The handwriting was beautiful - loopy and old-fashioned, the kind of handwriting Sister Ernestine, back at school, used.
"I now cannot like the writer on principal," Brad declared.
"Moron," Jake rolled his eye good naturedly.
I could read it quite easily, despite the fact that the letter was dated May 8,1850.
Eighteen fifty! That was the year our house had been built, the first year it was in business as a boarding house for travellers to the Monterey Peninsula area. The year - I knew from when Doc and I looked it up - that Jesse, or Hector (which is his real name; can you imagine? I mean, Hector ) had mysteriously disappeared.
"Hector," Brad shook his head.
"Mysteriously disappeared," Jake snorted.
Though I happen to know there hadn't been anything mysterious about it. He'd been murdered in this very house ... in fact, in my bedroom upstairs. Which is why, for the past century and a half, he's been hanging out there, waiting for ...
"Waiting for what?" Andy asked.
"For Suze of course!" Helen said excitedly. "They're soul mates."
The brothers all rolled their eyes but decided not to comment. They valued their lives after all.
Waiting for what?
Waiting for you, said a small voice in the back of my head. A mediator, to find these letters and avenge his death, so he can move on to wherever it is he's supposed to go next.
"Jesse doesn't seem like the avenging type," David said, "I think originally he stayed because he wanted his family to know the truth."
"And when they were gone he couldn't leave either," Andy realised sadly.
It was the parents he felt sorry for in this. He wouldn't be able to cope if he lost one of his boys and died never knowing whether they were alive or not.
The thought struck me with terror. Really. It made my hands go all sweaty, even though it was cool in my mom and Andy's room, what with the air conditioning being on full blast. The back of my neck started feeling prickly and gross.
"She doesn't want to lose Jesse," Helen said gleefully.
"We got it Mom," Jake rolled his eyes.
I forced myself to look back down at the letter. If Jesse was meant to move on, well, then I was just going to have to help him do it. That's my job, after all.
"I doubt Jesse would want to leave," Jake rolled his eyes again.
Except that I couldn't help thinking about Father Dom. A fellow mediator, he had admitted to me a few months ago that he had once had the misfortune to fall in love with a ghost, back when he'd been my age. Things hadn't worked out - how could they? - and he'd become a priest.
Got that? A priest . Okay? That's how bad it had been. That's how hard the loss had been to get over. He'd become a priest .
"I think that had little to do with his loss and more to do with his conviction as a Catholic though," Andy said rather amused, "after all Father Dominic never said whether his priesthood had something to do with his broken heart."
Frankly, I don't see how I could ever become a nun. For one thing, I'm not even Catholic. And for another, I don't look very good with my hair pulled back. Really. That's why I've always avoided ponytails and headbands.
Everyone burst out into hysterical laughter. "Suze...a nun..." Jake wheezed out. "God help Sister Ernestine..."
"Her hair? She's worried about her hair?" Brad choked out between giggles.
"The poor Monsignor wouldn't know what hit him," Andy wiped a few stray tears away.
"Honestly," Helen giggled, "even if Jesse left Suze wouldn't become a nun. She would just do something about it."
Stop it, I said to myself. Just stop it and read.
I read.
The letter was from someone called Maria. I don't know much about Jesse's life before he died - he's not exactly big on discussing it - but I do know that Maria de Silva was the name of the girl Jesse had been on his way to marry when he'd disappeared. Some cousin of his. I'd seen a picture of her once in a book. She was pretty hot, you know, for a girl in a hoop skirt who lived before plastic surgery. Or Maybelline.
More rolled eyes at that.
And you could tell by the way she wrote that she knew it, too. That she was hot, I mean. Her letter was all about the parties she'd been to, and who had said what about her new bonnet. Her bonnet , for crying out loud. I swear to God, it was like reading a letter from Kelly Prescott, except that it had a bunch of hithers and alacks in it, and no mention of Ricky Martin. Plus a lot of stuff was spelled wrong. Maria may have been a babe, but it was pretty clear, after reading her letters, she hadn't won too many spelling bees back at ye olde schoolhouse.
"So basically she's a vain, spoilt, idiotic little girl?" Jake summed up.
"Jake," Andy glared at his son.
"What?" Jake asked innocently. "Suze said she was like Kelly and that is exactly what Kelly is."
"Yes but it isn't nice to say it out loud."
What struck me, as I read, was the fact that it really didn't seem possible that the girl who had written these letters was the same girl who had, I was pretty sure, ordered a hit on her fiancé. Because I happened to know that Maria hadn't wanted to marry Jesse at all. Her dad had arranged the whole thing. Maria had wanted to marry this other guy, this dude named Diego, who ran slaves for a living. A real charming guy. In fact, Diego was the one I suspected had killed Jesse.
