Jack Slater was brushing his teeth in his private bathroom. His electric toothbrush always made his teeth and gums feel tingly afterwards, but he was very concerned about oral hygiene, so he dealt with it. The brush shut off automatically after two minutes. He rinsed the head off and placed the base in its charger. He wiped his mouth on the face towel hanging to the right of the mirror and turned around to walk into his bedroom. He stopped dead in his tracks.
Sitting on the toy box at the foot of his bed was a very small girl; her curly brown hair and pale skin glowed faintly in the night. Although her clothes, hair and skin had color, they were muted, as if she were a child in an old photograph. But the style of her clothes indicated that she was not from an old photograph at all; she was just dead. Jack knew this because of her glow; and because he was the only child in the huge house he shared with his busy parents.
Jack just stood in the doorway between his bedroom and bathroom, staring at the girl. He thought she looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't be sure. He took a few tentative steps toward her. She looked up at him slowly and he stopped.
"Are you Jack?" the girl asked sullenly. Jack stared hard at her.
"Yeah. How do you know me?" He stood still, waiting for an answer.
"You go to Temple," she replied, "I need you to help me. Will you?"
Jack blinked. "I hope so."
The girl looked hopeful for two seconds exactly. Then her face returned to its melancholy state.
"I need you to tell them. It was Rebecca's fault." Jack tried to commit the message to memory. Tell "them". "Rebecca's" fault. Got it.
"O.k. I will try my best." Jack too a few more steps toward the girl, but she began to turn more transparent. She was dematerializing, she was leaving him, but Jack needed more information.
"Wait!" Jack yelped, "I need to know more! What's your name? Who are 'they'!" The little girl continued to disappear.
"Tell them. It was Rebecca," the little girl said one last time, and then she was gone. Jack stood there, looking at the toy box where she had been sitting. He stared for a long time.
Suddenly, he ran to his desk, dug out the stub of a colored pencil, and wrote the girl's message on a scrap of computer paper. Then he wrote himself a note:
Get the morning paper's obituaries.
Jack's parents were already gone for the day when he finally made it downstairs for breakfast. Mr. and Mrs. Slater were always so busy with their careers. Jack felt like that kid from the cartoon about fairy godparents, except that instead of godparents he had ghosts, and they didn't grant any stinking wishes. He had finally found out why ghosts appeared to only him and not anyone else.
Last summer, while his parents and older brother Paul were funning and sunning their vacation up at a resort in Carmel, California, Jack was busy staying inside and watching cartoons. He hadn't yet realized that there were other people like him, people that could see and talk to ghosts, and that the ghosts weren't usually out to hurt him. He was scared to pieces of the ghosts he encountered. All of that changed though, when he met Susannah Simon.
Susannah, or "Suze", worked for the resort where he was wasting his summer vacation. She was assigned to Jack as a babysitter while his parents and brother played golf, tennis, and just generally ignored him. Suze tried to get him to go outside and play and swim like the other kids, but he was firm about staying in the hotel room and watching cartoons. Finally, she got fed up with sitting inside doing nothing all day, so one day she drug Jack out of the room and down to the pool. On the way, they ran into the ghost of a hotel gardener who had passed away the day before of a heart attack. Both Jack and Suze were surprised to discover that the other could see the ghost. That's when Suze began teaching Jack about his gift, about being a liaison between the living and the dead. He had event tried to help Suze get rid of a ghost he thought was bothering her, but it turned out that another, more sinister ghost and his own brother had tricked him. A lot of people were hurt that night, and Jack would never forget the lessons he learned.
The housekeeper in the Slater home, Rosalinda, had made Jack's favorite breakfast, chorizo and eggs with fresh flour tortillas, and heaped a huge pile onto a plate for him. He could smell it as he came down the stairs and into the kitchen. He took the plate and tortilla warmer off the table and started for the living room, smiling big at Rosalinda as he passed her on the way. The housekeeper winked and made a mock-stern face.