"Most likely," David agreed grimly.
Not, of course, that Jesse had ever mentioned any of this - or anything at all, for that matter, about his past. He is, and always has been, completely tight-lipped on the whole subject of how he'd died. Which I guess I can understand: getting murdered has to be a bit traumatizing.
"A bit?"
"Susie," Helen shook her head incredulously.
But I must say it's kind of hard getting to the bottom of why he's still here after all this time when he won't contribute at all to the conversation. I had had to find out all of this stuff from a book on the history of Salinas County that Doc had dug up out of the local library.
"Which come to think of it is a bit of an invasion of Jesse's privacy isn't it?"
"Not really," David shrugged, "it is after all public knowledge and public property. Not like this diary which is a real invasion of Suze's privacy."
Helen and Andy grimaced. They couldn't tell David off for this or his assistance in invading Jesse's privacy since they hadn't set good examples themselves.
So I guess you could say that I read Maria's letters with a certain sense of foreboding. I mean, I was pretty much convinced I was going to find something in them that was going to prove Jesse had been murdered ... and who'd done it.
But the last letter was just as fatuous as the other four. There was nothing, nothing at all to indicate any wrongdoing of any kind on Maria's part . . . except for maybe a complete inability to spell the word fiancé. And really, what sort of crime is that?
"A horrible one," David muttered, "it's a butchery of the English language."
I folded the letters carefully again and stuck them back into the tin, realizing, as I did so, that the back of my neck, as well as my hands, was no longer sweating. Was I relieved that there was nothing incriminating here, nothing that helped solve the mystery of Jesse's death?
"Yes," Brad stated.
I guess so. Selfish of me, I know, but it's the truth. All I knew now was what Maria de Silva had worn to some party at the Spanish ambassador's house. Big deal. Why would anybody stick letters as innocuous as that into a cigar box and bury them? It made no sense.
"I sense another paranoid nutcase," Jake said.
"Oh please don't!" Helen pleaded. "I hope only the body is what happened that summer. No murderous ghosts or the like."
"And should I worry that you managed to hone your senses for paranoid nutcases?" Andy asked.
"High school girls are insane," was all Jake's reply.
"Interesting, aren't they?" my mother said when I stood up.
"Not really," Brad groused.
I jumped about a mile. I'd forgotten she was even there. She was in bed now, reading a book on how to be a more effective time manager.
"Why were you reading that?" David asked interestedly. "You're already an effective time manager."
"I was looking for teaching tips for Brad," Helen smiled, "I'm certain the only reason he failed English and Spanish was because he didn't manage his time well enough."
Brad flushed grateful that someone didn't think he was an idiot. Though quite frankly he hated English and didn't understand his essay questions for it.
"Yeah," I said, putting the letters back on Andy's dresser. "Really interesting. I'm so glad I know what the ambassador's son said when he saw Maria de Silva in her new silver gauze ball gown."
The boys snorted. "She can talk," Brad muttered.
My mom looked up at me curiously through the lenses of her reading glasses. "Oh, did she mention her last name somewhere? Because Andy and I were wondering. We didn't see it. De Silva, did you say?"
I blinked. "Um," I said. "No. Well, she didn't say. But Doc and I ... I mean, David, he told me about this family, the de Silvas, that lived in Salinas around that time, and they had a daughter called Maria, and I just ..." My voice trailed off as Andy came into the room.
"At least she told me the truth for once," Helen murmured.
"Hey, Suze," he said, looking a little surprised to see me in his room, since I'd never set foot in there before. "Did you see the letters? Neat, huh?"
Neat. Oh my God. Neat.
"What's wrong with neat?"
"No one says neat anymore Dad," Brad rolled his eyes, "Jeeze keep up with the times."
"Yeah," I said. "Gotta go. Good night."
I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I don't know how kids whose parents have been married multiple times deal with it. I mean, my mother's only remarried once, and to a perfectly nice man. But still, it's just so weird .
"Teenagers."
But if I'd thought I could retreat to my room to be alone and think things over, I was wrong. Jesse was sitting on my window seat.
"As usual," Brad muttered.
Sitting there looking like he always looked: totally hot, in the white open-necked shirt and black toreador pants he habitually wears - well, it's not like you can change clothes in the afterlife - with his short dark hair curling crisply against the back of his neck, and his liquid black eyes bright beneath equally inky brows, one of which bore a thin white scar...
The gagging and moaning was done at minimum since they all actually liked Jesse.
A scar that, more times than I like to admit, I'd dreamed of tracing with my fingertips.
Brad mimed vomiting and Jake screwed his nose up in disgust. Honestly there were just some things you don't want to know.
He looked up when I came in - he had Spike, my cat, on his lap - and said, "This book is very difficult to understand." He was reading a copy of First Blood , by David Morrell, which they based the movie Rambo on.
"What Rambo was based on that boring book?!"
"Yes," David said patronisingly, "and would you believe me when I tell you Harry Potter was based on seven books?"
"Shuddup!"
"David, can the attitude," Andy chided, "and Brad, stop telling your brothers to shut up."
I blinked, trying to rouse myself from the dazed stupor the sight of him always seemed to put me in for a minute or so.
"If Sylvester Stallone understood it," I said, "I would think you could."
Jake and David snorted but withheld the comments on Brad's intelligence.
Jesse ignored that. "Marx predicted that the contradictions and weaknesses within the capitalist structure would cause increasingly severe economic crises and deepening impoverishment of the working class," he said, "which would eventually revolt and seize control of the means of production . . . which is precisely what happened in Vietnam. What induced the U.S. government to think that they were justified in involving themselves in the struggle of the people of this developing nation to find economic solidarity?"
Brad quietly moaned his confusion which out of pity and not wanting to be told off again, his brothers ignored.
My shoulders sagged. Really, is it too much to ask that I be able to come home from a long day of work and relax? Oh, no. I have to come home and read a bunch of letters written to the love of my life by his fiancé, who, if I am correct, had him killed a hundred and fifty years ago.
Then, as if that is not bad enough, he wants me to explain the Vietnam War.
That received some chuckles.
I really have to start hiding my textbooks from him. The thing is, he reads them and actually manages to retain what they say, and then applies that to other things he finds to read around the house.
"So that's where my books keeping disappearing to!" David cried out. "Next time Suze should enforce a ask first policy. I'm sure they can leave a note for me."
"Geek," Brad rolled his eyes.
"And proud of it," David grinned.
Why he can't just watch TV, like a normal person, I do not know.
"Yes, because I want to pay a higher electricity bill," Andy grumbled.
I went over to my bed and collapsed onto it, face first. I was, I should mention, still wearing my horrible shorts from the hotel. But I couldn't bring myself to care what Jesse thought about the size of my butt at that particular moment.
"Le gasp!" Brad cried out. "Suze doesn't care what Jesse thinks she looks like?"
"It must be love!" Helen cried out in a sing song voice.
"Or she's just really exhausted," Andy said.
I guess it must have showed. Not my butt, I mean, but my general unhappiness with the way my summer was going.
"Are you all right?" Jesse wanted to know.
"He's so sweet," Helen crooned, "caring about her constantly."
"Yes," I said, into my pillows.
Jesse said, after a minute, "Well, you don't seem all right. Are you sure nothing is wrong?"
Yes, something is wrong, I wanted to shriek at him. I just spent twenty minutes reading a bunch of private correspondence from your ex-fiancé, and might I add that she seems like a terrifically boring individual? How could you have ever been stupid enough to have agreed to marry her? Her and her stupid bonnet ?
"Jealous, much?"
"She's right though," David pointed out, "how can someone as intelligent and compassionate as Jesse be interested in someone as stupid and shallow as Maria?"
"Arranged marriage, obviously," Helen said.
But the thing is, I didn't want Jesse to know I'd read his mail. I mean, we're basically roommates and all, and there are certain things you just don't do. For instance, Jesse is always tactfully not around whenever I am changing and bathing and whatnot. And I am very careful to stock up on food and litter for Spike, who, unlike a normal animal, actually seems to prefer ghost company to human. He only tolerates me because I feed him.
"Sounds almost like a married couple," Andy grumbled.
Of course, Jesse has, in the past, felt no compunction about materializing in the backseats of cars in which I happened to have been making out with someone.
Jake and Brad couldn't help but burst into sniggers at that.
But I know Jesse would never read my mail, of which I get only a limited amount, mostly in the form of letters from my best friend Gina, back in Brooklyn. And I have to admit, I felt guilty for reading his, even though it was almost two hundred years old and there certainly wouldn't have been anything about me in it.
"I thought Suze hadn't told Gina about Jesse?" Jake said.
"Perhaps she did later on in her letters," Helen shrugged.
What surprised me was that Jesse, who is, after all, a ghost, and can go anywhere without being seen - except by me and Father Dom, of course, and now, I guess, by Jack - didn't know about the letters. Really, he seemed to have no idea both that they'd been found and that, just moments before, I'd been downstairs, reading them.
"I don't think Jesse spies on us," Andy said. Well he hoped Jesse didn't because that would have just been awkward.
"He just spies on Suze," Helen said cheerfully.
But then, First Blood is pretty engrossing, I suppose.
Brad grunted his disagreement while David nodded his.
So instead of telling him what was really wrong with me - you know, anything about the letters, and especially anything about the whole I'm in love with you, only where can it go? Because you're not even alive and I'm the only one who can see you, and besides, it's clear you don't feel the same way about me. Do you? Well, do you ?