"Yack," she scolded playfully in her Latin accent," you better don't speel in deh carpet porque you mama be mad!" Jack chuckled at her.
"I won't Rosie!" he called back to her and flipped on the T.V. He turned the channel to the local news, remembering his visitor the night before. The first network had commercials; the next one had the weather. On the third channel he found actual news stories, so he left it there. After a brief story about a small department store fire, the picture to the left of the anchor person's head displayed the photograph of the little girl Jack had talked to. He clicked the volume higher.
"Early this morning," the man began, "police and an ambulance responded to a 911 call about a young girl who appeared to be unconscious. The girl, Jersey Jaworski, apparently did not wake up to her alarm clock, so the housekeeper, Blanca De la Cruz, alerted her parents, Jeremiah and Rebecca Jaworski, who then dialed the emergency number. The ambulance transported Jersey, just two weeks shy of her 8th birthday, to Seattle Memorial, where doctors attempted to resuscitate her. She was pronounced dead at 7:45 a.m. The girl is survived by her father and stepmother as well as her older brother Justin, 14, and sister Chantelle, 1 year. The girl's death is undetermined as of now, but Mr. Jaworski, a member of the local Jewish temple, has authorized an autopsy to be done before traditional Jewish services are commenced. We will have more on that story as information is provided."
Jack stared at the screen. That news clip answered the questions he had the night before; her name, who "they" were and who Rebecca was. He took a bite of his food, but it didn't taste like anything that morning. He shut off the television set and took his plate to the kitchen. He found Rosie on the telephone, looking worried.
"No Blanca…you can't think that way! Everything will be good in the end; remember where she was gone to!" Rosie twirled the phone cord around her finger.
"I know you will miss la niña but you can't put the blame on yourself," Rosie glanced to her left and saw Jack standing there at the sink, "Blanca, yo me voy. I call you after my soap operas, ok? Adios." She hung up the phone and went to Jack's side. He was staring at the floor in contemplation.
"Mijo, what's wrong?" Rosie asked, putting her hand on Jack's shoulder," You look worried."
"A girl from my school died." Jack answered.
"You knew her, this little girl? I know her secoro, her nanny." Jack nodded his head a little in response.
"I knew her a little while. She was a grade behind me." Rosie sighed and patted Jack on the head.
"Yack, are you fine to go to school today or you want I call you mama and tell her you need to stay home?"
"I'll be ok, Rosie," Jack replied, "I think I'll go to her funeral though. It should be soon since she's Jewish too." He was surprised that the father ordered an autopsy done since it is typically Jewish custom to bury someone immediately after their death. He wondered if Jersey's ghost had had anything to do with that decision.
Jack walked to the hall closet to gather his rain coat and shoes. He was just buttoning up his coat when he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Slowly he turned around and saw the familiar curly brown head materialize amongst the Hanukkah decorations at the back of the closet. He managed to stifle a yell.
"Hi Jersey," Jack whispered finally. The girl lifted her head up above a menorah.
"You found out my name," she said. Jack nodded.
"You were on the news this morning. I hear they are going to do an autopsy." Jack stepped into the closet and shut the door behind him; he didn't want Rosie to hear him talking to thin air.
"Yeah," Jersey replied, "Rebecca didn't want one, but I whispered in Daddy's ear. She doesn't want anyone finding out." Jack looked puzzled.
"Find out what? What did she do?" Just then, the heard Rosie's footsteps coming from down the hallway. Jersey quickly faded as the housekeeper turned the door knob.
"Yack Slater, what are you doing?" she asked. Jack tried to hide his embarrassment at being found talking to himself in a closet.
"Just…putting on my shoes…" he answered feebly. Rosie rolled her eyes and chuckled.
"Vamanos, mijo! You gonna be late for the bus and you know I hate to drive." Jack slipped on his shoes and backpack and hurried out of the closet. Together, he and Rosie walked out the front door and down to the bus stop.