"Yes he does!" Helen squealed.
"My ears," Brad whimpered.
Thing - I just said, "Well, I met another mediator today, and I guess that kind of weirded me out."
"Kind of?"
And then I rolled over and told him about Jack.
Jesse was very interested and told me I ought to call Father Dom with the news. What I wanted to do, of course, was call Father Dom and tell him about the letters. But I couldn't do that with Jesse in the room, because of course he'd know I'd been prying in his personal affairs, which, given his whole secrecy thing about how he'd died, I doubted he'd appreciate.
"No I don't think he will."
So I said, "Good idea," and picked up the phone and dialed Father D's number.
Only Father D didn't answer. Instead, a woman did. At first I freaked out, thinking Father Dominic was shacking up. But then I remember that he lives in a rectory with a bunch of other people.
Everyone chuckled at that.
So I went, "Is Father Dominic there?" hoping it was only a novice or something and would go away and get him without comment.
But it wasn't a novice. It was Sister Ernestine, who is the assistant principal of my high school, and who of course recognized my voice.
"Bugger!" Jake said.
"Susannah Simon," she said. "What are you doing calling Father Dominic at home at this hour? Do you know what time it is, young lady? It is nearly ten o'clock!"
"Are people no longer allowed to have confessions these days?" Andy grumbled. He didn't like that nun after what he read. "I thought Father Dominic had an open door policy for any time."
"Ten o'clock is late?" Brad asked disgusted.
"I know," I said. "Only-"
"Besides, Father Dominic isn't here," Sister Ernestine went on. "He's on retreat."
"And he left Sister Ernestine in charge?!" Brad yelped alarmed.
"Retreat?" I echoed, picturing Father Dominic sitting in front of a campfire with a bunch of other priests, singing Kumbaya My Lord and possibly wearing sandals.
Once more laughter ensured. It took quite a while to calm down after that.
Then I remembered that Father Dominic had mentioned that he would be going on a retreat for the principals of Catholic high schools. He'd even given me the number there, in case there was some kind of ghost emergency and I needed to reach him. I didn't count discovering a new mediator as an emergency, however . . . though doubtless Father Dom would. So I just thanked Sister Ernestine, apologized for disturbing her, and hung up.
"She should have just hung up straight away," Brad said sagely.
Andy couldn't be bothered to scold him on his rude behaviour because quite frankly he would have done the same.
"What is a retreat?" Jesse wanted to know.
So then I explained to him what a retreat is, but the whole time I was sitting there thinking about the time he'd touched my face in the hospital and wondering if it had been because he just felt sorry for me or if he actually liked me (as more than just as a friend - I know he likes me as a friend) or what.
"Girls," Brad rolled his eyes.
Because the thing is, even though he's been dead for a hundred and fifty years, Jesse is really an extreme hottie - much hotter even than Paul Slater ... or maybe I just think so because I'm in love with him.
But whatever. I mean, he really is like someone straight off the WB. He even has nice teeth for a guy born before they invented fluoride, very white and even and strong-looking. I mean, if there were any guys at the Mission Academy who looked even remotely like Jesse, going to school wouldn't seem at all like the massive waste of time it actually is.
But what good is it? I mean, him looking so good, and all? He's a ghost . I'm the only one who can see him. It's not like I'll ever be able to introduce him to my mother, or take him to the prom, or marry him, or whatever. We have no future together .
I have to remember that.
But sometimes it's really, really hard. Especially when he's sitting there in front of me, laughing at what I'm saying, and petting that stupid, smelly cat. Jesse was the first person I met when I moved to California, and he became my first real friend here. He has always been there when I needed him, which is way more than I can say for most of the living people I know. And if I had to choose one person to be marooned on a desert island with, I wouldn't even have to think about it: of course it would be Jesse.
"Aww!"
"Urgh!"
"I hope this is the end of the depressing rant."
This is what I was thinking as I explained about retreats. It was what I was thinking as I went on to explain what I knew about the Vietnam War, and then the eventual fall of communism in the former Soviet Union. It was what I was thinking as I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed. It was what I was thinking as I said good night to him and crawled under the covers and turned out the light. It was what I was thinking as sleep overcame me and blissfully blotted out all thought whatsoever . . . the time I spend sleeping being the only time, lately, when I can escape thoughts of Jesse.
But let me tell you, it came back in full force when, just a few hours later, I woke with a start to find a hand pressed over my mouth.
"What?"
And, oh yeah, a knife held to my throat.
"WHAT?!"
"That's the end of the entry," David said weakly, terrified of his stepmother's fury.
"Andy, read it, now!" Helen barked.
Andy hurriedly ripped the diary out of David's hand and fumbled for a moment to find the right page. Then he began to read.